A Day In The Life…Of Me

Phew! Im completely wacked out. Today like many of the days recently has been a killer, full of working and activity and non-stop thinking. That’s why I thought I should blog about a day in the life of me just so you could see my busy schedule and how hard it is to fit anything (pleasure-wise) in edgeways:

• I woke up at 6.45am to wake up for school and to get ready for the long day.
• I left the house at 7.35 and arrived at school at 8.35am after my coach journey with friends.
• In the morning at school I had 3 lessons followed by a short break. Then I had 2 lessons followed by a 2 hour lunch break which gave me a chance to catch up with mates.
• After lunch I had another 3 lessons slot and school ended at 4.00pm
• I had to stay on after school for a company meeting. I have just formed a company which aims to sell themed mousemats. I’ll keep this on the lowdown for the time being but later I’ll dedicate a whole post to what I’ve done and my experiences thus far. Anyway the meeting ended at 6.30pm.
• I arrived home at 7pm to eat my dinner and to check my online activity; emails from 2 addresses, stats for this blog and other of my sites, money ;), and forums. Over at YGG I’ve been really enjoying the community atmosphere that’s been created and now we’ve organised some proper projects between ourselves. That forum is full of pros and Im just happy to be surrounded by like minded and driven individuals.
• Im just settling down to watch a football match (Chelsea vs. Barcelona) and that will end at 9.45pm. After that I’ll do a bit of homework, grab a shower and go to sleep at 10.30ish otherwise I get too tired out for the next morning.

As you can see, my timetable - especially on Tuesdays - is absolutely jam packed. I don’t really have any room for delays and above all and most worryingly, have had less and less time to blog and generally be on the internet. In my Summer Holidays I was on the computer for a good few hours a day, and now it feels weird to be without it for such long periods, even though the run upto Christmas is my busiest time as a webpreneur.

I’ll keep you guys posted but hopefully I should be able to keep on top of my work in school and outside of school - but time is becoming an ever increasing factor and a commodity which there doesn’t seem to be enough of.

So my advice for today - leverage your time and your assets well to provide you with a sound base for your work, company and for your life. Time management is one of the most important skills you can have in a world that’s all about pace and depth. Master this, and you’re set to raise high standards as you’ll always be on the ball.

Frozen Webhost Slashes Prices for 2nd Birthday!

As I was sitting here working on my brand new AIS (which is still in the works), I realised that I needed to find out how long I had left with my first webhost Frozen Webhost. Now as you might know I also have an account with Dreamhost (aff.) - mainly because I need the option to host unlimited sites. However Blogtrepreneur is hosted with Frozen Webhost (FW) and to be honest the site loading speeds are much quicker than with Dreamhost.

Anyway I contacted Steve (who as usual is nearly always on MSN ready to answer my burning questions) and he told me that my hosting with him runs out on 31st October! What a calamity! That means I have 3ish days to either move or pay for another 12 months. The thing is hosting with FW is a breeze and I enjoy the spotless customer service - its just that Im not prepared to pay a lot for it (I know I can’t help being a cheapskate).

Fortunately though, Steve is slashing his prices. Him and his company are celebrating 2 years of being in the business and so are cutting 50% on all hosting packages for any amount of time you pay for! That’s a massive discount. So I wanted to share this with readers of Blogtrepreneur because I know a few of you are looking for a new host at rock bottom prices. Follow these steps to get this fantastically priced, excellent quality hosting:

1. Go to FrozenWebhost.com and then click on Hosting.

2.Choose from any one of 6 hosting packages including 3 tiered Shared Hosting and 3 tiers of Reseller Hosting to suit your needs.
The best part - prices for Shared Hosting start at $2.50/month with 1GB Diskspace, 10GB Bandwidth and Unlimited Emails, MySQLs etc, and prices for Reseller Hosting start at $5/month with 5GB Diskspace, 50GB Bandwith and Unlimited Domains hosted, emails and MySQLS etc.

3. The important part: When you click Order on your package, in the Coupon Code field enter “FROZENBIRTHDAY”. This will deduct 50% of the price from your total!

4. The extremely important part: When entering your details, in the Comments field enter “Referred by Adnan”. This will get me a little referral credit which I will put towards hosting Blogtrepreneur, so you’ll be directly supporting this site.

Once you have paid for your amazingly priced hosting, contact me using the form on the Contact page, and I will also give you a PR4 link on this blog for 1 month worth $20 with TLA or $40 with Adbrite!

So that’s it. You get 3 for the price of 1: A saving of 50% on your hosting, a chance to support Blogtrepreneur and a free PR4 text link worth $40! So go for it. If you have any more queries please don’t hesitate to ask me or Steve. All webpreneurs need hosting, so here’s your chance to snap some great quality webhosting at a fantastic price!

Update - 26.10.06

Wow, where does all the time go? After my great Eid celebrations I havn’t posted here on Blogtrepreneur even though I’ve been meaning to. So now here goes for a little update on what’s going on behind the scenes.

On Monday I went visiting my grandparents for the festival and the day after that I journeyed into London with some friends. It was a good day out and a whole 2 days away from the computer. Sometimes a break is all that you need to get your mind back in gear and to start thinking with more clarity and more ration. Thanks to everyone who left comments in my last post.

