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I Took 8 Years to Learn What People Learn in 8 Minutes Today

In 2009, I bought my first .com domain. Before that, I had run my websites on free domains for roughly 7 years. It wasn’t until 2010 that I learnt the most basic thing there is to learn about the economics of the internet businesses.

After having spent 8 years and after building large amount of audience, I realized that advertising revenue for Pakistani traffic was tens of times lesser, approximated to be 30 times lesser at that time, than American traffic.

It took me 8 years to understand that CPMs for different geographical locations are different. It took me 8 years of my life to really understand that ad dollars aren’t decided out of magic, but are based on supply and demand economics. That ad dollars aren’t chosen arbitrarily, but are driven based on competition.

I was young and dumb. I had no one to tell me or teach me. I couldn’t find right resources on the internet and didn’t know where to look. In hindsight, I wish someone could have told me. Someone could have trained me and saved 8 years of my life. I could be so much ahead of the game by now had I learnt that so early.

But I was on a dial up, YouTube wasn’t founded yet, and there was no community, guidance or mentorship available.

I learnt from my experiences. I got tired trying to do so. I wasted years looking for things with no direction. You don’t have to learn everything from your own experiences. While I know that you will still learn the most out of your own mistakes, I hope and wish that you learn more than me from others.

Running Business on $150 Laptop

For 3 years, I ran 100% of the operations of our business using a Chromebook. I paid $150 for a brand new device manufactured by Acer called C720. It came with a 16GB solid state hard-drive and a 2GB RAM. I also didn’t have any other computing device in this period.

I used web clients for everything. Google docs for documents, spreadsheets and presentations. I used JSTorrent as a web-based torrent client. For apps with no chrome version, such as Skype, I installed android versions.

Web apps like Canva for light editing work, which is what I also use today. I don’t know how to use any powerful photo or video editing app.

While chromebook may not be an ideal fit for all kind of webpreneurs or freelancers, especially many developers and designers, it did the job just right for me.

I was able to run content sites and blogs seamlessly. I could manage and grow our social assets mainly Facebook pages and I could seamlessly create and update Facebook and other kind of ads.

It could also have been a great fit for my e-commerce business, which I didn’t have at that time.

Right now I use Macbook Air and wouldn’t recommend myself to buy a Chromebook again due to certain limitations it comes with, but the point I’m trying to make is one could get started with something like that especially if funds are limited.

You could of course buy a used windows device for $300 or so in Pakistan, but in comparison you could also buy a used Chromebook for may be $50-$75.

Travelling, Rediscovery, Places & People

I try to travel at least once every year to reset and rediscover. Sometimes I travel more. Sometimes I travel to new places. And sometimes I travel to the places I’ve been before.

There are places that I genuinely like to go back to. I appreciate them when I visit them again. Although, I appreciate them a bit lesser than I did the previous time. But I still like them enough. It is why I go back, of course.

Nevertheless, for places, first time is the charm for me. Every repeat visit, I still love them, but slightly lesser than before. So in a way, I think humans have the tendency to want to go to new places. It keeps the excitement alive and one can continue to witness things that are beautiful in unique ways. This is how I feel about places. The gratification from places is temporary, it is why it reduces on each repeat visit.

For people, it doesn’t work in the same way, at least for me. For example, every repeat meeting with my parents, or my daughter, or my wife, or my friends isn’t lesser gratifying than the previous one. Each repeat meeting can make our relation warmer than before. Each new day spent with them, can build on the last one, and be more rewarding for my happiness.

The problem is that people are location-dependent. To be with your people more, you have to be at one place more. And to be at new places, you have to be further away from your people.

Taksim Square, My Turkey Love Affair & a Military Coup

Some people say that my repeat visits to Turkey are a complete waste of money. Some suggest that I should instead be going to a different county every time I plan a foreign visit. Despite what they say, somehow, I keep coming back to Turkey.

Today I was at Taksim Square and later visited Galata tower, which by the way, looks even better during the night. Taksim reminded me of a story, and I thought to share it with you guys. But before that, I want to give you some back story about Pakistani people.

Due to constant terrorist attacks in Pakistan, two things happened to Pakistanis. One that I’m proud of and the other one that I’m ashamed of.

I’m proud of the fact that Pakistanis live with tawakkul which roughly translates into trusting in God’s plan. Most countrymen are not afraid of death or misfortune on the same level as most other people in the world. Despite seeing so much, Pakistani people continued with their lives, became fearless in the face of adversity and started to live with tawakkul and hope that nothing bad will happen. And if it does, it is meant to be. This makes it easier and better to live life despite the adversity.

