Efficient way to manage bills

Managing bills can be a tedious thing, especially if you are not a very organized person. The problem with paper bills is they are easily misplaced and even if you have them filed away it is not easy to find them quickly and it certainly isn't accessible from everywhere like office. This is where an online bill management service comes in handy. One good thing I found for this is Shoeboxed, where managing your bills is simple as taking a picture. You take a picture of your bill and upload it to your Shoeboxed account and they will human verify and do the data entry for you. All you have to do is log onto your Shoeboxed account and you can view the sorted and categorized bills. They also provide a iPhone application to manage your bills free of charge. Looks like a great service to try out and definitely a time saver.

Analytic can give you great keyword ideas

While optimizing a client website for search engines I went through the list of keywords that is already pulling them traffic and I was pleasantly surprised to find some popular names in Sri Lanka in the keyword list. I started working on that angle and immediately managed to draw highly targeted traffic that my client would love to have. Finding and predicting search patterns hard to do, which is why top SEO companies have special software to do this. However affording there services is a bit beyond a small business owner so most of the time they need to look elsewhere for there search engine optimization efforts. This is where a free but hugely important tool like Google Analytic comes in handy. Search engine optimization in Sri Lanka is still a growing business but I can see some future potential in it.

Planning a wedding is a nightmare

Looking at some of my mates I can get a brief idea how hard it is to plan a wedding. The look on there faces when the big day comes close is pretty amusing. Although it looks simple there are so many thing to look into and it is just too much for two persons to handle. Sri Lankan weddings are a complicated affair anyway, from finding a suitable hotel to picking the guest list to find tuning the wedding dress, these things can be overwhelming for anyone. I guess that is one reason why the couple seems so relieved after the wedding.
The cost of a wedding is also increasing by the day. Its amazing how much of an extra cost it takes simply to add liquor to the occasion. Most now prefer to arrange a small drinking party for those who drink and avoid serving hot drinks at the wedding. Another very costly things is wedding photography, it can cost you from 50k to 300k, depending on your preference. I know its once in a lifetime things but spending that much on one occasion just for photography is insane. Money rules I guess

The search for data entry jobs

After checking out my Google analytics account I found it strange that more people search for data entry jobs more than ways to make money online. Ranking for them doesn't earn me much money but they do provided some authority when it comes to making money online in Sri Lanka. Considering how hard it is to secure a data entry job, especially for someone who has no experience in the field, I personally think it is a waste of time. But just to check out the trends I wrote an article about online data entry jobs in Pakistan. Even though it is ranked around 8-10 in Google it still gets about 15-20 visitors from Google. It would be interesting to see how much traffic it will get if it comes to 1-3 places in Google and how much money this simple page can earn as well.

Social GoodDay at Refresh Colombo

I got an invitation from @rohanvim to join Social Good Day Colombo meet up, and since I was interested in networking with fellow Sri Lankans I attended the event yesterday. The event was held as a part of RefreshColombo, a monthly gathering of tech enthusiasts.
For me the highlight of the event was "Building an Effective Online Marketing Platform" presentation done by Niranka T. Perera of eMarketingEye. Since I'm also interested in online marketing there were some great points to take away from that presentation, and I will try to attend RefreshColombo meet ups as much as I can as well.
Up next was the presentation by Nandasiri Wanninnayake, founder of Horizon Lanka foundation. It was great how a rural village 50-60Km from Anuradhapura managed to overcome all the hardship thrown at them and build a effective Internet portal to the outside world. It is by no means just having Internet, student were thought English via Internet and it has grown to such an level that volunteers from other countries come and teach these rural village children. It is simply amazing how one man managed to do all this without much help from anyone.
Then there was a discussion about how we can use social media to improve the lives of others. It was kick started by Sanjana of GroundViews. I guess the simple message was act upon your tweets, tweeting about social good etc is easy but acting upon them is the hard part. There were some initiatives taken to start a social good movement. I'm looking forward to the ideas that will come up once the forum is set up.
As a whole it was a good experience and a well organized event. @cocoveranda was kind enough to produce some nice refreshments and  any event that starts with refreshments is a good event ;)