Dickson English House: Our New Banner

Posted by

Picture1

This is our new banner which we have hung up on the local wall near our school to attract attention. It’s quite colorful. I wish I could say that I designed it all, but I nearly did. With a little help from Microsoft, Istockphotos, and myself, we managed to come up with a design that was fairly attractive.

Of course, I hadn’t realized that Publisher wouldn’t create larger publications, so we had to go the vector graphics route to get the scale! But it turned out quite nicely. The most expensive part of the whole process turned out to be hiring the truck to help put it up as you’ll see in the next photo.

Don’t underestimate the benefits of offline advertising. While we spend similar amounts of money doing online advertising, we find that even where we are in one of the more wired countries on earth, traditional advertising methods do seem to get you noticed faster.

Kenneth

InvestorBlogger’s MoneySpinners 2009

Posted by

This is the Investorblogger’s MoneySpinners for 2009… It’s simple I will tell you where I made money in 2009 on my websites, and where I didn’t.

I’ve rated the means in two ways.

By Income over the year

  • <$ = less than ten dollars
  • $ = ten to fifty dollars
  • $$ = fifty to two hundred dollars
  • $$$ = two hundred ~ five hundred dollars
  • $$$$ = five hundred dollars ~ one thousand.
  • >$$$$ = more than a thousand dollars in 2009

and also by effectiveness. In other words,

  1. was I paid promptly (one star);
  2. is it regular income (one star);
  3. easy to implement/maintain (one star);
  4. prospects for future income (one star);
  5. and no hassle factor (one star).

These are aggregate numbers and I make no apologies if I get them wrong! But I’ve done quite well in the past six months and in the first six months. I will likely post an income report for the 2H in a few weeks once the final figures are in.

Item # Means Rating Effectiveness
1 Private Ads $$$$ *****
2 Amazon $$ ***
3 Hosting $$$ ***
4 Consulting $$$ **
5 BlogRolled $ ***
6 BuySellAds <$ *
7 PayU2blog >$$$$ ****
8 Text-Link-Ads >$$$$ *****
9 Clickbank <$ *
10 InTelliLinks $$$ ****
11 Linkworth $$ **
12 LoudLaunch $$ *
13 PayPerPost <$ *
14 SocialSpark <$ *
15 Adsense $ **
16 ProjectWonderful <$ *
17 Adwidgetize $ ***
18 Entrecard <$ *
       

There is no particular order to these sources of income, rather I posted them as I thought of them. It’s worth noting that things vary:

1. Izea and Payperpost Properties

Payperpost was initially a very good way to earn money online but in the past year just became a waste of space. Socialspark never had any potential for me at all. I barely made payout, then quit because it was so hard to find opps. For me, the death knell of Izea was the increased use of regional segmentation which ruled me out, not because of my audience (largely US) but because I was based in Asia. The final convulsion was their ‘experimental’ changes at the beginning of 2009. I was very thankful though because I met some great bloggers, discovered some good opportunities and learned how to blog. For that, plus earning nearly $2000 with PPP, I will always be thankful.

2. Entrecard, Adsense,

Entrecard, both as a means to attract traffic and earn money, wobbled seriously several times in 2009, such that many bloggers left the system, and removed the widget. I was sorry because it did bring me some good traffic, but it just became too troublesome with the rules changing every week, as well as the feature set.

Adsense also produced relatively little, as I removed the ad boxes from almost all of my sites. I was being smart-priced by the Adsense system, which I thought was unfair. In my opinion, it’s best to cut losers early, and go with the winners, so I started using my private ad sales to generate income.

3. Amazon vs. Clickbank

Amazon worked much better than Clickbank, though commissions were quite low. I never did break into the 6% range. But I’m increasingly interested in Amazon as a possible source of income, because of its leverage and familiarity to users. On the other hand, the niches I picked for Clickbank just did not work. I ended up being my only purchaser! Even Amazon did better than CB on the niche site I started.

4. The Big Winners

The big winners for me in 2009 have been Text-Link-Ads on several sites in my network, Intellilinks on several sites, PayU2blog on one site, and my own private ad sales on several sites. Each of these has chalked up quite a bit of cash, even though IntelliLinks came on the scene quite late.

