I got this “Pharma Hack” on my WordPress blog a few days ago.  Apparently it doesn’t have any effect on WordPress blogs, except it changes your title tags in your database (so you can’t easily change them) to promote pills…..this is what it did to my search rankings:

Sooooo……apparently NevBlog now sells Viagra :-)

It’s actually not a “hack” but rather a small “exploit”.

ANYHOW, I ended up paying to get it removed (yet it still came back).  I REALLLLLYYY wanted to do a search for “WordPress Pharma Hack” and see a sponsored result saying:

….instead I found nothing.

I had to personally call Chris Pearson who wrote the most detailed post about the pharma hack to get a recommendation for the removal of this brilliant little exploit.

But these large-scale exploits seem like a GREAT opportunity for WordPress junkies to make a bunch of extra money.  If someone charged $200+ to just “take care of this shit” for me….I would’ve GLADDLLLY paid.

-Nev

P.S.  In case you’re wondering, I’m currently moving this blog to WPengine  and they’re cleaning it up right now.

Chris Gaddis scheduled me to be on his MONEY TRAIN radio show a while ago….and on August 17th we had the call.

These radio interviews are usually pretty fun :-)

You can download it here (right-click + save link as):
http://www.nevblog.com/audio/neville-nevblog.mp3

On this recording, the audio from my end turned out pretty horrendous…..but if you crank up the speakers you can hear me ok.

Unfortunately only Hamburg and Ulm Germany are the other places besides Austin that have had Car2Go for over a year…so his only English-speaking and time-zone-similar place to call was Austin.

So he did some basic searching and found…me!

So after a 10 minute interview or so…he said I would be on the radio broadcasting to all of Montreal how cool Car2Go is!  I’ll try to find the clip at some point…

It’s one of those funny side benefits of posting random stuff on a blog :-)

It kind of reminded me about the random call I got to speak to poor people in Sierra Leon (and accidentally pissed one of them off)!

Mint.com made a big buzz when after only two years they sold for $170,000,000 dollars…..You can see a cool speech about it here: Aaron Patzer Mint.com Speech.

Anywhozzit, I looked at the very first page of their marketing plan and who do I see?  NevBlog.com!

So what does it mean to be on the first page of a $170,000,000 marketing plan?

Unfortunately, absolutely nothing.

But it did make me smile :-)

P.S. I guess the only result of this is Noah constantly bums on my couch…running his entire AppSumo company from his MacBook Air.  I get to pick his brain, and in return he gets to eat all the bananas and cashews he wants :-)

P.P.S. On a totally random Noah-note, since I’ve been filming all these videos for the Behind The Scenes product and plan on doing more videos, I needed a camera with better video quality (but mainly better sound pickup).  I was riding on the back of Noah’s scooter to a concert he got free tix to.    So this was my first test video when I got my new Canon S95 camera…featuring Noah’s Jew-fro head:

I think right now he’s uploading new stuff to his little product he just released on Mixergy.

The blog is simply a hobby, so it doesn’t take priority….meaning it’ll slowly improve.

One cool thing I added is the RANDOM button.

Where will it take you???  WHO KNOWS?!?!?!

I also put one on HouseOfRave:

————–

I’m just

testing out the

way this theme

displays different

styles of text on

blog posts

My Nordstrom Return Policy post!  Weird huh? This was a simple little post I did back in…2009..no…2007….no….2005 which has somehow topped the rankings for the search term “Nordstrom Return Policy.”

As I recall, up until a year ago it was #1 in the Google search results, now it resides at number 2:

What’s HILARIOUS to me is how many clicks, comments and stupid debates the post gets!  I’ve actually deleted many of the comments in the past, but now I’ve just plain stopped reading/moderating them.

The ONLY REASON I expect someone would visit that post is because it’s ranked so highly in Google, and on the actual Nordstroms page you can’t leave a comment.

On my dinky little post, people can feel free to air their opinions.  It seems like a lot of pissed off Nordstroms sales people visit the page.

Often these people are anonymous, so who knows how accurate their feedback is….

While that post does give my blog a lot more traffic, that traffic has an astoundingly high 94.71% bounce rate! This tells me that people searching for information about the Nordstrom return policy are not that interested in me.  What a shame.

