money

  • January 23, 2011

    Links Round Up for 01/23/11

    Also, last week I launched my new website for Manifest Development. Check it out if you didn’t already!

  • December 30, 2010

    Why iTunes Proves Apple is Only in it to Make Money

    I know what you’re going to say; “All companies want to make money.”  As a red-blooded, meat-eating, American capitalist, I think that’s a good thing. But there seems to be a thought among computer nerds (and most Apple product users) that Apple is the white light to Microsoft’s Eye of Sauron (sorry…I recently watched Lord of the Rings). That simply isn’t true, and iTunes proves it.  It also proves that you don’t need to have the best, you just need to market it the right way.

    Let’s take a look at a few reasons why iTunes is the bay window looking into what Apple really cares about most (hint: it’s money).

    (more…)

  • October 10, 2010

    Links Round Up for 10/10/10

  • September 1, 2010

    Quick Tip: Get a Family Cell Phone Plan to Save Money

    I was talking to a friend yesterday who told me his parents booted him and his brother off their family plan and set them each up with their own, and how much more expensive it is. Let’s look at some numbers. I am on a family plan so I pay: $10 for my line + $10 for unlimited texting + $3.50 for visual voicemail (which I need to cancel) + $30 for the data plan. Thats $53.50. Assuming he is doing the minimum number of minutes, with text, and data (he’s getting the Droid 2), his plan looks like this: $60 for talk and text + $30 for data. That’s $90. Of-course, with Family Plan with his brother, his plan would look like this:

    $100 for talk and text + $30(x2) for their data plans = $160 or $80/person. $10. Big Whoop. However, if you bump it up to the next plan for each person, it would be $110 vs $90. $20/month saved. Close to (essentially) a free data plan. If they add one more person to the plan, it would be $170/mo ($10 for the extra line), which divided by 3 is $56.60 per person. Plus, monthly charge savings tend to add up!

    Seems like a no brainer at that rate. You will save a good amount of money by playing your cards right with a family plan.*

    *note: These numbers are using Verizon Wireless’s plans. Results from other providers may vary.

  • August 16, 2009

    Car Fax’s Marketing Campaign

    Car Fax’s Marketing Campaign is awesome because they don’t tagret their audience, they target their audience’s customers. Car Fax wants car dealers to subscribe to their service, so instead of telling car dealers how great Car Fax is, they tell people who buy cars how great Car Fax is, and make car dealers who don’t have Car Fax look bad. This leads car dealers to subscribe because they want to keep their customers.

  • March 10, 2009

    My Thoughts on Less Accounting

    At the beginning of the year I wanted to find all-inclusive, online accounting software. That is, something that kept track of invoicing, other income, and expenses. As much as I loved Zoho Invoices, I needed expense tracking. So after doing some research, I settled on Less Accounting. Here are my thoughts.

    Pros:

    • You can import contacts from Highrise, GMail, or Basecamp
    • It has expense tracking
    • You can upload receipts to go along with each expense
    • It’s relatively cheap
    • The dashboard is pretty nice (though total income and expenses would be nice)
    • The reports features are nice

    Cons:

    • Recurring invoices do not auto send – why even have recurring invoices if I still need to go in and send it myself?
    • Recurring invoices weren’t working at all for 3 weeks after I first started using it
    • Email messages do no format- All of my emails when sending invoices have been on one line no matter how I format it
    • No “Mark Invoice as paid.” I actually have to go in, add a payment, reenter all the invoice information and then associate an invoice with the payment
    • Import Highrise contacts also wasn’t working for a while after I first started using it. I reported both this and the invoices twice
    • In order for my recurring expenses to have a name, they must be associated with a contact, so all my recurring invoices say “No Contact” instead of the reference name, like “Monthly Subscription to X”
    • I had to fix one of my recurring expenses to actually get it to show up, and my other ones still aren’t because I need to fix them, which isn’t very intuitive. If I set the 7th of each month as a recurring expense, it should show up on the 7th (or maybe even a few days before)
    • An “Include Paypal link,” while not detrimental, would be nice. Zoho Invoices had it and I used that quite a bit

    All-in-all I’m not to impressed by Less Accounting, despite all  the rage about it, and the fact that they sponsor a site called, “We All Hate Quickbooks.” The design is nice as are some of the features, but they took some liberties on user experience (or poorly designed their databases), leading to some pretty big grievances.

