My Yangshuo Secrets

... How to write a great website

Dear reader,

Thanks for visiting my website about Yangshuo. Over the years Yangshuo was a sort of second home. I even had an apartment there for some time. So I can tell you from first hand how nice the town is.My name is Peter and at the moment I live in Sitiawan a little town in north west Malaysia. I was born in the Netherlands.

Being tired of my jobs in Holland, I decided to travel for a while. It became almost five years. During this period I covered most of the territory in between Amsterdam and China. Believe me, cycling is one of the three passions I have in life. The others? Music and diving.

I have quite a history in cycling, which started way back when I was 6 years old. We Dutch love bicycles, we have good bike lanes and in the village were I grew up everybody cycled.

I never bought a car, I always went by bicycle. That continued when I had jobs, cycled to work, even it was 10-15 km.

After years of traveling by bicycle from Holland to China, into south east Asia and mostly back (see my bicycle website) I spend about 2 years cycling in China, lived for some time in Yangshuo too.

On my bike in 2002 in Sanjiang, north of Yangshuo China

But in 2003 I left the country because of the SARS disease. I went with my then girlfriend to the UK, lived there a year but we came back to Asia. This time to Malaysia.

As I had to make money, I explored the possibilities to work online. As I was living near Pangkor island it was tempting to see if I could write a website about this little island and earn a living.

But how could I build a website and earn some money? As said, in 2003 I lived a year in Manchester England. It was there when I found Sitesell. I downloaded a free e-book about setting up a website about affiliates: the affiliate masters course.

The affiliate masters course became my first introduction to Sitesell. Soon I learned that building a website was more then knowing a bit of Frontpage. And using a free hosting was a "not done" thing too.

I bought Make My Site Sell, which gave me all the tools to build a good website. As a special gift, I can GIVE you this e-book for FREE. Click here to get your copy.

However, as being a lazy person, I found very soon that creating a website using MYSS MANUALLY would take me a long time. That is when I bought the Sitesell package. And that was the best investment I ever made. Everything was easy to understand and the package turned out to be an excellent value. In the beginning I didn't see the full picture, but once the site was rolling, wow!

My first website, was pulau-pangkor.com and it grew fast. In the beginning I knew little about Pangkor, but that soon changed. The island was (and Is!) beautiful. Contrary to what many people thought, more then enough to write about. The website has now around 200 pages and still growing. I try to cover as much as I can. The website also brought me in contact with many locals and businesses. The website now has it's own forum and you can leave your message there (or a link to your own website, provided it contains descent content): Pangkor Forum.

But I have to admit, if I had not found SBI, I wouldn't be here where I am now. The process of SBI is pretty simple but ...it's like everything else, just work, hard work sometimes. The difference is that SBI gave me independence over my time. I do what I love to do. And I am not the only one! Listen to Tony:

There are many people using Sitesell these days. Sitesell owners are very successful. Many belong in the Top 1% of the 56 million websites worldwide. (I read recently there are now about 87 million!) Here is the list, take time, the list is so extensive it will take a minute to load.

So, what's the magic of Sitesell? If there is a magic, it is that Sitesell is so much down to earth that even I can understand it. Don't believe me? Why don't you look at the video below to see what Sitesell is about.

Or you can watch SBI-TV and if that is not enough, here is the Complete Site BuildIt Reference Guide.

Once the Pangkor site was running I wanted to set up a second site. This had to be about my "real" passion as I named it. It became www.bicycle-adventures.com Obviously I used again Sitesell to create it. The site grows slowly, many countries traveled are not yet in the website included and many photos should be scanned (I have thousands of slides here).

After the years of traveling, I wanted a new home, I found it here and with the help of Dr. Ken Evoy and Sitesell I found a way to make life beautiful. It can do the same for you.

Now with the start of my third website about Yangshuo, I am doing what I was planning for quite some time now. Now it is time to tell you how great the place is and why you have to visit this little travelers gem in China.

I hope you enjoy this website. If you have any comments, feel free to contact me. It's always fun to hear from people, whether they like my website or not.

Yours,
Peter van der Lans
230 Taman Sejati 2
Jalan Lumut
Sitiawan Perak
Malaysia
32000

For those who are interested in the bicycle adventures of me, have a look my bicycle adventures www.bicycle-adventures.com and if you want to have a look where I live, feel free to read www.pulau-pangkor.com

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