Blog Archive: April 2017

Famous Tbilisi Restaurant Review

30 April, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 13 seen

Famous restaurant in Tbilisi is another so called high end restaurant located in the quiet are of old town on Abo Tbileli street (Puri Square)

Famous restaurant is one of the best places to enjoy European & Georgian cuisine in Tbilisi in a pleasant music and a special atmosphere of comfort and playful romance.

During our latest visit here (February 2017) we learnt that a chef we already knew from master class in Asian cuisine - gourmet chef from Russia Natalia Chvileva runs this kitchen and it was real pleasure she come out from the kitchen just to say hi!

Restaurant Famous in Tbilisi

This is a unique crossroads of thoughts, feelings and sensations of taste, which is located on the first floor of an old 19th century mansion. At one time, Georgian intelligentsia lived in this house and in the basement of this building was an underground casino, which gambling bohemia enjoyed visiting.

In addition, Mikhail Lermontov lived in the house next door. Here, in the heart of the capital, 200 meters from Freedom Square, the silence of Lado Gudiashvili Square protects our guests from the noise of the city. It’s easy to plunge into the leisurely enjoyment of life and its delights at Famous. Just watch the play of sunlight through the leaves and the large old windows of the restaurant, listen to the magical sounds of the ancient Austrian piano and try our culinary delights.

Veal salad

Macaroons 

John F. Kennedy International Airport

29 April, 2017 | Airports | 10 seen

John F. Kennedy International Airport (IATA: JFK, ICAO: KJFK, FAA LID: JFK) is a major international airport located near South Ozone Park in the borough of Queens in New York City, United States, 12 miles (20 km) southeast of Lower Manhattan. It is the busiest international air passenger gateway into the United States, the fifth busiest airport in the United States and the busiest airport in the New York City airport system, handling 58,956,288 passengers in 2016.

Over ninety airlines operate out of the airport, with non-stop or direct flights to destinations in all six inhabited continents.The airport features six passenger terminals and four runways. It serves as a hub for American Airlines and Delta Air Lines and is the primary operating base for JetBlue Airways. In the past, JFK served as a hub for Eastern, National, Pan Am, and TWA.

For most of the times, when traveling to the United States for transatlantic flights, I've been using this airport at least for one direction. 

See: About Tbilisi - Kiev - New York Flight by Ukrainian Airlines

Waiting area at Kennedy's airport

Opened as New York International Airport in 1948, it was commonly known as Idlewild Airport before being renamed in 1963 in memory of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, following his assassination.

John F. Kennedy International Airport was originally Idlewild Airport (IATA: IDL, ICAO: KIDL, FAA LID: IDL) after the Idlewild Beach Golf Course that it displaced. It was built to relieve LaGuardia Airport, which was overcrowded soon after opening in 1939. Construction began in 1943, and about $60 million was initially spent of governmental funding, but only 1,000 acres (400 ha) of land on the site of the Idlewild Golf Course were earmarked for use.

PAUL Depuis 1889 Bakery & Restaurant in Tbilisi

28 April, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 39 seen

I'm glad seeing more good dinning places and restaurants popping up in Tbilisi, there is huge demand for a good place, and worldwide known French Paul bakery & restaurant brand seems have made a good decision opening a branch in Tbilisi on Abashidze street.

At Paul bakery you could get freshly baked bread and other French pastry goodies,in this article I'll stick with restaurant review. I love Paul because of salads and desserts. I've tried other things, like burgers here, though they are decent, there are better places to order burgers. Once at Paul stick with what they are best - pastry and damn good salads and entrees.

An appetizer plate

Smoked salmon, duck breast.. really good choice for appetizer.

Salads with mussels and shrimps

One of the rare places in Tbilisi, you could get goodies like this.

Pancakes with orange syrup

The Empire State Building & Observation Deck Tour

27 April, 2017 | Tourism objects | 33 seen

OK, this finally is off from my bucket list. Here is the tip I would give to myself - buy "skip the lines" tickets to avoid long hours waiting in the lanes.  it started to remind me my dear Georgia after the second hour of waiting in the lanes and hugging with Italian family to sing Bella Ciao. Amazing. Paid a visit to the Empire State Building, January 5, 2017

The Empire State Building is a 102-story skyscraper located on Fifth Avenue between West 33rd and 34th Streets in Midtown, Manhattan, New York City. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet (381 m), and with its antenna included, it stands a total of 1,454 feet (443.2 m) tall. Its name is derived from the nickname for New York, the Empire State.

It stood as the world's tallest building for nearly 40 years, from its completion in early 1931 until the topping out of the original World Trade Center's North Tower in late 1970. Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Empire State Building was again the tallest building in New York, until One World Trade Center reached a greater height in April 2012. The Empire State Building is currently the fifth-tallest completed skyscraper in the United States and the 34th-tallest in the world. It is also the fifth-tallest freestanding structure in the Americas. When measured by pinnacle height, it is the fourth-tallest building in the United States.

