Chicken Poop, Chocolate Goop, Hair Gels and Can’t Sells.
Posted on March 9, 2007 by Brian under Life, School.
Last night my wife took me to a speaker panel for 4 of the most prominent entrepreneur’s in the city of Wichita. One was Craig Allen of “Craig Allen Salon’s” the other was the owner of “Coco Dulce” a chocolate boutique, the third was the Sister of the owner/creator of “Chicken Poop” lip balm and the last was a poor guy trying to get an over worked idea to work for him. Over all the speakers were very good and the information was interesting for those that were there to learn how to start your own business. I think most of the people that were there were only there to fulfill a class credit or something.
This poor guy that had the web idea (a social place like MySpace but for sports) was one of the people that i feel will not make it as far as getting his business off the ground. The whole MySpace thing is a done deal. It was nice when it was new and at the moment there are so many social sites available that one more is just a drop in the bucket. I felt for this guy because he says he works a full time job, comes home to his kids and then programs till 2 in the morning. I told my wife that he just needs to come up with something more origional. The “Craig Allen” guy is another that I think wont last past 5 years. This is a novel concept, a salon geared solely towards men, but its a changing world. Guys are no longer moving towards $55.00 haircuts, reguardless of the environment. He stated that he is looking to expand his business in other states. I told my wife, “He may be able to get this idea to last in like California, Dallas, New York or maybe even Florida. However, here in Wichita its not going to last, the people here are just to frugal. They will try a concept for a while but when the novelty wears off the business eventually fizzles out and dies”. I think the people that will be in business for a long time are the Chicken Poop people and the Chocolate person. These are 2 concepts that we dont currently have in Wichita. Chicken Poop has gone nationwide thanks to Walgreens and is running neck in neck with Burt’s Bees, another natural’s creator. I told my wife that this is an idea that will be around for a while. Create a product out of natural ingreadents, give it a catchy name and package it to appeal to the customers eye. They have done all of this and its paid off for them in major ways. The chocolate place it great because they are appealing to not only the upper middle class house wife, but the corperate person that is looking for that “Something Special” for there end customers, bosses, CEO’s or whatever that they are wanting. This is a great concept that will be around for a while.
All-in-all this was a great speech sessions and i was glad that my wife drug me too it. Originally i did not want to go but i broke down (i can never tell my wife no, i may put up a good fight but in the end…i love her to much to deny her anything) and finally went. I took away some good knowledge if i wanted to start my own business and I think in the future if I do want to start my own business, i know who in town to turn to for advise.
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Blogging for Dollars
Posted on March 8, 2007 by Ching under Web.
So I’m still waiting for my first check from AdBrite.. How exciting! For the first time in years (and I must say years because I have been doing this online thing for over a decade now) my web site is actually generating some revenue. Cool, huh?
There are actually several ways to make money using your web site. You can sell goods or services. Basically you just follow the web catalog revenue model. Almost every web site that you buy merchandise from online falls under this category.
Then there’s the digital content revenue model. Examples of firms using this model are Lexis.com and ProQuest.
Then there are the web sites riddled with ads (like this one; heh heh). This is what you call the advertising-supported revenue model.
Then there are web portals like AOL and Yahoo! and there’s the subscription model or sometimes also implemented as an advertising-subscription mixed revenue model.
Then there’s the fee-for-transaction and fee-for-service revenue models. There are many other revenue models and firms often transition from one model to another if revenues aren’t sustained or sometimes the transitions are driven by their growth strategies.
For blogs the prevalent revenue model is the advertising-supported. There are people who do the pay-per-post thing which I have never really succeeded at—I tried it a couple of times but my blog entries never could make the cut. So I just gave up.
I pretty much have stuck to advertising. So I put ads all over the page hoping that some kind, generous soul will click on them and help me make some money.
I use several. Among them, LinkShare is the best. They usually only send me a couple of bucks now and then. However, the last check they sent was for $37. It came as a pleasant surprise to both Brian and I. It is the biggest one I have received so far.
AdBrite isn’t too bad. But I’m still waiting to get paid. =P
Google’s AdSense is great because it is the most customizable—but it is taking me a while to earn my first check. 🙁 Hopefully, I’ll reach the $100 mark soon so they can finally send me my very first payment.
Amazon Associates is okay, but it doesn’t seem like I’ll ever get a check from them. I’m hardly earning anything. You guys need to click on my Amazon ads and maybe buy some stuff from my store. =P
I can’t complain overall. I never thought of this web site as a means for generating revenue. I dreamt that someday it would, but I didn’t really think it would happen. I’m really pleased that I’m making a little bit of money out of it. So far the site is well on its way to paying for itself, which is very, very nice. Hopefully, I won’t jinx myself by blogging this. 😉 Remember to click on these ads!
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Bonefish Grill Rocks
Posted on March 5, 2007 by Ching under Flickr, Food and Drink.
Brian and I finally got a chance to redeem the $45 gift certificate we received from Bonefish nearly a month ago. I love Mondays because it’s my pretty much my free night these days. Free night meaning no school, no poker, no nothing. Only Heroes, one of our favorite shows. So we can pretty much go out to dinner and have a nice evening.
Anyway, I decided to try their sangria this time. I didn’t get a chance to try it last time because we didn’t want to get carried away. However, since our meal was pretty much free I thought I would get a drink so we’d have some sort of check to pay (alcoholic beverages were excluded from our certificate/coupon thing).
