NevBlog

Neville's Digital Surrogate Brain

Archives for November 2010

Facebook made me hundreds of extra dollars for free

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Something like one month ago I put up the now-famous “Facebook Like Button” on a business I run called HouseOfRave.com.

House Of Rave is an eEommerce company that sells light up and glow stuff.  Simple enough (see how it works).

The Facebook Like Button is a simple button people can press, and it will automatically “Like” a particular web address on their Facebook Feed.  It puts a small sentence saying, “Neville Medhora likes WhateverTheLinkIs” on your Facebook.

I did a little poking around and found the Like Button was really easy to install on the Shopsite shopping cart software I use.  To install it on your site, simply Google the term:

“How to install the Facebook Like Button on (insert your platform here)”

…and you’ll surely find a solution.  It took me about 3 minutes to install, and 2 minutes to test if everything was working correctly.  It turned out looking like this on every product of HoR:

Obviously the number of “Likes” varies from page to page.

Now this was just a simple test to see what would happen….and I was surprised to see that some of my product pages already had several “Likes” on Facebook.  Off to a good start!

Now a month later, some of the more prominent products on HoR have been gaining traction.  The Finger Lights above currently have 100+ Likes!…meaning somewhere on Facebook exist 100+ links to this product (most likely buried in the archives of people’s news feeds).

So the results of the inflow of traffic were as follows (there was already a small amount of traffic coming from Facebook, so the numbers aren’t that skewed:

WHAT I FOUND INTERESTING was that Facebook users clicking on their friends links to House Of Rave were pretty decent traffic.

The traffic had slightly higher bounce rates than the average visitor, fewer pages per visit and spent less time on the site than average, but….

It’s FREE traffic I didn’t do a DAMN thing to acquire!

Sweet :-)

The cool thing is, even if the conversion rate is much lower than the site average…SOME of the visits do convert, and in the first few weeks I noticed hundreds of extra dollars in revenue due to that completely free traffic.

That was revenue that didn’t exist before, but does now.

Those were customers who didn’t exist before, but do now.
This is a new channel of free traffic that didn’t exist before, but does now.
…all for 5 minutes of work!

As people start using Like buttons more and more, it could even become more profitable.

So Facebook Like Button…for making me free money while I do NOTHING….I LIKE you!

P.S.  An unexpected benefit I noticed is that products with lots of “Likes” are getting slightly better conversion rates now.  It seems people trust the Like button because the website owner cannot manipulate the numbers themselves.

The Online Living Will of Neville Medhora

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*NOTE: Like my What Would Happen If I Die post, I’d like to say this isn’t some weird online suicide note…it’s just my online will in case something were to happen.
Hey, I was an Eagle Scout: “Always be prepared”!

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11-13-2010.
Saturday.
6:24 PM.

I write this on my laptop, sitting cross legged on the floor, leaning against the foot of my bed.

Just 5 minutes ago a very close friend of mine who’s a doctor called me.  She was getting ready for a party and got a call that an unidentified 27 year old male was in some sort of “bike” accident, and had arrived at the hospital with bad brain damage.  Most likely it’s irreversible and he will likely die in the next few hours.  She had to cancel the plans and come into the hospital.

I could hear the relief in her voice as I picked up my phone.  She knows I’m not in the same city, and even if I was, I wouldn’t have my scooter there….but it reminded her of me.  A 27 year old male who owns a scooter.

Her call reminded me how quick I can go from happy-go-lucky Neville….to a dead lump of cells splattered on the pavement.

I then thought about how freakin cool it’d be if I was dead, but had a post explaining to EVERYONE IN THE WORLD what to do in that situation!  Like I was still blogging from the afterlife!

Oddly enough I don’t care about dying.  If I’m dead…that’s it.  I don’t have to worry about it anymore.

What worries me is the impact my burden would have on my family and friends if I’m still alive…but severely damaged.

Not quite dead….but sort of.

So I’d like to make a public, online living will.  In the event of my death or serious injury, anyone in the world can look at what I’d have wanted for myself in different events.

Hopefully this never has to be done…but hey, shit happens.

In the case of my death:

  • I would want all of my liquid assets to be transfered to my family.  This would be wired over to my parents (whom of course would use it to pay off associated costs, or share it with my brother).
  • Donate every organ and usable part of my body.  Rip it all out and give it to people who need them.
  • If I have some sort of funeral, I’d like this statement to be read:
  • “Hello everyone, thank you for being here today….I am talking to you from beyond the grave, spooOooOOOoOOoky huh (in a ghost voice)!  I’d like to say something as my last words: I was lucky.  I was REALLY lucky.  I was born in one of the best countries in the world, at a time and place where rapid technological change and innovation was taking place, into an uncommonly happy marriage between my parents, with a great brother, into a small but tight and highly successful Zoroastrian community, and had a fantastic upbringing.I’ve been lucky to have influences on my life that allowed me to never have a job, wake up whenever I want, live wherever I want, do whatever I want….anytime I wanted. I was able to “stay young” through this and have an incredibly fun time on Earth. That being said, that is now all gone.  It is gone, but was thoroughly enjoyed wilst it was had.I was here…and now I am not.

    This is neither joyous or sad.  It just is.