Waiting lines at the Empire State building to the observation deck

For a single ticket we paid about USD 60, and decided to save on additional skip the lines some extra USD 30, that cost us about 2 hours waiting in the lanes.

View to New York from Empire State building observation deck

The Empire State Building has one of the most popular outdoor observatories in the world, having been visited by over 110 million people. The 86th-floor observation deck offers impressive 360-degree views of the city. There is a second observation deck on the 102nd floor that is open to the public. It was closed in 1999, but reopened in November 2005. It is completely enclosed and much smaller than the first one; it may be closed on high-traffic days. Tourists may pay to visit the observation deck on the 86th floor and an additional amount for the 102nd floor. The lines to enter the observation decks, according to Concierge.com, are "as legendary as the building itself:" there are five of them: the sidewalk line, the lobby elevator line, the ticket purchase line, the second elevator line, and the line to get off the elevator and onto the observation deck. For an extra fee tourists can skip to the front of the line. The Empire State Building makes more money from tickets sales for its observation decks than it does from renting office space.

Photo exhibit at Empire State building

A lot of cool and interesting photography is displayed here from the start of construction. As visitors are more interested visiting outside obsevration desk some can find a lovely loneliness at this place and learn a lot about history of Empire State building.

Excavation of the site began on January 22, 1930, and construction on the building itself started on March 17—St. Patrick's Day—per Al Smith's influence as Empire State, Inc. president. The project involved 3,400 workers, mostly immigrants from Europe, along with hundreds of Mohawk iron workers, many from the Kahnawake reserve near Montreal. According to official accounts, five workers died during the construction. Governor Smith's grandchildren cut the ribbon on May 1, 1931. Lewis Wickes Hine's photography of the construction provides not only invaluable documentation of the construction, but also a glimpse into common day life of workers in that era.

View to Manhattan from outer observation deck at the Empire State Building

Khinklis Sakhli / Khinkali House on Moscow Avenue, Tbilisi

26 April, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 66 seen

I usually don't hang out in this area of Tbilisi, just recently we returned by marshrutka from Hiking Route in Georgia - Norio Village - Martkopi Monastery and were really starving, and agreed to leave the minivan as soon we will notice some restaurant, that's how we ended up here in Moscow avenue (somewhere between Samgori and Isani metro stations) and found this interesting Khinkali house.

Now, I must admit I had a feeling I've traveled back in the time to the early 90-ties, a disco scene, music from late 80-ties and fish aquariums. Though the food here, and especially khinkali was delicious.

Interior at Khinkali house on Moscow avenue, Tbilisi

It is a really spacious hall with separated seats,pretty surreal but cool

Georgian khinkali

Now, I love khinkali and here they were just delicious. I've decided to prepare khinkali at home, could be a cool experiment for food blog series.

Grilled meat

Now this is one of the rare places in Tbilisi you can order whole tenderloin steak

Q1 2017 Online Income Report - $5,886.46

25 April, 2017 | Blogging | 8 seen

First quarter of 2017 has been very interesting, tried and applied some new ideas, launched two separate websites and started to generate first real passive income from peer to peer lending. 

As there have been a lot of changes in the past three months, this year's online income reports will be different from previous quarter reports, they will cover not only earnings from this blog, but will include earnings from other websites and earnings from investments.

In short first quarter of 2017 (January, February and March) earned $6,335.20 what is an awesome more than double growth if compared to the first quarter of year before (see: Q1 2016 Blog Traffic and Online Income - 136,784 Users / $2,467.48), though if compared to previous quarter that's a little decrease (see: Q4 2016 Blog Traffic & Income Report - 197,850 Users / $6,921.16) 

About website traffic in Q1 2017

Now, I've already mentioned that in the past 3 months I've started two new websites, I decided to include all of them in this report.

ReinisFischer.com

Main blog, the one you are currently reading - First quarter of the 2017 set a new record in terms of visitors coming to blog. More than 200,000 users in three months. By now, on average,  blog gets about 70,000 monthly users, compared with previous quarter, blog have experienced a small but nice 11% traffic gain.

Website traffic Q1 2017. Data source: Google Analytics

Page views are up to 100,000 per month. Seems I could soon crack 100K users per month milestone, first originally set in July 2014.

I should also add that if compared with the first quarter in 2016, blog traffic in 2017 have  increased by more than 60%. Now, that's some serious growth. If things will go as this I could report about 350,000 users in first quarter of 2018. Hope so.

Q1 2017 vs Q1 2016 website traffic. Data source: Google Analytics

Tourgeorgia.EU

Originally first launched in 2011, this website made a re-launch from scratch at the last days of March 2017. There is nothing much to report for the first quarter of year, but I'm adding it here just for history and a basic reference point, as I find personally interesting seeing where how well visited this website will be after one year:

tourgeorgia.eu website traffic Q1 2017

Just 25 users and a lot of page views which are mostly generated by myself while developing this site.

tourgeorgia.eu is a side project for tour booking in Georgia, as my blog receives a lot of travel requests about Georgia, at the start of the year I partnered with some cool local tour operators in Georgia, and as a minimum viable product approach decided to test idea in the frames of blog by launching organized tours in Georgia service. The result was really good, got 30 bookings in first quarter of year, that's why decided to go with a separate website.

If you are planing trip to Georgia, you could make tour reservation.  

Site 3

Now, I;ve decided to keep in secret domain name, as this website is made as a SEO experiment. All I could tell right now - it's is in very competitive though lucrative income niche. Again, originally launched already in 2016, I still abandoned this project after first two weeks. Now a year later I decided to use this website as a SEO experiment for 12 weeks. Re-lauched at the start of March 2017, this website can brag with a lot of visitors as well, just 22.

Site 3 website traffic Q1 2017

I'm really eager to see how the next quarters of year will turn for these websites. If for tourgeorgia it seems it will be easy to crack 1,000 user milestone per month, then with site 3 I'm more humble in my future forecasts. Would love to see about 500 users for the next three months.

About income in Q1 2017

As already mentioned in the first paragraphs at start of this article, there are some fundamental changes in my online portfolio, with investments in peer to peer lending and new website/business projects

In first quarter of 2017, main blog still made a lions share (tourgeorgia.eu and site 3 didn't generated any income yet), though I can report first returns from peer to peer lending.

Affiliate marketing:

• Amazon Associates: $5,884.6
• Booking.com: $55,55
• Tour bookings in Georgia: $140

From tour bookings in Georgia, I created a separate website and online business start up - tourgeorgia.eu

Display Ads:

• Google AdSense: $255.05

Investments

• Mintos.com peer to peer lending: $10.03

You can read more here: Invest in Georgia - Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending - Mintos.com and Review of Mintos Peer to Peer Lending After One Month of Investing. My earnings here are relatively low, as I'm investing relatively low amounts yet. Though 10 dollars here gives me about the same I got from Google AdSense about 3 years ago. 

Total: $6,335.20

Expenses

This quarter I spent money on hosting, Facebook Ads, CDN, new domain names and virtual assistants / freelance writers

• Facebook Ads: $102.96
• KeyCDN: $49
• Linode: $17.5
• Domain names: $20.04
• Google AdWords: $16.89
• Virtual Assistants: $203
• Other: $39.35

Total: $448.74

I used Facebook ads and Google AdWords to promote Georgia related content. Starting January 2017 I've hired few content writers to help come out with articles in series: Living in Georgia, Digital Photography school and for tourgeorgia.eu project.

If compared to the first quarter of 2016, expenses have risen by more than 4 times.

Other Stats:

• Twitter: 6,211 followers (-77)
• Facebook: 3,645 likes (+750)
• Email subscriptions: 132 subscribers (+64)
• Alexa global rank: 177,701 position (-2,628)
• Web push subscribers: 7,709 (+2,746)

Goals for Q2 2017

Goals are my favorite part of such reports. My goal for second quarter (April, May, June) of 2017 - Traffic combined for main blog should be at least 220,000.

Income -  goal is to crack $5,000 at the end of second quarter, I hope my additional projects and investments will help generate  additional side income.  Additional activities should be able to help me reach $5,000 in the next quarter. 

How To Insert Node Reference in Content Using Views

24 April, 2017 | Drupal Development | 11 seen

I this article I'll cover some details on how to programmatically reference nodes in content using Drupal views.

Such behavior I've already implemented in this blog, see for example 83 reasons to Visit Georgia This year article to see it in action. Today I was working on one of my side projects - a laptop buying guide - laptop500.com and decided to implement a new feature - best selling items of the month, by programmatically referencing laptops (nodes) from archive.

Here is how - at start you will need to download and install references module, then visit Content type you would like to add such behavior and under manage fields (admin/structure/types/manage/article/fields) add a new Node Reference field

Node Reference field

I will set widget to Auto complete text field as later it will be much easier to enter just first letters of title to find and reference nodes.

In the next window (Field Settings) select Content types that can be referenced, articles for example

In the next window, under REFERENCED ITEMS FIELD SETTINGS Number of Values, make sure you select unlimited

Next go and create a new article to whom you just add a new node reference field, you should see new field enabled and you could start referencing nodes

Referencing nodes in Drupal

Now, after you will save your content all referenced items will be listed unformatted under content area, you could leave this as it is, or you could use manage display section from content type and hide referenced item field, and instead build a new views block to style those items

Referenced items under content

I'm going to hide default display and build a new views block. 

Create a new view, add Contextual filter nid, and add Relationships - referenced nodes, then add your fields and make them related to relationship, then just put block in your content area. 

Node reference views display using relationships

Referenced nodes displayed as views block

See live demo here: Top 20 Best Selling Laptop / Notebook Computers in April 2017

Average Salary in European Union 2017

23 April, 2017 | Macroeconomics | 251 seen

For the fourth year in a row, I'm publishing my humble observations on average salary changes in the European Union. In this article, I've decided to compare average salary in 2017 with 2014. 

