Power of Group Buying

In this fast moving machine world, everyone is busy and doing everything to get they income high to cope up with the increasing prices of everything starting from a pin to a house. Market is so vast and challenging nowadays so every product has to give some offer or the other to increase their sales. By default the first thing a manufacturer thinks is to sell more, so there is always a profit if booked in bulk, this power of group buying is something similar to that. 

Groups are formed within our relatives, friends, neighbors, colleagues etc and try to approach a seller for bulk order and share the discount the seller provides between the group equally, this way each one of us is satisfied with the same product with a discount, sounds simple right. Now how many of us implement this in real life, and in what places these are applicable? how often this can be implemented is another question. For any human, grocery is the first expense in monthly list, so why not we try this first within our friends or colleagues or relative initially ?

Let us take few examples and analyze this group buying concept to actually understand the real power of group buying

Product 1: Complan(Chocolate), 1Kg Pack - Rs.407.00, it already comes as two 500gm pack, so the cost of 500gm is Rs.203.50, where as if you buy only 500gm then the cost is Rs.216.00, almost Rs.13 more, think if you and your friend join together while purchasing this, you are saving Rs.13 in just one product.

Product 2: Britannia Oats, 1Kg pack is Rs.140.00, which brings 400gm to Rs.56.00 and 200gm to Rs.28.00, whereas if you buy them as separate pack of 400gm and 200gm it would cost Rs.58.00 and Rs.32.00 respectively, so again a profit of Rs.2 - Rs.4

Product 3: Ashrivad Atta, 10Kg pack is Rs.289.00 (1kg is Rs.28.9) and 1Kg pack is Rs.35, so if you and your friend are sharing this product, then you end up saving Rs.6 per kg

This is just an example list of items I could think of, you can actually join hands and saving money instead of giving it to the shop keeper or manufacturers extra. In case of  supermarkets bulk offers are very popular like buy 2 get 1 free, think if we just need only 1, we can share with our friend who is willing to buy the same product and enjoy the saving. 

In US, each area has a Group Buying club, where they join hands with members and purchase in bulk from wholesaler and pick up the product from this club, enjoying the profit equally among members, sounds great right. Lets start saving wisely :)

Fire Your Boss - The story behind

The world is now seeing internet revolution, wherever you go, whether it is to launch a song like kolaveri and win the worlds heart or launch a product or sell or buy or do what not using internet. The negative side of internet revolution is people getting cheated by false promotion and magical words. One such case is "Work Online From Home" to get rich. 30% of websites showcase someone whom you do not know showing a cheque with some whoooping amount attracting you, so what is all behind this ?

To my knowledge the most searched phrases in google are

1. How to make quick money

2. Earn money working from home

3. Free money to give away

4. Here is your share of profit

5. Spend 10 minutes daily and you can earn more than $50 everyday

and so on…

But, there is nothing called Free Money in this world. No one will give their money for free, unless you work and bring profit to them. So, don’t get fooled by some one, who sucks your time and effort and pay you peanuts.

I am not discouraging any one that you cannot work or earn money sitting at home. But there is nothing like “Earn $50 every 1 hour or earn $500 per day”, unless you are ready to put so much effort to get paid that handsome sum in your pocket daily.

There are two types of work from home. One is, you are associated with some company or won some online project and work on it. In this matter, you can earn the amount fixed by you and the company / project, as per agreement. Obviously, you know how much time and effort that particular job requires and you need to plan accordingly.

Apart from that, many people looks for wirting articles and earn money online, by attracting views to their articles. Again, it is not going to be so easy as you dream.

1. You need to be creative and capable of developing a single line story into a 3 hours cinema (just an example). Your content should be original

2. You need patience in editing and fixing photos / video to make your content more attractive.

3. You need to spend hours together to write more number of articles. The more the number of articles, the more the page views you receive and more the income you earn.

4. You need to spread the news after you finished publishing your work. For this, you need to log in to your social network sites (literally) and spread the news. Let us say, you are member of 10 social network sites like Facebook, Orkut, twitter, reddit and so on… Then let us say, if you are going to take 2 minutes approximately to log in and post your news in each site, then you need at least 20 minutes completely to spread the news of your new article to your friends circle.

After spreading the news, you cannot stand still waiting for page views to accumulate in your site, unless if your article is so catch and unique to attract people automatically. Otherwise, to make people visit your site, you need to visit them before. We write comments to other users and in turn, they visit ours and leave comments. So, let us say you need 10 comments and so you go and write 10 comments to your friends articles, then it is again going to consume your time. For example, if you take 5 minutes to read and comment an article, then approximately you need 1 hour to complete the entire task.

