Happy birthday BSA – you deserve all the positive % in all the charts.

I’m almost 1yr old at BSA, came in the mid-way right in the booming period, and let me tell you it is a fantastic experience. I get exactly what I’ve wanted from a team:

1) I got a rock star paycheck.
2) I learn stuff from the elite and get to know more and more people.
3) I help others and they thank me back (it’s rewarding after you see their feedback).

Here is the info graphic on BSA, before that I want to thank Matthew Kammerer first of all because he’s the guy I’m here today at BSA, he’s the one who introduced me to my life-time buddy now, Todd Garland, CEO of BSA. I’ve met three fantastic guys afterward, one is Catalin Zorzini – he does PR like you haven’t seen before, Anca Rusu – she’s in charge of the research which got us so far -and- Nathan Wong – one of the best programmers I’ve seen, he fixes every single request I have in less than a flash.

Cheers guys!

Happy birthday BSA! 2YRS!

Yup, he discuss strategies about Outsourcing and mentioned BSA as a great advertising outsource.

Check it out: http://zacjohnson.com/building-your-own-outsourced-empire/

PS: I’ll try to take Zac an interview once Scorpiono.com officially launches! Maybe include him in the expert panel, who knows? Cheers!

This deserves a blog post, yes it does! I’ve been busy before 15 december and after that I was pretty much into parties after parties, but right now let’s jump in and review 2009.

What did I propose myself in 2009?

- Buy a car

- New startup

- Personal branding

Buy a car: this one had a fantastic result, I have finally managed to raise the money and buy the Audi A6 (C6) 3.0 Tdi Tiptronic Quattro, full leather and everything I could of ever wishes for in it. I’m still thrilled about the thought that I get to drive my favorite car each day, anytime. It’s just that great feeling of power which I never sensed because all the savings (or at least most) were going towards buying it but finally I made a fantastic deal for it and I’m enjoying each day.

Success!

Here’s a photo:

New startup: Uhh.. this one is tricky. After I have sold mylol.net I was looking to start something new, so what I have done was join in DNForum platinum membership and also stick a lot more on namepros.com. Basically, the best ideas I get are from seeing the domain name. This way I ended up in buying and selling domain names for speculation, and I’m not regretting at all, I totaled $895 USD profit just by flipping (max 3 week held). I ended up with frenzyrss.com, to be developed into a desktop rss adobe air application which – because of the lack of interest my friend niflostancu showed – I abandoned. I then got re-thrilled about embedchat.com, making it a combination of a web directory of chat rooms – again I was shut down by the lack of financing to start it up with a proper backend.
I ended up with a lot of domains I never developed: embedchat.com,frenzyrss.com,airscripts.com,falconety.com and the list goes on.

Failure!

Personal branding: I’d say it’s a success right away and let me tell you why. In the spring of 2009 I joined Precision Media, a local youth marketing company. This was a major step for me, I was used with solo-ing on my laptop and skype any conference but now I really had to work with a lot of people daily face to face. Truly amazing experience hanging out with the CEO in the office, a really great guy who yelled “Business” all over himself, which could easily turn 180 degrees almost every guy who walked in there. Made a lot of connections in the Romanian online industry and a couple of great friends.
I left in the summer period due to the fact that I was going to enjoy the vacation more than stick with the job and get called anytime from any department demanding anything from a one-man-army-on-IT.

Just after a few days of quitting this job, Matthew poke me on MSN about “how cool BuySellAds is doing for him” and “why not join them? I got what it takes, should be easy and won’t kill my time over the summer”.

I have accepted this new challenge and I met one of the most exceptional guys I might ever get to meet, Todd Garland. I’m saying this because  he’s an absolutely great motivator, he keeps the spirit high inside the team and has the right answer at all times if help is needed. Truly a leader who can be your friend, and Todd Garland has earned my loyalty 100% – and I still have a ton to learn from him.
As a joke with my best friend, which I met in highschool, he asked me “How cool is BuySellAds, what would you do if they will not be doing so great financially as they do right now, in the upcoming 2010?” and my reply was “It’s so cool, I’d work without the need of an income for at least half a year because of the stuff I get to learn and the incredible respect I built for Todd”. I rarely have this drama in my voice, but I really meant it. The second best thing that happened to my 2009 was BuySellAds, no doubts!

I started building my personal branding, start to get in contact with the guys over Envato, BuildInternet, local market, and it’s going so well for me, I’m in need of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

Success!

My goals for 2010:

- Spend, spend, spend: I plan on spending a lot on fun, gadgets and trips.

- Get fit, build muscle: I plan on joining a health club and start swimming, just to get toned up.

- Start a division of BuySellAds locally or a parallel new startup: biggest goal so far.

The fantastic place I’m working at for the past months, where you might see me by “Cheers, Sergiu” at the end of the support tickets or website approvals, starts two new programs which will tear apart the competition:

I’ll quote Todd in his blog post:

Read the rest at: http://blog.buysellads.com/2009/12/announcing-bsa-premium-and-pay-per-click/

.. and probably will miss more.

