Cash The Checks

Today’s the biggest day for online shopping. You’ve heard of “Black Friday” (the day after Thanksgiving), well this is the online version.
The reason they call it “Black Friday” is because it’s the first day of the year where a lot of business go from being “in the red” (negative profits) to being in the black, earning a profit. For retail stores the real money is made in late November and December. All those bad months all get forgotten about during the holiday season.

The reason they call it “Cyber Monday” is because Monday is when folks go back to work after the Thanksgiving holiday and use their employers’ computers (and high-speed internet connection) at work to do their shopping. Anything they couldn’t find at the stores they’ll buy online.

It’s times like these I wish I had a store-front selling hard goods. People love scooping up good deals on days like these.

If they pay so much, why am I not going to throw some money into my Paypal account and keep it there?

First, Paypal has a history of “freezing” accounts for no reason. Back in 2001, I had an account frozen and all of my funds were frozen as well. I couldn’t withdraw my money or accept any either. They asked me to send them information about me. It’s been so long I forgot what they wanted, but probably a copy of my state issued drivers liscene and a copy of a credit card, and most likely a copy of a current utility bill. I sent in everything and I never did get that account re-opened.

If you think this was a fluke case, then take a look at Paypal Sucks. It’s happened to lots of other people too. I think Paypal has cleaned up its’ act after being sued, so I doubt anything like that would ever happen again. eBay owns it now too so that’s given me enough confidence to keep using Paypal under a new account I created soon after my first one was closed. Just how confident am I in Paypal? Well I use it to pay for my eBay purchases and receive money from my eBay sales, but as soon as I have money in there, it goes right back to my bank account.
Just a couple of months ago, I “accidently” left a few hundred dollars in my account.. I was surprised to see it earned interest, as I had forgotten Paypal offered that. I think it was 5.05% APY. Not too shabby, but not FDIC-insured, so “save” at your own risk.

In an effort to make some more money off of this site, Cash The Checks, I added a top banner, 720×90 in size, just under the title. It leads to ING Direct. If you sign up for free to their online savings account, which is currently earning 4.40% APY, then I’d get $20.

I’ve also added some Chitika eMinimalls ads on the left hand column featuring several products which may be relevant to readers of this site. The products are random things such as Poker chips, wallets, money clips and laptops. I still have a 160×600 google adsense ad unit on the sidebar which serves relevant ads based on the content of the blog posts.

I’m having trouble deciding what types of products to offer or ads to display, I’m not sure what readers of a personal finance blog would be interested in purchasing..

The end of the year is quickly approaching and for those of us who have a business and make business expenses, it’s a good time to make some calculations and see how much you’re going to pay Uncle Sam this year. The advantage of doing this now is that if your tax liability is too high, it’s a perfect time to make some extra business expenses before the year is through.

Here’s a few things you can do to increase your business expenses yet not spend foolishlly.

• If you’ve been wanting to upgrade your computer, there’s no better time than now.
• Pre-pay your advertising expenses for the next few weeks/months in advance.
• If there’s this business investment you’ve been hesitant to make, this could be the extra motivation you need to take the risk.

I was interested in purchasing some headphones, these really big ones, I ended up deciding on the Koss QZ-99 Noise Reduction Stereophone. Here they are..

I got them in the mail yesterday and it turns out these headphones are forsome heavy-duty work or for working at the airport or something like that. Not only that, but they have me an instant headache because it felt like a complete pressure change when trying them on.

So there’s another $50 down the drain. I’m going to be selling these on eBay, at least it’ll be another positive feedback on my account.

It seems as if these noise-reduction headphones aren’t for me, so I’m getting some smaller ones. Here they are

These have a retractable cord. That’s key because those wires always get tangled up. When you’re using them they always seem to get tangled up on something and after you put them away, getting them again and getting it untangled is such a hassle. The Koss headphones had a coiled cord and this one has a retractable cord. So we’ll see how it goes..

Here’s a few studio headphones

TheMoneyBlogs.com…Nothing But Money

SHERMAN OAKS, CA — (MARKET WIRE) — September 14, 2006 — “Nothing but money.” That’s the fitting slogan for the giant new blog aggregation site, www.TheMoneyBlogs.com.

Featuring over 130 high-profile bloggers, TheMoneyBlogs.com is one of the largest personal finance/investing blog aggregators on the Internet. Articles cover everything from stock investing to real estate; personal finance to venture capital, and are updated several times per day, so content remains fresh. Incoming articles are monitored and editors choose which blogs to highlight on the home page. Editors also choose “Today’s Best Money Blog” and “This Week’s Best Money Blog” and readers vote on what will be the “Highest Ranked Money Blog.”

The goal of TheMoneyBlogs is to house the best personal finance and investing blogs on the Internet — all under one roof. Bloggers include: venture capitalist Paul Allen, money managers Birinyi Associates (Ticker Sense), financial journalist Tom Foremski (Silicon Valley Watcher), investment manager and author Donald L. Luskin (The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid), and mutual fund expert Paul Merriman, among many others. All blogs are archived and there is a link back to each blogger’s home page.

