A brother shared this interesting study about how business is better in Ramadan

Here is an abstract of the study:

Piety and Profits: Stock Market Anomaly during the Muslim Holy Month* by Jedrzej Bialkowski**, Ahmad Etebari***, Tomasz Piotr Wisniewski****

Observed by more than 1.5 billion Muslims, Ramadan is one of the most celebrated religious rituals in the world. We investigate stock returns during Ramadan for 14 predominantly Muslim countries over the years 1989-2007. The results show that stock returns during Ramadan are almost nine times higher and less volatile than during the rest of the year. No discernible difference in trading volume is recorded. We find these results consistent with a notion that Ramadan positively affects investor psychology, as it promotes feelings of solidarity and social identity among Muslims world-wide, leading to optimistic beliefs that extend to investment decisions

Assalam Alaikum,

Intuitively, you know there is some connection between money and happiness.

But, my question to you is: When/How money made you happy in the
past? Do you recall a situation? Is it simply buying something,
if so how long that happiness last? Is it giving a gift? Is it
donating your money?

Share your thoughts here (as a comment):

May Allah give us all both happiness and money (and everything
good in this life and the hereafter)

New research shows that money is related to happiness but not totally. Basically, experiential purchases can bring more happiness than non-experiential ones. So, a trip or quality time with family may bring more long term happiness than just a new car or phone.

You can read more about it in the New York Times article: But Will It Make You Happy?

Research by Thomas Gilovich:

Dinar and Dirham system in Indonesia.

Listen to this interview with Joi Ito on BBC.

Joi Ito is an investor in early stage internet projects, including Twitter and Flickr. He has many interesting ideas and view points.

His idea of networking and getting things done are so similar to what we are doing at HalfDate.com

Guest post by Sakina Design.

We would like to introduce you to a new business, Sakina Design, which was introduced to the Muslim-American community at summer’s ISNA convention 2009. A lot of time, hard work and love went into the development and launching of this venture. It all started about three years ago when we were inspired to start a company that would change the standard by which Muslim businesses were judged. Like many Muslims in America, we had become frustrated with the quality and standards of many Muslim-run businesses. While we respect these pioneers, and thank them for the foundation they have provided, we feel it is time for a change. Not only should the Muslim-American community have access to Islamic products, but at standards that match or exceed those in the current U.S. marketplace.

Our principal complaint is the lack of Islamic decorations designed specifically for the Muslim-American consumer. What we see are products designed for overseas markets being imported to the U.S. They are either overly ornate or otherwise unappealing to our sense of taste and style. We also find most of these products to be low-quality, so even if we do like them, they appear cheap or break easily.

We believe the Muslim community deserves better. And we feel that the term Islam and Muslim should be attached to high quality products. Products that are designed and manufactured in accordance with the Islamic principle of ihsan (excellence). Products that appeal to our unique sense of aesthetics, that are durable and long-lasting, that are produced with their environmental impact in mind, and that take into consideration the health, safety and dignity of our fellow human beings.

And so the idea of Sakina Design was born. Here, we produce contemporary, high quality, eco-friendly artwork, which pulls on the rich tradition of Islamic art. We uphold the highest standards of honesty in our business dealings. We also do not take or give interest and believe that charity should be an integral part of any good business.

At Sakina Design, we not only hold ourselves to these standards, but hope that we will set a new standard for Muslim businesses, and all businesses. This is possible only with the help and participation of the Muslim American consumers. We will do our part in establishing and upholding these high standards, and we ask our customers to support us and all companies that uphold these ideals. Together we can change what is expected of Muslim businesses, and be proud of this label.

HalalBucks Reminder: It’s more important to have verses of the Quran in your mind and recited by your tongue than simply treating them as decorations!

Bismillah

A few months back we started a HalalBucks Pioneer club on Ning.com and we accomplished at least one project

Here is the result of the project: Baba Ali sold more Kalimaat games in one month than he did in the whole year for his last game. Special thanks to http://princessolive.com for selling the games in Canada.

So, many members liked the idea of the club. However, this time we are going to modify the format of the club a little bit. The old format was all members focus on one project each month, but it was quite demanding considering everyone is busy with own projects.

So, here is the new format, each member help someone else, why?

The new idea is inspired by the authentic Hadith collected by Imam Muslim,

So, as a member you serve another member (or many other members) at least once a month so you get Allah’s help.

The club will also solve another dilemma, which is how to avoid shameless self promotion

It’s awkward to self promote your business with your family and friends, and even when they know about your products, you often end up giving them for free.

With this club, at various social events, you can easily promote your friends’ services to your social circles based on the circumstances. At the same time, you get help from Allah for helping others.

So, want to join the club?

All those who paid for HalalBucks pioneer club will get to join the new club automatically. If you want to join, you need to be approved and pay a monthly fee ($20 USD).

