Taiyab Raja - Web Entrepreneur

CSSice itself is making some good progress in terms of traffic and exposure. Obviously it’s a little hard to tell how it’ll do overall, as it’s only been up for 2-3 days, but the traffic seems to be rising well for now. Also, I’ve started to get a steady stream of submissions through, some I’ve already had to reject because of them not reaching the required standard. I’ve got some great marketing ideas ready for the website, and some features too. Site of the Week should be implemented very soon, so I’ll be showcasing the best design of the week there. I’m also planning to release a load of resources for CSSice, so it can cater better to the targeted demograph.

So, yea, things are moving foward, I hope to give you an update on progress very soon.

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It’s really hard doing a project when potential funding for it is low; you usually need quite a lot of capital to begin with in order to create a bigger, more sustainable web project - well, I’m saying this because I’m experiencing it myself. It’s hard enough coming up with a plausible project idea, and darn right annoying when you don’t have the means to do it. I’m still in the process of selling off my old stuff, but a lot of it isn’t selling. I haven’t tried SitePoint yet, so I’ll guess I’ll try that very soon. Hopefully, my stuff should sell, and I’ll have enough after that for Coding2.

Sheesh, this is annoying…

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Apparently there was a pagerank update recently, and my blog is now PageRank 3 (although it may have already been that, and I just didn’t know :p).

Not much has been happening behind the scenes to be honest, although I’ve now sold Shortenerr, and I’m slowly gathering funds for projects such as Coding2; can’t wait till I get enough and start work on it - it’s going to be very interesting indeed.

Other than selling off most of my portfolio, I’ve also starting doing a bit of design work here and there in an attempt to raise funds for Coding2, I’m also in the process of designing a new portfolio design, which will be sweet. Can’t wait until that’s up.

So yea, a bit happening here, but once things pace up a little, you’ll get regular updates on progress.

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I’ve been pretty busy on developing my portfolio of websites recently; this is usually the case when I’m starting up again - it’s all pretty hectic at the start and then dies down a little. I’ll try to keep you guys posted on everything I do more often, but it’s a tad hard.

Just to let you know, I’m clearing up my previous allotment of websites to make way for the new. A fresh start - should be good.

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Over the past two days I’ve experienced my internet being down; and I have to say, it’s one of the most annoying experiences in the World. Knowing that you have countless projects and scheduled deadlines to meet and not being able to do anything about them is an immense feeling, and I’m sure glad I’ve got the internet back now.

To be honest, it happened for no reason. I have a direct debit setup with my ISP, and so there’s usually no problems at all with paying the internet bills, but for some reason, the payment had failed on this occasion, and all because of a minor £19.98, they shut the internet off. So, obviously, we had to ring up the ISP, make the payment and wait till they re-activated the internet. It was that wait that took forever.

This should be a lesson to all your web developers out there; make sure you’re not late with your bills (especially your internet ones!)

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One of the threats to online business are the existance of those who attempt to scam honest businessmen. It’s a problem that has existed from the beginning, and it seems like it’s on the rise. Just a few days ago, I attempted to purchase a website from a DigitalPoint member; being a common website purchaser, I just sent him the money via Paypal, and expected a smooth transaction. Well, I couldn’t be any more wrong. After a couple days, I re-sent a private message and contacted him via the site I was purchasing to see what was going on. I then checked my mail, and to my suprise, I got a response from the actual owner of the website, saying that he had no recollection of selling the website at all. I then realized that the person whom I thought was the owner was a scammer. He had simple copied a SitePoint sales page into a DigitalPoint thread, and tried to sell a site that wasn’t even his. Hopefully though, I’ve filed a complaint to PayPal, and it should go in my favour (usually PayPal give such transactions in the favour of the buyer of virtual goods), but we’ll see. It’s really annoying because I could have used that cash somewhere else, but instead, it’s held by Paypal, doing nothing.

Everyone who deals online will once in their life come across a scammer, and it’s becoming so common now it’s not even funny anymore. It looks like we all need to be a little more cautious, after all, we aren’t dealing face-to-face.

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Coding2
As you may already know, my next big project will be to develop an xHTML/CSS coding service called Coding2.com. The aim of the website would not only be to code high quality designs, but also be both fast and affordable as well. A lot of the popular coding services charge an absolute mint for their services (and yes, they should) but there are those out there without the budget to hire such services; therefore I’ll be aiming Coding2 at this demograph of people. I’ll probably set a base price of something like $70-99, and then add on costs as they ask for more pages and options etc.
There’s a lot of competition in such a niche too; it’s already dominated by quite a few big players, but hopefully I’ll get my share of the clients too.

Video Sites
I’ve had numerous video sites in the past, and I’m considering whether I should make loads of them for some kind of continous residual income; there are however a lot of complications with doing so. Nowadays, high quality videos are hard to obtain since Stage6 closed; so I would be forced into using Veoh’s terrible search feature, and a few other sites in the process.

Shortenerr
Shortenerr has been one of my background projects which I’ve neglected, I’ll probably sell the site though, as I have no interest in it whatsoever.

TagCheap
Another one of those background projects that make a couple bucks every so often; probably another site I’ll sell for cheap. I do admit though, the time I did promote this it made quite a lot.

I was also in the process of negotiating a purchase of a new website, but I was forced not to as the seller was ‘dodgy’ and could not provide me with proof of ownership of ‘his website’.

So yea, it’s my first morning back to web development, and I’m looking forward to what’s coming in the future.

Taiyab.

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Oh yes, I’ve finally returned to the world of blogging. Ah, it feels good to be back. I’ve finally got away from all that revision for exams, and they’re all done and behind me now. It feels good to finally have all the stress of exams leave me, and with the summer holidays around the corner, it’ll just be clear skies here on. I’ll be diving straight into some weird and wonderful projects very soon, I’ve actually started planning them already.

With regards to my websites, and the online side of things, I’ll be partnering up with a good friend of mine who’s a PHP whiz. That way, my downfall (not being able to code in PHP) no longer matters. I design, he codes; it’s a perfect match.

So yea, it’s all happening now, so subscribe to the feed for regular updates on my projects and discoveries.

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