It’s My Birthday October 28

Filed under Miscellaneous by RohailR | 4 comments

I’m now officially 19 years old. It’s kind of bitter sweet, to be honest, being that it’ll be my last year as a teen. Nonetheless, the past six months have been an interesting journey. If you recall, six months ago I wrote my first post on this blog (First Post) and told myself I wanted to see where I would get by the time I was 19. Given that six months is relatively a short period of time, I’m glad of what’s come of them and the many things I’ve learned in the past few months. I think that Walamu, no matter if it succeeds or fails, will always be my entrepreneurial baby and no one ever forgets their first one.

I want to thank the guys over at the Mind Petals Entrepreneur Network, as well as the guys at Young Wealth Weekly, for their continuing support and willingness to help a fellow entrepreneur out. All the members their have been extremely supportive and so have the readers and commenters of this blog. It’s been an exciting journey and I can only hope to continue to grow as a person as well as an entrepreneur. Anyone who is an entrepreneur knows that the learning is never fully completed and that is why I will always be an entrepreneur in the making. I will continue to learn and grow from experiences such as those from the past six months and you will see me continue to be “in the making,” but nevertheless a more experienced and better entrepreneur for it.

That First Dollar October 19

Filed under Marketing by RohailR | 2 comments

Walamu has officially broken it’s first dollar of revenue. First $1.50 actually. Someone from Rutgers upgraded their options for listing and opted for a featured listing, the most expensive option on Walamu. Maybe I’ll send them a t-shirt courtesy of RookieTees for that.

I can definitely vouch for all your other entrepreneurs in the making that it’s a good feeling when you get that first break. Hopefully things will continue in a positive manner and I am confident in Walamu simplifying the college experience for countless students to come. People seem to have heard about Walamu all over the place and sometimes it surprises me considering our early stages of marketing. It seems like our outrageous flyers have proved to be of word-of-mouth effect and that people are really talking about Walamu.

It’s time to take things to the next level and really push the guerrilla marketing tactics we’ve had in mind. True, they may offend some people and get in some people’s face. However, truth be told, from my experience so far, college students are extremely hard to reach considering the amount of information they are bombarded with on a daily basis. Smart marketing combined with guerrilla tactics seems to be what will work to grab college students’ attention. People have to be interested in your marketing, or else it’s just not going to fly. Think about Seth Godin’s “Purple Cow.” So this is where we are headed next in our marketing efforts with Walamu and I expect it to catch at least a few college eyeballs.

Side Project October 17

Filed under Projects by RohailR | 5 comments

WiiCave.com was recently launched. It’s just a side project that I’m expecting to bring in a descent amount of income with. I personally can’t wait until the Wii comes out. It really looks like it just might revolutionize the gaming world, something we’ve heard about occuring for a while, but something that hasn’t really happened yet in my opinion. I plan to keep WiiCave running for quite a while as I expect the hype from the Wii to bring in a good amount of traffic. WiiCave is focused on getting first hand opinions on the new console straight from the people who get their hands on the Wii first. It’s going to take some effort, but I’m going to track down the first people to get the console and get their honest opinion on the system. I look forward to launch time and expect big things from WiiCave.

Also, I’m thinking about adding AdSense to this blog (RohailRizvi.com) for reasons of providing a little side income, but more because I want some other form of motivation to keep blogging more regularly. I’ll try not to make it too obstrusive, but I think it should help with the overall content frequency of the blog. I’ll keep everyone posted on Walamu as well.

Edit: It’s 7PM and I was just congratulated by my friend and I asked him “for what?” and he said for being in the newspaper. I didn’t even get a chance to flip through the paper today and didn’t realize Walamu was in The Targum, the newspaper at Rutgers University. They also put the article online at the Daily Targum website. Here’s the link:

Web site offers free shipping for books

Is now a good time for Young Internet Entrepreneurs? October 8

Filed under Business lessons by RohailR | 5 comments

Web 2.0 is anything but in the shadows these days. Everyday we are hearing more and more about Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace in traditional media. Sources like The Wall Street Journal and New York Times are keeping up with these colossal new companies that built themselves up in a matter of months and are now looking to be acquired for over a billion dollars.

There in lies the problem, however. Or rather it is the sweet spot. It depends on which side of the spectrum you are on. If you are YouTube or Facebook then the number of suitors have grown pretty slim in terms of potential acquirers simply because of the price tag. Viacom backed out of wanting to purchase Facebook because they thought it was too expensive. They did, however, say that they are looking for younger, less established businesses with huge potential. This is where today’s young entrepreneurs come in.

The fact that big Web 2.0 has exhausted many of their options because of their price tag means that there are a slew of companies out there looking for great ideas with great business plans that haven’t even begun to hit their potential yet. These acquirers know that Web 2.0 is real and that a dot-com business is possible. They’ve seen Google and they’ve seen MySpace. They also know that the biggest wave of new corporate giants is going to come from the Internet. That is why this is the time to really try and get noticed if you are in the Web 2.0 world. It’s true that there are a ridiculous number of Web 2.0 “businesses” out there. However, most of these do not possess a solid business plan. Some of them don’t even have a way of making money other than Google Adsense.

If you are confident that your service is helping make other people’s lives easier and is something that they would use on a daily basis like Google or MySpace, then you should have no reason not to make something big out of your company. With a strong business plan, a business model, the right execution, and some luck, you can make your Web 2.0 a true success in the eyes of the world.