On the blog I’ve been editing and making small changes in the template. I downloaded and installed Alex King’s Popularity Contest Plugin. For a few weeks now I havn’t been happy with my Popular posts as they didn’t really reflect the newer posts that had been gaining traction, comments and trackbacks. This new plugin which you can see in my left sidebar ranks posts depending on all these factors and pageviews to give readers a chance to view the very best of Blogtrepreneur!

I also recently became a Performancing Publisher. At the moment, their house ad is displayed in my left sidebar underneath the Adbrite and TLA ads. At the moment they have priced my blog at $25 per ad per month, out of which I will receive 70%, and 30% will be Performancing’s cut. I think this price is very fair and on par with Adbrite and TLA and as an advantage I receive more of my money! This is also yet another income stream coming from this blog so overall Im extremely pleased.

Since I made User Verification compulsory for the Blogtrepreneur Forums I’ve been noticing a drop in spamming as well, so that will hopefully give me more time for other projects.

I’ve also been contacted and in contact with a lot of people in terms of doing Joint Ventures. However I’ve been having to turn down a lot of them because I simply do not have the time due to school work, blogging here and some new sites that Im releasing on my own. One of these includes my first journey into creating an AIS (Automated Income Stream), so keep watching for news of the release of the site.

So just to take my mind off my own projects, how are you guys getting on with your businesses? Please comment and share your recent ups and downs!

End of Ramadan - Happy Eid!

I know I don’t normally bring my really personal life into this blog, but I feel I should talk a bit about it seeing as its been my main focus for the past 30 days.
As a Muslim, I fast in the month of Ramadan. This year the month started in September and ended today (it goes by a lunar calendar).

There are a lot of benefits to this month of not eating or drinking from sunrise to sunset:

• It has been proven to act as a detox - breaking down unwanted substances in the body that have accumulated over the year
• Throughout the daylight hours, we are able to think about those who are unable to eat at all in 3rd world countries - so its a bit of a reality check
• By not eating, it also practices our discipline - which is good for anyone - especially for me as an entrepreneur who has to stick to time deadlines and the like

Coming out of the month, I feel that I’ve managed to achieve all of the above and feel invigorated and can’t wait to tackle the next few months. I feel that the fasting has really made me think about future goals and what I want to establish as a student/entrepreneur/human being.

Along with the end of this month, Muslims also have a celebration day called Eid-ul-Fitr. On this day (tomorrow), it’s customary to meet with family and exchange gifts (a bit like Christmas). Im heading off to see my grandparents up North - but in general its a day for happiness, lots of eating and moreover peace.

So although most of my readers are probably not Muslim, and may not be religious, I just wanted to take this opportunity to say Eid Mubarak (Happy Eid!), and to have a Happy, Prosperous and Peaceful rest of year uptil December and then after that in 2007. A lots changed for me, and hopefully in the past month you’ve learnt new things which you can implement in your lives as humans and young entrepreneurs!

Is SPAM Killing the Blogtrepreneur Forums?

I wanted to highlight this topic to all Blogtrepreneur readers, as I think its a very disappointing and saddening topic. For a fair few months now, the Blogtrepreneur Forums have been online. While it’s safe to say that they havn’t grown as much as I’d have hoped, I still find myself involved in a conversations with the site’s biggest fans and contributors. Along with myself as moderator, there are 3 people who I feel deserve some credit for keeping me company: so thanks to Dave, Paul and Fred.

Unfortunately, these seem to be the only people around in the forums. But please note that I am still totally appreciative to everyone who leaves comments here, we still have great commenters - but my main philosophy in starting the forums were to turn it into a place where all my commenters could talk and converse together.

There’s worse. Everyday I find myself having to spend a few minutes deleting spam. These spammers make their accounts in their forums and often link to adult or drug-related websites, whilst making posts covered in links to their crappy sites. It really annoys me. I understand that these people might be making a quick few uniques, but really, do they have no morals?

Also, my other PHPBB forum ChipandChat.com also does not seem to be doing very well, and also experiences regular spam. The main problem here is, unlike many other popular forum software (like VBulletin), PHPBB makes it really hard to delete spammers’ accounts. Paul told me how to delete the accounts once, and it does involve journeying into the realms of MySQL. Whilst the procedure is relatively straightforward, it is time consuming, and I just cannot spare the time to go into my hosting account everyday.

So now I am faced with a dilemna. Do I carry on with the Blogtrepreneur Forums and delete the spam accounts once in a while (I am able to delete the actual spam posts easily), or do I completely shut down the forums? Obviously if the forums were really active I would definitely keep them up - but seeing how they are inactive for most of the time, Im wondering whether it’s really worth the unprofessionalism (as people would get put off seeing spam). At the same time I am unwilling to pay the VBulletin registration fee at this time.

I want your opinion. I would really like to continue with the boards and see them grow so that it would eventually be worthwhile getting VBulletin. Please support this idea by registering and posting if you can - so that we can all share the knowledge and expertise that so many of you have. If you could do this, I would be extremely grateful. Thanks for listening!

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