Neville's Financial Blog

The hard drive crashed on my tablet pc two days ago, stuff happens.

Bought a new hard drive from ebay which after shipping cost me about $100. Now I need to find a proprietary Toshiba external CD drive so I can load the operating system to the new drive. Till then, I am using the University of Texas computers for everything….like back in the day! It reminds me of high school how I started House Of Rave from the school computers because my home computer was too slow.

I haven’t backed up the computer for about a month, so I’ve lost all my work/pictures since then……grrr…..but I’ll live.

LESSON TO LEARN: Backup more often.

On a fun scale of one to ten, this rates about a two. Tinkering with hard drives and electronics is always fun, but not as much when you just lost all your work.

Since almost everything I do is internet based, I thought if my laptop crashed it would be the same as my office burning down….but it really hasn’t been. I can still use the UT computers which have all the necessary software I need (Thanks R) and thankfully I do monthly backups, which I should increase to bi-monthly.

The main thing I miss is my email on Outlook. I’m currently back to using webmail to check all my email accounts.

Luckily, the total cost of this hard drive failure after I get everything fully repaired should be under $150.

-Nev

Perusing websites, I see ads all over the place. They usually don’t bother me if done tastefully, and provide the site owner with a source of income. Nothing wrong with that.

If free television stations didn’t interrupt their programming with advertisements, they wouldn’t be around. So it’s a bit of a trade off.

Taking a look at some personal finance websites, I noticed everyone has all sorts of cash-generating items on their site, which are relatively un-intrusive. I’m just curious of the average total amount everyone makes from their sites. For example, I was looking at Consumersim Commentary and took a good look around his site to see where cash comes from.

Just looking above the fold (meaning not having to scroll down), I noticed SIX different pieces of cash-generating website real estate.

At the very bottom of the page, I noticed FOUR different cash generating avenues including lots of text links for PageRank purposes. Based on the requests I turn down everyday for these, I’m guessing these go for between $50 and $100 a month.

I won’t even mention if there’s anything in the middle, as there is unlimited potential for that, especially on long blog pages.

Based on the Adsense Experiment I did a little while back, I could probably make about $500/month from a simple banner above the fold on the left side of the page. Not bad.

NevBlog originated late one night whilst working at the easiest job in the world as a way to track financial progress…not as a tool to make money. Now I am more open to the idea of it bringing in money….sort of.

I’m not going to slap a bunch of advertisements up immediately, but I’m stroking my chin thinking about it. A far cry from my previous anti-Adsense stance!

My streak of not monetizing this blog has ended. Interest.com (Owned by BankRate, Inc.) is now the official sponsor of NevBlog. This means I get paid to do what I already do….update this website.

Of course in return they want something: Advertisements. This works out perfectly because I hate managing advertisements, and they love it.

They pay is pretty good, but I could easily make more by handling my own advertisements (Doing the whole Adsense, text link and affiliate stuff)….however, BankRate and Interest.com bring something else to the table: Giving me exposure.

NevBlog is part personal journal, part fun, part SEO tool and mainly a NETWORKING TOOL. Believe it or not I’ve met some of the most influential people in my life through this blog. Sounds stupid, but very true.

It’s rather obvious there are now ads all over the place, including two visible above the fold:

I get paid $????.?? per month for allowing these advertisements to be placed on my site, plus I get the additional exposure. Since I’ve already met some very influential people solely through this site, I figured additional exposure couldn’t hurt. The money brought in through this arrangement will be divided up into different accounts just like any other income I make.

Thanks to Interest.com and BankRate.com for the arrangement!

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Current Asset Update (11-01-2006)

General Account – $ 4,631
Spending Account – $ 293
Spending Account 2 – $ 363
Investment Account – $ 2,741
Bill Account – $ 1,039
Permanent Savings – $ 4,770
Charity Account – $ 318
Stock Portfolio Value – $ 11,107
Roth IRA – $ 6,912
Emigrant Direct – $ 5,020
Total Liquid Assets – $ 37,194

Credit Card Balance – $ 0
Business Holding – $ 13,651
Total On Hand – $ 50,845

H O U S E O F R A V E – U P D A T E :
Over the last 2 years HouseOfRave has gone from making a few hundred bucks a month in profit to $6,000+/month. However the supplier has been experiencing pains along the way with the increased order volume.

The same problems keep happening over and over and the same excuses are being given over and over. Despite all my best attempts, I can’t get them to fully cooperate with my steps for expansion, so after 6+ years of doing business, it’s time to say goodbye to them as my sole supplier.

HouseOfRave is currently in a state of two different suppliers as I switch sources, and by the end of February I will be completely switched to a new one who is oriented more towards customer satisfaction, fresh products and prompt delivery.

N E V B L O G – U P D A T E :
I believe comments will for the most part be gone from future posts. Comments are entertaining, but for the most part relatively useless. Occasionally I get some good ones, but the majority are a waste of time. I get GREAT emails, but comments are not well thought out and are generally self-promotion for someone else with a blog or some lame remark about blah blah blah…..

