Nima Heydarian - Engineer, Entrepreneur, eCommerce Consultant

Dallas Industrial Automation Group

Nima — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:58:22 +0000

As I said few posts earlier, I just moved to Dallas. After getting settled here I started looking for clubs and networking events to join. I always liked LinkedIn and their professional groups. I had been a member of such groups in other cities and had attended their events. They are usually a great place to meet people and make contacts in your own industry (in this case Industrial Automation).

Well, I didn’t see any such group in Dallas and therefore I started to start one. Here it is: Dallas Industrial Automation Engineers. Hopefully I can start it off by getting some of my co-workers and customers to join the group and expand it from there. The goal is to have one get together every month to discuss current events in the industry and network with each other.

If you would like to join simply go to the group’s page and click join. Also if you have any suggestions for the group I will be very interested to hear it.

PHP Galleria Upgrade Completed

Nima — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 18:27:07 +0000

I bought PHP Galleria a while ago on Flippa for $1500. I redesigned it, added new features, did some SEO on it, and few usability upgrades. Hopefully it will result in conversion increase.

Following is a complete list of all that was done to the site:

Bought a new OsCommerce template for it and integrated it ($125)
Added new features such as Google Sitemap, easier checkout process, better categorization of products.
Made some on-site search engine optimizations such as more descriptive product descriptions, H1 and H2 tags, title tags, SEO URLs, better linking structure.

My total cost of the site including site purchase, coding work, and template was $1500+$45+125-$400 = $1265. The last $400 was refunded back to me from the original owner because PHP Galleria files had some sort of malware of it when I got it (which I removed and now does not affect the site anymore).

Right now the site makes about $100 to $150 a month. I am hoping to improve it to $250 to $300 a month and then sell the site back on Flippa.

How Site Looked Before:

How Site Looks Now:

Escrow Transaction in Dispute is Over

Nima — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:11:30 +0000

Over a month ago I bought a website from someone on Flippa who turned out to be a scam artist. I wrote about the story a while ago too.

Long story short: Once I bought the site, I paid through Escrow and he sent me the files. The traffic was not even close to what he was claiming on the auction. The earnings were off too (Adsense earning). Since traffic was about 1/100 what he was claiming I doubted the legitimacy of the Adsense income too.

Anyways, I decided to return the site and needless to say the owner wasn’t happy. He filed a dispute with Escrow and dragged it (literally) as long as possible. This meant going through three different phases of dispute resolution each about 2 weeks.

Today I received an email from Escrow that they are going to wire my money ($1700) back to my account which is great news. The site’s owner has actually completely abandoned the site which is now a parked domain. He was claiming $400 a month income on it at the auction.

After this experience I am never going to buy another website (or sell it) using any form of payment other than Escrow. It might have taken a long time to get my money back but at least I did.

I Live in Dallas Now

Nima — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 15:37:16 +0000

About two weeks ago (after one week of planning) Rockwell Automation moved me to Dallas, Texas area. I now live in Dallas itself and am starting to get to know the area. So far I love the city (far better than Cleveland or freaking Indiana).

So far I’ve been mostly traveling here to customers in Texas and Louisiana area. Sometimes I have to drive over 4 hours to a customer and 4 hours back which gives me plenty of time to finish my audio books (or re-listen to old ones).

I’m hoping to find some time soon, find an entrepreneur or web designer group/club around here and make some friends. Anyone from Dallas area that actually reads my blog?

Audiobook Suggestions

WordPress Pages Not Showing Up

Nima — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:52:55 +0000

I had yet another problem on Automation News. At first the wordpress posts were showing up blank. I got that fixed.

Now the pages were not showing up at all. I could see the pages in the admin area but when browsing to them on the site I was getting 404 error pages.

Here is how I got mine fixed:

Turned Permalinks to default
Saved it
Turned Permalinks to what it was before

Don’t ask me how it worked but it did.

WordPress Posts Are Blank – How To Fix It

Nima — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:51:28 +0000

Few days ago all the posts on Automation News WordPress blog were showing up as blank posts. This happened completely out of nowhere. I hadn’t updated or upgraded any plugins nor did I have edited the template in any way. Here is a screen shot of what the site looked like:

I looked at the database in PHPMyAdmin and lo and behold my WP_Posts table had crashed. A simple database repair fixed it.

To fix yours

Check PHPMyAdmin for any crashed table(s)
Check the box for that table
In the bottom of the PHPMyAdmin page (in the dropdown choices) choose Repair
Your posts are back online

Here is a screen shot of the PHPMyAdmin page:

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BuyHookah.com Review

Nima — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 18:59:32 +0000

Hookah is a water pipe type smoking device. It’s used for smoking flavored tobacco and rather popular in Middle East. I smoke a hookah every now and then (much less often now that I’m not in school anymore). It is relaxing and great for social events.