So, it is like 1 day to think about an article, 1 hour to write about it, 20 minutes to spread the news and again 1 hour to run through friends. So, you need to calculate how much it is worth. So friends, never get fooled by those Magical words “Earn thousands and fire your boss right now”. Because, with your boss, you are assured you will get paid at the month end, where as in working with online, you never know the ups and downs of earnings, unless you reached a level like 3000 or 4000 articles written already and they altogether has the capacity to draw at least $1 per day.

Otherwise, writing is fun and you can enjoy it, without a serious thinking of earning, which will surely raise by time.

BTTR - Back To The Roots

Back To The Roots (BTTR) is a great green initiative by two Berkeley university students. They decided to spend spring break growing mushrooms in the kitchen of their house. Nikhil Arora and Alex Velez stumbled upon a brilliantly simple way to change the way we think about food production.

In 2009, they launched Back to the Roots, which began as a tiny mushroom farm and has since moved full-time into producing irresistible little kits that allow pretty much anyone to grow their own oyster mushrooms. Two months away from graduation, and heading into the corporate world of investment banking & consulting, they came across the idea during a class lecture of being able to potentially grow gourmet mushrooms entirely on recycled coffee grounds. Inspired by the idea of turning waste into wages & fresh, local food, they experimented in Alex's fraternity kitchen, ultimately growing one test bucket of tasty oyster mushrooms on recycled coffee grounds. With that one bucket, some initial interest from Whole Foods & Chez Panisse and a $5,000 grant from the UC Berkeley Chancellor for social innovation, they decided to forget the corporate route, and instead, become full-time urban mushroom farmers!  

As the business grew, Arora and Velez also built a partnership with locally based Peet’s Coffee, somehow convincing the company to pay them to cart away used coffee grounds, which means they now turn a small profit on their biggest raw material. And as the two began giving tours of their West Oakland warehouse, where they would eventually grow as many as 500 pounds of fresh mushrooms per week. Then visitors started asking if they could take the coffee/spawn mixture home and try it themselves.

Back to the Roots has created 31 green-collar jobs in West Oakland, and they’re collecting and diverting about 40,000 pounds a week of coffee ground waste from the landfill. And turning waste into food just once isn’t enough anymore: They plan to start embedding vegetable seeds into the kits’ cardboard boxes, allowing budding farmers to grow their shrooms, plant the box, fertilize it with the leftover coffee grounds, and (hopefully) come up with tomatoes, basil, onions, or parsley. Back to the Roots has reached an estimated 10,000 kids via a Facebook campaign that donates mushroom gardens to elementary school classrooms nationwide.

Moral: Nothing is waste, waste for you is gold for someone else.

Auctioned Property - Not everyone's cup of Tea, even cheap

Real estate prices are soaring up and everyone's urge to buy a house is still as a dream. For those who dream of buying a property for the first time, this option may not sound good, because some people consider auctioned property unlucky, and have belief that buying the property which the owner does not willingly sell, another attractive factor in this auctioned property is the price fixed by the banks which is 25-30% less than market price. Also, since they are auctioned by banks, the title to these properties would likely be clear.

AUCTION PROCESS

Banks issue a public notice in newspapers about the proposed auction and invite bids. The notice includes the details of the property, date, time and venue of the auction, reserve price, and earnest money deposit.

Bidders must submit their applications to the bank quoting their bid amount which should not be less than the reserve price. Along with this, they must pay earnest money deposit which may be around 10% of the reserve price. The auction usually takes place after 30 days from the date of the public notice

• If the borrower settles the dues within 30 days, the auction will not happen and your earnest money deposit will be returned. 
• If the auction takes place and you do not win the bid, your earnest money deposit is returned. 
• If you win the bid, you will have to pay around 25 per cent of the bid price on the day of the auction. You need to pay the balance amount within the next 15 days or an extended period agreed between you and the bank.
• If you win the bid but do not pay the required amount within the specified periods, you will lose the money paid earlier. 

AUCTION INFORMATION SOURCES

• You will need to scan newspapers for announcements by banks regarding such auctions. 
• You can contact real estate agents who may have this information. 
• Web sites such as  http://www.foreclosureindia.com/,  http://indiabankauction.com/  http://bankpropertyauction.com/ provide online listings of properties which banks advertise to auction.

In a normal (offline) property auction, bidders gather at the auction venue where their bids are considered. Banks may also allow competitive bidding among the bidders for improving their offers.

CONSIDERATION BEFORE BIDDING

If the auction attracts aggressive bids, the price could go up and dilute the cost advantage. So, it is important that you make an assessment of the market value and bid prudently to get a good deal. Also, to be on the safer side, it is better to check the property documents before deciding to bid, or engage a lawyer to verify the title.

Also expenses on any repairs, renovation, unpaid property taxes, electricity dues and statutory liabilities will have to be borne by the buyer. The buyer also has to bear other expenses such as stamp duty and registration fees. So, do a proper inspection to assess the true cost of owning the property.