The second thing, which I’m ashamed of, is that with so much pain also came acceptance of pain to the point that some people stopped feeling pain at times. This roughly means that many people became impassive or beyhis, showed no emotion or became cold at the time of adversity.

I think both the things are linked. They are just different reactions to same events.

Now back to the Taksim story. It was June of 2016. There was a terrorist attack at Ataturk airpot in Istanbul. I was still in Pakistan at that time. I had a trip to Turkey scheduled for July 2016. I went ahead with my plan and came to Turkey. My hotel was booked at Taksim square. It was my 2nd day in the city and I started hearing helicopters, jets and gunshots. In the next couple of minutes, I found out there is a coup under process.

We were asked to stay in-doors through out the evening. There was a lot of violence during the night but everything had cleared by morning. Turkish people fought off the coup with bare hands and by morning they had won and had foiled the coup attempt.

Audio recording from the hotel room at Taksim square

There was a massive celebration the following day at Taksim square. I celebrated too and was able to spot other Pakistanis doing the same.

I’m happy that Turkey is able to come out of that time and I hope they will defeat the economic turmoil too.

Izteraab, Restlessness & Early Retirement

A few days ago I did a twitter rant about the inability to find equilibrium in life. You can read the rant below

My friend Haris pointed out that this is because the natural human state is not meant to be at rest. In fact, the natural human state is izteraab or restlessness and instead of avoiding izteraab one needs to embrace it.

I started writing this blog in order to finish my early retirement experiment and re-engage with work on some level. It was an effort to resume what I term in my rant as light work. Next thing I knew was that I was working full-time running e-commerce stores, content arbitrage and more.

After going through the experiment of early retirement, working lightly, and then working full-time, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can not and should not avoid work. I haven’t bought freedom from work completely probably because I don’t want to. The only freedom I’ve bought is that I can and should work on things that are most meaningful and fulfilling for my personal happiness and not whatever pays the biggest buck.

I’m also willing to engage with whatever pays the biggest buck as long as I can find people I can invest in who can then carry on that work.

I Couldn’t Afford Anything

I couldn’t afford anything. Like most other people in Pakistan, I couldn’t either. When I started my first blog, I couldn’t buy the domain or the hosting. When I bought my first .com domain in 2009, I couldn’t afford a separate hosting package.

I paid 1600 Rs for 1 year of domain inclusive of 1 year of shared hosting that couldn’t take 10 sessions in parallel. But I went ahead, and still shared that hosting with my friend Awais Imran aka WaisyBabu and hosted his site ArtsyHands alongside my site. The small blogging and tech community was very inclusive and believed in giving.

Uzair Sajid aka UzEE, who was also a student at that time, would help me modify my theme because I didn’t know how to. Salman aka SKDev, may his soul rest in peace, would do serious development work for me, for absolutely no charge.

Writers wrote for free for the love of music until KoolMuzone could afford them. Photographers and videographers covered concerts for KM, also for the love of music.

Faizan Shoaib became our product manager, for absolutely no compensation. He worked with us, at no cost, from 2009 to 2012. It wasn’t until 2019 that I met him for the first time.

My cousins and friends abroad would help me receive $20 in their PayPal and travel all the way to Western Union to send that money over.

My younger brother, became editor in chief, without me asking and eventually assumed co-founder role.

It all worked out in the end. I couldn’t afford anything or anyone. I couldn’t afford myself, let alone any employees. Still, it all worked out. It worked out because I guess I wanted it all to work out.

Not just for me, it worked out for all my friends who struggled alongside me. If you’re wondering that you can’t make it because you’re poor or foolish or no one would help you or teach you, then you’re wrong. All you have to do is reach out to people or learn on your own and take actions. If you keep taking actions long enough, it will work out.

That’s my promise to you.

Turkey, Again

I’m travelling to Turkey, again. I first visited Turkey when I was 6 months old. My parents took me there. They have a lot of footage from our trip which I also recently got to watch again.

My father, who is retired now, spent a lot of time in the past few weeks trying to digitize all the VHS content that he had. He has found some success and restored a lot of that content.

My second visit to Turkey was when I was 25. Since then I’ve been there every year, at least once.

Turkey is what Pakistan could have been. It is also one of the potential countries suited best for digital nomadism.

The quality of life is miles ahead of what it is here in Pakistan. The cost of living is incredibly cheaper than most of the developed countries. In my opinion, cost of living is only 33% higher in the metropolis of Turkey compared to the metropolis of Pakistan. So, if you need $1000 to live in Pakistan, you only need $1300-$1400 to live in Turkey.