Update: Average Salary in European Union 2018

For previous archives see: Average salary in EU: 2016, 2015, 2014

I wouldn't call bellow written a scientific research, as most of the data in this article are taken from Wikipedia's article List of European countries by average wage. To make it more interesting I've added the year of 2014  as a reference and made some simple calculations in Google Sheets. Data provided below might not be 100% accurate but they should give an overall insight on average salary levels across European Union member countries.

The average salary in European Union member countries 2017

If compared to 2014, average median salary has increased by about 2.02% during the past three years. The average salary in EU as of 2017 stands at EUR 1,520 monthly what is up from EUR 1489 in 2014

Now, there is a new leader with the most average salary in Denmark (EUR 3,095) overtaking longtime leader Luxembourg and leaving it on second place with EUR 3,095 monthly. Speaking of the bottom end Bulgaria and Romania take the last places with an average salary in EU, (EUR 406 and EUR 515, respectively).

The average salary in European Union 2017

The gap between richest (Denmark) and poorest (Bulgaria) is 7.6. Which actually is shrinking, as in 2016 the gap between Luxembourg and Bulgaria was more than 8 times.

There is one thing that should be kept in mind, not all countries in this list use EUR, in fact, there are 9 out of 28 countries in EU using their national currencies instead of EUR. ( Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Sweden and the United Kingdom)

From table below you will notice there is negative average salary growth in 9 countries during the past three years, for countries like Denmark, Sweden, United Kingdom I can it explain because of their national currencies been volatile against EUR and USD currencies. For other countries, it would ask more investigation, what is not the main topic of this article (though you are more than welcome to leave your feedback in the comments section)

Data source: List of European countries by average wage

This is a list of countries containing monthly (annual divided by 12 months) net income (after taxes) average wages in Europe in EUR currency.The table above reflects the average (mean) wage as reported by various data providers. In less developed markets, actual incomes may exceed those listed in the table due to the existence of grey economies.

While the median average wage in EU is about EUR 1,520 not all countries are equal, so, for example, the largest average salary have been registered in Denmark (EUR 3,095) while the lowest in Bulgaria (EUR 406).

If compared to 2016, there are no significant changes in overall development, and we still can observe that the median EUR 1,500 average wage divides EU by half - there are 14 countries where the average wage is above that line, and there are 14 countries where the average salary is below the median. 

In fact, just two out of fourteen countries were median average salary is below EU average (Slovenia and Malta) has average salary just barely more than EUR 1,000, making the rest from camp 'below the median average salary in EU' with even less than EUR 1,000 average monthly salary. 

How does your country stand at this table? Readers and I would love to hear! Drop a comment!

12 Dividend Stocks to Invest to Get Payments Every Month

22 April, 2017 | Investments | 15 seen

The other morning I read an article on Kiplinger - Great Stocks to Get Dividends Every Month, and I decided to make some calculations and speculations, as right now I'm looking to invest some money in dividend paying stocks and idea of getting dividends every month seems a very good option to make a living.

My goal for 2017 is to invest $8,561 throughout the year, not mandatory all money should be invested in stocks, in fact I have already invested about a quarter of that money in Latvian peer to peer lending marketplace - Mintos. See: Review of Mintos Peer to Peer Lending After One Month of Investing

Another, again about a quarter of my money, goal  for 2017, I'm planing to invest in dividend paying stock in Baltic NASDAQ Market, see: Dividend Paying Stocks In Nasdaq Baltic Market By Yield.

And right now, an option to invest in the US dividend stocks, though with much lower yields than Baltic market, seems a good way to diversify my investment portfolio in 2017.

12 Dividend Stocks to Invest to Get Payments Every Month

Annualized

Dividend $

Dividend

Yield %

Dividend

Payment

Additional

Payments

Occidental Petroleum

Corporation

Data source: Kiplinger and Dividend Insider (as of March 11, 2017)

In fact, above listed companies makes dividend payments quarterly, not monthly, though by acquiring a few of them or all, you could build up a portfolio with monthly dividends.

Also, as you can see, dividend yield for companies listed above doesn't reach 5%, with just a four companies paying yield higher than 4%, and three of them less than 3% annually, depending on your investment goals and strategy you might like to invest in stocks with dividend payments lower than 3%, but speaking of me - 3% is the lowest margin I'm looking to acquire a dividend paying stock

For example Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) historically paid dividends in March, June, September and December. Using such scenario you will need at least to acquire stocks from 3 different companies, to build a monthly dividend payments throughout the year every month.

Please remember: your capital is at risk when investing in stocks and you could actually lose some, if not all money, as stock prices might drop. invest only money you are comfortable to lose.

Returning to my investment goals and plans for 2017 - as I don't have much cash to invest in stocks, here are 5 stocks I'm considering to add to my dividend stock portfolio:

• The Coca Cola company - as an active consumer of this drink, I believe it's a good idea to invest in products you use, though I actually know, that Coke probably is not the healthiest drink
• Microsoft Corporation - again, as an active MS Windows and MS Office user, I love the idea investing in products I use daily
• General Electric - with a dividend yield at 3.2% this stock comes as the cheapest option, and as I don't have much cash to invest, seems a reasonable option to diversify
• AT&T Inc - with one of the highest yields at 4.8%, AT&T inc is an utility company, and I believe utilities as one of the best investment options
• Verizon Communications Inc. - the same reasons I'm considering AT&T Inc.

