I am done with Engineering. For once and for all. I passed all courses in first attempt with decent grades. But the last two months of the semester were crazy. Faced everything from serious shortage of time  to impossible people. The list of things to do was so long that, I didn’t know where to start ( Hence, I chose to go for nap instead). Eventually, the things got done and I made it through.

To be honest, balancing multiple things while studying is very difficult. You’ll tend to screw up at least something. In my case, I was balancing internship, my sites and college together. I even managed to get few design clients during the later half of the last 2 months. Yes, I have a track record of biting way more than I can chew. But as a collateral, my online business suffered. Panda and Penguin updates ruined a good portion of the business.

Talking about the internship, I have been interning at the SEM department at Rocket Internet. They are a new startup and operate the E-Commerce Store Namshi and Mizado. They are taking the whole GCC region by storm. Its a very promising start up. The time spent while balancing internship with college has been worth it because I have learned a lot of new stuff. Plus, I also have a semiformal Job offer from these people.

Now coming to the next point, my online income is down by 60-70%. My major earners have lost their positions in search engines. What used to work before doesn’t work now. To be honest, I haven’t been able to give much time because of internship and college. I’ll be looking into each of my properties again and figure out how to revive them. If I could do it once, I am sure I can do it again.

Lastly, I am in India at the moment. To be precise, in Mumbai. I’ll be heading to Goa soon. Come on, I deserve to have some fun after so much bullshit. Take care, yo !

I remember when locals used to quote out of their ass for rents. It wasn’t long before the times changed. Buildings are literally empty and their revenue is taking a major hit. Land Lords are desperate for tenants and tenants have a ton to chose from. The rents for premium properties have taken a major beating in the emirates.

People have identified the opportunity and are trading their place for a better/bigger place for the same rent or slightly more. Landlords are using various techniques to lure and please the tenants. Free AC, Free parking, Free maintenance and you name it.

Me and my family too shifted last month to a bigger place. I still miss the old house. I was in there for over 20 years. That place is always going to stay close to my heart.

I’ve lately been facing some time management problems. I have not really been as productive as I would like to be. Like you people know, I run a bunch of websites and go to a engineering college. College is demanding and thus I am not really able to focus much on my side business. Things were going decent as I could normally make up for the lost time during the vacation.

But lately, I have noticed something. My revenues have been very range bound. I was recording 10% month on month growth during the early months of 2011. I know that is a unrealistic growth rate and it was always going to be hard to maintain. Currently, things are looking bleak. Revenue has been falling at close to that rate.

I have been looking into causes of the decline. There were many. Google’s Panda update lead to 150$ in lesser revenue every month. Filesonic going down caused a loss of another 500$ every month.  That is like 650 $ rite there. I have another site which is very dynamic in the  SERPS, so you never know how much it makes.

To combat this volatility and decline, I decided to pay much more attention to core of my business and try out things which I didn’t before. Lets talk about the core first, I’ll be paying greater attention to assets which I already have and take it to the next level and regarding the later, I’ll be making new sites every month and expanding my networks. I have also been looking into verticals like local marketing. My preliminary calculations suggest that it could be feasible and there is decent money to be made. But before I could start raking in clients, I need to have a decent portfolio to convince them which I’ll be working over the period of time on.

At the end of the day, I think its going to be a steep climb. Lets see if I can really implement all what I’ve planned.

I know the title is picked up from Jay Sean’s old album but does that really matter? lately, I have been facing a lot of productivity issues. I think of getting something done but for some reason I happen to loiter around and not do the work. I would really like to finish off all the pending work.

Probably, It is because I get distracted really fast and jump from one task to another. This approach doesn’t let me complete any work. At the end of the day, I have tons of incomplete work waiting to haunt me. I think it is going to require some work. Small but sure steps towards instilling a type of discipline and work habit.

I have always been the free flow kind. I don’t like dead lines. I work at my own will. But slowly this approach is working against me. In the time i spend being moody, work is getting accumulated. At the moment, the work load is at a very critical level and needs to be dealt with urgent attention.

Lets see how it goes.

Before we go any further, I would like to tell you that Soul Rewards is not a scam. They just gave me the Itunes voucher, I had requested for. It took a while filling those annoying surveys but I eventually got to 100 points to redeem my vouchers.

I told all my family and mates about the site and got tons of referrals. I got points every time they filled a survey. It was wonderful. I reached my 100 point threshold pretty fast.

I think I am going to be filling more surveys and would advice others to do the same and milk the cash cow. I am already 82 points and should get the rest 18 soon.