It has been a while since I posted over here, which is a good thing in a way since it means that my work at Value Stock Guide is keeping me very busy. Just want to let everyone know that the business is doing well and growing every day.

MJ Demarco wrote a fascinating book on entrepreneurship called “The Millionaire Fastlane”. Essentially the book is all about changing your attitudes about what it takes to achieve success. It also breaks down the process of making money in its core principles, which is quite a revelation for entrepreneurs who generally are working with a vague idea of what they are trying to do. I read this book many moons ago and loved it.

This is all well and good. The biggest problem that entrepreneurs face is often the lack of support and access to a social circle to help them on. We all need a boost in morale every now and then and it is always nice to be able to ask and learn from others who have been on a similar journey. This is where a good forum dedicated to entrepreneurship can be a god send.

Which is what The Fastlane Forum is all about. Perhaps it was started as an accompaniment to the book referenced above. Or as a promotional/sales channel for the book. It is not important. It has now turned into a key place where entrepreneurs in all stages of success come together to share their experience and wisdom and help others that are just starting out or are stuck. There are also members here who are still working a job and are in the beginning stages of starting a business.

Check it out. My id is arohan and you can check my profile here. If you join let me know. I would love to connect with you there.

Figuratively of course!

Value investing is really a lonely profession. The fact that you are going against the market sentiment means that there are times when you start to doubt your investment thesis. With the decades of experience I have, I am now used to this feeling. The loneliness can get to you but when the investment thesis is validated and you see the returns, it trumps all the days of toil and nagging doubts.

The fact is, when investing, you win some and you lose some. This is just the nature of the beast. The trick is to limit your losses and maximize your winners. This is hard. Discipline and patience are a must. Also the ability to not get swayed by temporary market situation and price volatility. If you can detach your emotions from your stocks, you will be a successful investor. If you cannot do this, investing will always remain a mystery.

When in doubt, it is always an option to go back to indexing or even finding some good dividend stocks and take your gains on the yield. Whatever works.

Ultimately, great stock picks are only part of the returns we generate. The bigger part is the ability to let these investments mature. Without patience, you might as well buy a CD.

I had this to say on Seeking Alpha:  Best Stocks to Buy and a Super Start for my Stock Picks

As you can see, things are keeping me quite busy since the start of this year and the way it is all working out, it appears that the bizzyness will continue to pick up. Suits me just fine, I say. Bring it on

So what is new so far? Great connections, excellent syndication opps, new members (of course), a market that is waking up.

How about you?

Finally got Value Stock Guide listed at DMOZ. It is a great feeling

http://www.dmoz.org/Business/Investing/Stocks_and_Bonds/Equities/Guides/

I did take a long time and I think I waited close to 6 months since submission. A live dmoz listing is a great validation and adds a great deal of credibility in the search so I am definitely delighted.

It has only been 8 months since I opened up the premium membership to the Value Stock Guide stock picks service but I have my portfolio audited for over 2 years now. In October I started posting the long term performance record of my portfolio on the site.

As of October 31, 2011, the Value stock Guide premium portfolio comfortably beat S&P 500 index by over 20 percentage points.

For example,

• for 12 months ending Oct 31, 2011, VSG portfolio returned 29.89% compared to a 5.92% return with S&P 500 in the same period
• Since inception (Jul 23, 2009), the annualized return of VSG portfolio is 24.57% compared to a 0.09% loss for S&P 500

For a portfolio that focuses on long term value investing, these returns are quite spectacular given that in general undervalued stocks have not been such good performers as an asset class so far during this down turn. Coming out of recession small cap value stocks generally outperform all other asset classes by a wide margin and with the strict and disciplined stock selection I have no doubt the VSG premium portfolio will continue to do better than the market in general going forward and significantly so.

For anyone who does more than occasionally dabble in the stock market, following my recommendations would have easily and handsomely out performed the market after adjusting for the membership fee. Think of it as a hedge fund, except I only charge a nominal annual subscription fee regardless of the asset size and do not take 20% off the profits from the top as the hedge funds do. But I do emulate some of the positive aspects of a hedge fund. Your fee is guaranteed so if I do not beat the market in any year, you have the right to ask for a full refund of the fee you paid for that year.

