Pajamanation is the new Keusahawanan 2.0

Pajamanation Malaysia made its first roadshow in Penang as a vendor in Gerak Usahawan Pulau Pinang 2007 at Dewan Milenium, Kepala Batas over the weekends of 4 & 5 August 2007.

Here are some photos showing the team at work, advocating ICT as a mean of earning full-time income for individuals (pajama workers), working from home:-


All you need are a computer/laptop, a high-speed Internet connection (broadband, eg. TM NET Streamyx) and Pajamanation.com. For Pajama Enterprises, consider having a professional web profile using tools from 1oasis.net.

More micro enterprises going online...

A rough check on participants of a local exposition of micro enterprises in Penang in 2004 showed that about only 10% of the companies or micropreneurs have listed an email address as one of their contact methods. This year, in 2007, more than 50% of these micro enterprises are listed with respective email address, specifically for the companies that are going to participate at an upcoming Gerak Usahawan Pulau Pinang 2007 exhibition that's to be held at Dewan Milenium, Kepala Batas on 4 & 5 AUG 2007.

That's more than five-fold of growth in just three years - a good sign that micro enterprises are getting more ready for IT to spice up their business marketing and operation. Of course this positive growth reflects present Internet usage penetration reaching 50% of the population and a decent growth in the number of Internet usage during the 27-month (Jan 2005-Mar 2007) period: 13.4 to 13.9-million dialup users and 500,000+ to 990,000+ broadband users -- according to Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC). Or according to Aneki.com, Malaysia is listed as top 16th in the world in terms of the number of Internet users, ahead of its neighbors including Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. According to Aneki which bases its data on figures provided by US CIA, Malaysia has experienced 265% in growth in terms of number of Internet users between 2000 and 2007 -- Back in 2000, based on Nielsen Netratings or Computer Industry Almanac data which InternetWorldStats relied on for its world-ranking figures, Malaysia did not even make it in the top-20 lists for Internet users, penetration, and broadband subscribers, but now we obviously are (at no less than 1% of world's usage)!

Or simply because micro entrepreneurs in Penang are getting more and more exposed to IT over several related events like Penang i-Land (2004), Launching of Penang MSC-status cyber city and Global Technopreneur Forum (2005), Penang Technopreneur Blueprint (2006) and an upcoming MSC-related event in Penang in October 2007.

Still, only about 10% of these micro enterprises have their own domain name or website to showcase their products and services. And a quick validation on the email addresses supplied by these micropreneurs shows that about 10% of them are invalid -- either honest mistakes or simply means that they don't really use those email accounts anyway.

It's time for us to embark on a mission to advocate more use of Internet and e-commerce among the micro enterprises in Malaysia... starting with Gerak Usahawan Pulau Pinang -- we'll be at Booth #107. FREE Web.com/WAP.mobi Development service worth RM600+! (LIMITED TO 20 PATRONS -- Contact us for details). BONUS: FREE domain name worth RM28+ with paid hosting. See you there!

ADVERTORIAL: Mega-saving month on domains for Pajama Enterprises

Dear Pajama Entrepreneurs,

Earlier this month on 7/7/07, 1oasis.net, Pajamanation Malaysia's partner for web solutions announced its Merdeka-50 offer: 50% August hosting discount, and free domain name with a full-year hosting prepayment. The offer was announced through several opt-in mailing lists, and partner blogs.

Today, 1oasis.net has more good news for Pajama Enterprises in Malaysia -- Even lower prices for Domain Names, Web Site Builder and Digital SSL certificate to make it more affordable for pajama enterprises to start their own professional web presence and commerce:-

1. .com, .net, .org, .info, .name and .biz top-level domains are now just RM28/year !! If you have your domain registered elsewhere for RM40 etc. or more, transfer the existing domain to 1oasis.net for the same or more services for just RM27 for another year extension. Register domains in bulk and save even more.
   
   
2. Lower prices for .eu and .tv too for just RM35 & RM99 respectively to enable you to target to a specific region or mark your website of a specific theme -- Europe and "television" in this case. And .*.uk and .us are also down to RM29/year!
   
   
3. To promote Malaysians to come up with more .MOBI websites, prices for the domain has been slashed further. And if that's not enough, here's our BETTER OFFER: FREE Website Builder with each .MOBI domains!! Now, you can build websites for mobile platform, quickly, for FREE.
   
