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Thanks for your interest in advertising on NevBlog.com.
This blog is about my personal financial journey starting from the age of 22 in November 2004. Since then, this blog has been linked and written about in a variety of blogs, websites and major publications such as:

• Business Week
• The Wallstreet Journal
• Yahoo Finance
• Vedemosti (The Russian Wallstreet Journal)
• The Financial Times
• The New York Times.

The blog is about the financial learnings and happenings in the life of me, Neville Medhora. I graduated from University of Texas and have currently never had a real job thanks to starting several small businesses. Since high school I’ve started online web businesses which have grown to be my full time profession. This website is mainly about personal finances, small business experiments, money and lifestyle improvement.  Take a look around the site and see if your advertisement would benefit from being on NevBlog.com.

NevBlog ranks extremely well across a variety of search engines for a very large number of search terms, and is even currently #1 result in Google for the term Financial Blog. NevBlog gets between 2,000 and 4,000 unique visitors per day, and occasional spikes of traffic from large websites like Digg where traffic can go upwards of 30,000 unique visits in a day, and has hundreds of quality backlinks across many search engines.

TYPES OF ADVERTISING:

125×125 BOXES:

Purpose: Meant for exposure to viewers of this blog.  Great for upcoming programs, CPA offers, credit card offers, courses, industry announcements.
Price: $80/month.
Location: Right-side navigation area, above the fold:

TEXT LINKS:

Purpose: These are for companies wanting additional search engine exposure for certain keywords.  These links are all fully recognizable to search engines on every page of NevBlog which is classified as a financial site.  Great for cash, financial, stock, insurance, loan or mortgage related companies.
Price: $80/month
Location: Bottom-right navigation area, below the fold:

PRICING: $80/month per link or advertising box.

To sign up for a link or 125×125 Box, please signup through this PayPal Recurring Payment link:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick-subscriptions&business=service%40houseofrave%2ecom&item_name=NevBlog%20Monthly%20Text%20Link&no_shipping=1&no_note=1&currency_code=USD&lc=US&bn=PP%2dSubscriptionsBF&charset=UTF%2d8&a3=80%2e00&p3=1&t3=M&src=1&sra=1

Restrictions: Once again, used good judgement here. I won’t display anything I find offensive or innapropriate for the site. I might also reject an offer if the site is extremely scammy or non-reputable.  I do this to protect other advertisers and myself.

LUMP SUM PAYMENT:
If you want to pay in lump sum, please send PayPal payment to: service (at) houseofrave .com

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GOT OTHER IDEAS?

Think you’ve got a unique way of advertising on NevBlog? Run it past me, I’m always down to hear innovative ways to advertise! Perhaps you want to take up several spots of advertising and link them together to be unique, I can work with you on these ideas. There have been some pretty unique and successful campaigns on NevBlog in the past:

THE PIXEL SALE EXPERIMENT:
Checkout the original post.

This involved putting a small grid on the right-hand navigation where advertisers paid $50 for a tiny little square. This involved no text links and just a miniscule little square, but it surprisingly raised a lot of money in a short period of time for such a new site at the time, and got a lot of attention.

INTEREST.COM ADVERTISING BUYOUT:
Checkout the original post.

Interest.com who is owned by BankRate.com (The large company that does loans for Ditech.com and other big lenders) bought out all the advertising space on NevBlog for a 10 month period. I was also featured in their new “Blogs of Interest” section of their webpage. The deal bought them 4 ads total for all different parts of the site: Header, footer, left navigation and right navigation.

CONTACT:
Email: nevmed (at) gmail .com
Phone: 713.301.1546

I’ll be in Toronto from June 28th (Thursday) till July 3rd (Tuesday). If you’re in or around the area, hit me up!

Every time I go to Toronto I have a BLAST, and hopefully this time will be no different.

Here is my schedule:
June 28th – Arrive at 11am, not busy the whole day or night.
June 29th – Busy all day, going out at night.
June 30th – Busy all day, going out at night.
July 1st – Busy all day, going out at night.
July 2nd – Busy all day, going out at night.
July 3rd – Not busy all morning or afternoon, leaving at 3pm.

I’m always happy to meet new people over a quick cup of coffee, or meeting up Downtown for the nightlife. Call me if interested!

I’m staying in the Sheraton Parkway:
600 Highway 7 East (at Highways 404 & 7)
Richmond Hill, Ontario L4B 1B2 Canada

On a recent trip to India I found out that a low-level daily-wage worker will make about 150 rupees per day. This is about $3 in American currency PER DAY for sometimes back-breaking work.

For this reason, it’s very common to see these people setup small micro-businesses which could easily earn them more money…..or the same amount of money but with less work.

These people don’t build Web 2.0 applications, seek venture funding or build their business for the sole purpose of being bought out…..they simply use the basic foundation of business: Buy low, sell higher.

If you haven’t got much money, a big setback to running your own business is getting a license to sell….so a lot of the micro-vendors simply don’t have them. Another way to get around this is by bribing the cops if you get caught (supposing you have enough money).

So lets say you want to make some extra money in India, what to do?

A very common sight is selling some sort of fruit on the road. My favorite is the coconut stand. I LOVE coconuts, and had at least two per day. These are the fresh, green coconuts with delicious water and malay on the inside. No matter how hot it is, the water always feels cold because of the thick husk around it, and the insides of the coconut are scooped out and eaten. The only drawback to the coconut is it’s EXTREMELY difficult to open unless you’ve got the technique…..and a big knife. The process is pretty simple:

1.) You order which kind of coconut you want: Water only / Thin malay / Thick malay.
2.) The guy starts slicing the coconut into a cone shape at the top. Once down to the core of the coconut, he gives it a few hard strikes and pops it open.
3.) He hands it to you with a straw and you stand by the coconut stand until you finish the water.
4.) Once finished with the water, you hand the coconut back and the guy will slice a piece off the coconut and make a little “spoon” to scoop out the malay for you.
5.) Eat malay, pay (usually 10-25 rupees), done.

Most of these guys selling coconuts either just have a big stack of coconuts somewhere along the road, or have a rolling cart which they can easily relocate. A lot of people buy coconuts for a quick refreshment.

Another common way of making a little money is selling a few products in your own little portable store front. This “store front” is basically a suitcase or bundle which you can lay out quickly, and pack up even quicker for when the tax collectors come to check your license.

This vendor was selling just cargo shorts and shirts in a very busy area:

If you’re interested in his wares, he will quickly measure you, give you the right size, haggle out a price and you’re on your way. What this guy does is find a high traffic area and plops down his shop. If the tax collectors come by to check his license….he’s gone before they even know he’s there.

A slightly more illegal (although certainly not enforced) way of making some money is by selling counterfeit software on the streets. If you don’t know how to download copyrighted software, DVD’s or audio CD’s, you can simply buy it on the streets for a small charge (usually between $1 – $3).

There are big counterfeit rings which duplicate CD’s, print out the CD labels, package them to look real and then sell them on the street. You can get any software/music/DVD for very cheap all in broad daylight.

Another thing which is almost common as a coconut stand is a sugarcane juice stand. These guys keep a bunch of sugarcane sticks, which are very durable and look like bamboo, but have lots of sugary liquid on the inside.

These guys need a basic machine that squeezes the juice out of the sugarcane, as it would be very difficult to do by hand. They pass the sugarcane through this pressing machine, and the juice falls into a cup, which you then drink.

Sugarcane juice is very sweet and quite delicious, and is therefore a pretty popular street-side refreshment.

These micro-businesses provide incomes to millions of people across India, one of the reasons the Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize. The bank provides micro-loans and micro-credit to poor people who have the ability to run a business, but have no money.

I’m back from India, had lots of fun, made lots of observations, saw lots of crazy things, and even got my name in the newspapers.

In the U.S. it’s no secret that the Indian and Chinese economies are doing very well, but experiencing it first hand is always better. After spending nearly a month in India with people from different classes of society, I can definitely say the economy there is booming like crazy, and will continue to grow for quite some time.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE MIDDLE CLASS
The BEST part about the growth in India is the strikingly similar pattern India is following compared to the growth the U.S. underwent in the 1950’s. This can be extremely profitable because you can easily predict the future of India’s growth by studying the history of the U.S. and other developed countries after they started developing a large middle class.

India was primarily a labor-based country with an extremely large poor population, a small middle class and small upper class. It’s now starting to develop a large middle class, much of which was just VERY recently developed by the dramatic increase in IT jobs available.

Just like the 1950’s in America, people started making more money, the economy was great and a large middle class emerged. These people no longer looked only for functionality of a product, but also stylish design, brand names and prestige of owning that product. Indian people are becoming extremely brand conscious now and the consumer market is growing very quickly. There are TONS of shopping malls already built and still more are being built, this mall craze only started recently. Housing is also booming like no other to accommodate all these newly middle class people and their families.

