When people ask me if they could be successful at day trading, my first response is, “Do you know what day trading is?”

Most people don’t. You might think day trading is about finding the best online brokerage, grabbing a stack of financial reports, arming yourself with financial blogs and news and then diving in.

What many would-be day traders don’t realize is that success doesn’t come from the uncanny ability to analyze balance sheets and fundamentals like Warren Buffett. And even if you have the ability to interpret charts and price action–the primary skill for day trading–this is secondary to having the strict discipline of adhering to specific rules and guidelines.

Without these rules in place, day trading is like a child playing with a chainsaw.

I’m not judging the merits of day trading. I know both very successful day traders and those who blew themselves up financially with day trading. (For what it’s worth, I know many more of the latter variety.) But if you’re going to succeed at this kind of investing, you’d better understand what it takes.

What it takes to succeed

Here are observations from my experience as both a professional trader and money manager about what it takes to succeed at day trading:

• Hard work. Brains don’t hurt, but day trading is a skill, and that skill needs to be developed by treating this as a business. A lot of people day trade as a side avocation or hobby, maybe because it seems like an easy road to riches. Don’t fall for that mentality. I’ve known people with a gambling mentality who have been drawn to trading, only to be chewed up because they treated the markets as a casino and not a business.
• Discipline. Do you ever see the same people wandering around your gym who have no noticeable changes in their appearance from a year ago? It’s from lack of discipline and goal-setting. Trading is no different. People jump from strategy to strategy, or worse, have no strategy at all. The importance of discipline to day trading can’t be overstated. You may think you have discipline, but the true litmus test is your results.
• A keen grasp of probabilities. The best baseball players–the ones who get paid the most–hit the ball around three times for every 10 at-bats. A guy who hits it four times for every 10 at-bats is the best in the business. Put another way, even the best baseball players in the world achieve an undesirable result most of the times they get up to bat. Great traders are the same. Making money through day trading doesn’t mean you make the right call most of the time. The key is to lose a little when you are wrong (which is often) and make a lot when you are right.
• Letting go of the need to be right. Some people would rather be right than make money (or would rather be right than be happy, but that’s another blog post!). This personality trait makes for lousy day traders. In day trading, you will be wrong more than you are right, but that is not failure, it’s probability.

Defining your day trading personality

On a recent episode of “America’s Got Talent” (I admit it, I somehow got hooked on a summer reality TV show) judge Piers Morgan told one performer that he did not know how to define his act and asked the performer how he would define himself. The entertainer looked completely bewildered, and it’s no surprise that his act fell flat.

Ask 100 people to define their “investment personality,” and you’re going to get 90 blank stares. Lacking a clear description of your investment personality–are you a trader, gambler, investor or saver?–is a common error, one that can make or break your results.

In the broadest sense, everyone’s financial goal in investing is to make money. But that’s not enough. You have to find a strategy and set of rules that you’ll stick to and will keep you from an expensive labyrinth of mistakes.

Spending some time doing a little self-discovery can yield a strategy that is more in sync with your personality type, which may help reduce some of the emotional impulses that often lead people astray.

Still think you have what it takes to be a successful day trader? You’re the only one who can really know. But if you lack any of the key traits or a strong investment personality, don’t be surprised if you’re in for a long grind–or a financial meltdown.

Marc Pearlman is the author of the Positive Money Mindset and host of the popular radio show Your Money Matters! For more about Marc, visit marcpearlman.com or www.Yourmoneymattersradio.com.

Securities offered through Securities America, Inc., Member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through Securities America Advisors, Inc. Marc Pearlman, Representative. Your Money Matters! radio show and the Securities America companies are unaffiliated.

Source URL: Day trading: Do you have what it takes?

Copyright Protected © 2010 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Previously, I shared a little background overview of how I got started as an aspiring full time blogger and pursued my dream of working from home and making money with a blog. For many years, I worked a traditional day job as an attorney, whether it was with the federal government or whether it was in the private sector. A few years ago and rather unexpectedly out of the blue, I stumbled upon the idea of starting up a blog to make some money on the side. The idea was not to replace my seemingly stable and indispensable full time day job as a lawyer, but to supplement my salary with an alternative income stream. Little did I know and much to my subsequent surprise years later, my small network of profitable online weblogs would one day start reaping monthly incomes that greatly exceeded what I could earn as an ambulance chasing attorney. While I continue to balance my part time legal practice profession with my mixture of online businesses and other side ventures to this day, my blogging operations have finally grown to the point where they are now capable of providing me a stable and nearly free source of revenue – offering me a boost in a quality of life I never dreamed possible before.

If it’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that persistent adaptation, continuous self education, a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and the uncanny ability to function with little sleep – are traits that can truly be turned into financial success. Becoming a semi-full time blogger and giving up the tedious commute and traditional desk job – to work from home and earn a stable living is a reachable goal for many. The process is not easy and most of those who attempt to walk down this deceptively daunting and challenging path will undoubtedly fail miserably, but the fiercely determined and highly self motivated few will succeed – I’m living proof of that.

As entire books and trilogies can be easily written on the subject, the following is more of a quick summary for beginners who are interested in getting started with running their own profitable blogs than a comprehensive guide. Here are some of the key pointers that I’ve learned over time as a blogger who now earns in excess of six figures a year. I’m by no means an expert – just a guy who’s witnessed and endured first hand both his personal share of lucky successes and misguided failures when it comes to the subject of blogging online to earn a living.

If You Want To Make Money As A Blogger, Blog About A Subject Other Than Merely How To Make Money Online

This is not a blog about blogging, nor is it a blog about how to make money online per se. While I do occasionally dwell into ways how ordinary consumers can take advantage of arbitrage opportunities such as advantageous 0% balance transfer offers, reward credit card bonuses, and paid online survey offers that compensate participants looking to make some extra cash on the side – the primary focus of this blog has always been first and foremost focused on personal finance and long term financial planning and investing. The emphasis has always been on the nitty gritty elements of saving money, debt reduction, and planning for one’s financial future. One of the most recent endeavors of mine was to start sharing my personal net worth reports and income progressions over time. On this blog, I track and provide my own net worth tables for all to see, not to boast or demonstrate some ego-boosting bravado, but to show readers that I am just a regular guy, trying to work hard and turn my life’s fruits and efforts into a future retirement nest egg. I have had a tremendous number of failures in my life, whether they be personal, relational, or professional – but I have continued to strive for my dreams. That’s one of the essences of blogging – the sharing of personal viewpoints and the trials and tribulations of personal experience.

Those of you who want to quit your full time day jobs and end the seemingly endless cycle of trading hours for dollars, and start blogging online will do well for yourselves by picking a real world topic instead of dwelling in the saturated “make money online” tar pit. Not that there is anything particularly wrong with writing about your passion for blogging and generating income via your efforts on the web if that is your interest and true calling, but the fact of the matter is – it’s not a topical niche that deserves the type of massive attention and copycat imitation that it receives. Like the overrated careers that populate the professional landscape, the “make money online” niche is vastly over saturated, with supply outstripping the demand, and conversion rates (the ability to convert blog traffic into income producing sales) from its natural audience of extraordinarily tech savvy readers – too aggravatingly low. It’s not impossible, but I think you are better off choosing a less tapped into subject matter that’s not so exceedingly rife with scams and get rich quick junk products. Frankly, the same negative sentiment can be said for the technology niche as well, although fortunately for that area of tech based information, the content matter is more broad, more varied, and perhaps sufficiently diverse to accommodate new blogging entrants.

When choosing a subject to blog about – make sure you pursue a subject that is sufficiently broad and dynamic enough where you would be able to sit down and write out 100+ new blog titles on the spot if you had to. The world is currently filled to the brim with a tremendous number of subject matters and questions that still await to be responded to with updated information. Do you enjoy clothing and fashion trends? What about cooking, parenting advice, personal fitness, or outdoor activities like camping or fishing? How about coupons, shopping deals, lifestyle do-it-yourself tips, interior decorating, real estate news, home improvement, or celebrity gossip? Those are all interesting subject matters worth blogging about with plenty of advertisers to tap into for the passionate blogger.

How To Find Advertisers For Your Blog As A Beginner Blogger

Whenever I’m at a family gathering, with friends I haven’t seen for some time, or at some church function, one of the most common questions I get whenever I talk to someone about my online business (once I’ve overcome the blank stares after I tell them my self employment job title), is how I find relevant advertisers for my blog and how I actually get paid for my blogging efforts. Frankly, advertisers are everywhere and you just have to know where to find them. When your blog ultimately hits the big time and starts generating massive traffic, prospective advertisers and curious companies (and even advertising spammers) will naturally start tracking your contact information down. But until then, your best bet is to seek out and partner with the middle man companies out there – the affiliate marketing networks that consolidate and aggregate the various affiliate and lead generation offers out there on the Internet.

Through these affiliate marketing networks, you will be able to locate advertisers from a very wide variety of categories – all willing and able to pay you whenever you refer targeted sales or business to them through your blog or website. Many will allow you to access their affiliate product inventories and compensate you for a variety of sales referrals including – pay per click ads (PPC) which pay a tiny sum of money per text or banner ad click, pay per sign up or action type ads (CPA ads) which pay you a much larger referral cut in the way of commission percentages whenever you refer a prospective customer to them, and pay per impression ads (CPM) which pay a sum for a set number of website viewing impressions. For example, if I wanted to promote Monavie or any number of acai berry juice brands/scams for example (I don’t – but just giving this product as an example), there are plenty of companies out there willing to pay me a set referral commission (hypothetically, say 5-10% or $10.00 per lead) for every new customer I refer. Picking the right mixture of advertisers depends on your blog’s subject matter and your target audience.

Check out the following below recommended and popular affiliate marketing networks and companies for advertisers. Bear in mind, there are also quite a great number of specific advertisers and companies out there who also run affiliate programs, but are only obtainable if you contact them directly, and many frequently won’t deal with you until your blog reaches a certain traffic minimum (on average at least 5,000 unique visitors per month).

List Of The Best Affiliate Marketing Network Companies (Pay Per Click and Pay Per Referral):

Remember to negotiate for the best commission rates and learn to leverage your ever steadily increasing blog traffic to your advantage. Your negotiation clout will slowly increase as your blog traffic increases with time – be patient. Compare affiliate payout rates and offers and go with the best rate provider. All of the following affiliate networks below provide similar banners, ads, and website scripts you’ll need to get started, but each differs in the exclusive offers each carries in its inventory cache of advertisers. Many of the individual offers overlap between multiple affiliate network providers, but each of the following networks offers uniques. Be forewarned, it will likely take many, many, many months of very hard (but frequently fun and interesting) trial and error work before you’ll figure out how to maximize your ad revenue, but if you are persistent and are constantly learning, you’ll figure it out in time. Trying signing up and tinkering with each affiliate provider to get started:

1. Google Adsense: The most well known and best pay per click advertising network is run by Big-G. Google’s highly targeted contextual advertising program is a must have if you are a beginner to blogging. Just run the Adsense script on your blog and ads relevant to your content will automatically be displayed. Pay per click income is great for beginners but its usefulness tapers off in income potential after your site gets bigger.
2. Amazon Associates: With this popular and versatile program, simply link to Amazon.com related products for affiliate income earning potential. Very useful and scalable for even mature sites.
3. Ebay Partner Network: With the eBay affiliate publisher program, you can link to any specific eBay auction or link to an eBay ad based on keywords to get a commission cut of the sales generated.
4. Linkshare: Lots of very nice ad exclusives but less customer support and attention then I’d like. But in general, the exclusive affiliate offers are worth signing up for as you can’t get them anywhere else.
5. Commission Junction: The 800 pound gorilla of pay per action ads. Like them or not, they are the biggest of the advertising networks.
6. Flex Offers: Run by the same guys who run CardOffers.com. A personal favorite of mine as my longtime rep has consistently offered me the best affiliate payout rates. Lots of great exclusive affiliate offers for a diverse selection of categories.
7. CardOffers: A very popular choice for credit card sales and affiliate referrals if you are into the financial niche. The best credit card payout offers have all but dried up recently however. The economy is to blame.
8. NCS Reporting: Owned by Bankrate.com, it’s one of the biggest credit card referrals company. However, payout doesn’t seem as consistently high as CardOffers and account security was a problem for a while (major breach of my account by cunning online thieves).
9. Acclaim Network: Allowed me to run Citibank credit card links as a new start up blog when the other card affiliate companies wouldn’t permit it. Payouts are pretty low though.
10. Commission Soup: Invitation only affiliate company that offers great service and good payouts on most of their affiliate offers.
11. Market Leverage: Great referral program and an up and coming affiliate network company. Market Leverage is big among big name bloggers.
12. PepperJam Network: Another up and coming ad company that’s popular among established bloggers and affiliate promoters.
13. ShareASale: Provides a variety of affiliate companies to pick from.
14. Chitika: Touts quite a number of search targeted ads similar to Google Adsense
15. Google Affiliate Network: Seems like a blatant conflict of interest to me, but Google does offer a few exclusive deals. Not a well developed affiliate network as of yet however.
16. Text Link Ads: Used heavily during its heyday, but has grown somewhat taboo these days as a means to build up page rank based search engine authority, but some sites still use them. I personally don’t, but that’s because my site’s been around for a while now and I don’t need to use such services, which are better suited for beginners perhaps.
17. Azoogle Ads: Affiliate network that allows publishers to buy and sell text links and various ad space.
18. Clickbank: Offers primarily text links, random ads, and e-books of all sorts (big chunk of those offers are targeted at the make money online MMO niche).

How To Start Blogging For Money and Generating Blog Traffic

As there is simply no way I can write down every single advanced blogging technique and trade secret strategy I have about how to make money online and generate money with a blog (there is just too many), I’ll share just the basics as this is a post primarily to serve as a call to action for beginners. Here is how you can get going if you want to start getting serious about blogging as a way to replace your existing full time job and for you to start working for yourself. As entire blogs and books can be devoted to the subject, the following is just a basic primer to help newbies get started on the road to blogging for income. Please don’t fall for those stupid and utterly useless Shortcut To Internet Millions and related eBay type scams that promise lots of money with no effort and no computer know-how. Don’t be misled – you will need to work very hard, for months or years, but making money online with a blog is possible.  The following are the entry level steps I took to get started blogging:

1) Register A Domain Name and Purchase A Monthly Web Hosting Service: I recommend starting out with a free Blogspot.com or Wordpress.com account as a way to get your feet wet into the wonderful world of blogging. However, for long term brand name and website setup purposes, if you plan on making this whole blogging deal into a serious venture, I very strongly recommend registering for a formal domain name and choosing a paid web hosting service sooner than later. After all, doesn’t MoneyBlueBook.com seem much more professional than say – moneybluebook.blogspot.com?

• Get A Domain Name: Go with GoDaddy.com for your domain registration needs if you want to go with the service that most people are using at the moment. GoDaddy is a very popular registrar choice for bloggers just starting out. I personally use Dreamhost.com for my domain name registrations – but that’s only because they’re the company I started out with and I want to stay consistent. Good luck finding a short domain name however – it seems like all of the juicy domain names are all taken, especially the coveted “dot com” ones.
• Get A Reliable Web Hosting Provider: MoneyBlueBook.com is currently hosted on a dedicated LiquidWeb.com server. I pay about $150 a month for excellent and very reliable hosting, but that’s because this blog generates pretty decent traffic. Liquidweb is more expensive than other companies, but I’ve found their service to be extremely reliable with an excellent uptime track record. Most start up blogs can probably run sufficiently on a cheap shared server at least for some time with a hosting company like BlueHost, GoDaddy, or DreamHost for about $10-20 a month. But ultimately though, you get what you pay for. Cheap hosting equals unreliable up time. It’s not a big deal when you’re just starting out, but it’ll kill your business when your sites start generating serious traffic.

2) Install and Learn To Use Wordpress: Wordpress is the best and most reliable blogging platform to date. Some popular blogs out there are still operating off of other blogging programs like Blogger, but most are steadily migrating to Wordpress. Most professional web host providers can help you install this very powerful and versatile free blogging tool for you. It will take time for you to truly master the ins and outs of Wordpress blogging and learn how to fully utilize all of the Wordpress plugins and widgets available, but once you get the hang of the versatile blogging tools at your disposal, you’ll find the free Wordpress software to be quite indispensable.

