katelynriwv: November 2010

Monday, November 29, 2010

Making Money Through

Social products are an interesting bird. For even the most experienced product designer, social products prove an elusive lover. While there are many obvious truths in social products, there are also alot of ways to design them poorly. Especially when you are deep in the moment making pixel-level decisions trying to remember what’s important, things may not be so clear.

The only magic I’ve found in designing compelling social products that have the best shot at breaking through the noise and capturing people’s time and money is in being extremely clear on how your social product meets a few key design principles.

1. Design your product to matter in a world of infinite supply. In 2010, people are inundated with an overwhelming number of people, applications, requests, alerts, relationships, and demands on their time. You love your product. The benefits of it are totally obvious to you. However, if you and every member of your team can’t crisply articulate what emotional benefit someone will get from spending 15 minutes on your social product that they can’t get on Facebook, LinkedIN, or Twitter, you’ve got work to do.

This isn’t touchy feely stuff. Neither I nor the prospective people who may use your social product care about your features, your game mechanics, or how amazing your application will be when there are millions of people on it. I’m selfish with my time and you’ve got seconds to hook me in with something new. And I’m not alone.

To successfully use the fleeting moments you have, you need to orchestrate everything under your control to work together seamlessly under a single brand with a single reason for existence. Make it emotional. If your team can’t tie back every decision they are making to the emotion you want people to feel when they are using your social product, then your reason for existence isn’t strong enough to serve its role, which is to guide your team and the product decisions you are making.

2. Be the best in the world at one thing. To put an even finer point on the focus required of any social upstart, you need to be best in the world at one thing. For Lululemon, they’ve built a $450 million annual revenue business by focusing on the black yoga pant. For Twitter, it’s the 140 character message. For Facebook, it is connecting you to the people you already know. Everything these companies do ties back to a specific thing they are going to be best in the world at doing.

It’s not always obvious upfront what should be your best in the world focus and enshrining the wrong thing can be a problem. However, it is much worse to build a social product without guiding principles. When you are focused on the one thing your social product is going to do better than everyone else, all you need to launch is your one thing and no more.

Ask yourself and every member of your team what you are best in the world at every week. Even better, define it, agree on it, print it out, blow it up, and put it on the wall. This should be the filter by which everyone is making product decisions.

3. Seek out uniqueness. Today’s social platforms and applications are fantastic at meeting people’s need to belong. But equally important – especially in a world of infinite supply – is what makes us feel different and special. People want scarcity. People want exclusivity. This doesn’t mean your social product should be limited to a niche. Frontierville was built for mass appeal – so that I could play with ALL of my friends – but it still finds ways to bring uniqueness into its social experience via neighbors, customization of your plot, and collections.

When people talk about exclusivity and scarcity these days, discussions of game mechanics are never far behind. I love game mechanics as much as the next person. However, if you are implementing game mechanics in the exact same way as everyone else, you’ve got a problem. It goes back to the issue of infinite supply. If there is an infinite supply of points, badges, and levels because they exist on every single social product out there, the minute you use them without being thoughtful, you are losing your shot at exclusivity and scarcity. A better approach is to figure out what makes people feel unique and special on your service independent of any specific game tactic. Then, selectively cherry pick the features that reinforce your emotional reason for existence for people. For uniqueness to work, you have to lead, not follow.

4. Focus on your most important interaction until you have it right. Once you have the critical features defined, there is typically one interaction that is clearly the most important to get right. It’s the interaction that if you get right means someone comes back and, if you don’t get it right, you can’t realize your full potential. Take this interaction and be maniacal about it. For Twitter, this is the Twitter stream. For Polyvore, this is the set page. For Facebook, this is the news feed. For YouTube, it’s the video page. For Dailybooth, it’s the live feed page. It’s the interaction where your magic happens, so give it the care and feeding needed to make it a star.

5. Choose your words carefully. The earlier you are as a social product, the more your word choice should be different and distinct from everything else out there. Early on is the time to have something important and different to say. In fact, all the great brands of the past 30 years have started out appealing to the passionate and rebellious first. Virgin? Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Apple? The 1984 commercial. Nike? The subculture of intense runners sporting moustaches. Facebook? A few still remember the original Scarface logo.

There are things to copy from other services and there are things to make uniquely your own in social products. Layouts? Do your best but pay attention to what is already working. Colors? Hard to be original here, but blue is pretty played out. Icons? A toss up. Terminology? Own it. Your word choice is the primary place for you to have a point-of-view and present not only what you want your brand to emotionally mean to the people using it but the kinds of relationships you want people to have as a result of using your social product.

6. Create a party, not a museum. Great social products are clean, simple, and fast. The successful ones have little design flare, so that the people, photos, videos, text, and comments are front and center. The more design you add from colors to treatments, non-web-fonts, and graphics, the less your social application will feel like a party and the more it will feel like a museum. Or a magazine. Neither are a great goal. You want your social product to feel like it is a living and breathing party, not expensive furniture you’re not supposed to sit on.

7. Develop relationships, not features. Today, we have multiple personalities and different types of relationships with people in the real and virtual worlds. If you are going to design a new social product, it’s not enough to just offer a feature, like photos, videos, or events. You need to look at how the relationships on your social product will be important and different from the relationships you and others have already on Facebook, LinkedIN, and Twitter.

Most people will say that Facebook Connect handle the whole “people” thing for any new social product. I would argue that Facebook Connect is a start but if you can’t quickly show someone a new relationship dynamic or similar people in your social product in a way that is unique to your application, the value of people interacting in your new product will accrue back to Facebook and not you.

For example, I’ve found that on most new social applications I join I have the same 10 Facebook friends – typically my most prolific friends on Facebook already – on this new service too. In most cases, because these new social applications are just an extension of the things I’m already following them do on Facebook, such as sharing photos, events, lists, and videos, I don’t have a reason to come back to this new application a second time.

For a new social product, you need to think about how your social product expands, deepens, and changes the relationships people have today online and in the real world. This isn’t easy to achieve. The best example of a social product doing this well is Quora. Originally seeded with Facebook’s social graph, it has quickly differentiated itself by showing you people you may care about because of their thoughtful commentary, experience, and expertise displayed on topics that are important to you.

It takes alot for people to care about new people in the context of a new social product. Spending your time and energy on what constitutes similarity or what new relationships you want people to have as a result of your application is time worth spent.

As I think about what’s going to be created, discovered, invented, and re-imagined with social software in the next six months let alone the next five years, I can’t help but be excited. These principles shine a light on the first few feet in front of us, but, with every new social product success there will be new ones. As Alan Kay timelessly put it, “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.” I, for one, can’t wait to see what’s next.

Gina Bianchini is the founder of Ning, the leading online platform for the world’s organizers, activists and influencers to create their own social experiences with over 80 million unique users each month.

About a third of the top grossing apps in the Apple App Store are now making their money through the sale of virtual goods within the application after being free to download, according to research done by tech blog GigaOm.

The free-to-play model has so far served as a good way to entice users with free apps and then make money off the sale of virtual goods. Apple finally caved to developers and created a system to allow iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users to make purchases from within apps last fall. The design allows developers to create a free app and then get the user to purchase a very cheap virtual good, such as a better weapon in a game. It then becomes much easier to convert a non-paying user into a paying one.

Freemium applications are making a good bit of money. In January, mobile analytics firm Flurry said that the freemium games it tracked generated revenues of $9 per user per year, on average. In June, that number had risen to $14.66 per user per year. Previously, these games were generating around 99 cents to $1.99 per user per year. 34 of the top 100 apps are free, but make their money through in-app purchases of mostly virtual currencies as well as other premium features, according to GigaOm’s report.

Apple takes a 30 percent cut of all purchases made within applications. That’s the same amount that Facebook, another large host of social games (including Zynga’s Farmville), charges its game partners.

Apple’s App Store now has around 300,000 apps for sale and for free download. And the App Store is growing by around 1,000 apps every day. The Android marketplace, which has applications for phones running on Google’s Android operating system, only has around 113,000 applications according to some metrics.

Score another one for social games developer Zynga, which first brought the freemium model to the forefront as a significant source of revenue for games and other applications. Its games have become insanely popular, and the company is now worth as much as Electronic Arts — one of the largest publishers in the world — by some metrics from its virtual good sales alone.

Next Story: Microsoft and Cisco throw down the gauntlet for living room teleconferencing Previous Story: Nintendo: the gaming landscape has changed forever, but console’s are doing just fine

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Fox News '12 - Wilshire & Washington on Variety.com

I expect this is just the start of an ever-more rocky relationship between the news networks, but it may be a boon to the candidates. If they don't have to spend money to get exposure, doesn't it make more sense for them to wait until ...

Energy and Global Warming News for November 29th: Japan to help ...

Do these topics have a prominent place in the agenda for the Cancun negotiations (I haven't heard much to that effect in my reading of the news)? Could they be made a more prominent part of the agenda? Or are Ramanathan and Victor ...

Soap News: CBS Renews 'Young and the Restless' and More

Soaps are dying? Not yet. morning, CBS gave 'The Young and the Restless' a three-year renewal! Also this week, a fan favorite who was supposedly.

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Saturday, November 27, 2010

Making Money With a Website

This guest post is by Roman from how this website makes money.

Two years ago I stumbled across the concept of blogging for money. Instantly it hit me as the perfect thing: sit behind a computer, design a site, write, be my own boss, work from home, what could be better? I knew nothing about traffic, SEO, backlinks, Pagerank, or keywords. I knew nothing about how to make money with a website. So what did I do next? I registered the domain name howthiswebsitemakesmoney.

Looking back all I can do is laugh at my arrogance. Like thousands before me and thousands who will come after me, my first attempt at blogging was a site about making money online.

Two years later, I know how to start a site, I know how to write content, I know about SEO, I know about backlinks, I know how to add advertisements … but I still do not know how to make good money online. The site makes dimes a day, not dollars.

