No, I am not talking about United States nor Us magazine, just talking about us. We have a kind of a group here, consisting of few friends (technically, we are a set of brothers, friends, friends of brothers and brothers of friends). I am calling it kind of a group because we have never formally considered ourselves a group, our interests are different, we usually don’t agree on pretty much everything, including what to work on and how, and usually all (actual) work is done individually or by a group of at-most 2 people (others are always present to point out mistakes and sometimes to give moral support), but whatever work any of us do, it is pretty much always considered ‘our’ work.
Currently we have 7 running websites (including 4 blogs and a photoblog), with 2-3 ideas currently in development, some of these projects were started on experimental basis and are on a back burner right now, while others are actively worked on. Here is the list of our projects (in no particular order):
- Kirayadaar.com
- Eat ‘n Travel
- Politics Pakistan
- Optographer
- Carobaar
- Education Inn
- Majestic Islam
Let me know what you think about any of these websites. Any suggestions and feedback is most welcome.
Aqeel General, Personal
Yesterday I went to Lahore Bloggers Meetup, organized by Badar Khushnood, Google’s country consultant, IEEE Student branch of LUMS and CIO Pakistan.
Event started (I was 10 mins late, not sure if I missed something) with Badar Khushnood’s introduction to blogging and how to earn money from it. Main points of his presentation were:
- Follow your passion
- Find your audience
- And earn money from it.
It was followed by success stories of 17 year old student Haris from Sizzledcore.com – told by Badar as Haris’ mother didn’t allow him to attend the meetup due to his exam next day – and Saad Hamid from Sizlopedia.com. Then came Maryam Nasim, a housewife earning from freelancing using her site PinkWool. Last hour was dedicated to Question and Answer session, which was pretty interesting as well as informative.
End results were, earning money from blogging takes lots of patience and hard work. Write original content, and follow your passion. If you work hard you will eventually start getting some results, but there is no shortcut. Most importantly, don’t write because you want to earn money, write because you love to.
In the end, I finally got to meet many people I already knew on web, some more thoroughly than others. It was great to finally meet them all.
This meetup is also covered (in more detail) by Sohaib Athar, UzEE, Imran Jafri and TechMynd (the most detailed roundup yet).
Aqeel General, Personal bloggers, google, lbm08, lums, meetup