Here are some FAQ:

If I’m serving others, why should I pay $20?
Well, money is the best way to formalize a contract. Otherwise, nobody takes things seriously.

Why should you get the $20, not just giving the money to the one who helped me?
The whole beauty of this club is nobody is looking to get paid back by any human beings. We are helping others so Allah will help us. As for who gets the $20, it’s a maintenance fee. Also, as a concrete value, we will, inshaAllah, promote your business through our network as well, so that’s just an added bonus for you.

Can I try your service?
You can click on the button below and get 3 weeks trial for $3 a week. If you don’t like it at the end, we refund you all your payment. So you basically get 3 weeks trial.

What if there are haram products/services that I don’t want to promote?
We take who qualifies to join the club very seriously. They have to be halal, and also the rest of the members have the veto right to object to a new member.

How can I join?
You click on the subscribe button. You don’t necessarily need a Paypal account, you can use your bank card to pay as well.

Ask yourself why do people delete junk mails and throw away junk flyers?

The answer tells you what you should avoid. But, how can you turn your marketing flyers into gifts?

Recently, a client of our marketing service (http://HalalBuzz.com) printed some fliers for us to distribute. The good thing Alhamdulilah, HalalBuzz is unique, we don’t simply give out the flyers but we tie the business with the community/audience, and let someone in the community announce about the flyers.

BUT, still…

Wouldn’t be nicer if those fliers (flyers) where like valuable gifts instead of throw away junk mails?

The key secret is to turn your marketing materials into gifts. How do you give a gift? What kind of gifts you like the most? Here are three tips for you:

• Make them relevant to the recipients
• Customize them: Good gifts are not another junk in your garage that you don’t want to keep so you are giving them away. For flyers you can actually customize them by printing the communities name (Tips for parents living in California, or special discounts for ABC members)
• Create conversations with your flyers: E.g. a quiz where they can test their family members.
• Put call for actions: Put special tracking numbers on the flyer and tell them to go to your website to see the winning member each Friday
• Make it valuable: Imagine the impact if instead of receiving a flyer about a Hajj tour with pricing and so on, you get instead 10 tips to select a Hajj package, which one holds more value to the reader? Oh, even better if you know how to incorporate stories!

So, next time if you want to use flyer as a marketing vehicle, think about their contents.

Make your fliers as gifts not junks.

*This is a way to help both business and generate Sadaqah, inshaAllah.*

As we mentioned earlier about our HalalBuzz promotional service, we would like to explain here more about the 1/3 business model that we want to experiment with, inshaAllah.

The 1/3 model is mentioned in a hadtih where a man heard a voice from the cloud saying irrigate the garden of so and so; he then followed the cloud and saw a man in the garden and asked him what he did to earn this reward (dedicated rain from Allah). He said, whenever I have harvest, I keep a third for my family to eat, I donate a third, and I put back a third back to the garden. So, HalalBuzz wants to experiment donating 1/3 of our revenues, keeping 1/3 for the company, and giving 1/3 for those who spread the buzz.

Some people told us that it’s too much to give away 1/3, but still we want to try it and hope it works, inshaAllah.

So, we want to do this idea with the current buzz campaign (click to see).

Here is how it works:

• This campaign revenue is $117. On top of that, we will give $1 for reach tweet and $1 for reach facebook link, according to the counters on the halalbuzz site. (Up to $1000, inshaAllah).
• We will donate the 1/3 to one of the non-profit projects of our members.
• To help, you can blog, send this link (http://halalbuzz.com/buzz/archives/142) to your friends, or post it on your facebook
• To decide which non-profit project, you vote by leaving a comment. For example, “I just [sent/blogged about this and put the link] and I vote the 1/3 sadaqah to go to such and such school or project.”
• The non-profit that gets most votes, will get the 1/3 of this buzz.

So, what do you think about this idea?

For our HalalBucks readers who want to learn how to start a business, other than the idea and a website, we are putting $1000 as a seed for this campaign. Of course, we have also invested in building a mailing list over the years.

Alhamdulillah, right now HalalBuzz has several projects waiting in line. We haven’t decided to take on all these clients, because our goal inshaAllah to make sure that our clients are fully satisfied and have their goals achieved.

Here is a partial list:
1- http://knowinterest.com Alhamdulillah, they covered their investment within the first day of sending out a mass email.
2- Ad-Duha home school Islamic children courses, who has an interesting story for this HalalBuzz campaign. One of their customer loved their product so much that she paid us to promote them, subhanaAllah.
3- Test preparation service for students 13-17 age
4- Muslim social networking site
5- Women clothing, click only if you are a sister

The short answer is: It depends

As explained in this video by Dan Pink the author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

What motivates people to work are three factors:
-Autonomy
-Mastery (Challenge)
-Purpose

These three are mentioned too in the book Outliers: The Story Of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.

Disclaimer: Amazon link contains our affiliate link http://halalbuzz.com/Amazon. But that book is great and it was a bestselling book.