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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.

Breaking Problems Into Pieces

When I was in college, I didn’t do too well. I always thought this isn’t for me and education scared me. I read too many subjects with no interest or aptitude in, and I didn’t study enough of what I loved. Of course, due to lack of options of subjects in traditional college education in Pakistan.

I also think that I didn’t do too well because the education system made me study 350 days, and then examined me in 15 days. I think the reward feedback loop was broken to the core and there was no reason for me to concentrate basically through out the year. In summary, the system didn’t break down the problems for me into smaller pieces.

When I started university, I started to do well instantly. I feel I can give credit to two things that I’ve already mentioned above. Firstly, 80% of the time, I was studying what I was really interested in and had aptitude for. Secondly, I was getting assessed for quizes, presentations, assignments, mid-terms, and eventually finals. I was rewarded for studying daily, and my problems were broken down into pieces. I could solve smaller problems that led to solving a larger problem in the end, and I was rewarded through-out the process. I graduated with cum laude.

I understood that for me to do well, I’ve to break down my problems and also create sequential reward system where possible. So I started doing that in my life and my business from that point on.

When you think about creating a content website that will have 50 million pageviews everyday, your brain would likely not allow you to feel that this can be done. If you’re struggling with the first 50 views, how can 50 million views ever happen? When you think about running an e-commerce store handling 10,000 orders per day, you probably want to give up, before you even begin. And when you think about wanting to make a million dollars, a million sounds a bit too much for you to make.

But breaking everything down to smaller pieces makes it easier, at least for me.

When I and Saad assess potential business opportunities we tear the business apart, and break it into pieces. We identify the small contributions that we can make, and small problems that we can solve, that could eventually result in this large-scale business that we are assessing at the time.

To give you an example, if our goal is to create a YouTube channel with 100,000 subscribers, we would identify the average view count of many YouTube channels with 100K subs. Suppose that number is 10 million views. This means, we can get 1 subscriber for every 100 views we deliver. Next we’ll identify various combinations of getting 10 million views. For example it can be 10 videos with 1 million views (highly unlikely) or it can be 100 videos with 100K views (still quite unlikely) or it could be 300 videos with 33K views each (possible).

Next we identify ways to deliver up to 30K views to a video. How much can we bring through external websites. How much can we bring by embedding on our blogs, or on 3rd party blogs by creating relevant visual content for someone’s textual content. What volume can be be driven by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp etc. 

How many views can we do inside Youtube through search. What kind of search volume will our content have and various combinations of that for example videos with low searches but low competition and videos with high searches and high competition etc. How can we create a chain of views from one video to another through interactive video cards in the end etc and what percentage of views could come from there.

In the end we want to break things down to pieces so small, that literally anyone could do the simple tasks that need to be done on an on-going basis to create something much larger.  

My Chromecast Goes Everywhere With Me

I don’t have a smart TV at home. I don’t think that paying extra for smart TV is a better solution than buying streaming devices such as Chromecast or Fire Stick. There are many reasons why I think that, but here are my four favorite reasons.

I take my my streaming device everywhere with me. I shamelessly plug it in all my hotel rooms and all my Airbnbs so my smart TV also moves with me regardless of what the hotel or the apartment offers.

I don’t want to deal with firmwares of TVs and be at their mercy for updates, app supports, and to determine what I can or can not do with my TV.

Despite these two additional advantages, streaming devices actually cost lesser money than the difference between smart and regular version of the same TV model.

Lastly, many people don’t know this but Chromecast shows significantly lesser ads on Youtube than any of it’s counterparts. It’s the extra juice you get for staying loyal to both the service and the product.

Do you prefer smart TVs or streaming devices? What is your favorite streaming device and why?

Overlapping Audiences, Competing With Your Own Ads And My Take On This

Yesterday, I wrote about my ad account that got disabled and I concluded by saying the following

And in the super optimist world, I’ll have two ad-accounts burning twice the fuel, delivering twice the sales, making twice the profit. I want to think that this will happen. Because without this kind of optimism, it’s hard to want to run a business

Today when I read my own blog post, I realized that overlapping brigade must hate me right now for saying something so foolish. But I don’t care about overlap as much as many other people.

I hear a lot of people say that this audience will overlap with that audience or that your ads are competing with your other ads and that you’re bidding higher against your own ads etc. I understand. I understand what you’re saying and I understand what you mean. But I am not concerned on the same level as you.

