Opengarage
How to make money while doing things which we love
In a quest to make money, I have tried lots of different but albeit related things like providing services like web design to affiliate marketing. Some of them failed miserably, some of them are good sporadically and some of them shows great potential but it is still a hassle to make sure everything runs at the pace I want them to be. Sometime I wonder if my focus on making money is sidelining me to just concentrate on it instead of doing something worthwhile and something more challenging. Every now and then I have to think how to make more money from the things we are doing but I really don’t like the way things are going currently. I would much rather like to solve a technical problem because it gives me a sense of accomplishment. I am sure there are many like me who would just like to work on creating/doing stuff rather than worrying how they will make money out of it. But creating something doesn’t mean it will make money. Money is made when something is created and then sold to a person who values it more than the time/money spent to make/create it. There are whole gamut of different things like sales, marketing and support to go along with creating the product and it is not really a cup of tea for a person to handle all of them effectively. I have been trying to figure out a way wherein a loosely connected group of people can come together voluntarily and work together to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations. The question may arise why the need for it. I have been searching for a democratic platform wherein people with diverse skill-sets can come and collaborate together to do challenging things which make them happy as well as earn money for their efforts. I am not sure how things will work in such a loosely connected setup but I hope something workable can be found. Even though the answer still eludes me and I will be working to find a solution for it, I will like to note down few things which I would like to see in such a setup.
1) Democratic Setup with each member having a voice.
2) Work on something challenging which gives a sense of doing something worthwhile.
3) Make sure every member gets the benefit of good times.
4) Loosely coupled so that if someone wants to go on his own, he is free to do so.
5) Enable each member to live a life full of physical, emotional & spiritual richness.
The aim of the group will be to
1) Make work available which is fulfilling and make the members happy.
2) Make money while doing so.
In essence a place for people to come together, work on stuff, make money doing so and live a physical, emotional and spiritually fulfilling life.
The slogan can be – “The Pursuit of Happy Dollars”.
Is this the Life you want to live..
This is an excerpt from the book “Tears of The Mystic Rose” which can be found at
“the whole education system is criminal and against the innocent child
who has no choice but to follow whatever is thrust upon him
from the very frst day in nursery
the whole education is geared to training the mind
towards competition and aggression and jealousy and judgement
this fact is simple and of clear understanding
as no parent wants their beloved child to be behind others
everyone wants their child to come frst…be the best…always ahead
it is impossible that everyone can come frst in class
this mathematical principle would defeat even poor albert einstein
only one child can come frst…second…then third
which child wants to be third class…any takers
which child is congratulated for coming in last
any child with a dumb aptitude just to memorise stupid dates and numbers
and meaningless bits of knowledge comes frst in class
education just tests memory and not intelligence in any way
the subjects taught are all meaningless to the poor child
but teachers are serious and parents pressurising to do well in school
the innocent child has no choice
just cramming their innocent minds with garbage and rubbish
they are there to carry the dustbins of our past glory…or gory for that matter
the poor child is taught about
alexander the great…genghis khan…tamurlane…ivan the terrible…hitler
great battles and world wars…destruction and destruction
what is so great about alexander the great
just his egoistic conquering insanity
murderer termed the great conqueror
history
the stupidities of our past remembered with pride
geography
the reasons for the division of our one earth into separate nations
biology
all about everything except ourselves and our place in nature
chemistry
all about everything but what to do with chemical hormones of fear or anger
mathematics
where one plus one is two but never fits into our real world of counting
language
all is talk and talk and the language of silence is no means of communication
the whole education is upside down geared for the average masses
all subjects and syllabus and exams to exactly ft millions of different children
from different social economic cultural religious backgrounds
into one single exam pattern with no variation
all children carbon copies like a plastic factory churning out toys
each with the same barbie doll smile…exactly the same
we are simply creating robots for a controlled environment
comfortable and easy to manage in our conditioned society
all people must fit into one mentally acceptable social group
no wonder this human race is confused
fragmented and divided against itself…and always at war with itself
no child loves himself…no child accepts himself…no child can be himself
no child loves himself
and silently and deeply knows they are being crushed
by the education system to cram and struggle against their nature
to do well and be rewarded with meaningless degrees for employment
every child is conditioned that they are stupid and need to be educated
they know nothing…that they are not fit the way they are
they do not deserve reward without struggle and effort
divided from childhood they learn hate and learn politics of the smile
they hate themselves for failing to satisfy their eager and loving parents
teachers elders society and nations
they learn to hate their parents and elders for forcing them against their
nature and learn to smile jimmy carter smiles
all smiles all around…just keep smiling hurting inside…it pays to smile
no child accepts themselves as they are
how can they when they are rejected by all around…for stupid meaningless
reasons which appear to be serious and important by retarded grownups
do not cry be a man…live for society…live for another…sacrifice yourself
go to war and fight for your nation
no child can be himself
become this or become that…become this powerful president
or that famous doctor or that important government dignitary
or anything else will do…but do not become just yourself
the very first lesson in life…the only few worth unlearning
love yourself…accept yourself…be yourself
love yourself
by not loving yourself the small silent and fragile energy
is divided and fragmented from within and a cancer grows rapidly unseen
do not love others…just learn to love yourself first
one who loves himself understands the value of love from within
self love is the way to inner health and growth of self knowing
this love grows and blossoms through seven pillars of inner light
love nourishes and soon spreads on it own accord to others
accept yourself
what a stupid boring world we would live in if all humans were exactly same
learn acceptance of yourself just the way you are
existence has given birth to you and accepts you unconditionally
you are breathing and alive with its aliveness…a miracle in itself
each and every individual in unique and irreplaceable in this vast cosmos
the very beauty of you remains its unique signature
be yourself
you can try and pretend as much as this society demands of you
to be someone else and to live the life of the impossible imposter
there is only one way and that is being yourself
whatsoever you are just relax at ease and be yourself
just out of being yourself a tremendous grace and beauty
will be released and will radiate all around you
love yourself…accept yourself…be yourself
these qualities will create for the first time
an individual whose inner fame is undividable
a great pool of energy will gather and surround you
with this an inner trust will arise from within you”.