Interview with Josiah on PalPad October 6

Filed under Web review by RohailR | 0 comments

What is PalPad? How does it work?
PalPad helps people succeed—one relationship at a time. Whether it’s a college student looking for an internship, or a business consultant seeking new clients, people are the key to their success.PalPad facilitates relationship building by offering a number of features to track details of your friends’ lives. These details then serve as the catalyst for long-term friendship building.
What inspired you to create a service like PalPad and who did you have in mind when creating this service?PalPad was developed out of my own need for an easy, reliable place to record people I met. I envisioned being able to login to my networking control panel from any computer, and being able to develop my network of relationships. Other contact management tools I looked at were insufficient or overcomplicated for me as a networker – I wanted something that actually multiplied my networking efforts instead of taking up extra time.

I’ve been using this tool privately for 4 months now, and honestly I’ve been amazed with the results. People I causually met 4 months ago have partnered with me for profitable ventures—and I don’t think I would have remembered them without using PalPad. Because of experiences like this, I think I’ve only begun to grasp the power of relationship-based business.

How did you develop the site?

I outsourced site development: programming to a local college student, and graphic design to a contact in England. As a solopreneur, it’s vital to know what to delegate and what to do yourself. I’ve found that my time is best spent developing strategy, so I leave detailed programming to a specialist.

Would you say PalPad is an essential tool for business persons considering there are so many new ways to network these days and the number of contacts one typically has has grown exponentially due to the Internet and such?

You’re right, networking online has become very popular over the past couple years. And some great sites already exist for doing that – I’m not trying to compete with them. My intention is to create a whole new kind of tool.

I believe that the largest number of interactions each day come offline. Whether you’re intentionally networking or not, you run into dozens of people each day that could turn into customers, clients, mentors, or joint venture partners. When you systematically record each of these people each day, you are building the framework for success in your career and business.

I like to tell people, ”If you’re networking online, use LinkedIn. But for networking in the real world, use PalPad.”

Looking back at the development process, is there anything you would have done differently?

Absolutely. As many web service businesses know, it can be hard to meet deadlines using outsourced programmers. I lost a couple key months by mismanaging the people working for me. I would encourage anyone working with freelancers to offer performance-based income incentives.

What is the best thing you did during “pre-launch” time?

Without a doubt, it was creating the pre-launch site. Maintaining a blog forced me to keep writing and putting together new articles. The blog also raised awareness for PalPad, and helped establish a stream of visitors to the site.

I would highly recommend anyone working on a product like this to get a pre-launch site up as quickly as possible. It’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned this past year.

How do you plan on spreading the word about your service to professionals everywhere?

I’ve been learning a lot about free promotional techniques recently, and am eager to begin using them. No-cost marketing has three benefits: 1) it’s free, 2) it forces you to be creative, and 3) it can often be more effective than paid advertising. Small companies need to think differently in order to succeed.

Where do you expect PalPad to be in one year?

Over the next year, I will be working to spread the message behind PalPad to as many people as possible. I plan on gradually introducing new features that help people manage their network in more efficient ways. But my overall goal is to raise awareness that connections with people are the most important part of your business.

To learn more about PalPad, visit myPalPad.com.

In Retrospect October 4

Filed under Everyday by RohailR | 5 comments

I’d been thinking about this for the past couple of weeks before Trizle posted this today. If you’re a regular reader you probably noticed my lack of posting and I apologize for that.
But as a blogger, and especially as an entrepreneur, you eventually come to ask yourself: Why are you doing what you are doing when you could be using that time to do something more productive? This isn’t to say blogging isn’t productive because I’ve met countless people since the start of this site and it’s kept me going and has motivated me to keep striving and achieving as opposed to being idle.

I’m not saying I am going to stop blogging any time soon. I’m just taking a retrospective view of doing what I’m doing. Trizoko does hit the spot when they say no one cares what you are doing. And to a certain extent that’s true. Sure I have readers and maybe even a couple fans out there, but for the most part no ones depending on my blog for their well-being.

I don’t find myself as being a talented writer and nor do I come up with brilliant business philosophies that readers love to eat up (unlike Trizoko). Sometimes I feel it’s a burden to write something by readers will find useful. But truth be told, the reason I started blogging was to keep track of my ventures and aspirations and to keep myself moving towards my goals. And if readers enjoy that then great, but I can’t promise anyone mind bottling business advice.

All in all, I’m an 18-year old kid chasing a dream and that’s what this blog will remain about :D .

iPrioritize Not Just for Business Professionals October 3

Filed under Web review by RohailR | 0 comments

Many of you have probably heard of iPrioritize, founded by Adam McFarland of SportsLizard, the online service that allows you to create simple to-do lists and have them sent to you via email, RSS, or even to your cell phone. The service allows you to choose from to layers, a free account or a business account. The business account lets users assign and organize your employees’ tasks more efficiently.

I personally use a business account at iPrioritize to keep up with all my tasks associated with running Walamu. However, that’s not all I find Walamu useful for. As a student, there are tons of things I have to keep track of including presentations, homework, reading assignments, etc. iPrioritize has helped me immensely in getting organized and keeping on top my classes. Before I got used to writing down my tasks, I used to simply try and remember everything I had to do for the day. While I was pretty good at doing that, it was still burdensome to have to run through a million things in my mind everyday. I then “evolved” to writing all my tasks down on paper, although that wasn’t really helpful at either because either I would lose the sheet of paper where I wrote my tasks down or I wouldn’t bother to look at it again. I’ve now evolved to something much better: iPrioritize. It really doesn’t get any easier as there are so many ways to remind yourself of your to-do list and there’s no way you can really avoid being reminded of what you have to do for the day. It’s not like a piece of paper that sits at the corner of your desk all day and doesn’t get looked at. iPrioritize screams your tasks out for you if that’s what you need and doesn’t leave you with the burden of you remembering them all day. With email, RSS, and mobile internet options for reminders (I’ve actually checked out iPrioritize on my mobile web and it looks awesome), there’s no excuse for not running through your daily tasks with iPrioritize (or at least being reminded of them ;) ).