   
4. EXTRA BONUS: FREE Privacy Protection with every Domain name!
   
   
5. Publish your website faster, and at less cost too: Website Builder now costs as low as RM3/month for a 1-page online brochure, up to just RM18/month for a full-blown 500-page e-commerce website. All 1oasis.net hosting and website builder packages come with iron-clad 30-day money-back GUARANTEE. What have you got to loose to try it?
   
   
6. For secure online transactions, get a digital certificate, now from just RM99/year (from previously RM199/year!). Prices for all other certificates include wild-card ones have also been reduced substantially -- SAVE RM100 and more instantly.
   

All offers 1-to-6 above are valid until MIDNIGHT, 31 JUL 2007.

Get them now while these offers last and while your desired domain names are still available -- 10,000s are being snapped EACH DAY!


Regards,

Team 1Oasis .Net Hosting
"Celebrating our NINTH YEAR offering Web Hosting service"


PS: DIY Linux Plesk Pro web & email hosting account with 1000-MB space available for just RM60/year -- inquire for more details. (offer above does not apply for this plan)

PPS: Virtual/Semi & Full Celeron/P4/C2D Dedicated Server Running Linux/Windows (with optional Plesk/Cpanel) account with 10-GB to 2x300-GB storage (with optional RAID-1 setup) and 500-GB to 2-TB monthly transfer or more also available from under RM120/month. Server comes with 24x7 physical security, network monitoring and email+phone+web SUPPORT. ASSISTED PLAN available for RM350/mth. INQUIRE for details/custom quote.

NOTE: Cash back will be disbursed via PayPal (preferred) or to your Maybank account (if requested).

Visit us at Gerak Usahawan Pulau Pinang at Dewan Millenium, Kepala Batas on 4 & 5 AUGUST 2007.

Women-lead ICT based enterprises?

Some questions on this topic were raised by Lena Zúniga, a blogger for the upcoming Global Knowledge Partnership 2007 event that is to be hosted in Kuala Lumpur later this year:-

1. Are (there) micro, small and medium enterprises economic models that actually translate into benefits to local communities? What are the conditions for entrepreneurial initiatives to spread their benefits?
   
   
2. Self employment does not eliminate the fact that most women work double shifts and take most of the load of domestic work and family responsibilities. How do we address this and other challenges of women entrepreneurs in developing countries?
   
   
3. What capacities are needed to strengthen women lead medium, small and even microenterprises, and what strategies have proved successful to deliver these capacities?
   
   
4. Are there experiences in public policy, government support and international cooperation for the support of this specific sector?

Feel free to submit your opinions on these questions. For feedbacks accumulated so far, refer GKP forum website at GK3onlineinteractions.net.

You may also subscribe to the GKP moderated email group/mailing list to participate in the on-going and future discussions.

Disabilities not a barrier to success

A blog post by Zul Musa at SkorCareer.com pointed me to a story that many of us would have otherwise missed, one published a month ago on The Star.

Consider that Kamaruddin Ibrahim, a 47-year old disabled man is working fifteen hours a day growing his car repair workshop business in Kota Bharu, Kelantan (while plentiful other fully able youths from that northern town are migrating to big cities like Penang and Kuala Lumpur). With his determination for fifteen years, this father of six who has been cheated by a 'friend-cum-business partner' in his previous venture, and while still having a hard to time to even stand or walk properly is able to employ five workers including a 50-year old disabled man.

If this guy can succeed in business, anyone can!

And with ICT and skills many of us have acquired or is acquiring in colleges and universities, there should be many of us Malaysians able to chart our own entrepreneurial career and own business. No excuses now!

At Pajamanation Malaysia, disabled workers are one of the groups we want to devote our energy to assist. We believe, many of them are capable of insourcing and delivering excellent microjobs to the existing 100,000s of business entities in Malaysia. eHomeMakers.net for instance is already focussing on this group of workers, especially women. We plan to work closely with similar not-for-profit groups and government agencies to realize this goal of providing the fair opportunities to all Malaysians not minding their physical abilities, gender or ethnicity.

Join us today at Pajamanation.com and contribute in the healthy business and employment environment in Malaysia. It's FREE BTW!

