Meebo!

Logged into Meebo after a long time today. Wanted to talk to mom. Clicked on " Products" out of sheer curiosity. Noticed the "meebo me " widget.

Its now live on the site!!


Yayy!!

New Beginnings!

In 2 hours I turn 25! A quarter of century. Wondering whether I've really achieved something worthwhile.

New Beginnings!! Isn't that what this post is all about. Isn't it what New Year's Resolutions are all about? Don't we all resolve to turn over a new leaf on Birthdays??

So here's my Resolution for this year

1. To be leaner and fitter. (Really putting on too much weight)
2. To be a nicer person!!! ( Apart from actually nice, appear to be a lot more well read, genuinely smarter, less of a jerk, more of a success.... you know the works!! )
3. To learn to dance :-) ( Now this is something I really want to do)
4. To learn to play the guitar ( This I've been saying for the past 10 years! Long time no?)


Now, since we are talking about new beginnings I have a new job in hand! One that I am really going to take up. Someone I know wants to get into the ___ and he's asked me to join him
Yay!!!
Apart fm the fact that I get a decent salary, I get a stake in the company( we are still working out the details), I get into management and I get to do something I really love. He's also asked me to quit my job! So this is pretty serious!!


Cheers to New Beginnings!!!

Time is Money

Last week I was 1 step away from paying for advertising. So why didnt I? Money!! I was going to pay by Credit Card but there were a coupla things I hadnt completed(The About Us page and 1 lesson) so I held it off. The major contributing factor was that my Credit Card billing date is the 6th and any purchase made after that is payable on the 26th of the next month. So I've postponed the billing till the 6th. Obviously my ad wont show till the 7th.

And there's my worry.

Just to save a few bucks, am I losing out big time? I like to think not. The people who are going to find me from the advertising are not likely to not buy anything simply because I am a coupla weeks late. However, the class program that I am advertising-- will that get affected?I will have lost 1 month of the academic year so how am I going to balance that out?? Today is already the 2nd and 5 more days!! That's all I need. Unfortunately 6th is a Saturday so there wont be anything happening till the 9th,Monday.

I only hope I dont lose too much because of this decision.

Biz Skool Business Plan Competitions

So there are two business plan competitions--One at MICA and the other at IIT-Mumbai.
The deadline for MICA's is 28th and for the other is 1st October. I've decided to submit a BP to both but the best part is I havent gotten down to writing one.I've already got enough work to do with changing the front page,finish writing the content for the site, put up a "About Us" page ASAP since the place I am going to advertise is waiting for my moolah and I'd rather have the new content up before going live.
I should mention that the plan I am going with for the Biz Skool is not the idea on which this blog is based :-). I've decided to keep that to myself and go with the other. For the other, I even ran a survey on Surveymonkey but I dont need it yet. What I really liked about that survey was that in filled in a very short time.

Ok enough rambling.

Over the past few weeks, as my site builder got busy and vanished completely, I realised I had to start learning sooner or later how to do what I wanted done to the site. So I did! I fixed the links, I got the Social Media tags working and I started writing more for content(Ok, so the onus of writing content for the site was always on me but :-P ). Plus, I found a new place to advertise and they were more than happy to knock $25 off their set-up fee if only I'd link to their site. Done!! :-D

Also new is my job hunt. I've grown tired of working at the same place, where I realise what I considered important was not considered important by the management(I was drawing on my experience as an entrepreneur and failed online marketeer) so they preferred to continue fixing the Online Leave Management System for the office and I continued to push to optimise the company's product website
Not to mention we had no perks, pay was lousy, and motivation at an all time low. Really, going there to work was a drag and hopefully I'll get out of there soon. I'm talking to somebody for a job and really, if that comes through there's a lot I can now pursue so am really praying for that!

I forgot to mention that I have a somebody who's paid up but hasnt utilised the service available to her.I think I'll be waiting for a few days before writing to her :-)

Yikes!!!

On August 15th, my domain registration expired. I, of course, was blissfully unaware having registered with a different e-mail address that I dont normally check(which btw i totally love Google for for not having disabled my account!) . Dufus that I am, I dont realise for quite a while, possibly because even the domain registrants didnt (whatever it is they do to unpaid domains) for a coupla days.

Then a frantic run-around to deposit the money, inform the registrants and beg them to have the site back up as soon as possible.

Just to be safe, this time I've paid for 2 years :-)

10K

That's the price somebody was willing to buy me out for!!!!

Exciting! Somebody actually thought what I did was exciting enough for them to consider buying me out.

I turned him/her down though. :-)

Obviously I would. This is still my baby. I've spent countless hours on it, solving questions, agonising over my decisions, answering kids,.....................
Still quite emotionally attached to it.

Not to mention that 10K didnt even cover my expenses till date :-D

Big Blow.

Today, the person I was counting on to bring in new students decided to shut down her venture in favour of being able to spend more time with her kids.

The news is slowly sinking in.

I had so many hopes on this. While I now realise it was foolish to pin so much on 1 thing I so badly wanted this to happen. It would mean so many things

Freedom to quit my tech job
Freedom to do my own thing
Freedom to do something i really enjoy
Freedom from financial worries
Freedom..............

I guess its time to grin, put my chin up and go look for the next big wave .

Long while eh?

Yeah its been a while since my last post. 3 months? Lots has happened in between . Lotsa good things and a few bad things.So this is going to be another long post. Atleast I hope so. I never realised how much of a job it is writing a blog. Then again, this is more like a record for me than something i enjoy doing(atleast for the time being) so I guess its bound to feel a little dreary.

