I was reading this wonderful article by MMM and it reminded me how almost everything I know today was taught to me sublimely way before I was a teen.
Like many other kids, I received a small amount of money every month from my parents. It started with 100 Rs a month and grew to 500 Rs a month over the years. I stopped receiving this amount completely when I turned 18.
My mother encouraged me every month that I don’t spend all the money that she was giving me. She further encouraged me that if I am able to save 1000 Rs, I can give the money to her and she will give me an additional 10 Rs a month or roughly 12% gains per year.
Before I became a teenager, I was able to save up to 5000 Rs from the pocket money, Eidi and other cash gifts I received from my relatives. For handing this over to my mother, she gave me an additional 50 Rs every month in pocket money.
In hindsight, if you think about it, I wouldn’t have saved more than $100-$200 through-out my childhood. In addition, I wouldn’t have generated more than $100-$200 in compounded interest. Despite making no significant amount of money, I learnt the number 1 way of getting wealthy. I learnt how the money can do the work for you. That each dollar is an employee that works non-stop 24/7 to get you more employees every day. It’s even better than a pyramid scheme.
This, I think, is the single biggest differentiator between people who are able to get wealthy and those who do not. How much wealth you’ll accumulate over your life is never determined by how much income you make. I’ve known enough broke people in my life who make over $10,000 each month and still struggle to do well financially.
They do every thing in their power to make contributions in the form of “sweat equity” but make no progress whatsoever to make contributions in the form of “financial equity”. Sweat equity can get you a lot of income, but it’s often the financial equity that buys you the financial freedom.
I was lucky to be taught this way early in my life. It breaks my heart to meet people who make it to the top percentile as far as income is concerned, yet fail to buy themselves financial freedom. I hope I’m able to pass the same learnings to the readers of this blog as well as to my child.
I have been writing now for over 180 days. There are many things that aren’t great about life right now. But in comparison, there will always be more things that are right and less that aren’t and that means we need to always be grateful and keep moving forward.
Mental Health
The COVID-19 situation has surrounded us for too long and this will probably stay around for much longer. I have not been able to see the few friends I have in a really long time which was the best part of my day everyday and one of the biggest advantages of the freedom given by online businesses. I miss that and it’s affecting my already feeble emotional health.
There are other things affecting me too. I had an insanely good business a few years ago, which over the years isn’t as good as before. There are many friends and colleagues who weren’t there for me during this time. For this, I’ve learnt to realize that everything is my own problem and no one owes me anything. If anyone offers support, I need to be grateful. If someone doesn’t, that’s okay.
During this time I have also had colleagues whom I offered a lot of support to, but they have deprived me of both business and happiness. I’m trying to learn to deal with this too and hopefully I will.
Blogging
Some of the days I didn’t want to write at all. Somedays I’ve done it just because I had to do it to keep the challenge going on and somedays I’ve put my heart and mind into writing this blog.
There are many reasons that I continue to keep this challenge alive. Some of them concern me, and some of them concern you.
For the reason that concerns you, I have continued writing despite being down many days, on a holiday somewhere in between, and not having enough time many days, is because I want to showcase the # 1 most important thing about life and businesses to stay afloat: consistency.
Whether you’re building a business or just trying to stay alive, you gotta try every single day. You can’t take a single day off. I hope my year long effort can showcase that to the readers with my own example.
Appreciation
I can not appreciate my wife enough during this time of COVID-19, emotional crisis, professional crisis & more. She has stood by me, which she has always done. But not just that, she’s working many extra hours because our daughter is home-schooled by her now as schools are closed. Our domestic help is on leave because of COVID-19, and she has taken care of most of the household responsibilities in addition to many that she already had.
Like me, she also works online and is a freelance graphic designer. She has also given up on her work which not only affects her income, but also her future prospects of work, as well as her rankings on many freelance platforms. She has been the mother and the wife I hoped for. Thank you.
I planned to perform Hajj with my wife in 2014. Two weeks before we had to fly, we found out that we were expecting our daughter. After consulting doctors, we were advised that my wife shouldn’t be commencing this journey. I had paid $15,000 for the two of us and our travel agency had already made all bookings. They couldn’t issue a refund for her at this point in time.
I called Saad and told him about the situation. I told him that there’s no refund for my wife so may be if he ever considered Hajj, he might want to join instead. The best part about his reply was that he didn’t say that he will call me back or he will let me know or that he needs time to think. He said “sure, just let me know what to do”.
There are three takeaways for me from this.
Like they say Hajj is destined for each individual, I started believing that. He was meant to do it and he was meant to do it at that time.
That for him a sacrifice of $7500 both for his Allah and his co-founder didn’t mean a thing.
