Dealing with effects of today's economy

I recently read an article about a company that was laying off a significant number of workers. As part of their settlement package, they would be offered almost a 12 months of pay.

That seems like a lot but in this economy they would still be on the edge. Especially since jobs are so hard to come by. Sometimes that means making drastic changes to ones lifestyle. That's where a company that specializes in debt relief comes in. And you have a variety of options including debt consolidation, debt settlement, a consumer proposal and finally, as a last option, bankruptcy.

Before you chose do anything and possibly make things worse, you should contact a Certified Debt Specialist like Shelia Cockburn Esq. With a law degree from Fordham University, Ms. Cochburn has over 8 years dealing with litigation and prosecution matters in the areas of debt collections, business transactions and intellectual property. She is licensed to practice law in both the U.S. and Canada.

While Cockburn & Associate, LLP is Debt Settlement for Canadians company, they use principals that anyone could use. Check out their blog and read the articles and help yourself get out of debt.

Helpful hints with GPT

I just told you how to use a get paid to try site to your advantage. My biggest piece of advice would be to not cheat! If you cheat, your entire account will be forfeited! You'll do all of that work and not get paid for any of it. The worse part is that you'll get all of this extra mail for nothing. Your signups won't be considered invalid, you just won't get paid.

If you have any questions about how gpt's work ask me. I'll explain the best way I can.

Earn extra money when you get paid to try

I know all about Get Paid To Try because I've done it in the past. And yes you do make money from it! Want to find out how? Well keep reading because I'm going to tell you.

With gpt you sign up and get $20 as soon as you fulfill the member bonus. Then you complete member surveys and earn even more money. I know you're thinking it's not real but trust me, it is. You can earn $20 or $200 or even more it's your choice. How much time do you want to spend per day or week. Do you want to spread the money over a certain time period? After you decide that it's smooth sailing. Click here to begin earning money today! You'll see just how easy it is when you get your first couple of payouts.

The best part is that they usually have a referral bonus. Once you're a member in good standing you can refer other people. When they complete offers you get a percentage of their earnings. These earnings are for the life of their membership. So once you complete all of the offers that you can, your referrals can bring in extra cash month after month. It's a great residual earnings plan. Just sit there and think of how many of your friends that your can get to sign up.

What are you waiting for? Get out there and start recruiting people. But first you've got to sign up yourself. Start earning some extra cash now.

Run your business from anywhere

That's right anywhere in the world. Even if you're a small or mid-range business. You can operate your business from anywhere in the world. Going on vacation and worried about your e-commerce site? That's where Servora.com comes in. They can integrate everything into one system that cuts costs, offer convenience and creates efficiency. Try their new on demand application today and run your business from anywhere.

Do you follow your horoscope?

Do you follow your horoscope? Do you believe the things that it says. I know some days it seems like the advice was made just for me and is targeted strictly to me. There is a facebook page where you can follow your Biotrend - Facebook Horoscope. If you believe in astrology this page is a must read. It's very interesting and you won't be disappointed in it.

Give it a try and then come back and tell me how accurate it is. Spooky isn't it?

Have you signed up for Social Spark yet?

I know I did. I was actually a little disappointed that it took me so long to get accepted into SocialSpark. But it was definitely worth the wait. You do know what Social Spark is right? Here I am rambling on and you don't know what I'm talking about.

First was PayPerPost. Then the team decided to expand and the main company became IZEA. Then the IZEA team decided that they wanted to come up with a product that wouldn't affect the search engines. They decided that no-following links would work. But some advertisers still wanted the all might page rank. So the team decided that they would keep PPP and start a new company. That's when SocialSpark was born. The advertisers still get a great way to advertise their sites, and the search engines don't get manipulated by the links.

But that's not even the best part. The best part is that they'll pay you for your blog posts. If your blog is 90 old with regular posts you probably qualify. Need more to get convinced? There's an awesome blogging community that stands by IZEA. You can ask questions about the site, get somebody to help you with your blog or blogging problems or just chat in general. I'm sure the message board is my favorite feature because I spend so much time there. I've met some great people and found some awesome blogs that I wouldn't have ordinarily found.