L E X U S – U P D A T E :
Lovin’ it!

E D U C A T I O N – U P D A T E :
After not being in school for a while the psychology course I’m trying to finish online before I go to China is uugghhh…..

I’ve been sticking to my schedule, but it’s not fun having read about, take notes on and then answer questions about bunk theories made by Sigmund Freud. Hopefully this course gets more interesting.

T W O – M O S T – I M P O R T A N T – T H I N G S :
The two things I’m most focused on for the next few days will be finishing the psych class and switching HouseOfRave over to the new supplier.

I might even have to ::shudder:: stay in on a Friday night and study.

M O O D – U P D A T E :

Over the last few weeks I noticed NevBlog was not ranking in Google for any of the keywords previously bringing in lots of traffic (“Starbucks Liquor”, “Neville Medhora”, “Easiest Job In The World” etc…).

Even if you directly typed in “NevBlog” into Google the only thing that came up was other sites and my .xml site feed.

I usually don’t care about the traffic this site gets, but I care about some of the outgoing links, and without the site being indexed, those links were worthless…..I also can’t search for past posts to refer people to…..plus I just wanted to know what the hell was going on!

I thought it was a temporary hiccup in Google’s indexing, but almost a month has passed without improvement. I used Google’s Webmaster Tools and they said my site was being indexed just fine and nothing was wrong.

I casually mentioned it to my buddy Jon Brelig, and being the expert he is….he noticed a Robot NoFollow meta tag on my site. This was NOT on my Blogger template, instead Blogger put it in with the “Blog:Meta:Data” tag

THE PROBLEM:
Blogger.com made me switch to the “New Blogger” which apparently sneakily added a NoFollow tag. I figured there MUST be a setting on Blogger to fix this, but I haven’t found it.

THE RESOLUTION:
Removing the BlogMetaData tag from my Blogger template altogether.

THE FOLLOWUP:
I wrote this and removed the meta at 11:00pm on Monday night (2-26-2007). Just out of curiosity I want to see how long it takes Google to re-index my page for the term “NevBlog“.

I always try out new programs, web widgets, technologies, Photoshop and Flash effects etc. and have no place to put them. To solve that I created a section of this site called NevLab.

This is like the think tank of a big company where people just tinker around with ideas, new products or processes all day in hopes of stumbling upon something new or useful later down the line.

It’ll be like my internet technology testing area and playground.

The lab is very rudimentary in it’s design and will remain so. It actually uses frames which I haven’t seen on a website since 1997. Since some of the lab creations will have scripts in the head/body tags or require specific page colors or plugins, frames are the best technology for the job. Using a content management system (aka Blog) would be a terrible option for NevLab.

The NevLab is officially open!

For a long time I’ve allowed anyone even anonymous posters to freely post comments on this site. However that doesn’t seem to be working so well.

With WordPress you can see IP addresses and other info; however an anonymous Blogger comment without using any third party allows anonymous posters to remain completely anonymous.

It’s just a known fact that in a completely anonymous environment safe from any social repercussions people will inevitably start saying mean or stupid stuff. Point in case: YouTube comments. Good lord they’re the stupidest comments ever. I don’t even bother reading them for that matter.

This brings me to another point. When anyone DOES try to leave a constructive or encouraging comment on this site, there are a select few individuals who try to unnecessarily rip them apart JUST because they were nice towards me. That isn’t fair at all, and quite annoying to most people. A personal attack on me is fine, but don’t spill that over to others.

While stupid comments are sometimes entertaining, they don’t provide any growth value and actually stifle more intelligent remarks.

So now above the comment field it now reads:

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I ask that if you would like to leave a comment that you think of this website as my family’s home and that you wouldn’t say anything on this site that you wouldn’t, as an invited guest, say in someone’s home. Constructive criticism is welcome, as we all benefit from such advice. Rude, mean, or obnoxious comments are not welcome and will not be approved to post (that’s me, gently escorting the misbehaving guest out of the house). Please restrict your comments to the topic at hand, for the benefit of all who may be reading.
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That quote was taken from an article written by Elise Bauer. I couldn’t have said it better myself. I’ve also turned on comment moderation so comments will not be immediately posted. I don’t care if negative things are said, but any plainly ignorant attacks or rude posts will no longer be welcome.

Leaving an anonymous comment to me is like driving in your car, yelling something mean to a person on the sidewalk and driving off. You only do it because you KNOW they can’t catch you or figure out who you are.

If you were face to face with them, you’d never say something like that.

So to conclude: Don’t be a jackass.

I rarely check my Google Adsense earnings because I don’t use the program much, but I got a bit of a surprise to see some mysterious extra income and thousands of extra page views in the last few days:

It’s odd because none of my stat programs show any significant increase in traffic on the sites I have Adsense on. Adsense generally earns me less than a dollar per day, but all of sudden it’s sometimes been paying me over $12/day!

There’s on average an extra 13,000 page views per day ever since Dec. 3rd, and I have no clue where they’re coming from.

This is kind of the equivalent of free money falling from the sky! I’m a little baffled, but not complaining ;-)

From the beginnings of this blog on November 17th 2004, I openly wrote how much money I made, saved and spent. However I rarely reported what I earned through partnerships or consulting. This means what my actual finances were and the finances listed on this blog were different.

December 2006 was the last month I publicly accounting my income. For all of 2007 I haven’t listed specific income, and I will finally take off all that income on the NevBlog.com sidebar.

The plethora of bloggers openly listing their income generally hide their identity, write under pseudonyms or don’t name the companies they work for.

It’s not exactly hard to find out that I look like this:

…or that I live in Austin, TX. and Houston, TX., or that my phone number is:

…so listing detailed income gets tricky. Let’s say I do some consulting for a company and I openly list how much they’re paying me per month. It’s not fair to them to openly list that information.

One of the interesting things people found about this blog was the fact I so openly listed income. It was also good for me, as I felt self conscious about my finances if they were too low. An open environment definitely helped.

But for now, I’ll stop writing every piece of specific income on this blog.

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Here is the income for 2005 and 2006. And yes…I know I listed “Change Jar” as income when it’s not.

Money Made from January 2005 till Deceber 2005:
Online Biz – Jan. $ 502
Work $ 253
Work $ 281
Ebay Sale $ 100
Change Jar $ 55
Online Biz – Feb. $ 751
Work $ 271
Change Jar $ 30
Rebate $ 30
Work $ 229
Lottery Experiment $ 2
Web Design $ 100
Online Biz – March $ 946
Syntel Dividend $ 270
Ebay Sale $ 218
Ebay Sale $ 340
Water Experiment $ 5
Work $ 246
Work $ 248
Online Biz – April $ 836
Web Design $ 300
Change Jar $ 32
Surveys $ 55
Books $ 165
Selling Notes $ 105
Work $ 297
Online Biz – May $ 1,024
SYNT Dividend $ 21
FO Dividend $ 6
GE Dividend $ 10
Work $ 213
Change Jar $ 17
Work $ 167
Online Biz – June $ 718
FO Dividend $ 11
Work $ 274
Work $ 261
Online Biz – July $ 834
Work $ 304
GE Dividend $ 10
SYNT Dividend $ 11
Change Jar $ 35
Acco Brands $ 183
Work $ 210
Books $ 30
Online Biz – Aug. $ 804
ACCO Dividend $ 7
Work $ 228
Change Jar $ 76
Online Biz – Sept. $ 654
Selling Pixels $ 1,350
FO Dividend $ 11
SYNT Dividend $ 11
GE Dividend $ 9
Online Biz – Oct $ 1,120
Misc. $ 1,000
Birthday $ 200
Online Biz - Nov $ 1,630
Change Jar $ 115
Online Biz - Dec $ 1,801

Total on Dec. 31st 2005
$ 20,021

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Money Made from January 2006 till December 2006:

January 2006
Selling Pixels $ 700

Online Biz - Jan $ 1,131
SYNT Dividend $ 11
FO Dividend $ 11

February 2006
Change Jar $ 85
CraigsList $ 100
Online Biz - Feb $ 2,016
Adsense Experiment $ 138

March 2006
Mobile Marketing $ 158
Other $ 3,000+
Online Biz - Mar $ 1,915
Selling Pixels $ 100

April 2006
First order f/ new biz $ 30
Other $ 350
Selling Pixels $ 50
MobileCampus $ 110
MobileCampus $ 50
Online Biz - Apr $ 1,080
SYNT Dividend $ 11
FO Dividend $ 11

May 2006
SYNT Sale $ 681
ABD Sale $ 175
Other $ 1480
Selling Pixels $ 50
Change Jar $ 55
Online Biz - May $ 1,345

June 2006
FO Dividend $ 11
PGH Dividend $ 12
DYN Sale $ 250
Other $ 30
Online Biz $ 2,505
FacebookProfile $ 28

July 2006
Online Biz $ 1,770
Other $ 300

August 2006
Online Biz $ 1,600
Other $ 300
Change Jar $ 80

September 2006
Online Biz $ 1,700

October 2006
Online Biz $ 5,000+
Other $ 1,000

November 2006
BIDU Sale $ 230
Stock Dividends $ 32
Other $ 500
Adsense $ 120
Online Biz $ 4,000

December 2006
Stock Dividends $ 30
Other $ 500
Online Biz $ 4,500

Total on Dec. 31st 2006
$ 38,341

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Last Account Snapshot:

Explanation of accounts

No matter how well you did in 2007, I hope your

Now, it’s time to celebrate!

Best wishes,
Neville