I still have one free ad space that i would like to give to new entrepreneurs in Kuwait. if you have a business that is starting out in Kuwait and would like to place an ad in my blog, just email me so i can know more about your business and will provide the dimension so you can place you ad there.

No cupcakes ads!! allowed

I very much like online advertising for Digumz.com because i can see the results and how well the ad campaign is running. Believe me its really disappointing to spend money and not get any exposure. With online advertising i can see who clicked, and who is interested and made a purchase too. I will explain my simple marketing plan and what is the most effective method to advertise, remember that digumz.com is a game site and the way you advertise for your business can be very different than mine, but atleast you got a head start. First, you install Google analytics on your site and tag the inner pages too, dont ask my how because i have no clue, but when you do you can see the benefits. You can get to know from where the traffic is coming and analyse them by graphs, then the hits and much more detail that you can make sound decision (analysis paralysis:P) on.

So after installing google analytics (free of charge) now you can start to monitor your online campaigns, i say so because its more detailed and easy to use compared to the stats that come with the Hosting company that you have your site with. I have used Google Adwords, Youtube and Facebook. At the beginning i was thinking that Facebook will be the major refer to digumz.com and that it will be the most profitable to me in terms of advertising, but to my surprise Youtube hits the top spot. It refers most of my customers to Digumz.com, remember that the ad itself can make a difference : how its designed and placed plays another role, but i will not discuss this now. The only problem with Youtube was how difficult it was for me to advertise on it, it took me 2 days! But with facebook it took me 7 minutes (the time it takes to get your appetizer at TGI friday, that true wala). I can assure you that many prefer Facebook over google because of the ease of advertising, but youtube is much more targeted. I guess that Facebook is very cluttered, you got a million things on the page, from poke me to rate my bikini . But with Youtube its more clear cut and the adword you pick make it more targeted. The only problem with youtube is that its video based content, meaning that your customers must be looking for a video to watch on  youtube similar to what you want to sell them, ie if your selling ne3il (slippers) nobody is gonna go an youtube and watch a video with a title called slippers or anything to do with slippers unless you have a foot fetish!!

I always try to analyze stuff, like why business fail, or new trends emerge and i surely find an answer, but! with the mini’s I cant.

Why is anything resized in a smaller way nice! I cant stop thinking about it and could not find anything, I know some will say because its cute, but cute to me sells for a couple of days then people should get used to the cute thing.

Anyways I have met Abdulla Al Khanji the owner of Mini Delights, a very enthusiastic and smart fellow. Knows nothing about food before he started out, but truly passionate. He is like these 6 million sold books around the world kinda thing, which makes you wana quit your job and open a business strait away from his stories. I think Abdulla was a major mini introducer to Kuwait, after the success of Mini Delights.

Anyways now the mini craze is everywhere, and to be honest it’s not Kuwait only, many restaurants abroad use this mini approach.

I like how a big dull company like Khazan meat has moved fast and made their own mini sliders, that’s a good move from such large company who produce the same thing in and out daily.  

Okay so i can see where this is heading now, its the new Kuwaiti CRAZE! frozen yogurt every where! You got: Home berry, Pink berry, Yogen Fruz, Zero degrees, Cherriez and i know about another 3 more. This is an indicator to not enter the market, they are everywhere! With such perishable items and no barriers to entry market, the only winning model is to open in a heavy traffic place, avenue mall, 360 mall etc etc  that’s fine, if you have the capital to with stand rents and stay afloat. This is a very fast copy cat business where everybody could start, think of a business where its hard to copy and serves a niche market.  I once saw yogurt place in Gallaria 2000 mall, the place was so quite you can hear my mom hitting me with her slippers about the Wataniya deal i got her all the way from our home:p. Yes it may be cheap to produce and a high profit margin is associated with yogurt, but investing huge amounts especially that some are franchises require a lot of cash to maintain standards and expansion plans, my advice think of something else to start. How about a yogurt home delivery, opppps we got that too:p. Hmmmm how about  cup cakes infused with yogurt!!