3) Start Blogging On A Daily Basis and Pace Yourself As A Writer: The key to surviving as a blogger and building a sustainable future as a blogger capable of making a living online through blogging – is to stay consistent and not get overly burned out too soon. At the start, there is a natural euphoria of excitement as you start witnessing the blogging traffic fruits of your efforts, but don’t let the initial excitement force you to over exert yourself. Similarly, during your blogging journey, at some time or another, you are likely going to get stricken with an affliction of what’s popularly known as blogger’s block (aka, writer’s block). But fear not – even seasoned bloggers experience this feeling of laziness and lack of motivation on frequent occasion. Cut back on your blogging activities if you have to but don’t give up.

When you first start out, your readership will be pitifully few, but that’s absolutely normal. Don’t stop writing quality content as that is the only way you will generate readership in the very long run. This feeling of blogging loneliness and frustration caused by lack of traffic may persist for many months, but if you are to succeed, you must give it time. It takes a lot of time to get accepted into the good graces of the search engines and for strangers to organically discover your blog through the series of tubes of cyberspace. From the time I personally started blogging with the intention of ultimately making money online, it took 12 months or so before I finally started to generate a substantial income from my blogging activities. Blogging is easy to get started but difficult to truly master.

4) Learn To Monetize Your Blog Readership and Increase Your Blog Traffic: Blogging should always be a work in progress. You should always be adapting and finding ways to do existing things better. Even after you’ve started to generate traffic and establish a cadre of readers, you should be constantly trying to figure out ways to increase that traffic and tweak the effectiveness of your advertising pitches. Strategic Google Adsense placement, targeted blog titles, and improved search engine optimization updates are ways to boost your income and traffic.

Getting listed in search engine submissions, blog directory listings, exchanging blog rolls, swapping reciprocal text links, participating in blog carnivals via blogcarnival.com, guest posting on other blogs, writing comments in popular online forums, participating in popular and related blogs, article marketing, as well as engaging in social media sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Facebook, mySpace, and Twitter – are all valid ways to get traffic but you’ll need to experiment with each one to find out what truly works in terms of improved monetization and what methods are just ways to generate exciting blog traffic numbers, but that don’t actually convert into tangible sales. Tip: Social media marketing is vastly overrated for monetization purposes as social media readers are not looking to buy or have their specific questions answered – thus targeted, organic search engine traffic is key. If you want to make money blogging, you had better be praying to the great temple of Google and figuring out what the Google gods want in the way of blog content and optimization.

5) Never Stop Learning, Experimenting, and Examining Your Competitors: You should never be trying to re-invent the wheel. One of the best ways to improve your own blog and blogging approach is to learn from the techniques of others. Take a peek at your competitor’s blog or visit your favorite blogs to see how they monetize and how they structure their blog content for clues as to their success. Don’t worry about feeling like a spy – after all, more likely than not, they are peeking right back at your website as well. That’s what smart businesses do – they examine their surroundings, learn from the best, and constantly improve. After all, if you owned a struggling ice cream shop, wouldn’t you secretly visit competing ice cream stores that are more successful than yours to figure out why and how those shops are able to generate more ice cream sales than yours?

Source URL: How To Make Money Blogging

Copyright Protected © 2009 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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I am a part time (almost full time now) blogger who spends a great number of hours working on the Internet from home every night. For more than a year now, I’ve been quietly earning a sizable and consistent amount of money through blogging and my internet marketing efforts. As a multi-year veteran now to the world of making money online with a blog, I’ve joined a rather unique and eclectic group of young and emerging internet entrepreneurs – individuals who have not only successfully harnessed the power of the Internet to generate real money, but who have managed to turn seemingly unassuming websites into rather lucrative income producing automatons. While the phenomenon of blogging for money on a part time basis is certainly not new, the idea that one can actually become a full time professional blogger (a problogger of sorts) and generate not only a stable, but a sustainable income at a high velocity through mere blogging alone is quite a surprise to many (particularly among my friends and family).

I’m sure many of you are already well aware of a number of fairly successful bloggers and established Internet entrepreneurs like John Chow, ShoeMoney, and Darren Rowse of Problogger fame – online personalities that dominate the so-called “make money online” niche. Most of these semi famous Internet tycoons have been in the news for some time and have had many years to perfect the art of both online and mainstream personality-based sales pitches. Much of their mystique, self perpetuating hype, and authoritative attention stems from the sheer amounts of money they have raked in through their blogging and online entrepreneurial activities, and the continuous reminders of their financial success to their readers in the way of monthly income reports and screen shots of high dollar amount affiliate income checks. However, the ones you usually don’t hear about are those of us like myself who also run pretty successful operations of our own, but who have generally chosen to remain contently semi-anonymous and out of the lime light. While I’ve enjoyed a pretty lucrative career thus far in terms of the income streams that I’ve been able to pull through my collection of websites and online businesses, I made the conscientious decision early on to remain in the online shadows and out of the way in terms of real world publicity and attention. Not vying for the social media spotlight for ego-stroking purposes has allowed me to quietly generate a pretty prolific online business without the complicated hassles of unnecessary attention or even the critical scrutiny that the well known online bloggers at center stage face. Have you heard of the term “Millionaire Next Door” ? Well I’d like to think of myself as the “Blogger Next Door” – one of a growing number of unassuming and self made entrepreneurs who enjoy their relative anonymity and are content to blend in with everyone else in cyberspace while they quietly build their online fortunes.

Working From Home As A Full Time Blogger Is A Difficult, But Emotionally and Financially Rewarding Profession

My goal today is to simply break out of my usual personal finance subject matter for a moment and perhaps share some tidbits to encourage and inspire fledgling writers and aspiring entrepreneurs who have been quietly sitting on the sidelines – individuals who want to believe, but are afraid to take the first baby steps towards the world of self employment and Internet-based incomes. Admittedly, the journey from entry level writer and semi techie egghead, to nearly full time super affiliate power blogger is a very difficult and time consuming process, particularly in the early stages. Despite its rather ephemeral and unestablished nature, the seemingly unrealistic fantasy of being able to work from home and generate a full time income from just blogging alone is very real. While I have yet to make the final leap to full time blogger (I’m still a part time attorney), I am living proof that working from home and working for yourself is entirely and ultimately possible.

I stumbled upon blogging and the whole online business model a few years ago in 2006 quite by accident. One day I was tinkering with my free personal Xanga blogging account (this was back in the old days when Xanga.com was still popular) and I suddenly noticed the banner ads and affiliate links in the website margins for the first time. Examining the html source code, I finally realized and discovered that there was a whole marketing and income producing mechanism underneath it all that was quietly profiting from all of the user generated content that Xanga consumers were creating. From then on I decided to investigate further and figure out how the blog content and advertisement scripts were integrated into a workable business model – and the rest is history. A blog, or a weblog as it is officially called, is nothing more than an online diary of sorts sorted in reverse chronological order according to article post dates. Blogs are uniquely advantageous for monetization purposes because of the regularly updated and archived nature of their content. Simply put, Google, Bing, Yahoo, and all of the other search engines love blogs for both the fresh and timelessly relevant content they churn out, and generally prefer to rank them very highly for organic search engine traffic – which when translated into practical terms, equals dollars and cents for savvy entrepreneurs.

Now that I’ve worked for myself and have finally tasted financial success and professional freedom, no longer will I ever go back to working for someone else. No longer will I ever want to go back to the emotional and professional constraints of working the traditional full time desk job and devoting my efforts towards benefiting someone else’s company or firm.

I attended law school and graduated to eventually work as an attorney (law school is overrated in my opinion). But anyway, in one of the lawyer jobs I held before I pursued my dream of becoming self employed, I used to work for an overbearing and very unprofessional alpha-female attorney. Despite my best professional efforts at the job, I felt absolutely miserable working as an associate attorney at her small solo practitioner law firm – and never felt so unfairly scrutinized, treated so condescendingly, and persistently set up to fail. But because it was her law firm and because she was my boss, and also because I wanted to keep my precious full time job, I humored her belligerency and endured her belittlement and unreasonable demands for weeks and months. Despite my seething frustration, the fact remained that it was her personal law firm and I was merely a replaceable cog in a bigger machine – and thus I swallowed my pride and did as I was told. But eventually I had enough of the disrespect and quit the firm, literally storming out at the end of one working day without looking back – going from having a full time job that paid the bills to immediate unemployment.

Now that I am a semi full time blogger who runs a variety of part time real life business ventures and operates his own part time legal practice on the side, I use tragic memories of my working past to motivate myself. Whether you no longer want to work for anyone else or whether you were forced out of your previous or current job due to the economic recession or as a consequence of layoffs, it’s time to consider chasing the dream of becoming self employed and finally throwing off the shackles and emotional constraints of the traditional “trading hours for dollars” working life. It may be a scary first step to take, but the potential rewards and financial upside are worth it.

How Much Money Do Bloggers Make From Their Blogs? Answer: Depends On Blog Niche, Your Tech Savviness, and Effort That You Put Forth

When I talk about bloggers, I’m not referring to full time freelance bloggers and online newspaper writers who crank out articles for others. Those types of freelance writers who produce text based content for blogs that are owned by other people only generate a few dollars or perhaps just a measly $1.00 to $5.00 per blog post that they write. In this article, when I’m talking about bloggers and webmasters who are able to generate a very good part time income supplement or even a full time living from their blogs, I’m talking about those who own their own blogs and websites – entrepreneurs who serve as both website owner and chief content producer.

So how much income exactly do average bloggers earn from their blogs assuming a reasonable measure of built up success? That’s not an easy question to answer. Because the amount of money that bloggers make from their blogs varies so greatly depending on the type of advertisers that a website can attract, that statistic is highly dependent on the subject matter of the blog. As a general rule of thumb, the most lucrative and financially rewarding websites and blogs tend to be those in the financial niche where credit card issuers, online banks, brokerage firms, insurance companies, and mortgage lenders are better equipped in terms of financial capacity to pay a lucratively high price to affiliate publishers for customer and new sales referrals. While not as financially lucrative, other blog content niches such as entertainment, gossip, fashion, clothing apparel, legal services, health care, weight loss, shopping, computers, electronics, and dating are certainly financially worthwhile in their own rights and can be immensely profitable as well. However, successful online entrepreneurs who are able to multi task and pour in significant amounts of time and effort on a consistent basis may be able to target different content niches with a diverse portfolio of actively updated websites. Obviously the greater the content diversity from a variety of different websites with appropriate targeted traffic to match, the greater the pool of prospective advertisers to generate income from. The key is to also truly enjoy what you write about. The blog traffic, blog comments, and relevant advertisers will naturally flow thereafter.

Making a decent full time income online by working as a blogger is very much possible but it does require an enormous amount of time investment and educational self training, especially upfront during the initial stages when the financial rewards are still miniscule or non-existent. Whatever you do, absolutely do not quit your full time day job until your part time blogging efforts start paying off. I started blogging part time while I still had a full time day job – spending my off hours teaching myself the intricacies of blogging, website design, and Wordpress blog optimization tricks. It also took a great deal of time to learn the fundamentals of Adobe Photoshop graphic manipulation and the intricacies of basic Wordpress PHP programming for blog theme tweaking purposes. While the barriers to entry are extremely low for blogging as a profession and almost anyone and his/her grandma can get started at any time without paying a dime, there is no guarantee that the process will be easy (and I can almost assure you that the journey will be difficult and sleep depriving). A five figure income per month is possible if you pick the right niche and work extremely and exceedingly hard, but it’s not the norm. Most of you (more than 95%) will probably fail due to blogger’s block, frustration, and lost of interest – but the ones who can persist will succeed in time. Nothing in life is guaranteed but if you put your mind towards blogging and don’t burn yourself out – $100 a month, $1,000 a month, and perhaps even $10,000 a month of passive income is reasonable with the correct mix of content, the right blog niche, and a lot of search engine traffic generation luck.

Much of the information needed to get you started as a professional blogger can be obtained online for free and there is no real need for you to purchase or spend money on E-books or on the make money online books being sold at bookstores. But if you really want a good primer to get you started, I’d recommend something like Darren Rowse’s book – ProBlogger: Six Figure Income Blogging. Anyone who is a wannabe blogger knows about the original pro blogger himself – and ranked by experience rather than age, he’s the granddaddy of us all. Alternatively you can always just visit your local public library and borrow the books for free. But my advice is to just follow your favorite bloggers online and read through their past blogging post archives to get the information you need. You’ll get more real world practical advice on blog writing techniques, search engine optimization tricks, and website business maintenance pointers from these updated daily blogs than you’ll ever glean from mere stale books alone. The world of blogging for income and the fickle nature of search engine traffic generation techniques are constantly evolving so it’s best to stay updated on the latest news by reading from actively updated blogs and websites than from constantly reviewing some ancient textbook on the subject.

If you want to know exactly how much money I currently generate from my online businesses and from this personal finance blog in particular, unfortunately, I won’t be able to share that information in great detail at this time. If you must know a little bit, I will put this forth – this personal finance blog generates in excess of $100,000 in organic net profits per year, most of it without substantial effort on my part. I do not pay any money for advertising, I absolutely do not sell text links, I don’t do paid reviews, and I don’t engage in any pay per click Google Adword advertising – it’s all organic search engine based. Regarding the specifics of my income breakdown, I wish to stay silent on that for now. Perhaps in the near future I will share more about my online income sources and real life business ventures in greater detail with readers. For the time being, I don’t plan to share any pictures of fancy checks or reveal the specifics of my income sources from my blogging operations – you’ll just have to take my word for it. But it’s perfectly okay if you don’t believe me. Like I mentioned early on, I’m not interested in capturing attention or attracting a loyal zombie following – just hoping to inspire a few people and motivate some of you to a call to action.

Never Stop Learning And Chasing Your Entrepreneurial Dreams

To get the blogging and website business know-how you’ll need to run a successful blog, you’ll need to strive towards constantly educating yourself on all aspects of blogging. The facets are broad as blogging encompasses everything from the fundamentals of writing to grammar, basic web programming, graphic design, salesmanship, multi tasking, negotiation skills, and efficient time management. It will take months, even years before you will become a fully self trained expert on the blogging business. I started the early research and tinkering process in 2006, but didn’t start running my first few successful online blogs and start seriously generating a stable income sufficiently large enough to replace my day job wages until 2008. From the time I truly started writing and promoting this particular financial blog you are reading, I didn’t generate a sustainable full time income until 12 months thereafter. There will be times when you first start out that you will feel like no one is reading your work and that you are writing for yourself, but that’s okay. We’ve all been there before and that’s perfectly normal in the beginning. It’s a lonely process at the start but with time, your efforts will pay off. Meanwhile, to this very day, I still spend hours and hours every day reading blogs about blogging and scouring the web for any new morsels I can uncover about website optimization, how to generate more search engine traffic, and how to capture blogger traffic. As far as I’m concerned I will forever be a work in progress. There is so much to learn and my self driven educational enrichment will never cease so long as I continue to blog for a living and make money online (view my beginner’s primer on how to get started).

Source URL: How I Started Blogging To Make Money Online

Copyright Protected © 2009 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Compared to its bigger financial rivals like Citibank, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, American Express, or even Discover, Advanta Bank has been a relative unknown in the credit card and banking industry. However, over the years, Advanta has gradually and quietly built itself up to become a major niche market issuer of business credit cards. What started out humbly as a small financial operation from Pennsylvania that provided personal loans to teachers has transformed into a major (albeit not particularly well known) player of the small business credit card industry. Currently, Advanta Bank focuses on the small business market, and the company primarily gears its efforts towards creating credit card and banking products that fit the needs and appeal of small business start ups, aspiring entrepreneurs, and growing companies. Along with being one of the largest, if not the largest provider of small business credit cards, Advanta also offers a diversified variety of bank deposit products that include FDIC insured savings accounts, money market accounts, and certificate of deposits.

Advanta Is One Of A Very Few Number Of Major Credit Card Issuers That Exclusively Service The Business Credit Card Market

Advanta’s exclusive focus on the small business market seems to differentiate it well from the other major card issuers that have a tendency to over saturate the market with too many confusing financial products that are heavily advertised and promoted, but don’t always fulfill the appropriate small business need. The best targeted strengths of Advanta issued credit cards are their low fixed interest rates, long term balance transfer deals (15 months or more), and generous cash back credit card reward and rebate programs that feature no reward earning caps. Currently, all Advanta credit cards offer at a bare minimum, the ability to earn at least 1 reward point per dollar spent on business purchases, redeemable for rebate rewards like cash, free travel, gift cards, merchandise and more.