The site has been two years of disappointment. Two years of waking up in the morning and seeing the same green egg in AdSense. Two years of waiting for a four-digit affiliate check with my name on it. Two years of working without pay. Two years of scratching my head.

So I asked for advice, and every time the reply was the same: create a site about something else. Create a site about what you know and what you enjoy. Do not create a site with the intent to make money, create a site with the intent to help people by doing something you enjoy doing.

What happened when I changed my intent

Six months ago I created a new site. This time my intent was pure pleasure.

I live in Prague and I love it here. So I made a little site about how great Prague is and what people should do when they come for a visit. It was built in a month. In a gust of activity I designed the site and wrote the content.

It was so easy. I did not agonize over what to write about. The content flowed effortlessly from my head to the keyboard. I did not have to take long walks with the dog or waste water standing dazed in the shower coming up with new ideas. I just sat down at the computer and wrote about what I know. It was so easy I actually looked forward to it.

As an afterthought, I created a simple page where people can order a real postcard from Prague. Visitors select a picture of Prague and fill out a form indicating what they want written on the postcard. After they hit the Submit button I get the request by email. I grab a postcard and, like an ancient scribe long before computers, lick the tip of the pen and write. After pounding a Prague stamp on the postcard I toss it into the mailbox on my way to work. I charge $4.00 for this five minutes of work.

I created this site with no aspirations of becoming rich, no day dreams of shaking hands with Oprah, no imagined scenes of telling my employer to find some other donkey to kick around. I created the website because it was easy for me to do and I enjoyed it. I made it because I needed a break from my ‘real’ website. I expected nothing to happen.

Again, I was wrong.

My hand is ink blue from all the postcards I have written.

I wrote a postcard from a son playing a trick on his mother: “Hi, Mom! Sorry for not calling in last few days. But I am in Prague with friends. Having a great time and the beer is sooo cheap. Say hi to Dad.”

I have written postcards to countries all over the world. Some of them in languages other then English—I have no idea what I am writing. Fortunately, the order form does not allow Chinese characters!

I get emails from people thanking me for the information they found on the site, thanking me for the postcard, asking for more information.

I feel like I am making the world a better place. I made a website about something I know about and am interested in and people are thanking me. Emotionally it is a soft, warm, fuzzy ball.

And yes, I am making money.

Intend to enjoy and you might make money

I learned a lot about making money online not from my site about making money, but from licking postage stamps.

New arrivals to the make-money-online scene go through the same initiation—they start out with the intent to make money, then fail to make more then a pile of pennies. For some it means the end and they quit, but for others this brutal introduction teaches them that their intent needs to change.

Of course, making money is about traffic, clicks, affiliates, backlinks SEO, but it’s also about finding something you enjoy doing. If your intent is only to make money the odds are stacked against you: you will probably quit. But if your intent is to do something you enjoy then you will keep moving forward until one day, you will be surprised to find that you are making money.

What’s your intent?

Roman intends to figure out how this website makes money. He has been trying to do that for two long years, so when he needs a break and do something fun he goes onto his other website to send a real postcard to his mother who misses him very much.

Would you take advice from a woman who willingly hooked up with Jon Gosselin? Like not someone who just slept with him when she was blacked out drunk, although that would be damning (and disappointing) enough, but someone who was with him for months and plans to marry him? Jon Gosselin’s current girlfriend, 24 year-old Ellen Ross, wants you to do just that and has started a blog where she doles out life strategies to people who ask her for help. This story is in the Enquirer, and sounds straight from Jon and Ellen, who probably wants some publicity for her website.

Reality TV dad Jon Gosselin’s galpal Ellen Ross has started her own advice column, dishing out advice on everything from how to manage pets - she has three Chihuahuas, a rat and a fish - to getting over a breakup.

Despite the fact that her main claim to fame is she’s dating a jobless and divorced father of eight, Ellen, 24, believes she has what it takes to dole out pearls of wisdom on her blog, ellenross.blogspot.com. In October, the Enquirer reported exclusively that Jon and the 5-foot-5 brunette… are already making wedding plans.

“Jon says he’s more in love with Ellen than he ever was with Kate,” divulged the source.

The two share an apartment in Reading, PA and stay at his ex wife Kate’s home when Jon has custody of the children.

Sources say Jon, 33, expects to provide for his new bride with proceeds from the tell-all memoir he’s writing.

And that’s probably a good thing.

Ellen says: “I am not looking for any money, fame or profit from this at all.”

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, November 22, 2010]

I checked Ellen’s blog and it’s well written and can actually be helpful. She doesn’t have a self righteous tone, and some of her advice is good and thoughtful. She loves dogs and seems to know quite a bit about pets, and she has useful ideas for people’s personal problems. There’s something to be said about someone who starts an advice column, though. I think Lainey summed it up best in a story on Katherine Heigl where she called her “one of those ‘You Should’ kind of friends. You should do this, you should do that, I would do this, I would do that, she knows everything.”

This just makes it seem like Jon loves bossy women who take over and do everything for him so he doesn’t have to think. Kate Gosselin bugs the crap out of me and she definitely henpecked Jon, but he needed some serious ass kicking to get anything done. It looks like he’s getting his ass kicked by someone who truly enjoys telling him what to do. If only she could figure out the best way to help his poor kids.

