SalamMedia: The Birth of an Awesome Blog Advertising Company

It was dark into the night, I saw @tekong’s facebook post, that booth were up for grab and there were 14 days left. “It’s impossible to join now”, I told myself. I ran through a quick list that I have to do buntings, banners, website, candies, slides and all the preparation that’s involved in this. It’s impossible now as the deadline draws closer.

I have sat on the idea of starting a blog advertising company for so long. I was gonna give it another year. I didn’t have a name yet! I talked to my wife, colleague and meditated a lot. I couldn’t draw to a conclusion, a go or no. I tried some traditional advertising techniques, like car wraps from Denver fleet wraps, but nothing like blogging.

Here I am teaching Sara to be fearless, but I am fearful myself. This won’t work. Some things have to change.

10 days left to event, I decided to just do it. With Aisyah juggling Sara, I didn’t have any other help. If it’s something beneficial for others, I’m sure God will work His magic. And He did.

I drew up a quick to do list. Started doing everything as quickly as possible. From designing the logo, banner, name card, to building website, copy writing (by jolly this was the toughest) all of this was done myself with the help of sleepless night. Sometimes, when I worked till wee hours, I’d just walk to Sara, brush her hair to get some strength, it was all that I needed to burn the midnight oil.

As the deadline drew closer, things we getting intense. Then I realized, there’s no compelling reason for bloggers to sign up with me. I have to give something of awesome value. I have set aside a budget for the new iPad Mini 2 for quite sometime but decided to throw to my dream company as a lucky draw. This is between helping others or myself. Bit the bullet and willing to give it away. You can participate in the lucky draw on Salam Media Website.

The Blogrrr Event was held at Mines. To make it more challenging, it overlaps Big Bad Wolf, which made the whole place crazy busy.

We arrived at the location to install our gears the night before. The organizer did not provide any wall, so we had to creatively build our own to accomodate the backdrop. It worked fine. The sleepless nights were starting to take it’s toll. I was constantly being frustrated at everything, reckless drivers, bad traffic, no parking, location, mobile phone (which decided to corrupt and I had to flash the whole thing) and whole lot of thing starts falling on my nose.

This was a testament of my good deeds and it should be tough. My father has told me before, nothing good is easy.

Alhamdulillah, on that day itself, everything went according to plan. Acquainted to many new bloggers, met old blogging friends, our booth became a chatty booth. I met at least 20 prospect that day. It was amazing. Seriously, I’m not too focused on getting a customer but quality talks with prospects. I learned a lot from Mesiniaga’s MD, and applied what I learned that day.

Anyway, why did I create Salam Media? I have one goal that I have to achieve in life, to be someone who benefits other. I can do this by helping people earn extra income, at same the time help companies gain more exposure which leads to bigger revenue. Islam is my way of life and it should not be separated from what I do to earn my income. This is my form of dakwah, by promoting syariah compliant ads.

To date, I have qualified Salam Media a few prospects. Talked to big brands and my approach is sell nothing but value. It’s going to be slow start, I know, but if this is what it means to help others, so be it. I have His support when I started this venture, what makes you think He won’t continue supporting me? InsyaAllah when you plan to do something good, He’ll always be there.

Our neighbors were a cookie/perfume and cloth booth, both did poorly. I guess people who came didn’t really look for such products.

Sean Razak from Blogr.my, The grumpy dude who wakes up at 12 and works at Amanz.my wrote me a wonderful piece, Alif from Blogr.my, Kay from Raksasa Oren and Fathur, my Internet marketing teacher from JomPHP.

Nisa Kay, Shy guy and Sean on stage. I’ve got to say, the talks was a big mess and the turn out for the talks were pretty close to pathetic.

With Kak Ku Jie, who writes damn well and have been plagiarised by newspaper. How more awesome can a blogger be if not being copied by newspaper?

With heavy weight BroFramestone (which part is stone, no idea), Mijie friends since Maxis10 and Marcus Reus, SalamMedia founder, eh.. that’s me.

Pray for my success. InsyaAllah will help as many people as I can.