And you do not have to be an accredited investor to join and profit.

I sold Personal Dividends towards end of August to a private buyer. Now just in the last week, I have also sold the domains/sites taxes.me.uk and livinggreen.me.

Initially I was working with Sedo to find buyers for my sites but after listing with them for a long time, nothing seemed to happen. Perhaps, their brokered service is much better in terms of getting results. Anyway, I decided to give Flippa a try and I have to say, Flippa is much better at finding buyers and getting a deal done. You might not get the price that you want but the sites do move.

As a result I am now moving some of the other listings from Sedo to Flippa, including for CorporateWiki.org.

In addition to CorporateWiki.org, I have put the following domains for sale at Sedo. Just go to the domain link and click on the Buy This Domain button to see more details or purchase the domains.

• FineLiving.tv
• BestEver.me
• Bizzare.me
• SuperRich.me

You can also view my entire portfolio here. From here you can click on individual listings to see more details or purchase.

You can now buy domain name corporatewiki.org (this site) at Sedo.com. As explained (although in passing) in a previous post, I have put this domain up for sale to focus on my other projects.

Why Buy CorporateWiki.org?

This is a premium domain for anyone or any company/organization or education/government entity that is looking to create a directory or wiki for companies and businesses. The .org extension signifies that this is a service and as the name suggests the site is organized around businesses. When I initially started this site, I had a vision of setting up a corporate directory for businesses around the globe. Unfortunately as my other projects expanded, I do not now have the time to develop this in a way it should be.

This domain and the site has been around for more than a year and has excellent visibility in the major search engines for search terms related to corporate wiki. Most visitors that come to this site from search engines end up searching for companies and employee names in the site search engines. This means that you will have very targeted traffic as soon as you own this domain.

With this initial traffic already in place, you will be able to develop the site with little up front marketing expense.

How Do You Buy This Domain?

I have put this domain for sale on the Sedo marketplace, where you can go and buy this domain. You will need to make an offer and once the offer is made, depending on the offer I will either accept it or let other buyers bid for it in an auction. Sedo also provides escrow services for protection of the buyers and sellers.

Either way, from the initial offer to the completion of sale and transfer of the domain, it should not take more than a week or two.

When Should You Buy?

The time, of course, is NOW! If you want this domain, know that this is also a featured listing on Sedo for US, UK, France, Germany and Spain. This means that there are buyers in US and Europe looking at this listing. You can beat them to this deal by making an offer now!

I have just started a new corporate blog for Arohan Inc where I will talk about Business and Life. As this suggests, I will post personal musings as well as business topics at this site. Partly an experiment, it would be interesting to see how much the readers relate to my experiences. I do believe that every entrepreneur is cut from a different cloth and consequently experiences the joys and struggles of entrepreneurship in his own way.

Do check it out.

You might remember that I had set a goal of 100K uniques per day for Personal Dividends by the end of Dec 2010.

Well, that did not happen!

We did make some great progress. However, much remains to be done.

Coming into 2011, I have decided to focus completely on Personal Dividends (PD) and Value Stock Guide (VSG). As a result, my postings here will be sparse. I have put this site/domain up for sale at the Sedo Market place (see the link at the top of the sidebar on the right). So if you are interested, or know someone who might be, do visit the listing and make an offer.

I will continue to make postings here as things develop.

Business Model for VSG is Taking Shape

Value Stock Guide will be an awesome service when the membership finally opens. The day is not far off. In anticipation, and to build the buzz, I am giving away FREE Lifetime Subscriptions to the service to 50 randomly selected readers who pre-register for Value Stock Guide Premium Access. The service will be a paid subscription. I will continue to write free content, but members will receive specific recommendations, detailed stock research, and a focused investment community, among a few other benefits.

Personal Dividends Keeps Growing

In the past few months, Personal Dividends has received numerous mentions at sites such as WiseBread, SmallBizTrends, Mint.com, etc. At the same time, we continue to add contributors. As a result, the daily traffic and audience engagement is now on a sustained growth path. The recent Google algo change did not affect Personal Dividends search traffic much, which I believe does speak to the fact that a focus on quality and consistency is helping build trust and authority with the search engine.