Hot Topics

Is Your Email Address For Sale?

Have you ever wondered what happens to your email address once you give it an online marketer?

For the most part nothing, other than the person sending you regular emails with content and promotions/offers related to what every niche they happen to be a part of. This is the norm and one of the reasons you gave them your email in the first place.

Some of these lists can get pretty big and this presents another opportunity for the list owners to make some extra money. They can do this by either selling the email addresses on the list altogether or break it up by specific demographics (i.e gender, location, age) or the latest 1000+ people to sign up.

Where Do They Find The Buyers?

There is a site called Nextmark.com and it is one of the biggest sites for buying and selling mailing lists. This includes telephone lists, email address lists and home address lists. Currently there are over 60,000 different lists available which is crazy if you think about it and I’m sure that I am on many of them.

There is a feature that allows you to search for different mailing lists by keyword. In the example below I searched for lists related to “weight loss” and the #1 result was a shocker!

New Name.com Promo Codes

Name.com is quickly becoming one of the most popular domain registration companies on the internet. They offer great prices on new domains as well as renewals and transfers.

Name.com is constantly changing their promo codes. While old ones expire they are replaced by new ones. So here is a list of the latest name.com promo and discount codes as of March 20th 2009.

Latest Name.com Promo Codes
Renew .com .net and .org domains for only $7.69 using promo code: NPENBY – No Longer Working

New .com and .org domains for $7.99 using promo code: LORENA – No Longer Working

Renew .com .net and .org domains for only $7.69 using promo code: SAUDADE

New .com and .org domains for $7.95 using promo code: IPANEMA – No Longer Working

That’s it so far. I will keep updating these codes as I find them. I have saved a ton of money on over 20 domains using these codes.

UPDATE:
These are working as of May 12th 2009

Save .99 off a new .com or .net domain using promo code: PIRIGUETE – This is no longer valid

Save .90 on renewals of .com or .net domains using code: EATATCHANS

Get a new .com or .net domain for $8.25 using coupon code: GREENBOW – This is no longer valid

Get a new .net domain for $7.25 using promotion code: HTESROB I used this 2 days a go to register huggiesdiapercoupons.net – This is no longer valid

*Update June 3rd 2009*

Get a new .net domain for only $7 using name.com promo code – parkhill – This is no longer valid

Save .59 on a new .com or .net using promo code – washpark – This is no longer valid

$8.20 for a new .com domain registration using name.com promo code – stapleton -This is no longer valid

Update September 2009

$8.19 for a new .com domain registration using name.com promo code – diptera

Renew your .com .net or .org domains for only $8.25 using name.com promo code – chilopoda

I’ll post more as I test them.

Enjoy.

Lump Sum Lottery Winnings

This is an interesting topic, here in Canada a group on 13 office workers have just won the second largest jackpot in Canadian history. That was enough to start up our own lottery pool again and with that came the discussion of lump sum lottery winnings. What are the options and is it really worth it to take the lump sum over the structured yearly payout.

I was surprised to learn that in the US some states don’t offer lump sum payouts on lottery winnings rather opting to go with a large one time payout. I guess it comes as no surprise that this opened the door for investment companies to come up with their own programs for capitalizing on lump sum lottery winnings and taking a chunk of the cash as profit.

With in our groups discussion we had a few questions about how the lump sum payouts actually work. I thought that I’d do a little research and find the answers myself. Below are the answers to our 5 questions about lump sum lottery winnings.

1. How much of the money do we get to keep, assuming a $1,000,000 winning?

Answer: I went online to get a quote from one of these investment companies and got a response back in 5 minutes, they really wanted my money. After a few questions they came back with the quote of roughly a 20% fee. That seems a bit high but I guess it is reasonable if they are forking out $800,000 cash. This is negotiable though as the lottery winners we are in control, there are many companies that what this kind of business.

2. Do we have to sell the whole amount all at once?

Answer: No, we can split up the lottery winnings payouts however we like. So we could sell 50% of the annual payments and still receive a large sum of the lottery winnings plus get monthly payments. The payment splits are really up to you and the investment people they seem to be pretty flexible.

3. What kind of fees hidden or otherwise are we going to have to pay?

Answer: Apparently none. The lender is responsible for dealing with the court fees and paperwork nothing else out of pocket for us. Sweet.

4. Can’t we just go to the bank and sell it to them?

Answer: Nope. They don’t do structured settlement payments. At least not at my bank, and my bank rep said most other banks won’t either as it is not a simple transaction. She also recommended that we get our own lawyer to go over the paperwork before signing anything. Smart lady, that’s why my money is with you 

5. What lottery#’s are we going to play to win all this money?

Answer: Quick picks, keeping track of everyones personal picks is a pain and so many people use the same low numbers (birthdays, anniversaries etc…) that you end up with a ton of duplicate numbers. Save your birthdays for your own personal tickets and keep them out of the group numbers.

