Making Easy Money

Credit Cards, Internet Banking and Bank Charges

This is the first in a series of posts on how you can use your credit card to make money.

Remember, saving money is also making money, and this first…

This is the first in a series of posts on how you can use your credit card to make money.

Remember, saving money is also making money, and this first piece of advice on using your credit card will save you some money.

Here is something I do that maybe EVERYBODY does, but I find it EXTREMELY helpful to save some money. To do this, all you need is a Credit Card like the “Discovery Credit Card“, a bank account with a fixed monthly fee (i.e. a certain number of free transactions a month) and free Internet Banking.

If you get a few free transactions with your bank account, at the beginning of EVERY month, log into your bank account with Internet Banking, transfer whatever amount you think you can afford to spend (and what you THINK you will spend in cash) onto your credit card. In South Africa, the “Discovery Card” does not charge you per transaction (except for Petrol charges). This means that, instead of drawing money at the ATM every time you need money, you can use the available credit on your credit card as cash by paying with the credit card instead.

Not only will this save you money and TIME by you not having to use the ATM, you will also be able to monitor where you are spending your “cash”.

Make Maggot Money

If you REALLY want to make money, even if it’s not THAT easy money, try coming up with something that will kill maggots easily and cheaply. Don’t know what I’m…

If you REALLY want to make money, even if it’s not THAT easy money, try coming up with something that will kill maggots easily and cheaply. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Go take a look at this post about “Killing Maggots“.

It seems like there’s a scourge of maggots at the moment… And the methods of killing them are getting desperate (make sure you read the last quote):

I got the truck carbuetor cleaner, opened the windows and began to spray a quick mist-stopped them dead. not recommended for asthmaticsâ€¦.

my lovely little maggot story begins with finding the little creepy crawlys dropping from the fan/light in our showerâ€¦

Funeral Service Professionals spray diesel fuel on maggots and that works well.

Try the wasp sprayâ€¦ doesnâ€™t kill them on contact but give it a moment. It works! Next step attack outside!!

Last night I got into bed and found 6 small maggotts (I think) between the sheets. They had a really bad oder to them.

MTN – NOT the clever connection

MTN, South Africa’s supposed “Better Connection” is a Cellular Service Provider. But if you read this, you may begin to see why I say they aren’t the “clever connection“.

In my…

MTN, South Africa’s supposed “Better Connection” is a Cellular Service Provider. But if you read this, you may begin to see why I say they aren’t the “clever connection“.

In my previous 2 posts, “Vodacom – How NOT to make money” and “Vodacom – Ship of fools” I talk about WHY I switched my cellphone contract to MTN.

But, let me briefly describe their genius method of pricing their contracts:

– The iMate K-Jam is now free (as of this writing) on all the Pro-Call contracts.
– On Pro-Call 120, you get 120 free ANYTIME minutes – Cost: R379 per month, including itemised billing
– On Pro-Call 150, you get 150 free ANYTIME minutes – Cost: R360 per month, EXCLUDING itemised billing
– Cost of Itemised Billing – About R18.

This mean, for a free iMate K-Jam and 120 free ANYTIME minutes on MTN, you will pay MORE than you would if you wanted the 150 free anytime minutes. Ok, only R1, but STILL!!!!

COME ON PEOPLE, USE YOUR BRAINS!!!

Vodacom – Ship of fools

If you haven’t read it yet, please first read “Vodacom – How NOT to make money“.

After signing a new contract with MTN (supposedly the better connection), I went…

If you haven’t read it yet, please first read “Vodacom – How NOT to make money“.

After signing a new contract with MTN (supposedly the better connection), I went to cancel my cell phone contract with Vodacom. After all, they weren’t willing to give me a free cell phone, whereas MTN and CellC both were…

I walked into the VodaShop store and told the lady I wanted to cancel my contract. She handed me the form, and sat with me while I filled it out. She asked me why I wanted to cancel the contract, and I told her that I received a free phone from their competitor.

She said that I shouldn’t cancel, because I would be missing out on all the excellent services Vodacom was supplying me. I said, I got the phone I wanted (the iMate K-Jam) for free from MTN. It was simple, Vodacom didn’t think I was worthy of a free phone.

She then asked why I was cancelling, because they could give me a discount of R1000. And I said, R1700 is STILL R1700 more than NOTHING!

Oh well, I’m sure Vodacom will miss the money I gave them every month, what, with them making an after tax profit of R5.1 BILLION in 2005…

Vodacom – How NOT to make money

You’ll have to forgive me. The next couple of posts are going to be complete rants.

Vodacom is a cellular network in South Africa. Vodacom is probably the BIGGEST cellular network…

You’ll have to forgive me. The next couple of posts are going to be complete rants.

Vodacom is a cellular network in South Africa. Vodacom is probably the BIGGEST cellular network in South Africa. What does that mean? It means they don’t need any more clients/customers/plebs.

I spend a lot of money on my Vodacom cell phone contract. My subscription is only about R200 a month, and yet I make about R2,500 worth of calls a month. MTN and CellC are the other Cellular Networks in South Africa. They offer the iMate K-Jam phone free on a R430 a month contract. At Vodacom, on the same contract, you have to pay in R2,700.

I asked Vodacom if they were willing to give me the phone for free, because if I cancelled and went to another Service Provider, I could get the phone for free. I even said I was a “loyal customer” for the last 6 years. What could they do for me? The biggest discount they were willing to give me was R1000…

Is that clever? Is that wanting to keep a client who spends money? It’s almost like free money in my mind. They would make up the “loss” in 2 months. But Vodacom doesn’t know how to keep customers.

Read the next post to hear how nice it was to actually cancel my Vodacom contract…

Title Grabber – WordPress Plugin

Here’s a reall fancy plugin that I think is cool. Ok, not fancy, actually pretty simple and behind the scenes, and yet I think it could really help out with…

Here’s a reall fancy plugin that I think is cool. Ok, not fancy, actually pretty simple and behind the scenes, and yet I think it could really help out with WordPress SEO. It’s called “Title Grabber”, and in the author’s own words:

Letâ€™s say you are linking to a page, and donâ€™t know what to add as the title to the link. How are you to decide? You donâ€™t! Let Title Grabber do it. It takes whatâ€™s in between the <title> tags on the linked page and adds it to the link.

Why does this add to your WordPress’ SEO? Well, because the more information on a link, the better. Of course, it might help the other site’s SEO as well, but reciprocal help is almost always good. You can get this plugin from here, and, take a look at the link you just clicked to see if it added the “title” tag (I’m using this plugin now as well)… Oh, and while you’re on the site fetching the plugin, take a look at how cool the site actually looks…

Get a job you deserve

If you know you would perform well at a job, even though you are a party animal, or wild thing, or any other corny phrase, be careful what you put…

If you know you would perform well at a job, even though you are a party animal, or wild thing, or any other corny phrase, be careful what you put online. Unless it benefits your career prospects, it might actually be used against you.

The New York Times has an article online about how some prospective employers are using the internet to research possible candidates, and passing on candidates that have some pretty “interesting” online details.

For example:

Curious about the candidate, Ms. Homayoun went to her page on Facebook. She found explicit photographs and commentary about the student’s sexual escapades, drinking and pot smoking, including testimonials from friends. Among the pictures were shots of the young woman passed out after drinking.

“I was just shocked by the amount of stuff that she was willing to publicly display,” Ms. Homayoun said. “When I saw that, I thought, ‘O.K., so much for that.’ “

So, be careful what you reveal. Unless you’re looking for a job as a terrorist, don’t do go doing what the following candidate did online:

…a recruiter had told her he rejected an applicant after searching the name of the student, a chemical engineering major, on Google. Among the things the recruiter found, she said, was this remark: “I like to blow things up.”

Money Making Ideas

In my previous post, “Make Easy Money – An example” I directed you to the picture of a $901,000 check. Well, the owner of that check has another…

In my previous post, “Make Easy Money – An example” I directed you to the picture of a $901,000 check. Well, the owner of that check has another post in which he gives a few ideas on how to make a site that could have HUGE potential.

There are a LOT of big sites out there. I mean, look at MySpace.com, eBay, digg.com, etc… But his ideas on how to be #1 in a market are very good starting points, though they’re not over-night development projects.

Here’s a taste:

1. A free monster.com clone, maybe with a ebay like reputation system.

2. A social networking/ stock/money portal with a built in digg.com clone to highlight user generated “research reports” or “articles”.

Take a look at other interesting ideas and his comments on them here: “How to make a lot of money online via adsense”

And then, once you’re using AdSense, if you’re blogging for money and want to keep tabs on what ads are being clicked, take a look at my Plugin that gives you this info. Read about it here: “Google Desktop Plugins“

gdPMetrics v1.3 beta – View your ads

I’ve released a new beta version of gdPMetrics. This one contains 3 changes, most notably the ability to see at a glance what ads have been clicked on your blog….

I’ve released a new beta version of gdPMetrics. This one contains 3 changes, most notably the ability to see at a glance what ads have been clicked on your blog. I’m not sure if this works for all ads, but I use AdSense, and it works like a charm for me.

Here are a couple of images to entice you 😉 …

In the following image, you can see the new item added, namely “Total Ads Clicked”.
gdpmetrics with ads

The following image shows you the actual ads/link units that were clicked. I though this would be helpful as I could then see where people were heading and what type of ads were being clicked.
gdpmetrics ads

LINKS

– Download gdPMetrics
– gdPMetrics changelog

Discounts

As mentioned before in my post titled “Saving Money can be Easy Money“, a good way to make money is to save money.

A lot of people do their…

As mentioned before in my post titled “Saving Money can be Easy Money“, a good way to make money is to save money.

A lot of people do their shopping online. This is good as it gives people choice. But here are a few guidelines on saving money:

1 – Look for sellers that are offering discounts. There is a lot of competition out there. Don’t go for the first deal you come across

2 – Some sites have discounts when you buy more than one item, or a specific set of items. Browse around on the site before purchasing

3 – There are sites on the internet where you can get coupons or codes for special deals at certain websites. For example, you might find a site offering a coupon for a discount at Dell’s website. Or even Folica.com coupons, if that’s what you’re shopping for…

But, at least take the following into account when you go bargain hunting:

Don’t buy something just because it’s cheaper!
If you feel like a coke, and it costs $1, but the shop keeper is offering you 3 cokes for $2.50, you have to think whether you’re saving $0.50, or spending an extra $1.00 that you don’t actually need to…

Another example: In South Africa, the Canon EOS 30D Digital SLR camera sells for about $2500. But, in America, it goes for around $1500. But, saving $1000 doesn’t sound as good as SPENDING $1500 of money I don’t have…

Your thoughts?

gdPMetrics v1.2 is stable

Well, I’ve received no real negative feedback regarding the beta version, so I’m releasing it as stable.

If you have any comments or suggestions, questions or complaints, please let me know,…

Well, I’ve received no real negative feedback regarding the beta version, so I’m releasing it as stable.

If you have any comments or suggestions, questions or complaints, please let me know, and I can try and help you…

LINKS

– Download gdPMetrics
– gdPMetrics changelog

gdPMetrics v1.2 beta

There is a new version of gdPMetrics available. This version now uses Asynchronous methods of fetching data so as not to hang the Google Desktop Sidebar while retrieving blog info….

There is a new version of gdPMetrics available. This version now uses Asynchronous methods of fetching data so as not to hang the Google Desktop Sidebar while retrieving blog info. I’ve left this in beta mode due to the major change, and would welcome any comments or feedback on this.

I have used it successfully for the last 2 weeks, and will change it to stable if all goes ok for the next couple of weeks.

Once again, you can fetch it from here: Download gdPMetrics
A changelog is available here: gdPMetrics changelog

On a sidenote, this plugin is now available via the Google Desktop Plugins page. It seems to have been quite popular due to it being a Google “Staff Pick”. Thanks Google.

Easy Money Trends

It looks like the people from the UK are looking for Easy Money the most. If you do a search for “Easy Money” using Google Trends you’ll see…

It looks like the people from the UK are looking for Easy Money the most. If you do a search for “Easy Money” using Google Trends you’ll see something like the following:

What surprises me is the fact that the United States is #7 on the list.

Wonders will never cease… 😉

Is Prostitution easy money?

Of course, there are risks involved, and I DEFINITELY don’t suggest doing it. I come from South Africa, and if you’ve heard of HIV or AIDS, you’ve probably heard of…

Of course, there are risks involved, and I DEFINITELY don’t suggest doing it. I come from South Africa, and if you’ve heard of HIV or AIDS, you’ve probably heard of us. That sounds REALLY bad, and it’s a generalisation about our country, but don’t worry, there are a few generalisations we have about YOUR country. EVEN if you’re not from the USA. 😉

But, regarding prostitution and easy money, there’s a post entitled “Why do prostitutes make so much money?” which speaks about an analysis of prostitution. But the writer definitely has his head on his shoulders when he comments:

The earnings from prostitution is determined by supply and demand, just like everything else. Because demand for prostitution services is high relative to supply, prostitutes make pretty good money.

Why is supply so low? It ought to be pretty easy to think of reasons for why there aren’t more prostitutes.

(1) The stigma of the profession–and this is really a big one.

(2) Risk of catching disease.

…

Prostitution definitely doesn’t sound like Easy Money to me. Does that mean my dreams of being a Gigolo are over?