And 2010, well, who knows? Literally, I expect the big winners will start off 2010 strongly, but I’m already planning for the next phase as I move away from Blogging to running standalone sites. I’m using SBI (as some of you may already know), because of its keyword research tools.

A Great Time to Buy Your First House? 5 Tips To Consider

Posted by

In the general economic climate in 2010, for many first time house buyers, this period represents an excellent opportunity to buy a house (new or existing) at a very attractive price in some of the most livable places in their country: though deposits are higher, asking prices are way off their highs, they have multiple choices of properties, initial mortgage rates are very low compared to historical rates, making properties really affordable, if you are a first time buyer.

What’s the risk?

But interest rates are now beginning to creep up slowly in various parts of the world. Central banks are fighting a very difficult balancing act right now: between deflationary recession and inflationary demand, because the usual tools to fight inflation have been relaxed so much. The risk is: if the double-dip is avoided, that rates will rise dramatically from current levels back to historical averages at least to stem the inflationary commodity price spikes.

Get Ready for Higher Rates

For first time buyers, this will mean: increased payments in their mortgage payments. I am enjoying the benefits of the extra 10-20% reduction in my own payments, but am quite sanguine that early next year we’ll see some upward increments in the rates. First time buyers will need to prepare themselves for the return to higher mortgage rates at some point in the next 12 months. What can a first time buyer do?

Fixed Rate Mortgage

Consider locking in rates with a fixed-rate mortgage loan. Why? Simply because the fixed rate mortage will keep payments at the same level for the life of the mortgage. With both mortgage rates and inflation likely to rise in the longer term, the payments will become relatively cheaper over time.

The additional benefit is that, if you know you are going to live in the same house for a long time, you will probably see a rise in nominal house value and cheaper relative mortage payments (because inflation will mean higher pay rises and costs).

And rates right now, albeit higher than Adjustable Rate Mortgages, are quite attractive. One site is featuring rates from 4.75% for 30 years and 4.25% for 15 year fixed rate mortgages (of course, a number of assumptions are made including your credit scores, profession, locality, etc.) so you may find rates more expensive than these numbers.

Increase Your Down Payment

First, figure out how much of the downpayment they can afford to make for their house purchase. The more the better your initial rate will be, and the less you will have to pay in additional rates when rises do come. I wouldn’t recommend any 100% mortages EVER, because of the increased risk that you might face. Try to pay out an initial 10% or even 20% of your house price on purchase, and don’t be tempted to fold additional niceties into the loan amount.

If you have been saving for a few years during the heat of the boom years, you will by now have saved a reasonably large amount. If you haven’t, don’t worry. There is still plenty of time to save money as these lowered prices are going to be with us for some time, at least until the recovery is well underway (in 2011?). So get started saving.

Make Regular Additional Payments

Making regular additional payments against your principal will, depending on your type of agreement and the TOS, mean that your interest payments will go down longer term. It also means that the term to repayment will shorten, and should help save a bundle of cash over the longer term. It’s like being given a surprise payment as the returns on each lump sum payment are pretty attractive. And certainly much more attractive than sticking the money in the bank at 1% pa.

Buy Desirable Property

Overall, I’d be looking to be desirable property, if I were living in the US and househunting. Why? Because it’s all too easy in a down market to only look at the sticker price, but to protect your house value, you will need a keen eye to see the potential purchase in terms of its market position today, and tomorrow. So don’t go looking in the bargain basement section of the real estate market. Those items are usually priced like that FOR A REASON.

Avoid Home Equity Loans

Once you buy your property, avoid taking out additional home equity loans on the house, especially if your initial downpayment was low. It will add to your overall payments each month and rates are much higher than regular mortgages. If you must renovate some or all of your house, try to do it from sources of funds (savings) that don’t put your own equity in the house at risk.

Disclaimer: InvestorBlogger is a homeowner, but doesn’t claim any professional knowledge as such of property markets or lending. Do your own research before you make any decisions.This post is sponsored.