Some companies would just explore new niches and develop it and bring innovation to it. Like Apple did with Smarthphone.

Some companies would do nothing and keep showing demo videos of their never-to-be-launched products and have kind of circle-jerk around the office on the success of Demo video and then get back to their routine business. Yes I am talking about Microsoft.

And here is another totally different beast laying in the bushes. (I am talking about recent history, I don’t think they even claim now that, they are a search company any more. So it’s useless to mention it.) Their only job is to look around, what is hot on the market and invade it. They can’t acquire those companies, because they have become so notorious that no startup in their right mind would be willing to work for them.

Let’s take a look at just launched, Google Drive and its pricing closely (25GB of space for $2.49 a month, 100GB for $4.99 a month, or 1TB for $49.99 a month). They are only designed to destroy Dropbox completely. While an average user would be getting excited by saving tons of money on ‘Cloud’ storage, but this is barely any good business practice. I am not talking about ethical values. I am talking about basic business principles.

To make my point clear, Google Drive is leveraging Google’s overall worth and capital to compete than being valuable at its own. That’s why I called it a bad business practice.

Dropbox despite being little expensive was doing great. And the product succeeded ‘at its own’ rather than leveraging billions of dollars from any outside company. They built the Cloud Storage Niche and succeeded, but all of the sudden, Cow-boy Google entered and invaded it.

Following today’s launch of Google Drive, I guess, the acquisition of Dropbox (by Apple) is both imminent and inevitable. Since I can’t think of any Mac user who does not use Dropbox. And from the business perspective, Apple should not allow Google to invade Mac OSX. And on top of that Dropbox is very much like the Apple company. It would be interesting to see, Dropbox offering 25GB-50GB free storage in coming months too. It’s my speculation, but this would be a better tactic than lowering their prices. Because this is not where they should be competing at.

Google has shown its card, actually two cards. Google Drive and Google+ (meh). Now it’s Apple turn to finally show their, Dropbox and Twitter cards. Apple already lost instagram to Facebook, and I am pretty sure this time they would not be taking any chances.

And this is called ‘Website Flipping’ hence Flippa.com came into existence the leading marketplace for selling and buying web properties. The term flipping originated from the real estate industry, where an investor would buy an old house, renovate it, and then sell it at higher price.

Anyway, below are the basic points which you should take into account before you are ready to sell your website on Flippa.

1. Be as honest with the potential buyers as you can. No one likes sneaky sellers that is common sense.
2. Be straight forward and candid with the potential buyer questions. Neither be rude nor go below your self-esteem for some bucks.
3. If there is any negative point about your website, make sure to make it crystal clear to the potential buyer. It might sell for a little less, but you would have successful deal at the end of the day, rather than, ending up auctioning your website again in the case of deal failure.
4. Try to offer all the statistics and analytics data and monetization income publicly, this saves a lot of time on unnecessary private messages from the potential buyers, and deal closes fast.
5. Give a brief reason why are you selling the website, whatever it is, be straightforward.
6. Give brief suggestions, how the new buyer can keep the site running, growing and making money.
7. Before accepting the bid, make sure twice that the buyer is ‘genuine’ – there are many guys (possibly your rivals) on Flippa market who would create ‘fake’ accounts to ruin your listing by making fake bids.
8. Always ask for a realistic price. Don’t expect anyone to buy a bicycle for the price of Merce. Unrealistic price demand can negatively affect your listing as well as your profile repute on the Flippa Marketplace. Buyers on Flippa are more smarter than you think you are.  See below how to determine the price of a website.

On Flippa, websites are sold and valued according to the below Formula which is pretty simple.

a = Yearly Income in Dollars

b = Value Factor, Website own worth which is between 1 to 10 normally.

Flippa Price = a x b

There are various factors which determine the website worth. Some of them are listed below.

• Technology used. Either Open Source CMS or Custom built.
• In case of Custom built, its code structure matters as well.
• Age of Site
• PageRank
• Traffic Sources, More is better.
• Niche Authority of the site
• Monetization methods
• Loyal Readership
• Content level

For Instance If a WordPress based blog yearly income is $25,000. and It’s very much established both in terms of traffic and income, and has some authority too in its niche. Then its value factor would be between 2-3. So taking this into account you can figure how much would it sell for. My idea is between $40K to $60K considering current trends on Flippa Marketplace.

Our Tutor (Mr. Ali Malik) quickly jumped to the bottomline, that why we are here, of course you are here for making money he said. Moreover he said, no one writes codes for fun, people would most probably be writing poetry or making paintings for fun than writing a piece of code. He also said, If you enjoy writing code as much as a poet enjoys writing poetry then it could be win-win situation for you in your career.

He was very much to the point, Like he said, an entry-level developer like us, can make between PKR 15000 to PKR 35000 per month, if they opt for a job. However beyond 9-5 Jobs, you can also work as a freelancer, starting from $5/HR. Or If you are a smarter-ass, you can make your own websites and make money through monetization (Adsense etc).

