Bargain hunting

I found something over the weekend that I knew I would eventually get, an MP3 player. I had no idea that the prices on the darn things were coming down so fast! I paid just under $20.00 for an MP3 player that holds 500 songs. I bought it at one of our local department stores. It came complete with earphones and it is so simple to use. I just plug in the player into the USB outlet on my laptop just like a compact flash drive and open up my Windows Media Player program and download the music from there.

Now my daughter wants an MP4 player so she is saving up for the one that I saw for under $50.00. My guess is by the time she saves up for one they will be down in price too.

The financial crisis may fix itself without government intervention

The current state of the financial"meltdown" maybe not as bad as we are lead to believe. Consider what is happening right now on Wall Street, people are selling their stocks because they are going down in price. As the price goes down, more people sell. So what are people doing with the money after they have sold the stock? Simple, they are putting the money either into savings accounts or CD's a few might be buying gold. So now you have the banks filling up with money. The only way for banks to make money with those deposits is to lend it out and charge interest on it. Banks don't make money on just letting your money sit in the vault. So now the banks have more money to lend and then everything should return to a "normal" venue.

We will all see how this pans out in the next few weeks. I personally feel that the fall in housing prices was way overdue. The price of houses was much too inflated for what they were really worth. I also think that the current interest rates for most credit cards (from 18% and up) is outrageous. When the greedy banks got their hooks into the unwilling public like it did for the past 10 years, something had to give and it looks like it is the banks. I have no sympathy for banks that charge fees to talk to a teller or overdraft fees from accounts that had money in them (I have had that happen on more than one occasion).

Blogging for money and cutting your losses

If you blog for money you have probably started up many blogs in hopes that one of them will catch on in popularity. How long do you work on a blog before giving up on it? I give mine at least 6-12 months and sometimes longer. For example I stated a blog almost 2 years ago on wordpress.com (you can't make money on wordpress.com but the experience is priceless). For the first few months I was lucky to get 1 visitor a day. After 5 months I was up to 5 visitors a day and then at 9 months it just took hold and I had over 150 visitors a day. Last summer I had over 2000 visitors a day on the wordpress.com blog alone. My audience had grown but it took time, lots of time. The worpress.com blog is about current affairs and I only write a blog post about 2X a week on there.

About 9 months ago I started up several blogspot blogs in hopes that at least one or two would catch on. Some of them have. In all I started up 10 blogs, all with different topics and none of them linked to each other. Last week I deleted 6 of them because they were not getting the readers I had hoped for. Each one of them were only getting 3 or less visitors a day and it was not worth my effort to keep on writing to just myself.

Know when to cut your losses and delete an old blog if you have to. Not all blogs will get regular readers, in fact most of them don't get any readers at all. Know when to move on or learn how to tweak your blog to make it more reader friendly. It might be a good time to have someone look at your blog and let you know what they really think of it. Your writing style may suck or those cookie recipes that you list on your blog might just taste awful. It could also be that you are writing about something that no one cares to read about or that everyone else has already covered. Take a good hard look at what you are doing on your blog to attract readers and not have them come back.

Wasting food and money - a pet peeve of mine

One of my biggest pet peeves is wasting money on the weekly grocery bill. When my kids were younger they would bug the heck out of me at the grocery store that they needed breakfast cereal because we were "running out" at home. I put my foot down when they were picking out cereals just because of the "prize" inside the box. Then they wanted to try out a "new" one to see if they would like it or not. At the cost of $3.00 a box I found the smallest box I could find so they could "try it out". Of course it almost always ended up with a half eaten box of cereal because they would no longer eat it. That is a waste of at least $1.50 each time they pulled that stunt. The last few years I have not bought cereal for them since they now eat breakfast at school and on weekends they get a cooked breakfast.

Of course that also brings up the fact that I am getting irritated by people that whine about the high cost of everything when they are wandering around WalMart in their size 5X pants. They seem to find enough money to stuff themselves silly and yet complain about the cost of health care, contact lenses, gasoline, rent and not earning enough to pay for it all.

Have you watched the TV news lately and seen how many obese (not just overweight) people are in the background of live TV news shots? That tells me the economy is not as bad as the nay sayers want us to believe. Over eating has become a pastime even with the higher cost of food. In centuries gone by, rich countries always showed off their wealth by having a plump population. Has the USA returned to that custom? If so we have got to change it or our health costs as a nation will really sky rocket.

Free stuff

Here is a TGIF gift for my readers, a list of freebies.

• Just for your computer, a free resistry checker to keep your computer runing smoothly. It's called Error Nuker
• Create your own PDF files. Free download of PDF creator.
• Remove porn from your computer with Parental Cleaner, free download
• Free marketing graphics for your blog or website.
  

WaMu customers - what happened?

If you are a customer of WaMu like me, you woke up this morning with a new bank. JP Morgan Chase is now the current owner of WaMu. The US government had to step in at the last minute to hurry up the purchase of the banking giant because on Monday of this week banking customers of WaMu were withdrawing 10% of the banks assets. There was a run on the bank if you will. Now if the customers had just calmed down and waited there would have been a purchase in the next few weeks anyway.

The industries that thrive on fear and hope

With a title like the one above I bet you are thinking about organized crime but you are way off base. In fact a rather larger portion of our economy is based on those emotions.

The insurance industry is based solely on fear alone. The fear of losing something and not being able to afford to replace it is the basis for home owners insurance and car insurance. Fear of the unknown is the basis of health insurance and life insurance. Those industries play on our fears in order to sell more insurance to us everyday. Car insurance TV ads show realistic car accidents that startle you, life insurance ads show a wonderful family with a voice over that says “what would they do if you are not there?” Fear of someone breaking into your home is a boom to home security companies and locksmiths. Even the fear of getting old has the cosmetic industry making millions on making people look young. How about that TV commercial with the old woman laying on the floor of her own home, calling out “I can’t get up” in order to sell Life Alert security? Not only does fear sell products but it is BIG business.

The other side of the coin is the hope industry. That industry rises up out of a down turn in the economy. It can be something simple as a chain letter emailed to you with a “good luck fairy” inside. You must send the email on in order to receive good luck. Prayer websites have an increase in visitors.

The gardening industry starts to turn out more “good luck” plants like the “Lucky Bamboo” and the “Money Plant”. I have an interesting tale to tell about the Money plant. I bought one of those plants, not because of the name but because I liked the look of it. I bought it about 10 years ago and had it for a few years when some of the larger leaves dried up and fell off. At the time I thought nothing of it but I did start to watch the plant more closely after that. It seemed when ever the plant had a large leaf fall off, an unexpected bill would show up. If the plant grew a new leaf and it grew large then unexpected money would show up. We moved to another state just over 4 years ago and I gave away all my plants before we left. I don’t remember what happened to the Money plant but it was an interesting plant to watch for a few years.

I learned about the “good luck” industry from a woman that came from China. She collected elephants that had their trunks raised in the air. That pose was a sign of good luck. When I started my own small part-time business she gave me a large Chinese poster of a painted horse on rice paper. The horse symbolizes a wish of good luck for a new business.

The huge gambling industry is based on hope and it does a good job on persuading individuals in parting with their money in hopes to win big and change their lives forever.

When you think about it a large portion of the industries that are in business today have an element of fear or hope as a selling point.

Making money with your blog part 5

If you have been following my series of "How to make money with your blog" then you will be happy to see this installment. In the first 4 parts of the series I talked about developing your blog and getting links to it.

If you missed the first four here is part 4 with links to the other 3 parts at the end.

In this part you will find out how to make money from it. On the blog The Playful Pup, you will notice I have now put some advertising on there in the form of banners in the side panel. This type of advertising is called affiliate advertising and you join a company that is looking for website and blog owners to put advertising on their sites. How you get paid is when a person clicks on an ad and then buys something at that site. You receive a percentage of the purchase price. Now you are probably wondering why I took so long to get to the money part of the blog. That answer is rather simple. You see many of the affiliate programs that you will apply to will have some sort of approval process. By letting some time pass and growing your blog first you will have a higher chance of being approved by the affiliate company.

Here is a list of the affiliate companies I have joined with some insight into how each one of them has worked for me.





Share a sale: I have been with them the longest. I find their site is easy to navigate through and find some really good companies to host on my blogs. They offer pay-per-click advertising too.




Pepperjam is brand new and paid me $10.00 just to sign up. They seem to be attracting some of the major retail websites on the internet. They have BBC America, Chase, Jelly Belly, Sesame Street and many more. The companies listed on there tend to be pickier than the ones listed on Share a sale but the payouts are higher.

Remember to keep track of the ads you post on your blogs. Some of the companies you have an ad for might no longer be in business or offering the deal you are advertising. Don't keep seasonal ads up too long. Rotate your ads if you can so your readers have a variety of things to look at and not the same old same old.

Of course you can always add Google Adsense ads to your blog but unless it is a high trafficked blog you won't get many people clicking through. I find that my click through rate is less than 1% and the click might be worth a whole nickle.

Now you are ready to join an affiliate company.

State of the economy and how to fix it

I have never in my life seen so many theories tossed around as to how to turn around the economy. The politics being spewed out by both Obama and McCain have got to be some of the worst ideas I have heard in years.

Let's take a look at what happened so far and see what the answers might point to. It started with the housing crisis, that was started by more and more people not being able to make their house payments. I for one do not believe that people in general over mortgaged their homes. If you have ever gone through the lending process then you would know that you need income and equity in the form of a down payment or equity in the home itself to qualify. On top of that the home has to appraise at a level that makes the lending company comfortable. So what happened? People lost their jobs or had their incomes cut. Lack of work or a decent paycheck coming in is what was the cause.

We are a country of consumers but we don't produce what we consume. We stood by while large corporations shipped out our jobs to China, Mexico, Taiwan and India. We still continued to buy those products even though it made our economy less stable.

Here is my opinion on what the government should step in and do:

• Increase dramatically the import tax of any item imported into the USA. I say triple the current tax.
• Take away any tax breaks given to US companies that have manufacturing facilities located outside of the US boarders that produce items for sale in the USA.
• Close all loopholes that allow companies to import items from one of their off shore facilities to a facility in the USA without paying import taxes.

Those items alone will not only encourage companies to bring back their production lines to the USA but will help ease the tax burden that has been levied on the average tax payer and shift it to the large companies.

Next we should have an actual wage that people can live off of. When it is the norm to have 2 or more incomes coming into a family just to pay for essentials then something is amiss. When was the last time you could pay for rent and food on a $7 an hour job? $7 an hour equals $280 a week before taxes. I know that the fast food places and the mom and pop stores complain every time the minimum wage goes up. If they say that they can't make money by paying a decent wage then I say they shouldn't be in business.

The current state of the economy has charged me up to become one of those fat burners that cut the fat out of our lazy ass government, the only problem is with the choices we have for our new leaders - YUCK!

Improving your company

Enabling your company to grow and become it's best is something that only a few CEO's know how to implement. Now with the computer age everyone that owns or runs a company can have access to software that can analyze the processes that take place within our company structure to improve our business. That process is commonly known as cpm (Corporate Performance Management). It is a way to check to see if what we are doing with marketing, product development and budgeting is in reality really paying off. For example if you had 3 coffee shop locations and need to see how each one was preforming for you, you would implement a form of cpm. That would also enable you to see which one of the coffee shops would do better if you needed to change the hours it was open. It is a very comprehensive way to analyze the way your company does things as well as it's reaction on your customers.

The American Presidential race and the rest of the world

Some of us in the USA are fed up already with the day in and day out political updates that the media keeps dishing out. On the nightly news about 50% of the coverage is devote to politics. I am quite sure that there are thousands of other news stories going on in the world that is much more interested and will eventually affect me as a person in the long run. For example how many wars are going on right now in the world?

Even people in Europe are fed up with our Presidential race as evidenced by this political editorial. Come on news media, report on the rest of the world.

The USA economy is driving the rest of the world

Most of Europe wanted to be rid of the American forces in their own economies. While they have eliminated a bit of the influence most of it remains. The USA is a country of consumers. We have money and we spend it. The rest of the world has become dependent on that fact. They have become the producers of what we buy. When our economy went south so did our spending habits. We are not buying disposable goods anymore. Our paychecks are going more toward groceries and gas with little left over for even expensive items of clothing much less for electronic gizmos and gadgets. I have posted a news video below that details more of what is going on with the world economy.

What does the situation with Fannie Mae and Freddy mean to you

If you are wondering how the mortgage situation is shaping up with Fannie and Freddy here is the latest video news that has some answers.

Plight of the unemployed

Another Sunday and what are you doing? If you are unemployed this is the day that you are frantically looking in the Sunday newspaper for jobs. You may also be looking online for work on one of the major employment websites like monster.com or careerbuilder.com. I remember when Sundays use to be a time to relax and enjoy sleeping in and having a leisurely day. Looking for work could then start on Monday. It’s not the case anymore with the national unemployment rate at 6.1% and some places are higher than that.

If you happen to be one of those in the 6.1% then here are some tips on where to look for work. Your state unemployment office or it’s online website is just about the best place to find work. Many companies will only hire through the unemployment office. You don’t have to be unemployed to get a reference through the unemployment office either. Check your local small newspaper online for their classifieds. Craigslist.com has unemployment listings but I would thoroughly check out the company before even setting up an interview. I don’t know but maybe it is just me and the thought of Craigslist, since it is the same site that lists stolen items and prostitutes.

One of your last resorts is a temp employment agency. I have only had 3 jobs through a temp agency over the last 20 years and all of them were bad news. The first one I was placed at a computer manufacturer that imported computers from China and was taking the labels off of them and putting major brand names on them. The company had only 5 employees and only 2 spoke English. Totally crooked and I knew it. I left after a week. That was 20 years ago in Silicon Valley. They were selling computers to Circuit City and another major computer outlet (now out of business). I don’t know if they are still around but I wouldn’t doubt it.

My next temp job was 6 years ago. I was hired to be a process inspector but when I got to the company I was told to move huge pallets of bricks by hand and lay them out to be painted in the parking lot. The temperature was near 100 with no shade and I found out that the only other person doing it with me was also hired as a temp. He was suppose to be the certified forklift operator. After 2 days of just picking up bricks and laying them down on the ground I had enough. The pay was only $9.00 and hour and not worth the heat stroke. The guy that was with me said he was going to stay because he needed the money really bad. That was the end of that job.

My last temp position I was at for 2 years! There was just nothing else around and it was at HP. You see HP lays off their regular employees and replaces them with low paying temps. That job ended over a year ago and now I have a regular job that I can now put money aside for my family’s future rather than spending it on health insurance - since temp agencies rarely cover health insurance.

I would love to see an end to temp agencies and their tight wad ways. I think that companies should be forced to hire employees if the employee are with them longer than a few weeks.

You are the sole controller of your blog

As a blog writer I sometimes get some unusual requests. Most of them are link requests but often I get some off the wall ones. The most bizarre one was a request for me to write a blog post about their website for no charge. Not only had I never heard of the website before but when I visited it, it only had one item on there saying "welcome to our new website". Now before you start making requests for blog or website reviews you must have an established website or blog for me to look at and then we will talk how much my time is worth. I am a professional writer and I get paid to write articles for the web.

Next is those "I have added you to my link list, please add me to yours", comment. First off unless I visit your blog and really like it only then will I add your link. I don't know you from Adam so stranger requests for link exchanges will get you no where with me. I also think of that method of increasing inbound links to your website or blog very rude.

Remember that as a blog owner you control your blog. I know in the very beginning when you are desperate for inbound links to your blog you exchange links with everyone and anyone - don't do it. Instead get your blog listed on the many thousands of blog directories that are. The link exchanges you later do will be with fellow bloggers that you admire or have become friends with and not strangers. The links will mean much more to your readers than just a collection of random blogs and websites.

The Economy down turn creates a market boom

With gasoline prices up and real estate down there has been an interesting shift in goods and items sold. Milder climate areas of the USA have seen a rush to buy motorcycles and bicycles as alternate forms of transportation. Even though I have a car that gets 30MPG I have been eyeing a scooter that gets 80MPG at a top speed of 70MPH. That would be great except I could only use it during the milder months since I live where it snows. I am really waiting on a small SUV that get 50MPG that is 4WD for the snow I drive in during the winter.

Seeing that there is a growing demand for cheaper transport it only makes sense that there will be a higher than normal demand for bicycling and motorcycle accessories this Christmas like helmets. I can also see a growing demand for Harley parts and motorcycle mechanics. If you have a retail store then take some advice and cater to the newer modes of transport by either carrying much needed items for it or providing people with those modes of transport a secure place to park while at your store.

Saving money on personal items

Have you shopped for personal items lately? You know what I mean - bath wash, cosmetics, shampoo and such. You know those items are expensive. The cosmetic industry alone has made billions off of wrinkle reducers and acne treatments. One of the simplest ways to save money is to not shop at expensive stores for those items. If you are a regular reader then you know my love of the local Dollar Store for batteries and school supplies. They also have brand names of shampoos and hair conditioners but before you buy them make sure they are the higher quality brands than the .97 cent shampoos and conditioners at Walmart. I have found some expensive cosmetics at the Dollar Store on occasion too. I am also very reluctant to buy a body wash for $3.99 at Walmart when I can get a slightly smaller bottle for a buck at the Dollar Store. Since shampoo and body wash is made out of the same thing I also save money by using a cheap shampoo for a body wash. I would love to hear how you save money on personal items. Do you have a favorite store or a recipe for mixing up stuff that you would like to share? Just post a comment for all the readers to benifit.