If you're not a member of SocialSpark you should really get over there and sign up now.

Wanna hear a bad oyster joke?

I only know bad jokes. Not bad as in lewd but bad as in what a corny joke kinda joke. Anyway here's the joke: What did the girl oyster say to the boy oyster? You never open up to me. See I told you it was bad. I told the joke to find out if you like Gulf oysters. Oysters are an excellent source of zinc, vitamin B-12, and omega-3 fatty acids as well as being a low calorie protein source. However you should avoid oysters if you have liver disease, diabetes or a weak immune system.

You can eat oysters fried, broiled, grilled, steamed and of course, raw. But whatever way you choose to indulge, make sure you're Oyster Aware.

Do you need help with a non-profit job search?

Have you tried execsearches.com? It's a service established in 1999 connecting job seekers with employers. They are a non-profit jobs board for mid-level, fundraising, and executives in nonprofit organizations. It's free for job seekers. For recruiters there's a $99 fee to post their first job. Their e-newsletter is published weekly and is packed with articles and new non-profit jobs. Best of all, it's free. If you're looking for a job in the world of non-profits, check out execsearches.com

Would you look for a Russian Bride?

There's a large segment of the population that have a big preference for Russian women. Now there's a place where they can go to find women that meet their criteria. Loversplanet is a new website that features Russian women. You can use their search parameters to look for women from a certain country, by age or even their views about children.

The site charges a flat fee, no letters or credits to buy! You then have access to thousands of womens profiles across the site. But you can view the site and search to see what they offer before you pay. If you're looking for Russian women to possibly start a connection with, why not try to site out for free. Who knows, you might find that one perfect woman for you.

I think John wants to buy a car

Sigh. We really don't need this expense right now. I already have a car and neither of us drives to work. So he really doesn't need a car right now. But what was he doing last night when I got home? Looking at Car Prices on the internet. He's leaning towards a Malibu or a Impala. I keep trying to tell him to wait until we move to get a car because we'll be living together and we'll be able to cut our housing expense. My car would also be closer to being paid off than it is right now.

The only thing he really wants in a car? Radio controls on the steering wheel. He doesn't really care about anything else. At least he is trying to compare prices and researching cars and features. That way he knows exactly what he's getting into and what the car should cost. I just hope he takes my advice and waits to buy the car. We really need to save our money right now.

Has anybody used Planet Feedback?

I'm having problems with a company. I really don't expect the company to do anything but I want to put the letter out there anyway. I'll also blog about it on 2 of my blogs. I used PlanetFeedback twice a long time ago. Once I got a resolution and the other time the company ignored me. I didn't expect anything either because it was such a large company.

I was just wondering if they still get results or if companies ignore them.

Would you sell your website?

Obviously I couldn't sell this one even if I wanted too because technically I don't own it. I do own two of my own websites though. I can't imagine selling them however I could see why some people do. They have really popular sites or the name of their site is something that people really want. I'm not talking about just blogs either, I mean regular websites as well.

What would you do if someone offered you money for your website? Would you sell it, think about it then sell it or just outright turn down the offer?

Learn how to make money with a real estate website

There are a ton of money making websites online. Most of them all tell you the same thing which is start a website and get investors to buy links on your site. Take a gander through the many sites out there that deal with this topic and you'll see that they basically tell you the same thing.

Well there's a site out there for people interested in real estate. It doesn't involve buying houses and renting them out to dead beats either. I mean really, who wants to deal with that. You get a bunch of people who don't pay their rent on time or who destroy the property that you've invested so much money in. You should check out the Real Estate Investor Websites and you'll learn a bunch of tips.

Tips like how to leverage your time and money into building wealth. It will also teach you how to generate leads and turn those leads into sales. These leads are generated morning and night, even while you sleep. These websites are easy to get up and running too. Most of them are ready in just a few days and they're professionally designed. You also have a personalized email address giving you more credibility.