Investments in above mentioned 5 stocks would generate a monthly dividend payments every month.

My strategy is simple - next I will invest about USD 4,000 to acquire stocks in above mentioned companies. Why chose 5, why not to stick with one? Simple - diversity. My goal is to build a liquid and growing portfolio using many investment strategies. My goal at the end of 2017 is to invest in stocks about 40-50% from my initial $8,561 plan for 2017. Some 20-40% for peer to peer lending and probably some 10% - 40% in mutual funds.

Hiking Route in Georgia - Norio Village - Martkopi Monastery

21 April, 2017 | Outdoor Activities | 176 seen

Hiking from Norio village to Martkopi monastery is about 10km long distance (forth and back), best done in Spring, Summer, or early Autumn. The route is pretty steep, though covered with asphalt, there are parts of the damaged surface and some agility is needed. 

Update: We originally did this hiking path back in 2017. in 2020 there is a new asphalt road built reaching the monastery complex

The route offers a kind of Wilderness in Georgia views, with ruined bridges, tumble asphalt, and livestock with a really nice Martkopi monastery at the end of the route.

Tip: You could get to the Norio village just for 1.5 GEL in about 30 minutes from  Samgori metro station in Tbilisi

We decided to take this hiking route at the end of February 2017, here are a few shots from our route

At the start of route in Norio Village

It was a nice and sunny Saturday in February 2017. With help of Google Maps we started our route just after left marshrutka

First obstacles - mud puddle 

It was a good test for my Aldo leather shoes I bought in NYC few month before.

It also reminded me another hiking route we did and failed to complete because of landslides in Tbilisi - Failed attempt to complete Tskneti - Turtle lake hiking route

Livestock

It wouldn't be Georgia without cows crossing your path

View towards Martkopi monastery

It will ask about one more kilometer to reach our final destination - Martkopi monastery, and that will be the toughest mile (kilometer). As snow is still keeping in the upper ranges of mountains - the rest of the path is kind of mud puddle hell.

We did it - at top at Martkopi monastery

Yes, it's time to buy new Aldo shoes.

View near Martkopi monastery

This was an intermediate hiking route, but I guess it would be easy to handle in Spring (after the snow has melted), Summer, and early Autumn. In total (forth and back) it took us about 4 hours to complete this route and we had a very good sleep at night

Investment Opportunity in Georgia - Fish Farming & Agro Tourism

20 April, 2017 | Doing Business | 20 seen

The other morning I was contacted by acquaintance informing about interesting investment opportunity in Georgia. Investment opportunity involves fish farming and possible agro tourism.

As this investment asks more than $300,000 and is out of my knowledge, I decided to "list" it on blog as blog is getting a lot of eyeballs regarding invest in Georgia.

Here is the proposal:

This package is to find interested investors for 350,000 USD for a 49% share in the project. The entire farm and project is as of today on a fire-sale of sorts for about 200 000 USD for 100% ownership of 41 Ha (the original purchase price of the land in 2012) near to Sagarejo, Georgia plus all the information, research, data and project planning we as developers has or ever had.

The land was evaluated by Pro Credit bank at 400 000 USD and the entire project much more. As can be seen from the projections it is very profitable, the current owner and investors just don’t have money to do it. Some of the information is not relevant anymore but the land and the project is still valid.

There are 2 main possible project directions - “cheap protein to the masses in bulk” idea which would require 350,000-400,000 USD to start up and be self sustaining.

The other being specialist carp production for a very specific target market, those projection would look much different.

The farm is also very suitable for Agro-Tourism including but not limited to commercial carp angling, accommodation in the heart of the wine lands of Georgia and monster carp fishing.

Qualified investors please contact me either using contact form or by sending e-mail to reinisfischer@terramatris.eu to get more information.

How To Remove HTML Elements From Drupal 7 Feed

20 April, 2017 | Drupal Development | 8 seen

In this article you will learn how to style RSS feed in Drupal 7 (not sure, but most bellow written should apply to Drupal 8 as well)

I'm using RSS feeds to power up e-mail newsletters, see How To Sync Drupal RSS Feed to Mailchimp, and everything would be fine, except I had to stop automated email marketing because of amazon affiliate links included in feeds, which is against Amazon Associates TOS. 

If you are sending out RSS feeds via email and you are not concerned breaching some rules with links included, this article is not for you, but if you are on Drupal, using Amazon Associates for product reviews and sending out e-mail newsletters powered by RSS, keep reading.

Solution turned out much easier than I thought at start.

