Economy in U.S is going down the drain which is leaving some people to suffer while others are enjoying. People who are enjoying are either really rich, or really smart. I know I am not rich, but I can tell you that I am smart. I enjoy life because I am not broke. The reason behind that is almost everywhere I go, I manage to get heavy discounts, or freebies. Sometimes both. I think if I can do it, so can you. Therefore I am going to share some of my tricks with you.

In general, when people go out to buy things, they don’t do their research. They just go to the store that is close to them, and just buy the thing at a price stated. Do you know that stores like Macys, Sears, Best Buy all have their bargains and special discounts that they can offer you. But not every person get it because they don’t have certain type of personality.

Before you walk in the store, make sure you have done your research. If you are buying a laptop then search it in all the competitor store and see their prices. Always check for places like Slickdeals.net

Things you need to have when you walk in the store

• A mindset that if you don’t get the product here, you can always go somewhere else.
• Open Mind.
• Knowledge of companies bylaws. (Pretty geeky but it helps)
• Friendliness
• Confidence in yourself.
• Obviously MONEY.

I always tend to make an impression to the person that I know what I am talking about. Even though I am clueless. But then I inquire about the product. Ask them questions. Don’t treat the sales person like an idiot. If you are nice to them, they will be nice to you. I mean this one representative at the Best Buy store, told me about a $100 discount. I was very nice to him. I talked to him for a while, and in the end he is like. We are not suppose to encourage this discount, but we have this available if you want it. I am like sweet, so now I got a $100 discount on my laptop.

How did I manage to get it? Well first I talked to multiple associates. I like to know what everyone thinks, so I ask them all at different times as I walk around. I also ask each one if they have discounts available. It took me an hour to buy a laptop that I could have bought in 5 minutes, but I saved $100 by just walking around and talking to different associates.

Another example would be at Macys, They were giving out $10 gift cards to their first 100 customers. On each door there was a person giving out the card. But do you know that they really give $10 gift cards to each 100 customers entering from that door. People don’t even go to the store thinking it will be a big line. So this is what I did. I got there early. Store opened and I got the $10 certificate from one entrance. Went around to the other entrance got another one. After 15 minutes the store was opened, I had $70 in gift certificates. What you know I bought myself a nice outfit. With a little walking around the store, I lost some weight (That is a plus), and I saved money.

Lets look at the scenario of me at Dillards bargaining for a perfume set that I want to buy for my mom. Now this is a freakin $80 perfume set. With the economy and as a college student who have that much money to spend on mom’s gift. I mean come on, you have to give gifts to so many people when you have a big family like mine. So I bargained with the girl at the counter what I get with this $80 perfume set. She is like you get some free samples. Well, I said no I want a free gift with it. (You know they do have them, the employees are not encouraged to tell you that). Well then I just talked to the manager, and she gave me the set for $65 ($15 off) plus with the gift, and free samples. Big money I just saved there myself. Key point to be noted: Don’t be afraid to talk to the manager. Now I wasn’t creating any trouble. I was just asking if that was possible.

I went grocery shopping at a local store Publix. I had a good experience, so I wrote to their corporate office telling them how nice my experience was. Next thing you know they sent me bunch of coupons. I have about 50 coupons that says Save a $1 off any $1 purchase or more. I got a publix bag, and a pen. Insane isn’t it. So write to the corporate office and give them your review.

I eat out a lot. Considering I am a college student who doesn’t know how to cook. Whats new. Anyways with this economy eating out is almost impossible. I still manage to do that. You know why? Because I go to the same stores over and over. I give them good feedback. I am a customer they remember, so I always end up getting a discount. There were few times that I even got the meal for free.

Price matching is essential. I am sure you hate Mail In Rebates as well as I do. Well they are a pain in the ass process. You have to mail the stuff to get your money back. So technically you are wasting your time, money on mailing, etc etc. Just ask the people if they have instant rebate instead. Another thing I do is find the product cheaper somewhere else. But go to the store nearest to my house. Then I just talk to the manager. Most stores match competitor prices. I bought my Vaio which was suppose to be $1400 at Best Buy, but it was $1149 at office max with a mail in rebate. I came to Best Buy and talked to their manager in a very calm tone. He gave me the laptop for $1099 with Instant Rebate there… So I saved myself $50.

So the Key points you need to understand is:

Ask for Discounts
Ask multiple people who work at these places

And you will save all this money, but still have the latest stuff that your heat desire. The economy is not only hurting you, but it is hurting the stores. They want you to shop, so take advantage of this. The corporate makes rules like Gifts with perfumes or what not, but employees are encouraged not to discuss it. Who does it benefit, the employees because they get to keep the gifts which are left over. So by asking you are just doing yourself a favor.