Smart Phones under Rs.10000

Samsung Galaxy Y S5360

Currently priced at Rs 7,000, the Samsung Galaxy Y has Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS with 830 MHz ARMv6 processor, 290 MB RAM and a 2MP camera. Galaxy Y comes with a 3 inch TFT capacitive touchscreen, Samsung's TouchWiz user interface and multi touch function. It has 180 MB internal memory which can be expanded by up to 32 GB. Other features include WiFi b/g/n with hotspot, Bluetooth v3.0 A2DP, a 1200 mAh battery, 3G and A-GPS.





LG Optimus Net P690


Currently priced as low as Rs 9,999 now. The Optimus Net comes with a 3.2 inch capacitive touch screen with accelerometer and proximity sensor for better gaming. It has an Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system powered by an 800 MHz Qualcomm processor. This is only the second handset to feature Android 2.3 with above 800 MHz processor. Its other features include a 3.15 megapixel camera, 32 GB expandable memory, WiFi b/g/n, WiFi Hotspot, DLNA capability, Li-ion 1500 mAh battery, A-GPS support etc.





Nokia E5 


There are many more Nokia handsets within the Rs 5,000-Rs 10,000 price bracket, such as Nokia C series X series phones, this E series is priced at Rs 9,000, Nokia E5 runs Symbian S 60 operating system on an ARM 11 600 MHz processor. Nokia E5 has the best in the industry 5 megapixel camera with flash, 32 GB expandable memory slot, 2.36 inch display, 1200 mAh battery, A-GPS, Nokia Maps, Bluetooth, WiFi b/g etc.



Micromax A70


Very reasonable price of Rs 7,600, Micromax A70 3G comes with Android 2.2 Froyo operating system and a 600 MHz ARMv6 Qualcomm processor. Its 3.2 touchscreen is a capacitive one that supports multi touch input. A70 is the only handset in this list to feature dual cameras — a 5 megapixel camera at the back and a front facing VGA one. Other noted features of Micromax A70 include a 1450 mAh battery, 32 GB expandable memory option, WiFi b/g with hotspot feature and Bluetooth.

Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman


It is priced at Rs 6,250, and is the cheapest phone in the list. As the name signifies, its key feature is its Walkman. Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman comes with a Zappin key to search music. When pressed, the Zappin key opens a preview of the next track and lets you decide whether it is a favourite you want to listen to or not. A Karaoke function also enables the vocal track from any song to be lowered instantly so you can sing along. Though it's the only phone in this list to run on a Java operating system, it has a decent specification list with 3 inch scratch resistance display, 256 MB internal memory expandable memory up to 32 GB, WiFi, Bluetooth, 1000 mAh battery and 3.15 megapixel back camera.

தமிழ் வளர்ப்போம் - பேஸ்புக்கில் தமிழில் பெயர் மாற்றும் வழி

1. Goto Google Tamil Translate -> Type your name in English and press SPACE

2. It converts your name into tamil

3. Facebook -> Home -> Account Settings

4. Name: Edit

5. Copy and Paste your name from Google Translate website into the name settings text box, do not forget to enter password and click save changes.

E-Challan Initiative by Chennai Traffic Police

I see many funny posts about singara Chennai, how its traffic system is and about  Chennai City Traffic Police (CCTP). When we make fun of them, we should also appreciate their efforts. It does not reach public completely, because of very less awareness, let it start from literate people.

The e-challan system has proved so successful that the investment cost of Rs.2.83 crore was recovered in just four months. The CCTP's monthly average fine collection until June was around Rs.70 lakh a month. This works out to Rs.2.8 crore for four months. But, in the four months since the launch of the system, the fine collected has been over Rs.5.8 crore.

The money raised through fine goes back to the road-user. We use the money to instal traffic signals, temporary barricades, and road markings. CCTP have started a facebook page, CCTP Facebook Page where they post regular updates of traffic diversion, they also take complaints, post details of income/expenditure and many more.

The system helps trace past violations and previous offenders with ease. Since the software is pre-programmed with specific fine amounts for each offence, there is little chance of corruption as long as offenders insist on an e-challan. Everything is incorporated in the bill itself. If it's a 'no parking' offence, earlier some officials could get around Rs.200, but now they can't do that because it's all incorporated in the machine. If it is no parking, the fine is Rs 100.

In case of any complaints with regard to the misuse of the devices by field officials, public can call 28521323 or sms to 9003130103. They are also planning for spot credit card payment of fine.

Writing in the visitor's book at the Anna Salai police station, Jayalalithaa wrote: "This technology driven initiative of the Chennai city police will go a long way towards better enforcement of traffic rules. The utility of these systems depends on the persons who handle them. The police, as law enforcement agents, should always strive to fulfill the aspirations of the people by serving them effectively."

