Making Money

Ideas for making money, including my own business, websites, and ideas!

Stock Brokers: Which online brokers can YOU use?

Posted by

2

There’re a lot of good sources of information on brokers for those who live (‘reside’) in the UK or US. But what about those of us who “don’t qualify”?

Are you NOT a US Resident? Oops, I’m sorry… We can’t help you.

Look no further. I’ve done a little research from the SmartMoney’s Annual Broker Survey, and not surprisingly they are listing a number of well known companies, newcomers and upcomers… But the list is ABSOLUTELY NO USE, if you are not a Resident of the United States nor a citizen.

I won’t go into why this is silly, but suffice to say, the lower the price of trades, the less likely the broker will accept international clients, like you and me. At least that was the rule, now it’s not so clearcut.

From the original 16 listed brokers, I’m making my own list of InvestorBlogger’s Short List of Brokers who accept International Clients (i.e. non-resident, non-U.S. citizen investors who would like to trade the U.S. markets).

  • 1. ETrade: One of the first brokers I applied, too. They approved my application, but the service wasn’t great then. It should be now.
  • 2. TDAmeritrade: Where my current brokers’ account is held. Fast, lots of resources. Service is available, but somehow distant.
  • 3. Charles Schwab: Did consider them, but they have quiet higher initial requirements, or at least did. You do have to register through their one of their international sites, not from the US site.

Other Serious Contenders included,

  • 4. FirstTrade also offers International clients trading services.
  • 5. OptionsXpress would allow me to register and fund an account, which was a surprise. They have branches in different countries, including Singapore
  • 6. Interactive Brokers allowed me to register, but I never completed the applications. I should have. The service allows you to trade many markets, not just the US.

7. Sogotrade, Zecco, Banc of America, all had slightly fussy processes or requirements but at least welcomed international investors.

One of the problems was finding the information. Often sites would require you to hand over your email address without stating clearly that you would be able to then register for an account. Other sites had the information hidden away in Help files or FAQs. Still others didn’t say openly that they accepted international investors, or directed me to ‘international sites’ which wasn’t helpful, (yes, you, Fidelity!).

I would strongly suggest that you read through the websites to find the best deals, the markets you want to trade, though the application requirements for most accounts are pretty similar:

  • 1. passport copy;
  • 2. proof of address;
  • 3. an application form;
  • 4. a W-8BEN form (for the IRS); and
  • 5. minimum account funding (at least!)

Once you register, you won’t have access to the full-range of US products, either such as IRAs or other accounts/services because of legal restrictions. But if you are in a country with a tax-treaty arrangement with the US, this may not be an issue!

Disclaimer: I’m a satisfied customer of TDAmeritrade, but there are no affiliate links in this post.

Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

Posted by

About the author: Emilia Johansson works with AffiliateTips.com on a daily basis. She has many years of experience in affiliate marketing and has been working with different online projects since 1998.

What can we never can get enough of? For sure, it’s time and money. It’s sad to see that a big part of the American population spend more time working than they do with their family. Adding to our concern is the fact that the yearly cost of living increases around eight to ten percent while the income only increases around two to three percent. As this is happening before our eyes many seek a job by the side to get an extra income. This is where affiliate marketing comes in as it’s a great way to make with the Internet.

What’s great about affiliate marketing is that it’s easy to do and the start-up costs are exceptionally low. Time will also be on your side – as the Rolling Stones said. Many have been so successful with affiliate marketing that they’ve been able to quit their day jobs and started working from home instead. There are however a few things one has to take into consideration while working as an affiliate. Read this article in order to get tips and tricks about everything from how to find affiliate programs to how you get heard in the crowd.

How to Find Affiliate Programs

The first thing you have to do if you want to work as an affiliate is of course to find an affiliate program. How does one know what affiliate program to choose as there’s thousands to decide from? Start with having a look at your website or blog. What segment are you an opinion leader in and who are your visitors? If it’s education you’re passionate about then you should look for great education affiliate programs. Don’t stare yourself blind on the commissions either, conversions are just as important if not even more. When you’ve done this you’re up to a great start – now you have to get noticed.

Getting Noticed With a Blog

As many blogs are offered for free it’s an extremely inexpensive way to make money as an affiliate. Create a blog which is dedicated to a specific topic, preferably something you feel passionate about. To get a rank on the search engines you need to update your blog on a daily basis and put in specific keywords which are relevant for your niche.

Money making affiliate marketers working with blogs place specific ads or banners on their site. What these ads have in common is that they are all relevant to the blog’s content. For example, if you write about education, you really only should have ads which in some way is related to the topic. It’s the only way you’ll make money with affiliate marketing.

Devote Yourself to The Merchant

Another way many affiliates make money is through creating a website which is entirely devoted to some specific merchant’s products. These websites are, as blogs, inexpensive to make but they require knowledge about how a website is created. If you know this then you can promote products through writing about news happening in the industry, events and if you’re really good it’s not a bad idea to tailor the site to a specific brand and its products.

Even more important here than with blogs, is that you know how to work with search engine optimization. If you have this know-how you’ll be able to maximize your traffic and hopefully also increase your income immensely.

We hope we’ve been able to help you a little bit with your dreams of working at home. Of course, success isn’t going to happen over a night but if you stick to it you might soon be able to work from home as an affiliate!

This is a guest post by Emilia Johansson from AffiliateTips.com.

Financial Bearings: Where am I heading?

Posted by

2

I have been an online investor since 1998, but I have yet to make any serious money. I invested in the run up to the millennium, only to find myself too busy to take care of my stocks in the months following the peak. At one point, my holdings reached nearly $21K in value, but then in 2002 they collapsed to a little over $8K. Since then, with rising stock prices, and a change in philosophy, I’ve clawed my way back in several aspects.

Shifted to Dividend Bearing stocks

That was the biggest shift I made. And it now produces about $100 per month gross (before taxes) for my account, which is not a bad return on the current value. I’m currently holding these stocks in my dividend portfolio, some of which now offer very attractive dividend rates.

current stocks

I actually don’t know how much sense this portfolio makes for other people, but somehow it is comforting when the stock market is being creamed to check your account and see a regular income in dividends from your stocks. After losing a lot in the dot com crash, I currently find this preferable to picking stocks out of thin air. This portfolio has varied been $11K and $14K in value over the past few years, but with me being over 15% still in cash, the returns have still been quite respectable.

Paying Off Loans

We’ve nearly paid off our car loan, and we’re likely to start making other changes to our personal finances in the coming months. We now are considering paying off our mortgage quicker than usual, and we have several creative options that we are looking at.

With about NT$2.3 million still outstanding, a rising interest rate, it is tempting to shift more money into paying off our mortgage. Clearly considering the opportunity cost is something we’ll have to look at. Do we need the money elsewhere? Our salaries haven’t increased much over the last five years, though our life quality has improved in many ways. Therefore, inflation hasn’t really helped to mitigate our mortgage payment much. Lower interest rates initially helped, but with higher inflation rates creeping through most people are beginning to feel the pinch with higher oil prices, utility and food payments, and mortgages.

In the Biz column

Our business is financially ticking along at a slightly higher notch than in the previous two years, but it still hasn’t generated enough free cash to really amount to much. I had the depressing experience of comparing our financials to a number of companies, and realized that our business, though light in debt, still is relatively under capitalized. We are profitable, we do manage to budget our expenses well, and we are consistently beating budgets, but we are still trying to make up for the last three years poor performance when costs jumped out of control, and sales stagnated (that’s a position I don’t want to be in again, I can assure you!).

So we’re looking at a number of options to boost our business’ coffers, including short-term lending, better term deposit rates, and shoring up income. This should help in the long term, but it’s going to be a few years, before we find ourselves in the ‘healthy financials’ column.

Online Business

It’s been quite exhilarating online to reach the US$10K mark in entire earnings. In fact, that money is now sitting in the bank, earning a pittance. I’m planning to start using the money to generate more money (it’s all part of a money cascade… part of my philosophy!) where trickles of income flow back to create waves, then torrents of cash! Who knows if it will work? Part of the money has already been used to buy a new stock in my portfolio – more details later. More of the money helped open a new CD in my bank at about 2.2% (the best available at the moment in NTD). But the bulk really is just sitting there.

The bigger challenge is finding a real product that I can sell: I’ve had some success as an affiliate for Amazon racking up nearly $1K worth of book sales, and other smaller incomes, but running this blog has proven that it’s quite difficult for me to convert clicks. How difficult? Well, I’ve yet to sign up a single affiliate for any of my hosting plans (BlueHost or Dreamhost); I haven’t any ClickBank sales either. I keep feeling that I should persist with this to figure out the way to do affiliate sales, so that future online business opportunities become possible…

Any suggestions?