There is no doubt, Web developing has huge scope here in Pakistan. There is more work than developers in this country. And on top of that, in a struggling economy like our, running a software house doesn’t require much capital either. Therefore there are plenty of jobs for ‘talented’ web developers in Pakistan.

Anyway, among Seminar audience of around 50 people, I guess I was only the one, who enjoys writing codes. This is because, If I didn’t have an interest in coding, I won’t be learning it in the first place. Therefore it was little annoying to me, when everyone out there was asking questions as to How much they can earn after learning their courses.

Of course, Money is vital, and every business relies on money to survive, but making money, should not be the ‘sole’ purpose of one’s life. If you really want to excel at something, then, one should have deep interest involved in it too. Without passion and interest, I guess, there is no difference between a web developer and a Luggage loader. I follow these principles in every aspect of my life.

Anyway, If you have good understanding of computer, and have interest in building web apps too, then I guess, Web Development, is the most ideal profession here in Pakistan. Once you have become a professional, and depending on your level of skills and expertise, you would have various choices ahead of you. You can either work for a software house, Or you can work as a freelancer from your home, Or If you have some Capital, you can start your own software house, and lastly, can build your own successful web apps, which is the primary reason why I’m learning web development.

Topic 1 A basic introduction to PHP a web programming language.

I will discuss it later, how PHP works and handles the data. However you should know, that all PHP code after it is processed by the server, is rendered as HTML to the end-user. Which means, If you go to any website written in PHP, and see its ‘source code’ you would only notice HTML. For instance, this very website runs on WordPress which is written in PHP. If you view the source code of it, you would only notice HTML markup and not the PHP code.

Topic 2 What is a server-side technology
As mentioned above, PHP is a server-side scripting language, which means, everything PHP does takes place on the website server rather than a client. Web server is a computer, where the website is hosted and is accessed to retrive a webpage. And a client computer is which retrieves a webpage or displays the webpage, used by the reader of a website or an internet user. Almost all of the modern web hosts have PHP pre-installed. In addition to this, you can install PHP on your own Windows or Mac computer. We would try to cover Local PHP installation in another tutorial. To sum it up, to view a PHP website, a user or reader, doesn’t need to have PHP installed on his/her computer. Since PHP runs on the web server of the website. Therefore it’s called server-side scripting language.

However for many users, this is a lot of work to do, as I myself prefer to simply right-clicking on any folder and through the context-menu sync it to my Dropbox account. This is what, this tutorial is about. Since, Dropbox as yet does not support this feature. We are going to use a third-party app for Ubuntu to achieve it. This App for Ubuntu or Linux is called ‘ Dropbox Share ‘ and is available from WebUp8 repository.

Step 1 Installing Dropbox share on Ubuntu
In order to install, Dropbox share, on your Ubuntu or Linux computer, Please open Terminal and run below commands.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install dropbox-share

Step 2 Syncing and Un-Syncing Folders or Files
Once you have installed Dropbox share, Simply right-click on any file or folder you want to sync with your Dropbox account. And from the context-menu select Scripts > Dropbox share or Dropbox unshare. Simple as that. Once the folder or file has been synced to your Dropbox account, you will get a popup notification on your computer screen, confirming it.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
 <meta charset="utf-8">
 <title>CSS3 Punch Button</title>
 <meta name="description" content="CSS Punch Button">
 <style>

 /* punch
*******************************************************************************/
button.punch {
 background: #4162a8;
 border-top: 1px solid #38538c;
 border-right: 1px solid #1f2d4d;
 border-bottom: 1px solid #151e33;
 border-left: 1px solid #1f2d4d;
 -webkit-border-radius: 4px;
 -moz-border-radius: 4px;
 border-radius: 4px;
 -webkit-box-shadow: inset 0 1px 10px 1px #5c8bee, 0px 1px 0 #1d2c4d, 0 6px 0px #1f3053, 0 8px 4px 1px #111111;
 -moz-box-shadow: inset 0 1px 10px 1px #5c8bee, 0px 1px 0 #1d2c4d, 0 6px 0px #1f3053, 0 8px 4px 1px #111111;
 box-shadow: inset 0 1px 10px 1px #5c8bee, 0px 1px 0 #1d2c4d, 0 6px 0px #1f3053, 0 8px 4px 1px #111111;
 color: #fff;
 font: bold 20px "helvetica neue", helvetica, arial, sans-serif;
 line-height: 1;
 margin-bottom: 10px;
 padding: 10px 0 12px 0;
 text-align: center;
 text-shadow: 0px -1px 1px #1e2d4d;
 width: 150px;
 -webkit-background-clip: padding-box; }

button.punch:hover {
 -webkit-box-shadow: inset 0 0px 20px 1px #87adff, 0px 1px 0 #1d2c4d, 0 6px 0px #1f3053, 0 8px 4px 1px #111111;
 -moz-box-shadow: inset 0 0px 20px 1px #87adff, 0px 1px 0 #1d2c4d, 0 6px 0px #1f3053, 0 8px 4px 1px #111111;
 box-shadow: inset 0 0px 20px 1px #87adff, 0px 1px 0 #1d2c4d, 0 6px 0px #1f3053, 0 8px 4px 1px #111111;
 cursor: pointer; }