You are not allowed to twitter. Thats what twitter just told me when they suspended my account. Reason, I violated some of their terms, which was not stated. Now, I tried contact their support for about a week, no response. Well then I went over to Izeafest, and didn’t get a chance to write this post. But it was retarded because I took so much freaking time out to follow people, and I had like 1700+ followers. Anyways, since no one was replying, I deleted my account!

Because, I don’t want you guys to follow me at a place where I can’t even update my self.

Here is the New link to my twitter – Syed Balkhi’s Twitter Page

Follow me at twitter everyone. Twitter is growing rapidly, but their terms are getting ridiculous. They are nofollowing the profile page, you can’t follow more than 2000 people etc etc. I think we should all just join Plurk instead.

But if you are still on twitter make sure you follow me.

I am sure you guys see those promotional videos on youtube. People just steal one of the random beats, and match it up with text in the images. Well, I decided to take it one level up. I got Dpizzle aka David Pegg, member of Balkhis and Uzzz Productions, to write an awesome song for this website.

This song was recorded from an apartment can you believe that? Yup, David is my roommate, and they are starting their own band. We are working on their website, so it launches the same time as their album. Any who, If you guys were thinking that I played that Guitar. Nope, not that good yet.

But cut to the chase, he wrote me a small piece of promotional song and matched it with the video. So check it out.

Lyrics:

Do you want to be a blogger?
And make your website really cool?
Get a million hits from Google,
And take the other clowns to school.

Do you wanna get rich,
And make a killing?
Learn to brand yourself,
And get to selling.
Well if you really want to
Learn to do these
Check us out online
And go to Balkhis.

Better SEO
And web designing
How to use PPC
And advertising
Make happen using Wordpress
CPM and Affliates

Do you wanna get rich,
And make a killing?
Learn to brand yourself,
And get to selling.
Well if you really want to
Learn to do these
Check us out online
And go to Balkhis.

Do you wanna get rich,
And make a killing?
Learn to brand yourself,
And get to selling.
Well if you really want to
Learn to do these
Check us out online
And go to Balkhis.

If you really like the video and want something for your website. Their band will be more than willing to help you. Send me an email through Balkhis, and I can get you in touch with them.

Don’t forget to social bookmark this song, and add it to as much places, so it get some attention around the blogosphere

Well, As I have mentioned in my few posts before that Balkhis Crew was working on a redesign for this site. We have finished the work. This theme comes with alot of new editions. My goal is to constantly update the site and get rid of all the technical issues that my past theme had.

I am sure you guys are probably wondering why the change in design?

Problems with the Old Design

1. Not Compatible with All Browsers – Firefox 3 had some minor issues with the design. IE 6.0 was a mess.
2. Slow – Past design was using alot of images therefore the load time was high, so some of my audience were unhappy about that.
3. Issues with Padding – As I was using word limit plugin to display the excerpts from each category on homepage, sometimes due to the use of images, the padding wouldn’t work out right.
4. Multiple other minor problems.

I would like to thank all of my regular users who has supported me with their honest feedback and reviews. There were some other sites that pointed out my mistakes as well. Thanks alot to Nabil for bringing the load time of all sites together, so I could see where I stood among the rest.

I am open to all feedback. Even though we have tested the design extensively, certain things can only be tested with a live display. So I would like to apologize in advance for any inconvenience during our upgrade and fixes. Please use the contact form to report any problem.

Usually, I like to code my personal projects in private place, but this time was a bit different. I went through this design step by step, teaching some of my friends who wished to learn html and wordpress. It was a pleasant experience, I think it would be fun if I get to do that with a group of around 15 – 20 people. We got alot of feedback while we did that. Every minor bug was detected because there were many different eyes, but I think there is always something that is left out and thats why I depend on you guys.

So help me get this site to the next level. Did I mention with the rate Balkhis is going, I should get around 35,000 uniques this month

While the title of this post seems a little bit unrelated right now but after reading this post you will see my point. Lately, I have been very stressed out. Why? Because I am overworking myself. This Blog, Local Business, other projects and more. In the past few days I saw myself a bit unproductive. My work rate was slowing down. Creative ideas wasn’t hitting my mind. Until my mom and friends pointed out my daily schedule and how it is getting weird. Than I started analyzing myself. I came up with the list of my unhealthy habits that is effecting my productivity in blogging and working online. Good thing is that I caught myself early before the damage can be severe. Read the tips so you can avoid these things.