Header via The Hollywood Gossip

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Denver Broncos News: Horse Tracks 11/27/10 - Mile High Report

Your daily cup of Orange and Blue Coffee - Horse Tracks.

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Return to OregonLive later today for more from The Oregonian on the terrorist arrest.

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Denver Broncos News: Horse Tracks 11/27/10 - Mile High Report

Your daily cup of Orange and Blue Coffee - Horse Tracks.

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Return to OregonLive later today for more from The Oregonian on the terrorist arrest.

News - Jennifer Aniston, Chelsea Handler Flaunt Bikini Bods in ...

The new BFFs show off their curves while celebrating Thanksgiving abroad.

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This guest post is by Roman from how this website makes money.

Looking back all I can do is laugh at my arrogance. Like thousands before me and thousands who will come after me, my first attempt at blogging was a site about making money online.

What happened when I changed my intent

Six months ago I created a new site. This time my intent was pure pleasure.

Again, I was wrong.

My hand is ink blue from all the postcards I have written.

I get emails from people thanking me for the information they found on the site, thanking me for the postcard, asking for more information.

I feel like I am making the world a better place. I made a website about something I know about and am interested in and people are thanking me. Emotionally it is a soft, warm, fuzzy ball.

And yes, I am making money.

Intend to enjoy and you might make money

I learned a lot about making money online not from my site about making money, but from licking postage stamps.

What’s your intent?

Reality TV dad Jon Gosselin’s galpal Ellen Ross has started her own advice column, dishing out advice on everything from how to manage pets - she has three Chihuahuas, a rat and a fish - to getting over a breakup.

Despite the fact that her main claim to fame is she’s dating a jobless and divorced father of eight, Ellen, 24, believes she has what it takes to dole out pearls of wisdom on her blog, ellenross.blogspot.com. In October, the Enquirer reported exclusively that Jon and the 5-foot-5 brunette… are already making wedding plans.

“Jon says he’s more in love with Ellen than he ever was with Kate,” divulged the source.

The two share an apartment in Reading, PA and stay at his ex wife Kate’s home when Jon has custody of the children.

Sources say Jon, 33, expects to provide for his new bride with proceeds from the tell-all memoir he’s writing.

And that’s probably a good thing.

Ellen says: “I am not looking for any money, fame or profit from this at all.”

[From The National Enquirer, print edition, November 22, 2010]

Header via The Hollywood Gossip

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Denver Broncos News: Horse Tracks 11/27/10 - Mile High Report

Your daily cup of Orange and Blue Coffee - Horse Tracks.

Portland terrorist bomb plot: News, opinion from The Oregonian and ...

Return to OregonLive later today for more from The Oregonian on the terrorist arrest.

News - Jennifer Aniston, Chelsea Handler Flaunt Bikini Bods in ...

The new BFFs show off their curves while celebrating Thanksgiving abroad.

bench craft company scam

Denver Broncos News: Horse Tracks 11/27/10 - Mile High Report

Your daily cup of Orange and Blue Coffee - Horse Tracks.

Portland terrorist bomb plot: News, opinion from The Oregonian and ...

Return to OregonLive later today for more from The Oregonian on the terrorist arrest.

News - Jennifer Aniston, Chelsea Handler Flaunt Bikini Bods in ...

The new BFFs show off their curves while celebrating Thanksgiving abroad.

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Friday, November 19, 2010

foreclosure

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autosport.com - F1 News: Rosberg: Pirellis won't help Mercedes

Nico Rosberg doubts the new Pirelli tyres will do anything to ease the difficulties Mercedes suffered with front-tyre grip on the 2010 Bridgestones, after the Formula 1 teams tried the 2011 rubber for the first time in Abu Dhabi today.

Small Business News: Questions For Your Business

Everybody has questions when going into or running a business...everybody. If you have some burning inqueries you'd like to get answered, read our small.

EA launching Facebook golf game PC News - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our PC news of EA launching Facebook golf game.

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autosport.com - F1 News: Rosberg: Pirellis won't help Mercedes

Small Business News: Questions For Your Business

Everybody has questions when going into or running a business...everybody. If you have some burning inqueries you'd like to get answered, read our small.

EA launching Facebook golf game PC News - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our PC news of EA launching Facebook golf game.

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autosport.com - F1 News: Rosberg: Pirellis won't help Mercedes

Small Business News: Questions For Your Business

Everybody has questions when going into or running a business...everybody. If you have some burning inqueries you'd like to get answered, read our small.

EA launching Facebook golf game PC News - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our PC news of EA launching Facebook golf game.

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autosport.com - F1 News: Rosberg: Pirellis won't help Mercedes

Small Business News: Questions For Your Business

Everybody has questions when going into or running a business...everybody. If you have some burning inqueries you'd like to get answered, read our small.

EA launching Facebook golf game PC News - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our PC news of EA launching Facebook golf game.

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autosport.com - F1 News: Rosberg: Pirellis won't help Mercedes

Small Business News: Questions For Your Business

Everybody has questions when going into or running a business...everybody. If you have some burning inqueries you'd like to get answered, read our small.

EA launching Facebook golf game PC News - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our PC news of EA launching Facebook golf game.

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autosport.com - F1 News: Rosberg: Pirellis won't help Mercedes

Small Business News: Questions For Your Business

Everybody has questions when going into or running a business...everybody. If you have some burning inqueries you'd like to get answered, read our small.

EA launching Facebook golf game PC News - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our PC news of EA launching Facebook golf game.

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autosport.com - F1 News: Rosberg: Pirellis won't help Mercedes

Small Business News: Questions For Your Business

Everybody has questions when going into or running a business...everybody. If you have some burning inqueries you'd like to get answered, read our small.

EA launching Facebook golf game PC News - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our PC news of EA launching Facebook golf game.

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autosport.com - F1 News: Rosberg: Pirellis won't help Mercedes

Small Business News: Questions For Your Business

Everybody has questions when going into or running a business...everybody. If you have some burning inqueries you'd like to get answered, read our small.

EA launching Facebook golf game PC News - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our PC news of EA launching Facebook golf game.

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Fox News President: Jon Stewart Is Crazy And NPR Is Run By Nazis ...

The second part of The Daily Beast's interview with Fox News president Roger Ailes is out today, and Ailes' encore doesn't disappoint. He responded harshly to Jon Stewart's pervasive criticism of cable news and had some tough, ...

WGN News Anchors Flip Out

WGN News Anchors Flip Out: Chicago news anchors comically go nuts when a bridge implodes the second they cut away from it...

EA launching Facebook golf game PC News - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our PC news of EA launching Facebook golf game.

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Lions vs. Cowboys: Good News On The Injury Front; Dez Bryant Is ...

The Dallas Cowboys get some veterans back in practice, and Dez Bryant is a violent man.

Police News at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the ...

1 Tweets that mention Police News at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics -- Topsy.com. Pingback on Nov 19th, 2010 at 3:23 am. 2 Police News at ...

Movie News Quick Hits: Leonardo DiCaprio to Star in New JFK ...

Do you find Wall-E and Eve so adorable you just want to eat them? Now you can thanks to Charm City Cakes. - Warner Bros.

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Small Business News: Questions For Your Business

Everybody has questions when going into or running a business...everybody. If you have some burning inqueries you'd like to get answered, read our small.

Photos Implant 'Memories' of Fictional News Events | Smart ...

Participants in a study were far more likely to “remember” a fictional news event when a headline was accompanied by a tangentially relevant photograph.

Taiwanese News Channel Animates Royal Engagement! | PerezHilton.com

Royal Wedding Fever has hit Taiwan! Check out their animated (because we wouldn´t want it any other way!) interpretation of Prince William´s engagement to Kate Middleton (above)! Sooo...

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Thursday, November 18, 2010

Online Money Making Opportunities

eric seiger

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 11/18 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning Chiefs fans! A somewhat shorter version of Arrowheadlines this morning. Not a lot out there. Enjoy your Kansas City Chiefs news. Oh, and don't forget about football tonight (Go Bones!).

News Corp's Two Newspaper Tablet Projects are Back on Track

After stories that Rupert Murdoch had binned his adventurous newspaper app project, his son James has said Project Alesia is going ahead, whether other newspapers want their content aggregated or not.

Fox News Decoded - Swampland - TIME.com

What do you do to amp ratings after you've won a big victory at the polls and the public has wandered off to start celebrating the holidays? At Fox News, the answer is obvious: you up the ante.

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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 11/18 - Arrowhead Pride

News Corp's Two Newspaper Tablet Projects are Back on Track

Fox News Decoded - Swampland - TIME.com

What do you do to amp ratings after you've won a big victory at the polls and the public has wandered off to start celebrating the holidays? At Fox News, the answer is obvious: you up the ante.

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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 11/18 - Arrowhead Pride

News Corp's Two Newspaper Tablet Projects are Back on Track

Fox News Decoded - Swampland - TIME.com

What do you do to amp ratings after you've won a big victory at the polls and the public has wandered off to start celebrating the holidays? At Fox News, the answer is obvious: you up the ante.

eric seiger

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 11/18 - Arrowhead Pride

News Corp's Two Newspaper Tablet Projects are Back on Track

Fox News Decoded - Swampland - TIME.com

What do you do to amp ratings after you've won a big victory at the polls and the public has wandered off to start celebrating the holidays? At Fox News, the answer is obvious: you up the ante.

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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 11/18 - Arrowhead Pride

News Corp's Two Newspaper Tablet Projects are Back on Track

Fox News Decoded - Swampland - TIME.com

What do you do to amp ratings after you've won a big victory at the polls and the public has wandered off to start celebrating the holidays? At Fox News, the answer is obvious: you up the ante.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

personal finance money management

In the digital age, nobody likes carrying a lot of cash around – I know I don’t, anyway. This can be especially frustrating when you go to keep track of your expenses, who you owe money to, who you lent some to and just where it all goes over the month.

