When you start a company, you are no longer you. You become a representative of a company. When people are contacting the company, they are not contacting you. You have to learn how to keep your personal and business life separate. If you don’t you will end up in a big mess. Having that said, how many of you have seen most successful companies use their company email. Such as chris@microsoft.com, or syed@balkhis.com. Well if you own multiple websites, it kind of gets hard to keep up with them. Like I have Balkhis and Uzzz Productions. It tends to get hard to keep up with both of my company emails and keep track of my personal email. I have to switch out from my mailing accounts over and over to stay updated. Well now I am going to tell you something that I have been using which can do it all.

GMAIL – yup it is Google Mail.

No I am not going to tell you guys to set up an account with google using your domain. But I have an alternative way which you all can use efficiently and it is much easier. When I started the company, I had to get a company bank account, so I thought I should make a separate gmail account also for the company. While I was doing that, I put all the business related stuff in there. What I have done is I have forwarded all of my company email to this one email. So Uzzz Production email and Balkhis email all goes to this one gmail account, and then when I reply back, I can reply using gmail, but it shows my company email.

I will show you how you can do that in this post.

First Sign up for a Gmail account (one which is not personal)

Then use your Cpanel email service to forward your company email.

Click on the Settings link on the top right corner

Continue to the full post to read the entire tutorial.

As you all know that I am running a Balkhis ML Contest which is proudly sponsored by Market Leverage.

To win this contest basically you have to earn points. I am not doing random drawing because people who do the most work sometimes doesn’t get lucky enough and it is not fair. So the person with the most points get to win this time.

I have posted a few ways to earn points on the official contest post.

This is just another way that can get you 3 points to add to your total.

Digg the Official Balkhis Market Leverage Contest Post

Digg the post above, and add a short comment. Once done post your username below, so I can verify.

For those of you who have never used Digg, I recommend you all to sign up to digg because it is one of the social bookmarks that is essential for the growth of your website. Hitting the top page on Digg is an honor.

I have also posted a short article in the past that relates to Using Digg for your Advantage.

Good luck in the contest.

Well unlike most of my past contests this is only a one week deal. This contest is starting today June 11th, and it will last till June 18th. Before I explain how this contest will be ran. I want to let you guys know why I am starting this contest. When I was in Seattle, I got an email from Debby of Market Leverage (ML). In the email, I was offered to run a contest in which the prizes will be donated by Market Leverage. Debby and Market Leverage are just setting the standards higher and higher among the competitors. They are becoming my favorite publishers. I would like to thank Debby and Market Leverage for considering this blog worthy and giving me the honor to run this contest. Since you have honored me and this blog, I would like to name this contest in the honor of Market Leverage, Balkhis ML Contest.

Now even though the prizes were donated by Market Leverage, I get to pick how I will run the contest. Now I tried to make this contest as simple as possible. And this time, there is no random drawing, so you can pretty much confirm your winning spot, if you have the most points. The person with the most points earned within these 8 days, will be the winner. And yes there will be 4 winners by point ranking system.

O did I tell you what the prizes are?

Prizes

First Place: Flip Camera

Second Place: IPOD Nano

Third Place: $50 AMEX Card

Fourth Place: 2GB USB Pen Drive

Above are the ones that you can work your way and win.

Aside from those I will be giving out,

1000 entrecard credits
468 x 60 banner on Balkhis (1 month)
125 x 125 banner on Balkhis (1 month)

These three prizes will be given to users selected randomly from those who enter the contest.

Now how exactly will you get these points?

**You don’t have to have a website to win this contest because alot of clues will not require you to have a website.

It will be described in clues. So I will not give out all the ways all at once. I will add the clues in my posts along the week, so you guys would have to read the blog if you are interested in the prizes. But how will you stay updated? I have an Idea. How about subscribing to my blog via email.

O I think I forgot to mention, this is one of the clues to earn points. By subscribing to Balkhis via email, you will earn 10 Points.