Visit your content type, under Manage Display scroll down to Custom Display settings and enable RSS feed

Custom Display Settings for Drupal 7 Content types

Next under RSS display settings manage fields you would like to keep, and set body to plain text (or some other predefined text format)

Rss Display settings for Drupal

For powering Mailchimp newsletters I'm using a custom built RSS view

Add a Feed view to default content view (you can use some of your existing views, for example frontpage, or create a new content view with a feed display)

Feed settings:

• Path: rss.xml

Format:

• Format: RSS Feed
• Show: Content: RSS

Now make sure you change content display settings to RSS you enabled at content type manage display section (see above). Save your view and here you go, you just stripped out all html elements from your feed. Now, if you want to keep some html elements like line breaks or paragraphs and most probably images, you should go to text format settings and enable custom html elements for plain text. 

As I'm using several RSS feeds, with just one stripping out <a href> attributes, I created a custom Text format especially for these kind of feeds - Amazon RSS Feed.

How & Why To Hire a Virtual Assistant / Freelancer - UpWork.com

19 April, 2017 | Blogging | 25 seen

2017 have come with some fresh ideas and changes for me how to continue successfully grew my personal blog (the one you are currently reading).

It was back in December when I was intensively brainstorming  ideas on how could I keep my 365 days blogging challenge (an article per day) meanwhile rising the quality of content.

Another reason I was looking for a Virtual Assistant / Freelancer - I was looking for ways of doing less by myself and getting more free time on other, let's say organizing issues. 

This blog covers many different topics, which might not been related at the first glance, I write about my travels, restaurant reviews, also I write about my adventures in home remodeling, meanwhile I keep writing about gadgets, investments and more on. Let's say I have a lifestyle blog with fintech touch, In the past I've eliminated some of the topics in past, and  keep focusing 90% on things that really matters to me. 

There is a pretty popular section - All about Georgia, where I keep putting my notes on my discoveries in Georgia as I've been living here as an expat  for more than 6 years already, I started to get a zillion of questions on blog's contact form - how to travel cheap, how to travel luxury, how to you name it... I try to answer on all questions, I would say my reply rate is about 99% (I won't reply on buy viagra stuff and things like that), but it started to get a little bit time consuming to reply to all those travel seekers. I had to come out with a solution.

I was sitting in my Tbilisi apartment and planned my New Years trip to the US, when a simple, let's call it - a minimum viable product approach idea come. I need to partner with some small, but growing travel company here in Georgia, so I could forward all those travel request and probably get some commission out of it and a more free time, as I wouldn't keep answering on e-mail, but my travel partners. 

i posted a simple advertisement on my Facebook business page, and soon I was contacted by David, an English speaking guide and driver with a small, and growing travel company here in Georgia. We agreed on meeting, negotiated on terms (we agreed on 20% commission, what's great actually). 

Potential Business Partner Search In Republic Of Georgia

Soon I crafted and created a real service I'm offering through the blog: Organized tours in Georgia

I launched this service in mid January, and got already 4 requests in the first month, the next February generated already 16 requests and first 7 day trip in Georgia happened, from which I earned $140, with more trips planned during the Spring and Summer.

Easy money - taking into account that I own the platform, with a lot of content related to Georgia built over years and a decent visitor traffic to blog (In January about 80,000 users)

Now, I have contacted with other potential travel partners here in Georgia, but right now - David and his travel company is a win-win for both of us, in case the demand for tours in Georgia will increase, I have a room to grow.

Now, David, although classically doesn't fit neither as a Virtual Assistant or Freelancer, with help of him I was able to get more free time and what's important to raise a total income from my blog. I hope we will have a long lasting relationships and a lot of tourists served. 

The another topic many blog readers contact me - is about relocation to the Republic of Georgia, in the blog series about Living in Georgia I've written many tips&tricks, cost of living and more, answering on these questions sometimes might be even trickier than answering on travel requests. Then I realized - a question can be turned into a longer blog post. I started to expand longer answers in longer blog posts, which is great actually if you are out of ideas for blog content.

Again I was starting to think I need some Virtual Assistant who might come out with articles about living in Georgia, and then as a surprise one day, my better part noticed on some local Facebook group there is an expat girl, living in Georgia offering kind of Virtual Assistant / Writer services. I immediately contacted her and we agreed on some 3-5 paid articles per month, related to Georgia expat things. Who could write better posts to expats than an actual expat, right? And it started working out, Irina's (that's the name of girl) posts turned out to be really popular.

Basically we've agreed on article topics and content writer has almost 100% freedom in her articles, with me keeping my editorial rights to approve or disapprove.

Now, when things come to be global, there is a much easier way for hiring a freelance talent  - and it's UpWork.com

About UpWork.com

The best companies win with the best talent. But great people can be hard to find. We’ve created a freelancing website that connects clients with top freelance professionals from San Francisco to Sao Paulo.

Whether you need one writer or an entire team of programmers, we help you find the right experts to fuel your success. Our freelancing website lets you work effortlessly with freelancers anywhere. Say goodbye to business as usual.

With the help of UpWork I was able to hire 3 freelance writers for my digital photography school project in a matter of just a few hours. Upwork is simple, straightforward and I would say a top discovery for me to find talents in 2017.

How to Post a Job on UpWork

Now you will need to sign up for UpWork.com at start, make sure you register as a client and not as a freelancer if your goal is to hire a talent. 

