New shopping comparison website

There is yet another online shopping comparison website. Much like shopping.com but easier to navigate and find what you are looking for. This one is called Digxa.com and I was browsing the site looking for digital cameras. My daughter has been looking for one and she has been saving her pennies for it. Right now her price range is just under a $100.00 but in a few more weeks she'll have more. She is looking for one that has at least 5 mega pixels with video capabilities. She fell in love with a digital SLR that was only $150.00 so I told her to just wait and save up for it.

The website had much more than electronics, it even has womens clothing and furniture. You ought to take a look at the site but remember only to buy something when you have the money for it. Take a lesson from my daughter, save and budget for the things you really want. That way you won't be paying for it again and again with finance charges.

Unique businesses

The service industry is one of the largest growth sectors in the USA. Don't overlook developing a business that caters to providing a service. Technical repair of expensive equipment can be a lucrative business. Most home electronics have become so inexpensive that most people don't bother with getting them repaired but industry electronics is another story. The great majority of industrial equipment is run by computers and robotics. Not every company can afford to have a full technical maintenance crew. Often they will have a mechanical maintenance crew and hire a contractor for technical work as needed. If you plan on going into that line of work or have a background that will allow you to start your own service business you will need to look into equipment for your business such as high tech workbenches, test equipment, lighting and a static free work area. The most likely source of your business will be word of mouth, since networking in the electronics field is worth more than gold.

Choose an easy way to pay off your credit cards

I currently have 4 monthly bills that I will be paying off over the next 6 months or less. 2 of them are credit cards and 2 are medical bills. Here is a simple way to choose which debts to pay off first.

• Choose the highest interest rate card or payment to pay down first
• Pay as must as you can to pay off that first debt
• Mark you calendar for the deadline to pay off that debt and stick to it
• On your other cards or debts pay double or at least 1.5 times the minimum monthly payment, until the first debt is paid off

Once the first debt is paid off then just move to the next debt and use the money you would have normally used to pay off the first debt to pay the next one. Then repeat the process until you are credit card free.

Lastly get rid of any credit cards that charge a membership or maintenance fee. They are worthless to have. I have one that will be gone next month. I pay an outrageous monthly fee of $6.00 that would be better spent paying off a medical bill. $6.00 may not seem like much but 6 X 12 is $72 a year that I could save. That same card also has a $48.00 membership fee that I could do without too. A pair of scissors will be introduced to that card very soon.

Online contests

Another way to make extra cash is to play online games. I stay away from the ones that require a membership fee or cost money to play but when I come across an interesting game to get a few extra dollars I let you know about it. There is one new website that offers online contests where you can win by guessing the answer to a question using the clues they give you. The site is called Break the Vault and costs nothing to join. The prize money is in the $200 and up range so it could be worth a try to look into. I am still not sure how the site is making any money to pay for the prizes. Maybe they charge a lot to advertise on their website. In any case you might want to drop on over there and check it out.

Ways for kids to make some extra spending money

With stranger abductions of children many kids no longer have the option of doing odd jobs around the neighborhood to garner some extra spending money nowadays. Kids that babysit for the evening are hard to find. Those jobs are now being done more and more by adults. With the age of the internet it has opened up a vast opportunity for kids to earn money without the risks of leaving the house. Here are 2 cases in point where children have not only earned extra spending money but became multimillionaires in the process. One is a girl that at the age of 13 was designing the code for myspace layouts. She started out just doing them for her friends and soon people were paying her for them. Next is 2 boys that have a blog. They giveaway games and animations that you can put on your myspace page or blog. They make their money from advertisers that advertise on their blog. The two are millionaires. All the kids I have mentioned started out just doing something for fun and made money in the process. Maybe your child cane do something too.

Selling from your website

So you have gotten your website up and running. You have of course submitted it to all the major web search engines or paid for someone more tech savvy to do it for you. How do you know that you are not getting ripped off? Here is a site with information on how to avoid search engine marketing malpractice. If you are trusting someone else to do your Search Engine Optimization then you should look into the possibility that they could either be doing it wrong or just plain ripping you off. I once signed up for one of those banner ad displays. I would buy 10,000 impressions of my banner on other websites. I have no idea where they appeared. For all I know they appeared for a brief second on an add farm site. I do know that it only took less than 15 minutes for all the 10,000 banners to be displayed. I received no visitors from any of them. That was $25.00 down the drain. My advice to you is learn all you can about SEO and marketing your own website before you trust someone else to do it for you.

What does the Bear Stearns bail out mean to you?

The big news for today has been the bank bail out of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan with the help of the Feds. What does that mean for everyday folks like us? Watch the video and learn more.

Home loans

Are you in one of the many states that is experiencing a high foreclosure rate? Or are you in one of the states that is not affected that much at all? California and Florida seem to be the worse ones for foreclosures so far. In those states you might find a tightened qualifying standards for home loans. I live in Oregon which has not been affected that much by the home loan crisis thus far. The Oregon mortgage rates can vary depending on the type of home you have. Many homes here in Oregon are manufactured and not stick built so they require a different type of home loan. When investigating mortgage rates you want to keep that in mind.

Gas powered cars versus the hybrid

Are hybrids the better deal? I have found an interesting article below for your information. In my humble opinion the hybrid does not get good enough MPG or MPE. I still remember experimental cars getting 100+ MPG several years ago. What ever happened to them?

The high price of paradise

The gentle soft breezes, the warm tropical water and the high prices are all part of the new island paradise of Hawaii.

This week went fast!!

I have not had much time to even check on this blog, I was so busy this week. Yes I was making money, so it was a good type of busy. I had started several small part-time ventures last year to make some extra money. The reason I started several different types of ventures was to see which one would have more success and pique the interest of more potential customers. The silver jewelry sales were mediocre at best. Ebay sales of used but hard to find items was good for awhile until the downturn in the economy just before Christmas. Blogging for cash (paid posts)was OK but it is not constant. Freelance writing for websites is fun and I still do that. The most successful so far is writing a niche hobby blog that I am making money with Google AdSense alone. The blog is about sewing. It is something I know a great deal about. I have made money selling my unique sewn and machine embroidered items both at local fairs and on eBay, so I decided to share my experiences on my blog. In the process I have put more effort into my part-time business that sells machine embroidered items for the pet owner.

Saving money on your grocery bill

Here are 2 articles that I wrote recently for Associated Content. They are both about saving money - what else? The first one lists several websites that offer free online grocery coupons you can print out. The second article lists many ways to save on your monthly bills.

Free online grocery coupons
Money saving tips

News from Wall Street

Is it time to go shopping for stocks or not?

Ripoff artists and scams

Whenever the unemployment rate rises the scam artists come out of the woodwork to prey on those people that are unemployed. A few years back, around 2002, there was a scam involving talent scouts. What would happen is that a "talent scout" from an agency would approach people and remark "you have the look we are looking for", "have you ever thought about modeling or acting?". The scout would then give them their card and tell them to show up for the next casting call. The agency would hold the "casting call" and let them know all about how famous the agency was and the founder was a big name supermodel. They let the "future models and actors" know that they had an immense data base filled with portfolios of models. They let everyone know that film producers, top name modeling agency's and advertising companies had access to that data base. In order to join that group and have their photos and portfolios available they just had to pay a membership fee. The fee was in the $500+ range. It smacked of ripoff as soon as you heard the money amount.

But what does this have to do with unemployment? The "agency" also uses the same ploy to get their talent scouts. How do I know? I was suckered in as one. They pull the same "song and dance act" with their talent scouts. They don't pay them, the scouts work on commission only. For every person they get to sign up they get XX amount of dollars. When you are desperate for work you will do almost anything. I was with them for 3 weeks, which was 1 week longer than most of them. We were recruited in droves. There were always about 30 people that signed up to be a talent scout each week. Some people were commuting 50+ miles in to the agency.

After I quit the scam got on the news and the place got shut down. That was only one place out of thousands all over the country. It was a franchise.

Move up to last week when I got an email. Here is the photo of what they sent.

It is the same scam except this time they cut out the talent scout. They use email instead. When you click on the ad in the email it takes you to a site called Hollywood profiles and it also mentions a very nice membership fee. Be warned and stay away!

The gas crunch

Everyone is feeling the gas crunch. I am at the point of having to think about replacing our little commuter car. It has about 150K miles on it and it will soon be wearing out. It is the first car that I have ever owned that I have never had a problem with. It gets great gas mileage and I can commute to work on $20 to $25 of gas each week. I work 18 miles from home. Because of the gas prices I am seriously considering our next car to be a hybrid of some type. Although I am trying to save up to pay for the car with cash I know I may end up with a car loan - which I dread. This time I am going to shop around to see what Car Loans there are out there. In the past I always went with what the dealership offered in the way of a loan but I did get burned once on that, so I have learned my lesson. I have got to shop around first.

Making money as a freelance writer

I really love to write. I have been writing short stories and articles for pay for about 5-6 years now. Most of them had been for small time print magazines that only paid about $20.00 or less, but hey, I was in print! It is a big ego boost to me to have someone read my work and enjoy it. I really like writing for Associated Content since I now just write something that I know or like and submit it for payment. They apparently like my work because I always get an up front offer of payment for my articles. They not only pay me for publishing the article on their site but I also get paid extra for each 1000 readers that read my articles. So far I get a nice little payment each month just for people reading articles I have already been paid for. One month I got over 9K readers for one article alone and that meant an added $9+ that month in addition to my other articles views. Freelance writing has now become a really nice part time income that I only thought of as a hobby before.

Do you have a blog you need to promote?

Getting traffic to your blog can be an interesting challenge. Have you heard of Buzzfuse? This is a newer content marketing site that can help you promote your blog. You simply create an account and link your blog to photos you host. It gives you another way to drive traffic to your blog and extra links pointing to it too. Signing up is free.

Your rebate check

So how are you going to spend, or save your rebate check from Presedent Bush?

Is the mortage crisis as bad as the media says it is?

The media seems to be blowing the mortgage crisis way out of proportion. Here are the figures to set your mind at ease:

• 93% of all mortgages are being paid on time
• 3% of mortgages are in foreclosure
• 4% is the left over amount from the above amounts. It might be the margin of error or might consist of mortgages with late payments. Your guess is as good as mine.
  

What the above figures boil down to is the fact that only a small portion of home owners are in trouble, but it makes good headlines.

Pay off your credit cards - NOW

The credit card issuers are pulling a fast one. Some of them, BofA for one, are jacking up the interest rates of their cards without informing the credit card holders. Customers are only finding out the new interest rate when they open their bill up. Some have jumped from 8% to 25% overnight. I have been getting offers in the mail for credit card that have a credit line of only $1000.00 for 25%. Are these people (the card issuers) crazy! Those interest rates use to smack of loan shark years ago.

Consumer watch dog groups are advising consumers to pay off their credit card pronto and cut them up permanently. Start with your highest interest rate card first and pay it off. Don't forget to call the credit card company to cancel the card before the last payment or you might incur some monthly or yearly fee that they had planned to charge on that last billing cycle.