Ok, let's see Way back in March, just after my last post, someone I know made a very interesting offer to me. It involved me shifting base from Hyderabad to Nagpur- something i wouldnt have minded if the work(and pay :-D) was good! So I went to Nagpur, checked out the place and the job and the offer(nearly 3 times my then salary).I come back to Hyd and my boss calls me to tell me he wants to talk to me. So I go meet him on a Saturday(when the office is closed btw) where he offers me a pay equivalent to the Nagpur offer plus 3 more. The only hitch was that half was cash and half was stock encashable at the end of the year. Funny na-- get paid peanuts for the greater part of a year and then suddenly everybody wants to give me money :-)

After a lot of talking and thinking, I turned down the Nagpur offer.

That was difficult. That offer also involved teaching as well as the freedom to run my website and to use the resources of my workplace!! What more could i ask for?? Plus they promised to pay for my MBA if i stuck around for three years(an offer matched by my Hyd boss though he didnt give it in writing but then neither did my nagpur boss) and the fact that I'd come back to Hyd in just about a year's time or less. My biggest concern was what I would actually be doing in Nagpur and the fact that it was Nagpur. If I think Hyd's a dead place and I should get outta here, nagpur's worse even by my standards.

Anyway, Nagpur got a No and Hyd got a Yes

I got an interview call from TISS!!

That was thrilling!! I was just glad I got a call from somewhere.Something to show for a year's work. Something to prove "Hey me good too!!"

Turns out they called 750 candidates for 60 seats with the usual reservation thrown in. Given that I was an engineer in a software company, well, you know what my chances were.

Moving on. Somewhere in end April, I got ripped off :-( . A kid mailed me with questions, paid up, and received the solutions. Two days later, he cancelled the payment. A friend told me that 100% of Online-Frauds are committed by Indians or Pakistanis. Unfortunately, this kid was definitely one of them so................................

And finally, one day I was just randomly surfing the net checking out a Free Online Collaboration tool when I chanced upon a post. 1 thing led to another, and I just might be coming into some serious money. Finally!! And the timing couldnt have been more perfect. I was almost going to shut this down since money only seemed to be going out and not coming in. Just keeping my fingers crossed now!!

Hmm, not so long after all. Anyway who cares :-)

Patience

That's the one thing I am slowly learning from this venture. I need to have Patience. I sit and answer kids questions for free day after day, week after week, month after month.
Things will not happen overnight that I know. Yet I've also learnt that just because things are happening very slowly doesnt mean they wont happen at all. My first sale was a year AFTER I started doing this. I made 3 sales in a rush and nothing after that! Luck? I hope not.

Its taken me a year,three and a half grand and God alone knows how many hours to make a grand. A grand!!! That's all. And the best part is I still havent gotten that grand for the simple reason that my Payment Vendor says and I quote

"Due to the total balance being under 35, this amount will be carried-over and paid to you on the next payment cycle, if you have any questions regarding this, please contact your account manager."

My balance is $23.16.

Up to Speed!

I should give credit where its due-- in this case my Mom. She came home fm Mumbai,in Feb2005, carrying a paper clipping in her bag about how CL was tutoring kids online and she wondered why I couldnt do something similar. Well, I had always said I was fond of teaching, I had 24hrs Internet access and I was decently good at Math so I thought "why the hell not?"

And so I started.

I took it nice and slow at first. While I researched the competition, I also started posting at various sites, looking at the type of questions being asked, why particular posters were more enthusiastically received and what worked for the student.I also made a list of the things I would need to seriously take up this.Top on my list was a computer(though that didnt arrive) till Jan2006.

I researched hosting options, domain name registrations, compared competitors and drew rough drafts of what I wanted the site to look at.
However, my real piece of luck came when I met 64BitWhore via PagalGuy.com(India's largest MBA forum). He really kick-started everything.I hadnt yet registered a domain name so over 2 sleepless days and nights we thrashed over a domain name and I finally registered that. A little later I got my server as well. He really helped me a lot--fm Domain Name selection+registration to setting up the pages and the advertising and general advice and really a whole lot more that I can put down here.

I registered the domain on 13/8. 13/8!!! 6 whole months after I had started doing this. Sure I had a Tripod page up but that couldnt really be considered anything worthwhile. 6 months is a long time. Had I registered earlier, the search engines would have found me earlier, and perhaps I would be better off than I am today.

My mistakes?? Plenty!!
I waited too long to register a domain name.
I really didnt search thoroughly for the lowest prices. I found a hosting solution with Rediff that would have cost me 2.5k. Instead I got everything done for less that 1.5K.
I hadnt researched payment vendors enough. I was going to go with PayPal!!
I had no idea how I was going to advertise or make the site popular

Guess I've come a long way since then. Still there are plenty of things I could improve. But isnt that the best part on entrepreneurship? Learning and whatever mistake you make, is --well whatever... :-)

p.s. Though it may look like I make a post only when I make a sale, that's not true! Been working on this for a while but yeah sale count is now 3! :-)

Why?

Why do people blog? I always thought Blogging was kinda egoistic(or is it egotistic--i forget which is the correct word). I mean, I know that some blogs are downright hilarious, for e.g. Sidin's blog, but the rest? What made them think that total strangers would be interested in reading their blog?

Why should you be reading even this in the first place? Apart from wasting atleast 2 mins of your time, what purpose does it serve? And what do you gain from it?

So why am I blogging? Show-Off obviously!!! Well, also the fact that I promised myself I would start a blog when I made my first sale.

Why?

Like I said--Ego. Leaving my marks for posterity. Someday when I become really famous somebody's gonna discover this blog and then you'll get a peek into my life from the time it started to get exciting!

Or perhaps I'll cringe at how idioticly naive I was. And Arrogant. And stupid.

Oh, and the count is now 2 sales!! :-)

My first Sale

Today I made my first sale.