4 Keepz

Here’s a quick look at some of the posts from the MoneyBlogNetwork and beyond over the past week:

NCN continues his 33-day series. Day 22 is aboutemergency funds. Wow! $20,000 seems like a lot of money to just be sitting in a bank account earning interest.

MBH’s thoughts on Maxed Out - I wasn’t too fond of it.

J.D. talked about Freegans, which are basically freaks who go through other people’s trash in order to find food. - Disgusting! I think this borders on insanity.

Here’s an FMF guest post with strategies for saving money on travel.

Nickel talks about why he and his wife are switching to Bank of America’s money market account.

Flexo highlights some of the relief that college students will get from a new bill that was passed. - This is great and all but it fails to address why college is so freakin’ expensive to begin with!

Jim wants your thoughts on the United States’ deficit. - Yeah, it’s bad but I got to say that Clinton’s rosy outlook on the debt came prior to both the tech stock bubble and 9/11. Let’s face it, elected officials are HORRIBLE money managers!

Tricia mapped out her strategy for saving money on heating costs this winter. - Sometimes it’s nice living in area where the coldest temperatures during winter are in the 20s and 30s for lows and the 40s and 50s for highs. Though, I do miss winter.

BluntMoney likes the Scanalizer she won here on AllFinancialMatters. - That’s cool!

The Digerati Life takes a look at the causes and the consequences of the subprime mortgage snafu.

Lastly, here’s Meg’s top tips for accumulating easy wealth.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy!

By the way…

I would like your opinion. How many links would you like in each week’s roundup? I have a ton of blogs in my blog roll but not nearly enough time to link to all of them each week. I think roundups should stay at or around 10-15 links. Is that too many or too few?

Original post by JLP

I’ve been sloppy about linking back to carnivals I’ve participated in the last couple of weeks. So belatedly, here they are :

93rd Festivl of Frugality

Personal Finance Tips

Carnival of Everything Finance - 3rd Edition

3rd Carnival of College and Finance

118th Carnival of Personal Finance - Fun Money Facts Edition

104th Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Personal Finance #117

Carnival of Personal Finance #116

Blogs and Posts that caught my eye

I’ve been following Tricia from blogging away debt and have been moved and touched by her revealing her life story about her family, her finances and her determination to pay down her credit card debt. Why don’t we pack up and move and how she reduced her house living area to reduce her heating bills were two posts from her that really got my attention of all the other finance posts out there.

Original post by Mr Credit Card

A few people asked me how I have an Amex blue card with a $50,000 credit limit. It is very simple actually I found out from another person that did it and I have personally helped 3 of my college age buddies do this successfully. Amex doesn’t need any sort of a income verification process for any credit line increase of 25k and under. You can either call them during business hours (don’t speak to Apu in Bangladesh because he can’t do it for you!) or do it online anytime at http://www.americanexpress.com/cards/loc.shtml

I will guarantee that if you put in a 6 digit income(which they dont verify for requests under 25k) they will auto approve you to a 25k credit limit. Now if you are still wondering how I got the 50k limit on my card, it was just 1 step longer. I had an American Express Blue rewards card, and a Blue cash card. I called in to close the rewards card,but told them I’d rather just consolidate the limits first of both cards (25k each at the time) and then just close the card. They were happy to do it for me, and didn’t require any verification at all.

Are there any benefits to this besides telling the girl at the bar you are trying to pick up that this card has a 50k credit limit,while your bank account only has $23.49 in it? Yes..Part of your credit score is your utilization rate on a card. If your credit limit is 5k and you owe $2,500 then your utilization rate is 50% and that looks pretty bad on your credit score till you pay it off. If you have a 50k limit and have a $2,500 balance, then a 5% utilization rate would look very favorably on your credit score.