Google announces Photography Contest

Wow friends, great chance to share your views with the world. Google announces Photography contest, with no entrance fee, wonderful news ah... a photography portfolio of 8 photos can be submitted. they have limited only one entry per person, subsequent entries will be rejected.

Eligibility Rules - More Details

• 18 years or older on the submission date 
• Should be enrolled for undergraduate or graduate in a reputed university
• Not a resident of Brazil, Quebec, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, Libya, Liberia, Zimbabwe, or Myanmar (Burma)

Contest Period - November 10, 2011 - January 31, 2012

Categories - More Details

Me, Food, Travel, Fashion, Sound/Silence, Action, Street, Sport, Night, Point of View

Prize Details - More Details

• 100 entries selected as Semi-finalists will get Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone
• 10 individuals selected as Finalists will receive an invitation to exhibit his or her Photographs at Saatchi Gallery, London for 7 weeks. Prize includes round-trip airfare for each Finalist and 1 guest to London, UK with 3 nights hotel accomodation and meal cost of US$200 per day per person
• Grand Prize will receive a 7-day trip for a photo shoot with a professional photographer at a place to be mutually agreed with Sponsor and the Grand Prize Winner. 

Now what are you waiting for, Enter the Contest and Submit your photos to win.

Microstock - Earn Money from photos

Taking Digital photos has almost become a habit for everyone nowdays. All of us have a digital camera or mobile camera. Technology has changed so much, that people started buying mobiles having camera as one criteria. Nokia N8 is giving 12MP camera along with its mobile, Samsung Galaxy, iPhone providing 8MP camera.

Early days taking photos included a cost for buying film roll, but now photos does not cost even a penny, so everyone of us take photos whenever we want and at some point, when you turn back, its piled up with loads of personal photos, we do click some unusual events, and lot more, but did anyone of us thought What to do with these photos? Will they make something sensible for us? Can it be sold and made money?

You can either sell your photos, monetize your photos with advertising or submit your photos to sites that will share advertising revenue with you. Here comes the list of options to make money from our photos Stock Photography is a concept where we upload our photos. Instead of hiring a professional photographer, a buyer licenses an image and the user uploaded is paid a commission.

shutterstock - It's free to contribute and you'll earn $0.25 to $28.00 per image download
dreamstime - Download images for as low as Rs. 10.98/image, commission to contributor
fotolia - Download images for as low as $0.75/image or $0.16/subscription, commission to contributor
iStockphoto - Free images to download
123RF - Download images for as low as $0.21/image, commission to contributor
BIGSTOCK - Download images for as low as $0.99/image, commission to contributor
YAY - Print images for as low as $1.40/image, commission to contributor
Veer - Free images to download
CANSTOCKPHOTO - Download images for as low as $0.40/image, commission to contributor
panthermedia - Download images for as low as € 1/image, commission to contributor

Coffee or Tea ? Switch to Healthy Alternative

70% of human beings wake up with a cup of coffee or tea, but did we think whether it is healthy? The caffine content, the aroma addicts us to have it more, simply like a alcohol. We should be thinking and switch to a alternative drink every day to be fit and healthy, because health is one thing which we cannot buy in this world, one good example is Steve Jobs, who is capable of buying anything and everything, but not his health. Some of herbal drink which we can make a habit daily and their vitamin values are

Hibiscus Rosa-senensis(sembaruthi): Three hibiscus petals boiled and filtered like coffee, add some lemon juice with honey and drink it like Tea. If taken regularly for 40days, reduces heart attack and increases heart strength, reduces stress.

Cassia auriculata (avaram poo) is proven to control and reduce blood sugar levels. It rejuvenates the body  and reduce blood sugar levels drastically. Avarampoo can be cool dried, powdered and used as a tea which helps to rejuvenate and cure diabetes.

Boil few tender Mango leaves in water and washing mouth with this water, reduces tooth ache. Taking half teaspoon of ground powder of Mango leaves dried in shade with water 2 or 3 times a day stops dysentery. 

Water boiled with basil leaves (Thulasi) can be taken as drink in case of sore throat. This water can also be used as a gargle. It reduces blood cholestrol. Basil (Thulasi) has strengthening effect on the kidney. In case of renal stone the juice of basil leaves and honey, if taken regularly for 6 months it removes kidney stone via urine.

For menstruation delay, take ½ teaspoon finely ground cinnamon (dalchini) every night along with 1 cup milk. Powder 1 teaspoon dried mint (pudina) leaves and take with 1 teaspoon honey, thrice daily. Kills intestine germs, clean blood, cleans blood vessels, good for gastric problems

Guava is a rich source of vitamin C, guava's vitamin C content is 5x more than that of an orange, carotenoids, potassium, phosphorus, calcium and iron. If you have chicken pox, drinking 4 cups of guava tea will make the chicken pox heal faster and the skin will have less scarring.

Stay healthy.......