I took something I couldn’t handle, I increased the consultancy/bug testing/development period of most of the projects because I have received upfront payment and decided this would be a good loyalty sign from me.. it’s NOT because it create a looong line of projects as follows:

- I’m most focused on a Poker site project for a UK based client (two brilliant student poker players)

- A lawyer club site

- An anti-spam site

- A print design for local event

- BuySellAds handling support (Jeeez, If I could only take one thing from the list and keep it, I really enjoy this one the most!)

- A student organization (I pretty neglected this, I’m afraid I have little time to stay in touch with the guys here)

Besides this, I’m actively scouting for a car, most likely it will be a BMW 3 series, next week (hopefully) – I say “next week” for the past 2 months, so I’m not that sure anymore. Therefore I’m on the road a lot of time at potential dealers.

Oh.. did I mention I’m a student too? Yup that too.

Bear with me, I have my OWN creativity sparks for my OWN projects soon to come – I’ll make a proper lunch when time is good.

Until next post, hope you guys are doing great!

My problem and all the attempts: http://blog.scorpiono.com/personal/how-nvidia-8600m-gs-screwed-my-weekend

My fix:
- Browse on how to disassemble the entire laptop
- Took out the heatsink
- Applied 5 minutes of heat at 3cm distance on the GPU directly
- WORKS!

For how long? Not sure, but works!!!!! works!!!!
No more vertical lines!!!

I’m having an Acer Aspire 5520G with NVidia 8600M GS 512 RAM.

Two days ago it completely crashed my Vista system while I was playing Heroes of Newerth (yeah.. nerdy DotA game, I love it)

Behavior:
- Vertical lines very pixaled
- Blue Screen Of Death
- Can’t boot windows right

I’ve tried so far:
- Reinstalling Vista
- Installing Windows 7
- Installing latest drivers
- Installing old natural drivers from Acer.com
- Registering for all the silly laptop forums to ask for advice or message others having problem with this.
- Cleaning for dust the main GPU after completely removing all the components of my laptop (It worked this time, but when I tried a 3d application, same vertical lines, no more rebooting)
- Cleaning and using a Hair Drier (Yes, Google and you’ll find it as a solution to fix damaged GPUs)

None of the above worked.

Remaining:

- Modify the NVidia BIOS for my GPU as my buddy Niflostancu recommended
- Install windows Xp and see how it works with it
- Buy a new damn laptop and smash this one at NVidia’s head development chief’s head!

Edit: I’ve tried the BIOS thingy, no success, I’ve tryed XP, works a bit longer than Vista/Windows7 but still crashes.

Fix/Solution: Buy a new laptop / video card and yell to all of your friends “NVidia sucks!”

WAAAAAAAAIT! I FIXED IT!

http://blog.scorpiono.com/personal/i-fixed-fried-gpu-nvidia-8600m-gs-with-a-hairdrier

Anthony, which unfortunately didn’t socialize that much with me after the sale, is selling the website on Flippa.com

I love it when he says this:

.. thus giving me some credit for the SEO.

On the other hand:

I can reply: The .COM was taken, and frankly it was my FIRST project online and besides the hope to grow it up, I have never imagined it would grow so high.

I have left Anthony some good comments on his auctions hoping that he’ll receive the BIN of $20,000 USD for the project, it definitely worth the money.

URL: http://flippa.com/auctions/74239/Teen-Social-Networking-Site-59000–Users-with-Revenue—HUGE-POTENTIAL

Let’s start with the minus “-“

- Right now, I tend to answer every email on my personal address, be it a spam or just some troll demanding for stuff, i reply and aggravate the situation since at BuySellAds I try to help each and every single person which seeks guidance on revenue optimization and tech questions. I’m an answering machine now, and some emails I receive on my @scorpiono.com shouldn’t be answered.

The plus “+”

- This is a big one because I tend to be very shallow sometimes. I check things out and resolve it the eeeasy way. Well, it seems not anymore, I right now actually tend to give a huge accent on actually FIXING the problem instead making it just disappear. Hopefully, I’ll get less shallow day by day because this is IMO my biggest CON.

The previous post was a video from Envato with Collis and Cyan which I salute again.

I had one BIG question for them which was never asked in the interview, so I emailed Collis (yes, he’s a nice guy and he replied).

Scorpiono:

I have watched the interview, fantastic, one question buzzes in my mind, I’d love to post it to my blog:

Where do you usually spot the content writers for new sites (which forums/HR sites) ?

Collis:

Hey Sergiu,
Thanks for the email!  In answer to your question, I typically find them via the FreelanceSwitch job board or sometimes we just have an open contributor email address or form (e.g. on Tuts+ anyone can submit a tutorial) and sometimes these people go on to be regular contributors,
Hope that helps!

Thanks
Collis