Post a Job on UpWork

Select from option either you need a part-time/short term freelancer or dedicated freelancer for longer term. At the start for my first job offer I choose a part time

Job description

Choose a category and subcategory - as I was looking for freelance photography writers I choose Writing -> Article & Blog Writing.

Give a nice an straightforward name for your job posting - I included both job position and fee rate - Photography Content Writer (Blogger) Needed - Earn $100 per 5 articles

Clearly describe the work you are looking to be done, here is what my first job description looked like (and worked out pretty good):

A long-term job for anyone who's interested and experienced with photography.

I'm looking for a content writer to help produce high quality informational content for my personal blog.

My budget is about $100 per month. 
3-5 photography related articles required in month with minimum 1000 words per article

This include, but are not limited to: How to, tips&tricks, DSLR reviews e.t.c

Please bid for a trial article at $5 (500 words) and send over the following:

At least one (or two) articles on the same topic you feel are closest to what I'm looking for.

Your answer on why you're a good fit for this position.

Rate and Availability

Choose how would you like to pay, either Pay by the hour or fixed price.

Select desired experience level. As this was my first job offer I stick with the Entry level

Now, fill out other additional details you are looking for this job and Post Job. You can choose to save draft, if you would like to review your offer and post job later.

Hire freelance talents on UpWork

Once you will hit Post Job button, UpWork's algorithms will do kind of magic and will find talents related to your job offer - you can view freelancer profiles and Invite To Job those you think will suit the most. For my first job offer I sent invites to about 15 candidates and got reply in first hours from 4 of them. 

There is a good messaging system and you should discuss any details with freelancer. I offered to all freelancers a paid $5 trial article for about 500 words. I got two trial articles delivered in just a few hours. Both trial articles were great written and unique (I checked for plagiarism, and both were 100% unique). I agreed to hire freelancers after successful trial articles for more articles, assigning each freelancer articles we agreed during our messaging phase.

Payments on UpWork can be done trough PayPal or using a bank card. Upwork features a nice android and iPhone apps, for even better collaboration with your freelance writers / Virtual Assistants.

Review of Mintos Peer to Peer Lending After One Month of Investing

18 April, 2017 | Peer to Peer Lending | 14 seen

End of the February 2017, marked one full month since I've been investing to Mintos peer to peer lending platform. In this article I'll share some of my findings.

The idea to invest in Mintos Marketplace first arise at the start of 2016, when I was looking for a passive investment opportunities in Georgia (country). Back in these days a newly built platform popped up on my radar, see: Invest in Georgia - Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending - Mintos.com

Both individuals and entities can invest through Mintos. Individual investors must be at least 18 years old, have a bank account in the European Union or third countries currently considered to have AML/CFT systems equivalent to the EU, and have their identity successfully verified by Mintos. At the moment, US citizens or taxpayers cannot register as investors at Mintos.

Affiliate link here: Signup to Mintos.com here. By using this affiliate link for registration both you and I will receive — 1% of our average daily balance which should be paid in 3 installments for the first 90 days.

Now I was slow on actually starting to invest there for about 8 months, when finally after the New Year, I made a resolution to save million dollars until I will turn 60, see: Road To Million Dollars in Saving Account, my goal for 2017 is to invest about $8,561 during several batches, and different investment portfolios, with peer to peer being just a part of the broader portfolio.

In January 2017 I deposited first amount on Mintos. See: My Start at Investing on Mintos Peer to Peer Lending Platform: Depositing Funds

As I'm located in Georgia, while Mintos Marketplace default EUR bank account is located in Latvia, I was offered to deposit funds in GEL currency to Paysera at local Georgian bank (Liberty) which then is deposited to Mintos Marketplace. In January Mintos platform introduced - currency exchange, at start for free, then it increased to 1% fee and as on March 1st even to 3.5% for EUR/GEL or GEL/EUR currency exchange. 

In total I've deposited GEL 3300 (EUR 1238 / USD 1305) in three batches - at the end of January, at the start of February and in the middle of February. 

My investment strategy

I invest in loans only with buy back guarantee, which means, at least theoretically, that in case if loans go past due, loan originator would buy back bad loans, helping investors to avoid losing money. I tend to invest in short (30 day) loans in Georgia.

In February I had following currency portfolio: 579.53 EUR and 1,665 GEL, if exchanged forth and back, that would mean I have split in half my initial GEL 3300 deposit. In currency exchange fees I've paid GEL 3.65, which equals to about EUR 1.41.

Investments in Georgian lari

Most of the loans in Georgian lari have been late

Investments in GEL (as on March 1st, 2017)

Although I bought first short payday loans already at the end of January, I didn't received a single payment in February. Now speaking about investments in GEL currency, there were two loan originators issuing loans in GEL - Creamfinance and Lendo. I invested GEL 1300 in loans issued by Creamfinance - and all of them were late. 

Seems some shift have happened on platform, as Creamfinance stopped issuing new short day loans in GEL currency, instead Lendo pushed a massive amount of GEL loans, offering high 17% annual return. 