Small business owners, corporate start ups, or sole proprietorships looking to organize their business expenditures onto a single credit card program may want to evaluate and review Advanta for themselves as a possible business credit contender. Having a dedicated business credit card offers unique and tailored benefits not offered by regular consumer cards, including substantially higher credit limits and much more attractive purchase reward incentives. Typical free and time saving business card benefits such as itemized employee expense tracking, and online tools for credit card accounting and bookkeeping are also included. Additional free business benefits include the function to add additional employee credit cards to the account, order personalized checks, create customized expense reports, view and pay Advanta bills online, and perform promotional balance transfers.

In its efforts to introduce small business credit card products that fit the needs of business owners as well as fulfill other potentially worthy public interest objectives, Advanta has recently launched the Kiva Business 4 Business Project, fashioning credit card offers that not only allow cardholders to earn cash back credit card rewards, but at the same time promote charitable card reward donation for aspiring entrepreneurs and fledgling businesses in the developing world in the form of matching Advanta-Kiva loan grants.

For Regular Consumers Interested In Advanta Offers, Keep In Mind That Even Non-Business Owners Can Apply For A Business Credit Card

Business credit cards offer noticeably better benefits compared to regular consumer cards, including much higher spending limits and much more lucrative credit card reward programs. However, while many ordinary consumers may be attracted to the benefits of business cards, some may be reluctant to pursue or apply due to their lack of ownership in an actual business. Dispelling the myth, one of the most common misconceptions about business credit cards is that only actual small business owners or those who have applied and received an Employer Identification Number (EIN) can qualify for a business credit card – that presumption is false. In actuality, anyone can legitimately qualify for a business card, as non business owners can apply for business credit cards without automatic disqualification. All the card applicant has to do is apply for the business credit card utilizing his or her Social Security Number (SSN) as the application form-requested business identification number. When individuals apply for business cards using their SSN without having a EIN, they are simply applying as a sole proprietorship, which is simply any business operation with just a single member, regardless of actual income or profits. There is no legal prerequisite to call yourself a sole proprietorship and no paper work is involved. Simply using your personal name as the name of the business will suffice for business credit card application purposes.

Reviews Of The Top Advanta Business Credit Cards With Rewards and Balance Transfer Offers:

1) Advanta Platinum Unlimited Rewards BusinessCard – With the Advanta Platinum Unlimited Rewards card, not only do you get an introductory 15 month, 0% APR offer for balance transfers, you also earn 1% reward rebates on all card purchases that are redeemable for cash, airline travel, and merchandise. Along with the usual business credit card benefits, the Unlimited Rewards card is customizable with your company’s name on the top of the card. There is also no annual fee.

2) Advanta Customizable Platinum Business Card With Unlimited Rewards – The customizable Advanta Platinum Unlimited Reward card is the same as the regular version in the way of terms and conditions except you have additional customizable options at your disposal, such as the ability to personalize the card with your company’s name, trademark logo, or colors. As with most Advanta business cards, you also get a 15 month, 0% balance transfer introductory offer, along with the ability to earn unlimited 1% purchase rebates. There is no annual fee.

3) Advanta Business World Master Card – This particular business card offer from Advanta is first and foremost very purchase reward centered, allowing you to earn 1% reward rebate on all purchases with an additional bonus of 50% worth of extra reward points every year. In regards to reward point redemption, there is no cap on the cumulative rewards that can be earned and accrued, and there are no airline travel restrictions or blackout dates for reward flight redemption. There is also no preset spending limit or annual fee with this card.

4) Advanta Net 90 Platinum Business Card – Always creating new products for small business customers, Advanta presents the 90 day grace period business card that allows consumers and small business owners the ability to enjoy continuous and recurring 90 days worth of 0% interest free purchases. This is not an introductory limited time offer, but a permanent no interest feature that allows you to pay 0% APR for 3 months automatically after all credit card purchases made on your account. This business reward credit card also earns 1% back with a generous credit limit and no annual fee.

5) Advanta Kiva Business Card – With the Advanta-Kiva Business credit card, you’ll not only earn purchase rewards for yourself, but all earned rewards that you contribute as a charitable donation to the Kiva charity will be matched by Advanta, and sent out to help small growing businesses in developing countries. The public interest minded Kiva organization provides micro loan grants to help fund entrepreneurs and small business start ups in less developed areas of the world. Cardholders also get to earn a 5% bonus statement credit on the first $1,200 each year spent on Kiva grants, charitable donations, and other eligible purchases. The Kiva card also provides an attractive 0% balance transfer offer for an industry leading 15 months, with no annual fee.

6) Advanta Kiva Credit Card For Business Professionals – This particular Kiva credit card offer from Advanta Bank is designed for non business owning professionals who want to earn credit card rewards for their purchases but at the same time do some public good by helping entrepreneurs and small businesses in less fortunate countries through the Kiva charity via micro loan grants. As a charitable incentive, Advanta will match the micro loan charitable contributions offered up and donated by the cardholder accrued from his or her Advanta credit card purchase rewards. The card also offers Advanta’s popular 15 month, 0% APR balance transfer offer with a low fixed interest rate thereafter. This Advanta Kiva credit card also allows cardholders to earn .25% cash back rebate on purchases up to a full 1% back, with no annual fee to worry about.

Source URL: Reviews Of The Best Advanta Business Credit Cards and Offers

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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What’s the deal with status symbols these days? While I’d like to think that I’m perfectly immune from the need to walk around and carry lofty symbols of wealth, power, and status on my shoulders, sheepishly, I must admit that I’m not. I don’t occasionally wear designer clothes or don expensive apparel brands solely for the quality threads, or dream of buying a BMW or Mercedes sports sedan for crash test safety reasons alone. After all, there’s something about rarity, uniqueness, and exclusiveness that beckons each of us at some point in our lives. Whether it’s the elite acknowledgment that one gets from being an alumni of a top tier Ivy League university, or whether it’s membership into an ultra exclusive golf club usually reserved only for top celebrities and the rich and famous, I’m sure many of us secretly envy at times, those who are in this special inner circle.

Actually, the notion itself is quite silly really – the idea that simply because you possess something unique that very few other people have, or have VIP membership into some special organization, that you are somehow better off than others or worthy of admiration. But it’s simply human nature I suppose. We all innately appreciate the attention and envy of others, whether we truly want to admit it or not. Don’t believe it? All you have to do is observe the rise and popularity of television shows like MTV’s Super Sweet 16 to see how the desire to be envied and praised is very much part of our society’s psyche and celebrity culture. If it were not for our humanistic lust for all things that glitter and our natural attraction to the glitz and glamor of all that surrounds the rich and powerful, we wouldn’t have such things as paparazzis and celebrity magazines. It’s because we as a society desperately seek to emulate the rich and beautiful that there are such things as status symbol cars and multi-million dollar mega mansions.

Thus there should be little surprise that there are even such things as one-of-a-kind credit cards that only a select few have the luxury of possessing. Whether it makes any real sense for anyone to go gaga over something as mundane as a limited edition credit card is up for debate, but it’s something that’s been glorified in the rising hip-hop culture and permeating our English vernacular, calling attention to itself.

What Is the Black Centurion Card From American Express?

The American Express Black Centurion Card (simply referred to as the Black Card by some) sprung out of an urban rumor in the early 1990’s about a super secret black credit card available only to a select group of rich and powerful celebrities. While the reality was that no such card existed, American Express ultimately played off the whispers and capitalized on the rumors, quietly creating the Amex Black Card. Its exclusivity compounded the rumors over time, leading to more and more outlandish claims about the benefits and perks offered to the holder. Perhaps you’ve seen the almost mythical Black Card touted in hip hop music videos or heard it referenced in other facets of pop culture, but you rarely see it out in the open. The card is definitely not widely available and unless you hang around or work with celebrities, famous people, or wealthy individuals, it’s unlikely you will ever see one in your lifetime.

The Black Centurion credit card from American Express is definitely a rarity in the marketplace and in some circles, is considered an impact statement. First of all, the card is almost entirely black, which instantly gives it a look that’s different from all the credit cards out there, and secondly, it’s not even made of ordinary plastic like most credit cards, but rather of a special aluminum, titanium mix, giving it a different feel altogether. There have been suggestions that the titanium composition of the Black Centurion Card even triggers metal detectors at airports, but obviously this hassle is easily circumvented by transporting the card or wallet via its own plastic container through the X-ray conveyor belt scanner.

While the card imposes a hefty annual fee, for those who can easily afford it, the Black Card offers a juicy wealth of exclusive card benefits, like special concierge services, exclusive travel benefits and perks, enhanced credit card rewards, frequent flier airline miles, cashback credit card bonuses, and the ability to harness almost unlimited spending power. Perhaps I’m blowing the card a bit out of proportion and making the card bigger than what it really is, but the card is definitely not for your ordinary credit card spender – it’s meant for whales and high rollers who spend a lot – in the tune of more than $250,000 a year. But one thing to keep in mind is that due to the status implications the card seems to convey, mere possession and use of the Black Card may cause the cardholder to unnecessarily stand out awkwardly in ordinary situations. Using the Black Card from American Express in an inappropriate situation may be like showing up at a family reunion in your flashy, gas-guzzling red Lamborghini sports car while your relatives and family members quietly chug into the parking lot with their fuel efficient Honda Civics. Of course, not everyone will recognize the Black Card and many may see it as no big deal – just one of many random credit card choices out there.

How Can I Apply For The American Express Black Centurion Credit Card?

If you are wondering to yourself, how does one actually go about requesting official information or submitting an application for the ultra exclusive Black Centurion card, you’re likely going to be out of luck. Membership into the Black Card club is by exclusive invitation only, based on either your celebrity reputation or your proven ability to be a big credit card spender. However, there are affirmative steps you can take to satisfy the qualification requirements to trigger a personal credit card invite. To qualify for such an invitation based on proven financial ability, you’ll not only have to prove yourself to be a high credit card spender, but you’ll also need to have an exceptional FICO credit score and credit report history, along with a hefty personal balance sheet of verifiable monetary assets. Here are the basic requirements to get an American Express Black Centurion Card application invite based on your potential purchasing power:

1) You Must Be An Existing American Express Credit Card Holder – The American Express Black Centurion Card is currently only available to select holders of American Express credit cards. Although it does not matter which Amex card type you have (whether Blue, Blue Cash, Blue Sky, Green, Gold, or Platinum), because of the high spending requirements to qualify, you will want a card with a very high credit limit. As such, those who qualify for the Black Centurion Card tend to be former holders of Amex Platinum cards, which offer the highest credit limits of all Amex card types. If you are not already an existing American Express credit card holder, you will need to apply for one of the following high credit limit cards and start racking up significant purchases in a short period of time:

• American Express Preferred Rewards Gold Card – You get 10,000 instant points after your first purchase. Earn rewards with no preset limit.
• American Express Preferred Rewards Green Card – Get 5,000 instant bonus points and earn shopping and travel rewards with every purchase, with no preset limit.
• American Express Platinum Credit Card – Earn 25,000 bonus points after spending at least $1,000 within 3 months. Get access to American Express’ personal concierge service and earn reward points with no pre-set spending limit.
• Business Gold Card From American Express Open – This is probably an ideal way to get a Centurion Black card special invite as you can put all of your business related expenditures and purchases on this one card.
• Business Green Rewards Card From Amex Open – Earn 5,000 instant bonus points with your first purchase. Earn rewards with every purchase with no preset spending limit.

2) You Will Need To Spend At Least $250,000 A Year On Your American Express Credit Card – If this amount is too much for you, you probably shouldn’t even think about trying to obtain a Black Card to begin with. With the hefty start up and annual maintenance fees, this card will only truly benefit those individuals who spend a significant amount of money on entertainment, on airline travel expenses, and on expensive hotel stays. This may seem like an impossible amount, but for those of you who run your own small business or frequently have large amounts of reimbursable business expenses to pay for, the high expenditure requirement is quite do-able. For those who have employees, paying a payroll management company via credit card and having them in turn pay the employees via check is another great way to charge everything onto your American Express card. Especially for those people like myself who use credit card rewards for Google ads and spend significant sums of money on online advertising through Google Adsense and other internet marketing programs, the $250,000 a year spending requirement is not out of the realm of possibility.

A major problem that many wannabe Black Centurion Card seekers have in reaching the $250,000 annual spending limit requirement on their existing Amex cards is that their current monthly credit card limit simply isn’t high enough to allow them to spend that much. To reach $250,000 a year, a cardholder would need to have a credit spending limit of approximately $21,000 a month give or take a few hundred dollars ($250,000 divided by 12 months). The solution to the insufficient credit limit hurdle is quite simple. Simply submit a check or online prepayment amount at the start of each month to American Express to cover your credit card expenditures for the month. For example, even if your actual credit card limit is only $10,000 or less, simply by submitting card payment of something like $11,000 in excess of the limit up to the magical $21,000 requirement will allow you to reach your desired $250,000 for the year. Of course, the assumption is that you will actually spend at least $21,000 minimum per month.

Once you have successfully spent over $250,000 a year on your American Express credit card, you may wish to contact American Express directly if they haven’t already contacted you with a Black Centurion card invitation. While there is a common misconception that you can’t actually solicit Amex for such an invite, truth be told, if you satisfy their financial spending requirements, the company will probably be more than happy to welcome you into their exclusive credit card club.

3) You Must Be Able To Afford The Black Card’s High Annual Credit Card Fees – Once you are approved for the American Express Black Centurion card, you will need to pay the setup charges and subsequent annual maintenance fees. While earlier charter members enjoy substantially lower fees, currently for new members, there is a one time $5,000 initiation fee for the primary card holder and an upfront annual fee of $2,500, for a total of $7,500 due at the end of the first billing cycle. Clearly, the Black Centurion card isn’t for ordinary middle class working folks who don’t have thousands of disposable income dollars to throw around like Monopoly play money.

What Are the Best Features and Benefits of The Amex Black Centurion Card, and Are They Worth The Significant Annual Maintenance Fees?

The American Express Black Card is available in both personal and business form, but the vast majority of holders will likely find its benefits and credit card perks to be highly business-oriented, particularly in the area of business client entertainment as well as airline and hotel travel. For those who wish to apply for the business credit card version as an individual, keep in mind that it is perfectly legitimate and acceptable for individuals operating as a sole proprietorship business unto themselves to apply for a business card using their own names as the name of their business. As a small business owner, it’s what I personally do when I apply for business credit cards.

While the detailed specifics and the terms and conditions of your program will vary somewhat depending on whether you carry the personal or business version of the Black Centurion Card, the features and benefits of the Black Card are essentially the same. The Black Centurion offers the card holder exclusive and automatic upgrades with a wide selection of airline carriers, hotel resorts, and cruise ship travel programs. But the greatest and most touted benefit is the Black Centurion Card’s concierge service and personal shopper program, which helps cardholders find anything they desire in the area of fine dining, personal and business shopping, and travel related bookings for things like airline tickets, hotel reservations, and rental car arrangements.

1) Personal Concierge Services – Those who can afford the financial rigors and high expenditure requirements of the Amex Black Card are likely accustomed to personalized service and attention, and the Black Card program is happy to oblige with its personal concierge service for cardholders. Via the services of an outsourced concierge provider called Circles, American Express provides personalized VIP attention for both its Platinum and Centurion Black credit card customers. However, compared to regular Platinum card carriers, Black Centurion members receive more dedicated and prompt attention, and are understandably given access to a more highly trained and qualified staff of concierge representatives.

Having a dedicated and attentive personal concierge allows cardholders to outsource the time and effort of purchasing airline tickets, making hotel arrangements, booking rental cars, planning vacation trips, making dinner reservations, haggling for concert tickets, and researching prices. The actual success rate that the personal concierge agent has in securing exactly what you are looking for is somewhat debatable, but presumably due to the prestige and financial clout of the Black Centurion credit card program, it stands to reason that the company likely has greater access to exclusive deals and arrangements with the top restaurants, concert shows, and sporting venues than ordinary individuals.

The personal concierge service is probably the most commonly used and most invaluable Black Centurion Card benefit for many. While some people point out that the concierge agents are not always the best at locating what the cardholder is seeking, there’s no denying that this is still a very convenient luxury to have at one’s disposal. Not only does the cardholder have access to the personal concierge service, but the cardholder’s family members, personal assistants, and secretaries have access to this card perk as well.

2) Airline Travel Upgrades – If you are a frequent personal or business traveler, you will definitely appreciate the automatic airline upgrades offered by the Black Centurion card. What this means is that if you purchase a regular economy class ticket on one of participating airlines, you are automatically upgraded to elite status – usually this means getting bumped up to business or first class based on seat availability. With business and first class seats usually being triple or quadruple the cost of ordinary coach class seats, it’s not hard to see why this is such a potentially invaluable card benefit. With automatic upgrades into the following elite airline and hotel travel programs, cardholders enjoy such perks as dedicated check-ins, priority boardings, extra airline mileage earning opportunities, and bonus hotel stay earnings:

• Continental OnePass Gold Elite
• Delta Air Lines SkyMiles Gold Medallion
• US Airways Dividend Miles Platinum Preferred
• Virgin Atlantic Airways Flying Club Gold
• Priority Pass Membership
• Hilton HHonors Gold

Black Centurion cardholders also get access to Continental Airline €™s President’s Lounge, Delta’s Crown Room Club, and Northwest Airline’s World Club as well as exclusive and complimentary access to Priority Pass’ over 500 VIP airport lounges. Automatic elite car rental upgrades with popular car rental companies like Hertz and Avis are also complimentary and available to cardholders.

The American Express Black Card also provides members with a companion airfare program that offers cardholders free guest airline tickets when the Black Card is used to purchase tickets. Currently, you can request up to 4 complimentary companion airline tickets a year. Of course, there may be a few airfare restrictions and blackout dates.

3) Hotel and Resort Lodging Upgrades – Along with automatic airline travel upgrades to elite status, the Black Card also offers automatic hotel lodging upgrades at all participating hotels and luxury resorts. Through partnerships with over 500 worldwide luxury hotels and resorts, chances are you will likely enjoy elite upgraded status at most premium hotels and resorts like the Starwood Group (Le Meridien, Four Points, Westin, Aloft, Sheraton, Element, St. Regis, and W Hotels), Ritz-Carlton, Mandarin Oriental, Hilton, Leading Hotels of the World, Amanresorts, and Centurion Villas.

Unfortunately, a few of the greatest and most coveted Black Centurion Card perks of past years have since been eliminated from the program. Until a few years ago, Hyatt’s Diamond Elite Status and Starwood’s Preferred Guest Platinum status were automatically offered to cardholders. However, Hyatt Hotel has since left the program and the Starwood Platinum status privilege is no longer offered to card members – a great disappointment and upset to many cardholders as the Starwood frequent guest suite upgrade program was indeed one of the best around. Now, cardholders will no longer qualify for automatic free Starwood Preferred Platinum status, but will receive Starwood Preferred Gold status instead, which offers substantially less upgrade opportunities for members.

4) Retail Shopping and Entertainment Benefits – More likely than not, American Express Black Centurion Card members are likely prolific shoppers, whether for personal reasons, or for business purposes. Coupled with the dedicated and personalized concierge service, card members can solicit the services of personal shoppers and price researchers to help them locate any product or custom merchandise they desire. For those who enjoy frequenting luxury boutiques and high end retailers like Bulgari, Escada, Gucci, Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue, personal shoppers are available at such retailers for VIP attention. In some circumstances, entire stores may be reserved for your personal shopping pleasure so you can bypass lines and avoid crowds. For those who desire reservations at exclusive restaurants, tickets for hard to find entertainment shows and sporting events like the Super Bowl, your Black Card concierge is there to help you secure such coveted tickets. American Express has deals and exclusive arrangements with hundreds and thousands of restaurants to reserve tables for card members. With the Black Card, you will have greater access to so-called Gold Card events and premium luxury seating at concerts and events not ordinarily available to the general public.

Members also get automatic subscriptions to “Black Ink” magazine, an ultra exclusive publication that caters to the materialistic fancies of like minded wealthy clientele discussing such indulgences like luxury performance vehicles and exclusive dream vacation destinations. On occasion, as yet another complimentary benefit for coveted Black Card holders, American Express sends out free gift cards worth in excess of $500-$1000 to a variety of exclusive high end retailers. Amex has also been known to send out to Black Card customers, such gifts like expensive digital cameras and high end women’s jewelry.

Is The American Express Black Centurion Credit Card Worth The Hefty $7,500 Initiation Fee (One Time $5,000 Plus The $2,500 Annual Fee)?

First of all, if you are even asking yourself if the Black Card is worth the cost, this card’s likely not for you. Remember, to even qualify for an exclusive invite or to even satisfy the financial requirements to request membership, existing American Express card members need to spend at least $250,000 a year worth of credit card purchases. If your business or personal situation allows this type of high spending, chances are, a comparatively small $7,500 fee is unlikely to even register as a blip on your financial radar. Keep in mind, the American Express Black Centurion card is all about exclusivity and rarity. It’s a coveted financial item and the ultimate status symbol because it is only held by a limited number of wealthy individuals. The card should be regarded as a personal branding tool for those who can indeed afford the cost of carrying it. The automatic travel upgrades and complimentary perks and credit card rewards are certainly appreciated by card carriers, but it’s probably the exclusivity and status symbol of the Black Card that cardholders who can afford it covet the most. For ordinary consumers who do not have thousands and millions of dollars to throw around, the Black Centurion Card is a symbol of great excess waste and unnecessary decadence, but for the higher income types, it’s akin to driving around an expensive luxury sports car – it’s an attention getter for many.

But speaking from a cost benefit analysis perspective, are the benefits of the Black Centurion Card worth the one time $5,000 initial setup fee and the subsequent $2,500 fee year after year? After speaking to a few actual Black Card carriers and picking their brains a bit about what they find so useful and indispensable about the card, I have to conclude that the card is indeed worth the hefty annual fee, but only if you are a heavy business traveler or one who frequently engages in airline travel and hotel stays. The Amex Black Card is primarily business oriented and most of the airline and travel perks are geared towards upgrading existing travel accommodations into more comfortable elite offerings. For busy business types, the airline and hotel upgrades over the course of a year may very well cover the cost of the annual fee alone.

For those who primarily use the personal concierge services of the card for shopping research and entertainment reservation purposes, the cost benefit of the annual fee is more debatable as the cost is a bit harder to quantify. While American Express tends to provide better customer service for its cardholders than that of other credit card issuers, I think the concierge services is likely only useful in certain circumstances. For example, purchasing airline tickets is a breeze online and I find I can probably do a better job myself with a few keystrokes online than any concierge representative who isn’t as skilled at bargain hunting and deal finding. But for busy business types who have little time for mundane things like shopping research and price comparison, having a personal concierge at one’s beck and call certainly may be worth the cost of card membership.

Source URL: How To Apply For An American Express Black Centurion Card

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Fortunately, a blog can still stay alive and remain healthy even without fresh updates for very long periods of time (weeks to months). One very unique aspect about blogs not found in most other industries is the ability to harness residual Internet traffic for long term growth despite lack of immediate content production. Oftentimes, it’s past blog posts that rank highly in Google keyword searches, which do the most to help sustain a blog’s successful traffic levels, and not posting frequency per se. Posting frequency is actually quite overrated, especially for mature sites that have at least a solid year’s worth of quality posts. Of course, in a perfect blogging world, the more posts that a site can accrue and index, the better, but offering a new post everyday is not necessarily a deal breaker. So long as the motivation to keep a blog alive is still there, a blog can still thrive, grow, become widely read, and become financially successful with proper monetization.

Even Formerly Consistent Bloggers Ultimately Get Bitten By Writer’s Block At Some Point Or Another

It’s been a year since I first started blogging for fun and transitioning my little hobby into a decent part time side job. I’ve had numerous ups and downs in terms of motivation and focus over the past few months – most of which I assumed I had permanently overcome. Much of the initial frustrations with running a fledgling personal finance blog happened early on when search traffic was non existent and lack of advertising success led me to question whether I could turn my hobby into a sustainable source of quasi-passive income. However, after 9 months in, the worries and gripes associated with the initial lack of blogging success faded away when my blogging efforts finally started to pay off and my efforts to convert organic search traffic into tangible pay per click and affiliate advertising income started to bear fruit en masse. Monetary success and upward trends in terms of website traffic have a way of greatly lifting one’s blogging spirits and sparking confidence to become more self motivated.

However, despite the steady traffic growth and monetization successes of my original personal finance blog and the newer health and fitness blog, persistent blogger’s block finally bit me again. For the last few weeks, I’ve struggled to motivate myself to update my blog posting and to adopt more sustainable entrepreneurial work habits. At first I tried cutting down my daily posting schedule to just a few personal finance and frugality articles a week, but ultimately even that proved difficult to sustain. I think after nearly a year of working continuously on my part time blogging business and putting time in at my full time job, I’ve finally burned out, at least for the moment. Thankfully, it’s happening during the annual summer slump, when most blogs and online websites see a noticeable decrease in search and referral traffic due to the cyclical and seasonal nature of Internet use. While certain niches such as college preparation and travel sites tend to enjoy an appreciable surge in traffic during the summer months, the vast majority of sites see a noticeable decline during the months of June, July, and August as prospective readers and viewers choose to spend their free time outdoors at amusement parks and take advantage of summer vacation traveling opportunities, putting off any significant financial moves or planning decisions until the fall.

As luck would have it, my sudden pangs of writer’s block couldn’t have come at a more fortunate time. The summer slump allows me to lesson the strain on my posting routine and take some time off to unwind and get away from the pressures of posting regularly. The urgency of needing to write regularly was starting to become a bit overwhelming. For those who wonder why I even bother stressing about the need to write regularly, or putting self imposed worries on myself, the answer is simple. I treat my network of blogs like a part time project that must be sustained consistently until the day they can completely overtake my full time job and allow me to become independently self employed and fully sustained financially. My dream and goal for myself has always been to become fully self employed, to become independent from the shackles of working for someone else (the Man if you will), and to find true financial freedom from the daily work grind. The fruits of success will be even sweeter when I can permanently escape the hassles and limitations of painfully long daily rush hour commutes and having to deal with high gas prices.

To reach this lofty but reachable goal of making money online through the monetization of my financial and health related blogs, I know I’ll need to get my blogging mojo back, so to speak. Unable to get out of this rut on my own, I’ve decided to take a little blogging break and go on vacation to momentarily escape my full time job and part time work responsibilities. I’m currently traveling overseas and will do so for the next few weeks. I plan to visit my parents and get my mind off the rigors of running a network of monetized blogs. It’s amazing how a little simple change of scenery and work space can refresh one’s motivation and perspective. I think it’s also the same reason why weeks ago I was trying to find public places outside of my home that provided complimentary free WiFi Internet access. It was probably in an attempt to escape the monotony and ho-hum sameness of working from home. Sometimes, a little healthy distraction is all we need to get our business minds back on track.

Source URL: Battling Blogger Burn Out and Lack Of Blog Posting Frequency

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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As the American and world economies endure a period of economic recession, the once stable and thriving marketplace can seem like a distant memory. Not only does it seem like unemployment warning flags and disappointing corporate earning reports lurk around every corner, it’s all too easy to succumb to the financial despair. When you combine the mortgage market meltdown with increasing housing foreclosures, and you mix that with high gas prices, fears of another major Islamic terrorist attack, and snowballed consumer pessimism, you have a spicy cocktail for widespread financial depression. While I’m not a financial fortune teller, nor am I a guru who can predict when the recession or lingering credit crisis will pass, all I can do is reassure you of areas in your life where you ought not to be overly distraught or paranoid about.

One segment in the economy that has spawned a huge surge of concern and irrational panic is the area of bank failures and bank bankruptcies. Because of the excessive subprime lending to consumers totally unqualified to receive home mortgages made by irresponsible mortgage lenders in the past few years, the economy is now reaping the terrible financial whirlwind result of defaulting loans and home foreclosures. This calamity is currently happening on a massive scale as huge banking giants like Citibank and Bank of America, as well as major thrift saving institutions like Washington Mutual are getting pummeled for their ties to bad mortgage loans. Unable to recoup their housing mortgage investments, many of these financial service providers are having to write off billions of dollars of unrecoverable bad loans, triggering serious questions by creditors, deposit account holders, and shareholders of their ability to continue as viable going concerns.

Bank Failures Have A Way Of Sparking Emotional Panic, Regardless Of The Government Effort’s To Alleviate Fears

While most major banks have healthier segments of their financial businesses to siphon assets and capital from, thereby allowing them to stay afloat, a few have not been so lucky. Netbank, an online banking institution that was one of the first early adopters during the initial Internet banking craze, ultimately keeled over due to the disintegration of its mortgage business segment. When its asset position could no longer meet depositor demand, federal regulators swooped in to shut it down, forcing Netbank to ultimately file for bankruptcy.

Banking and mortgage services giant Countrywide Financial recently faltered under the crushing weight of bad mortgages as well, and was ultimately acquired by Bank of America at an extremely huge discount, saving it from near collapse.

Most recently, IndyMac Bank fell flat on its face, triggering shock waves that signified the United States’ second largest banking collapse in history. Due to the sheer financial size of IndyMac bank, and the large scale and huge number of account customers the banking collapse affected, the news triggered panic attacks and resulted in reports of huge lines of desperate customers clamoring to get their deposit money out of the bank out of fear of the unknown. Despite the federal government’s announcement that the vast majority of deposit holders would not lose a single cent of their money, news of catastrophic bank failures have a way of making consumers go crazy and act in irrationally frenzied ways. As someone who considers himself relatively educated about the subject of finance, even I have to admit I was disturbed by the sheer magnitude of the Indy Mac bank collapse. After all, if IndyMac could fall, who else could potentially be next? I felt a slight tinge of emotional panic despite my otherwise logical and rational mental faculties – and I wasn’t even an IndyMac banking or home mortgage customer. But yet, I still felt the reactive emotional ripples that made me question my faith and trust in my bank and the economy at large. While bank failures are incredibly rare, they do happen – especially when there is a significant and pervasive trigger (the subprime mortgage meltdown) that is causing the financially destructive domino effect.

Thus, that is why it is extremely important for us, as cool headed consumers, to greatly educate ourselves on the types of financial and banking protections the system has in place to shield the money we save up in banks, savings and loans, and credit unions from loss. By learning more about how the federal government, the FDIC, and private bank risk sharing agreements protect our deposits, the more our fears will diminish, thus helping to solidify our faith in our banking institutions. We live in an efficient market where there are powerful protective systems in place, and proper financial education will help to reinforce that confidence. Thus sometimes, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – a nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance” (a powerful quote made by former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression).

How Does FDIC Insurance Keep Our Bank Accounts and Deposit Money Safe?

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is a federal government run entity that provides deposit insurance protection for participating member banks – guaranteeing their deposit accounts from loss. The FDIC system was set up to instill consumer confidence in our nation’s banking system during a time of severe economic recession and financial turmoil. To prevent massive runs on banks triggered by irrational consumer panic to withdraw money during times of crisis, the United States government set up the FDIC to guarantee depositors at insured banks that their money would always be safe, even during the worst of times.

As a general rule of thumb, the current FDIC insured amount per depositor at each bank is $250,000 (with extra exceptions for different ownership categories). This blanket protection insures member bank accounts from bank failure loss, up to the maximum insured amount of $250,000. The FDIC protection covers a variety of bank deposits, including – checking accounts, savings accounts, money market accounts, certificate of deposits (CD’s), and even bank money orders and cashier’s checks. However, the FDIC protection does not cover non bank deposit type accounts and assets like – stocks, bonds, mutual fund investments, variable or fixed annuities, U.S. Treasury securities, or contents stored in safe deposit boxes. As FDIC insurance only covers bank failure loss, it also does not provide protection against bank fire, fraud, or theft, although in the overwhelming majority of cases, individual banks usually have their own private hazard and casualty insurance coverage against these other types of loss.

The FDIC also provides loss protection for retirement accounts held in member banks in the form of deposits. The FDIC limit for retirement accounts, which includes self directed plans like Roth IRA’s, Traditional IRA’s, SEP’s, and Keogh’s, currently stands at – $250,000. The higher FDIC limit for retirement accounts is a clear recognition by the FDIC of the importance of ensuring that consumers always have their retirement nest eggs to fall back on.

How Does The Federal Government and The FDIC Monitor The Banking Industry?

While by no means a perfect system, the banking industry is highly regulated by the federal government and watched by multiple federal agencies – including the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of Currency, the FDIC, and the Office of Thrift Supervision. Along with state banking regulators, there are multiple sets of eyes at all time on the state of the banking market. While bank failures are incredibly rare, they do happen on occasion unfortunately.