Business entities in Malaysia reached another high record

Malaysia now has 756,245 registered companies in the country as of 31 DEC 2006, according Commerce & Consumer Report 2006 or Companies Commissions of Malaysia (SSM). That's one company every 33 individual in Malaysia, based on the latest statistics of 26.64-million population by Department of Statistics Malaysia (or about two million less according to US-CIA report in 2007).

Of course as we've stated earlier, only about 500,000 of these companies are actively operating as of last year per January 2007 report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Malaysian SMEs which also states that the micro companies constitute about 80% in numbers of all active business entities in Malaysia.

Here are some big numbers revealed in the Star's news report headlined "Number of firms registered in Malaysia reach record 756,245":

KUCHING: The number of local and foreign companies registered in the country touched a new high of 756,245 as of Dec 31 last year.

The number of new local firms registered last year grew by 5.4% to 752,078.

The growth was more impressive for the registration of new foreign companies, which jumped to 41 from 30 in 2006, an increase of 36.7%, according to the 2006 Commerce and Consumer Report launched here on Thursday.

With the increase, the report said the total number of foreign companies on the register reached 4,172.

Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Mohd Shafie Apdal, who launched the report, said the number of new business registrations in the second half of last year showed a strong rise of 22.5%.

The ministry’s statistics for the first quarter of this year revealed that 9,841 new companies were registered, up from 8,909 in the fourth quarter of last year.

Mohd Shafie said the overall growth of 5.9% in the wholesale and retail trade, hotel and restaurant sectors was the same as that of the overall economy last year.

“Its contribution to the GDP remained unchanged at 14.7%, making it the second largest services sub-sector after finance, insurance, business and real estate,” he added.

In a separate press statement, the ministry said the Tribunal of Consumer Claims received 1,886 claims in the first three months of this year.

Of the number, 1,085 claims were on goods and the other 801 were about services.

Feeling entrepreneurial now?

Now, imagine what you can sell to these 500,000 local businesses... Imagine selling your products and/or services to 1% of these businesses, i.e. 5,000 enterprising customers. Or what you can buy from them!

Ready for Pajama Enterprise?

It's been exactly six months today since Pajamanation first revealed its idea of pajamaworking to the public. This soft launch or beta period has garnered well over 2000 subscriptions to Pajamanation microjob exchange, providing us considerable feedbacks and lessons which we will carefully adopt for our next major release of Pajamanation.com.

As anticipated, 90+% of our members who joined us from well over 200 cities around the world (including over 20 cities in Malaysia) are microworkers who want to get paid to perform fractional work assignments offered by corporations and micropreneurs. Pajamanation is now closer than ever to break the 5,000 members mark, in time for our planned global launch, which will enable Pajamanation.com to offer micropreneurs a very effective platform to crowdsource their microjobs.

At Pajamanation Malaysia, we're committed to offer the best work crowdsourcing platform for our members. Besides recruiting talents (i.e. professional microjob-based workers), we are readying to offer training to pajamapreneurs and microbusiness owners.

Pajama Enterprise vs. Pajama Workers

What do we mean by microbusiness (or pajama enterprise as we'd like to call them) anyway? What are their differences compared to pajamaworkers?

As mentioned earlier, pajamaworkers are the service providers -- those who perform the microjobs at home, and deliver to companies or individuals they've contracted with. The other half of the equation are the enterprises that outsource the microjobs to home/pajamaworkers.

The United Nations defines a micro enterprise in Malaysia as a business entity with an annual sales turnover of less than RM 200,000 and is employing no more than five employees. Similar definitions are offered by agencies like SMIDEC or business-centric NGOs. Most of the micro enterprises are sole proprietorships, partnerships of 2-4 individuals, or a family-owned proprietorships & private limited companies (Sdn Bhd).

Why Less is More?

Why Micro Enterprises then, instead of Small & Medium Enterprises (SME) or large corporations and government agencies? Wouldn't the bigger ones be able to outsource more work? After all, the 4000+ large organizations (Less than 1% of all total active business entities in Malaysia, contributes to 94% of national GDP (compared to only 60-70% in Australia, Japan and Germany) [Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yaakop, Minister of Finance II, 12 SEP 2005).

Because the 500,000+ SMEs provides 65.1% employment in Malaysia, and 80% of those SMEs are micro enterprises (UNDP Report, 2007). Plus, during the past whole decade employment agencies for both full-time jobs and part-time/freelancing employment have only been able to offer jobs/freelancing contracts to 10% of job/work seekers -- if Pajamaworkers are to rely only on SMEs and large companies (private and government-linked, i.e. GLCs), 90% of them will not get any work assignments and thus will be forced to stick with more secure full-time employment for residual income, which are also hard to find nowadays!