It’s always funny to see what random articles gain traction!

• Generally be in certain classes
• Apply for the job
• Go through interviews
• Submit writing samples
• Be a “staff” writer for a year
• Get promoted up to a writer

I wanted to publish some business-related stuff in the newspaper, and  all that BS above seemed useless and time consuming.

Figuring that EVERYONE who applies says, “I want to write for you guys”, I tried the opposite (kind of like this mentality).

Before I ever talked to ANYONE at the organization, I went ahead and actually wrote out three full, quality articles. I even went out and got quotes from experts and copied the typical newspaper-story format.

I then printed out four copies of each news story and brought them along with me for my very first talk with someone at the newspaper.

I literally walked into the office and asked, “Who do I speak to about publishing something, I’ve got articles ready to go.”  The person in the office was a little intrigued that I had ALREADY written the articles BEFORE I’d even made an arrangement and took a quick glance at them.  Deciding they were decent enough, he walked me over to the “Special Features” editor and told him I had three good articles ready to go.

Now a newspaper has to pump out quality content every day, that’s hard, and I somehow KNEW they would accept my articles quickly, but I didn’t realize HOW quickly!  They asked me to come in later for an editing session….me and editor sat down for two hours brooding over every sentence (a process I didn’t really like), and the 1st article was ready for print that week!

BAM…I was a published newspaper writer in two days :-)

The next several articles were the same story.  Editing session –> publish.

Some good advice Linda?

The next instance was pretty recent, when Jonathan Oullet contacted me saying I kind of helped inspire him to start a company.

However I’d like to tell you another quick story before we proceed (don’t worry, it all goes together):

My Downtown roommate kept talking about manufacturer high end and sweat proof undershirts as a business….and I immediately raised a crooked eyebrow at the idea.  However he CONSTANTLY talked about it and researched getting shirts made with silver thread (or something like that) which reduces bacteria, smells, sweat etc etc…and even “double fabric armpits” and all sorts of odd features.  (This is seriously a true story).

So one day I sat down with him and did some quick competitive research (aka I Google’d it). We came across very few places that had anything like he wanted to make, except one: Silverback Apparel.  It was kind of an “Awww-shit” moment for my roommate who realized someone had beat him to the punch.

Nevertheless he was glad such a product existed and wanted to buy some.

I still thought anyone so interested in sweat-proof undershirts was INSANE.

Annnnyyywaaysss….

About one week after we realized some guy had already made these shirts, Jonathan Oullet left some comments on NevBlog  and contacted me via email about his company I “partially” inspired…SILVERBACK APPAREL!  He designed and manufactured these super-high-end undershirts and was selling them to really high end stores.

I was flabbergasted I had TWO nutjobs in my life that were obsessed with sweat proof undershirts!  <— awww…link love.

A few emails later and Jonathan sent me some samples of these undershirts.  I honestly didn’t think I’d be impressed.

I WAS WRONG!!

I’m LOVING THESE SHIRTS!  You see, I live in Austin, TX. and it’s hot as hell during the summer.  On some days, even just walking around my back tends to sweat through my shirt.  In fact I don’t wear colors like blue so I don’t get massive sweat stains all over my shirt.

The first time I wore one of these undershirts, I just wore it around as a t-shirt to do errands.  I got in my car (which had been parked in the blazing sun) the whole day and did all my errands.  I noticed something weird: My back wasn’t sweating like it normally does.  My (under)shirt also didn’t feel dirty like most shirts do after walking around on a hot day.

Maybe all the bamboo and silver thread the shirt was made of actually worked?  I also noticed the armpits were double-fabric, as well as the entire back of the shirt (so even when I did sweat I couldn’t feel it AT ALL on the back of the shirt)!  I didn’t realize at first how many “extra features” this shirt had.  It also just felt really damn comfortable.  I also would brag to friends, “I’m wearing a $60 undershirt!”  ($50 plus shipping for the high end stuff).

This post wasn’t a paid post, I just genuinely like the product Jonathan created.

This is why I risk posting biz information on this blog even though some people might copy it.  I think it’s hella cool he got at least SOME inspiration to start a business from me.  Kind of makes me feel all warm inside (but NOT sweaty!) <–wow…that was a lame joke.