Escape Winter – Head To The Maldives

Summer Holiday Escape

The Maldives has a prime location in the Indian Ocean, south west of Sri Lanka. Spread across an area over 90,000 square kilometers, it consists of a chain of about 1,200 small coralislands – 200 of which are inhabited. It’s one of the most luxurious and remote destinations for a relaxing holiday where beach days are your main activity. Of course there are other things to keep you busy too – from diving to island hopping – and resorts that cater to everyone including young families and honeymooners.

WHAT’S THE TIME DIFFERENCE AND WHAT’S THE LOCAL CURRENCY?

The Maldives is three hours ahead of the South Africa. The local currency is Maldivian Rufiya and English is widely spoken. You currently don’t require a visa and can fly from airports including Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. Search for flights on Emirates.

WHAT’S THE BEST TIME OF YEAR TO TRAVEL?

Between November and April, the Maldives enjoys interrupted blue skies, dry and sunny days at around 30 degrees. With two distinct seasons – wet and dry – travelling during this period is the perfect season to explore its many coral islands, venture on an island hopping excursion, or simply while away the hours by your hotel pool.

WHAT’S THE FOOD AND CULTURE LIKE?

Maldivian culture is influenced by Indian, Sri Lankan, Indonesian and even Africa traditions. The nation is both diverse and unique, and getting to know island life will be a memorable experience. Expect the rhythm of drums, homemade craft markets, and local dishes including coconut-based curries, fresh seafood and stuffed chapati (masroshi).

WHERE ARE THE BEST BEACHES TO VISIT?

No matter where you decide to pull up a deckchair, you’ll be greeted with stunning views and the purest white sand on the islands. But some of the Maldives’ best beaches include Bikini Beach (Ari Atoll), Cocoon Maldives (Lhaviyani Atoll), Veligandu Island Beaches (Kaafu Atoll), Reethi Beach (Baa Atoll) and Mirihi Island Beach (South Ari Atoll).

WHO IS IT GOOD FOR?

Thanks to the wide choice of hotel resorts, the Maldives appeals to couples and groups of all ages and families travelling with young kids and teens. You’ll find plenty of luxurious adult’s only resorts, as well as those with kids’ clubs, sports and beachside activities.

WHAT CAN I DO THERE?

While you won’t experience the buzz of a major built up city, the small capital of Malé is busier and boasts markets, mosques and a national museum. It’s a good place to sample some local food outside of your hotel resort, and to soak up the daily life of Maldivian people. If you enjoy watersports such as scuba diving or snorkeling, then the Maldives won’t disappoint with the amazing coral reefs and opportunities for boat trips.

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BidorBuy South Africa’s eBay

Online auctions

We’ve all heard of the international online auction giant eBay. eBay is the world’s largest trading community where millions of people buy and sell millions of items every day. Yet despite its global reach eBay has failed to penetrate the South African market.  The worthy South African alternative to eBay is bidorbuy. 

While eBay dwarfs bidorbuy in terms of global market share, bidorbuy currently enjoys market domination in the South African online auction marketplace. bidorbuy was founded in August 1999 and is currently the largest internet auction website operating in South Africa. bidorbuy generates an average 11,000 million page impressions and receives over 430,000 new visitors to the website monthly. There are currently around 240,000 registered members with approximately 12,000 members actively trading in any given month.

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Some of the many features offered by bidorbuy that are similar to eBay include the Buy Now listing where an item can be sold at a fixed price, the Rating System where buyers and sellers rate one another on the transactional experience, an Automatic Bidding feature where the system bids on a bidders behalf up to a maximum pre-defined amount, and the very significant Verified Users status (South African sellers apply to become verified after completing a stringent verification and identification process). 

The benefits of a common marketplace

Although bidorbuy shares many features with eBay, the benefits for a South African user to use a local site like bidorbuy far outweigh those of using the international eBay. South African’s have bought into the success of bidorbuy while fully appreciating the potential that the Internet holds for local e-tailers. The bidorbuy community is very strong and provides an active forum where buyers and sellers can exchange ideas and discuss concerns from a similar local perspective where they share the same economy and are faced with similar challenges. This forum is properly run and well moderated and has become a very popular ‘hang-out’ and social networking platform for local South African e-tailers and online shoppers.

Faster and more secure payments

It is exorbitantly expensive to make an International transfer for goods bought overseas especially for lower valued purchases. In South Africa Internet banking is widely accepted for buyers as one of the safest methods of making payment for purchases concluded online. Since both the payer and payee are located in South Africa there is a greater recourse should a problem arise during the transaction. South African FICA and FIAS regulations provide a further safeguard to buyers and sellers by ensuring that the identification and whereabouts of the individual is available on record should any recourse become necessary. 