The one thing I noticed about their sangria was that it was more wine-y than fruity. I typically prefer fruity-tasting sangria since I’m not much of a wine fan. After a couple of gulps, however, the sangria started tasting pretty good. It wasn’t the best sangria I’ve ever had, but it’s possibly one of the strongest. By the middle of our meal I was feeling pretty good (and borderline obnoxious). Brian actually wanted to go walk around Best Buy after dinner, but we canceled that idea after my sangria. LOL. I really can’t drink anymore.
This time we had the Bang Bang Shrimp, Imperial Mahi Mahi (one of the specials), Sirloin and Creme Brulee. I skipped the best corn chower ever because the last time I had it, I got too full to eat my meal. If you go to Bonefish, however, I highly recomend it. Because it is simply the best corn chowder ever. It has big hunks of crab meat in it.
The Bang Bang Shrimp did not disappoint, though. Lance recommend it because he and Lisa had it the last time they were there and he said it was spectacular. Naturally, we had to try it. He was absolutely right. The Bang Bang Shrimp was delicious. Brian even loved it. He said it’s the best shrimp he’s had. His salad and our bread came shortly so we didn’t get a chance to finish the shrimp, but I had a few more of course. It was really good stuff.
My mahi mahi was good, but I didn’t get a chance to eat much of it as I got full from the shrimp. This always seems to happen. Anyway, Brian said that his sirloin was outstanding. He said it was still juicy despite being well-done. It was possibly the best sirloin he’s ever had. Although, his angel hair marinara (the side item he chose) was not very good. It was watery and didn’t have enough marinara sauce, I thought. Then again, pasta really isn’t their specialty. But then, they ought to try to make everything good so I would suggest improving this dish. (more…)
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Recent Poker Development
Posted on March 4, 2007 by Ching under Flickr, Poker.
Who are you? And what have you done with my husband?
Over the last few weeks, Brian has blossomed into a poker an amazing poker player. It seemed like it was not too long ago when he was whining about all the crappy ATC (any two cards) players, getting sucked out on either on the turn or river, always getting knocked out early or before me, and not being taken seriously. He’d constantly get crap about having to wait for me to get knocked out and he used to always be teased whenever he would outlast me as if it were an amazing feat. Honestly, one one point—because of the way that he played—it was.
“I just want people to take me seriously,” he’d complain to me on many a drive home. Most of the time I would lecture: quit the ATC thing (he would complain about people getting lucky against him but he was one who was prone to playing iffy hands himself; his attitude was it’s okay if I get lucky but I’m going to be really upset if you get lucky against me), only play premium hands, raise or fold (believe it or not, the way to last in a tournament setting is by not getting involved in too many hands), and have a positive attitude. “If you want people to take you seriously, you have to play well. And quit the unsportsman-like behavior,” I’d often preach.
He would get so upset sometimes and all he’d talk about were his bad beats by these crazy poker players. He’d whine about how much he hated playing at APL because of all the donkeys. He’d steam all the way home. I hated these conversations because they weren’t productive. Instead of discussing our respective games, he’d just be whining, whining, whining. There was nothing to learn in whining.
I think the turning point came when I finally got fed up. I said, “Stop it.” The incessant whining finally got to me. I have bad beats, too. Everyone does. I don’t whine about them all the way home, though. I think about how I played. I think about whether I played my cards right and they just got lucky, or whether I could have done something—anything—differently in order to prevent getting beat. Could I have pushed the other player out earlier—either pre-flop or after the flop—by a more substantial bet? How could I have minimized my losses or gotten away from certain hands. These are the things I like to think about going home. I can only tolerate so much whining. (more…)
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Tax Season Blows (Again)
Posted on February 24, 2007 by Ching under Life.
It used to be that I loved tax time. Tax time to me was synonymous with two words: tax refund. That’s actually how Brian came to get his big screen TV years ago. It was a good refund year for me. Then again, we used to file separately. Now we are filing jointly and man, how that changes things.
Last year we had to pay $1600 plus in taxes. Brian and I cashed out our 401Ks from our previous employers and we got dinged big time. Cashing out your 401K is never a good idea. Any smart person will tell you that.
In Brian’s case he didn’t have a choice (if I am recalling this correctly). I think his balance was below the threshold that the firm was willing to keep without penalty. Of course, if you continue to make contributions, they don’t penalize you but Brian didn’t have another job at the time so we couldn’t make any additional contributions. The only thing to do was take it out.
I my case, I cashed out my 401K out of anger. I was mad at a credit card company for making me feel smaller than a mealworm so I decided to pay them off and never do business with them ever again. Of course, I really didn’t have the money to pay them off. The money had to come from somewhere and the only place I could get money from was my old 401K. So that’s the story there.
Last year was really crummy for us tax-wise. This year is still pretty crummy but at least we don’t have to pay $1600. We only have to pay about $800 ($150 to Federal and $650 to the state of Kansas) so it is half what we paid last year.. But we still have to pay. Man, I really miss the days of tax refunds!
Anyway, Brian is pretty happy with his current employer so there won’t be any job-hopping. I’m hopeful that the stability will help when it’s time to do taxes for 2007 next year. I could really use some refunds, specially since I’ll have to start paying on $50K in student loans. Yuck!
Of course, Brian had to point out that if we had a child we’d have an automatic $3500 tax deduction. All things remaining the same, we’d actually end up with a $2700 refund if this were the case.
The refund may seem tempting but that’s not a good reason to have children. And to be honest, raising a child takes a lot of time, love, and responsibility (among other things) so it’s not just about money. However, if you want to talk in dollar terms. The $3500 tax deduction really doesn’t cut it. The government is getting off cheap. Bump that deduction up to $10K and maybe I’ll think about it.
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