In such an occurrence, as soon as the federal and state regulators determine that a bank no longer has the capacity to meet depositor demands and sustain sufficient capital due to insolvency problems, the FDIC barges in to take command. Once it takes control, the execution is usually fairly rapid as the FDIC is highly motivated to ensure a seamless transition. Until the FDIC can find a suitable buyer of the failing bank’s assets, the bank generally continues to run as usual without significant interruption. In the rare event the FDIC cannot find a suitable buyer, it closes down the ailing bank and sends out checks to all account holders within the FDIC insurance limits along with interest. Usually the FDIC payments are sent out in a matter of days.

For Those Banking Customers With $250,000 Or Less In Total Bank Deposits, Your Money Is Fully Covered By The FDIC

If you are a young student or a person with relatively low income with little in the way of financial or banking assets, you probably won’t have to worry too much about losing your money in the event of a bank failure. If your total bank deposits are less than $250,000, you can rest assured that the full faith and credit of the United States government has your back. The ones that have to be more vigilant in how they structure their checking and savings account deposits are those with more than $250,000 in total deposits. Those with more than $250,000 in deposits will need to pay greater attention to how they break up and consolidate their money among FDIC insured banks to ensure maximum FDIC protection against loss.

For Those With More Than $250,000, You’ll Need To Pay Attention To How The FDIC Provides Separate Coverage For Different Ownership Categories At Any One Bank

While I personally don’t have more than $250,000 in total bank deposits that require me to even worry about this problem (yet!), it’s something I want to know more about because I know one day I will reach that goal (why dream if you can’t dream big). It’s better to know how to structure your bank deposit portfolio now and plan for that occasion, than not know what to do when you reach that point someday in the not too distant future.

While the FDIC insurance program protects individual bank depositors up to a maximum of $250,000 per bank, there are clever ways and not-so-secret methods to get you around this protection limit. The primary way to accomplish this is through deposit account diversification. By splitting your total deposits into multiple ownership category accounts or splitting your assets among different FDIC insured banks, you can ensure full protection of your money. Remember, bank deposit accounts at different banks are insured separately (although all bank branches are considered part of the same bank). Thus, each bank has its own complete set of FDIC coverage limits.

At any one bank, the FDIC offers each category of ownership account its own individual coverage cap. There are different types of ownership categories, each with its own $250,000 FDIC insurance limit. You can go straight to the official source if you want to know more about the FDIC’s policy on ownership categories, but the more common ownership categories are listed here. Remember, each ownership category (single account, joint accounts, etc) gets its own $250,000 FDIC coverage limit:

• Single Accounts – Most consumer bank accounts fall into this category, which covers checking, savings, and CD’s. Basically, if your bank account is in your name only, its ownership category is probably that of a single account. Single accounts also include sole proprietorship business accounts you may own at the same bank (DBA, “Doing Business As” type businesses). All personal and sole proprietorship business deposit accounts at the same bank are added together as single accounts and insured up to the combined maximum FDIC limit of $250,000.
• Joint Accounts – Joint accounts are simply bank deposit accounts that are owned by two people or more at the same bank. While most joint accounts are held by married couples, joint account owners don’t necessarily need to be married. For example, while I have my own individual bank account at a local Chevy Chase Bank, my mom and I also jointly hold a separate shared deposit account at the same bank. Individuals can have multiple joint accounts at the same bank, each with joint ownership involving different people, but when it comes to calculating the total FDIC limit for the joint account category, all proportional shares that each individual owner owns in all joint bank accounts at any one bank are added together and insured up to $250,000 for each individual. Thus, while a joint deposit account for a married couple may appear to enjoy a higher $500,000 FDIC limit, it’s actually made up of two separately capped $250,000 limits – one for the wife, and one for the husband.
• Trust Accounts – Both revocable and irrevocable trusts get their own FDIC insurance limits of $250,000. By listing others as beneficiaries, one can strategically use trust deposit accounts to get around the usual FDIC individual caps. For example, both a husband and wife can set up 2 separate revocable trusts in each other’s names to get an extra total $500,000 FDIC limit on top of their other single and joint account limits.
• Business Accounts – I’m sure business owners feel the FDIC insurance deposit limit for business accounts are currently much too low, but as it currently stands, bank deposit account funds held by corporations, limited liability companies (LLC’s), and partnerships at any one bank are combined and insured up to a maximum FDIC limit of only $250,000 (much too low in my opinion). Keep in mind, sole proprietorship business accounts are lumped in with single accounts.
• Retirement Accounts – Self directed retirement accounts where the account holder gets to decide what to do with his or her money, are offered much higher insurance limits under the FDIC – at $250,000. This particular ownership category includes the following retirement plans – individual retirement accounts (IRA’s), Roth IRA’s, Simplified Employee Pension Accounts, and Keogh Plan accounts. All retirement account deposits held by an individual at a single bank are added together and insured up to a maximum FDIC limit of $250,000. However, keep in mind, retirement account assets invested in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds are not FDIC insured as you’re actually investing through a broker with a working relationship with your bank. The FDIC coverage only protects retirement bank deposits, not investments.

Those With More Than $250,000 In Bank Assets Should Shift Bank Deposit Money Into Joint Accounts To Maximize FDIC Coverage

Because the FDIC provides $250,000 total protection limits for each ownership category, including $250,000 for self directed retirement accounts at the same bank, consumers may be able to greatly increase their total overall financial protection by splitting their money among different types of ownership accounts at the same bank. For example, if you have an individual savings account with total deposits valued at $600,000, you need to be extra careful about bank failure. In the event your bank fails or is suddenly unable to meet depositor demands, you stand to potentially lose $350,000 because only $250,000 worth of assets in the single account category are covered. The solution is not to open up multiple bank accounts like checking accounts or CD’s as they are all of the same ownership category and doing so won’t increase your overall FDIC limit. The best way to diversity and boost your FDIC limit is to spread your deposit among different ownership categories or among different banks. In the case of the hypothetical individual $600,000 savings account, it would be advisable to take at least $350,000 from that savings account and shift it into a joint account with your spouse, thereby sheltering the $350,000 under the $500,000 ($250,000+$250,000) total joint account FDIC limit. You might even want to make sure you give each deposit account extra room under the FDIC cap to allow interest to accrue, but still remain fully protected.

To reiterate the point about ownership categories, let’s say you went to Wells Fargo and opened up a brick and mortar checking account, an online high interest savings account, and set up a few CD’s – your total coverage limit will still only be $250,000. However, if you opened a joint account with you and your wife or husband, while opening up your own individual checking account at the same time, you will be able to receive $250,000 coverage limit for the checking account, and another separate $500,000 total marital pool coverage limit for the joint account.

Business Accounts Are Covered By FDIC Insurance, But Depending On Type Of Business Entity, They May Or May Not Boost Your Overall Coverage

Depending on business type, a business bank deposit account may or may not enjoy its own separate $250,000 FDIC limit apart from the individual’s cap for single accounts. Because a sole proprietorship and the individual running it are regarded as one and the same for taxation and legal purposes, the FDIC treats sole proprietorships as single accounts for assessing the extent of FDIC coverage. Thus, opening a sole proprietorship business at the same bank as your consumer checking or savings account will not allow you to gain extra coverage.

Only partnerships, limited liability companies (LLC’s), and corporations are able to qualify as separate ownership categories for additional FDIC insurance coverage. Because the FDIC regards certain business entities as separate ownership categories for FDIC insurance purposes, it is not uncommon for clever but sneaky business types to express interest at creating phantom, dummy businesses for the sole purpose of inflating FDIC limits. However, FDIC regulations expressly forbid this practice and stipulate that business accounts for partnerships, corporations, and other unincorporated associations need to be engaged in an “independent activity” such that the business is not engaged primarily in boosting FDIC insurance coverage.

Further Bank Account Diversification Strategies Using Multiple Banks To Increase FDIC Coverage

Because FDIC insurance coverage is offered for not only different account ownership categories, but also for different banking institutions, the recommendation by some pundits for high networth individuals is to spread one’s assets among a multitude of banks. Because each bank offers its own set of bank failure protection limits by the FDIC, savvy account holders are often advised to sacrifice some of their deposits made at just a handful of high yielding banks for greater diversity by spreading it among a greater number of deposit institutions. Let’s say you have $750,000 in a high yield savings account at HSBC Direct that you want to fully protect under the FDIC. If setting up joint accounts to boost FDIC coverage is not available to you as a viable option, you could instead open up accounts at say, Bank of America and Wachovia, shifting $250,000 into each of those two new savings accounts. Thus, your total $750,000 portfolio would now enjoy separate $250,000 FDIC coverages at three different banks. As I mentioned above, in such an event, you may actually want to consider breaking up the $750,000 into four total banks instead of just three to give yourself room to grow in interest and stay fully protected.

One alternative way to shift your banking assets among different banks without actually having to run around the neighborhood or Internet looking for new banks is to participate in a Certificate of Deposit Account Registry Service (CDARS). Banks that are members of the CDARS network do the leg work for you by breaking up CD deposits into smaller size chunks that are separately held at different participating network banks. However, your funds continue to enjoy a single point of access at your primary bank with one statement and one interest rate. The practice is rapidly growing in popularity and I highly recommend it as a wonderful and hassle free way to diversify your banking holdings for maximum FDIC protection. Here’s a list of banks that participate in the CDARS network. One downside of using a CDARS bank is that they tend to be smaller, regional size community banks. Some people like smaller community banks, the type of place where everybody knows your name. However, I highly prefer mega-corporate size banks as they tend to resonate more stability and are better capitalized in my opinion. There are only a tiny handful of large institutional banks participating in the CDARS network at this time. Furthermore, because of the CDARS network fees that banks pay for each CDARS transaction (there is no fee to the customer), CDARS deposit account interest rates tend to be lower than that offered by more competitive non-CDARS banks.

However, if I had financial assets in the neighborhood of millions of dollars and account diversification was on my mind, it is unlikely I would be spending my time worrying about FDIC insurance limits. I would probably have the bulk of my money either invested in mutual funds, index funds, money market funds, or other broadly diversified investments that have never been known to actually fail. Frankly, I don’t even think broadly diversified investment assets could ever technically fail – in the worst case scenario, they would simply gradually lose their stock value over time. Buying super secure assets like U.S. Treasury Bills and Treasury Bonds would be viable alternatives for high net worth individuals as well. While U.S. Treasury products are not FDIC insured, they are fully backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. The federal government could simply print more money if financial Armageddon necessitated that course of action.

Source URL: Is My FDIC Insured Checking Or Savings Account Safe If My Bank Fails?

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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As a personal finance blogger and a dot com mogul-super affiliate tycoon wannabe (I’m joking), I regularly spend sums of money on domain name registrations, web hosting services, and home office computer supplies. However, the bulk of my tax deductible business expenses consist of expenditures for online advertising through top search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. While compared to the big boys (and girls) my advertising budget is comparatively puny, I still seek to maximize my money however I can, whether that means utilizing free promotional coupons for extra savings and free online advertising, or taking advantage of credit card offers to earn cashback rebates on Google Adword purchases.

Online Advertising Through Pay Per Click Works, But It Can Get Expensive Depending On Subject Niche

Those who are familiar with online advertising know that there are a variety of ways and methods to get your website brand or blog name into the search engines and thus into the public eye for maximum traffic. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the methods are created equal. Currently the most popular search engine with the most capability to leverage the most search traffic by far is run by Google. But while the Google Adword program’s certainly the most dominant player in the online marketing world, there are also other lesser options worth mentioning – most notably Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft’s MSN AdCenter. Neither Yahoo Search nor MSN AdCenter are likely to topple the 800 pound gorilla of Google Adwords anytime soon, but the smaller search sites still own a small, albeit dwindling piece of the search engine pie.

For those who spend money on internet advertising through Google, Yahoo, or MSN, probably the bulk is spent on paid text link advertising or pay per click (PPC) promotional campaigns. Both paid text links and PPC advertising are used by many bloggers and website promoters to generate traffic needed to convert organic search traffic into profitable affiliate sales. Personally, I highly advise against engaging in buying or selling paid text links, and refuse to engage in paid text link buying or selling myself. The frowned upon practice is a form of marketing suicide in my opinion, and is the number one way to incur the wrath of Google, which sees the buying and selling of paid backlinks as a form of guerrilla attack on the integrity of the Google search engine algorithm.

In contrast, pay per click advertising and the purchasing of approved advertisement links through Google, Yahoo, or MSN’s network of publisher banners and ads are proven and permitted ways to drive website traffic. However, as anyone who engages in pay per click advertising or other affiliate marketing means through Google Adsense or Yahoo Ads knows, the cost to promote a successful PPC ad campaign isn’t cheap. While newbies to internet advertising are unlikely to spend much money initially (a few hundred dollars a month at most), larger scale promoters frequently spend upwards of hundreds to thousands, or even hundred thousands, of dollars on monthly pay per click advertising alone.

Use Credit Card Rewards To Save Money On Online Business and Advertising Expenses (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN AdCenter)

Smart business types should always try to find ways to minimize business expenses and utilize as many discounts and promotional offers as possible to net the greatest overall profit. One of the best ways for bloggers and affiliate marketers to save money in this area is to maximize and strategize their use of credit cards rewards. Presuming you are savvy and responsible with your usage of credit, and maintain a respectable FICO credit score to boot, reward credit cards are essential ways for online entrepreneurs and advertisers to maximize their small business spending. Surprised that there are credit card reward programs dedicated and suited for web based businesses and online marketers? Don’t be! While Yahoo and Google credit card advertising rewards are not as well known as say, credit card discount programs for groceries and gas, the area is a steadily growing (albeit not fully tapped) segment of the credit card rewards market. Currently, most of the best cash back credit card rewards for bloggers, webmasters, and internet marketers are not widely advertised, and to get the details requires some digging, which I’ve done below.

For the tax minded business folks who wonder if there is an income tax on credit card rewards or aren’t sure whether one is obligated to report all cash back rewards and point rebates earned through the use of credit cards, rest assured – there is no such tax. Credit card rewards earned by consumers and businesses are viewed as purchase incentives by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the nature of discounts and coupons, not subject to personal income tax liability. So don’t miss out on the cash back savings and discount potential of specialized credit card incentive programs designed to help you finance and pay for your online advertising and promotional efforts.

1) Google Adword and Adsense Pay Per Click Advertising – Get Up To 5% Cash Back With Reward Credit Cards

Until the day Google announces the release of its long awaited Google credit card and starts up its own Google credit card rewards program, the following card offers are your best bet when it comes to earning cashback for money spent on Google advertising. Personally, I can’t wait for Google to come out with its own Google credit card and would be the first to camp out in line for something like that – I’m quite the Google fan. Just the thought of earning Google rebate rewards on a percentage of all Adwords expenditures and the ability to redeem points for either cash or Google branded products like T shirts, mouse pads, and even portable Google fridges would be quite lovely. I used to carry around a Yahoo credit card back when Yahoo offered its own card program. When they eventually discontinued the Yahoo credit card rewards program, I was sad to see it go. It was pretty neat being able to redeem points for cool Yahoo T-shirts and other merchandise – techie stuff you couldn’t get anywhere else.

In the meantime, for those of you who spend a lot of money or even just a little bit on Google Adwords and Google Adsense advertising, here are the best credit cards cards to help you save money and get cash back rewards on your PPC advertising efforts. The rewards you earn can be used for whatever you wish, including plowing them back into more PPC marketing. While Google does not currently have any special deals with any particular credit card issuer to offer Google discounts, there are a few specially suited cards for such purposes.