In order to provide more work for pajamaworkers, we need to aggressively tap the power of the 400,000+ existing micro enterprises, as well as establish more pajama enterprises out of the pool of potentially millions of pajamaworkers, starting with the ~3.5% unemployed labour in Malaysia today (Datuk Wira Dr Fong Chan Onn, Minister of Human Resources, 2007) -- with tens of thousands of them being fresh university/college graduates, or degree holders.

The Pajama Work

As you can see at Pajamanation.com, there are 150 categories of work that Pajamaworkers can perform. So, what kind of work can a Pajama Enterprises and SMEs offer?

Although the kind of work can be just about any fractional work that business entities do on daily basis, our initial focus would be to take advantage of what today's Generation C offers the best:-

• C – Cusp
• C – Caring
• C – Control
• C – Content
• C – Channel
• C – Criterion
• C – Celebrity
• C – Cynicism
• C – Character
• C – Credibility
• C – Connected
• C – Consensus
• C – Collaborative
• C – Code (internet coding)
• C – Community/Communication
• C – Creativity/Creative/Creators (also "Creative Class")

==> Sum-ed up to "Creative Content (CC)".

Consider that ICT especially the web and mobile platform are your best tools for production, business operation and marketing -- the complete business cycle of starting up, run and sell!

So, what can you ideally produce? Try books, magazines, online/offline (news/journalism) media, product design/engineering/prototypes, marketing materials, sales quotations, translation works, graphics etc.

What kind of services can you get for your business operation? Try accounting, clerical, market research, business consultation, online/offline media setup & maintenance, articles, project/marketing planning, photography, online/offline marketing, sales, and the list goes on -- you should know what your business needs better!

Note clear enough? Here are samples of our pajama entrepreneurs/enterprise:

• lukaso from Indonesia who is a "31 years old, with a technical and business background. I studied at the University of IST Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Graduated in B.Sc. Computing"

• 1oasis from Malaysia who specializes in "business acumen & project engineering/management"

Here are some samples of microjobs offered by several business consulting marketplaces:-

wilfred from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Organisation : SME

Description : Wilfredstudios.com Small Budding website design firm based in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. We've got grand ideas and sky high passion in creating the best designs for websites.

Project Title : PSD -> Joomla template

Project Description : PSD of website provided with layers (design provided is close to traditional joomla layout, should be easier) needs to be converted into joomla template, compatible with Joomla 1.0.x

Additional Description (2007-06-18): Just a quick one... the payment is in USD 25 - USD 100.... equivalent to about RM 100 - RM500

'Challenger' from Florida, USA (27jun07) at iFreeLance.com:

Category:

Graphic Design / Multimedia

Subcategory:

Banner Ad Design

Title:

Website header for blog

Work Location:

Offsite

Project Phase:

Bidding

Duration: 6d, 22h, 18m
Bids: 1 [already received at least one on the 1st day]

I need a Web header for my website www.argumentender.com . It's going to be a blog where I compare similar products. The idea I am going for is the ArgumentEnder to be in a font that appears to be for a main event boxing match and maybe a pair of boxing gloves on a hook. Underneath the "Argumentender" would say...Where the gloves come off.. Maybe a couple spotlights on each end of the banner shining on the entire banner.

Or the task could more specific, instructionally for a web design work, eg. by rw123 at GetAFreelancer.com:

The task you will be bidding on is as follows:
You will take one (1) PSD file and convert it into CSS/XHTML. I expect that you will be communicating with me a lot to ensure the right template is being created.

I will send the file that needs to be converted when we are discussing the project in the PM.

Please only bid if you have designed complex CSS/XHTML templates in the past (I will request your portfolio as proof).

It is also very important that you have experience in coding boxes with rounded corners using only CSS and WITHOUT using javascipt.... I need to see examples of this that you have created because my design uses many boxes with rounded corners of different heights and widths. These boxes will have text dynamically added from my database and therefore they need to be flexible.

The winning vendor will have experience in creating similar websites, will provide instructions on how I can edit the templates you have created, and set up the pages so I can easily make changes myself to the layout, fonts, text, menus, etc

The backend of this site will be written in Python with a mySQL database so my developer will need to be able to easily edit your pages to insert the necessary code.

