What a cool shirt!
Posted on November 14, 2007 by Neo
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It’s probably the geek in me that thinks that this is a cool shirt.
Contest o rama
Posted on November 10, 2007 by Neo
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Well I haven’t had time to update this blog in a while. But after stumbling upon this blogging contest page. I decided to enter a bunch of them. This is my mass contest blog entry. I’m only entering contests with simple link entries, else I’d be writing 10 pages of posts.
So let’s start:
Contest #1:
- Link back to the Making Sales Making Money homepage using the anchor text home based business opportunities.
- Link back to the Contest Blogger homepage using the anchor text sweepstakes.
Contest #2:
Here is some link love for The Rookie Blogger.
Contest #3:
Get a cool sniper suit or also called Ghillie Suits at Ghillie Suit Clothing.
Contest #4:
Mark Houston Recovery has a contest here. Check out their articles about drug and rehab.
Contest #5:
Here’s a weird link. 97e3613
Contest #6:
I want to killthezombies.com.
Contest #7:
Here’s another contest from the writers manifesto.
Contest #8:
Crucial has a contest here and ;inking to both David Airey’s site and our Split-Shared hosting page will get 1 extra entry into the draw.
The Business of Hot Yoga
Posted on August 15, 2007 by Max
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One of the things I like to do is go to a hot yoga class. When I say hot, I mean that literally. Known as Bikram yoga, a series of 26 postures are executed in a heated room (105 degrees) in 90 minutes. It is said that the heat warms up the muscles and joints which helps students to perform the poses. The sweat also detoxifies the body. It is recommended that students attend a class everyday. I go once a week. Maybe.
Anyways, I first heard of this back in 2001, while acquiring my MBA. My management strategy professor at the time mentioned that the business model was ingenius. He noted that all teachers of Bikram yoga must be certified, a process that costs $6,000 dollars and takes a couple months, held only in Los Angeles. Re-certification is necessary every 3 years. There are more than 3,000 teachers. That comes out to a staggering $18M in revenues every three years.
Buying Web-Based Businesses
Posted on August 13, 2007 by Max
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In my quest for retirement, I recently looked into buying an e-business that sells services related to search engine optimization (SEO). My research into web-based businesses has been interesting to say the least. As someone with a background in finance, I found it surprising that these businesses are commonly sold for the equivalent of one-year’s net income. In traditional businesses, it is often many multiples of one-year’s net income. Seems like a cheap way to buy cash flow.
The business I wanted was purported to generate $80K in revenues against $30K in expenses, for 10 hours of work per month by the owner. The asking price was $60K. A few days after verbally accepting my bid, the seller told me that they signed a contract with another buyer. No big deal. I’ll definitely be looking into more web-based businesses to get my feet wet in the industry.
I think I may look for niche markets which may be easier to break into. I’ve always liked reef tanks so something like a site selling protein skimmers may work.
Did You Choose to be Poor During College?
Posted on July 26, 2007 by Max
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There is a joke that one of the shortest books ever written is titled “Career Choices for History Majors.” That’s pretty funny, though it’s probably not funny to history majors. The fact is, choosing your major is a critical decision that people are forced to make at when you don’t know much about life – age 19. Who really knew what they wanted to do, were capable of doing, and would enjoy doing, at that time?
I had two roommates in college. One was a sociology major, one was pre-med, and I majored in finance. Everyone was happy with their choices – everyone did ok grade-wise. After graduation, the sociology major became a social worker. The pre-med roommate attempted but failed to get into medical school, and went into dentistry instead. I got a job in finance.
As a few years passed, the sociology major realized that his job would not enable him to amass wealth. He earned less than $25K per year – steady, with little hope of substantial increases. I went from $30K to $67K in that time period, from 1995 to 1999. Fortunately, my roommate was smart enough to see his dilemma, disciplined enough to obtain several certifications in information technology in his spare time, and determined enough to change his career path. Today, he earns $80K per year in the computer industry.
Now, I know people are going to say, you should do what you love. Unless that realistically can make you good money, you shouldn’t. Do what you love in your spare time. Once you become financially independent, you can do what you love all day long. That mean’s staying away from majors like sociology, anthropology, history, women’s studies, English, philosophy, etc. Leave those for the future peasants.
You want to be rich, right? So do your due diligence. Research what jobs are available for your chosen major, what they pay and the typical career path. If you are fine with that, then by all means, pursue it. If not, then change it. When you are in a foot race, do you line up a few feet behind the starting line? Then why would you do that on your road to riches.
How Real Estate Accelerates Net Worth
Posted on July 23, 2007 by Max
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I bought my first home in early 2000. Much to my parent’s chagrin, I purchased a cold, hard loft in Chicago’s gritty Fulton Market neighborhood. Surrounded by meat packing factories and industrial warehouses. It was a condo conversion. I paid $250K, with $50K down. The $50K down payment was comprised of the fruits of my 4 years of working in corporate America. I’d lived with my parents for a couple years, then moved to an apartment. I’d managed to save $50K in those years.
