Understanding Blogstarta

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Momekh

I’m a blogstarta, make no mistake.

I love blogging and have been at it since the day it was born. Literally. I have been blogging since the time John C. Dvorak called blogging the best thing since CD ROM.

And www.blogstarta.com is the perfect domain name for shop that helps outs bloggers.

Blogstarta is the answer that I have found to all the blogging related questions that I have faced over the past years. It is a small shop that I have set up to meet the needs for pretty much anyone who is willing to start blogging.

A person who is new to blogging would probably start off at one of the free hosting services, like WordPress.com (or if the person is really new and knows nothing, then blogspot.com :) ). That is the first mistake they’d make. The best thing to do is get your own domain name and hosting. Given that these come very cheap nowadays, anywhere between USD 4 per month to USD 15 per month, here’s how a blogger should justify this cost; it is a hobby, hello?!!? You’d spend that much on a cup of coffee, so it is only wise to chip in 10 bucks per month to your blogging. The benefits of having a self-hosted blog as compared to hosting a website that someone else controls (like wordpress.com or blogspot.com) are many, but all things said and done, you’d need a domain name and hosting.

When you get the hosting and domain, you’d then need to set up your blog. This involves uploading the WordPress files onto the root of your hosting, and then installing WordPress. There are a few other things involved in this, like setting up the permalinks, setting up some basic categories and choosing the right theme for your blog. With Blogstarta, all of this gets ‘outsourced’ by the blogger to Blogstarta. Blogstarta does this for the blogger and makes the whole blogging thing  less intimidating.

After the blog has been set up, courtesy Blogstarta, the best thing I think a blogger could want is some sort of support, on things like how to do stuff with their WordPress install, how to tweak that theme, how to improve their blogging skills etc etc. This support bit is what really sets Blogstarta apart. I have set up the best-in-the-business Help Desk to support Blogstarta customers. This support will be separate from the support the hosting company will provide, and will really help the blogger out in setting a path for him or herself. God willing.

I am currently making a small video/screencast of how to sign up for Blogstarta and what Blogstarta offers. But the Blogstarta website is ready to take orders. If there are any questions, let me know in the comments section below – all suggestions are welcome.

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Newness, Pro Blogging, Social Media, Technology, The Net | Tagged , | 2 Comments

The 80/20 Principle

Posted on May 31, 2010 by Momekh

20 percent of the the input will generate 80 percent of the results. The remaining 80 percent of the input will generate only 20 percent of the results.

This is not a mild observation, this is a fact of life, a phenomenon that is undeniable.

What is the 20 percent of input that you do to get the 80 percent? Identify that, and do only that. You will have so much free time that you will feel almost ‘negligible’. That’s alright, because in the grand scheme of things, you are negligible, a speck in the Sahara, a paper boat riding the Niagara.

If you feel that you can’t do this or that because you don’t really have the time, you are being ignorant. I have tons of examples – tons! – from not only other people’s lives, but my own, where the 80/20 principle has helped in increasing overall productivity while decreasing the overall time spent to achieve it.

That is how it is. That is the way God has set up this place. Learn it. And live.

Our notions of cause and effect are symmetrical, but that is not how they are in real life. A small cause can have such a massive effect, and a number of large causes may not be able to give any effect whatsoever. Identification of that ‘important few’ causes is why you’d bother thinking about this in the first place.

Some Examples:

  • By just being able to hire the right person, you as a business owner can free yourself from pretty much everything that goes in running a business
  • By reading 20% of the book, you may know 80% of its content! (I have tried this on numerous occasions while at college and this has always worked – students call it selective study. It is selective and, if done right, is a magnificent example of the power of the 80/20 principle)
  • You can pray all you want to God – but a simple act of kindness to another fellow being, especially when you know you don’t ‘have to’ be kind, bears greater rewards from the One Above (all those nights spent in prayer is the 80 percent you can easily replace, if you want to!)
  • You may fall in love within seconds, and that few seconds might as well affect the remaining years of your life.
  • One sixer by Javed Miandad in the last ball of the last over can cement his place in the National Cricket Team for years to come.
  • The right words spoken to your spouse can replace all the expensive dinners and outings that you otherwise think you’d need to do to convey your feelings.

I can, you can be sure, go for miles with this.

Identify the 20 percent!

Posted in Life etc, learning | Tagged | 2 Comments

One Constraint

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Momekh

What is the one constraint, that when removed, will yield massive positive results, in this life and the hereafter?

