ZSM Archives - Hamad Dar's Blog

Custom Email Newsletters in 2010; And How I Saved My Business

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.

A few weeks later though, I used PHPMailer for a completely different reason. It literally saved my business from an instant death. But I will write about that tomorrow, in a different post.

Motivating The Motivator

My friend Zeeshan is a true awami person. He connects with people on a very unique level. He also has a rare ability to connect with people from all walks of life. I can’t do that. It’s a skill that I don’t have thus far. And I know very few people who can connect with people on this level.

His life story is very motivating for everyone because he didn’t just accomplish success in business. But he successfully defeated all life-struggles and hence everyone can relate with him.

I can only connect with people who are interested in internet marketing and entrepreneurship and even there, I probably only connect with a very small subset. But that doesn’t matter. Every person comes with a unique set of skills and everyone doesn’t need to learn to do everything. Individuality is the only thing that the world needs.

However, I connect very well with Zeeshan and he listens to me and gives value to what I’ve to say and if I can ever motivate him to do anything in life, he can do the rest for everyone else. So in a way my small actions, can have a large impact.

As long as we make our small contributions to the society, in our own small ways, they can go a long way.

He just published his 2nd Vlog, so check it out.

Zeeshan, YouTube & Beyond

I met Zeeshan aka ZSM nearly 10 years ago. I met him after reading this article. He just had his 100th story get on Digg’s front-page which was a very big deal for me since I hadn’t had my first at that point. For people who joined social media later, Digg was like Reddit, only bigger.

To put things in numbers, 1 story getting popular on Digg would roughly mean 50,000 unique visits. 100 popular stories would approximately mean 5,000,000 visits. Assuming an RPM of $5, which is quite low, this should have generated $25,000. In 2008. By a 17 year old. Before Facebook, Twitter & YouTube were a thing.

Zeeshan also happens to have a rare disability called ‘rickets’ that has caused deformation to almost all the bones in his body. But I’ve found him more ‘able’ than most other people I know, including me. Since he doesn’t talk a lot about his disability anymore, I’m not going to do any further talking either.

Zeeshan’s story is extra-ordinary. What he achieved was special. Way more special than what anyone else I know achieved. But Zeeshan in the last couple of years, was very ordinary. He was ordinary because like most successful people, he had found his comfort-zone. He seeked happiness in things outside of work, which I completely understand. But once you do that long enough, you become very ordinary. And somehow, I feel special people shouldn’t be ordinary. They can be ordinary for themselves, but not for the rest of the world. And the world deserves to see more of Zeeshan.

Today, I think would be the first day of that happening. Zeeshan has just started his YouTube vlog. His challenge to himself is 1 vlog a day for at least next 365 days.

My predictions for his YouTube channel are below.

He will cross minimum 250,000 subscribers before year ends, without a Rupee in ad-spend.
He will have minimum 10,000,000 views before the year ends.
At least 1 of his videos will hit 1 million views. There’s a 50% probability that this will happen. But if he gets married in last quarter of 2020, there’s a 95% probability of this happening.
All these predictions will only come true if he completes 365-day challenge.

I’ve recently developed a habit of making public predictions. They can be embarrassing if you’re awfully off. But they are fun and challenging. They also improve my chances of predicting better in the long run.

Anyway, if you’re interested in more of Zeeshan, here’s his first Vlog.