Live Learn Invest

General Update

This isn’t really two general updates in a row.  I just didn’t want to spend time on the title of a general post.  As some of you may have noticed my blog posting frequency has gone down in the past month.  Truthfully, I just don’t feel like taking the time to write a blog post daily and most of the time its because there’s nothing new to write about.

But I wanted to continue upon my post from yesterday because there are so many things that I didn’t touch on.

Regarding the Houston Apartments, the management team is now managing over 600 units in Houston after Apartment #2 closes.  They are already working on the next 2 deals in Houston.  Unfortunately, I’m out of funds to invest in more apartments over there.

Ebiz#3 officially kicked off today.  No orders and just 20+ visitors.

I’d like to announce Ebiz#4.  It’s something that I’m pretty excited about doing.  It’s also something that has great potential.  I’ve got a bunch of major partners in on this project.  We’ve being working with developers on Elance to bid this project and it’s been a learning experience.  But we’ve finally selected a development company and things are going to start rolling now.

Unlike the potential $1,500/month for Ebiz’s#1, this one has huge monthly potential.  The goal is to value the company valued at over $1 million within a year.  In fact, since we decided to go ahead with this project it has snowballed.  So you can see why I haven’t been putting alot of effort into Ebiz1 for now.  It’s a best possible use of time thing. 

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General Update

Time for another update.

Apartment #2 has been funded.  We reached the goal of raising the $2.7 million.  It is scheduled to close at the end of the month.  We have locked in interest rates today at 6.15%.

My tenant at SLC townhome #1 moved out last week.  My PM is trying to find a new tenant right now.  I hope I don’t have a vacancy for too long.

Ebiz#1 business picked up in the beginning of this month.  Ebiz#3 is almost ready to go.  I know I keep saying that, but the credit card processing is working, all the products are on the site and all I’m waiting for is to get some of the product in stock.

Poker is going well.  I’m going to play some more satelite tourneys to try to qualify for the WSOP in July 2008.  My account is still hovering in the $1,000 range.

I went to personal training for one session, then I got sick the next day so I had to postpone the next two sessions.  Not a good way to get started.  I noticed that I always seem to get sick right after I start a new workout routine.  I wonder why that is.

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Personal Trainers

I finally bit the bullet and hired a personal trainer for working out.  I have been pondering this for years.  I mean do I need to pay someone to tell me how to workout and what exercises to do?  But in the past year I’ve really hated working out.  I can’t last at a gym more than 15 minutes without getting bored and leaving.

The one thing I’ve noticed is that after all these years, my routine is usually the same whenever I get back into gym mode.  Over the past 15 or so years of working out, you tend to favor a core set of exercises.  So many over the last 15 years I may have done 2000 more bench press reps than dumbbell rows just because I always started with chest.  That imbalance in reps would lead you to have certain muscles overdeveloped as compared to other ones.  It’s just a natural tendency.

My trainer was quick to find those flaws with a series of exercises.  Sometimes when you can’t do something simple, its not cause you’re not flexible or limber.  It’s cause you muscle is so weak that it can’t pull you that way and that’s pretty sad.

Today was my first session with my personal trainer.  It was a simple set of exercises.  The biggest difference was that I had a trainer constantly watching my form.  Honestly, it felt really different to have someone tell me how high to lift and what speed and to watch my back for arching etc…  The working out part is easy for me.

The hard part for me is diet.  I have been keeping a log of what I ate the past week.  One look at the log and she said, “You need to eat about 3 times this amount” and “protein shakes will be your best friend.”  I don’t know if I can eat that much.  Basically, I need to eat 9 meals a day or increase the size of my current meals.  I guess that how I’ve always stayed a slim and trim 5′11″ and 147 lbs.

So I have two months worth of personal training and I’m not going to waste it by working out hard and then not eating properly.  I guess the money aspect will or should make you stick to the plan.  I can’t quit now, it’s all been paid for.  BTW, my goal is to gain 5-8 lbs of muscle in the next 8 weeks.

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Making Money Online - April 2008

Here are the numbers for April. 