Don’t worry my subscribers, if you are already a balkhis subscriber via email, you will automatically gain 10 points. Now this will help you by getting you more points. Also you won’t miss any chances of earning points as posts will be delivered to your email address.

Please stay consistent with your email use. So use the same email everywhere. If you subscribed via a certain email, then use that same email to sign up to Market Leverage (ML).

O did I forget to mention this is another clue. You must signup using my referral link. Which is in the banner, so click on the banner above to sign up. This will get you 20 points for every approved account via my referral. (Sorry to those who are already a member of this service, it won’t count toward you).

Anywayz isn’t this an exciting contest. I know for sure this is. Market Leverage is doing a great job. These guys are really friendly. As soon as you submit, and your application gets reviewed. You will get a kind welcoming phone call. Where their representative will explain everything to you. The part that I like is you don’t have to wait for the offers to be accepted. For some of them you do, but you can contact your account manager to speed up the process. I recommend them at all cost. They will be going in my money maker list when I upload the new design for Balkhis.

O I just thought of another quick way that you can gain points.

Just write about this contest on your blog. Make sure you link to this post, and make a mention that this contest is supported kindly by Market Leverage, and put their link. This will get you 20 points toward your score.

Once you have written about this post, do remember to send a trackback or comment on this post linking to your post so we can keep track of it. This will take me to another clue.

Commenting on Balkhis will also gain you points. Each comment will be worth 2 points. You may not comment more than 2 times on one post. I mean you can but you won’t be rewarded. Don’t spam in the comments, because I will be moderating carefully. I have also asked David Pegg, Amanda Roberts, and Areeb to help me out with maintaing the contest and keeping track of the points.

Well guys what are you waiting for. Let the contest Begin.

More Clues that are added:

Digg Balkhis Market Leverage Contest – Clue #1

Digital Point post on Balkhis Market Leverage Contest – Clue #2

Tweeting the Balkhis Market Leverage Contest – Clue #3

Affiliate Marketers Giveback for Balkhis Market Leverage Contest – Clue #4

Join Mybloglog for Balkhis Market Leverage Contest – Clue #5

Market Leverage TV trivia for Balkhis Market Leverage Contest – Clue #6

Tip Sunday and Market Leverage Contest Clue #7

Technorati is a need for blogs – Balkhis Market Leverage Contest Clue #8

Entrecard Recommendations – Balkhis Market Leverage Contest Clue #9

Finding the Treasure – Balkhis Market Leverage Contest Final Clue

It was about a year and a half ago, I launched my directory (idk.in) which turned out to be a success when I sold it for $20,000 USD. Not long after I launched my directory, a concept of bidding directory gained alot of fame among the directory owners. One of the reasons were because it seemed to do very good for some of the bigger directory owners. Chris also known as mystikmedia, owner of the famous Alive Directory launched his first Bidding Web Directory with a name of bigweblinks.com, which got $20,136 USD from the links submitted to in on the homepage. Now, Chris was promoting his sites greatly and this site got a PR 7. Alot of directory owners took a stab at this option and thinking they will make easy money also. Well along with other web directory owners, Chris himself launched a few more of these bidding directories. But this post is not about Chris, or bidding directories. But it is about a concept behind the bidding directories which played an important role in the demise of directory industry.

While the directory industry is not dead right now because you can still make money from a general web directory. Sadly not many of these webmasters are catching the mistake and keep on making it over and over again. This mistake is Auto Approve added in the directories, or you can call it Instant Approval like Bruce of Authority Directory calls it.

This feature was introduced and made popular in the famous bidding directory script, phpLinkBid also known as phpLB. Now this is the biggest mistake of the directory industry. I am not saying that Google got angry because of the bidding directories because alot of general directories got penaltised due to their promotion techniques of buying links on other sites, but this concept itself just goes on to show that a directory is a peice of trash where everyone can throw in their links and write whatever they want.