1. Advanta Platinum BusinessCard For Online Marketers – Also known as the Advanta Platinum Business Card With Customized Cash Back Options, this card offers cardholders the ability to earn as high as 5% cash back on all online marketing expenditures. It’s probably the best overall reward credit card for new bloggers and affiliate marketers who are just getting into the PPC advertising scene. The expenditures that are covered include Google Adwords, Yahoo, MSN Search, and eBay fees. The Advanta rewards program also covers office expenses as well. The high 5% rebate rate is only provided for the first $1,500 of qualified expenditures, and after that it’s a tiered 1% cashback on everything spent.
2. Advanta Kiva Business Card – With the Kiva business credit card offer, online marketers get to earn up to 5% cashback on money spent on online advertising services like Google Adwords or Yahoo Search. There are no restrictions as to which affiliate or ad network must be used. The card also earns up to 5% cashback for business office related expenses like gas, computers, utilities, and even charitable contributions. There is also a nice 0% balance transfer offer for 15 months.
3. American Express Plum Card – With the highly advertised Plum Card from American Express Open (the Plum card yogurt commercial is everywhere on TV these days), you get an astounding 2% cashback rewards on everything purchased with the card if you pay within 10 days of your billing cycle. The catch is you’ll need to spend above $5,000 a month with your Plum credit card. Anything less and you’ll only earn 1% cashback. Of course, the card was designed for big time spenders and small businesses with high expenses. If you spend a lot of money on Google Adwords or other forms of advertising, you may want to think about the Amex Plum card. There is a hefty $185 annual fee that’s waived for the first year, but it’s easily worth it if your business spends a lot of money on online advertising or other business expenses.
4. Fidelity Rewards Signature Card – While the card requires a Fidelity Investment broker account to maximize rewards earning potential, if you’ve got one or are willing to sign up for one, you can earn 1.5% cash back on all your online advertising efforts. Actually, coupled with a Fidelity account, the card allows you to earn an effective 1.5% cashback on all products and services you purchase with the card, with no category or store limitation. Most comparable card programs only offer 1% back for general purchases so if you are a major spender, this is an ideal and recommended card to get. The Fidelity Signature is one of the reward cards I use on a regular basis.
5. Chase Business Cash Rewards Card – With the Chase Business Cash Rewards offer, online entrepreneurs and small business owners can earn up to a tiered 5% cashback on all purchases with no merchant or category restrictions. Your rewards earning potential is unlimited and there is no restriction as to how much you can earn. Your cash back percentage rate rises and falls depending on how much you spend per month. For online marketers who expect to spend more than $2,000 a month on Google Adwords (that’s when the high 5% kicks in), this is a nice card to have.

2) Yahoo Search Marketing – Get 5% or More CashBack Savings Using American Express Business Credit Cards

Currently, savvy online entrepreneurs have the ability to take advantage of American Express’ Open Network Business credit cards to net themselves more than 5% cash back rewards when they spend money on Yahoo Search Marketing services. Through a special partnership between Amex and Yahoo announced not too long ago, American Express business credit card users will now get to enjoy a 5% discount on all their Yahoo based advertising and web promotional expenditures simply by using their Amex business cards. This not only includes pay per click advertising using Yahoo’s Search Marketing, but also includes Yahoo publisher services ranging from web site hosting, e-commerce, to domain name registration.

While Yahoo is not the most popular or even a serious contender in second place, its PPC advertising fees are substantially lower than that charged by more popular services like Google Adwords where greater bidding competition among advertisers drives up promotion costs – making Yahoo a cheaper, but still viable alternative. Besides, it’s good to diversify one’s advertisement methods. One can even take credit card rewards one step further. Currently, there are certain select Amex business cards that offer even more lucrative rebate rewards on top of the existing 5% discount for Yahoo services. All of the following American Express Open business credit card offers below offer additional cumulative rewards on top of the 5% discount on Yahoo Search Marketing:

1. Blue Cash For Business Amex Card – With this high earning business credit card offer, you have the potential to earn up to a tiered 5% cash back rebate on eligible special category purchases. For everything else, including PPC advertising expenses, you get a tiered 2.5% cash back rewards rate. The special purchase categories include gas stations, drug stores, and supermarkets. In addition, Amex business cardholders also get to enjoy the usual Amex Open network savings on free hotel stays, car rentals, and airline travel.
2. American Express Business Gold Rewards – This popular premium small business card with no preset spending limit can help you save up to 25% off your business expenses. There is an unlimited rewards earning potential on purchases and your Membership Rewards never expire.
3. American Express Platinum Business Card – This business card from Amex is a popular choice to earn purchase rebates redeemable for retail, entertainment, and dining rewards. There is no annual fee and there is no limit to the number of points you can earn.
4. American Express Simply Cash For Business – You can use the card to earn 5% cashback on wireless services and home office supplies (like laptops and office gadgets). You also get 3% cashback on gas and 1% for everything else. There is no annual fee and no rewards limit.

3) MSN AdCenter – Get 3% Cash Back Rewards By Using Mastercard Business Credit Cards

Currently, Microsoft’s MSN AdCenter has a partnership with Mastercard’s network of business credit cards to offer MSN AdCenter advertisers 3% cash back rewards on money spent. While American Express is the card of choice for most business owners, the MasterCard partnership with MSN AdCenter makes Mastercard sort of a must have for heavy or even mild users of MSN’s advertising network.

To be eligible for the 3% cash back savings, Mastercard business credit card holders need to register and enroll their cards into the Master Card Easy Savings Network. While fairly straightforward, you can review the MasterCard Easy Savings FAQ if you need more info about the program. Keep in mind, along with the 3% rewards you can earn on all MSN AdCenter expenditures, you still get to earn the usual credit card rewards (if offered) on top of that. This has the potential to effectively boost your total reward earning percentage way past 3%. Here’s a list of the best Mastercard business credit cards for MSN Ad Center affiliate marketers and pay per click advertisers:

1. Advanta Platinum Business Customized Rewards Mastercard – This business credit card option by Mastercard is your best bet when it comes to maximizing your MSN AdCenter savings and online advertising spending in general. Along with the ability to earn 3% reward savings on all MSN AdCenter expenditures, you also get to earn an extra 5% cash back rate (with purchase limits) on top of the 3% for money spent on fees with online advertisers and merchant sites like Google Adwords, Yahoo, and even eBay. You also get cashback rewards for money spent on utilities and telecommunications, not to mention additional business savings for computer electronics and related office supplies as well.
2. Chase Business Rebate Mastercard – Earn up to 3% cash back on office supplies, restaurant dining, gas, hardware, and home improvement expenditures. Currently there is also a long 15 month 0% APR balance transfer promotional period as well.

Source URL: The Best Credit Card Rewards For Google Ads and Search Advertising

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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I’ve edited and updated my compiled list of Citibank promotion codes with the latest active bonus offers for new Citi banking customers:

• Currently, Citibank is providing a new $200 bonus deposit offer with the opening of a new Citi checking account (Promo offer code: CEMX). This offer expires on June 30, 2008.

• Citibank is also offering a new bonus offer for 16,000 Citi Thank You Network reward points with the opening of a brand new qualifying Citi checking account (Promo offer code: CSVL). The promotional Thank You points are instantly redeemable for the equivalent of a free $150 gift card. The new Citi account holder will also get to earn triple Thank You Network points for 1 year. This offer expires on July 31, 2008.

Citibank Is A Decent Banking Option For New Checking Account Customers – Not So Much For Savings Accounts However

For those of you out there who have yet to settle on or select a primary bank to handle your banking funds and transactions, you may want to take a look at what Citibank has to offer. While they offer pretty unimpressive interest rates for a major national or international bank, they do make up for lower yields in other ways. While I have a hard time recommending Citibank for savings or money market accounts due to their comparatively lower interest yield offerings, I do recommend their checking accounts.

Usually when it comes to choosing banks, I look at three major components – (1) Office branch locations and ATM convenience, (2) Online website versatility and functionality, and (3) Account interest rate competitiveness. However, when it comes to checking accounts, the interest rate component is far less important of a consideration than the first two factors. Most savvy banking consumers adopt or should adopt the practice of routinely transferring excess deposit money to high interest savings where the funds can properly earn and accrue interest. The amount that sits in the checking account should thus be the bare minimum necessary to cover daily expense turnover and fulfill emergency fund needs. As such, the minimal amount that resides in the actively used checking account will likely benefit more from the wealth of branch office and ATM locations, and a well developed online account management interface than any high interest offering. After reviewing the features offered by other prominent banks, I chose Citibank as my primary bank years ago due to its thorough national banking presence and well maintained online website for handling account transactions.

I can almost always find a Citibank location wherever I go and Citi ATM’s are everywhere. Their ATM presence has multiplied tremendously ever since they partnered up with 7-11 convenience stores to offer Citibank branded ATM’s, giving Citibank customers access to a much larger network of surcharge free locations to perform their banking.

In addition, as I perform the vast majority of my checking transactions electronically, having a clean, robust, and secure banking website interface to handle my active checking account transactions is very important to me – and Citibank fits the bill quite well.

Along with Citibank, Bank of America is another popular and widely accessible checking option as well, with bank branches and ATM’s everywhere. They too offer free money promotions as well for new customer accounts – take a look at my updated list of Bank of America promotion codes.

Source URL: New Citibank $200 and $150 Promotion Codes For New Customers

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Spammers and Scammers Are Relentless And They Can Afford To Be – Sending E-Mail Lures With Scam Bait Doesn’t Cost A Thing

Starting very recently, I’ve been receiving nearly 20-30 spam related messages everyday. I have no idea how they are effectively evading my spam filters, but they are. These spam messages are driving me absolutely crazy and are irritating to say the least. But one can’t help but find some amusement from the content of these desperate messages. These spam letters that flood the web are mostly from the poor African country of Nigeria – sent by notorious computer users who run well documented Nigerian 419 scam operations. You know when you receive one of these classic Nigerian 419 spam letters as they are pretty recognizable. Usually the Nigerians use very flowery, British style English comprised of exaggerated legalese-type terminology to make the content appear more legitimate. However, oftentimes their lame use of the English language borders on comical and their complete lack of understanding regarding American and western male and female names makes me chuckle. For some reason they have a habit of using the funniest and oddest fake first and last names – using common first names as last names, and improperly matching up male and female names – like Peter John, Mark Donna, or Smith Karen for example – frequently it’s pretty obvious they’re fake names as the names simply sound unnatural. But then again, these Nigerians and African spammers are not incredibly bright. They may be criminally and diabolically clever, but they are not exactly all that well educated or worldly. They resort more to the law of probability and the long held truism that “a sucker’s born every minute”. By casting a very wide net, even their ill conceived attempts may net at least one or two potential biting fish in the long haul.

It’s not just the crazy Nigerians either, spammers and scammers live in other countries as well – all beyond the reasonable reach of established arms of law and justice. Most of them approach the spam and scam business utilizing the same typical shot gun approach. Since the Internet affords the ability to send out many messages at relatively little to no cost, they are able to send out massive amounts of spam emails to potential victims with one click of the mouse or a single tap of the keyboard. Perhaps 75% of their spam messages will be screened out by domain or email spam filters, and perhaps another 90% of those that don’t get filtered out are ultimately deleted by the recipients immediately. However, a small percentage will still get through and a small percentage will be read, and an even smaller percentage will ultimately fall for the scam bait. While the chances of an unwitting recipient acting acting upon the message and replying back to the Nigerian scammer are slim, some people still do.

Frankly, these scammers from Nigeria, Eastern Europe, and South East Asia have nothing to lose – the scams are usually quite profitable for them. Take the Nigerians for example – they live in a wasteland of a country – with a corrupt government, lax law enforcement, high unemployment, with little semblance of an economy. Any amount of money they can siphon from American citizens or that of other western countries is worth the effort and time. To them, there is simply very little risk involved since their government and police enforcement officials either turn a blind eye to their antics, don’t care, or are simply too financially overwhelmed to take on the challenge of cracking down on computer crimes.

Although I may have some sympathy for the poor economic lives the scammers must live in their native countries, their criminal attempts at trickery often leave me coldly and sarcastically insensitive. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t amuse myself with their lame shenanigans. That’s why I sometimes enjoy reading spam emails – they’re funny. They really amuse me – like something from the funny pages. Today I received an email from poor “Madam Ruth Moses” who addressed me as “dearly beloved in Christ”, stating that she was “suffering from a cancerous ailment” and that she was “married to Engineer Gilbert Moses an Englishman who is dead”. Apparently they lived a life of charity of helping the “down trodden and the less-privileged individuals”. Evidently she now has $4.4 million US dollars in some African bank due to a large financial payout stemming from her husband’s untimely death in a car accident that she is unable to retrieve, and is willing to give me a 25% cut if I assist by providing her a “small process charge” to help facilitate the release. Oh how generous and noble of Mrs. Moses – especially since she enjoys citing biblical passages in her message to me, for as she puts it “The Almighty will fight my case and I shall hold my peace.” Comical, yet pretty pathetic. If I ever had the chance to meet any of these spammers, I’d laugh at their face for 15 minute straight.

I Am Now Very Distrustful and Extremely Paranoid About Doing Business Or Any Online Communication With Residents From Proven Scam and Spam Prevalent Countries

Unfortunately, what scammers with their spam emails have done is made me very distrustful of anyone from traditional scam haven countries. The list of countries mainly stem from poor, and legally and socially undeveloped countries like Nigeria, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and Indonesia, but it also covers countries like Russia as well. Many of these third world countries either have corrupt governments or are constantly experiencing tribal warfare and upheaval that prevent stable law and judicial enforcement to flourish. But as of now, I would never do any online business with people who live in those countries at the present time. I’ve already been tricked once and after my one time experience of getting scammed during my post college years, I’ve learned my lesson. It may not be politically correct, but I think it’s a smart business move to refrain from doing any online or Internet transactions with anyone from these countries – the financial risks are simply too high. My purpose for rejecting individuals from these countries is not to stir up racial, ethnic, or even social controversy, but simply to protect my own financial interests, so please don’t take offense. I would gladly do business with them and so would millions of American merchants on eBay, Craigslist, and other online stores if only fraud wasn’t such a huge and rampant problem in those parts of the world.

I run a few small online eBay and weblog businesses (take a look at my ebay business guide), and these days the quickest way to turn me off and cause me to reject your business proposition right off the bat is to say you’re from Africa – it frankly doesn’t matter which country in Africa. I have yet to meet a single African country (aside from South Africa, although that’s debatable as well) that I trust to do business with. The rampant scams and spams that originate from that continent have turned me into a hyper-vigilant person. Most African countries simply have undeveloped legal systems that prevent merchants or publishers like myself from being able to bring legal action to effectuate contractual disputes. That is why the U.S. is such a great country. Despite our over-lawyered and lawsuit-happy society, we have a perfected legal system that ensures legal disputes have a forum to be heard and resolved. Scammers and spammers have a much more difficult time operating their illegal craft here in this country. A few foreign rotten apples have really ruined the whole international tree and apple pile, but online entrepreneurs like myself have to do to what it takes to protect ourselves and our interests. It may seem racist and prejudicial to rule out a whole segment of the world’s population, but it’s not – it’s just smart business.

Despite eBay’s attempts to provide it’s buyers and sellers with more purchase and selling protection, many if not most major eBay Power Sellers now refuse to ship to certain dangerous countries, such as Nigeria or Indonesia. A sizable number of merchants have even ruled out shipping to any foreign destination due to the prevalence of scammers living overseas where they are shielded from prosecution. It’s terrible what these online and Internet scammers have done to the whole industry. These days as I browse through business propositions and offers I receive over email on a regular basis, even African sounding surnames, African cities (like Lagos, scam capital of Nigeria), African banks, and anything to do with Africa trigger glaring red flags when I evaluate Internet commerce deals. So if your online business is based in Africa, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to do business with you at this time. Perhaps someday when your government stabilizes and sets up a legal system that will protect and ensure my legal and contractual interests I will consider it. But until then, too bad so sad. If you are a legitimate African, East European, or South East Asian business, don’t be offended if established western and far east Asian businesses demand strenuous proof of identity and extra evidence of trustworthiness before doing business with you.

All About The Nigerian 419 Advance Fee Fraud – Also Known As The Check Cashing Scam (For Those Not Familiar With What They Are)

The classic Nigerian 419 scam has been around for a long time but scam success didn’t fully take off until the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web. The country of Nigeria has all the essential ingredients that has enabled it to become the worldwide hub of Internet and computer crimes. The country is not only dirt poor, but unemployment is incredibly high, and the government is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent. The country also happens to be an English speaking nation – making it all the more easier for select scammers to communicate with their primarily English speaking victims all over the world. The 419 numeric designation refers to the Nigerian Criminal Code that covers the crime of fraudulently obtaining property through false pretenses. Unfortunately the 419 criminal code is a mockery of the Nigerian legal and criminal enforcement system as the laws in that country are frequently ignored and flaunted, thereby allowing scammers and spammers to run rampant with little fear of accountability. The Nigerian 419 scams have recently developed into a world wide epidemic of Internet fraud crimes that have branched and spun off into other criminal areas such as: charity scams, romance scams, lottery scams, and even threats of violence and extortion scams.

In its most common form, the Nigerian 419 fraud is also known as the Nigerian advance fee scam. The process works by its ability to successfully build trust and emotional confidence with the alleged victim over time, and ultimately persuade him or her to provide confidential financial information or to send sums of money for the possibility of a much larger gain in return. The scam appeals to human greed and the fallible desire to inherently trust others. Through easy and unregulated access to Internet cafe computers and connections, Nigerian scammers have been able to harvest e-mail addresses and contact information to use in their elaborate scams. With potential victim contact information in hand, they usually submit massive amounts of electronic letters to recipients though deceptive means such as spoofed email letters, and cleverly disguised and graphically adorned emails that hide their malicious intent and true source. Oftentimes they’ll write and pretend to be a wealthy heiress or someone who is terminally ill and dying from a disease like cancer, and plead with the recipient for an amount of money in exchange for the promise that they will pay back the amount plus more. Oftentimes they will cleverly claim that they have access to or are in control of a vast financial fortune to which they would be willing to offer the recipient a huge portion as a reward if he or she would provide some upfront money first.

These scam letters are frequently very, very elaborate, as they often disguise the email meta headers to make them seem like they came from legitimate sources such as governmental agencies (like the classic IRS email scam letter for example). Sometimes the headers aren’t even disguised all that well, but the messages still contain content indicative of a mass spam campaign to artificially inflate the stock price of a particular financial investment (penny stock scam spam). Oftentimes they’ll make references to real life current events such as tragic disasters or make reference to official business developments such as laying claim to being connected with some wealthy foreign business developer in the news. Oftentimes they utilize fake phone numbers that can’t be tracked down. One common ploy of the advance fee scam is to send the recipient a fraudulent Western Union or fake personal check for a very large amount of money, and write to the recipient to apologize for the excess amount that was sent and ask for a portion back in supposed good faith. The recipient, thinking he or she will get to keep a large portion for their services, deposits the fake check and cuts out a legitimate sum of money that he or she then sends to the scammers. In time, the check will undoubtedly bounce, forcing the recipient to swallow his or her losses with the bank – an unfortunate result that still happens despite attempts to thoroughly educate the public on the prevalence of Internet scams and how they work.

Source URL: Nigerian 419 Scams and Spam Emails Are Funny But They Make Me Paranoid

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Over the last few years, I’ve learned to incorporate blogging and online websites such as my personal finance and frugality blog and a few other attorney based blogs (I prefer not to reveal them here) into my tentative business goal of one day truly working for myself and ending the cycle of exchanging hours for money. While my online sites are certainly growing rapidly and exceeding my own expectations, since none of my non-traditional income streams have yet to fully develop and mature, I still have to rely on traditional employment means to support myself. Thus as much as I’d like to, I still cannot abandon my day job entirely. However, that doesn’t mean I must walk the age-old career oriented path that most people resort to following. With my college and law school degree already in hand, rather than working the law firm path, I’ve chosen to tap into my entrepreneurial spirit and work temporary positions to fund the growth of my home based businesses.

Unless Your Day Time Job Is Working As A Full Time Computer Guy Or Computer Gal, Finding Extra Time To Work On Your Online Side Ventures Is Difficult

While some personal finance and online commentators seem able to juggle their personal full time jobs with their blogging business duties, I’ve found that certain jobs are particularly difficult to juggle, particularly if you are walking the career oriented path. In my case, working as a full time practicing attorney would leave little time left for business blogging projects on the side. The hourly and work pressures (of office hours and take home assignments) would simply be too demanding. It’s certainly not a coincidence that the vast majority of online bloggers, and particularly personal finance bloggers tend to be predominantly computer network administrators, software engineers, or computer programmers – individuals with continuous access to computers and ample blogging time throughout the day while on the job. Unfortunately, most employees of other professions don’t have this same flexibility and luxury of ready-access to the computer that the computer techies have. That’s why for those individuals working in the legal, education, or even health care field, working full time jobs on a contractual, short term basis may be the only manageable way to generate livable income, but still have the vacant time to develop a side business that stands a chance to grow into a viable income replacement project one day.

Working A Temp Job Makes Devoting Time To Developing Home Based Businesses Possible

Since working as a full time temp worker in the contract attorney field, I’ve noticed that the working lifestyle, the flexible hours, and the non-stressful schedule of the temping profession absolutely compliments and suits individuals like me who want the ample time after work to devote to side projects. The fact of the matter is that blogging and working as a contract employee on a temporary, non permanent basis actually go quite well together. Trying to build several online and real life businesses takes substantial amounts of extra curricular time – the type of extra time outside of one’s job that those not in the computer field are usually unable to set aside. At the same time, it is not that I want to end up temping for the rest of my life, but I see it as a currently necessary and convenient way to support myself temporarily while building up the core of my side businesses while I am still relatively young in the grand scheme of things.

For those looking to build passive income streams through creating an online website business or running a self employment operation, you may want to give short term and long term temping some serious consideration. I know many would argue that that there is no future in performing temporary work, but personally, I see the same bleakness in permanent jobs that purport to offer job stability, and professional growth prospects. I have seen too many of my friends and acquaintances get badly burned in their professional careers and family life due to complete and over-reliance on their employer’s good graces and whims.

Plus, with self employment and having your own home business, there are a wealth of self employment tax deductions and tax deferred investment options at your disposal – not available to full time employees working for someone else. A few of them include the option to deduct the home office part of your home rental used in the regular course of your trade or business, as well as the ability to capitalize and reduce your taxable income of the portion pertaining to business assets, such as the cost of a business laptop notebook computer. I will discuss the wide variety of self employment tax deductions and financial benefits in a future post.

Source URL: Blogging And Working As A Temporary Contract Employee Go Well Together

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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As with all free promotions, there are several generally applicable rules to follow. Most of the deals are structured and laid out similarly – starting with a minimum funding requirement and followed by several reward tiers dependent on the completion of a certain number of banking transactions. Usually the offers require the new account customer to complete a certain number of direct deposits and online bill pay transactions. Both direct deposit and bill payment are free so customers need not worry about incurring any extra finance or transaction charges. Other than needing to fund the new accounts with a minimum balance and complete a few banking actions, there are no risks to opening a new checking or savings account. Citibank no longer does a hard credit pull when opening a new bank account, opting to perform a Chex System screen instead in situations where no request for overdraft protection has been made. Do keep in mind however that online payments for Citibank credit cards are treated like internal transfers and are usually not counted towards the bill payment requirement for promo offers.

For the Citibank offers listed below, you have the option of opening the new accounts online by accessing the application links or you can phone in your application by calling Citibank direct. Be sure to provide the customer service representative the desired Citibank promo code. Past Citibank offers such as the iPod shuffle promotion and a few other $100 to $200 offers have all come and gone, but new promotions are constantly being released and marketed. I will post and update this guide with new free offers as I become aware of them. Keep in mind, while these promos are advertised as limited time offers, they are often extended past the original expiration date. Please let me know by dropping a note in the comment section if I’m missing a Citibank promo code or need to update any offer information.

Verified Promotional Offers For New Citi Checking And Savings Accounts:

1) Free $100 Citibank Regular Checking Account Offer – Offer Code: CY73 – Active!

• To qualify for the free bonus offer, open a qualifying Citibank regular checking account online or via telephone (1-800-374-9500), and fund it with a minimum of $1,000 by 12/31/2008.
• The new Citi checking account must in a Citibank Account, Citibank Everything Counts or Citigold bank account relationship package.
• Within the first month after your account is opened, make at least one direct deposit into your new account or make at least two electronic bill payments from your account each month for three consecutive months.
• The $100 reward will be deposited into your Citibank checking account within 120 days from the end of the statement period in which you met the qualifying requirements.
• This offer is only available to Citi card members who are the primary credit card account holders and is not valid for existing Citibank checking account customers.

2) Free $200 Bonus Offer With A New Checking Account – Enter Offer Code: CEMX – Expired

This new offer is simply the former $200 Citibank promo offer “CYAN”, except with a new four letter code and a new expiration date.

With this promo offer, Citibank is offering a $200 bonus for new Citibank checking account customers. As with most Citibank offers, this one is only available for first time Citibank deposit account customers and will be paid only once to any individual. Persons who currently have or at any time have had a deposit account at Citibank are not eligible. You can inquire and apply for the offer by calling Citibank at 1-800-374-9500, visiting their website, or stopping by any of their Citibank Financial Centers. Be sure to mention the offer code CEMX when prompted to do so. To qualify for the free offer you must:

• Open and fund a qualifying Citibank regular checking account using the offer code with a minimum initial deposit of $1,000 or more by the expiration date of 6-30-08. The EZ Checking account does not qualify for this offer. To earn the free money bonus, you will need to open either a Citibank Account, Citibank Everything Counts, or a CitiGold checking account.
• To Earn The First $100 – Starting no later than the calendar month after the month in which your account was opened, you need to make a direct deposit or at least two electronic bill payments from your new account each month for three consecutive months. The $100 bonus will be credited to your new checking account within 120 days from the end of the statement period that you met the qualifying requirements.
• To Earn The Second $100 – If you continue making a direct deposit or at least two electronic bill payments each month for the next three consecutive months, you can qualify to earn an additional $100 bonus deposit.

3) Free $150 In Gift Cards and Triple ThankYou Reward Points With A New Checking Account – Offer Code: CSVL – Expired

If you apply and qualify for this dual Citibank offer, you’ll have the potential to earn 16,000 Citi Thank You Reward Points, redeemable for $150 in gift cards. To qualify for the triple ThankYou Points offer, you will need to do open and enroll a new qualifying Citi checking account into the Thank You Network. For twelve months, your qualifying debit card purchases and relationship accounts will earn triple Thank You reward points. You can qualify for either or both the $150 gift card and triple reward point offers, but can only utilize the same Citi checking account only. Unfortunately, as is usually the case with such promotions, this dual offer is only available to new Citibank customers.

• To qualify for the free Thank You Points offer, you must open a brand new qualifying Citibank checking account by 7-31-08 and deposit at least $1,000 by the expiration date. Your expiration date to properly fund your account will depend on your method of opening your new banking account. Qualifying Citi checking accounts opened through Citibank Financial Centers must be funded by 7-31-08. Citi checking accounts opened remotely through Citi Phone Banking or through the Citibank Online website can wait until 8-31-08 to be funded.
• The new qualifying Citi checking account has to be either a Citibank Account, Citibank Everything Counts, or a Citigold Account.
• Within 60 days of account opening, you must (1) enroll your new checking account in the Thank You Rewards Network and (2) complete one direct deposit per month, two electronic bill payments or five signature debit card transactions and continue for three consecutive months.
• Electronic bill payments, whether online or via phone banking, cannot be made to or consist of transfer payments made to accounts within the Citibank credit card or banking network.
• After all offer terms are satisfied, 16,000 bonus Thank You points will be rewarded within 120 days. The points can be redeemed for the equivalent of $150 in gift cards or other rewards available through the ThankYou Rewards Network.

4) Free $200 Bonus Promotion With A New Checking Account – Offer Code: CYAN (Enter It Manually) – Expired

• This expired promotion has been replaced with CEMX (see above).

5) Free Pair Of Round Trip Airline Tickets With A New Checking Account – Promotion Code: CP74 – Expired

This offer requires a new Citibank Checking Account and a new/existing Citibank Savings Account. This promotion requires a lot of upfront money (minimum initial deposit of $25,000), but the payoff is excellent – you get to earn 40,000 Thank You Points with this bonus reward offer redeemable for two free round trip airline tickets. Plus, you can always withdraw your funds after you receive you bonus reward. To qualify for the free offer you must:

• Open a Citibank regular checking account by the expiration date of 5-16-08, link it to a new or existing Citibank Ultimate Savings Account, and complete qualifying banking activities to earn 40,000 Thank You reward points.
• The qualifying transactions include: depositing $25,000 or more into your Citibank Ultimate Savings Account, funding your checking account with $1,000 and enrolling it into the free ThankYou Rewards Network.
• Thereafter you can get your 2 round trip tickets to anywhere in the continental U.S. (up to $400 value each) by redeeming your 40,000 ThankYou Points.
• To apply by phone, call 1-888-214-0018 and mention code: CP74.

6) Free $50 Bonus Offer With A New Checking And Savings Account – Promotion Code: CYAP – Expired

This promotion requires first time Citi customers to open a new Citibank Ultimate Money Savings Account and a new Citi EZ Checking Account. To qualify for the free offer you must:

• Open a new Citibank Ultimate Money Account and a new Citibank EZ Checking account online or by phone (1-877-624-9600). You must fund the Ultimate Money Account by the expiration date of 4-30-08 using the promotion code CYAP.
• No later than the calendar month after the month in which your account was opened, you must make at least 2 electronic bill payments each month for 3 consecutive months.
• $50 will be credited to your regular checking account within 120 days from the end of the statement period in which you met the above requirements. Your Ultimate Savings Account and checking account must be in good standing at the time of the $50 credit.

Source URL: Citibank Free Money Promotion Offer Codes For New Bank Accounts

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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1) Never Buy Products From Anyone Who Wants To Be Paid By Western Union.

If someone asks for payment by Western Union, do not respond to them and avoid them immediately. Their low priced merchandise might be tempting, but it will almost always be a scam. Remember, it is your own responsibility to verify the reputation and legitimacy of the seller. Western Union is not responsible for the non-receipt or quality of any goods or services.

Common Western Union scams include, but are not limited to the following:

1. Seller asks you to pay by Western Union and tells you that the transaction will be safe because you can make the payment out to someone you know, but put the seller’s address on the payment. You are then instructed to tell the seller the money transfer control number (MTCN) of the payment so he can go to Western Union and verify that you have made the payment. Once you receive the shipment, you are then supposed to contact Western Union and change the payment recipient’s name to the seller’s real name so that the seller can pick up the money. It’s a scam everytime because once the seller knows the address or the control number, he can obtain the payment with no problem. Many Western Union agents in foreign countries never ask for proper identification.
2. Seller asks you to pay by Western Union and tells you to make the payment using Western Union’s secret question feature. The way this feature works is the Western Union agent will ask a secret question to whoever is picking up the money, and the person picking up the payment must answer correctly in order to collect the money. It’s a scam everytime because many times Western Union agents, particularly those outside of the United States, do not ask the question, and only care if the person knows the address or control number. Western Union even advises on their website not to rely on the secret question feature.

2) Never Use An Escrow Service Other Than Escrow.com

Escrow is verified and recommended by eBay. Note that Escrow.com will handle transactions in any country in the world, except Romania and Indonesia. Fraud is so rampant in those countries that Escrow.com cannot effectively and safely help you transact with sellers in those countries. What Escrow.com does is ask both the buyer and seller to agree on terms. The buyer must then send the required funds to Escrow.com. Once Escrow.com receives the funds, they notify the seller to ship the goods. Once the buyer receives the goods and confirms that everything is in order, the buyer notifies Escrow.com to release the funds to the seller.

Escrow.com is safe for both buyer and seller because the buyer does not have to release the funds to the seller until they receive shipment and verify everything is correct. It is safe for the seller as well, because even if a buyer claimed non-receipt of the shipment, the seller could provide Escrow.com with the tracking number for the shipment and a shipping manifest showing what was sent and received. In which case, Escrow.com would then release the funds to the seller.

Common Escrow Scams Include, But Are Not Limited To The Following:

1. Seller tells the buyer that they prefer an escrow company other than Escrow.com. The seller gives the buyer the website address of the escrow company they prefer, and indicates that this is the only escrow company they trust. The buyer goes to the website and discovers a cleverly designed site that looks legitimate, with promises of safety and security. It’s a scam because the website is actually owned and operated by the seller or the seller’s associate. Once the buyer sends their money to the so-called escrow company, they will have actually sent their money straight into the hands of the scammer.
2. Seller tells the buyer that they will do the deal securely through SquareTrade.com. It’s a scam because SquareTrade does not act as an escrow service. They do not approve deals or hold funds for anyone. All SquareTrade does is allow eBay sellers to place a SquareTrade seal on their auctions, which shows that the eBay seller is willing to allow SquareTrade to help resolve any future disputes. Anyone who claims that they will use SquareTrade like an escrow service is a fraud. The seller may even send the buyer a spoofed e-mail, one that looks like it came directly from SquareTrade. However, it will be a fake.
3. Seller tells the buyer they will use a shipping service called TNT, and that the buyer should send their payment to TNT, in which case TNT will hold payment until they can inspect and ship the seller’s merchandise to the buyer. It’s a scam because TNT is a shipping company and not an escrow service. They do not hold funds or inspect shipments on anyone’s behalf. The seller may even send the buyer a spoofed-mail, one that looks as if it came directly from TNT, complete with logo and tracking number for the shipment. However, the e-mail will be a fake.