I don't tend to invest more than 2,000 GEL as I wouldn't call lari a strong currency, see: My Savings Report January 2015 - GEL Loses It's Value Against USD For 14% Since September

Now, as I told - 0 earnings from lari in February, seems I will need to wait until April (earliest) to see how buy back is actually working. With delayed interest rates it still should be profitable. 

Investments in EUR

Before investing both in EUR and GEL I made some calculations with what to expect during February. I was looking for about GEL 16.2 and EUR 4.5. At the end of the month I got flat 0 in GEL and humble 0.82 EUR. Not at all what I was looking for. 

Investments in EUR (as on March 1st, 2017)

In mid February a major push happened with Georgian loans, Creamfinance halted short pay day loans in GEL, while Lendo exchanged most of it's loans from EUR to GEL, pushing investors to exchange EUR to GEL, though offering a really tempting 17% annual return. Short day loans from Georgian in EUR currency just disappeared. I was left with no other option as to look on other "markets" beyond Georgia and extended my limit from 30 day loans to 3, 6 and even 12 month loans. Yes, the yield decreased as well from some 11.2% to 9.5% for Banknote pawnbroking loans and 8% for Mogo car loans.

Dividend Paying Stocks In Nasdaq Baltic Market By Yield

17 April, 2017 | Investments | 54 seen

After couple of years of pause in investments I have decided to return to investing.

It probably all starts with my New Year's resolution to save in my "retirement" fund a million dollars before I will turn 60. See: Road To Million Dollars in Saving Account

My goal for 2017 is to put aside, or more precisely to invest $8,561 throughout the year, not mandatory all money should be invested in stocks, in fact I have already invested a little bit more than $1,000 in peer to peer lending, in another Baltic "start up" - Mintos. See: My Start at Investing on Mintos Peer to Peer Lending Platform: Depositing Funds

I like Mintos because of one reason - they offer to invest in Georgian loans, as I have been living in Georgia for about 6 years, I always look on perspective ways to invest in Georgia. Invest in Georgia - Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending - Mintos.com

Now, my experience on investing in Baltic stock market starte in 2001 or 2002,when I first bought stocks of Latvijas Kuģniecība using privatization certificates. Which latter in 2005 I sold for about 500 or 600 Latvian lats and bought a Canon camcorder. In 2007 I bought some Lietuvos Dujos stocks which I sold soon. 

Now in 2016, I still use Canon, but instead of camcorder - a DSLR camera, see: First Impressions Of Canon EOS 1200D Camera With 18-55mm Lens, also I feel way more mature in investing. And that's way I started to explore my options to invest in dividend paying stocks. Baltic stock market was my first choice to make an "Investigation", here is what I have found so far.

Dividend Paying Stocks In NASDAQ Baltic Market By Yield

I made following table using records from dividend payouts in 2016, stock price and dividend yield is calculated according to the February 23, 2017 trading session. The following table should be used just for informative use.

Data source: Dividends and other payouts, Google Finance and Morningstar

In 2016, there were 19 companies listed on NASDAQ Baltic paying dividends to stock owners. Yield varies a lot, starting the high 9.6% for Latvijas Gāze, ending in low 0.8% for Arco Vara. The good news there are 7 companies giving dividend yield higher than 5% - Latvijas Gāze, SAF Tehnika, Silvano Fashion Group, Olympic Entertainment Group, Tallinna Vesi, Tallinna Kaubamaja Grupp and  Merko Ehitus. 

Well, that doesn't mean they will pay such yields mandatory in 2017, 2018 or 2020, but it gives some overall understanding. 

Please remember: your capital is at risk when investing in stocks and you could actually lose some, if not all money, as stock prices might drop. invest only money you are comfortable to lose.

Speaking of me - there are 6 companies which stock I'm looking to acquire in 2017:

• Latvijas gāze - highest dividend yield and a strong dividend payment record since 1999.
• SAF tehnika - second highest dividend yield
• Silvano Fashion Group - third highest dividend yield
• Olympic Entertainment Group - fourth highest dividend yield
• Tallink Grupp - though a low dividend yield, just 2%, though the largest market gap (EUR mln 654) on NASDAQ Baltic
• Telia Lietuva - very low dividend yield, just 1%, second largest market gap (EUR mln 553)

My strategy is simple - next I will invest about EUR 2,500 to acquire stocks in above mentioned companies. Why chose 6, why not to stick with one? Simple - diversity. My goal is to build a liquid and growing portfolio using many investment strategies. My goal at the end of 2017 is to invest in stocks about 40-50% from my initial $8,561 plan for 2017. Some 20-40% for peer to peer lending and probably some 10% - 40% in mutual funds.

I feel young and energetic to take some more risk (and both stocks and peer-to-peer lending seems pretty risky to me) and not to stick with more safe, but less yield - deposits, mutual funds or obligations. Though I'm planing to have them in my portfolio over time.

What about you, are you investing in Baltic stock market? Leave a comment- readers and I would love to hear!