IT WORK
On a trip to one of India’s IT hotspots Hyderabad (Also now known as “Cyberabad”), showed that a MASSIVE amount of young people are employed there, mainly by overseas companies. I believe I heard that over 270 multi-national companies had large installations there, and many more using services provided by those facilities. Since India is already a very educated country, large companies are flocking here for relatively low cost talent.

I quickly realized that 80%+ of the high-tech jobs were NOT call centers. Major IT companies like Microsoft have massive facilities in India that do much of the same work like their U.S. counterparts. These jobs have more normal hours and also pay extremely well. The pay difference for an employee in the U.S. vs. India is DRASTIC. An entry level job for a college grad in U.S. could fetch $30-50,000/year, while in India an equally good pay would be roughly 35,000 Rupees a month.

Just 6-10 years ago that pay would be EXCELLENT, but now it’s becoming a standard for young people.

MULTI-NATIONAL BRANDS
I see why all these large companies keep talking about “Expansion in China and India”….people are loving the brand names here. Food is especially growing here. The three most prominent food chains I saw were McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Baskin Robbins (yea, I thought that was a little out of place too). KFC was also making a decent appearance and Starbucks is about to start there (I predict Starbucks is going to be a phenomenal hit in India).
As the big chains try to build their brands oversees, they build very nice restaurants at first. Some of the fast food restaurants were MUCH nicer than we have in the U.S. A few Pizza Huts I went to were more like upper scale restaurants than a fast food joint. Same with the two-storied luxury KFC I saw. The food also generally tasted better since Indians have a stronger tolerance for spicy foods, and every fast food place had a much larger selection of vegetarian foods to accommodate the many vegetarians there.

CALL CENTERS
As for the call-centers I always hear about in the headlines over here in the United States, those rumors have been put to rest. Only about 20% of the high tech jobs here are in call centers, and those are generally considered to be boring or dead-end jobs. The hours are very odd (usually all night shifts), and the work is rather dull and monotonous, however the pay is excellent.

What was interesting about the call center jobs is all the other benefits employees get. Many of these benefits apply to the regular jobs also:

In Hyderabad there were massive complexes around the IT area which I thought were offices, but were actually apartments. Since the call center people work such weird hours to accommodate high-traffic times in the U.S. and other countries, it’s sometimes dangerous or inconvenient for people to travel to-and-from home at those hours. Therefore many people can live right next door to work in a luxury apartment for very little money! Free transportation is also provided for all employees in case they want to go anywhere. You also get all the insurance and savings account benefits as most people in the U.S. receive.

INFRASTRUCTURE
If one thing holds back India from becoming a fully developed country, it will be infrastructure problems. All the rapid growth taking place is doing so without properly fortifying the backend public facilities such as power, water, waste and transportation. It’s slowly improving, but the pace is falling very quickly behind development. Even in many large cities, most places have only a few hours of running water, frequent power outages, extremely congested streets and lots of trash lying around.

DRIVING
Although I’ve been to India several times before, I always forget how scary the driving is compared with the U.S.. Essentially there are no rules…and if there is a rule, no one follows it. Those nice striped lines that people drive within in the U.S. basically mean nothing over there. If you have space to move forward, use it. Driving over there can be described as “one big close call.” The roads are for the most part very old, very small and extremely congested. They are also crowded by people, cars, trucks, bicycles, carriages, rickshaws, dogs, cows, cattle and an occasional camel or elephant.

It takes about one week to get accustomed to the driving there. Till then, your heart will stop many times on a simple drive. Yet somehow the chaotic flow of driving seems to work.

TRAFFIC
Traffic is terrible. The larger cities are starting to literally choke on themselves, as growth has been sprinting along, but infrastructure has taken a back seat. During peak hours, going only a few kilometers away by car can sometimes take more than an hour. In that time you mainly sit and wait. The traffic is often so compacted that even bicycles cannot pass through the cracks. I’d say of all the cities, Hyderabad had the worst traffic.

There are TONS AND TONS of motorcycles and scooters on the roads because a car is such a hassle. Let’s not even start talking about trying to find parking.

CORRUPTION
Just like the last time I went, corruption is still very rampant on all scales. If you need a permit or any government approval, the way to get it done quickly is by bribing the right people….otherwise your approval will take forever. Police officer pulled you over for running a red light? Just slip him some money along with you driver’s license and you’re off the hook!

THE BAD FUTURE
Like all things which grow too fast, they are followed by a downfall. While everyone is reveling in the great economy and how fast India is growing…like everything, it will be followed by some sort of downturn. It will then stabilize and grow again, but this time more cautiously. Just like in the 1950’s, people started spending much more than they earned thanks to credit and loans. I see the same thing starting to happen there.

THE GOOD FUTURE
India still has a long way to go. Over the next 15 to 20 years I see their economy doing great things, but not without bumps along the way. As their middle class rapidly increases, the demand for more consumer goods, services and entertainment will drastically increase. With such a massive population, more and more people will continue to enter the middle class.

I’ll post some interesting ways of doing business in India later.

In two days I’ll be going to India, my last trip there was 6 years ago, and from what I hear, things have already dramatically changed since then.

What I’m mainly interested to see is how the rising middle class is affecting the country. Is it like the rise of the massive middle class in the U.S. in the 1950’s, or is it different?

While I’m there I’ll try to visit some of the massive call centers I hear so much about, perhaps make a few contacts. Some of the best engineering talent in the world is in India, so some interesting things must be happening there regarding entrepreneurship. This is a democratic country with tons of talent being used to develop tons of large scale projects, so it’s inevitable that Indian entrepreneurs will spring up all over the place. I’d like to meet some of these people.

Some questions I’ll ask myself while there:

-What brand of cars are becoming prevalent? Fiats dominated the road last time I visited.

-Last time I went, disposal waste per household was extremely low. I remember one guy with a small basket picking up the garbage for every household in an entire colony (equivalent to an apartment complex). Hardly anything was wasted. How has that changed with modern packaging techniques, fast food etc?

-How easy/hard is it to get an internet connection and power outlet for my laptop over there? Is it expensive?

-Cell phone usage?

-Adjusted price comparison of a Big Mac in the United States and India. Over there It’s actually called a Maharaja Mac and is made with lamb or chicken instead of Beef. McDonald’s got in some trouble for serving beef.

-Attitudes towards the United States?

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I’m also highly interested to see if the level of corruption has gone down, as this is one of the more powerful issues I see holding India back.

The way of doing business there is entrenched in bribes and “Bonuses”, many which are now considered a normal part of doing business. The sad thing is the people who enforce the law are involved too, so people are forced to continue the system of bribes in order to get anything done.
For example: If you open a restaurant and need a liquor license, let’s just say unless you pay someone a very large “gratuity” for their work, your license won’t show up for the next 10 years.

This also happens on a smaller scale. For example: If you want to park your car in a no parking zone, an officer will ticket or tow your car unless you “encourage” the officer not to with a monetary incentive.

I also want to try some sort of money experiment while in India. With the sheer amount of poor people already trying to sell stuff, I don’t know if my bottled water experiment would fly over there, so I’ll have to look for something else!

My planned Vegas Gambling Experiment never reached fruition because the night of my birthday I lost my wallet.

I’ve since cancelled and renewed everything in there, but the lack of credit/debit cards left me powerless to purchase anything…so I only had $400 in cash for the trip after that point. This means blowing $200 on gambling wasn’t an option.

On another note, I did make approx $120 from Vegas, but probably because I’m an extremely boring gambler. I’d put a dollar in a machine whenever I would walk by the gaming floors at different casinos, spin a few times, and the second I double my dollar, I’d cash out. This actually happened A LOT. I swear these slot machines felt like free ATM’s. I’d put in a dollar, get $2….put in a dollar, get $6……put in a dollar, get $15…

Of course I lost sometimes also, but little by little the winnings added up to a decent amount. Odds are if you gamble with your winnings, you will lose them…so unless you get great pleasure out of casino gambling (which I don’t) then it’s pointless.

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As for my lost wallet, it seems someone found it, charged $70 of gas on the credit card, got their other car and charged an additional $40 of gas.

Nothing else was charged. It seems an otherwise honest person, found the wallet and took advantage of an easy situation. I’m sure they also enjoyed the $70 of cash inside. Perhaps they could use some of that cash to at least ship back the wallet.

My business cards which have my websites were also in the wallet…so whoever found my wallet might be reading this right now.

Enjoy the free gas!

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I paid for my Vegas trip from the Spending1 and Spending2 accounts.
–Ticket = $300
–My share of Hotel + Internet charges = $140
–Cash spent = $500
–Total Spent = $940

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I sold my first stock in I don’t know how long. It was Baidu (BIDU). It was kind of an impulse purchase I made a while ago after reading TheKirkReport one day. I put $1,000 on it, and a little later it went down 75%. Instead of being rational and quickly selling this very speculative stock I knew nothing about, I held it and haven’t checked it for a very long time. I saw I was recently up 25% and decided to get out. $230 pocketed after fees. Dumb luck, as I knew absolutely nothing about the stock.

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General Account – $ 4,731
Spending Account – $ 87
Spending Account 2 – $ 42
Investment Account – $ 3,704
Bill Account – $ 739
Permanent Savings – $ 4,891
Charity Account – $ 318
Stock Portfolio Value – $ 11,227
Roth IRA – $ 6,912
Emigrant Direct – $ 5,020
Total Liquid Assets – $ 37,671

Credit Card Balance – $ 0
Business Holding – $ 6,645
Total On Hand – $ 44,316

I try not to charge fast food on a card, so I always use cash. If I don’t have enough cash and I feel like being a cheap, I’ll be forced to simply eat very little.

If I only have $1 and some change, I can get something from the value menu at most fast food places. This generally isn’t enough for a dinner…but if you’ve only got a dollar to spare, it’s the best way to fill your stomach on the cheap!

1.) Get the biggest thing with the most nutritional value for your money.
My last poor man meal was at Taco Bell where I got the 1/2 pound Beef Burrito because it contains lots of satisfying meat and costs $1.40 after tax.

2.) Get water.

3.) Slow down the entire eating process.
This is the trickiest part. When hungry it’s hard to slow down eating, but there are a couple of simple tricks to it. Make sure to put the burrito (or whatever) down after each bite, this stops the temptation of taking your next bite too quickly. Take sips of water, read a book etc.. Overall, it should take between 15-20 minutes to finish the whole thing. I have no scientific proof behind it, but it’s the only way to get myself full from a single value menu item.

In the U.S. we’re so used to eating such large quantities, that sometimes we forget it only takes relatively little to fill a stomach. Simply slowing down the eating process makes you feel much more full!

For example, to kill the time between bites I’ll bring stuff to occupy myself.

Of course if you’ve got the means to cook, Ramen is still cheaper, but for me it doesn’t satisfy hunger because it lacks almost any nutritional value.

Bon appetite!

I went to Boston for a week to check the place out, maybe see if I’d like to live there. I had a great time there, flawless weather throughout the trip and a great place to stay. Check out the full panoramic view I had!

After visiting Boston for a week, cruising around, meeting friends, seeing businesses and partying….I found out that Boston is gorgeous in the summer, well educated, well established, but not the place for me.

My main complaints with Boston was the population was too young and there was a complete lack of flavor. Especially trying to go out. You can go to a very large selection of pub-style Irish places, but not much else. I was in the middle of New England, so I kind of expected that.

For partying, everything was relatively spread apart, and the whole place kind of goes dead before 2am, which I didn’t expect from an area with such a dense college population. I did however like the whole MIT/Harvard/BU/Downtown area with the Charles River nearby. It was gorgeous while I was there, although it’ll get cold as hell pretty soon (Something else I don’t particularly like).

So my comparison between Austin and Boston is done, and in my opinion Austin is the winner. Austin has a large amount of diversity in not only race, but also age. It also has different “flavors” around the city. Austin is also FRESH. It has an enormous upside potential, and it will be fun to watch as this city grows and changes. Boston will be pretty much stay the same even after 20+ years.

So based on my three places I could possibly live, Austin is my final choice.

I think my favorite part of getting back to Austin was seeing my Scarabeo in my living room. For some reason I got a kick big from seeing it indoors!

This was actually a very cheap trip overall. I spent $260 on the plane ticket and only $250 the whole time I was there….Not bad!

If anyone with an interesting story wants to meet up, please contact me. I’d love to visit some local companies, see how things are run etc…

Also, if anyone knows of any big events or high profile parties going down in Boston from Oct. 4th till 10th, I’d appreciate a heads up. A large purpose of this trip is to make new contacts, so if you’ve got any leads, let me know!

One year ago I got the idea from MillionDollarHomepage.com to sell pixel squares on the site. This was a complete fad, and people were buying pixels to benefit from curious clickers and the search engine benefits of having more links.

I put them in the right hand corner of the site for a year, and so far here’s what happened from this little experiment.

• A total of $2,300 was made from 46 squares sold.
• 17 different people bought space on the site for $50 a square.
• I learned that taking advantage of a fad makes people actually pay $50 for a little square.
• The more people buy squares, the less value they have. People will only click a few squares out of curiosity.
• There were 110 comments on the pixel square post, a lot of them along the lines of, “I once thought this guy was legit, but now he is coming off as a slimy used car salesman!”
• The only person who made A LOT of money from selling little squares was the MillionDollarHomePage.com guy.

A year later, I’m taking these pixel ads down. The last pixel order I got was in May 2006. It was a fun little experiment, and the only real money I’ve ever made from this blog.

So goodbye Pixel Sale! Thanks for the money :-)
-Nev