Adsense revenue from this blog: $104
Adsense revenue from other sites: $24
Revenue from advertising sales: $48
Revenue from affiliate sales: $0
Ebiz’s: $718

Total Revenue: $894

Adsense from this blog took a slight jump up.  There was really nothing special about any of the numbers this month.

Ebiz1 had a slow month.  In fact it was the second worst month so far.  Being new to this niche, I don’t know what the cycles are like for my product.  I definitely know that there is a seasonal cycle.  Maybe April is just a slow month.

One way I can tell if it’s just me or not is when I order from my dropshippers.  When I place an order, I get an order number.  So let’s say I order something on Monday and get order number 100.  Then I order on Tuesday and get order number 150.  That’s not a good sign for me, because my dropshipper has shipped 50 units in that day and I only got one of those orders.  If I order on Tuesday and I have order number 103, then I know that the entire market is slow.

Ebiz2 I’ve officially shut down.  I’m going to reuse it as soon as I find another product.  All I need to do is get a new URL, change the logos and products and I’m up and running again.

Ebiz3 should be up in two weeks.  The Volusion software is much more complicated than the OScommerce so the setup has been taking a while.

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.ASIA Domain auctions

I talked about my attempt to get some .asia domain names in March.  Well, I did not outright win any of them.  However, the auctions have finally now started.  What sucks is that I charged over $2,000 on my credit card and I won’t get that refunded until the auctions have completed.  So I’m paying the interest for several months.

My first .asia auction still has 15 days to complete and so far there’s only one bid for $10.  I wonder if I’m only bidding against a few people or if people are going to wait until the last day and then start the real bidding.  If I can snag any of the domains I tried for for under $100, I think it’d be a bargain.

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The Orange County Adventure Race

This past weekend I participated in the Orange County Adventure Race.  I’d like to say that I competed, but once again we did not place very well.  You can see the results here, our team name was Live Learn Invest.

The Orange County Adventure Race consisted of 3 main principles, boating, mountain biking and trail running.  The race started off with all teams running to three checkpoints.  At each checkpoint you picked up some material needed to make a paddle.  The total distance covered by running all three checkpoints was 1 mile.

The next step was to build a paddles out of a wood stick and a board and tie wraps.  While I was building the paddles my race partner Eddy was blowing up the boat.  You can see my amazingly built paddles in the picture below.  Yes, we took the time to take pictures during the race.  See how competitive we are!

The next section of the race was to paddle out and back about 1 mile in the lake.  When we got our boat into the water we counted about 40 boats in front of us.  Since there were about 90 teams, we were in the middle of the pack. 

Paddling is obviously not our strong point because as we got back from the boat leg, there were only about 15-20 boats behind us, so we had lost at least 25 places.

The next step was a small obstacle course which ended with a small wall climb which I underestimated on my first jump.

Then it was the mountain biking leg which was 6 miles.  This leg was easy for us since we both mountain bike alot and we passed a good number of teams.  Unfortunately, 6 miles was a short distance and there weren’t many climbs that would have helped us catch many more teams.

The final leg was a 3 mile run.  We started off at a jog but Eddy’s knee started to hurt so we walked the last 2 miles of the run.  We figured that the walking cost us about 6 places in the standings.

In the end we finished the total race of 11 miles in 2:45 (2 hours 45 minutes).  In the 2 person team division overall we came in 29th out of 40th.  But in the men’s 2 person division we came in 2nd to last. 

The first place team finished in 2:06.  This was the first OC Adventure Race and the turn out was great.  I have a feeling that there will be many more to come.

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Apartment #1 Update

It’s been two months since my last update on Apartment #1.  The last time I wrote about Apartment 1 I said that pro-forma revenue is around $82,000/mo for the complex and we are at about $66,000/mo.   In March we dropped down to $62,000/mo in rental income.

Although vacancy is actually lower, we had greater rent concessions and bad debt which amounted to the $4,000 drop in income.

The renovations are almost complete.

Overall, we are slightly behind our Year 1 goals.

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