I bought my hookah from Buy Hookah website (a while ago) and couldn’t be happier with it. I bought the Scorpius Magdy Zidan hookah with Namoor hose. The hose makes all the difference.

My favorite flavor is (by far) Starbuzz Blue Mist, and Starbuzz Blackberry.

I still buy my tobacco and other occasional hookah needs from BuyHookah.com. The shipping is fast and I have no complaints.

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Dear Flippa …

Nima — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 02:58:13 +0000

Dear Flippa,

Please don’t allow autoblog (with HUGE ADSENSE income – as the sellers like to use for the titles) auction listings.

These are not good websites and are honestly filling a large part of Flippa auctions up. I constantly browse Flippa for new websites to buy and hope the quality of the listings stay high.

Webstie Projects Status Update For July

Nima — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:51:52 +0000

Here is a short update on the website’s I worked on last month:

Automation News Website

I started Automation Field Engineer in Jan 2010 as an automation engineering website. Last month I moved it to AutomationNews.org -a much better domain name.

In the beginning I was the only writer. As time passed and the website became better I found other writers to join me 100% profit of their own articles and linking back to their own site at the end of their articles.

Last month yet another writer joined the author’s group for Automation News. We now have 4 engineers and one researcher writing for the site.

I am on the quest to find two or three more writer so we can assure minimum 2 posts a day on the site (weekdays). Once Automation News has over 200 posts (115 right now), has at least 50 feed subscribers (12 right now), and is fully indexed, I will submit it to Google to become a Google News site in Automation and Control industry.

I also changed the site’s theme a bit. Changed the logo and the background from black to white.

Traffic hasn’t improved much on Automation News. It’s at about 1000 unique visitors a month. I believe this is mostly due to the fact we moved domain names. Even though I 301 redirected the old domain in my experience moving domains can cost 15% to 20% of your site’s traffic.

My goals for August is to add two new writers, and make the site rank at worst fourth for the term “Automation News“. Traffic increase would be nice too but it really depends on the content the writers and myself write.

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Biomedical Blog Website

Biomedical Blog is another one of my rather older sites (4 years old) that I had not done anything with for quite a while. Last month I made some substantial changes to it as well.

Added a new theme
Hired new writers
Improved its SEO stuff

Right now I have three writers (other than myself) who write 10 articles a month each which translates a minimum of 1 article a day.

Biomedical Blog has actually been pretty successful so far. Our FeedBurner count is at over 70 subscribers which I am really excited about. Since the improvements traffic has also increased 20%. Still the traffic is at just over 1000 unique visitors a month. I’m hoping to make that 1500 by end of August.

I have similar plan with Biomedical Blog as the Automation News site. Once there are over 200 articles on the site and at least 100 subscribers I will submit the site to Google News as a news source for Biomedical Engineering events, products, and research.

PHP Galleria

PHP Galleria is a PHP web script store. I bought it on Flippa last month and have been doing upgrade work on it. It is still work in progress but should be done by end of this week. I’ll post a detailed update about it over next weekend. You can still read about some of the incremental updates I did last month.

Poison Ivy Treatment

I also made a new website, Poison Ivy Treatment, last month. I had someone from Elance write 3 unique and quality articles ($120) on the subject and put the site online on a WordPress platform.

Traffic right now is at no more than 2 or 3 visitors a day, but all of the site’s pages are indexed by Google. I plan on only submitting to a few free directory submissions a week.

This is more of a test for me to see how well I can make it rank for its own term and analyze its revenue if any. I’m assuming it will take about 6 month or so before it starts generating income. My prediction (hope) is that it would make $50 to $100 a month after 9 month or so from advertising.

Page Peel Advertising PHP Script

Nima — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:11:29 +0000

Have you seen those page peel advertising on the corner of the websites? Once the user point his/her mouse on top of it the corner area, the ad peels off revealing a banner underneath it. The ad can be clicked on and the user is taken to a the advertisers page.

The peel away ads can be placed on your website by a PHP script. It can place the ad on either one of the corners of the page.

On PHP Galleria I’m selling the Peel Away Ad Script for $9.99. Check out the live demo and feel free to ask any questions you have by posting a comment here.

Buy Page Peel Advertising Script

Readers are fed up with pop-up ads and scroll in and out ads. Simply use peel away advertising on your website.? You’ll make some extra cash on the side and your visitors won’t be pissed either.

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