First things first, I mean no disrespect to other marketers. I will also never claim that I am good at what I do. I am always learning. I spend everyday in this industry with an open heart and an open mind with will to learn more than I knew yesterday. I understand that different marketers have different strategies and yet they are able to deliver results. In summary, I think any strategy that brings the results we seek, is the right strategy and that many strategies can co-exist together.

Now off to some of the reasons why I’m comfortable with overlapping and competing with my own ads.

In the past, I’ve had a successful product where we were spending thousands of dollars per day in ads, and were generating tens of thousands in sales. I did everything in my power to scale the ads profitably until I couldn’t anymore without hurting profitability. So I created a second ad account, created 100% duplicate campaigns as my first ad account, and started competing with my own ads.

The end result was that I was able to increase my sales by over 60% and my profits by over 40%. In summary, by competing with my own self, I slightly reduced my margins, and significantly increased the money I took home.

Now I don’t know about you, but I prefer focusing on the actual dollars I take home, and while the margin percentage remains the significant focus of my business, it isn’t what I’m actually focusing on at the end of the day.

There are many occasions when simply raising the budget will cost you much higher CPA than creating a duplicate copy of your campaign and duplicating budget like that. Of course, you’re overlapping and competing with your own ads, but if it works, then why not?

In addition, not many people know this but Facebook sets CPM penalization not just for ad-accounts, but even for business managers based on the reports it receives from the users about your ads. In this case, running identical campaigns from multiple ad accounts or even different business managers will generate significantly different results.

Furthermore, my attitude towards overlapping and self-competition is also lenient because we like to scale fast. If we won’t scale, someone else will. If we won’t compete with our own ads, someone else will compete with our ads. This is how we like our marketing at Socialoholic.

My Ad Account Got Disabled, But I Live On Optimism

Today, an ad-account for one of our e-commerce stores got disabled. There was no violation. It was the same ads that we had been running for 4 weeks. Usually when the ad account gets deactivated, there’s an appeal link. The account is usually sorted in couple of hours. But today, there was no notification or appeal link.

I’ve still appealed through a different support channel, but its not going to resolve in couple of hours but would take longer than that.

Meanwhile, I’ve exported all campaigns to a different ad account. Theres a way to export CSV of campaigns and import to a different ad account. Here’s a walk-through video of how to do it. The process can still be very messy because of custom audiences, and lookalikes. When Facebook deactivates one ad account, it locks everything inside that ad account including all custom audiences and lookalikes. So its not possible to move those if they are owned by a disabled ad account.

I had a shitty day trying to do these manual, hateful tasks. I really had two options. Option # 1 was to basically feel angry at Facebook and stop advertising. Option # 2 was to start-over.

The option # 2 can be interesting because I may be able to make the 2nd ad account deliver profitable campaigns too. In the best case scenario, I may get the first ad account back as well. And in the super optimist world, I’ll have two ad-accounts burning twice the fuel, delivering twice the sales, making twice the profit. I want to think that this will happen. Because without this kind of optimism, it’s hard to want to run a business.

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.

Recycled Clothes, Landa, And How Large Is The Industry

I learnt something unique in the past few weeks. The size of the recycled clothing industry is mind-boggling and Pakistan get’s the lion’s share of this market.

Zari originally introduced this to us, but my curiosity was further fueled by my long-time friend Saad who filled me in with complete details. I’m left speechless by the sheer size of this industry.

Since 80 billion pieces of clothing are produced every year, more than 10 times the number of human beings in the world, it is obvious that every year there’s a lot of clothing waste. Since I buy roughly 5 pieces of clothes and hope them to last 5 years, I must admit I was shocked with the amount of production and could obviously imagine the wastage. But what happens to all this wastage? It’s sent to emerging economies like Pakistan for nearly free.

The west gets rid of their “waste” instead of using it to fill lands, or decompose in environmentally hazardous manner. Pakistan then puts a new soul in what is termed as a waste.

This wastage that comes to Pakistan is approximately about 1.5 billion pieces per year. This is 125 million pieces per month or 12.5 crore pieces of clothing.

After sorting, nearly 50% of this clothing is marked unfit for wearing and eventually goes into fiber extraction. The other half, which roughly comes down to 60 million pieces of fashion, are restored and made fit for wearing. But what surprised me the most is this fun part; a large chunk of what is restored as fit for wearing is then exported out of Pakistan.