button.punch:active {
 -webkit-box-shadow: inset 0 1px 10px 1px #5c8bee, 0 1px 0 #1d2c4d, 0 2px 0 #1f3053, 0 4px 3px 0 #111111;
 -moz-box-shadow: inset 0 1px 10px 1px #5c8bee, 0 1px 0 #1d2c4d, 0 2px 0 #1f3053, 0 4px 3px 0 #111111;
 box-shadow: inset 0 1px 10px 1px #5c8bee, 0 1px 0 #1d2c4d, 0 2px 0 #1f3053, 0 4px 3px 0 #111111;
 margin-top: 8px; }
 </style>
</head>

<body>
 <div>
 <button class="punch">punch</button>
 </div>

</body>
</html>

I am not sure, if below snippet of code is useful for average WordPress users, However, It would come in handy for a lot of WordPress designers. By default when you display the WordPress Categories with count, it wraps the count the with brackets i.e ” (12) ” – And there is barely any way you can style it to your liking as you can see in the below screenshot.

The below snippet of code does two things. First, it removes the brackets around the count number, Second, it replaces brackets with ‘span tag’ around the count. So that you can style the count with CSS to your liking.

<ul>
<?php
	$args = array (
		'echo' => 0,
		'show_count' => 1,
		'title_li' => '',
		'depth' => 1
	);
	$variable = wp_list_categories($args);
	$variable = str_replace ( "(" , "<span>", $variable );
	$variable = str_replace ( ")" , "</span>", $variable );
	echo $variable;
?>
</ul>

You can either put above code directly into your theme, Or you can also put this code in the WordPress text widget. However to run PHP in WordPress text widget you would have to follow this short tutorial.

Below is the CSS code that I have used in above example for ‘count’ wrapped in span tag.

.widget ul li span {
    background-color: #999999;
    border-radius: 10px 10px 10px 10px;
    color: white;
    cursor: default;
    float: right;
    font-size: 9px;
    height: 15px;
    line-height: 15px;
    margin-right: 10px;
    margin-top: -28px;
    position: relative;
    text-align: center;
    width: 28px;
}

.widget ul li span:hover {
    background-color: #000;
}

And I have really been pondering, what could be the purpose of a startup, that apparently does not have a solid “revenue model”.

Are they just a scam to grab millions from VCs? Or are they really ambitious ventures by youngsters. I may be wrong, but looking at current trending startups, I can clearly see, they are built with the ‘sole’ purpose of being acquired.

All you need is to make a buzz on the Internet, for instance, currently Pinterest, and VCs from every corner of the world, would be cueing up to give you millions.

Who actually pretty well know, the so-called startup does not infact have a solid revenue model in place. And therefore they eye the return on their investment, on the acquisition as well.

This fairly seems like a case with Posterous. They didn’t have any solid revenue model, that could make it profitable and I guess they never would have. And their investors might have forced them to sell it off to Twitter who knows?

What is even more ironic, the company (Twitter) who acquired it, till to date, has not got a revenue model itself, that would even get it close to the break-even point. It just lost $69 Million or so, last year. And If you can figure a revenue model for Twitter that can make it profitable, then certainly you are more genius than Einstein.

Lastly, Posterous acquisition is majorly a great disappointment for me, both as an early-adopter of new web services, and as a tiny web entrepreneur. If I ever build a startup, I’d make sure to build its revenue model from the day one, so that it reaches to the break-even point at least, within a couple of years. Else, let the World amuse me and sit back.

The opportunities in front of Twitter are exciting, and we couldn’t be happier about bringing our team’s expertise to a product that reaches hundreds of millions of users around the globe. Plus, the people at Twitter are genuinely nice folks who share our vision for making sharing simpler. – Posterous Blog

Today I woke up to a ‘strange’ news in my timeline. Twitter acquires posterous. I was one of the early adopters of Posterous service, and used it very often (almost everyday), until they brought in ‘spaces’ – I don’t know If it was due to mind-fucking ‘Spaces blogging service of MSN’ but I was little annoyed by the change. Because the sole reason I switched from Tumblr to posterous was, simplicity. Now I have moved back to Tumblr for my personal blog.

I am not sure what are the ambitions of Twitter behind this acquisition, apparently it looks like, Posterous is eventually going to be shut-down as it only seems like a developers-hunt. Or Twitter might be expanding its features, by giving each twitter user its own blog. It could be little interesting. Because it’s only today I started to work on my very first Twitter Based Web app, that might might be offering similar features. If this is really so. We would love to have competition. ;}

On Demo it looks pretty nice, so nice that I want to throw my iPhone and iPad in the trash bin right away. But hey! haven’t we all seen the demo videos before of ‘ Courier ‘ which was believed to change our life. Therefore I am little skeptical, and barely give any fuck to Microsoft video demos. For me, Microsoft is a company that builds great products in the ‘Lab’, but it’s only Apple that sells them and makes profit period.

via: Techcrunch