An Open Source Company
I have been a honest guy most of my life. I do have my own share of dishonesty but they are quite few and small. As such I have always faced many problems because of being a honest guy. Now as I run a small startup, I have a dilemma that should we start becoming more aggressive which in process may make my “Honesty is the Best Policy” to take a backseat. For the time being I think we can get off with being honest. But many times I worry if I can always continue to run the company with the same honesty and zeal. I am not sure about the answer. But many times I dream of running a company which is very open,transparent and honest in whatever things we do. Kind of “An Open Source Company”. I mean is it possible to run a company where every information about it is available in public. Every expenses, every income, every mistakes, every idea, in short EVERYTHING in public eyes. I am not sure if it will be possible to run/create a company like that. But I can always dream. I hope something similar is already running somewhere.
The Movie 3 Idiots and My Life
I watched the movie 3 Idiots Recently. In more than 1 way , I had been like Rancho, though I never had the guts to do what he is capable of doing. I mean all the mischief he got to pull-off. I did my computer engineering because I was interested in computers from class 7th onwards. I never cared for reading just for the sake of passing exams but for the joy of it. And it used to happen that many times I would read books meant for higher classes just for the joy of it. I wish more people can understand that Life in itself is very fulfilling. We need not live it for somebody else. I particular remember 1 incident from the movie which has happened in real time to me. I think it happened in 2nd semester. We used to have a lecturer “Venkatesan” who would come to the class and would just start reading from a book and expected us to write in our notebooks. Now I never liked having notes. I always felt that having book is enough and I always wrote the answers in my own words. So on that day, as he was dictating the notes and as usual I wasn’t writing it in my notebook. So he became furious and asked me why I am not writing in my Notebook. I told him that the stuff he was telling is already available in the book and there is no point in writing it again in notebook as I already have the book with me ( I always used to purchase the books and never relied on library to fulfill my coursework). And he asked me a question from earlier class and I replied the answer. The answer wasn’t exactly the same as what was written in the book but the gist was same. He said that the answer is wrong but I insisted that it is correct. He asked me to get out of the class. I obliged him and went to library and got another book which almost agreed with my answer. When I showed it to him, the expression on his face was priceless. I think I had always been a very simple student doing almost what the teacher asked, but from that day onwards, my rebelliousness started with the system. Till 12th I didn’t had any problem reading through routine school stuff but during college I started to hate it when apart from computer related subjects I had to read through many other subjects. In retrospective I don’t think it was a bad thing because learning about other related things just expands your mind but at that time I was just thinking that I am supposed to be a computer engineer and I need not waste my time on learning about *induction motors* or *tensile strength*.
WordPress Mega Site Manager – Desktop Tool to Manage wordpress sites
As my number of sites built on top of wordpress is increasing , I find it tough to manage them. I was wondering if there are any solutions which will allow me to manage the sites from a single place. If there aren’t any such thing available then I would like to create such a software which will allow to update the themes,plugins and do other general wordpress related task remotely.
Auto Content Services – Opengarage Idea – $3000 pm potential
As more and more people come to know about making money through niche blogs or sites, the need for quality content will increase. As such I think we should concentrate on providing such services. AMA already provides a way to post your content on multiple blogs through XML-RPC but I think it can be taken one step forward by providing the content itself. Actually it is kind of reverse AMA. AMA expects you to write your own content and then allows you to publish your article across various blogs which has joined it to get some free content. But here we will be providing contents which will be posted on the blogs of the blog owner. I know of 1 such service and they are charging around $67 monthly access fee and $1.50 per 200-300 word article. I do not know how many articles a person working full-time can write so I am just assuming some figures our of thin air. Let us suppose a writer writes around 10 articles per day and it mean he can generate something around $15 per day. He works 20 days in a month and it means $300 per month per writer. The monthly access fee is $67 out of which let us assume $30 is paid as commission to affiliates. It means a writer should be able to generate something around $330 per month of revenue. Now there are two ways to hire the writers. One is having them work directly under you and other is letting any freelancer apply for being a writer. In the latter method we need to incorporate some kind of rating within the system so that the blog owners can rate a writer and let good writer increase their prices. The latter is also somewhat scalable in nature and even if the company pockets only the monthly access fee ($30) it translates to $3000 per month in case only 100 people signup. Not bad for such a simple site. So this is on my todo list and would like to finish up such a site as soon as possible.
Website Idea – Domain | Page Rank | Whois | Traffic | Performance | Misc
Lately as I have been increasing my online empire I have felt a need to maintain the status of various domains I have like the Pagerank, the traffic, the renewal date and so on. There must already be something like this available online but anyhow the idea of creating something like this itself is attractive and we are going to create a site for providing a good detail about the domains you hold. This can be a good start for the Opengarage idea I am having.