As always, there are a lot of apps out there to help you do various things with your money. There are apps to figure out how to manage your money, oversee expenses, send money to people, keep track of who owes you, and more.

In this article, I’ll show you some of the applications you can take advantage of to do everything I’ve mentioned here, leaving you free to pick and choose the apps that will make your life easier.

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How to Manage Your Money

I’m beginning to learn just how difficult managing your expenses can be. For the most part, I use my debit card tied to my checking account to make purchases. I use it at the grocery store, when I go out to lunch with my coworkers and on the weekend when I’m out exploring the city.

At the end of the month, my bank statement looks pretty ridiculous. All of these small transactions make it difficult to sift through. I still know what everything is, but if I wanted to see where I could be saving some money I wouldn’t know the first place to look.

Sounds like you? Even if it doesn’t, you could still reap the benefits of visually being able to manage your money. These apps make the process a lot easier.

Mint

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Mint has been on our radar since back in 2007 when Karl wrote about it. Plain and simple, if there is one app I want you to keep in mind it’s this one.

Mint is a free personal finance application that can help you compare your bank accounts, credit cards, CDs, brokerage and 401(k) to the best products out there. It offers a visual representation of your finances and is very easy to set up. Use it to manage your budget, get credit card advice and understand investing.

Here’s a great video showcasing an overview of Mint’s features:

For some helpful tips on how to use Mint, check out Bakari’s article on How To Use Mint To Manage Your Budget & Spendings Online.

Thrive

Thrive (directory app) is also a great application if you’re looking for a simple way to keep track of your spending. With Thrive, you get an overall Financial Health score, which is one number that shows you how financially fit you are. It also shows you scores in other areas and offers you advice on how to make improvements.

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Thrive breaks down your spending for you and shows you where you can save. Compare your current budget to last month’s, as well as view a six month average and target budgets to follow.

Texthog

Looking for an even simpler way to track expenses? Texthog (directory app) lets you easily store, organize and access your receipts, expense reports and more via text message, the web, your email, iPhone and even Twitter.

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A Texthog free account gives one user the ability to track expenses, view unlimited reports and get budget/bill reminders. Take a photo of your receipts and utilize tags and categories to keep track of everything.

To check out Texthog on your iPhone, you can find the application on iTunes.

Venmo

Speaking of text messages, have you heard of Venmo? Venmo (directory app) is a nice little app that lets you pay and charge friends with your phone. Send and receive secure payments by linking your card to your account. This allows you to settle small loans you give/get by eliminating paper transactions for small amounts of money.

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To use Venmo, all you do is create an account. You can then send and receive money to other accounts simply by using text commands in SMS. Accept a “trust” request from your friends and make transactions without having to authorize them by texting a 3 digit code.

This is a pretty solid application that I have been using a lot lately with my friends/coworkers. It’s great for when a bunch of you are out to lunch and not everyone has cash on them. “I’ll just put it on my card and Venmo you all afterwards.”

Owe Me Cash

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Owe Me Cash is a nice app I found recently that is also very easy to use. If someone owes you money, you just sign into Owe Me Cash with your Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, or regular account and tell the app about the debt. The app will send automatic reminders to those that owe you money by phone, text and email, so you can get paid!

This app is more fun than serious, but it doubles as an easy way to keep track of who owes you what. Let the app bug your friends to pay you so you don’t have to do it yourself – it’s a win-win.

Conclusion

With these applications, your finances will never look better. Say goodbye to paper money and change.

What do you think of these money-managing applications? Will you be using any of them?

Image Credit: marema

Are you an entrepreneur, solo business owner or freelancer? Are you keen to get regular business advice but don’t have the time to work out which blogs to subscribe to? Well, we’ve done the research for you.

Here’s a collection of business blogs aimed at entrepreneurs and small businesses. These have been chosen for their insights, advice, presentation and overall appeal to business people. Hopefully you’ll find these blogs cover all the business management advice and business trends analysis for your needs.

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1. Harvard Business Review

Harvard Business Review is a staple in any entrepreneur blog collection. The blog delivers timely business analysis and professional management advice.

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2. Young Entrepreneur

When you’re just starting our with your business venture, things can be a little tough. Young Entrepreneur focuses on the things you’ll need to know – financing, bootstrapping, identifying opportunities and making sales.

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3. 64 Notes

64 Notes gets straight to the nuggets of gold by bypassing straightforward management tips and filling each post with those eye-opening things that change your business from alright to amazing. They also write a lot about how to avoid being the start-up that failed.

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4. The Personal MBA

The Personal MBA is a blog dedicated to teaching all the tips and tricks you would have learned if you had done a degree in business. It recommends books, summarises books and draws on advice given freely by great minds in business. If you follow this blog you will learn a great deal about managing your business.

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5. Instigator Blog

Instigator Blog is a very insightful blog, mainly discussing thoughts relevant to small business and entrepreneurs, written by an entrepreneur as he works on his business.

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6. Fast Company

Fast Company is a major business blog, covering business news and trends. It’s vital information if you want to know where business is heading.