All Directory Owners, should stay away from auto-approval. While it will save you some time, but it will cause your directory’s quality to suffer, and directories will be considered another paid links. Right now it is not because most directory owner/editors are charging for paid reviews. They review each site individually and its a review fee that the advertiser is paying them. If the site passes the criteria of the editor, then it gets included. So it is not a paid link. But by adding this method into scripts, and sites doesn’t give you any advantage but can harm you.

Eventhough I never favored bidding directories, but anyone who asked me which script to use to start a bidding directory. I said phpLD Bidding directory by the people who brought the famous phpLinkDirectory script to us. The main reason for that was because it doesn’t do auto-approve. It will let the user bid, but the editors have to approve the site and then it will appear.

Now I am keeping a close eye at the directory industry and staying in touch with some of my friends who owns directories. I still recommend people to submit their sites to directories, but not to ones which does auto-approve. If you want to know how to determine a quality web directory read my most where I set a guideline and give you a list of my favorites.

Hopefully directory owners and script developers will take this point seriously and not implement this feature in their sites/scripts.

I know when I was reading the career list, I never saw one that said making money online. Our world is still in the old days and stuck with Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers and other daily work day jobs as a great career. I mean I am in college, the next person I talk to is either pre-med, pre-law, or engineering major. Now we all know half of these people won’t even go onto become a doctor, or a lawyer, but they have these false hopes. That is given to them by their parents. Now when was the last time you heard a parent telling their kids, Hey you are going to be the next online millionaire. Heck a next online billionaire.

I mean believe me when I say this, alot of people still think that the Internet is risky. Hell half the world is running and relying on internet. Online stores are open 24/7 without the fear of robbery at gun point, and people think that dot com businesses are bound to fail.

Ever tried taking an economics class. First thing they tell you is that dot com businesses doesn’t have a very established platform. Well that is because these people don’t even consider that making money online is an option. An easy option which alot of people are now realizing it, and those who have realized it are making a living now.

I mean people from the countries that have high unemployment rates. Why don’t they have a major in colleges called Making Money Online. Heck Search Engine Optimization. I know what a major is Graphic Designing. These people go technology institutes for 4 years, and they learn all about graphic designing. Their skills are undescribable and imagination is beyond the limits, but they still end up working at a company for a salary.

But no one ever think about hey I can make more money doing these designs and not have to go to work. A graphic designer gets paid 25,000 rupees every month in Pakistan if that much. Rough Estimate for a beginner. Now converting that to US Dollars it only becomes $357. Now they work for entire month in which they produce good 3 – 4 sites. Even more sometimes. Their skill level is well beyond mine and they do great work. Now if one of them just wait to think for one moment and say hey, I can get a contract online and make 4 designs for $150 and make more money than this. How many of you would go for a custom unique good looking design for $150. I know I would… because that is dirt cheap for a custom website design.

They are only held back because no one ever told them about this sort of thing. No one told them about making money online. It could be the parents who can take the initiating step. They can tell their kids that. I don’t know if any organizations are interested in this, but I believe that big organizations, big companies can also put together a campaign like this to eliminate poverty in the countries with high unemployment rate. Hopefully Bill and Linda Gates foundation is seeing this post. I would go and be a speaker.

Take a look at a corner book store. Do you have it in your country aside from U.S. Come on my Indian and Asian audience. Well I am only referring to these countries because the $ converting to these currency is alot. So now if all of these owners instead of going out of business can sell their books either online on ebay, and in store. They will make good profit. I say ebay because they can get good shipping because Amazon have standard shipping cost, and shipping internationally cost more.

When will the society change and start recognizing you, me, us as a well hardworking human being. I mean I get alot of comments like oo you do the lazy work. “I never see you working”. Your work is so easy. Comments like those. Well if I make good 50k – 80k income a year, there is nothing wrong with my career. I make more than an average american family.

If there are parents who are reading this post please go talk to your kids and explain that they have this option also. Get them to work online while they are going through school rather than going and working at a local store for $8 / hour.

Also if you are reading this and want to support the cause, please make a post about this topic on your blog. This is Balkhis attempt to cut down unemployment rate around the world and show the people a new Vision for Success.