There you have if folks, the low down on lump sum lottery winnings. I seriously hope you have to reference this info once you win the lottery, just not on the same draw as me :)

Commercial Web Hosting

Here is how most bloggers get their start on the internet. First they look for a free blogging service like blogger.com or wordpress.com. These are not bad in the beginning when you are just learning how to write and market your blog. But there comes a time when the free service isn’t good enough and you want to start making some real money.

For that you need to ditch the free blogging sites, own your own domain name and look for some commercial web hosting.

I am a firm believer that you need to spend money to make money and nowhere is that more true than on the internet. Now I’m not talking about spending hundreds of dollars and most commercial web hosting is fairly inexpensive, roughly $5 – $12 a month. Owning your own domain is even cheaper at around $10 per year. (even cheaper if you use a name.com promo code)

The 3 Best Commercial Web Hosting Companies
Here are my top 3 picks for commercial web hosting companies. It should come as no surprise that these are also some of the most popular hosting companies on the market today.

1. Hostgator.com
For less than $8 a month you get unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, and the ablility to host unlimited domains. You get a ton of software and support included in this plan and if the time comes you can also upgrade to their dedicated hosting service.

2. Powweb.com
This was that first company I dealt with when I started 3 years ago and they are great. Your first year is $60 including a free domain and 300 GB on disk space (I never even came close to using it all). Powweb also has really good 24 hour support via chat and a great forum with very knowledgeable members. You can pay by paypal too.

3. Godaddy.com
Godaddy’s deluxe plan is more than enough for what most bloggers and internet marketers need. They have all the bell’s and whistles as the other guys but have more free ad on applications. The deluxe plan starts at 6.99 a month, the price decreases the longer you sign up for.

So if you are currently blogging on a free hosted site either (wordpress or blogspot) consider switching to a commercial web host and you’ll be in a better position to start profiting from your site.

Shoptillyoudrop.net Possible Scam?

While looking for ways to increase my income I came a across a site called Shoptillyoudrop.net a site that claims that you can make money as a mystery shopper or get paid to take online surveys.

I found an interesting article about this site that might make you run from it. This is from the Better Business Bureau where a women was scammed out of almost $5000 You can read it here

Keep in mind that there is very little information about shoptillyoudrop.net other than what is posted on the site it’s self and most reputable scam exposing websites don’t have any reports on them yet. I would use extreme caution if you are considering joining shoptillyoudrop.net. Do your research first.

They also charge a registration fee of about $25 to join.

Laser Hair Removal for Men

This is comes as a request from one of my co-workers. Knowing that I can find deals and get discounts on pretty much anything, he asked that I look into laser hair removal for men and more specifically back hair removal.

We are in Toronto so I focused on the clinics operating in the Toronto and Durham region here is Canada. This seem to be a hot topic that NO ONE whats to talk about, except me because apparently I have no shame.

Let me start by saying that laser hair removal is not a cheap service. But there is such an increasing demand for it that a lot of Clinics in major cities like Toronto are starting to offer it. With increased competition come big opportunities for deals and some really big savings.

To keep it simple I looked at the full back hair laser removal service for 1 session to see which clinic had the best deal. Below are the top 8 best prices at the Toronto clinics. Keep in mind that this is only based on pricing and not quality or effectiveness of the treatments. These are in no particular order.
Laser Hair Removal for Men
#1 TTClinic.com – Special Offer save 50% off their regular price. Cost – $250 Offer good Till Sept 2009

#2 Lasercentre.ca – Promotional pricing on until Feb 28th 2009 50% off regular price. They also claim that they will match the price of any other Clinic in the Greater Toronto Area. Cost – $240

#3 Bellairlaserclinic.ca – Save 25% on medium areas, including the full back service. They have some decent multiple session offers as well and 20% off for first time clients. Cost for single session – $393.75

#4 Yongeeglintonlaser.com – No promotional pricing that I could find other than combining services (chest, stomach and back for $799) They also have a buy 5 get 1 free deal. Cost for a regular full back hair removal session is $399

#5 Ntcenter.ca – Special on the full back service regular price of $500 on sale for $399 limited time offer.

#6 Lilianalaser.ca Located just north of Toronto still serving the GTA lilianalaser.ca has the lowest price on the full back laser hair removal for men service I’ve seen at just $189 per treatment. There is a promotion on until Jan 31st 2009 were the per session price drops to $155.

#7 Baywoodclinic.com No per session promtions right now full back sessions cost $499

#8 Qesthetics.com Promotional pricing on now, save 50% off regular pricing. Cost of a full back session $250

There are about another 8 clinics that I contacted for pricing an laser hair removal discounts or promotions but not one of them would give me a quote without booking me for a free consultation. That sent a red flag up in my books as they would most likely try and pressure me into commiting into a package deal.