In 2003, as the Treasurer of the condo association, I resigned from the board and sold because a special assessment was a certainty. I got $300K for my place - $200K paid of my mortgage, I got my $50K down payment back, and gained $50K in profits. That was when I experienced the power of real estate. I had spent four years saving up to collect $50K. And in two year’s time, I made $50K for what? Nothing but living in loft.
So with $100K in my bank, I resisted the urge to trade up. Instead I bought two one bedroom condos in the South Loop, a good rental neighborhood where the rents cover the mortgage, taxes and assessments. I lived in one, and rented the other one out. In the meantime, I also put money down on a pre-construction condo in Evanston, a Chicago suburb that is home to Northwestern University. This all happened in 2003, where my net worth at year end was $100K. As of today, my net worth is a tad under $500K.
How do you leverage your blog to make more money?
Posted on July 10, 2007 by Neo
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Sorry that it has been so long since our last post. We’ve been on vacation for the past two weeks. This blog isn’t big enough yet to have guest bloggers and we didn’t want to fill it with nonsense posts while we were gone.
With that said that, I’ve been thinking about how many “How to make money online” blogs there are. The more I think about it, the more I believe that these blogs are looking at it all wrong. Many blogs have decent traffic and are bringing in a good 3 figures a month. I really believe that these blogs can bring in alot more… but not by blogging itself.
For example, most bloggers trying to make money are actively learning three key things:
- SEO - how to rank better in search engines to get more traffic
- Traffic - how to increase traffic to their blog
- Conversions - how to make money off the traffic
These are great tools to learn. In fact, these tools would be great if the blogger had an online store or something tangible to sell instead of Pay per clicks. In fact, making money online bloggers know alot more than many of the online stores or online sites out there. They can use their skills to leverage a better pay off by partnering with someone who makes more per customer.
Imagine that you’ve gotten your blog to 1000 visitors a day. If you could partner your blog with a store, share your SEO knowledge, funnel some readers to the store, could you not make more money?
The reason I bring this up is because blogs are great for niche markets which make them great for niche businesses. If I loved wireless keyboards and wrote about them day and night, I may think that placing affiliate links and adsense ads on my blog will make it money. It may. But wouldn’t partnering up with a small online computer store be better? Imagine if you could get 25% profit from every keyboard sold, or every customer that came from your link instead. This isn’t an affiliate program, its a partnership.
Here is a very real example. Let’s say I start writing about the Harry Potter book coming out next week. I add my Amazon affiliate link in my posts and chances are that my Google adsense posts will contain Harry Potter links also. If I sell a Harry Potter book through Amazon, I’d make about 6% or $1.00.
However, if instead of using those links, I contact a small online book store with no concept of SEO or marketing and made a deal with them for 25% profit of any books including Harry Potter which I bring to them from my blog. Wouldn’t this be a win-win for both? This would just be the start, using SEO, contests, marketing you can increase their traffic by leveraging your blog.
I Got a Crush on Obama
Posted on June 26, 2007 by Neo
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This post isn’t about the “I got a crush on Obama” video. It’s about what this video means. This is going to be the first presidential election in the internet video era. I think that this video is going to wake up many politicians. The fact that ordinary people can create they’re own videos about candidates and get the SAME media attention and press coverage of the big networks has got to be scary.
While I have no idea if the video is helping or hurting Obama, it is definitely increasing his reach in the online world. I’m not really into politics and have no opinion on this actual video by BarelyPolitical.com. I just think that it’s a new barrier broken for the internet.
We may start to see floods of online videos from candidates very very soon. The videos may not be from the candidates themselves, but may be secretly funded by them. While the standard boring ones probably won’t get alot of views, I’m sure there will be some very creative videos coming soon.
Win a Ipod Shuffle at Live Learn Invest
Posted on June 20, 2007 by Max
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Two contests in one day?? I’m contest whoring today.
Live Learn Invest is running a simple contest where the winner gets an Ipod Shuffle and a free linkback. The main difference between this one and many of the others that I’ve seen is that he’s promoting a different site and mainly wants a link to Printed Circuit Boards instead of his blog.
You don’t have to write a review of the blog or even create a separate post even though I did. So if you’d like a free linkback from a PR4 site and a chance to win an Ipod Shuffle go check out his contest.
Pure Blogging Contest for $200!
Posted on June 20, 2007 by Max
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Pure Blogging is holding 2 separate contests this month worth a total of $200. The contest rules are here.
Pure Blogging is awarding $100 CASH to whoever posts the 1000th comment on his blog. The blog is in the 800 comment range, so hurry up and comment. Also, there is a random drawing for another $100 CASH to anyone who blogs about this contest, like what I’m doing right now!
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