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7. Entrepreneur Blog

Entrepreneur Blog is a site dedicated to providing business insights to entrepreneurs. It will analyse business failures, successes and trends, while offering sensible advice for any business owner.

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8. The Entrepreneurial Mind

The Entrepreneurial Mind is a business blog written by a Belmont University professor of Entrepreneurship. His academic insight into the world of the entrepreneur is a great balance to the news and trends offered by other blogs.

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9. Creative Web Biz

Creative Web Biz is a great blog for all the artistic entrepreneurs out there. This is a place for those people who are entrepreneurs, but don’t much care for all the business management advice and trends. This blog is entirely focused on how to get that art out there and sold. Highly recommended for musicians, artists, and makers of other crafts.

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10. Work Happy

Work Happy is a blog offering advice for anyone in business for themselves. It’s useful for freelancers, small business owners and entrepreneurs alike. It features a lot of video presentations from entrepreneurs to keep things interesting.

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Bonus: Entrepreneurship Interviews

Entrepreneurship Interviews added itself on to the list by being a wealth of information in the form of interviews with entrepreneurs. It’s not much to look at, but there is a lot to be gained by listening to what other entrepreneurs say candidly about their own business ventures.

More Blogs

If you’re keen to see some more great blog lists from MakeUseOf, read on:

Four Best Inspiring Blogs Every Life Hacker Should Subscribe To
3 Personal Finance Blogs That Will Get You Out Of Debt
The 10 Most Stunning Photo Blogs
6 Best Web Design Blogs To Follow
The 6 Best Blogs For Architectural & Interior Design Ideas

If you know of other great blogs for business people, let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: Shutterstock

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Lujiazui Breakfast: News And Views About China Stocks (Nov. 18 ...

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: Shanghai's main stock index fell 1.9% yesterday amid concerns about the impact of government efforts to slow down ...

New Yorker's Music Critic Moves to News Corp.'s Daily - NYTimes.com

Sasha Frere-Jones, a music critic at The New Yorker, will become the culture editor of The Daily, News Corporation's so-called iPad newspaper which is currently in development.

More Bad News for Obama 2012: Catholics Elect Dolan - Swampland ...

Corrected Nov. 17: The Catholic bishops' surprise election yesterday of New York's Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan as their president is more bad news for Obama in 2012.

Lujiazui Breakfast: News And Views About China Stocks (Nov. 18 ...

New Yorker's Music Critic Moves to News Corp.'s Daily - NYTimes.com

Sasha Frere-Jones, a music critic at The New Yorker, will become the culture editor of The Daily, News Corporation's so-called iPad newspaper which is currently in development.

More Bad News for Obama 2012: Catholics Elect Dolan - Swampland ...

Corrected Nov. 17: The Catholic bishops' surprise election yesterday of New York's Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan as their president is more bad news for Obama in 2012.

alpine payment systems scam

Lujiazui Breakfast: News And Views About China Stocks (Nov. 18 ...

New Yorker's Music Critic Moves to News Corp.'s Daily - NYTimes.com

Sasha Frere-Jones, a music critic at The New Yorker, will become the culture editor of The Daily, News Corporation's so-called iPad newspaper which is currently in development.

More Bad News for Obama 2012: Catholics Elect Dolan - Swampland ...

Corrected Nov. 17: The Catholic bishops' surprise election yesterday of New York's Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan as their president is more bad news for Obama in 2012.

managing your personal finance

Until now, Seattle startup Doxo has been pretty secretive about what it’s up to. All it’s revealed is that it’s backed by Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions and Mohr Davidow Ventures, and that it’s been developing a paperless billing product.

Today, however, co-founder and chief executive Steve Shivers gave me a demo of the service. And the site is now handing out invites and letting in users.

Shivers and his team tried to answer this question: If so many of us are Web-savvy, why haven’t we gone completely paperless? Shivers said 55 percent of US households pay some of their bills online, but only 15 percent of them have gotten rid of paper completely. The gap between the two numbers includes people who still pay some of their bills the old-fashioned way, as well as people who still receive their bills and other messages in the mail, even if they pay online.

There are a couple of problems with the current way of doing things, Shivers said. Customers have to go to separate websites for each bill, and it’s an impossible headache to log in to 15 or 20 different accounts each month.

Doxo should help push users towards a state of complete paperlessness. It offers an online dashboard for managing each account where you need to pay bills. Users will be able to upload their bills (whether they downloaded it from the company website or scan a copy they received in the mail) and store their login name and password for each account. That way, they’ll have all of their billing information in one place. Then, if the billing company decides to create an account with Doxo, they can send you your bills via the Doxo website, and they can send other messages, such as a revised privacy policy.

All of the documents belong to you, Shivers said. Doxo can’t sell the data to anyone else, and you can download each bill whenever you want.

The approach sounds a little like Mint, the popular Intuit-acquired personal finance service. They both bring multiple accounts together and make the data easy to understand. At the same time, by focusing on bills, not financial institutions, Doxo is tackling a different problem. Plus, it has a different business model — instead of making money when it convinces users to sign up for different accounts or credit cards, Doxo will charge businesses, since they’re saving money by not sending paper bills. Businesses supposedly spend $30 billion a year to mail 50 billion bills to customers.

