Personal Finance Blog

Tips And Stories To Help You With Managing Money

Top Twenty New Useful Website Applications

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An interesting array of new, useful websites have appeared on the Internet. All these websites are designed to make your life easier in some regard.

The websites listed below are displayed according to their Alexa ranking, which is a measurement of how popular sites are and how much traffic they get. Google and Yahoo of course battle for the number one position worldwide, so that should give you some idea that the closer the website is to the number one position, the more popular they are. They are also listed by the topic they cover.

Alexa Rank Useful Websites Topic
161 www.multiply.com Media Storage
199 www.pogo.com Games
1,183 www.slate.com Government Gossip
4,061 www.opentable.com Dining
12,060 www.gasbuddy.com Energy
16,253 www.fitday.com Health
31,436 www.annualcreditreport.com Finance
35,711 www.glassdoor.com Company Gossip
44,868 www.sproutbuilder.com Media Creation
48,177 www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/ Government Gossip
56,660 www.nextbus.com Transportation
73,063 www.fedspending.org Government Gossip
92,030 www.billshrink.com Finance
119,812 www.techmeme.com Technology
454,896 www.capzles.com Media Storage

It’s worth taking a look at some of these to see how they will help you in your daily life. One favorite is the www.opentable.com where you can book dining reservations. Their database comes complete with photos of the inside of the restaurant and price ranges for dinner.

The next time you are waiting for a bus to arrive, you may be lucky enough to discover your bus system is being tracked by a GPS system. Although this site, www.nextbus.com does not have all the states in the U.S. covered, it is a great idea and one I hope will blossom into all parts of the world. Seems that one cold morning while waiting for a bus, I developed this sytem in my mind. Life is becoming easier with new technology!

I mentioned the top twenty useful websites and only listed 19…what should number 20 be?

Facebook Used to Make Money Online

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Brian Campbell made $25,000 in 21 days on Facebook

Brian Campbell made an initial claim on his Facebook page that he could make $10,000 in 37 days.

Well, he surpassed his original claim and made $25,000 in 21 days. He decided to pay it forward and gifted John Chow $10,000.

So, how do you make money using Facebook?

To begin with, sign up for an account and learn how to use various applications of Facebook to reprint your website blog feed, find and communicate with friends, post videos, provide valuable content to your visitors and provide leadership to anyone who wants to improve their financial condition.

History of the Development of the Facebook Website

In 2008, Forbes Magazine declared the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, 24 years-old, the youngest self-made billionaire on earth with an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion U.S. dollars. Described as a young geeky computer programmer, Mark is the mogul who is guiding the extraordinary growth of Facebook.

In 2006, Yahoo offered to buy Facebook for a billion dollars, but Mark Zuckerberg declined. Microsoft then made him an offer of $240 million dollars to gain 1.6% of the company. Based on this information, some analysts came to the conclusion that Facebook is worth $15 Billion dollars. Not all analyst agree on that valuation.

Mark Zuckerberg is not new to the field of computer programming. He wrote his first software program in the 6th grade. In high school he was approached by both Microsoft and AOL due to a hacking project he was involved in. He decided to go to Harvard University instead.

He built the original Facebook site in two weeks, while attending Harvard. Within a short period of time, more than 2/3 of the student body at Harvard was using the program. Within four months they had launched the program to over 40 colleges. He expanded Facebook to be used in high schools and then in 2006, he opened it up to the public.

Facebook now has more than 700 employees, has hired a lawyer, shares more than ten billion photos, has 100-million-plus users and is connecting people with each other like they have never been able to connect before.

Facebook Helps Entrepreneurs

It has been said that marketing in 2008 begins with conversations and what better way to have conversations with people than being an active member of the Facebook community? People around the world are using Facebook to connect with each other for social purposes and that provides the ultimate medium to network and share your personal recommendations for a huge variety of products and purposes. What kind of marketing system can you create on Facebook?

Watch the interview with Mark Zuckerberg on 60 Minutes here:

 

Updated October 21, 2013

In 2013, Facebook and Google reached an agreement about advertising. In a few months, Google will be able to buy ads on the Facebook ad exchange. A similar agreement was also made with Amazon.com. With Facebook being the advertiser’s nirvana, this may be the biggest surge forward to this date.

Forbes magazine, Sept., 2013 reported Zuckerberg to be worth $19 billion coming in a #20 of the Forbes 400 richest Americans.

 

 

Offline Advertising Helps 83-year-old To Sell Pearl Jewelry

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Entrepreneurs can blossom at any age, even at 83. Wearing what you have to offer is one way that Marian Flake, 83 years young sold her jewelry to her friends at the doctor’s office.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yhXUab_4zA  With so much focus targeted with online marketing, sometimes we forget that offline advertising works well too. Here are some tips to help you advertise your website domain name offline.

  1. Go to www.cafepress.com  and have some wearable artwork put on a tee shirt, sweatshirt, baseball cap, coffee cup, clock or many other items.
  2. If you don’t have any artistic skills in making up logos for your website, go to www.elance.com and hire a professional graphic designer to make you a logo. Then you can upload it to www.cafepress.com  and order all you want.
  3. License plate frames are a great way to advertise to all those people who are sitting in traffic behind you.
  4. Put a cool graphic on your car window. Go to to find out what they look like.
  5. If you are fortunate enough to have one, put your domain name on your boat.
  6. Put a yard sign in your yard, if your neighborhood allows it.
  7. Order pens that have your domain name on them.
  8. Talk to people you see when you are out doing errands. Word of mouth is wonderful.
  9. Make an unusual business card  stand out from the normal cards.   

Enhance your entrepreneurial skills by talking about your website offline and by using offline advertising such as the ten offline advertising ideas mentioned here.

Add your unique ideas here in the comments section!

Passionate Blogging Works

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John Chow
John Chow

Have you ever wondered why some blogs become wildly successful while other blogs become ghost towns that no one visits?

In a recent interview on Breakfast Television, expert blogger John Chow was asked what is the biggest mistake that new bloggers make when they start blogging. His response was that it is a big mistake to start blogging just for the money. He recommends doing a blog just for fun.

When people start blogging just for the money, they neglect the passionate side of themselves. People like to read good content from others who are passionate about their topic. Choosing something to write about that you feel a lot of passion for basically makes the job, well, not a job. John said, If you are passionate about it, it’s not really work, is it?

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Blogging experts reveal their blogging tips

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Learning To Blog Class Sessions

One of the fun things about going to BlogWorld Expo 2008 was listening to expert bloggers reveal their personal blogging tips and tell us how they make money with blogging.  Jim Kukral lead a question answer session with four very successful bloggers, Brian Clark, Zac Johnson , Darren Rowse  and for a brief time Jeremy Shoemaker.

Each guest was asked questions about what made their blog successful and what they recommended to others who are starting out a new blog.  They discussed issues such as which programs were making them the most money, whether Google Adsense was really Webmaster Welfare, and what topics are the best to blog about. They talked about how long it takes to establish a good blog and what to expect from your blog at the beginning.  All of them agreed that you need to have a passion for the topic you are going to be blogging about to avoid the dreaded “abandoned blog.”
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