If my co-founder hung together with me during a time like that, there’s nothing he can do more to prove that he’s worthy of being a good co-founder.
Often in life, someone may present you with opportunities that seem great. They may appear instantly rewarding and they might even make you very wealthy but “If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day. – Naval Ravikant“.
I purchased Koolmuzone.com in January 2009. By the end of 2009, I had built some kind of traffic as well some kind of authority in the Pakistani music space; but I was still not making anything more than a pocket change. Part of the reason why that happened was because you didn’t really get paid anything for Pakistani traffic. People can relate to that even today. I mean if in 2020 you make significantly less on a Pakistani traffic compared to the US traffic, you can imagine how bad it was in 2009.
Ten months into my efforts to make this work, I still hadn’t generated more than $200. In October of 2009, Telenor announced a blogging competition. Bloggers were supposed to generate maximum outbound traffic from their blogs to Telenor Weblounge Portal. Because I had significant traffic, but no means to monetize, I placed Telenor banners on my blog (for free). A month later, Telenor published the stats and Koolmuzone had won the competition.
By November, I received a Blackberry Bold phone as a prize for the competition. After receiving it, I drove straight to blue area and sold it for $500 so I could use it to fund the future growth of my business.
As I’ve mentioned here before, I enjoyed a 2 year break from work. Or I thought that I would enjoy it, but I didn’t really. I picked many bad habits and got very unhealthy. I am still not healthy, physically, but I was very unhealthy mentally too. I’m quite healthy mentally now.
When you’re deep into something like a 2 year break, its difficult to start working. You don’t want to work. You’re deep in that mental zone that leaves you good for nothing. I was, at least. So I decided to write a blog. Something that I could term productive, but wouldn’t require much effort on my part either. It worked out well for me. Within 30 days of writing, I was working full-time. It really helped me pick up that lost pace.
In 2020, despite COVID-19 pandemic looming above us, we’ve done quite well. We’ve already done tens of thousands of dollars in revenue in the first quarter despite being a super difficult time to operate a business in. This blog helped me do it.
I introduced 365-days streak in my life so I was forced everyday to turn on my laptop and think. For the first few weeks, it was quite easy. I had so much to talk about. I had many stories and experiences to share from the past 10+ years. But then I started running out of stories to talk about.
My daily challenge started to annoy me and continues to do that occasionally. It is especially difficult for me to write when I’m actually busy working on super important aspects of the business yet I’m still forced to write. It sounds bad, but it isn’t. I’m forced to push my limits and boundaries every day. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?
Other days, when I’m not busy, but also can’t seem to think about anything interesting to write, I start consuming content that I continued to bookmark for weeks and months, but could never find time. So I’m forced to read so I can learn something meaningful that I can then write about. All because I’ve a challenge which can get annoying, but gets me to work, learn, and share.
I have been practicing social distancing for the past 10 days. During this, I’ve went out only once because I needed to buy some important essentials. During the first 3 days, all I did was read about the COVID-19 virus. It wasn’t healthy.
On my 4th day, I enrolled in a digital marketing course that I wanted to do for a long time but couldn’t find time. 3 days into it, I was spending thousands of dollars on ads to try what I had just learnt. I haven’t watched more than 5% of the content of the course yet, and have spent considerably more time trying those things.
During the quarantine, I have found myself busier than I usually am. Before, I was spending considerable amount of time outside of the house mainly to socialize. While that is obviously not a possibility now, I am making the best of this time by not just learning new things but actively trying those in my business.
I haven’t watched Netflix or movies so far in the last 10 days, and I haven’t felt like I have anytime left to think about how to “kill” time during the quarantine.
There are things you always wanted to do but didn’t have time for. Now is the time for that. It’s time for you to be with your family. It’s time for you to play all the games that you wanted to play with your kids, but could never find time. It’s time for you to learn all those skills that just couldn’t fit in your otherwise busy routine. It’s a tough time for all of us if you think about COVID-19. But apart from that, it’s a great time for self-reflection and to make progress in life.
I don’t like doing these posts too much. I like to talk more about meaningful things that could potentially help others and less about myself. But I don’t feel like talking about meaningful stuff today. I want to talk about myself.
Pakistan
2 days ago, Pakistan reported more than 100 cases of COVID-19 in a single day. The government of Pakistan so far is claiming that 100% of the cases are imported ones, and there are no local transmissions. The problem with Pakistan is not the virus itself, but the healthcare system which is over-loaded and in a mess even without the virus. The second problem with Pakistan is that with lockdown more people will die of hunger and poverty than the virus will kill without the lockdown. Hence, Pakistan has adopted a mid-way strategy with regards to social distancing.