    I would like to say I’ll “always be looking over you guys”…but I won’t.  I will simply be gone.  The sack of cells previously known as Neville Medhora which evolved from billions of years of small genetic modifications and selections has been irreversibly removed from existence.

    I am reminded of a quote I heard Jerry Seinfeld say about why he was shutting down the most popular show on television at it’s peek.  He said, “After years of going on stage and entertaining the audience, I’ve developed a sense for when to get off stage.  Stay too short, and they’ll want more. Stay on too long, and it can leave a bad taste.  Now is the time.”

    I may not have “stayed on too long”….but it was a great run while I was here!

    And look on the bright side: Now that I’m gone, someone else can finally have the distinction of being the best looking human in the world ;-)

    (insert raucous laughter and applause here).

    I love you all.


In the case of serious brain damage:

  • Pull the plug.  If that doesn’t work, hold a pillow over my face.  If that doesn’t work, inject me with something that’ll kill me.  If they don’t allow that kind of thing…ship me somewhere they do, and get it over with.
  • I’d like to make it absolutely clear I refuse to live as a vegetable.  I will actually be ANGRY if someone decides to keep me in this state. If I need other people to take care of me in order to simply exist…it’s my turn to exit the stage.

So there you have it!  In case something happens, at least people will sort of know what to do.

…now let’s hope no one ever has to search for this post :-)

Working Time Lapse

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Have you every wandered what it looks like to see me work?

Of course you have!

Enjoy 5 hours of me working on a computer condensed into 1 minute and 20 seconds.  EXCITING isn’t it!

You can actually see it start to get dark around the 1:00 minute mark:

It’s a little funny how many people would LOVE to work at home…little do they know, it’s just you sitting at a computer for hours on end.

…but I love it :-)

Ways You’ve Made Money

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Just curious, what are some ways you’ve made small amounts of quick cash?  They can be online or offline methods.

In the past I’ve done:

What are some of the things you’ve done, or see people do that make quick cash?

They can be easy or hard things.

Let me know by leaving a comment!

November 2010 Goals

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Those October 2010 Goals got finished nicely, so it’s time to move forward with November 2010:

1.) One CWPCT every week (you won’t know what that means so don’t try to guess).

2.) Promotion on House Of Rave.

3.) Handstands: Every morning when I wake up I should do four laps back and forth in my apartment walking on my hands.

I should also then do 2 minutes of still handstands.

I can already walk on my hands pretty well and even turn around.  I can also hold a still handstand for about 45 seconds.  However I like being able to do them well, so this will be good endurance training (and it’s also a way to trick me into gym-mode in the morning)….sneaky sneaky!

Still handstand, legs spread:

Still handstand, legs together:

Walking on hands:

4.) House Of Rave Christmas Season Preparations

All of these goals are reasonably attainable within the next month, so no excuses….including Thanksgiving and other festivities (which there are MANY of this month).

Cheers,
ɐɹoɥpǝɯ ǝllıʌǝu   <– It’s upside down in honor of the handstands!

October 2010 Goals DONE

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I’m getting slightly better at finishing off my monthly goals.

And I must attest it mainly to the negative ramification aspect of the goals.

For October 2010 I stated the negative ramification of failing to complete all four goals was:

I was asking my brother and roommate how to keep accountable this month and I randomly spurted out this gem:

“If I don’t accomplish my goals this month, I’ll give away my bike to this particular crack-head bum I see on the street corner all the time.”

I met this particular bum doing The Homeless Experiment and personally know this guy is a huge druggy and alchy. I will be DAMNED before I give that (insert lots of derogatory words here) bum gets my mountain bike.  I ride that bike all the time and love it (I actually bought it from Lance Armstrong’s bike shop here in Austin)!

So there you have it.  If I don’t have those four goals crossed off  on Oct. 31st, 2010….I’ll give my beloved bike away to that bum.

On October 29th I worked furiously all day to make sure I’d be done with work in time for the arrival of guests in town.  It would also be Halloween, so many festivities were in store.

I then gasped in horror as I noticed the LAST GOAL on my October 2010 Goals was not going to be completed.  CRAP!

I immediately went through the list of excuses I could give on this blog (or maybe slyly avert the subject altogether) in order to not really give away my bike.  However I also thought to myself, “I’ve officially procrastinated work again, and surely this weekend I’ll be in a bad mood because I didn’t finish it all…why don’t I just stop complaining and DO IT?”

I had till Oct. 31st to finish this.

However the last goal “Redesign NevBlog” involved getting a bunch of weird formatting errors solved on my template, adding custom sidebars to WordPress and all sorts of stuff I really didn’t know how to do.  A programmer would be needed. I immediately started calling around, and fortunately I got Ray of WiredHive to come out to my apartment on SATURDAY AFTERNOON.

During the 6 hour period I spent with a programmer, my friends went out for brunch, drank mimosas, visited places in Austin, went to the pool and hot tub….and I was sitting inside with a programmer.

Was I happy about this?  No….because I was missing out on fun.  But YES….because I was accomplishing what I said I’d do.

I ABSOLUTELY 100% KNOW I would NOT have made such an effort had I not had a negative ramification linked with that goal.

October 2010 goals completed?  CHECK!