SaifulSham.com

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After publishing our ebook recently, Syazwan&I face a hectic time answering queries from people close (and not so close) from us. Questions such as how and when we start, is it true, etc are some of the popular one. It’s really add up to the work load… Oh yes, we are 90% done with phase 2. As you can see, I haven’t much time to blog lately, as I’m preparing the materials for our 3 ecourses which we launched together with the “Petua Pengiklanan Berkesan” ebook.

At first I thought, this wouldn’t be a problem, writing back in Bahasa Malaysia, it’s something that I have been doing all my life! How bad can I be! Well, quite bad to be honest. Writing is easy, but to write something good and worth reading, it takes time. When I have covered everything I will publicly put the ecourses links on the main page of SaifulSham.com . Btw, SaifulSham.com is our second project for this semester break, and I ‘m hoping I can start the third one soon. I just have about two weeks before going back to UTP.

Ok, back to the purpose of this post. How does it start? Hmm, let put it like this. We start our Online Ventures with no money down. (Don’t stop yet, continue reading, it’s quite inspirational you might say). One fine day, while surfing the Internet I accidentaly come across a forum. Webhostingtalk.com if I’ve forgotten which one, it’s long time ago. When I found a topic requesting free hosting from the numerous web hosting provider on the web. What amazed me is, some of their request were granted! So, I tried my luck. Actually at that time, I doesn’t even know what hosting is, what they do, etc. But after doing a quick research, I get a few basic idea and I jump into the wagon and made a request for a free hosting. It’s hard to persuade the stingy hosts, but finally I manage to convince a hosting company to host me for free. Being a complete greenhorn I played with it, research a little bit more, when I found out, hosting have to be accompanied by a domain name to realise it’s full potential. So, I went hunting again for a domain name. This time I knew I couldn’t get one for free, so I have to do some “service online” in return for a domain name. That’s how I get my first .COM . After successfully getting a domain name I tweak and tried various things. And after some more surfing I discover ecommerce. But at that time it seems, every transactions need a credit card, so I can’t proceed further. I just read any available article, download every ebooks I could find, etc to satisfy my curiosity.

Meanwhile I’m getting myself comfortable with Lelong.com.my . I advertise the “service” which land me my domain name, and ends up with a RM32 bidder for it. So, that’s my first profit.

When, just at the right moment, one fine night, I was chatting with Syazwan when our discussion lurked into the topic of Internet business. He said he has one business idea, he has voiced it to his roommate, but his roommate told him that it’s costly and expensive to start an online business. His roomate cite an example of his uncle who spent RM500,000 to start an Internet business selling batiks and took nearly 2 years to be profitable. At first Syazwan was a little bit hesitant to share his business idea, but after telling him, who know if I might help. He told me is idea.

Then, I showed him my collection of ecommerce articles. I told him that from what I know, you can start an business for less than RM1000. Maybe even half of that! (During that time, now, maybe a quarter of that!) At first, he didn’t believe me as his roomate has given an example of a struggling technopreneur, but after showing him some websites, I managed to convince him. Then we start discussing our plan. We gave ourselves some times to do an elaborate research.

It tooks us a long time to start actually, because we are a little bit skeptical with ourselves. We are not very confident we can pull this through. When finally, we say to ourselves, let give this a try, Ebay Malaysia come at the right moment. We try our luck in Malaysia first, if we are successful here, then only we will tap the international market we said. Our products are selling like hot cakes, we are the first seller selling that “particular” products there.

Syazwan’s enthusiasms grew, he ask me to quickly proceed with our expansion plan. However, I remain reluctant and skeptical. I prefer to concentrate on the “gold mine”. But Syazwan push ahead and I obliged. And I have to say, good call! A few months later, our gold mine starts depleting. More and more seller come in and slashing the prices. Competition become intenses, we tried various tactics to revive earnings but it never been the same as before.

Luckily our “expansion plan” start producing results, and as we are selling at international customers, we enjoy good margins. And earnings has been stable so far, after some time. And that’s our first mega project (note, it is still running).

From the profits we made, we reinvest some and reward ourselves some. With the reinvestment fund, some goes to enhance and refine our business strategy while some goes to finance our another ventures. And we are proud to say, SaifulSham.com (not profitable yet, not very sure of the prospect, are 100% funded by the profits of our Online Ventures- we are doing this maybe just as a contribution to the public)

And, some time soon, we will embark on our 3rd Mega Project.

Wish us luck and pray that we prosper.

Download our first ebook “Petua Pengiklanan Berkesan” for FREE here (Bahasa Malaysia)