PS: As I posted a few blog posts earlier, you can Get your FREE credit score and more at www.Freecreditreport.com

Also MANY MANY people here on Fatwallet Finance forum did this as well with no problems. Link to post

Original post by Paul

Hi everyone sorry for the lack of updates over the weekend, I have been extremely busy working on school projects, I have some great news for everyone, I’m pretty certain that I now have over 100k in new credit limits on my newly applied cards!

During the application process which I completed a week ago, I applied to nearly 20 cards and fortunately none were rejected,however I received many more messages about being deferred than an instant approval. Dont worry though, most people I know that received the deferred status on their applications were all approved a few days later. It is very easy to check, you can call the credit card company within a few days and ask about the status of an application and they will be able to tell you whether or not you have been approved as well as your new credit limit. In addition to saying whether you are approved or not and your new limit, most issuers will even let you request a credit limit increase without you even having the card in hand!!!

Original post by Paul

Original post by Tyler Thomas

AFP - The European Union's 10 ex-communist states, which were hit by massive unemployment after they shifted to a market economy almost two decades ago, are now facing a labour shortage, according to the World Bank.

Original post by Yahoo! News: Business

AT&T and Cingular I’m a present customer and I have to say your 3G coverage sucks. Also the bricking of iPhones is a crappy way to treat customers. If you are going to come after me or shut off my service for breaking your new TOS section 5.1 100% of any and all communication in any format voice/digital/electronic or otherwise will be reprinted in it’s entirety on this blog.

let’s see what happens

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Original post by Michael Gray

AT&T and Cingular I’m a present customer and I have to say your 3G coverage sucks. Also the bricking of iPhones is a crappy way to treat customers. If you are going to come after me or shut off my service for breaking your new TOS section 5.1 100% of any and all communication in any format voice/digital/electronic or otherwise will be reprinted in it’s entirety on this blog.

let’s see what happens

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Original post by Michael Gray

Original post by Tyler Thomas

I just received an email from a reader :

“Hi Mr Credit Card, my credit has taken a hit but I do need a credit card. Do you have any suggestions for guaranteed credit cards for bad credit folks like me? I have been turned down by a couple of the major credit card companies. My score is in the 500s.”

Well, all I can say is that if you have a fico score in the 500 area, credit card issuers and any finance companies will consider you to be a sub-prime borrower. Therefore, the cost of credit to you will be much higher. There are credit cards that are specifically geared towards borrowers like this reader, but they do come with higher costs and fees. Here are the different types of credit cards available and the pros and cons to each one.

1. Unsecured sub-prime credit cards - There are many issuers of sub-prime credit cards. For example, First Premier Bank and Orchard Bank - now HSBC are two of the more well-known sub-prime issuers.

The thing to be aware of when you are apply for one of these cards is the fees. You will most likely be hit with one-time application and processing fees, annual fees and even monthly maintenance fees! I wrote about this in Bad Credit Card Application Fees and Fineprints.

Secured Credit Cards - You are almost always guaranteed to be approved for secured credit cards because you must put a deposit with the credit card issuer. The deposit will be your credit limit and if you default, it acts as your collateral. Most secured credit cards do not have any of the fees that unsecured sub-prime cards charge. They usually just have a reasonable annual fee. The only thing you really have to ask is if the secured credit card reports your payments to the three major credit bureaus. This is because this is the only way for you to rebuild your credit.

Prepaid Credit Cards - You may also see ads touting prepaid debit cards. Though they may be great because you are not extended credit, it also means that you cannot rebuild your damaged credit with a prepaid debit card. It is also more costly than regular credit cards or even a secured credit cards. So unless you got into this mess with uncontrolled spending, I would certainly not recommend a prepaid credit card.

Bottom Line - Even if you have bad credit, you can get a credit card. Most sub-prime credit card issuers will approve your application. You just have to be aware that you have to pay higher fees. If can settle for a secured credit card, then you will not have to pay as many fees as a regular sub-prime unsecured credit card

Original post by Mr Credit Card

I have seen that Liam Eagle from TheWHIR Blogs published an article in his blog titled “A governing body for hosts?“. Since I’ve read the article I felt I needed to add something to this topic. Let me first say I don’t like the idea of founding any kind of world hosting body.
First of all because […]

Original post by D.Avramov

Commenter Chris left this response to my post, A Look at an Equity-Indexed Annuity:

O.K. I’ve read through all of this and the fact is that we’re talking about several different things.

First of all we’re talking about investment vs. insurance. To everybody trying to compare an FIA (Fixed Indexed Annuity), it shouldn’t be done. An FIA is insurance. The risk is taken on by the insurance company. Hence the ability to guarantee that the there will be no loss in the value of the contract, as long as the individual follows the rules.

Secondly, nobody should have all of their money in one type of vehichle. There needs to be diversification. However, as an individual gets closer to retirement the “time horizon” reduces. This requires an individual to reposition their funds from an investment to insurance.

Third, as the individual is getting older and is needing to preserve more of their funds, or in retirement and decumulating their funds, we need to look at the type of vehicle the individual is in. One of the things that I feel everybody can agree upon is that we’re living longer. I feel that we’re going to be looking at many “boomers” needing to take a stream of income. There’s only one vehicle that will GUARANTEE that they can never outlive their funds, annuity.

Fourth, to all the people that state that FIAs are high commission products. I will agree that in the past there were some rogue companies that were paying outragous commissions. However that arguement is outdated. Side note, the MasterDex is not the highest paying FIA.

Fifth, and finally, what is the risk tolerance of the client? What are the goals for the clients funds? How soon do they need to get at the money? We need to look at suitability. We need to take care of the client. We can argue which is better, however no one vehicle can meet all the clients needs.

I’d like to look at some of Chris’ points.

“First of all we’re talking about investment vs. insurance. To everybody trying to compare an FIA (Fixed Indexed Annuity), it shouldn’t be done. An FIA is insurance. The risk is taken on by the insurance company. Hence the ability to guarantee that the there will be no loss in the value of the contract, as long as the individual follows the rules.”

If it is fair to compare the “risk” of the stock market with the “non risk” of the EIA then it is perfectly fair to compare the performance of the two. Also, if Chris’ argument were true then why the heck do all the annuity salespeople start their presentations off by talking about the S&P 500 Index? If it’s not fair to compare an EIA with its underlying index, then salespeople shouldn’t be allowed to even MENTION the index! Once they (the salespeople) mention the index then I think it is fair game to compare the two.

I’ll stop comparing the two as soon as salespeople stop representing their product as a risk-free way to invest in the market.

“Secondly, nobody should have all of their money in one type of vehichle. There needs to be diversification. However, as an individual gets closer to retirement the “time horizon” reduces. This requires an individual to reposition their funds from an investment to insurance.

“Third, as the individual is getting older and is needing to preserve more of their funds, or in retirement and decumulating their funds, we need to look at the type of vehicle the individual is in. One of the things that I feel everybody can agree upon is that we’re living longer. I feel that we’re going to be looking at many “boomers” needing to take a stream of income. There’s only one vehicle that will GUARANTEE that they can never outlive their funds, annuity.”

Notice in the second point Chris states that as a person approaches retirement, their “time horizon” reduces and then in the very next paragraph he talks about how people are living longer. I think the insurance and brokerage industry wants people to look at an approaching retirement as a reduction in your time horizon so that they can justify selling you an annuity. If you retire at 65, there’s a pretty good chance you could still be around at 85, which is twenty years. That’s a long-term time horizon in my book.

Oh, and that GUARANTEE that Chris speaks of is only as good as the insurance company. If the insurance company goes under, guess what happens to that annuity. No, it’s not likely to happen but there’s always a chance that it could.

“Fourth, to all the people that state that EIAs are high commission products. I will agree that in the past there were some rogue companies that were paying outragous commissions. However that arguement is outdated. Side note, the MasterDex is not the highest paying EIA.”

I still say that if annuities are as great as everyone says they are, reduce the commission payout to EXACTLY the same payout as mutual funds. Seriously, why should a salesperson earn a bigger commission from an annuity sale than they earn from a mutual fund sale?

“Fifth, and finally, what is the risk tolerance of the client? What are the goals for the clients funds? How soon do they need to get at the money? We need to look at suitability. We need to take care of the client. We can argue which is better, however no one vehicle can meet all the clients needs.”

Some annuity salespeople scare people into buying an annuity. I would be willing to bet that most (notice I didn’t say ALL) annuity salespeople fail to properly explain market risk to prospect. Instead they get a prospect who is close to retirement, who has saved his money for 30-40 years, built up a nice nest egg and then ask him how much of his nest egg he can afford to lose? When the prospect naturally says, “NONE,” the salesperson is more than happy to point him to a product with a guarantee (and lots of extra fees).

Finally, I wonder how many annuity salesmen on the verge of making a big sale would actually tell a client that the annuity isn’t suitable for them? More likely, they make the sale and justify it later. No, not ALL salespeople would do this but there are those who do.

This is going to sound like a blanket statement, but most people would be better served by avoiding equity-indexed annuities. The only people I have found who even like EIAs are those who sell them.

Original post by JLP

A commenter in one of my previous kitchen remodel posts asked how I found a contractor.

It all started several years ago. We bought our house in 1999 and almost immediately we started dreaming about the stuff we wanted to do to it. Our house is nearly 50 years old and nearly every room needed some type of work. I knew that a lot of the projects were going to be way out of my league so I started thinking about a contractor (keep in mind that this was seven years ago). Anyway, I started seeing signs in different yards and all of them were for the same contractor (his name is Fred). I made a mental note of it but never made any calls.

Fast forward to 2007…

After we paid off our credit cards in 2006, we started saving money for a remodel. Then earlier this year we went to Home Depot to start to get an idea of how much our kitchen remodel was going to cost. After visiting with the Home Depot guy we got cold feet and decided to put it off for a while.

Then a couple of months later, both my dad and my father-in-law suggested we refinance our house and use the equity to finance our kitchen project. In Texas, you can’t refinance for more than 80% of the value of the home, so that you at least have a 20% equity position based on market value (yes, there’s some risk to this but that’s not the point of this post). Anyway, we decided to do this and met with our bank. Our appraisal came back pretty conservative (meaning it came in for less than I thought the house was really worth), which made me feel comfortable with the refinance. We refinanced and received our funds back in early August, which I immediately rolled over to our GMAC Bank account.

Once we had the money in hand, we decided to pursue a contractor. I called a friend of mine who works with various contractors and asked him for some names. He recommended a few that I wasn’t familiar with so I asked him about Fred. He told me that Fred was really good, but that he wasn’t cheap. He also told me that Fred had crews to do different tasks, which makes his projects go a lot faster.

My wife called Fred and scheduled a meeting with him and two other contractors. Fred really impressed us. He was older, had been doing remodels for decades, and had a good reputation. And, he would do everything. A big plus in my book.

The next guy was also qualified but left us with the impression that we would have a lot more responsibility. For instance, we would be required to hire a cabinet maker, plumber and electrician. Basically, we would be the contractor for the deal. I wasn’t comfortable with this at all. His bid came in a LOT lower than Fred’s but it didn’t include everything, so it was really hard to compare.

The third contractor never called us back and we found out through my in-laws that he was really slow. So, he was out. We didn’t want our kitchen out of commission for six months!

We called Fred back out to our house to answer some more questions and decided during that meeting that he was the man for the job.

Everyone I talked to before hiring Fred had nothing but good things to say about him. That, and the fact that I saw his signs in lots of different yards over the years, made the decision easy for me. I also liked the fact that Fred didn’t require a draw (access to our funds in order to complete the project). My big fear was a contractor running off with our money and never completing the work, which seems to be rampant in the contracting business. One lady I know hired a contractor who gutted her house and then took off! She’s out some money, has a gutted house, and now has to find another contractor to come in and finish the job.

Our job’s still not done but I can tell you that so far I have been extremely impressed by Fred and his crew. They come to work. They don’t lounge around - they work! I don’t think I have ever seen one of them standing around unless they were on a lunch break.

So, that’s my experience.

Original post by JLP

Here’s the latest pictures from our kitchen remodel. They started installing the kitchen cabinets on Thursday. You can click on the pictures to see more detail. The pictures don’t do them justice because they look incredible.

That’s my son’s hand sticking out from behind the plastic and my daughter’s yogurt sitting on the floor. The big hole in the ceiling is where they inserted a huge beam to support the ceiling since they took out a load-bearing wall.

Here’s a before picture of the family room, which is connected to the kitchen:

Although we loved the fireplace, it was too big and took up too much room. It also made it hard to arrange the furniture. So, we decided that since we were in the midst of a remodel that there would never be a better time to take it out. So,… we did!

Taking out the fireplace gave us an additional 6 feet of wall space to work with. On that wall, we will put built-in bookcases with shelving for a nice-sized flat-screen TV. The fireplace will be moved to a spot in between the family room and the kitchen, which will help tie the two rooms together and make for a really nice atmosphere. I’ll post more pictures later.

This is going to end up costing us a lot of money but I think it will be worth it.

Original post by JLP

AP - Stocks dipped a bit Friday, the last trading day of the third quarter, with Wall Street relieved about solid readings on the economy but cautious ahead of October’s corporate earnings reports.

Original post by Yahoo! News: Business

Investor’s Business Daily - For those new to CAN SLIM investing, this could be uncomfortable to hear. Some may even think its hogwash: Price-earnings ratios don't really matter.

Original post by Yahoo! News: Business

The US credit card processing industry constitutes approximately 500 companies with annual revenue that adds up to almost $10 billion. There are a few major companies in this highly concentrated industry that account for 40 percent of industry revenues.

Competitive Landscape

The industry is of course prospering, and is positioned to grow by leaps and bounds, owing to the demand driven by consumer spending. The profits garnered by an individual company depend on its quality of operations, as services are sold largely based on cost. Large companies have efficient operations with the ability to provide more services, whereas smaller companies lack economies of scale but can still compete by specializing in industries and providing custom services. The business is highly automated and capital-intensive.

Products, Operations & Technology

Third party processors not only provide their services directly to merchants but also to banks that issue credit cards to accept credit card payments. These services include authorizing, capturing, and settling merchants’ credit and debit card transactions, and handling chargebacks. Chargebacks are a result of an unsatisfied customer who disputes a charge owing to defective products, damaged products, products not received or credit card fraud. Most processors also sell or lease Point of Sale (POS) terminals. Large processors provide both merchant and card issuing services. Small processors, on the other hand, concentrate either on merchant or card issuing services, and may specialize in particular vertical markets such as credit unions or retail cards.

In a credit card transaction the cardholder uses a credit card to make a purchase. This card is swiped through a POS terminal, which transmits the card number, amount, and merchant identification number over the processor’s electronic network. This information reaches the bank that issued the card, where the verification process ensues. The cardholder account is checked for sufficient funds/credit for the purchase, followed by an authorization sent along the same network. At the end of the day the merchant sends the day’s charges in batch to its processor, which sends the information to individual banks for settlement.

The industry handles a high volume of transactions. Processors own several processing and telecommunications hubs across the country. Chief processing expenses consist of telecommunications expense, personnel, and computer network maintenance.

For more, visit here

Original post by admin

Citi has expanded its relationship with Expedia.com by introducing a new credit card. The Citi PremierPass® / Expedia.com® World MasterCard® comes in two versions: the no-fee card and the Elite card.

The benefits of the no-fee card include:

• 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers for 6 months (3% BT fee with $5 min and no cap)
• Earn up to 3x ThankYou Points when you book on Expedia
• $50 off first Expedia purchase
• 1 point for every 3 miles flown
• 1 point per $1 spent on other purchases

The features of the Elite card include:

• 0% APR on purchases for 6 months
• Earn up to 3x ThankYou Points when you book on Expedia
• $100 off first Expedia purchase
• 1 point for every 1 mile flown
• 2 points per $1 spent at supermarkets, drug stores and gas stations
• 1 point per $1 spent on other purchases
• Complimentary companion tickets
• $75 annual fee

These cards represent slight variations from the existing Citi PremierPass cards. The primary differences seem to be:

• The initial signup bonuses come in the form of Expedia discounts ($50/$100) versus points (10,000/20,000)
• The spending requirements to get the signup bonuses (only a single purchase for the Expedia-branded cards vs. $100/$500 in spending for the regular PremierPass cards)
• The bonuses for Expedia-related spending
• The intro 0% offers: Currently the standard no-fee PremierPass card offers a 15 month 0% balance transfer offer (3% fee with $5 min and no cap) while the standard Premier Pass Elite card does not offer any intro rate for either purchases or BTs.

For more information on the Expedia cards, see here and here.

Original post by ccwatcher

There are certain features of credit cards which may provide card companies with additional revenue, but are major pains for those who succumb to problems they create. One of these is a method sometimes used to calculate interest which is called the two cycle average daily balance practice.

What does this long name mean? It’s actually very simple. Say you have a card with a $1000 balance and 15% APR. Your interest for the month is simple - $150/12 = $12.50. Easy. With the two cycle average daily balance, it takes into consideration what your balance was the prior month as well. If that number was higher, this process averages the two balances and you’ll end up having more interest tacked on to your bill. Not fun.

It is possible that this process can work to your advantage. If your balances were reversed ($1000 the first month and $1500 the second), you’d actually be paying interest on $1250 instead of $1500, which isn’t bad.

Regardless, this is a somewhat complex way of generating interest on card balances, which need to be watched very closely in order to avoid paying unnecessary. In order to simplify your life and interest calculations, just avoid cards with this feature!

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Original post by Platinum Stud

AP - The International Monetary Fund chose France’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn as its new leader Friday to face questions of the organization’s relevance in a world that seems to need it less and less.

Original post by Yahoo! News: Business

Reuters - Forecasters are busy churning out new and
gloomier economic predictions because of a global credit crunch
whose outcome nobody can be sure of until financial conditions
normalize and uncertainty subsides.

Original post by Yahoo! News: Business

Click here to read all of the 33 Days And 33 Ways To Save Money And Reduce Debt posts.

Day 22: The Emergency Fund

A brief history of my Emergency Fund -

Before I decided to get out of debt, I did not have an emergency fund.  I lived “paycheck-to-paycheck” and if things got “tight” at the end of the month, I would whip out the old credit card and “solve that month’s money problem”.  Of course, all that I was doing was pushing one month’s problem into the next month, and so on and so on.

When I finally decided to get my financial house in order, the first thing I did was establish a mini-emergency fund.  I sold things on eBay, I had a yard sale, and I started living on a strict budget.  Very quickly, I was able to put $1000 into my savings account.  (Click here and here to read about times when I had to dip into my emergency fund.)

After getting out of debt, my next goal was to build up a big-time emergency fund.  I wanted enough money in my fund so that if my wife or I lost our job, our family would be taken care of and neither of us would have to rush out and take a job that we didn’t enjoy.  After some consideration, I settled on the nice round amount of $20,000.  I spent the next several months piling up cash and putting it into savings.  I never really considered interest rates.  My goal was to a have a readily available cash supply, set aside for  a true emergency.

Now that I am maxing out my retirement contributions and education savings account contributions, my emergency fund is just “sitting” in my savings account, earning interest.  I don’t really worry about how much interest it makes, because this money is not to be used for investing or spending.  Nope.  The money in my emergency fund is for - you guessed it - emergencies!

I also have a small amount of cash in non-retirement, long-term savings.  I have divided this amount between a standard brokerage account and my online savings account.  Each year, after I max-out my retirement and education savings contributions, I will then pile up as much cash as I can in my brokerage account and my savings account.  This money will be used for future “major purchases” - cars, furniture, etc.  My super-long-term goal is to buy a house - with cash!

If you have written a post about ‘an emergency fund’, contact me and I’ll be happy to link to your post.

Leave a comment about the security of having “an emergency fund”.

Click here to read all of the 33 Days And 33 Ways To Save Money And Reduce Debt posts.

Original post by NCN

AP - Germany’s IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG, hit badly by its exposure to the U.S. subprime lending crisis, said Friday its first-quarter profits fell nearly 67 percent.

Original post by Yahoo! News: Business

Not sure which is more entertaining the dyslexic nature of the ads (coffee, moms and Stargate) or the huge list of ads at the end … holy crap what a great user experience …

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Original post by Michael Gray

One of the problems I have with people who work in the social media space is that they use it simply to boost their own ego. It’s time for some tough love, creating linkbait in the SEO social media space is like joining in an incestuous circle jerking link orgy. While there is some content that has value, 95% of the work is meaningless for any thing other than self satisfaction.

If you’re one of those people writing 3.1416 ways to optimize your blog titles with wordpress plugin THX-1137 and you’ll triple your subscribers with some meaningless traffic ponzi scheme, I’m talking to you. Are you really creating and writing something of value that hasn’t already been said before? If you hesitate for even a second thinking about it, I think you need to re-examine your approach.

When I make criticism like this, people often reply hey Gray I’m not writing for you, I’m writing for my current or potential clients to show them we understand the space and how things work. To that I respond how things work in SEO-land is not anything like how they work in the rest of the world. Getting links in SEO-ville is much easier than getting links in competitive industries like finance or health & fitness.

If you’re really interested in pitching a job to a potential client, which do you think is more impressive, the traffic you got to your SEO blog from your egobait, or how you took a travel blog less than 30 days old and brought it 30,000 visitors in one week.

Do you think your client wants to see examples of you promoting yourself, or see click-heatmaps showing the 20,000 people who came from a social media site visited other pages and hit the back button after the first page, because it was completly off topic for a B2B website?

Ask yourself this question are you better off spending your time building something for yourself, that has commercial value, and will build you a passive income from defensible traffic? Or should you spend your time creating a personality based on digital vapor, that has no long term value, and zero chances of ever rescouping time/energy/effort you put into it?

If you do, then go ahead spend your afternoon concentrating on writing yet another post thats been done 52 times before, it makes it so much easier for me to play in commercial spaces when there is less competition.

Sponsor: SEO Phone Consulting Direct one on one q

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Original post by Michael Gray

AFP - The European Union's economy commissioner said in a newspaper interview Friday the bloc is worried about the low level of the dollar against the euro.

Original post by Yahoo! News: Business

AP - Japan’s economic recovery remains on track despite figures Friday that showed a jump in the nation’s jobless rate and a continued decline in consumer prices, the economy minister said.

Original post by Yahoo! News: Business

AP - KB Home, one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, swung to a loss Thursday, citing a deep deterioration in the housing market and warning the sales slump will likely extend into next year.

Original post by Yahoo! News: Business

AP - Rite Aid Corp.’s second-quarter loss widened sharply and the drug store chain warned Thursday it expects to lose more than it previously forecast for the year.

Original post by Yahoo! News: Business

AFP - The US economy carried strong momentum into the mid-year credit storm, expanding at a 3.8 percent pace in the second quarter even as housing remained weak, a revised estimate showed Thursday.

Original post by Yahoo! News: Business