Now I’ve given you the size of industry in terms of number of units, but not in terms of revenue. Pakistan as a country generates nearly $200 million out of export proceeds from these products.

Mind boggling, isn’t it?

Thanks Zari and Saad for the input.

We Almost Ended Up In Greece, But You Can’t Go Wrong With A Pakistani Passport

I asked my wife to look for a hotel for us at a resort town called Çeşme. She headed to Booking.com to make the reservations. By giving 0 shits about the location, she sorted the listings by price and found a cheap and nice property.

It was cheaper than everything I had seen in Çeşme so it surprised me a bit. But she had made the reservations by that time. Later, but not too late, I found out that she booked us up in a resort town of Greece instead of Turkey and the hotel is in Chios and not Çeşme.

I was annoyed, but I was also surprised. How did Booking.com recommend her a place in Greece instead of Turkey. The reason is that both the places are really close. They are about 15 KMs apart and it takes merely 20 minutes to reach by ferry from Çeşme.

My suggestion to the travel website; when you make a recommendation like that, it’s not a feature but a bug. I understand they recommend near-by places when sorting by price, but they shouldn’t be recommending near by places beyond borders.

It’s such a shame that we can’t stay at the property we booked because obviously we can’t go to Greece without a visa. It would have been fun though, to cross borders like that on a ferry. I’m sure someday, but today isn’t that day.

Coronavirus, E-commerce & Grave Situation in China

We kept taking orders after the first news of coronavirus surfaced. We thought, like most other things, this will come to an end too but it hasn’t thus far. A large part of China is still closed, and e-commerce is pain in the ass right now.

Dropshippers had no option but to shut down operations entirely, including us. But even those with inventory are running short of goods. Some sellers are increasing prices so goods can last a bit longer. Because everyone is affected equally, even with higher prices the sale velocity is hanging there, somewhat.

After we were unable to dropship some of our orders, Saad spoke to one of our friends who generally buys inventories for his FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon) business. He then spoke to the vendors he works with to score some inventory for us. We were obviously willing to buy goods at higher prices, even from outside China, preferably even from within US, just to fulfil the pending orders.

While we were able to eventually find some inventory for our pending orders, what our FBA friend told us was shocking to say the least. He said Chinese want to import right now. They want to import face masks. The same ones that they exported and at higher prices than they exported for.

While those of us who aren’t affected by this outbreak are aware of some of the risks this virus is causing, but the fact that Chinese want to import face-masks right now was really able to make me imagine the gravity of the situation.

Booking.com Is Restricted In Turkey, But There’s Something Interesting Happening

Because I use booking.com to book my hotels, I sometimes ask the hotels I stay in about the percentage of bookings they get from booking.com. The answer varies between 60% for some hotels and 80% for others. But it is safe to say that majority of the bookings.

For the last hotel I stayed in Istanbul, the manager claimed 75%. This is despite the fact that from within Turkey you can not use Booking.com to book properties in Turkey. So it means most of the bookings that hotels in Turkey get from Booking.com are booked from outside of Turkey or by foreigners. But some Turkish people also use booking.com to book properties within Turkey by using VPN.

Those who aren’t tech-savvy, and do not know how to by-pass the restriction, then book the properties using Kayak or Agoda. Hotels claim that after Booking.com, they get most bookings from Kayak or Agoda because they are not restricted from usage in Turkey. My last hotel claimed he gets 15% bookings from Kayak or Agoda. In summary 90% of his bookings are coming from Booking.com, Kayak & Agoda.

The interesting thing is that Kayak, Agoda and Booking.com are all owned by Booking Holdings.

Not just that Booking Holdings also own Priceline, Rentalcars.com, OpenTable, Momondo, Cheapflights and many other travel websites.

Booking.com charges 15% commissions to properties which most hotels are happy to pay as “marketing cost”. The manager I spoke to today says before this network, each hotel employed marketing staff and spent money on internet ads that may or may not always worked.

Booking Holdings posted $15 billion dollars in revenue in 2018. They don’t own any properties or any hotel rooms. Marriott posted $20 billion dollars in revenue in 2018 and it is the world’s largest hotel chain with 10,000+ properties and 1 million+ rooms. Since booking holdings has low operating costs compared to Marriott, their operating income is 2.5 times higher.