This slightly higher cost for a much better lifestyle makes it my favorite spot to spend some quality time.

Here’s my favorite video about Turkey.

How Hunger Drove Me & My Co-Founder To Success

Some of what I am going to write may feel insensitive to some readers. I apologize to them, but I will still write about it because it is the truth.

Yesterday someone called me to ask that he wanted to sell merch in the memory of Kobe, the basketball star. May his soul rest in peace. It reminded me of a story and that is what I’m going to write about today.

During the early stages of my work, I was trying really hard to make any kind of revenue but I failed year after year. My co-founder on the other hand, whom I didn’t know at that time, dropped out of college because he couldn’t afford it anymore. My family’s financial circumstances were better than his, so for me it was just the hunger to make it work. But for him, it was the actual hunger, that comes from not eating enough.

To fulfill my hunger to make it work, I used all kinds of opportunities to make money including trying to sell merchandise in the memory of celebrities who recently died. I tried all forms of click-bait for content that didn’t exist and then locked the content until user performed a certain action such as provide an email or phone or zip, for which I got paid. I did fake-news of all kinds. I did it all.

I feel no shame in writing about it today, because I think that’s what people do when they want it bad enough and it isn’t working. I won’t do most of that today because I don’t have to and I only want to work on good opportunities. But I probably would do all that again if I had to start over. Of course, I’ve always drawn a line. I don’t want to scam people out of their hard earned money, but I felt no shame in capturing their attention or wasting their time for money.

My co-founder on the other hand started his journey by scanning Pakistani magazines commonly known as digests in Pakistan; including Khawateen Digest, Suspense Digest etc and then published them online. Of course, an act of piracy, but he complied with the requests of the publishers, and only made them available for overseas Pakistanis. Eventually due to the pressure from publishers, he closed the website completely. He also feels no shame in this. He did what was meant to be done to be able to live and it got him the kickstart.

My co-founder was hungrier than I was. His hunger came from his drive to win as well as because it was a survival game for him. My hunger came from the drive to win only. He did twice as good as I did. Because he wanted it twice as much.

Today, we don’t have the same drive as we used to have. Despite having 15+ years of experience, we don’t perform on the same level as we used to do. We’re more knowledgable, highly skillful, more experienced, and less hungry. And we don’t do as good as we used to do. Hence, for me, hunger is the single biggest differentiator in killing it, or not.

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

Staying Consistent Even When You’re Low

I started this blog to develop work ethic. To be able to stay consistent despite how I feel. Today is one of those days when I felt indifferent. In fact, last week was that kind of week. I didn’t want to write and I didn’t want to work and if it was 2019, I simply wouldn’t have worked.

The problem with giving in to these feelings is that you go further deep into these feelings. And not working for a day or two, or a week is not problematic. Going further deep into these feelings is problematic and it drags that week into a month, and month into an year.

Because I’ve to write here once a day everyday, even at my low I’m working and writing and that’s the kind of push I needed to give to myself.

I recommend that you introduce certain challenges in your own lives. So when you’re low like me, you can make an attempt to turn things around.

Signing Up For Gmail in 2004 Was Painful AF

I signed up for my first gmail account in July 2004. It was magical. Hotmail offered 2MB storage at that time. But Gmail thought of offering 1 gigabyte. This blew everyone away. After all, there’s no comparison between 2 megabyte and 1 gigabyte. There was only 1 caveat.

Gmail, for a very long time, was an invite only network. Only existing users could invite other people, and that too in limited quantities. It was similar to Orkut, another Google product, that you could only join by invite. The funny thing is that a ton of Pakistanis had both access and invitations to Orkut. But no one I could find had access or invitations to Gmail. So the struggle began.

My elder brother found a website called GmailSwap.com where you could offer services against a gmail invite.

Me and my brother tried to offer a bunch of services but nothing worked out. No one was interested in whatever we were offering. We weren’t creative, I guess. Or may be we offered Pakistan-relevant services that no one in the community had any interest in.

1 day I posted a swap service request that I’d spy anyone in Pakistan against a gmail invitation. A German-Pakistani found the post amusing but wasn’t interested in spying anyone. Instead he was interested in a pirated copy of Entity’s Paradigm (EP)’s debut album Irtiqa since he couldn’t buy it legally in Germany. I happened to own the album but only on cassette. Because I didn’t have the money to buy the CD, I converted the audio cassette to digital MP3s and then shared the album with him over the dial-up.

He wasn’t exactly happy with the results but rewarded me anyway for the effort.

I finally signed up on the super sexy 1 GB gmail account.

Who could have known, I’d despise it in the future.