One question right now is whether the service can be useful even if the companies sending you bills haven’t signed up with Doxo. Shivers predicted that the experience will vary from user to user. Some will be fine just using Doxo as a repository for bills and account data. Others will find that a number of the businesses they need to pay are in Doxo already. And yes, there will be a group that doesn’t get much use out of the site right away, but they might sign up for the companies whose bills they want to pay, and then they’ll receive notifications as businesses join.

There are some shortcomings right now — mainly the fact that you can’t make payments on the Doxo site. Doxo just gives you the bill, hands you over to the billing site, then you can mark the bill as paid in Doxo once you’re done. But Shivers said Doxo is definitely looking to add in-site payment features, mobile features, and more.

Next Story: SkillSlate grabs $1.1M to find local service providers Previous Story: Symbian CEO Lee Williams steps down

Before purchasing life insurance as an investment, a potential investor should understand a few things about the types of life insurance and how they work. Basic life insurance can be broken down into two major categories, term insurance and whole life insurance.

Term insurance is insurance for which one makes annual premium payments in exchange for a death benefit. This is the least expensive type of life insurance and cannot be purchased as an investment. The death benefit is all that one receives from term life insurance, provided one passes away while the policy is active.

This type of insurance is ideal if you do not believe you will need life insurance in your later years; the older one becomes, the higher the premiums for term life insurance. The primary purpose of term life insurance is to protect those people who depend on you; as one gets older, most people accumulate retirement savings and/or their children become self sufficient, decreasing the need for term life insurance.

Whole life insurance, also known as permanent or cash value life insurance is the second type of life insurance and can be broken down into whole life, universal life, variable life, and variable universal. In general, cash value life insurance offers protection throughout one's entire life, and also includes an investment — the cash value. Only a portion of the premium payments on a cash value life insurance policy cover the actual insurance. With the other portion of the premium, the insurance company sets up an investment known as an accumulation account which is invested in interest-bearing securities.

The cash value reduces the amount at risk to the insurance company and thus, the insurance expense over time. The owner can access the money in the cash value through policy loans or other options which reduce the death benefit. Accordingly, premiums for such policies generally tend to be higher than those associated with term life insurance, at least in the earlier years.

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Scripting News: Design challenge: River of News in HTML

The design challenge is this. GIven the latest HTML techniques, do a mockup of a great River of News. If it's really something new, I'll put the software behind it and make it live. Permanent link to this item in the archive. ...

Nintendo hasn't discontinued Wii Speak Wii News - Page 1 ...

Read our Wii news of Nintendo hasn't discontinued Wii Speak.

Great Dolly News! | PerezHilton.com

Yes! We´re totes excited for this! Dolly Parton made the official announcement on her website today that she is planning not only a brand new album full of brand new music, but a worldwide...

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Today, however, co-founder and chief executive Steve Shivers gave me a demo of the service. And the site is now handing out invites and letting in users.

All of the documents belong to you, Shivers said. Doxo can’t sell the data to anyone else, and you can download each bill whenever you want.

Next Story: SkillSlate grabs $1.1M to find local service providers Previous Story: Symbian CEO Lee Williams steps down

bench craft company scam

Scripting News: Design challenge: River of News in HTML

Nintendo hasn't discontinued Wii Speak Wii News - Page 1 ...

Read our Wii news of Nintendo hasn't discontinued Wii Speak.

Great Dolly News! | PerezHilton.com

Yes! We´re totes excited for this! Dolly Parton made the official announcement on her website today that she is planning not only a brand new album full of brand new music, but a worldwide...

benchcraft company scam

benchcraft company scam

benchcraft company scam

Scripting News: Design challenge: River of News in HTML

Nintendo hasn't discontinued Wii Speak Wii News - Page 1 ...

Read our Wii news of Nintendo hasn't discontinued Wii Speak.

Great Dolly News! | PerezHilton.com

Yes! We´re totes excited for this! Dolly Parton made the official announcement on her website today that she is planning not only a brand new album full of brand new music, but a worldwide...

bench craft company scam

Today, however, co-founder and chief executive Steve Shivers gave me a demo of the service. And the site is now handing out invites and letting in users.

All of the documents belong to you, Shivers said. Doxo can’t sell the data to anyone else, and you can download each bill whenever you want.

Next Story: SkillSlate grabs $1.1M to find local service providers Previous Story: Symbian CEO Lee Williams steps down

benchcraft company scam

bench craft company scam

Scripting News: Design challenge: River of News in HTML

Nintendo hasn't discontinued Wii Speak Wii News - Page 1 ...

Read our Wii news of Nintendo hasn't discontinued Wii Speak.

Great Dolly News! | PerezHilton.com

Yes! We´re totes excited for this! Dolly Parton made the official announcement on her website today that she is planning not only a brand new album full of brand new music, but a worldwide...

bench craft company scam

benchcraft company scam

bench craft company scam