3) Always Request That You Pay A Seller By One Of The Following Methods

1. Credit Card – Safe because most credit card companies will refund your money if you file a proper fraud complaint.
2. Escrow.com – Safe because it protects both buyer and seller, as mentioned in Rule # 2.
3. PayPal – Usually safe for purchases under $2,000, because PayPal will let you use a credit card and will verify the seller’s address, banking information, and identity (do not send money to someone through PayPal if they are listed as “unverified”).
4. Letter of Credit (LC) – Basically, this is like using your bank as an escrow service. For example, you can go to your bank and apply for a letter of credit for the dollar amount you need to pay the seller. Your bank will freeze the funds in your account, and issue a letter to you and the seller’s bank verifying that they are holding the money and that they will transfer the funds to the seller’s bank account as soon as delivery of the goods to you is confirmed.

Do Use Bank Wire Transfers Until Identity Has Been Verified and Confirmed

Be very careful with any seller that requests payment in advance by T/T (telegraphic transfer), also known as bank wire transfer. This is a tricky gray area because some legitimate international sellers do require money by T/T in advance. Sometimes it is for a deposit, and sometimes they want the full transaction amount. Before sending money by T/T, make sure you ask for the following:

1. Seller’s full name,
2. Seller’s address,
3. Seller’s telephone number,
4. Seller’s company name,
5. Seller’s business license number,
6. Seller’s bank’s name and telephone number,
7. A scanned or faxed copy of the seller’s identification card or driver’s license,
8. References from companies the seller has worked with before, preferably in your country.

Tell the seller you need this information to run a thorough background check. You can then use a service such as Intellius.com to run a background check on them. You can also hire an international buying agent in the seller’s country to go to the seller’s physical location and buy the items for you in person, and then ship them to you. Most buying agents will charge a reasonable fee to securely buy for you.

Remember, if the seller is legitimate, he will understand your need for verification and will comply. If the seller hesitates, resists, says he cannot delay anymore, or demands that you send payment as soon as possible, you should become very suspicious and perhaps reconsider the transaction. The seller is very likely a fraud. Do not let greed or haste overcome your common senses.

4) To Assure Sellers That You Are An Honest And Legitimate Buyer, You Should Become Verified

1. Obtain a DnB (Dun & Bradstreet) number. This can be accomplished by applying for a credit builder account at dnb.com. Dun & Bradstreet will verify your company information including company name, address, owners, and ongoing debts (credit cards) or lines of credit.
2. Get PayPal Verified – Open a PayPal account. Once you have one, apply to become a verified premier member. PayPal will verify your address and identification by depositing two small amounts of money into your bank account or credit card. Afterwards, you must verify the total amounts that were deposited to prove that you are the owner of the bank account or card.
3. Get an Alibaba Trustpass Membership – See the list of wholesale sources below for more information.
4. If you are in the United States, become a member of the Better Business Bureau Online.

5) Verify The Seller’s Identity

If a seller tells you that he or his company has a website, run a WhoIs check on the website to see if the seller’s name and address match the internet registrar’s record for the site owner. Beware of anyone who doesn’t have a name and address listed in the WhoIs section of their domain, or of anyone who just recently registered the domain.

6) Develop Your Own Private List Of Trusted Wholesale Suppliers

1. Worldwide Brands – Worldwide Brands carries over 4,000 products and they also provide drop shipping services. That means they can ship products directly to your customers, and you do not need to keep any inventory or perform any shipping. They are an eBay Certified Solution Provider, and they are also a member of the Better Business Bureau.
2. NAWCA – (North American Wholesale Co-Op Association) is another fantastic source for over 100,000 products via their 2,000 distributors, many of which can perform drop shipping for you. The NAWCA was founded by a collective of wholesalers and distributors in 2001. Highly recommended for eBay sellers.
3. Ingram Micro – Ingram Micro is the second largest electronics distributor in the world. They offer very good pricing.
4. Tech Data – This company operates a huge electronics distribution center in the United States.

Buyer and Seller Community Portals - There are excellent wholesale deals to be had here, but because these sites are part of the unregulated wild, wild west of international wholesellers, you have to be extra careful and vigilant in sorting the diamonds from the rough. There are definitely more scammers here than legitimate sellers. Be careful:

1. Alibaba – Alibaba is a well trafficked source for wholesale buyers and sellers to connect on the internet. You should check this site frequently and sign up for trade alerts for whatever you are buying or selling. Your priority should be to deal with Alibaba companies that are Trustpass verified, although that in of itself is not always a sure guarantee of reliability. You can also become an Alibaba Trustpass member yourself. For a small fee, Alibaba will have a third party credit agency contact you to verify your name, address and company identity. Once you are an Alibaba Trustpass member, you will have more credibility, and sellers and buyers alike will take you more seriously. However, do note that scammers are everywhere. Please read my personal scammer experience for more insight.
2. Exporters Singapore – Similar to Alibaba, but this site requires all members to pay a fee after a 30 day trial period. This method helps to keep scammers out.
3. Power Source Online – Power Source Online is a computer parts trading exchange for dealers, brokers and services companies. You can find cheap computer parts and components for resale.

Note: The rest of the communities listed below are similar to Alibaba, with less traffic, but it is advised that you review and join as many as possible to maximize your opportunities.

1. Global Sources
2. EC 21
3. Rusbiz
4. EC Plaza
5. Importers
6. Trade India
7. Offer 21
8. Fuzing

Source URL: My Powerseller Guide To Making Money From eBay Wholesale Products

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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So how did I end up doing this type of work instead of using my law degree to pursue a so-called real legal career? Sometimes I ponder about what my dream job might have been had I not gone to law school, since it wasn’t my passion in life to begin with. My decision to attend graduate school was more due to process of elimination. I started out college on the pre-med track to become a doctor, did well in my studies, got bored with chemistry and biology, and eventually shifted gears into computer science. I loved taking programming theory and practice courses and did very well, but after a few semesters, I decided that I couldn’t see myself stuck as a computer programming nerd – so I moved on (how ironic, now that I’ve come full circle again). So then I decided to go the business route and major in finance. After a few more semesters during which I did pretty well, I pondered what else was out there. However, by then I had enough college credits to graduate and my parents were beginning to wave the tuition baton, “encouraging” me to move onto bigger and better things. After looking around, I decided I wasn’t ready to financially support myself just yet. So I took the LSAT exam and sent in my application to a few top tier law schools. Before I knew it, I was attending the state law school and working my way through civil procedure, contracts, and criminal law classes.

Going The Law School Route – But Still Not Sure Where I Wanted To Go Professionally

One thing that I noticed during law school was how incredibly math-adverse law students are. I suppose that’s why they all chose to attend law school to begin with – to avoid having to deal with mathematics or anything related to numbers. However, it just so happened most of my law school friends were of the opposite persuasion – they were mostly into tax law, a legal field riddled with numbers and statistics. I wasn’t particularly fond of all the math involved, but I went with the herd and ended up taking most of the tax law courses available – everything from individual tax planning and corporate tax, to the most difficult law school course I ever took – partnership tax.

After law school I worked for a trial judge and later when on to work for the federal government as an associate attorney for a year or two. After another very short stint working for a crazy female cougar attorney (I’ll share that story one day, as it was a very eye opening experience, but for all the wrong reasons), I ended up choosing to work for myself. After starting up a few profitable blogs such as the personal finance blog you are reading right now and another law related one, I now work as a contract attorney on the side when I’m not working from home. I receive most of my contract attorney assignments from staffing agencies that place me on legal projects that last anywhere from a few weeks to several months. The job description usually entails very simple duties such as legal document review and mindless legal tag coding. Many dread performing contract lawyer work, but the work provides very lucrative pay without the heavy responsibilities (I often refer to it as my “stripper pay”). It’s perfect for my lifestyle at the moment since I don’t want my full time job to hinder the time and effort I devote to my personal small business operations.

The great thing about contract attorney work is that it is extremely stress-free and unlike a traditional lawyer job, my responsibilities and duties end at the end of the day. I never have to run into the office after work or cut a weekend short to file a legal brief or prepare a memo. However there are long term drawbacks to this line of short term work. The biggest downside is that the work is only temporary and isn’t career track oriented. With temping, while meals and transportation are frequently reimbursed, you usually don’t receive any health benefits or job security. But then again, in this day and age as well as economy, do any of us truly have solid job security anymore, or even guaranteed health benefits? The other downside with legal temping is the lack of professional development. However, I simply cannot see myself pursuing the traditional attorney path anyway. Lawyers notoriously burn out fast and work tremendous hours that ultimately take a terrible toll on their health, family wellbeing, and lifespan. Plus, legal employment prospects for attorneys isn’t what it used to be as the market has become extremely saturated. Almost anyone with half a functioning brain can go to law school these days as there are no significant barriers to entry or pre-requisites that need to be overcome to apply. Especially in a major city like Washington DC, you can’t walk in any direction without bumping into a lawyer. It’s utter and complete saturation.

Looking To the Future – Sacrificing Some Income Now To Build Up My Online Blog Businesses and Incubate My Other Real World Ventures

Thus, I’ve come to realize that the key to building wealth and reaching financial prosperity is to build up multiple streams of alternative and passive income, apart from your primary full time employment. Otherwise, you simply run the risk of living your entire life trading hours for dollars. Passive income generation through methods such as blog income or stock market investing help to get around the finite time problem by allowing you to generate income even when you are not actively sitting and working at your office desk.

However, I don’t regret going to law school at all. I was prudent to have attended a state school with relatively lower in-state tuition, and I was very fortunate to have been able to consolidate my student loans at a very low fixed interest rate. My college loans are all paid up and my graduate school loan payments are thankfully quite manageable. Other than tuition issues, law school prepared me for the future by teaching me how to more aggressively and confidently combat conflicts in the legal and business world. Overall my finance, tax, and legal background has helped me to better improve my personal finance blogging tasks, as well as enhance my non traditional legal pursuits. I knew after law school that I didn’t want to pursue the traditional law firm job path since I had a passion for entrepreneurship and running my own business. When I discovered how to make money blogging and developed the ability to tap into the limitless potential of online business income, I knew I had found my calling. It’s a key component part of my solution to end the 9-5 workweek cycle, and the reason why I’m currently sitting at home right now tinkering on the computer instead of collecting a steady paycheck at a stressful full time lawyer position or even at a contract attorney gig.

For now, I plan to only take a short time off to work on my ventures full time as I currently am not yet able to live off of my online income alone. Perhaps that day will someday come, but for now, I plan to return to my legal contracting job after a month or two off. Obviously I don’t see contract attorney work as the future for me since the profession is inherently unstable, unpredictable, and projects do tend to dry up during recessions and slow economic periods. I merely see it as a necessary means to an end for now. Meanwhile, I also realize that by taking a few months off I am forfeiting a substantial amount of contract attorney pay to spend time building my passive income businesses, but I think in the long run and even in a few years from now, the short term financial sacrifice will pay off. The amount of money I am losing by not working full time is quite substantial however. Contract attorneys in my area get top wage rates of $35 an hour with time and a half of $52.50 per overtime hour worked past 40 hours. My contract projects usually require that I bill around 50 or so hours, which comes to a weekly income of $1925.00. I’ve worked at least one extremely time demanding project before in the recent past, during which I worked and billed 96 hours a week for a span of one month. The work was a simple breeze, but the hours were brutal. Of course during that time, I earned $4,340.00 per week before tax. I guess it speaks highly of how much potential I see in online and passive income businesses that I would forsake that wage income now.

Source URL: Working At Home To Build Passive Blog Income And Giving Up Full Time Job Pay

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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Individuals Can Apply For Business Credit Cards With Their Social Security Numbers

What many consumers seemingly overlook is that business credit card benefits can be available to them as well and are not reserved for complex business entities alone. Card applicants don’t have to be part of a corporation or a limited liability company (LLC) to qualify. Ordinary individuals can go into business for themselves and establish their business operation as a sole proprietorship. If you are self employed, a freelance worker, or an independent contractor like myself, you may very well be operating as a sole proprietor already. In the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the government, and credit card companies, the individual and his or her sole proprietorship business are one and the same for legal and income tax purposes. The only significant difference is when it comes to record keeping and business tax deductions. As sole proprietorships are entitled to write off their business expenses against their income, most are encouraged to apply for and utilize an Employer Identification Number (EIN). This federal tax ID allows the sole proprietor to more easily keep their personal and business expenses separate so that business transactions can be more properly distinguished and categorized for tax deduction purposes. Having a separate Employer Identification Number apart from the individual’s personal Social Security Number (SSN) also allows the individual to apply and obtain credit lines separate and distinct from his own personal credit history.

For ordinary consumers interested in taking advantage of the many benefits of business credit cards but aren’t interested in actually writing off any business deductions, so long as they properly pay off the balance each month, they won’t have to put up with any extraneous IRS tax filing obligations. Other than the introduction of a separate business credit line for the sole proprietorship or company applicant, the differences in usage between consumer and business credit cards are fairly minimal.

Business and Personal Credit History Scores Are Reported and Recorded Separately

While they may be taxed as income generated from the same source, the sole proprietor and his or her business entity are treated separately for credit recordation purposes. Their credit histories and credit scores are not intermingled or consolidated when it comes to reporting credit transactions to the credit reporting agencies. In fact, the way they are reported differ as well.

Business credit scores range from a scale of 0 to 100 with 75 generally regarded as an excellent credit rating (example of a business credit report). Some agencies even report their own metrics such as Dun & Bradstreet (DnB), which reports its own Paydex score regarding the likelihood of credit delinquency. There are different types of scoring methods used for personal credit scores as well, but the most popular one is the FICO score, which ranges from 300 to 850 with 700 regarded as excellent. Both business and personal scores along with their accompanying credit history attempt to reflect the individual or business entity’s credit worthiness based on past and current credit lines, credit inquiries, and history of paying back outstanding debt.

Even With An EIN, Business Credit Card Applications Usually Require SSN’s As Guarantees

A true business or corporate credit card is a line of credit that is offered solely under the name of the business entity with all activity reflecting only on its own business credit history through business credit reporting agencies like DnB, Equifax, and Experian. However, the vast majority of online business credit cards still require that the business card applicant provide a personal guarantee for business credit liability. That is why card issuers almost always still ask for both a business tax ID as well as the Social Security Number of the person applying for the card. There are ways to obtain a business credit card through local banks and major card issuers using only a EIN without the need of a SSN, but those types of cards are strictly limited to established businesses that have developed and extensive credit histories. Thus, unless your sole proprietorship has a long standing and proven credit rating with a major business credit reporting agency like DnB, you will be required to associate your SSN as a guarantee for unpaid debts.

How a business card application will impact the respective business and personal credit reports depends on the card issuer’s policy, but in the vast majority of cases, an initial and one time hard credit check is applied against the applicant’s personal credit history like any consumer credit card would for approval purposes. While the inquiry itself will show up on the personal credit report, the business credit card balance and credit line will not. This hard credit inquiry is only for the initial approval. Subsequent business credit activity will be recorded on the business’ separate credit history report solely, unless there is something like a missed payment. Because most online business credit cards are backed by the cardholder’s personal credit and linked by his or her personal SSN, in the event the business entity enters default such as by filing for bankruptcy, the default may be reported on the personal credit report. But in general, business credit activity is kept separate from the associated personal credit file. This is the case for all major business credit card issuers like Citibank, Chase, and American Express.

However, despite the association of the applicant’s SSN with the business card as a guarantor, so long as the card payments are made properly, there is no business credit balance or credit usage impact on the individual credit history report other than the initial application inquiry hit.

Applying For A Credit Card With Just A Business Tax ID, Without A Social Security Number

For various reasons, including wanting to keep a pristine personal credit history report, or fear and paranoia about identity theft, some card applicants may seek to apply for a consumer or business credit card with just a business tax ID, without having to provide a personal SSN as a liability guarantor. Unfortunately that is not possible with the majority of online credit card offers. With regular consumer credit cards, attempting to replace the SSN with an EIN on the card application will likely result in a rejection letter as well.

Source URL: Applying For A Business Credit Card With A SSN, And Without An EIN

Copyright Protected © 2008 Money Blue Book: Personal Finance Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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