Newsbites

Newsbytes: Interest, income and AdWords

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Well, it’s a real long time since I did a newspost for InvestorBlogger. But here it is… what’s going on with InvestorBlogger?

July Income Report: Changes Afoot

July was less than a stellar month on income for InvestorBlogger, bringing in an approx. $471.12. I’ll be including this but from July 1st I’ll be reporting on a strictly CASH basis. In other words, only money or cash that is received in my accounts will be recorded as an income. Affiliate income that is not paid out will be noted, but since different affiliate programs and advertising vendors have varying payout regulations, it will not be counted.

Only when I have the cash in one of my accounts, PayPal or Broker or Bank, will I record it in my cash received column. Unfortunately this will mean that some income will be double counted as I haven’t received it yet cash-wise, but counted it earlier as ‘income’. So I will keep an informal record towards the end of 2008, but from July 1st I will be releasing official results shortly!

  • Bank Interest    $27.06
  • Stockbroker    $122.50
  • Blogging    $97.50
  • Advertising   $165.04
  • Consulting    $59.02
  • Total: $471.12

Google AdWords: Does it make Ad Sense?

One of the new things I’m trying is bringing traffic from AdWords. I finally signed up for a Google AdWords account; had my cards accepted and am now running ads for one of my pages. it’s pretty easy to set up, I was surprised. I’ve set up five different ads with different styles advertising my Make Money page. I’ve already had 6 clickthroughs already. I’m not expecting the campaign to yield any real traffic but so far the clicks are clicking away just as fast! 🙁

Perhaps the links on the page are too confusing or there are just too many links on that page. Anyway, at least I’m now learning the ropes of using AdWords type words. I am beginning to think up new ways to monetize this, but it’s all very new to me! Any tips? Any one?

I’ll be doing a post on this shortly once I have enough clicks to write a proper story about the whole thing!

Maxxing things out: The only way to go!

It’s true – I haven’t maximized the earnings on some fronts. In fact, I checked through my accounts and figured that I could be earning about $23 more per month, just by putting more of my ‘stagnant’ cash in better earning accounts. In fact, I just double checked my figures and found out that my savings are ‘less-‘ optimized. With the money in the brokerage account, I figure I could earn about another $7 per month.

Here’s to maximizing the income! Anyway, next time you get your interest statement, make sure that your account is getting a decent rate! It’s easy to be too busy and overlook such ‘little’ things: truth is, you’re only cheating yourself if you do.

Best Wishes,
Kenneth

Videos: Credit Default Swaps – the next crisis?

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These two videos attracted my interest. Have you heard of Credit Default Swaps? If not, read (watch) on…

Part 2.

There’s more on Wikipedia, too. So what is a Credit Default Swap?

"A credit default swap (CDS) is a credit derivative contract between two counterparties, whereby one makes periodic payments to the other and receives the promise of a payoff if a third party defaults. The former party receives credit protection and is said to be the "buyer" while the other party provides credit protection and is said to be the "seller". The third party is known as the "reference entity".

When a credit event in the reference entity is triggered, the protection seller either takes delivery of the defaulted bond for the par value (physical settlement) or pays the protection buyer the difference between the par value and recovery amount of the bond (cash settlement). Simply, the risk of default is transferred from the buyer to the seller.

For example, ABC Corporation may have its credit default swaps currently trading at 265 basis points (bp). In other words, the annual cost to insure 10 million euros of its debt would be 265,000 euros. If the same CDS had been trading at 7 bp a year before, it would indicate that markets now view ABC as facing a greater risk of default on its obligations.

Credit default swaps resemble an insurance policy, as they can be used by debt owners to hedge, or insure against credit events (such as a default) on a credit asset. However, because there is no requirement to actually hold any asset or suffer a loss, credit default swaps can also be used for speculative purposes."

This is interesting stuff, how have we built such a house of cards? …

Carnival of Making REAL Money Issue #21 on August 1st, 2008

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These articles are presented for the Carnival of Making REAL Money edition for August 1st, 2008. Because there are only a few articles for this edition, I’ve only organized a few categories! Thank you for your excellent submissions and keep them coming! Summer time is no time to forget about personal finance, that’s for sure!

Personal Finance

Online Earnings

Investing

CALL for Submissions

I’m definitely looking for articles that are readable, inspiring, and well-written for readers who may or may not have much investing or financial knowledge. Articles will cover making money in the real world, as well as online; being in business; making investments; making money through smart decisions; and aspects of personal finance, etc.. It is NOT about dieting, surveys, drugs, selling things, what you ate last night or any of a myriad of irrelevant topics. If you are not sure what is accepted, read the previous carnivals. It seems that a number of people don’t bother to follow the policy… As such, …

  • Your article must be original and previously unpublished in this carnival. I like to maintain a variety of sources and topics, I will only accept one article per person per blog. — If you submit MORE THAN TWO articles to any edition of this carnival, ALL your submissions will be eliminated without hesitation. Repeated multiple submissions to this carnival will mean that your articles and/or your behavior are spam-enough to blacklist your blog from this carnival.
  • In short, submit ONE article from one blog once only.
  • Spam: Articles must be unique, ideally hosted on a full-blog (ideally not on a subdomain of blogspot, blogger, etc.). If you are serious about your blog, then find a real blog host on a real domain.
  • Comments MUST be enabled on any post submitted to the carnival and registration must NOT be required: I’m hoping that we generate interest in the submissions and that traffic generates comments. Let’s not frustrate our readers.
  • Please, do include a comment about your article for your readers. Even if it’s just a few words, it will help me to know that your article is not a spam submission!
  • Additional reasons for not inclusion: popup/popover/popunder windows, URLs that time-out, missing articles or moved pages, articles that make NO sense, any music/tracks/voice-overs that auto-play, articles that REQUIRE registration before reading and/or commenting.
  • All editorial decisions are final. If you wish to know why I didn’t accept your original entry, please contact me via the contact form.

In short, I run this blog carnival in my free time, I receive no money for this activity, so I’d appreciate as much consideration as possible. It would be nice if you acknowledge the blog carnival somewhere on your website! Anywhere, it doesn’t matter: in a post, in the post you submitted, in the blogroll, etc.. or you can do a separate post when the post is published. This helps to drive traffic to the carnival, where people can find your posts!

In short, thank you for taking the time to consider submitting ana rticle

Best Wishes

Kenneth from Carnival of Making REAL Money