Make Money Online

I’ve had all my insurance with one company over the years - Home, Auto and Life.  It was simple and easy.  However, my company just dropped my HomeOwners Insurance, and for the first time I’m considering other companies for my Car insurance.  In my case, I visited SecureInsuranceQuotes’ insurance page for Washington State, filled out a quick form, and then received an email confirmation from the service.

I would have personally liked to have received immediate on-line quotes from the service, but the email I received indicated that additional information will be shortly forthcoming so I can receive “Instant Insurance Coverage” for my VW Passat.

SecureInsuranceQuotes is not an insurance broker, but rather a marketing service provided on behalf of insurance brokers.  They also provide information on other Insurance services including Home Insurance, Life Insurance and Health Insurance.

PayPerPost has announced a new service similar to SponsoredReviews and ReviewMe – PayPerPost Direct.  If you are trying to make money blogging, this is another tool that you can use to mazimize your profits.

However, it seems that PayPerPost has done an end-run around both of their primary competitors in this direct-to-blogger marketplace.  They are only charging a 10% transaction fee for their PPP Direct service, and instead of penalizing the blogger by reducing their post amount, they are charging the 10% fee to the advertiser!

This means that if you charge $50 for a post on your blog, you will receive the full $50 from the advertiser, and they will pay a nominal $5 service fee to PayPerPost.   Compare that to SponsoredReviews, which would only give you $32.50 and keep $17.50 for themselves, or ReviewMe, which would give you $25.00 while keeping a tidy $25.00 for themselves.  All for you advertising their service on YOUR Blog!

Even more of note is that PPP Direct essentially takes the middleman completely out of the relationship between advertiser and blogger when you consider that ~ 5% of the transaction goes directly to fees charged by credit card companies (advertisers usually pay PayPerPost via credit card) and PayPal (used to compensate bloggers).  So any way you cut it, competitors are charging 7 to 10 times as much as PPP Direct does.

This increased efficiency will keep more money available to the blogger <=> advertiser relationship and will result in better pay for bloggers and better/more results for the companies choosing to advertising in this fashion.  And that is ultimately good for everyone involved.

Finding an office space for your business can be a tricky endeavor. One of the advantages of making money online is that you typically don’t need office space when you are just starting out. But as you start growing your business, you don’t want to have employees coming to your house every day. That’s when it’s time to find some help from a company involved in Corporate Real Estate Services.

For example, if you are looking for Denver Office Space, you can work with MacLaurin Williams, which provides Tenant Representation services needed for everything from Lease Renewal to a Building Purchase or Sale. They can save you some serious dough - check out how MacLaurin Williams saved $365,000 for Prima Energy in Denver by finding them 16,000 square feet of office space for a relocation in 90 days!

I often run into posts from bloggers that outline how much money they make online. Often, they will also include “schwag” in their earnings reports. How do they get that, you ask? Most often, it’s received from corporations looking for a product review, or picked up at networking events or TradeShows.

But what if you don’t get out much? There’s also prizes to be won while you blog for money. For example, Pay Per Post has started HDTV Tuesdays, which is sponsored for the month of May by Bid4prizes. The past two HDTV Tuesdays had winners picking up Apple TVs and PlayStation 3s, and this Tuesday, you might be lucky enough to grab a Slingbox, Nintendo Wii, Yamaha Surround Sound System or a Logitech universal remote.

With HDTV Tuesdays, Pay Per Post is following up on their very successful “Thousand Dollar Tuesdays,” which helped engage the members of their network in pursuit of the$100, $500 or $1,000 prizes.  Members will discover the special prize opportunity as part of their normal course of working with Pay Per Post.

Is this new promotion as good as cold-hard cash?  In one way, maybe not, as you will need to pay taxes on whatever prizes you win, just like winning or making money.  However, winning a prize can be a good way to actually get something that you want, instead of postponing a purchase “until you can afford it.”

In any event, Pay Per Post is to be commended at bringing these opportunities to their members.  If you haven’t signed up yet, be sure to do so before the next Tuesday contest!

The NFL draft and mini-camps are over, and if you’re a die-hard NFL fan, you are having to wait until August and the start of Preseason before you can get your next football fix.  But this is a great time to start thinking about Fantasy Football, and start getting your teams together.

If you haven’t participated in Fantasy Football before, or want to to have a chance at huge pay-out prizes, you should check out the American Fantasy Football League, and make sure that you’re prepared for their drafts that are starting August 18th.

I’ve had two of my cars broken into over the years, and after my second break-in, I’ve only purchased cars with Alarm Systems.  Likewise with our homes, we’ve always had Security Systems installed within the first month of moving in.  We’ve never had any issues with burglary or break-ins, but my family feels more secure knowing we’re protected.

But when I was in college, I had someone break into my apartment and steal my stereo system.  With a new security system from LaserShield, I could have protected my room with a motion-sensor system that sports a 105-decibel siren.  It looks fairly unobtrusive and comes with monitoring for $19.99/m. 

Sometimes companies/entrepreneurs need to bring outside funding in to help grow their business. If you’re company is involved in information technology and nanotech, then you should contact Venture Alliance Partners to see whether there might be a fit between your company and their private equity fund. They are located in Copenhagen, and prefer to receive your business plan in hard-copy as opposed to email.

I don’t know about you, but my computer frequently seems to “veg-out”, and starts to have incredibly slow lag times when switching from one application to another. I know that I probably have way to many windows open, but I have over 1GB of RAM… shouldn’t I be able to work the way I want?

What I usually do is spend too much time trying to find another free spyware tool that I haven’t previously used, try to find some unused applications in my install/uninstall control panel, and then have my computer spend the night defragging. But this takes way to much time, and if I wasn’t already technically-inclined, I’d be absolutely lost.

Now there’s an application that promises to provide an all-in-one solution to Speed up PCs in 5 easy steps. Magic speed is a wizard-based PC utility that will make your PC faster and more efficient in 5 simple steps.

The download is quick and easy - only 4.2 MB - it took less than a minute on my connection. The software is PC-only, and works on Windows NT, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. Best of all, the installation does not require a restart to begin working with the program.

Magic Speed starts by analyzing your start-up applications, and presents you with the option to delete them on a one-by-one basis. All the “X” pieces identified were easy enough to identify and delete, but many of the “?” applications would require some knowledge of computers for the user to be able to identify the application prior to deletion. A user could certainly get in trouble here if not careful. I deleted all of the “X’s” denoting “viruses” — two of them were for my RealMedia player, so I guess this qualifies (hah!)

The second step “Fixes PC Problems”, of which I had 159. With some trepidation, I clicked “Fix” on a global basis.

The third step “Cleans Your PC” by deleting temporary files and temporary registry values. It found 4,344 files on my computer totaling 24 MB. Again, I clicked “Clean” with closed eyes.

The fourth step “Windows Tweaks” is filled with six settings the applications recommends be turned “On”. I only had two of these set to “on” for my computer, so I quickly fixed that. Uh oh.

The fifth and final step helps you to defrag your memory, and to add “WinBoost” to your startup list.

So I never did see the anti-virus or spyware check that was promised in the overview, but I am certainly hoping that this application will speed my computer up today. It seems to be swapping through my applications better now, and I don’t have any lag in letters appearing as I type (which I did when starting this post…). The next step is to try it on my wife’s computer and see how that improves. Try it out and let me know what you find out!

MasterSeek is an international business search engine that claims to have over 45 million companies indexed in 75 different companies around the world. You can search by company name and find standardized results including phone and address information. If your company shows up in the index, you are also able to add more information to your listing (for free) to include # of employees, year established and a basic description of your business. I found both of my companies listed there, and took advantage of the opportunity to update some of the information displayed. Your changed information is then reviewed by their staff for accuracy, and then updated (hopefully) at some point in the future. As with most business directories, the information is only as good as what you put in, so be sure to update your listing soon!

Every businessman needs a break, and what provides a better break from reality than an intense horror flick? I haven’t seen a good edge-of-my-seat horror movie since The Grudge, so I’m going to mark May 25th on my calendar — the theatrical release of Ashley Judd’s latest film - Bug movie.

Also starring Michael Shannon and Harry Connick, Jr., the film promises to be an “intense, mind-bending psychological thriller”. Usually this pre-marketing fluff rarely tends to come true, but Bug is directed by William Friedkin, the man behind The Exorcist. And if the movie trailer is any indication, this marketing rings true.

Of course with a new movie comes new posters. They are a mainstay of any theatrical release, although in this day and age of web marketing and over-saturation of seemingly every media outlet, movie posters are these days more art form than marketing vehicle. Check out the posters from Bug:

I have to confess that I don’t get the movie’s tagline - “First they send in the drone… then they find their queen.” Are the bugs real? Is Peter really a bug? Is Agnes just having hallucinations? I’ll have to wait until the 25th to find out.