“There’s fresh, new content on the site all the time. We showcase what we feel are the best, most interesting, entertaining and timely personal finance and investing blogs every day,” says TheMoneyBlogs.com editor Brice Wightman. “Being proactive in managing the content results in a better finished product.”

By year’s end, TradingMarkets will launch TheTechBlogs.com, an aggregation of the top technology blogs on the Web, and plans to do the same in sports, finance, and politics, among other major verticals.

The MoneyBlogs is located at www.TheMoneyBlogs.com and the RSS feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/themoneyblogs/feed

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CONTACT:
Brice Wightman
TradingMarkets.com
15260 Ventura Blvd.  Suite 2200
Sherman Oaks CA 91403
brice@tradingmarkets.com
(818) 449-7461
(213) 955-5858, ext. 242

I placed 6 bets again this week.

Colts(Indianapolis) -12
Saints(NewOrleans) +5.5
Broncos(Denver) -7 (-160)
Seahawks(Seattle) -3 (-115)
Chargers(SanDiego) -1
Chiefs(KansasCity) +1.5

Speaking of The Money Blogs, I’m one of the “130 high-profile bloggers” and you can see my blog here: http://themoneyblogs.com/cashthechecks/

It’s just an RSS feed of this site, all it does for me is increase my exposure and it gives them more content. So it’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.

With more and more projects being built and re-vamped, I decided to get a new hosting account. I decided to go with Cyber Wurx. They have a real cheap blog hosting plan. You can host 5 domains, 5 blogs, for only $5 per month.

This wasn’t extremely necessary, but you can’t keep all your eggs in one basket. If one host goes down you don’t want to lose all your revenue so it’s best to spread things out a bit.

There’s also an SEO benefit to having several hosts. Seperating your different sites into different IP’s (class C IP’s to be specific) is crucial if you’re going to be cross-linking your domains or if your sites have a similar theme.

I haven’t been with them long enough to test the speed and downtime. In the few days I’ve been with them, there hasn’t been downtime but I know a few days isn’t enough to truly test the service. But the support is great, I was getting responses within minutes and there were at least 2 people available to answer questions and help getting me set up.

If you decide to go with them, tell them that username: “eddiecon” sent ya.

I almost forgot to add something to the previous post, the most important part. What’s the point of making that site? Of course it’s to make money off of it. I added Chitika and Adsense ads on it in the header and the sidebar.

What’s Chitika? It’s a pay-per-click sponsor that pays you for every visit you send them. Look at my sidebar on the left to see some of the ads I’m displaying. You choose which ad-size to place, what colors you want your ad to be, what item(s) you want to display, and Chitika eMinimalls does the rest. To join the program and make money from your blog, click below.

I went 3-3 this week, nearly went 4-2.
Total Wagered This Week: $120

Total Won/Lost This Week:  -$7.23
Total in Sports Book account: $180.79

New 2006 Season Goal: $200.00

A few weeks ago I got an idea to create a gadget site compiling to the best gadget blogs out there into one centralized gadget site. I got out my notebook and wrote out the plan. Here’s what I did.

I got my hands on a copy of Auto Blogger Pro from Relink Software. This script is like Wordpress on steroids. You can add feeds and just like that it populates your blog with them. Lots of other nifty little add-ons in there too but I haven’t tinkered with it that much just yet.

I did a google search for the top gadget blogs (including my own gadget blog: I Review Electronics) and added the feeds. I only added feeds that showed the full post, not just an excerpt.

I chose a theme for the blog, I went to this blog posting that has over 980 blog themes free to download. I picked one I liked then I edited the header and did pretty much no other tweaking on it. I was shocked at how fast the whole process went. With my other blogs it would take me days of work to get everything perfect.

Alright without further ado… take a look at..

Hawt Gadgets

I’m wagering $120 again this week. Here are my picks.

The internet is where you go to get information. It has replaced a dictionary, a thesauras, and the encyclopedia. The internet is filled with TONS of free information. Every day, there’s hundreds of thousands of new pages being created. The web is as cluttered as it’s ever been.

That being said, I see making money online by selling “information” is something that’s not going to slow down anytime soon. It’s simple, charge a fee for something people can already get for free. People save their time, effort and energy by paying a small fee to get the information they want.

Another idea I got recently was to gather a massive collection of legal forms. Then charge a dollar for someone to print one out. This could be a prenuptial agreement, eviction notices, and anything else you can think of. It’s pretty fair too, I spend days upon days gathering all the information, and someone just pays a dollar and gets just what they’re looking for in a matter of seconds.
With this frame of mind, the possibilities of making money online by selling information already out there are endless.

It was a good week, went 4-2.

Total Wagered This Week: $120

Total Won/Lost This Week:  +$32.80
Total in Sports Book account: $188.02

New 2006 Season Goal: $200.00