This will be an going project and if I am happy with the initial results I will have lots of other work for the winning bidder.

It is important that the code is clean and organized and friendly for SEO (as well as supporting all major browsers and w3c compliant).

If this first project is a success, we can start working on the other pages.

I look forward to working with you.

And a microjob that may require the pajamaworker to have a double/'second life' as requested by wdb from Belgium:

Organisation : SME
Description : Storefront (shop) in second life (full service)
Project Title : Second Life establishment
Languages Required : English

Project Description : We want to open a mortgage bank in second life to give mortgage loans for people who want to develop properties on second life virtual grounds.

Start Date : 2007-06-18

How can Pajamanation Malaysia help Pajama Enterprises?

We offer optional consultation and can procure cost-cutting services to help you deal effectively with pajamaworkers and even potential customers.

For a start, our sister company 1oasis.net can help you operate more professionally on the Web with your own domain name and affordable commercial email and web hosting:

• YOUR OWN EFFECTIVE ONLINE BRAND: We believe that today, having a professionally-matched domain name and web presence is a MUST for every business and organization, both big and micro. By using a URLs like www.jaring.my/yourcompany-name and www.free-web-host.com/your-brand-name or email domain like @streamyx.com, @pd.jaring.my, @hotmail/yahoo/gmail.com, @somebody-else-company.com etc., instead of advertising your own brand, you are advertising other people's brand every time your website receives a visitor or your sent emails get read by the recipients.
  
  
• A RINGGIT SAVED IS RINGGIT EARNED: Do you know that many companies in Malaysia still pay as much as RM100/year for a full year registration/license of domain name? Even the more savvy Internet users are still paying an average of RM50 for a .com domain name. Did you know domain names actually RETAIL from as low as under RM10/year (for .info & .or) and .com/.net starts from under RM30/year! Why pay more? Consider that many enterprise will end up registering more than one domain (Many companies own ten or more domain names to protect their valuable brand names and their variations), and with every RM 10 or more saved per domain, that would add up to considerable savings EVERY YEAR! The money saved can perhaps be channeled for other marketing activities or to promote the website itself.
  
  
• RELIABLE WEB HOSTING AND E-COMMERCE (NEW PLANS JUST UNVEILED ON MONDAY, 25 JUN 2007): Did you know that many companies in Malaysia are paying as much as RM100+/month for hosting space well under 1000MB? 1oasis.net offers secure hosting on both Linux and Windows platforms with storage between 1000 MB (1-GB) to 10,000 MB (10-GB) and monthly fee starting from under RM10! (10% of what some local hosts charge!). And instead of a one-price-fit-all package, an option where you may end up paying for more disk space, email accounts, MySQL/MS SQL database accounts and bandwidth that what you'll actually need or optional premium features like IP address, SSL certificate and e-commerce / site builder, 1oasis.net offers ala-carte options -- PAY ONLY FOR SERVICES THAT YOU NEED.
  

Need help with any of these online business tools, or need assistance on how to market your brand and/or products online? Our pajamaworkers are ready to help you! Or you may contact us directly.

Tune in for more upcoming services for pajama enterprises and pajama workers...


Read more about glocal crowdsourcing:-

• Mastering the Virtual Workplace

• Globalization - The Great Equalizer

• Outsourcing Blogging

• SEVEN myths about Oursourcing
  
  

• Nothing speaks to freedom louder than a halfsuit
  
  
• Hire Globally, Test Locally
  
  
• Entrepreneurship 2.0 (VIDEO)
  
  
• The era of big software is over
  
  
• Pajamaworking at home... where in Malaysia?
  
  
• A gizmo for Pajama Workers to call 2.5 BILLION phones
  
  
• Unleash your creativity
  
  
• Are you a Micropreneur?
  
  
• An Authenticy Timeline - Welcoming/Fear of Web 2.0
  
  
• Should You Telework/Telecommute?
  
  
• Crowdsourcing at work: Ears Wide Open
  
  
• Outsourcing Malaysia: In Search of Excellence
  
  
• MSC Malaysia Animation Competition 2007 (closing TOMORROW, 28 JUNE 2007)
  
  

Are you ready? (Or are you already?) We'd like to hear from you... Please add your comment below: