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I love doing business and entrepreneuring because I feel proud of the accomplishments I achieve. I am young and trying to make it, so business is a pretty high priority right now…but all work and no play makes Nev a dull boy.

I am definitely a party person. I cannot stay home on the weekends.

I regularly go out on business lunches to places most college students cannot afford on a regular basis, but my hosts can. These lunches, trips and special accesses are all part of the fun of business. Most of the time they are not even about money. It’s important to form a good business relationship, but more important to form a good personal relationship.

Last night I was treated by two very generous hosts to a night on the town, let’s call them “Bob” and “Vinny”. Both are very young and very successful. We went to a bunch of hotspots all across town, no waiting in lines, no identification checks, all V.I.P. and I didn’t spend a cent.

I’m not going to reveal exactly how much money they dropped this Thursday night, but let’s just say they could’ve paid my tuition. Businesses is good, eh ;)

Now it’s Friday…time for some more partying!

The popularity of Tablet PC’s is on the rise. As a 2-year user of a Toshiba M200, I firmly believe that all laptops will soon be outfitted with the flip screen and pen function.

If you get in early, I think there are some great opportunities to a piece of action in the…

Audible Inc (ADBL) – Provider of Internet audio information.
Sigmatel Inc (SGTL) – Designs and develops analog-intensive, mixed-signal integrated circuits.
Portalplayer Inc (PLAY) – Designs, develops and markets comprehensive platform solutions.

As a college student and a proctor in a computer lab, I can personally attest to the fact that laptops are getting ever more popular as described in this USA Today article (here). Mark Cuban writes in his personal blog how desktops are boring.

This tablet technology will soon burst its way into mainstream when prices come down a bit and people become more familar with the technology. I consider myself an extremely fast and adept computer user, and a simple mouse does not cut it. ESPECIALLY those slow touch-pads on laptops.

So if you happen to have any inside information about where certain specialized tablet parts come from, let me know!

My most useful tool to help me understand how much money I truly have to waste is immediately distributing incoming money to its respective accounts soon as it comes in.

For example, yesterday my bi-weekly paycheck was directly deposited into my general account (The point where all money goes in and out of my hands). The total came to $246. The FIRST thing I did was login to my Bank of America account and transfer the money in the following amounts:

• $49 to Bills Account (20%)
• $49 to Spending Account (20%)
• $74 to Permanent Savings (30%)
• $74 to Investment Account (30%)
• Total = $246

So the money has been distributed into the different accounts and it can no longer tempt me to spend it by sitting in one giant account. Only 20% of it goes into my spending account which can be spent on any frivilous expenditure I choose. If I don’t have enough money in the spending account, I don’t buy it.

Yesterday was one of those awsomely hectic days where you run from place to place (I love those), but the highlight of the day was seeing Carl Stuart speak at a University Investors Association meeting. He has been hosting a personal finance radio show based in Austin for over 10 years. The man KNOWS HIS STUFF. I’ve never seen someone so adept at quckly answering a barrage of quick, tough personal finance questions. He also manages over $250,000,000 of other people’s money.

Some of the interesting points he brought up:

• We experience financial losses twice as hard as we experience gains.
• Only two investments have consistently outpaced inflation: Stock and real estate.
• Doing financial research on the interenet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.
• The two best teachers are Trial and Error

It turns out he too was a political science major who just wanted to get out of college and jump into the real world. It seems he’s done pretty well for himself so far!

The water experiment was a success, but I got lots of emails saying that $5 in profit per hour was not worth it….some points to consider:

• I made that money in 30 min, not 1 hour.
• I overpaid Barry.
• I only had 24 bottles. Lesson learned: Next time bring several cases.
• I can get someone else to do this for me.

And the MAIN POINT: I can turn almost no money into a much larger amount now that I have learned the above lessons. That was the point of this experiment.

This could easily be a $40 an hour activity for a kid looking to score some quick cash.