At the very least check out the site and see if it's something you might be interested in. Who knows by this time next week you could be a real estate guru!

Wanting to move to your own domain?

Are you on blogger too? How about vox, myspace or livejournal? Don't you think it's time to move to your own domain? Most of the bloggers that I know that take blogging seriously have their own domain names. What most of us have done is just to move our name from xxx.xxx.com to just xxx.com. That's what I did with both of my blogger blogs.

But what happens if you move over and get stuck with a horrible host. I mean DreamHost is double billing their customers! How on earth do you deal with that. It's not as easy as just moving. Some hosts try to lock you in long term. Well you could find a great deal like the Lunarpages Offer for DreamHost Customers. Their offer is very generous. Starting with a $40 off hosting with Lunarpages by using code DHRefugees. If you don't get it, that's another slam at DreamHost. They will also add up to 9 months of paid time the customer has spent with their DreamHost contract to all former DreamHost customers. Of course this is a lunarpages special only.

Lunarpages to the rescue!

On our basic plan just increased and is massive and ideal for bloggers! You get 15,000GB of Transfer & 1,500GB of storage, free domain name & 10 add-on domains for $6.95 a month + loads more. When considering web hosting there is only ONE option, Lunarpages.com! We have been in business for over 8 years & we provide beginner (LPQuicksite), basic, business, windows, Linux, VPS & dedicated hosting services.

Our plans support Ruby on Rails, JSP/ASP & we have PHP5 & MySQL5 servers & our plans all come with unlimited databases, email accounts, FTP accounts & parked domains.

Lunarpages also pays generous affiliate commissions $65 and if you sell one of our dedicated hosting plans we pay $180 - http://www.lunarpages.com/affiliate/

Why not give Lunarpages a try. Especially if you need to move to your own domain. There's no time like the present.

Shopping for new glasses

It's time to reconfigure my budget for the year. I'm short in some areas and over in others so I have to move some money around to make the numbers balance. I get new glasses every two years and this is the year for a new pair. I found somewhere online to get them really cheap. My Great Discovery: www.ZenniOptical.com sells only their own brand of glasses and they start at $8.00 per pair. Umm, that's complete with prescription. Shipping is $4.95 no matter how many pairs you order. So for all of the fashionistas that have a different pair of glasses for every day of the week, you can have 7 pairs of glasses for less than $75.

I have to get my prescription from my eye doctor. I know he'll be ticked because he can't sell me his frames with the 200% markup anymore.

Wedding dreams

I've never been big on weddings. I just always imagined that I'd be married. I never worried about colors, styles, dresses or any of that stuff. We've been talking and I've started to think about it a little. I definitely need help with Wedding Planning because I'm not a girly-girl. I'll have bold colors instead of soft colors and stuff like that. I'm going online to get advice on everything from vendors to photos to the registry and everything in between. I can also get free planning tools to help make everything flow smoothly and be as stress-free as possible.

I'm not looking at anything definitively but it's never too early to start. Especially when you're looking to spend upwards of $15k and that's on the cheap.

Car shopping

I might be getting my car sooner rather than later. I was shooting for next year but I might actually get it the end of this month. I've been looking online for Honda Car Quote, Dodge and Chevy quotes. But I'm really leaning towards a Hyundai.

I can get 2 free car quotes, so I'm looking at a Accent and a Elantra. The site will also give me the wholesale price of the car. That way, I can look at the wholesale price as opposed to the sales price and know where to start my negotiations.

I just hope the rest of my money comes in so I can get this process started.

CRM software has been updated

Business owners hate training new employees. It's a necessary evil but make no mistake about it, they hate it. Why, it's time consuming. Most employees learn better by actually doing the job, not reading about it in a book. Well there is a product out there that will let you spend more time increasing sales. At the same time, your employees spend less time learning software. What is this wonder product? It's AIMpromote. Superior to traditional CRM it has a lower cost of implementation and total cost of ownership. And now the software has been updated.

