In his long series of posts, Alex King has been looking at how to monetize his blog. In this article that I suggest you look at, you will see how he struggles with the idea, but finally accepts that, to continue what he is doing, some degree of monetization is going to help.

He looks at some great ways to monetize and analyzes their success or failure, both monetarily and in terms of his own philosophy. I’ve always respected Alex King’s blog as both highly original and very quality focused. He writes:

When I first launched alexking.org back in 2002, I didn’t plan to make any money from it or do any advertising on it. …

Much has changed since then, primarily the fact I no longer have a “day job” and this is no longer “stuff I do in my spare time”. Instead, this is “stuff I turn down paying work to do”. I have no expectations of getting fully compensated for the content, software and plugins I make freely available here, but if I can bring in a couple of bucks through ads and donations it helps me justify the time I spend on these projects.

Highly recommended overview of some of the issues related to monetization. Well worth reading, too. Hence, this is my more reading article of the day!

As many of you know, I recently started switching much of my cash deposits from low-yielding accountings where interests rates rated a paltry 0.4% or 0.5%. I didn’t realize how much money I was throwing away until I started researching high yield savings accounts.

When we are busy following our chosen paths in life, we rarely stop to read the fine print of most things: that bank account, the new credit card agreement that just came in, an insurance policy, or whatever. Yet such vigilance can really pay when it comes to your money.

In fact, many checking accounts and standard bank deposit accounts now regularly pay out rates that are L-O-W even by regular standards. So, how is a customer supposed to know whether the rates are great or not?

Well, eMoneyCentral.com is one great website that provides information in all states in the US and offers comparison tables that you can check regularly. A few minutes research on this website should be able to reap considerable dividends over the long term. After all, there’s a big difference between 0.5% and 5.5%, esp. once it accumulates over 20 years! So, spend a few minutes today checking out rates, and save a ton of money!

This ‘high interest’ post was sponsored by eMoneyCentral.com.

I came across this rather interesting story on the NYTimes blogs by David Pogue: It’s a house that heats and cools itself naturally. While I won’t summarize the story here or indeed post selected contents. To read the story, you can click on this link, but I’ll point out some of the interesting aspects that might make a house like this appeal to investorbloggers.

The idea of the construction is simply to use an abundant material from a renewable resource to construct a house that itself is environmentally neutral, needing no energy to cool it in summer or warm it in winter. In fact, the temperature is influenced by the convection effect as well as proximity to the ground to cool or warm the house. Traditional insulation is typically avoided in the walls to enhance ‘flow through’ of the convection currents. The secret lies in a wood called southern yellow pine that contains a lot of resin that naturally occurs in the South.

Naturally avoiding the use of heating or cooling systems in houses would help cut fuel bills dramatically, as the home heats and cools itself without depending on electricity or electronic temperature management systems. I’m not sure how much of a traditional utility bill could be eliminated via this kind of house, but even raising base temperatures inside in winter or cooling in summer could significantly reduce the amount of additional heat or cooling required.

Combine this with external resources wind power or solar power to generate electricity for additional uses such as tvs, lighting and other lower power modern tools, and you could have a house that is virtually fuel free. It generates as much power and heating as it needs from completely renewable resources.

If this were not enough, you get them to build albeit a standard form house on your land, from $60K to about $200K (or more for some models), and you’d get a house that would more than likely pay for itself just in fuel bill savings alone. Throw in a unique house on your own land, and you would likely have some price appreciation, and gains in value just for putting the project together. Of course, you’d need to install a solar panel or two and/or a wind turbine (neither of these is cheap), but you’d never have to fork out for utility bills in milder months. And you’d like get tax benefits, subsidies or credits as well!

Would anyone like to comment on typical fuel bills for 2 bedroom houses/apartments in the States per month? I have no idea what these are at all!