1) Lack of Sleep – Sleeping was not something that I was considering as a necessity. With excessive amount of work and meetings, I was postponing blog post and other work to later in the night when everyone else is sleeping. Now my schedule was something like this: I work in the day such as go outside and meet clients. I come home work on the computer a bit. Take care of designing orders. At Night I work until 6 a.m or so. Thats actually the morning. I take a nap and get back up around 10. So in 24 hours, I was only getting 4 hours of sleep. Yikes.. 20 hours of hard work. VERY Unhealthy.

2) Caffeine Intake – is also something that I was heavily relying on so I can continue my normal routine. I was drinking atleast one energy drinks a day. Sometimes Redbull other times Monster. I was drinking nearly 24oz. of Soda. 2 cups of Coffee in the morning and one cup in the evening. That is alot of Caffeine there!!! I was up all day running around, and I crash sleep for 4 hours. But during the caffeine intake there was another thing that I was lacking. I wasn’t getting hungry…

3) Anorexic Behavior – Well since I was taking so much caffeine, I wasn’t eating alot because I never feel hungry. So I have coffee than I have soda, no space for food. I was only having one real meal in the day. Which was impacting my attitude alot. It was fine for a first few days, but than I was losing energy.

4) Unhealthy Diet – Aside from one real meal. I was eating alot of snacks. Ofcourse Junk Food. Sometimes it was choclate, other times chips, doughnuts, french fries. Nothing really healthy. I wasn’t eating these foods while I was relaxed. Usually these were my breakfast. Except for French Fries, but the rest was my breakfast which I was having in the car.

5) Lack of Exercise – I wasn’t moving alot. I get up and use the computer, leave for the meeting which I drive to. Than I meet with clients in their office so I sit there. I come home and have lunch. Than I get back to work, and I am still sitting. All the Junk food, no exercise. I am starting to gain weight. Feeling sick to my stomach sometimes.

6) Lack of Social Life – While I was continuing my routine, I was losing my social life. The most social thing I did was Plurk. Most of my plurks were about myself having headaches. If my friends or family comes over, they never really find me in a good attitude. I was always exhausted. I was not going to alot of places. And if I did go, I was busy with phone calls. So I was constantly stressed.

7) Avoding the signs – I was avoiding every symptom my body was trying to give me. I would crash every night badly. I was feeling sick to my stomach almost every day. I have headaches all the time. I couldn’t think of creative ideas when I was designing.

All came down to me breaking down. I had a headache all day, not feeling good. I couldn’t work straight. Couldn’t write a good post. I am not talking to anyone in the family. Until my friends and my mom started asking me whats going on. You haven’t been eating lately. You are acting different. Than I started looking into my daily life style, and I found all of the problems above.

I wasn’t being very productive at what I was doing. My blog posts were suffering. I was pushing myself to do too much. I started slowing down. I got back to my normal routine and things started to get better. Than I wrote two successful posts back to back. One was 13 ways I used to promote my blog to success, and the other was about Vlogging 101 – Guide to make all type of Videos.

Now I am on routine which I will try to balance from now on. Here is what I think is necessary for a webmaster to be productive

Good NIGHT Sleep – I noticed that when I was getting night sleep it is much more relaxing. Because people in the house are not making noises. Specially because I have a little brother who is 4. So I can’t have a restful sleep during days. Therefore Night sleeps are necessary.

Well Planned out Meals – Personally I think the food pyramid is BS. So just pick your meals wisely. Some proteins, fruits, carbs. Have atleast 3 meals in day on the right times. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Snack here and there.

Exercise – Exercise keeps your mind fresh. It gives your body the workout it needs and keep you in good shape. So you will not have overweight problem. I am sure if I had continued my schedule, you would see me as another obese person. Than I will be blogging about how to loose weights and things that I am trying. lol

Socializing – Family time with family is a must. You don’t know how much you miss when you don’t interact with your family. Alot of my post ideas come from my family. Like this one was suggested my mother. Socializing with your friends is another thing that is needed. You need to go out and have fun. Can’t work all day. Relax your brain a little.

Limit your Caffeine intake – Caffeine is like something that your body just want more and more. Today one red bull might be enough, but tomorrow you would need 2 to do the same amount of work. The synergistic effect comes in play. I am not saying don’t drink coffee because I know I can’t operate without it, but limit your caffiene intake. Don’t drink excessive amount of sodas because you are gaining alot of useless calories also.

Do the following and you will see the difference. Now I find the energy to write longer and more useful posts. Better quality because I have the energy to do so. Try it yourself if you don’t believe me.

Disclaimer: I am no health professional. I am just sharing my experience with you guys so you don’t do the things that I have done. For health advice please consult a professional. While I understand I am pursuing a career in medicine, I don’t have my degree yet, and for me to give health advices is against the U.S Law because that is practicing medicine without a license.