Take your time to find the answer, and then focus all your energies in removing that one, single constraint. Leave all problems aside and remove that one constraint. You’ll thank me later.

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Islam, Life etc, Lifestyle, career | Tagged | Leave a comment

Traveling because you can?

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Momekh

Are you travelling a lot?

Probably not.

A lot of people don’t get to travel, although they’d want to. Anecdotal research alone tells me that most of us would want to be in a position to travel freely and to ‘see the world’ but they don’t get the chance to do so.

What are the reasons for not being able to travel freely?

Most quoted answers:

“I don’t have the money to do so”

“I can’t find the time to do so”

In many cases, both answers hold true for many individuals.

That is a sad state of affairs because there is a remedy for this. It is being self-employed.

If you are a student, learn a skill that you can sell, if you are already in a job, first quit because you probably already have a plan. Tell me I am right.

I wonder how many people are willing to learn how to become self-employed?

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Life etc | Tagged | 3 Comments

Pakistani Govt shot the messenger

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Momekh

youtube-banned-in-PakistanYouTube is banned in Pakistan.

They have banned the medium, effectively ‘shooting the messenger’.

It is like protesting against Geo TV for telling us that the government has raised fuel prices. Need more be said?

If you are in a position that the government official(s) are in now, what would you have done? And more importantly, how many decisions you make in your life that reflect this mentality of blaming the messenger? Ever ridiculed the servant serving you sour milk?

I call this ‘jumping to conclusions’ rather than ‘arriving’ at them. You may call it stupidity.

Posted in Life etc, Social Media, pakistan | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Being a businessman

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Momekh

I prefer entrepreneur as the title, because frankly, it sounds way cooler than businessman. And as far as definitions go, the two words are different, but that’s not the point here. The point is that you get to be what you want to be. You have all the time in the world and you are making good money to make those stubborn ends meet. That was the reason I insisted on not getting a job while graduating from college. That was my objective, my objective. And that is where most aspiring businessmen/entrepreneurs get it wrong; the reason.

Most people see the business world as the surefire way to make tons of cash. If money is your only incentive to be a businessman, you’ll probably remain discontent with your ‘business’. Most businesses will fail and you will face cash flow problems from day one, or day two if you are lucky. I am tempted to say that ‘business does have the potential of earning you Millions’ to keep the carrot dangling at the end of the stick, but I am reminded by the hefty paychecks of some of the employed individuals that it is not about the money, it is about the freedom.

As long as earning money is a by-product of offering top notch service and/or products via your business, I think that all is set. Your business should be there for the reason of ‘improving your quality of life’ and not just to ‘earn you more money’. You may say that it is the same but then you’d be wrong; if you are earning more money but do not find time to spend on things you enjoy, your business is failing and is not achieving its objective.

It is not about the money, it is about the overall quality of your life.

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Life etc, learning | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Facebook ban – a Pakistani’s perspective

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Momekh

If you are a writer and a copywriter, a situation like this is a dream come true; you get to define a massive situation spread across a whole country in one simple word. Silly

As of now, the whole domain of Facebook is banned. YouTube is banned. So is Wikipedia. Basically, three of the top five most-visited sites by Pakistanis are banned within Pakistan, as per the decision taken by the higher-ups.

Consider this: there you are, walking alone down a poorly lit street. Out of a dark corner, your worst fears come true. A dog appears and menacingly barks at you. You instinctively stop in your tracks. The dog is barking, edging closer to you. At that very moment, your whole body tells you to ‘flee’, to run like crazy. So you have a stimulus in the form of a barking dog, and you have your instant, emotional reaction of ‘run now!’. But what would you do? You, in all probabilities, would not run. Although the emotional response almost demands that you run for your life, experience tells you that the BEST WAY to handle this situation is to stay your ground. ‘Stay your ground’ is pretty much the opposite of your first reaction of running away, but experience with dogs tells you that you have a higher chance of not being bitten if you just stand your ground and ‘sush’ the dog away.

The first reaction of ‘banning’ the Facebook domain for something that they were not contacted to begin with, that first reaction sounds good enough. You are a country, and you have a population to answer to. But is that reaction the right one? Perhaps the BEST WAY of handling the situation lies doing something quite opposite? In ‘reasoning’ with the perpetrators? Perhaps. But where there’s a mob, there is no reasoning. Ten people walking down a dark street confronted by a barking dog would present a very different picture indeed.

Posted in Islam, Life etc, pakistan | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment