It occurred to me, as we were pondering what to do with the leftovers from our tax refund, that I don’t know jack about investing.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I understand the very basics of how shares and the market work (yay, economics) but I don’t really understand the different methods of investing beyond mutual funds. Obviously, this needs to be rectified.
So, does anyone have any good recommendations for books and websites on investing?
I’m NOT looking for get rich quick schemes or information on exactly what to invest in. What I’m looking for is basic, generalized info so I can bring myself up to speed and understand WTF a broker is talking about.
Popularity: 17% [?]
As much as I don’t like shilling for my own benefit, I must say that I really do honestly love Swagbucks.
I’m not the type to do most of their ‘social media’ type earning and I don’t bother to search out their swag codes so I tend to earn fairly slowly, but I still make about $15 in Amazon.com
You don’t have to choose Amazon cards as payment, but I find them pretty utilitarian when it comes to getting what I want and you earn them faster than, say, cash. You can also get actual goods, but like those prizes you tried to earn by selling the most magazines/wrapping paper/whatever as a kid, anything worth getting would usually take forever to earn.
In any case, Swagbucks is on my mind because I’m about to hit $35 and combined with my Amazon referral earnings, I’ll have enough to buy myself a new game (hurray for free SuperSaver shipping). I’m thinking Final Fantasy XIII
Decisions, decisions.
*Yup, you guessed it, they’re referral links.
Popularity: 14% [?]
By now, you’ve probably seen Swagbucks referral links all over the web. Almost all the blogs I’ve been to were urging their users to sign up, but I was hesitant because most of these sort of sites sound better than they turn out to be. Eventually I gave in because I figured that even if it turned out to suck, I wouldn’t be losing any money.
Swagbucks gimmick is that you earn ‘swagbucks’ by searching, and you can redeem those swagbucks in their store for everything from giftcards to comic books to actual cash. Unlike the other ‘search and earn’ sites, you don’t earn pennies every time you search, but you win a few swagbucks randomly (usually at the rate of about 2-4 a day). There are also ‘swagcodes’ which show up periodically on the site which you can input for a few extra bucks.
The swagbucks to cash rate is quite low. 85 swagbucks (70 at the moment) nets you $5 on Paypal, and then Paypal snags transaction fees out of your $5. You’re better off either selecting a physical prize from the store like a book or magazine subscription (don’t worry, no shipping costs), something downloadable like music, or a giftcard. Most giftcards go on ‘sale’ periodically, meaning you can get some pretty good deals.
Swagbucks is not a good way to make a ton of money quickly. If you figure a rate of 4 swagbucks a day over the course of a month, you’ll be making 120 swagbucks a month. If you add in a few extra bucks from the ‘swagcodes’ you catch and referrals, maybe you’re looking at 150 to 200. Not a huge payout, but then again you’re getting paid to do something you already do.
I found it easiest to just add Swagbucks to the ‘preferred search engines’ in Firefox, so it’s always right there in my search box and I always use it to search. Some IE users like to use the toolbar to make sure they always search with Swagbucks. It also helps to friend/follow Swagbucks on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, because that’s where the majority of the swagcodes turn up (I use the little widget on the bottom right of this site to check for codes.)
And as a tip, you can’t spam the search in the hopes of getting more swagbucks. You’ll ‘win’ more often if you search organically than if you try to repeatedly search for similar items. If you don’t win any bucks after a few searches, try searching again after a couple of hours.
Overall, I enjoy Swagbucks referral links. It’s not going to make me rich, but if I can get paid for something I would do anyway, I’m down with that.
*Yes, that’s my referral link. Clicky clicky.
Popularity: 20% [?]
I really do. It’s gotten to the point where I have to scroll down several times to find the content or navigation on some of my favorite blogs.
Believe me, I understand the need to monetize a blog. Having a blog on saving money be a money sink is annoying, not to mention silly. But that doesn’t mean I have to like the hamfisted attempts of some blog owners to make money.
So give it to me straight. How annoying are the ads on my site? If you use a feed reader, how bad are the ads in the RSS feed?
I’ve tried to be reasonable and make sure that my navigation is visible at the top of screen and any ads in the actual post text are less than 100px high. The categories are right there under the banner (which is why I changed the image colors to make them stand out a bit more) and the tags should be visible in the right-hand column on a 800px height screen without scrolling down. I’ve also tried to strike a balance in the side bars so there’s a lot more useful widgets than ads.
Keeping in mind that I can’t just rip all the ads out and they need to be visible in order for me to make my costs back, what would you do with my ads?
Popularity: unranked [?]
You often hear about how to dress and interview for a corporate or white collar job, but for some reason people
have decided that this knowledge isn’t needed when you’re trying to snag a part time or minimum wage job. Apparently those jobs aren’t ‘worthy’ enough for our attention, but with so many people being laid off and others just looking for a second job, competing for what used to be positions for bored teenagers and kids home from college, your interviewing skills and sense of style are suddenly going to be very important.
Getting the Application
Always apply in person. It’s much easier to ignore anything online. If they direct you to an online application anyway, ask the manager for his or her name and the phone number for the store so you can follow up in a few days if you haven’t heard from them.
Make sure you’re dressed neatly and you are carefully groomed. You don’t have to break out the business suit, but you need to look serious. A nice skirt (or khakis) and a fashionable top (or wrinkle-free polo) would be nice, but a pair of dark jeans and fashionable, dressy top would also work for casual clothing stores.* Many clothing stores will make note of what you were wearing and your attitude when you applied, and some many even toss your application immediately if you don’t have the right ‘look’. So style your hair, brush your teeth, put in your contacts and spit out the gum.
Don’t rule out working weekends or nights on your application unless you absolutely, positively can’t do it. That means things like already having another job, unable to pay for childcare, having to take care of ailing parent, etc. Wanting to go out with your buddies who weren’t laid off isn’t a good reason. With so many workers wanting the same job, you can’t afford to be picky right now. You can probably get some weekends off, but you’re simply not going to be hired if you’ve got finicky hours listed.
Popularity: unranked [?]
(Read the Introduction and Part One)
Clothing – Clothing is one of the easiest categories to make money off of if you’re satisfied with small gains. You’ll often find items with the tags still on, making things easier, but make sure you really check the garment for holes, missing embellishments, stains, etc.
You have to have a good eye for fashion, quality and fabric. A nylon blouse from Walmart might not sell for more than the price you bought it for, but a silk blouse might be among the treasures you find in the pile and you can pull a decent profit on high quality items. Classic styles and items from the 1930′s through 1960′s (and reproductions) are in high demand, but good luck getting people to buy a vintage tie-dye muumuu that smells like pot. Even with styles from the 1980′s coming back (and we’ve all seen the poofy sleeved mermaid bridesmaids gowns on the lawn), you have to carefully pick and choose because only the true hipsters want some of the less flattering styles that we wore back then.
You can sell clothing on your own at a website or eBay, which will allow you to collect the biggest percentage of the sale, but the onus is on you to do the marketing/business side of things. You could also sell to a vintage clothing shop, which would pay you under ‘retail’ value for the item because they need to make a profit too. Or you could try a consignment shop, where the shop will take a cut of the sale in exchange for doing the business side of things.
Popularity: unranked [?]
No, I’m not talking about hosting one (although that will usually net you at least $100), I’m talking about the fine art of buying under-priced items and reselling them.
There are a few co
ns to this little plan to make money:
1. It increases clutter in your home. – You do have to hold the items until you can sell them and if you’re buying items that need to be cleaned up you could have several projects at once.
2. You have to know what you’re looking for. – If you just buy random junk and try to sell it you won’t know how much to pay for it and how much you can resell for.
3. It takes a lot of time and effort to sell for the best price. – You can’t just buy an item, post it on eBay and hope for the best.
That said, it’s possible to make a decent amount of money on the side if you’re willing to do the work.
Popularity: unranked [?]
I’m going to be totally honest with you. Only a very small number of bloggers make enough revenue on their blog to cover the costs of hosting, let alone make a decent sum of money on the side.
Blogging is a lot of work if you’re looking at it as a source of income rather than a hobby. To be a successful blogger you must:
- Write entertaining posts. Whether or not they are educational is up to you, but all posts need to be well thought out and well written.
- Maintain the blog. This includes updating any codes, setting up or reorganizing your sidebars, redesigning layouts, etc.
- Network. This includes reading other blogs and commenting, answering e-mails, joining directories/exchanges/whatever.
At first glance that doesn’t seem like much, but if you figure it takes you half an hour to write a post, maybe another half an hour to read blogs and comment and another half an hour a week to maintain the blog and you’re dealing with 7 or 8 hours a week.
If you’re like most bloggers and make less than $1 a day in ad revenue, you’d be making around $1 an hour, which wouldn’t exactly have you rolling around in a bathtub full of Benjamins. And if you’re serious about your blog as a secondary source of income, you’re probably spending 20 hours a week on it, with not that much more of an increase in revenue for the first few months.
Still, blogging is a great hobby and with sites like Blogspot offering free hosting, there’s no reason NOT to try. Just don’t expect to suddenly be making a fulltime salary. It takes months of dedication to make a profitable blog and even years to gain a decent income.
Popularity: unranked [?]
So first off, what is a multi-level marketing? Wikipedia to the rescue:
“Multi-level marketing (MLM), also known as Network Marketing, is a marketing strategy that compensates promoters of direct selling companies not only for product sales they personally generate, but also for the sales of others they introduced to the company. The products and company are usually marketed directly to consumers and potential business partners by means of relationship referrals and word of mouth marketing.” - Wikipedia – Multi-Level Marketing
Multi-Level Marketing is NOT the same as a pyramid scheme. The difference being that there is a real product being sold and MLMs are technically legal.
Common MLMs that you may have heard of include Amway, Mary Kay, Cutco and the newcomer Mona Vie.
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So what’s so bad about that?
First off, if you want to make a decent amount of money you can’t just sell the product. Instead, you need to sell the MLM to other people who will then start to sell the product (and MLM) thus giving you referral sales/money. While this sounds fantastic, you have to realize that there’s a limit to how deep in the referral levels you can make money off of.
If you take a good look at the ‘success’ stories, you’ll find that the people more than $100 or so a month are the people in the top 5% or so of referrals. In other words, they’re the guys at the top of the pyramid. The other 95% are peons making the money for the the guy at the top. Statistically speaking, if you join you’re probably going to be a peon and not the pharoah.
That’s not to say that it’s impossible to become rich with a MLM job. I’m sure the top .05% of the marketers are enjoying their second home in Hawaii.
Secondly, most of these companies make you buy your own stock to start off with. While company literature usually claims that start up is ‘free’ or ‘only $XX’ that usually doesn’t include the stuff you have to buy in order to sell. If you can’t sell this crap, you’re stuck with it and you usually have to buy a certain amount of product a month to continue to collect your referral sales money. Many companies also make you buy more than the minimum if you want to make an extra percentage on the referrals.
Company literature also usually claims that this can be done from home in a few hours a week, which is bullshit. The people working only a few hours a week are the ones in the bottom 95%. The people making a living off of MLM are the ones treating it like a full time job and working overtime. MLM is not something you can do in your spare time and expect to make a decent supplemental income on.
And finally, you will become ‘That Guy’ (or ‘That Girl’). In the end, almost everyone in the MLM ends up preying on their own friends and family. It’s hard to make cold calls into a cold market where you don’t know where the demand is, so you end up trying to sell to your friends, family and co-workers. No one wants to be friends with someone trying to pitch a product to them and people will start to avoid you. No, I’m not exagerating. I’ve known a few people in MLM schemes and this is exactly what happens.
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So why do so many people get sucked in? GREED.
Thousands of dollars a month for only a few hours work. Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?
But like all things that sound too good to be true, Multi-Level Marketing fails in the end.
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More Reading:
- Federal Trade Commission on Multi-Level Marketing
- Great article on MLM with links for further reading
Popularity: 24% [?]
Some people are born salespeople and have no trouble convincing people to shell out tons of money for crap they don’t need. Then, there are the rest of us who sit at our computers and can’t figure out why no one is bidding on our prized collection of band memorabilia.
Here are a few simple tips to getting more money out of bidders on Ebay.
1) Run a search for the item you’re selling.
If you get hundreds of listings, you may want to hold off on selling that particular item for a while. Lots of listings mean lower bids.
Also take a look at the wording of the listings and see if there are any keywords or phrases common to the higher ending items.
2) Get descriptive in your listing title.
It’s not ‘blue pants’ it’s ‘NWT Old Navy Blue Leggings Size 4″. The more info in your title, the more people are going to look at it. Furthermore, a descriptive title will make your listing come up in more targeted searches, which is where a lot of bids will come from.
3) Provide the basic info, and then get interesting.
Start off your description with the usual info (size, condition, color, etc.) and then get creative or personal. If that mini-skirt helped you land your current boyfriend, say so. If there’s a funny story behind the collection of DVDs you’re parting with, tell it (briefly). If you can make the bidder feel like they have some sort of connection with you, you might get them to bid.
4) Try your hand at creating lots of items.
If you’re selling off a ton of used DVDs at ~$2 a pop, you’re going to lose about $.50 in various listing/paypal fees. Instead of selling low-priced items individually, try to sell them in logical groups. Bidders feel they are getting a better bargain on a lot of 10 Sci-Fi DVDs than 10 individual ones.
5) Don’t start with too low a starting bid
Sure, setting an item at $.25 will probably land you a bid, but there’s always a chance that it could be the only bid.
I’m sure there are lots of other tips floating around the internet for selling on eBay, so if you think you have a good one, spill it in the comments.
Popularity: unranked [?]
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