Some said I was still being paid for my time much like a job. This is true. BUT….I have made an agreement with Barry to set him up with 5 cases of chilled water and a large cooler with ice. He will sell them all day from 11am till 5pm and we will split the profit.

If he simply runs away with my investment I stand to lose approx. $33:

If all goes well, I can possibly make approx. $48.50:

If Barry does all the selling, all I have to do is drive over the cooler, water and ice to his corner. Not a bad deal.

Identify the “next big stock” or “next iPod” and get rich! Well, even Ms. Cleo can’t predict that, so an easier route is to spot upcoming trends such as the recent oil surge. Easier said than done.

I have been looking for a place to park some money for the long term, and I have come across a few trends which have the potential to explode in value:

1.) Water. Kirk absolutely loves water stocks, and for good reason. In scarce supply, drinking water is more valuable than gold, oil and money because it is vital to our existence yet taken for granted. With a rapidly increasing world population and a mass exodus of people moving towards large, condensed cities, Kirk’s long term positions on water make tons of sense. I have a feeling that water companies in countries with current severe water problems would fair better than American companies.

2.) Batteries. Battery technology has always lagged behind the technology sector, and everyone is just about fed up. We need some fuel supply for our mega-capable portable devices of today that can last for weeks, months, years at a time without recharge. On some phones the largest component is the battery. On laptops the heaviest component is the battery. As a laptop user I abhor “plugging in”. In a world which is getting increasingly portable, the market for long-lasting, reliable, relatively affordable power supplies is HUGE HUGE HUGE. Any advice on how to catch this wave? I am looking towards some fuel cell technologies and Energizer (ENR). Drop me some sector fund names if you know any that concentrate on portable energy.

3.) Nanotech. That term is so vague and can be applied in so many areas that it’s basically a crap-shoot trying to pick the right stocks without vigorously keeping up with the sector. Since that is not my plan, I will soon invest in a nanotechnology fund. Holding this for a long period of time (10-15 years at least) could prove profitable as new breakthroughs occur and people start pouring more money into the sector. The key here is to get in at a time when nanotech is not in the news for a while. BUT….nanotech has been a buzzword for quite sometime, and lots of people have lost lots of money investing in it so far. Start looking for companies who are turning their research into actual products, because companies that do only research make no money. Look for nanotech to appear in places you would never expect. Here is a Forbes article on best nanotech products.
Right now it seems sports products have caught the nano bug already, I expect to see it in the luxury goods area in a few years. Being creative, I imagine new nanotech fabrics, creams, materials etc. will start to appear in these places:

• High end, ultra-warm yet THIN winter coats.
• New, ultra-luxurious interior fabrics for luxury cars
• All over the exterior of cars in the form of scratch resistant body panels, rain-resistant windsheilds, super-road-hugging tires
• Some sort of new material to use on paper currency making it much more difficult to counterfeit
• Ultra-thin yet ultra-effective insulations for pipes, cables etc.

These are the types of things I expect to see in the upcoming years. I can go on forever, but you get the point. Nanotech can be used in countless areas, some areas which most likely no one even knows about yet. Back in 1960, who would have thought silicon would become so widely used?

So a little while back I bought two flat-panel LCD monitors for my desktop computer. It was cool while it lasted running dual monitors, but since I am never at home I have started to use my Tablet PC almost 100% of the time. Hopefully someone else could put better use to these monitors than I can.

Therefore, on Ebay I am selling my:

• 18.1″ Atec Neoview Flat Panel LCD w/ TV Tuner & Remote
• 17″ Flat Panel Samsung SyncMaster 175v LCD Computer Monitor

These two monitors should generate a little income for me also.

Well a lot of people are against the gambling idea! I will still give it a whirl to see what comes from it. If anything, it will be a nice $200 lesson for me.