Mental Health
For the past few days I kept reading to learn more and more about the virus in order to be more aware of the virus to protect myself and others not only in health terms but also in the markets and to create the right investment strategy. The good thing about consuming all that information is that it kept me busy while I was distancing socially and I learnt a lot of things. The bad thing about consuming this much information on a pandemic is that it induced fear, anxiety and panic in my mind. Today, I’ve decided to pull back. The important stuff will reach me as it will reach everyone. The details, I’m not interested in anymore.
Work
My work is a mess. For the past 15 years, I’ve only known two ways to make money. I either sell ads to make money i-e publishing, blogs, ad-breaks etc
Or I buy ads to make money i-e e-commerce, influencer marketing etc.
Both are in a mess right now.
The CPMs are down as much as 75% depending on the industry you are in. So selling ads is 75% lesser profitable as before. This in theory means this could be a good time to buy ads. While that’s true that CPMs are lower for buying ads too, but that’s because the demand for buying things except for certain essentials is down too. In addition to demand, the supply chain is disrupted too as most things are manufactured in China which is not fully functional even now.
In summary, both e-commerce and publishing are largely affected.
As I was spending more time at home than usual, and do not have much work to do except for reading about the virus, it has been a bad combination for me. So I’m taking a step back.
Options
The options that I can personally think of to keep me engaged are Netflix, reading, courses etc. I don’t think binge-watching Netflix will be too helpful in restoring the right state of mind for me. So I’ve decided to enroll in certain online courses. Work has been absolutely essential for me always to keep me in the right state of mind. I think getting educated further about digital marketing is going to feel as an extension of work to me.
What are you guys going to do if you are in a similar position?
The problem with the traditional mentality is that we feel that in order to make a big buck, we need to know rocket science. Many people believe that their compensation is directly proportional to how much more qualified they are about a certain skill.
This could be true in certain cases especially in competitive or saturated lines of work and most specifically for those seeking fixed compensation in the form of salaries. However, it doesn’t always have to be the case.
The money is in the application of skills and not in the skills itself. If you know javascript and can write 20 lines of codes in JS for your employer or your client, of course your compensation will be minimal. But if you use 20 lines of JS in a specific use-case yourself, your compensation could be 10s of thousands of dollars. Let me give you a few examples below.
If you’re a graphic designer and your main gig is to create thumbnails for YouTube or Facebook videos, may be you can charge $10-$30 for something like this. But if you have the ability to create thumbnails that will have a very high click-through rate on YouTube, then your skill is worth a lot more. You could use your small skill for a massive payout. May be you could even hire or partner with someone who makes videos, while you only focus on those high click-through rate thumbnails and eventually get rewarded long-term by YouTube algorithm.
I have also used small skills for massive payouts by applying them in areas where the reward could be very high. And here’s an example of what I did in 2011.
This was a black hat technique. Most people do not talk about black hat techniques publicly but since I was very young, on an exploration, learning the true power of internet, and also learning my true self, I do not mind talking about it today. It helped me learn a lot and unlocked the true potential of my mind. I discourage black hat as a long-term business model but sharing this is important because I want everyone to know what you can do with very little knowledge if you look in the right places.
I was still in university pursuing a bachelors degree in Computer Science. I had learnt some programming there. Nothing extraordinary, nothing that I could use to score a high paying job. Just good enough on a student scale. I had learnt some HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL etc but not a lot. A couple of assignments, one or two projects. But I found an area where these skills could be applied.
After seeking help from someone who explained me of this technique, I set up a landing page. A simple page with nothing but a video embed and some ads. I used some CSS to place facebook Like button behind the video embed’s play button. Every time a user would play the video, he would also share it on his Facebook without knowing. This way couple of his Facebook friends would also end up on the landing page and would play the video themselves creating a viral loop. In couple of hours, I had over 20,000 users online on the landing page and of course I made a lot of money.
The only skill I used was some CSS which I barely knew enough to be able to sell something for $5 on Fiverr.
Two days ago, I wrote about the reason why I got introduced to PHPMailer. I finished my blog saying that I ended up using PHPMailer for a completely different reason. This blog is a continuation of that.
The Rocketship
In 2011, my music blog Koolmuzone was seeing growth faster than it had seen before. It was burning all the rocket fuel, breaking all its previous records. The kind of growth that made certain people uncomfortable.
One late February night became one of the most miserable nights for me. Days became weeks, and weeks became months, but the misery didn’t end. Someone clearly didn’t like me and so he found a way to take Koolmuzone’s Facebook page down.
The Crash
My page was taken down by a fake DMCA report. It took me many weeks to understand what happened, and I’m going to explain that below as clearly as I possibly can.