After all that talk about yogurt, i feel like getting a pink berry original now:(

Im in love with the airlines industry and in flight itself, and the budget airline model even more. You can see thats why i made my mom invest in a loosing business: Wataniya airlines:P. The Wataniya management are so fickle, they seem not to know what to do, one day they wana fire employees the other no they wana increase capital, very unstable management decisions. I’ll tell you a story, when Wataniya just started out, i got the email of the CEO and sent him some advice. I told him that he should put on the menu of the on-board food the source of the chicken and meat they serve. I did so because some shiite only eat from specific suppliers, i know this because am a shiite but am not religious in any way and eat everything even our friend piglet j/k, but the idea was when a minority notices that you care about them they become very loyal. Peugeot car company does this with gays they purposely advertise to the gay community, and they became where loyal to the brand. Anyways so then he sent me an email and thanked me only, i was hoping he would say what do you want as a gift for this piece of advice: i would have said that i would like to ride in the cockpit of the plane and see a full landing and take off, anyways it did not happen:(

Im visiting the Paris Air show in the summer (freak! ya i know:p) and i bought some domestic flight tickets in Europe, so i purchased my tickets from Vueling Airlines. Its a Spanish budget airline (doing well), but these guys are the true budget airlines. See how they take every penny you got! The ticket is cheap at the beginning 22 euros, 8KD then it starts to build up: if you want your boarding pass detail by sms you pay 1 euro, if you want the front seats of the plane you pay 5 euros, if you want exit row seats you pay 10 euros (these are wider seats) then after i got raped with hidden fees, the payment page come up. (Circus drums beating:P)……………….. then they asked for 9 euros for me to pay using my credit card! can you believe that even with paying them i had to pay! that does not even make sense. So then my ticket became 55 euros in total but still cheap over all. So now i print the boarding passes (free) and i noticed that there is more than one copy of the boarding pass, i thought the printer maybe went haywire, but noooo they made me print two copies because one is the “Customer copy” the other is the “Airline copy” , the bastards used my printer to print their copy!! and that’s a true budget airline. They even stated on there site that if you use the bathroom, you pay 5 euros and when you flush you pay 2 euros, J/k.

Am very fond of Google and how amazing their services are, i used many of them like advertising and Google maps to find my way when in the states. So a friend of mine told me that i should add Digumz on Google maps and so i did. So now when you open google maps , Kuwait map opens up based on your IP i guess. I followed the instructions on adding a business on the map, and it started to ask me questions like, what time the store opens, upload photos, more information you would like to show to your customers etc etc, so when done and all happy i have submitted my request and then i was surprised that they need to confirm that am the owner of the store, and so they will call the store for providing a pin code. Here i was disappointed because i was home when adding the Digumz store info, but within seconds of submitting the info, my mobile rang! picked up the phone and here comes an automated voice providing me with a pin code!! my mobile was not in the info i submitted. I went crazy, i said man! Google are really good, how the hell did they get my mobile number, but then again they are Google.com so they know everything, moo!

After showing off to my partner how i added Digumz to Google maps, and how they got my mobile number, he said with a strait face: Qaiss, the Digumz store phone is on call forwarding to your mobile:p  Small or large a business is, politics is always there:)

give it a try, write Digumz on Google maps.

Just wanted to update you guys on the car and how it looks.

Slow as a turtle:p

After checking the market for delivery cars, i found the Suzuki Celerio to be a good choice. I made a mistake, took the car and made two deliveries and the results are bad. The seat is very uncomfortable, the performance is equivalent to the Flintstones under the hood. The car is slow! ok yes its a cheap car but i did not know that it would be that slow.

Anyways these are a sample of the car branding i have done with the marketing team, will choose the one below. If any body knows a good place to make a car wrap, that would be a great help.

Its sad to see a new venture like wataniya airlines close down after a 2 years in business, but what i really would like to see from such sad news is how can we benefit from wataniya experience.

I personally have questions about what was its target market and maybe its model did not work, i truly believed going against Kuwait airways and having an advantage with a new terminal would give them edge. Another thing that am thinking about why didn’t jazzera airlines buy it out, because buying wataniya would give them more planes and a free terminal for themselves.

The loss of wataniya airlines must be done in case a study for business students around Kuwait to learn how to target markets and how to build these models around them. I was so impressed with the airlines that i made my mom buy shares:(

Thats another thing we need to know what happens to the shares because i guess for every share i made my mom buy i may get an exchange of “en3al” .

After a long discussion that P2BK is the place to advertise, i have agreed to have a booth there. I paid till now 195KD for the booth and 250KD for the banners. Is it worth the money and time spent?

Let me say the place was crowded, very crowded. But what are people looking for and what are they buying? the crowd is 90% ladies, young and old. All looking for food. If you have food to sell that would be the place. As expected: accessories and clothe designers are the major sellers. Another note, my booth sucked and the colors came out all wrong, blue instead of xbox green.

One weird concept was a triangle restaurant, that sold everything in a triangle package, made no sense to me. If they were trying to save space with this genius concept i would understand, which i dont think so. Ask your self a question, why are milk packaged in rectangle cartoons and soda’s in cylindrical cans? you see with milk that expires fast storage is a main concern so wasting space cost money, but soda’s have long shelf lifes so no problems with storage. So now where does a triangle fall here?

As for my booth, i think yet to be analysed, let me say my first day is bad.