South African sellers are unable to receive funds (nor does PayPal offer South African Rands as a currency option) from international buyers, thus making it very difficult for a South African based seller to trade on eBay. bidorbuy has a similar local payment system to eBay’s PayPal called bobPay. bobPay is a payment facility created specifically for bidorbuy sellers enabling them to receive payments made by credit card.

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Local delivery can save the day

It goes without saying that there are many obvious benefits to shipping products locally as opposed to having to ship something outside of the country. The cost of sending an item abroad can become momentous. Not to mention the extended time that it takes for a buyer to receive an item. Another noteworthy benefit to trading locally is that there are no risks on the bottom line as a result of volatile fluctuations in the exchange rates and there are also no potential complications with exchange control regulations. Often buyers also forget to take into account the additional costs and complications of buying from an overseas seller resulting from customs duties and VAT.   In addition, the South African law offers much greater protection to South African buyers and sellers in the unlikely event that a transaction is faced with complications or disputes.

bidorbuy facilitates profitability

eBay generates revenue from a number of fees including a fee to list a product and a fee when the product sells, plus there are several additional optional fees all based on various factors and scales. These fees add up and quickly become a deterrent to anyone who wants start up a business selling on online auctions especially when new to selling online where profit margins are low. The upfront listing fee can take quite a chunk out of seller profits. Listing on bidorbuy is just as easy as listing on eBay with the significant difference being that sellers do not pay anything until the item actually sells. There are options to upgrade a listing by enhancing it so that it appears on homepage or to promote it in a specific category, but these enhanced listing fees are optional.

bidorbuy hosts two promotional auctions called the Crazy Wednesday and Snap Friday Auctions. These promotional days offer new sellers an effective way of getting noticed and getting a good price on items. With up to 65,000 items being listed during these peak periods, many regular buyers (‘bidorbuyers’) eagerly anticipate these promotions and bidding becomes furious and as a result helps to raise seller’s profiles and profits very quickly.

A big fish in a small pond

While eBay dominates the online auction market and has millions of trades taking place daily, it becomes a very difficult environment for new sellers to enter into. With so many sellers in one place there seems to be just too much competition on eBay. bidorbuy provides a local platform whereby sellers can quickly set up a competitive online South African business, and there is far less competition for sellers listing niche products on bidorbuy than trying to sell the same product on eBay. In comparison to eBay, bidorbuy may seem like a small pond – but with an average turnover of over R10 million from more than 200,000 listings resulting in over 30,000 transactions per month, it certainly seems like a pond large and worthy enough to be fishing in.

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What is Daily Data

What is daily data

Daily Data is an anonymous 100% FREE daily prize draw funded by advertising revenue.

It’s a bit like a free newspaper that sell’s advertising to fund the running of the newspaper. In our case, advertisers pay us to advertise on the site and when your number is drawn, we pay you.

Winners have 24 hours to claim the prize, otherwise the money rolls over to the next day until it is claimed.

Free! Really?

It also works in the same way that commercial (non-SABC) TV works. When you intentionally watch a TV Show (for free), you will unintentionally watch the adverts that pay for the production of that show. When you arrive on the Daily Data website to check the daily winning number, you are exposed to the adverts on the site, which generate the revenue that is given away. The more money we give away, the more traffic turns up to win it. It’s a self-sustaining circle. The bigger the site gets, the more it can afford to give away.

What is Daily Data not?

Websites that give something away for free usually make money by concealing tricks in their Terms & Conditions. Typically, they get your permission to sell details onto their “trusted partners”. Let’s be honest, who actually reads the Terms & Conditions fully when they join a website? And who wants their contact details passed around regardless of how “trusted” the partners are.

Why doesn’t Daily Data sell your details? First and foremost, it’s not a nice thing to do, and I don’t think people will put up with it for much longer. If we wanted to make money by deceiving people, there are much more lucrative ways of going about it. Secondly, the ad revenue is enough to cover the costs of the prize money (and a bit more…). The site has only had a small percentage of the active cell phone numbers in the country entered so far. If we get at least 10% of these numbers, we can (all else remaining equal) afford to give away a very nice sum everyday to our members. The biggest obstacle on the way is gaining and maintaining the users’ trust. If I start burying tricks in our Terms and Conditions, then it will never grow.

Anonymous

This is why we only require your cell phone number (to go into the draws) and your email (to send you reminders to check the draw). This is not enough to sell on, and we don’t even ask for your name. Effectively, the site is anonymous.