Most of the times when you get a DMCA report, it is for copyright infringement. But this one was different. It wasn’t a copyright report. You can see the copy of the claim below
Hello,
We have removed or disabled access to the following content that you have posted on Facebook because we received a notice from a third party that the content infringes or otherwise violates their rights:
[Page: www.koolmuzone.com]
We strongly encourage you to review the content you have posted to Facebook to make sure that you have not posted any other infringing content, as it is our policy to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers when appropriate.
If you believe that we have made a mistake in removing this content, then please visit http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=1108 for more information.
The Facebook Team
The fine line here was that the person who sent this report to Facebook didn’t say I was violating anyone’s copyrights. That there wasn’t any particular piece of content on my page that infringed someone else’s right. The report rather claimed that the ‘page name’ itself is infringing someone’s rights; a trademark claim.
I read that email everyday for many weeks until I found out what happened when I read the following line
[Page: www.koolmuzone.com]
This line made me realize that the content that infringes someone’s rights is the page name itself.
After I realized this is a bogus TM claim, I started seeking for the legal ways to acquire trademark for my brand which wasn’t trademarked at that time, neither by me nor by someone else. The TM didn’t exist in any country or jurisdiction. It was a bogus TM claim that Facebook asked me to resolve directly with the other party by providing his (fake) email address that no one responded to.
First Attempt of Recovery
So I went ahead and locally registered my company, acquired the relevant tax number for my business and obtained the relevant trademark. However, in the end I was still asked by Facebook that it doesn’t resolve any DMCA claims, instead I should directly resolve the matter with the claiming party or in a court of law. A party with a pseudonym and a fake email. I was stuck, and I was still devastated.
Second Attempt
After spending a few more weeks, sometime in April, I thought of something. I thought if Facebook can be as stupid as this with a fake trademark claim, it could be even more stupid than that.
I realized that there could be a potential solution to this problem and the solution could be PHPMailer. The thing about PHPMailer, or any mailer for that matter, is that you can send email “from” anyone’s email address “to” anyone’s email address. This might be difficult for some people to understand but the way the email protocol works is that you can send an email from an email address that you don’t own or have no access to.
The only thing different about such emails are the “email headers” that are commonly used to verify the real origin of such an email. The email headers mention the real domain name / server IP from where the email originated from and can be helpful in detecting spoof emails.
Because Facebook took a page down on a fake TM claim, I wondered if it would restore the page if the fake email address took the fake TM claim back, without verifying the email headers. And so I sent out that email.
The next morning, my page was restored.
I was hurt, very very hurt. I buckled up and got back to work. I had wasted over 2 months because someone wasn’t happy with the progress we were making.
Looking Back
Over the years, I’ve tried to understand the psychology of people who do that. They think there are two ways to win the race. The first way is to run faster, so you can really get ahead. This, in my opinion, is the only way to actually win and make progress. The second way, however, is to hurt your competition, so you can get ahead of him.
The problem with the second approach is that although you get ahead of your competition, you don’t really move farther in the true sense. You’re still standing right there, only with weapons. And if you think about it; what good does it do to you? If you win a race by eliminating your competition, how does that benefit you?
Sure, you’ll get the winner’s medal but without actually moving forward. You’re not going to have any more visitors coming in or you won’t be generating any more revenue. Why would you do all of this for a fucking medal. If, the person who hurt me, is reading this; think about it.
Since then, in the past 7 years, I’ve never worked in the Pakistani industry. It was toxic and I wonder if anything has changed so far. Even if things have changed, I’ve never really mustered courage to ever work here again.
To all the people who have stood by me during this tough time, I owe everything to all of you. To everyone who were the reason for my pain, I forgive you, although I’ll be surprised if you were seeking forgiveness at all.
In 2010, I met Aamir Atta, founder of ProPakistani, who I think greatly helped me shape my mindset at that time. I was introduced to him by my friend Zeeshan Shafquat Malik aka ZSM, who was editor in chief for ProPakistani at that time.
When I met Aamir bhai, I realized that a large influence of ProPakistani at that time came through his email newsletters. I was already sending out daily RSS newsletter using feedburner, just like the one I send today. But Aamir bhai used to send a custom designed newsletter. Each issue of his newsletter was manually designed and had the most popular and engaging posts pertaining to that period.
To get this kind of flexibility, with no additional cost, it meant that he had to setup his own mailing server. I don’t know if there were other better ways to do this back then with no additional cost. But even if there were, I’m assuming neither me nor Aamir bhai knew about it or couldn’t afford it.
When I came home from the meeting, the first thing I did was setup my own mailing server and so I installed PHPMailer.
It took me some experiments to learn to use it but shortly I was sending out my own customized newsletters too.