I might also buy $100 worth of $1 scratch-off lottery tickets and display the averages of my winnings, this has been an experiment I’ve wanted to try for some time now. It would not only be educational as I would have to do a little research on statistics and averages, but it would also be kind of fun! Would anyone else like to see me do this?

I have another article in the Daily Texan tommorrow on qualities employers look for, I’ll post it tommorrow!

To date, the primary source of investing I have done with my investment account money is stock. Once the account balance hits $1,000 I put $500 into my Ameritrade account.

Right now I have $1,217 to invest. $500 will most likely go to stock soon, but I have $217 to play around with. I’ve previously used extra money like this to buy business clothing, but I want to do something different this time.

Gambling to me is not only entertainment, it can be a form of investing. Some friends of mine constantly play online poker for entertainment (and of course to make money) and they make decent returns every once in a while, but online poker is extremely time consuming. Online sports betting was brought to my attention by The Alpha Guy.

I don’t know much about sports, but after doing some research I found you can place relatively safe bets that turn small profits. If played out right with no emotion involved, this could possibly churn out some small profits here and there with very little time and research involved. The high stakes gambling can be left for trips to Vegas :)

Obviously there are risks, but what doesn’t have risks? Even if I lose this $217, I will consider it a $217 class on statistics, odds and risk management. Hey, that’s cheaper than taking a statistics course in college!

Properly utilizing Google and other search engines is one of the keys to online business success. I don’t spend a single cent advertising my online business that brings in between $500 and $1,000 per month. I have simply optimized the site for Google and the like.

Here is a quick guide on how to improve your PageRank.

What NOT to do:
DO NOT try to trick Google. I have done this before by creating a sleu of blogs that all linked to each other and my business. I was penalized for using “invisible” links that were the same color as the background and making a web of pointless links. Google recognized that I was “cheating” and dropped my PageRank to the point where I had the worst sales in years. It took me over 6 months to correct this mistake.

WHAT TO DO:
1.) Name all of your pages. Do not leave pages named www.whatever.com/Product123.html. Make sure you name your pages according to product names etc. such as www.Whatever.com/Cool_Flashing_Gizmo.html. This improves your chances of coming in a higher search result.

2.) Name your images. The images for your cool flashing gizmo should be named: “Cool_flashing_gizmo.jpg” etc.

3.) Update frequently. Leaving your site stale does nothing for you. Update something, ANYTHING, every two days. Search engines recognize your site is active, therefore boosting your credibility. Search engines will also crawl your site more often, allowing you to take advantage of recent updates.

4.) Create a blog for your business. Keep your customers updated with a nice business blog. Talk about your products and link to your business. A blog lets customers know that your business is active, and that there is a person on the other side of that website.

HOW DO I KNOW I’M RIGHT?
Try typing in “Miserable Failure” on Google. The first result is “The Biography of George W. Bush.” This happened because a bunch of bloggers put links on their page like this: Miserable Failure. See what power we have!

EXPERIMENT
One of the top search keywords I get for my site is surprisingly “Starbucks Liquor” I did a post about it a while ago. I will make this link, Starbucks Liquor, and see how much it boosts my position when Googled. Right now I am the 8th result. If a couple other of you bloggers make the link Starbucks Liquor in your blog, with the link pointing to www.NevBlog.com, my position will move higher.

I had a goal of setting up a third, steady side income by 3.15.2005. Obviously that goal was due yesterday and I haven’t set up anything new. My asnwer to that is to rejuvinate my efforts with Resumite.com. I see a lot of potential in this market towards the end of this school semester when people will be actively searching for jobs.

When I go back to Austin on Sunday, I will have a new 4-bedroom apartment waiting across the hall from my existing 2-bedroom thanks to the efforts of my roommate. He somehow managed to get our apartment upgraded without any moving fees!

On Thursday I will be attending a Zarthusti Chamber of Commerce meeting. Many memebers of the Zoroastrian community (I am Zoroastrian) are very well established in the business world, and it is nice to network and listen to what they have to say.