Neville's Financial Blog

This blog will be dedicated to tracking my financial progress. Today I turn 22, let’s see how far I can financially advance by the time I am 23.

http://www.thekirkreport.com/

http://www.pfblog.com

http://tradermike.net/

http://www.maoxian.com/

I regulary check up on these blogs everyday to learn more about stocks, finance and life. For anyone looking to start investing, try reading these blogs as a start (but make sure you do your OWN homework also). Remember, if you like what they do, drop them a contribution every now and then!

I read this article in CNN about bloggers losing their jobs because they maintained blogs.

If you maintain a blog, leave your work out of it. Just a heads up for anyone with a job and blog!

The portfolio was up $105 today for a total of $9,234, bolstered mainly by some action in Dynegy (DYN). Their quarterly earnings will be coming soon, hopefully the reaction will be positive this time around!

I had another article published today in the Daily Texan newspaper, this time on young entrepreneurs. The article focuses on two entrepeneurial students at UT, the organization Texas Entrepreneurs, an entrepreneurial band and the founded of Alamo Drafthouse.

I’m a big fan of blogs which I can take some information away from, but one thing I’ve noticed is the very annoying presence of Google Adwords. They look disgusting, clutter the page and make it known the author wants some money for their blog.

That may be a harsh review, but I’d like to ask anyone who uses Adwords: How much money do you make off them per month? Also, how many clicks equate to what amount of money? Leave comments please, I am very curious.

Unless they generate hundreds of dollars per month, I refuse to put them on my site. I did a bit of research, and could find no reports of personal finance bloggers reporting their profits from Adwords.

I have a friend who runs a popular skiing website which makes a pretty comfortable living off Adwords, but his site gets a massive amount of traffic and draws people actively looking to make reservations, find new ski lodges etc.

Help me solve this question! Anyone with Adwords on their blog, let me know what you net!

According to Yahoo Finance, these are the Top Ten Money Blogs Everyone Should Read.

Hmm..Yahoo Finance thinks everyone should read us. Looks like we’ve tipped an iceburg with the Personal Finance Blog!

• …been able to keep myself fully occupied with business ventures
• …met a powerful current business partner
• …have had at least 7 in-person meetings with strangers who found my site
• …become the #1 and #2 search result for “Starbucks Liquor“
• …become the #1 search result for “Financial Blog” (Shameless plug)
• …have been mentioned in: Yahoo Finance, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and Business Week
• …had several business articles published in a newspaper
• Much, Much More

Thank you Blog. Sorry I can’t tell you everything right now, all my current ventures are confidential for the time being.

Sincerely,

-Nev

An article written by Elizabeth Harris in today’s New York Times mentions me and some other financial bloggers: Psst: Want to Know My Net Worth?

It even has a picture of my………nose, hand and tablet PC.

The main interview was done by Elizabeth Harris about a month ago, and there was a photo shoot done two weeks ago.

Here is a scanned version of the article:

Feel free to copy, steal and use the image.

• Bottled Water Experiment
• Bottled Water Experiment Part Deux
• Tablet PC Writing
• Lamborghini Gallardo
• Selling Class Notes
• Crashing Corporate Governance Conference
• Herb Kelleher
• Meeting Sir Elton John and Andy Roddick
• Meeting Dave Liniger – Founder RE/MAX
• Katrina Cards

On February 1st 2006 I for the first time put Google Adsense on NevBlog. I begrudgingly did this to fund my charity account, but the ads annoy me more than anything, so I will take them down for a little while.

Selling Pixels made me over $2,000 with just a little work and was more fun/unique than AdSense. However, I do see why people use Adsense. Here are the revenues from my first few days using AdSense:

After the 5th day, revenues were usually pretty low, somewhere in the $1 – $2 range or lower….sporadically jumping to over $10 on some days. The big money days were when I actually wrote about the ads, naturally drawing more attention to them.

Something really going against the ads is they were “below the fold” which means people must first scroll down to see them. I like extremely simple usability, and putting an ad where a navigation menu should go is a no-no to me.

If utilized correctly, people can actually make a decent amount of extra money with AdSense. This would mean positioning the ads correctly and writing about high pay-per-click topics, neither of which I did (or plan to). However, the ads tend to clutter pages and skew what content topics are written about.

This was a nice little experiment with Google Adsense for me. I learned something and came away with a total of $138 for the 28 days of February…..roughly $5/day.

It’s been a full month since the last entry, and I feel like I should have tracked it better. I kind of wish this blog was private so I could actually write everything that goes on, but it’s still nice to share.

Anyhow, I was in California for 2 1/2 weeks for business/fun, and the trip was very successful. I spent a total of $2,100 which was slightly over budget, and rings in an average of $123/day. I still feel that’s a lot, because I didn’t pay a cent the entire trip for housing (Thanks to awesome friends).

During the trip I spent over $600 on rental cars. I had to make sure I got full insurance coverage on all the cars since I recently got in a wreck, plus I’m under 25, generally meaning an extra $25 per day….plus you have to fill up your own gas.

My rental car for 21 days after the wreck was taken care of by the insurance company, but I had to pay $315 for the extra insurance ($15/day). I made sure to take this, because if I wrecked the rental WITHOUT insurance, I’d be doubly screwed.

Soon as I got back to Austin, I realized my lease on my summer apartment had expired! I got back to Austin at 1:00am on a Sunday night, and the apartment management had threatened to move my stuff out of the apartment by THAT NIGHT. Obviously I haggled here and there and eventually got them to slightly extend my stay for free, but I needed an apartment FAST.

Craigslist came to the rescue. I now have a larger room in a nearby apartment for only $270/month…and I paid out the entire lease up front, so all the way until December I don’t have to pay a monthly rent. Total was $945 till December 1st, 2006.

Unfortunately I had to move IMMEDIATELY when I got back to Austin, but the Camry was gone, so fortunately my parents gave me their spare van to use for the move. Also with a temporary car to use, I don’t have to go car shopping immediately. Plus I also have my scooter and bicycle to use….and legs….and the buses.

The van actually came in handy because I needed to move quick in one trip, I don’t think the Camry would have fit all my stuff (even though I have very little). It’s not the most fun thing to drive, but it does get me around having to buy a new car immediately! Here’s my new pickup line: