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2011 Goals

Life

It’s that time of the year when people make public promises to themselves that last almost as long as the hangover most of them are going to earn tonight, otherwise known as New Year’s Resolutions.

Not a fan.

I am, however a fan of planning out some concrete goals and doing my best to meet them.     I do this through a series of 30 day projects.  I set a goal that can be reached in 30 days, and push for it.   I tend to make my goals fairly aggressive, and I tend to meet them.

Here were my goals and results for 2010:

  • January:   Wake up at 5am AND read to my kids every night before bed. These were easy goals to meet.    A year later, I am still getting up much earlier than I ever have, even if it’s not 5AM.   I write better late at night than I do early in the morning, anyway.    I’m not still reading to my kids every night, but we are making progress on teaching my four-year-old to read.
  • February:  Do 100 push-ups at one time by the end of the month. I accomplished this in 22 days.    I also had a secret project that involved doing something sweet for my wife every day.  By the end of the month, she was convinced I had done something horrible that I was trying to make up for.
  • March:  Do 100 sit-ups at one time by the end of the month. It took me a week, but I found out how bad sit-ups are for your back.   Pure failure.
  • April:  Spring Cleaning.  I will declutter every room in my house this month. We missed one room and one closet, but made a lot of charities happy.
  • May:  Have a sit-down dinner with my family, at the dining room table at least 3 times per week. We managed this one and enjoyed it, but we haven’t managed to keep it up.   I’ll have to try this again.
  • June:  No computer use, while anyone else in the family is awake, except for household necessities, such as bills. This one worked well and improved the quality of our interaction.  I’m not quite this strict about it, but my computer use has gone down dramatically while my family is awake.
  • July:  Write fiction every day. I don’t think I wrote more than a few pages of fiction, but I did write every day.
  • August:  Buy nothing new this month. We came very close to doing this one perfectly.  It wasn’t easy.
  • September:  Attempt to learn a new language. Total bomb.  I never even got started.
  • October:   No yelling at the kids. Have you ever thought about trying this with a a two-year-old and a four-year-old?  We never got started.
  • November:  No complaining.  Not at home, not at work. I didn’t make this an actual month, but I’ve been trying to complain much less.  I think it’s been working.
  • December:  I will have done 14 projects this year.  December is a month off. As planned, I took December off.

So I missed 4 months of projects.   This year, I’m going to modify my overall plan and only do 6 projects, every other month.   That will give me a month off to either relax or incorporate the goal into my ongoing habits without any stress.

Here are my goals:

  • January: I’m going to do Tim Ferriss’s Slow-Carb diet.  Yes, it’s a fad diet, but it beats the constant stream of garbage I eat now.   The basic plan is to avoid anything white; no bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, or sugar.   That’s accompanied by a targeted supplement regimen and a timed exercise plan to manipulate my metabolism.    I’m not adding any aerobic exercise to my day, because I want this to be as controlled an experiment as possible.   If it’s working at the end of the month, I will keep it going.    It’s time to not be fat anymore.
  • March: In February, I managed to get myself able to do 100 pushups in a single set.   In March, I hurt my back trying to do the same with sit-ups and that killed my workout habit.   This March, I’m going to do the 100 pushups challenge again, but this time, I’m going for perfect pushups.   Last year, they got sloppy after about 80.  This year, that won’t be good enough.
  • May: I’m going to do at least 30 days of the Couch to 5k running program.  It’s a 9 week program.   As a 30 day project, it’s designed to establish the habit.  When I tried picking up running last year, my knees were causing problems.  Hopefully, my January project will mitigate that this year.
  • July: I’m going to pick up a new language.  This is the failed plan from September 2010.   I’ve narrowed it down to either Spanish, Swedish, or Italian.  One is useful, one is a part of my heritage, and one is for fun.   At the moment, I’m undecided.
  • September: Undecided.  I am leaning towards a “nice” month.  30 days of doing something nice, for someone, somewhere.   If I go this route, I’ve got 9 months to plan, because that’s a lot of things to do.
  • November: Absolutely undecided.    Any suggestions?

That’s my plan for the new year.   Six specific goals, each lasting 30 days.    I could definitely use some help for September and November.   Please give me some suggestions in the comments.

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Making Extra Money Part 3: Product Selection

Finance

When you’re setting up a niche site, you need to monetize it.  You need to have a way to make money, or it’s a waste of time.

There are two main ways to do that:  AdSense or product promotion.   To set up an AdSense site, you write a bunch of articles, post them on a website with some Google ads, and wait for the money to roll in.

I don’t do that.

I don’t own a single AdSense site and have never set one up.  This article is not about setting up an Adsense site.

My niches site are all product-promotion sites.  I pick a product–generally an e-book or video course–and set up a site dedicated to it.

Naturally, picking a good product is an important part of the equation.

The most important part of product selection is that the product has an affiliate program. Without that, there’s no money to be made.     There are a lot of places to find affiliate programs.     Here are a few:

  • Amazon.   If you don’t live in one of the states that Amazon has dropped in retaliation for passing laws that attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling on collecting sales tax, you can sign up as an associate and collect a commission on every referral you send that turns into a purchase.   That means you have a lot of product to choose from.   Unfortunately, your commission is small, so you need to promote fairly expensive products to get a decent return.   On the other hand, people trust Amazon, so that’s one less hurdle to making a sale.
  • Commission Junction.   These are the people managing affiliate programs for a large number of credit cards and banks.  If you’ve opened an account with INGDirect through one of my links, I got a commission for the referral. (Thank you!)   They have a lot of other products, too.
  • e-Junkie.  This one is a popular distribution system for bloggers.   It’s likely that, if you’ve bought an ebook from a blogger, e-Junkie handled the fulfillment process.   A lot of the products available there have an affiliate program, but that is up to the owner of the product.
  • ClickBank.  My favorite.   This is one of the largest affiliate networks specializing in electronic products, whether that’s membership sites, ebooks, or video courses.   Commissions are good, often 50-75%.   They also offer a 60 day guarantee of every product sold through their site, which helps soothe the wary customer.  This is the site I’ll be using for this series.

The first thing you need to do is sign up for whichever program you intend to use.

If you’re not going with Clickbank, feel free to skip ahead to the section on keyword research.

Once you are signed up and logged in, click on the “Marketplace” link at the top of the screen.

Clickbank

From here, it’s just a matter of finding a good product to sell.   Here are the niches we’re going to be looking for:

  • Back pain
  • Bankruptcy
  • Conflict resolution at work
  • Detox diets
  • Fat kids
  • Foreclosure avoidance
  • Job hunting
  • Weddings
  • Writing sales copy

I’m going to look for one or two good products in each niche.  When that’s done we’ll narrow it down by consumer demand.

For now, go to advanced search.

CBSearch

Enter your keyword, pick the category and set the advanced search stats.     Gravity is the number of affiliates who have made sales in the last month.  I don’t like super-high numbers, but I also want to make sure that the item is sellable.  Over 10 and under 50 or so seems to be a good balance.

The average sale just ensures that I’ll make a decent amount of money when someone buys the product.   I usually aim for $25 or more in commissions per sale.  Also, further down, check the affiliate tools box.    That means the seller will have some resources for you to use.

This combination will give us 36 products to check out for back pain, unfortunately, none of the results are for back pain products.    After unchecking the affiliate tools and setting the gravity to greater than 1,  I’ve got 211 results.    Sorting by keyword relevance, I see three products, two of which look like something I’d be interested in promoting.   One has a 45% commission, the other is 55%.  The X-Pain Method has an initial commission of $34 and claims a 5% refund rate.   Back Pain, Sciatica, and Bulging Disc Relief pays $16, which will make it a potentially easier sale.  I’ll add both to the list for further research.

I’m not going to detail the search for the rest of the niches.  That would be repetitive.  You can see my selections here:

Now we’re going to go through a few steps for each of these products.

The Sales Page

We need to make sure the sales page doesn’t suck.    If the site doesn’t work, is hard to read or navigate, has a hard-to-find order button, or just doesn’t look professional, it’s getting cut.

  • Raw Foods is eliminated.  The sales video is horrible and the order link is at the bottom of several screens worth of nothing.  It’s a crap site.
  • The 7 day foreclosure-avoidance product is out.  Site’s down today.  I want reliability.
  • Management Training By The Book is out.  I don’t like typos on the sales page, especially in the page title.

The Email List

If it has an email subscription form, we’ll need to subscribe, then double-check to make sure our affiliate information isn’t getting dropped in the emails.   If it is, the seller is effectively stealing commissions.  In the interest of time and laziness, I’m going to eliminate anyone pushing for an email subscription.  It’s harder–and time-consuming–to monitor that.  On of my niche site had a seller completely drop their product.  Instead, they pushed for email subscriptions so they could promote other products as an affiliate.  Absolutely unethical.

  • Wedding speeches is eliminated for  throwing a mandatory email entry into the order process.  There’s no guarantee they are up to anything shady, but I’m taking the simple route.

Checkout and Credit

Finally, we’re going to visit the checkout page.  You need to do this from every links in the newsletter and the links on the sales page, just to make sure you’ll get your money.

The way to tell who’s being credited is to look at the bottom of the order page, under the payment information.   It should say [affiliate = xxx] where xxxis your ClickBank ID.   Anything else, and the product gets cut from the list.

When you are checking these, don’t click on every possible link at once.  That confuses the cookies. Do one at a time.  I tried to do it in one batch for this post and lost half of the cookies.  If it weren’t for the fact that I already own one of the products and bought it through my own link and got credited, I would have been talking undeserved trash about thieving companies.

Other Factors

Sometimes, when you’re examining a product, it just doesn’t feel right.  When that happens, drop it.  There are millions of other products you can promote.   In this case, I’m dropping the anger management program because, in my experience, angry people don’t think they are the problem.  Here’s a life tip:  If everyone else is a jerk, the problem probably isn’t everyone else.

  • Another important factor is the sales page itself.  If it doesn’t make you want to buy the product, why would anyone else?
  • Amazing Cover Letters is eliminated because it’s too easy to overlook the buy link.  If I have to hunt for it, it’s losing customers.
  • Amazing Wedding Planning is getting eliminated because I don’t like the sales page.  The buy link is easy to overlook, and it doesn’t compel me to buy.

Now we’re down to 10 products in 6 niches.    At this point, we’re comfortable with the sales pages and we know that they are crediting commissions.   As it stands right now, all of the products are worth promoting.

We’ll make the final determination after doing some heavy keyword research in the next installment.   That’s where we’ll find out how hard it is to compete.

Any questions?

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Prepping for an Estate Sale

Finance

At the end of the month, we’re having a massive garage/estate sale.   When my mother-in-law died, she left us a lot of stuff.

A lot.

Really, when I say “lot”, I mean it.   When most people say they have a lot of stuff, they mean they’ve got a closet to clean out.   That’s similar to looking at a “scale of the universe” app and comparing a grain of salt to the Oort cloud.   We’ve donated several truckloads of blankets, jackets, and toiletries to a homeless shelter and more than 80 rubbermaid containers full of clothes to the Salvation Army.   That’s on top of two dumpsters(big enough to park a truck in) full of garbage of things we didn’t think were worth salvaging.   That has still left us with several rooms packed full of stuff.

When I say ” a lot”, I mean it in a visceral, oh-my-god-can-this-be-over-or-should-we-consider-arson kind of way.

Now, it’s time to get rid of the stuff that’s left.

The things that have sentimental value have already come home with us.

The things that look unique, rare, or collectible–like the 1970s Pepsi glasses–have been set aside for more research.   They may end up in the sale, or on eBay, depending on what we find out.

From here, I think I can just follow my garage sale guide.

We’re going to run the sale on Friday, Saturday, and Monday of Labor Day weekend, to maximize traffic.

We’ll advertise in the paper and put up some signs.    The house is on the busiest street nearby, so passing traffic should be high.

The nice thing about having an emptied house is that setup can be completely done ahead of time.   We’re setting up tables and starting to price it all this weekend.

On the days of the sale, we’ll have at least 2 people working the entire time.  One will be inside, while the other will be outside for the tools and furniture that are getting sold.  Both will have money and be able to make change.

Outside, we’ll have the bigger pieces of furniture, tools, and some kid stuff to draw in passerby.   Inside will be the appliances, jewelry, and the small and/or valuable items.   We’ll only  be setting up in the living room and dining room, with the back hallway and kitchen roped off, to control access and visibility.

We’ve got a bit of help available at different times over the weekend, so we should be able to handle the entire sale, including breaks, relatively smoothly.

Have you ever run an estate sale?  Anything I’m missing?

 

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Selling Your Home: The Real Estate Agent

Finance

If you are not able or willing to sell your home yourself, you’ll need to find a real estate agent.  A realtor is someone who deals with all of the hassles involved in selling your home in exchange for a fee of up to 7% of the selling price.

The hassles include marketing, an objective price analysis, advertising on the internet and in newspapers, providing a yard sign, negotiating the sale price, reviewing and filling out the contracts, and navigating the entire process for you.  The aren’t meaningless duties, so make sure you are getting what you pay for.  You need to find the right realtor for you.

The key to to ask questions, particularly the right questions. You can ask the wrong ones if you’d like, but they tend not to help much.

Helpful questions include:

  • “Can I call your previous clients?” If the answer is no, run away!  If the answer is yes, get the list and call them.
  • “Have you sold any homes near here recently?” Get the names and numbers of the customers and call them.  Find out how it went and what they wish would have happened differently.  If the realtor hasn’t sold nearby homes recently, keep looking.
  • “Will you put your sales strategy in writing?” If it’s not in writing, you may be left paying the full commission, without getting the full promised service.
  • “What will you tell a potential buyer that wants to negotiate?”   Make sure you and your realtor are on the same page.

Now for some secrets that realtors will not volunteer.

  • The selling fee is negotiable.  If you live in a popular development, or if nearby homes have sold quickly, you should be able to get your fee reduced a couple of points.
  • You don’t have to sign an exclusive listing agreement. With an exclusive agreement, you will pay the realtor a fee if the house sells.  Period.  With a non-exclusive agreement, you can list with several agents and only pay the one who actually sells your house.  If you find the buyer, you won’t pay a selling commission at all.

Selling your house can be intimidating and realtors are there to make the task easier for you.   Have you had any problems with real estate agents?

Selling on Craigslist

Finance

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The vast majority of personal finance websites(including this one) focus on reducing your bottom line–cutting costs.   The other end of the budget is at least as important. Have you tried raising your top line lately?   Have you picked up a side hustle, sold an article, put ads on a website, or even sold some of your stuff?  After we had our garage sale a few weeks ago, we were left with some furniture that was too nice to donate or discard, so we decided to sell it on Craigslist.

The key to selling your stuff on Craigslist is taking pictures.   They don’t have to be good pictures, just something to let your customers know what they are getting.  Take pictures, post the measurements and, if it’s electronic, the model number. Beyond that, a simple description will suffice.

Be safe when you are posting the listing.  Don’t give your address and don’t post when you will be home.   That’s just a job offer for burglars.   When you talk to a potential buyer, never tell them there is nobody home.  Tell them your roommate is the only one home and he doesn’t want to deal with the sale.   Don’t give strangers on the internet an opportunity to rob you.

When you are meeting a buyer, pick a public place away from home, if at all possible.   If you are selling furniture, it may not be possible, but it is for smaller items.   Meeting in a busy gas station parking lot or even in front of the police department is a good way to stay safe.   Secondary crime scenes are nasty things and inviting the wrong stranger in is offering one ready-made.

[ad name=”inlineleft”]Bring a friend.  Preferably, an intimidating friend. Crime is less likely to happen if there is more than one person there.    Bring a friend to a public place to meet the buyer to maximize your safety.

Don’t get ripped off.   Craigslist scams abound. Bad checks, forged checks, and shipping scams are just some of the problems.

Only accept cash. It’s hard to forge a greenback.

One of the most common scams, after a bounced check, is the cashier’s check scam. You’ll get an email saying the item is great and payment is on the way.  When the check clears, a relative of the buyer will come to pick up the item.  Then, oops, their secretary made the check out for $3000, instead of $300.  Would you mind sending the overpayment back by Western Union, minus $100 for your troubles?   First sign of trouble:  over-complicating a simple transaction.   Second sign:  not using cash.   The cashier’s check will be forged.   There is no way to verify funds on a cashier’s check, and the bank will post it as available well before it comes back bad.   You will be able to spend the money, only to have the money disappear later. That means you can’t wait to see if the check clears before wiring back the overpayment.  There is no way to recover your money.