Have your sales force focused on making those sales not sitting in a room learning software. Check out the company press release for more details:

Traverse City, MI October 19th 2007 -- AIMpromote, provider of lead management and customer relationship management software, has launched a significant upgrade to their CRM offering. The newly added white-label CRM software feature enhances the value that lead aggregators can offer to their lead purchasing customers. The enhanced reselling functionality provides an intuitive interface to completely manage the selling of a privately labeled CRM as their own.

Lead aggregators operate in the highly competitive B2B space, and need ways to add value to their offerings. Michael Myles, President and CEO of AIMpromote said "The significant added value provided by the AIMpromote white-label customer relationship software gives lead aggregators a way to differentiate themselves in what has become a highly commoditized market." He went on to say that "this product also provides an easy way to leverage existing client bases to more rapidly increase sales."

The close tie-in between the selling of leads and the powerful sales management functionality of the AIMpromote customer relationship software enables the end-users of the system to easily purchase leads that are then available to be worked directly in the system. There is no importing necessary. Billing is also consolidated, providing an easy way for the end-user to manage their funds and billing profile. The system has been designed from the ground-up to offer high levels of customizability and advanced functionality for everyone involved, while requiring little investment in time.

The CRM reselling and lead sales functions functionality includes the ability for lead aggregators and CRM software resellers to completely customize pricing, including setup fees, discounts, and free trials. This flexibility empowers the resellers of the system to enhance their profit margins as they see fit. The CRM reselling system allows lead aggregators and consultants the ability to brand their system with their own logo and contact information. Integrated Authorize.Net payment processing gives an interface to take credit cards automatically, and have the funds deposited directly into their bank accounts. The advanced accounting and reporting pages in the AIMpromote system give a top-down view of the business as a whole, as well as for each individual account.

The tiered approach that AIMpromote has taken to the reselling of their powerful customer relationship management software gives even the end-user clients the ability to also resell the system. The billing and accounting system automatically takes care of everything for them, even automatically setting up accounts. "The ease of use and flexibility of the AIMpromote CRM for those providing business-to-business consultation services and those selling leads has created an opportunity to significantly improve the bottom line, with very little time or expense," said Matt Wolfe, Vice President of Operations for AIMpromote. Wolfe added, "The service and functionality of the system is unique in that customers are supported through an integrated support ticket system by their parent account. The end-users of the system will never know that the service they are using is being resold, or that the company from which they are licensing the software are not the actual manufacturers of the software. To them, it won't be AIMpromote at all, it will be 'ABC Software Company CRM', or whatever name the company reselling the software chooses."


About AIMpromote
AIMpromote leads the market in growth and technology for on-demand lead management and CRM reselling solutions. AIMpromotes enterprise lead management software empowers companies in any industry to more effectively generate, delegate, and report on leads and the teams that manage them. AIMpromote is the only solution that integrates detailed web analytics with sales and marketing analytics to provide a complete closed-loop view of the sales process. The AIMpromote lead management software offers a completely customized solution that can be tailored to fit any organization's customer acquisition workflow. The unique combination of having the most functionality, and the lowest total cost of ownership, AIMpromote is the most cost effective solution for improving close rates and marketing efficiency.

I'd rather be shopping

Do you like to save money when shopping online? Of course you do, who doesn't like to save money. Well I have a site for you to check out, it's the Rather-Be-Shopping.com Blog. There are coupon codes for over 450 stores on the site. And if you're looking for a particular coupon, you can email the author of the blog, and they will email you back with an answer.

There are all kinds of stores online. Most people know the big stores, but even places like the Gap, American Eagle, and Old Navy have coupon codes. If you shop a lot online like I do, check out the site and save yourself some money.

The internet is changing the face of banking

But will it make traditional brick and mortar banks obsolete? I don't think so. Not in the near future anyway. However, in 10-15 years, I could see traditional banking going by the wayside.

The younger generation seems more likely to do internet banking than most older folks. As a matter of fact, I've been contemplating opening a bank account from a overseas bank since I spend a lot of time there. Needless to say, I would do almost all of my banking online. Then when I go to that country, I would have access to my money without having to pay fees.

So what do you think? Would you bank online only?