If you get a response that includes a link, do not click it!  Ever.  No matter what the link looks like.  Ever.  No clickyclicky. It may be an innocuous link to your ad, but the link can be masked.  Any other link is almost definitely a link to a virus-ridden website.  Repeat after me: No clickyclicky.

If you get an email about Craigslist transaction protection or escrow, you are being scammed. Run away.

Craigslist can be great way to turn your junk into cash, but only if you actually get the cash.  Keep yourself safe and scam-free.

 

Side Hustle: Garage Sale Tips

Finance

Garage sale week wasn’t enough.    There are so many little things that I did–or meant to do–that I forgot to include them last week.

  1. Advertise everywhere. I do mean everywhere.   Take out an ad in the paper.  Put an ad on Craigslist.   Have fliers in the grocery store, the laundromat, and any place that has a publicly-accessible bulletin board.    Put big, bright signs at every possible turn to get to your sale.  Assume the drivers a dense.  Don’t give them an opportunity to make a wrong turn or–like I did–put conflicting arrows on different sides of a sign.
  2. Use bait. Set out tools and furniture where they are visible.   Lots of people drive past if they only see knick-knacks.   Tools get the men to stop, furniture gets anybody running a household to stop.    If you don’t actually have any tools to sell, put your lawnmower out with an insanely high price on it.   Heck, if someone wants to pay you 125% of retail for your mower, take it!   I had a number of tools and lawn-crafting gear–actually for sale–near the end of the driveway.    If I can get the people out of the car, someone will find something worth buying.
  3. Price it like you’d buy it. People don’t come to garage sales looking for sale prices.  They come looking to pay as little as possible.  They want the crazy deal.   You’ll have to oblige them, at least a bit.  Price some things very low, and everything else almost very low.   Aim for 25% of retail or less, except for a few special items that you won’t mind keeping.
  4. Don’t be afraid to say no. Some hagglers are jerks.  If the offer is insulting, don’t feel obligated to take it.
  5. Bag the little stuff. Instead of pricing every toy 10 cents, put a handful of toys is a zip-lock bag for a dollar.   Mix some of the bad with the good so the crap goes away, too.   Reject every offer to open the bag and sell the stuff separately.
  6. Put the bags of toys on a table in the driveway. Kids stay out of the confined garage and entertain themselves digging.   Kids are clumsy.  They can’t break your lamp if the don’t come near it.   Parents will welcome something to keep their little brats occupied while they shop.  It’s a win for everyone!
  7. Describe anything that isn’t obvious. Make a lot of signs.   To be clear, make a lot of signs.  Describe the furniture.   Show a current ebay auction for the item.  Identify the antiques.  You don’t want to be forced to sell everything yourself.  Let the signs sell for you.
  8. Start early. Price and sort your stuff a month in advance.   The night before the sale, all you want to have to do is set up tables and unbox your stuff.  Don’t try pricing it then.
  9. Multi-day sales are best. It gives people a chance to tell their friends about it, or to come back and buy the thing they passed up.  Don’t lose out on the buzz!
  10. Save your grocery bags. A few weeks before a sale, I go to the grocery store and ask if they mind if a bundle of plastic bags goes home with me.  The manager has always said it’s okay.   If that doesn’t work, just double bag your groceries and save the bags for a few weeks.
  11. Use blankets and tarps to hide anything that isn’t for sale. People will ask about everything they can see.  Save yourself the hassle.
  12. Plan your layout to let people browse and move. You don’t want a traffic jam in the garage.   Give it a clear flow, with enough room for people to pass each other comfortably.   Three people should be able to pass each other in every row.  It’s not always possible, but try.  If two people can’t pass, start over.
  13. Clean your stuff. Clean items sell better.   Dirty stuff will have to be sold for at least 25% less than clean stuff.

That’s it for now.  More to come, I’m sure.

Note: The entire series is contained in the Garage Sale Manual on the sidebar.

Update:  This post has been included in the Money Hacks Carnival.