    Did I miss something? Am I doing something wrong? Comments are open.

  • December 27, 2008

    Mileage as a Tax Write Off

    money

    It’s not quite that time of the year, though this week (or at least part it) I will be fixing my books up to submit to my accountant. December 31st marks the end of the first official fiscal year for my business. That means I’ll be going over what I have documented, checking my receipts, and finding last minute expenses and write-offs to lower my bottom line and try to reduce the magic number I’m going to owe Uncle Sam. One thing I hadn’t realized until late in the year was that mileage on your car is a write off.

    Since I did find that out, I’ve been keeping a notebook of everywhere I drive and the mileage it took to get there and back. But to backtrack and make sure I’m including all of my meetings, trips to the bank and stores, etc., Google came to the rescue. I looked over Google Calendar to check for meetings I attended and then put the addresses in Google Maps to get a approximate mileage to document. I also looked at bank slips for dates I took those trips, and dates on old receipts to document trips to the store. Turns out I will have a nice little deduction now.

    This helpful tip also helped me to start thinking of other things I might not think of as write offs. Remember, anything that you use for your business can be considered tax deductible- mileage and gas, tolls you might pay, cell phone, books, etc. If you’re thinking about starting a business, or just starting, it’s definitely worth talking to an accountant to get you on track.

    PS- Soon I’mstarting a new blog called, “Freelancing the Net.” I’ll be talking about how I got my start and providing helpful tips and resources for freelancers just starting out, so keep a look out for that in early 2009!

  • November 24, 2008

    Cheap Christmas Shopping

    money

    So it’s probably the case that you’re feeling the pinch in these less-than-desirable economic times (to put it lightly). CNN is reporting a lot of families will have trouble putting gifts under the tree this year, as it the case with my family. However, if you’re like me you’ve got some money saved up for this holiday season. Here are some ways to spend that money more effectively; below is a list of sites where you can generally find things cheaper than normal.

    • woot.com: woot has one deal per day, everyday. There are also some days where they have a “Woot-off”- several (dozens of) items over a couple days. Something to watch closely if you’re not sure what to get something. They also have tee-shirts at shirt.woot and wine stuff at wine.woot.
    • Overstock: Overstock has a wide range of things that you can find refurbished, which will save a little on the price.
    • AmazonMp3: Cheap digital music.They have daily deals and the Five for $5 Fridays. Plus they are all DRM free, so it doesn’t matter what kind of computer or mp3 player they have. An AmazonMp3 gift card would be perfect for the music lover you know. (and Amazon.com in general isn’t too bad either!)
    • Deal Finders: There are several sites that will help you find deals/coupons/cheap stuff online. BeatThat! is just one of many sites showcased in LifeHacker’s Deals Section.

    I use woot and AmazonMp3 (and Amazon in general) regularly. What sites do you use to save money? Any musts that I missed here?

  • September 17, 2008

    Have a Business Plan

    Businessing

    Since August I’ve come up with or have launched a number of side projects in hopes of increasing revenue streams so I’m not as busy during the school year. Unfortunately, I’ve left out one “minor” detail with these- a business plan. This doesn’t have to be in the form of an official, written plan that you’d submit for funding (but I’m sure that helps). It’s more about making a plan and giving your side project some direction as opposed to just slapping together something and releasing it to the world.

    I’m currently working on a presentation for one of my SE classes about Trade-off Analysis in Web Development. It mentions that a lot of web apps are rushed to the market with not quite perfect but present features, and that’s what’s more important. However, I’m the lone developer on most of these projects and that’s not necessarily the best course of action for me. For one, I don’t have a huge user base of people ready and willing to test for me. Second, while I usually come up with an idea, I don’t have foresight as to where the project would and could go. This is something I need to think about. And third, something I am going to elaborate on in another post, I don’t have the capital for marketing. So what do I do?

    Well, I do have the advantage of being in an academic environment. I know a lot of people who are willing to connect me with the people I need to talk to. However, when I meet with those people I need to be ready and tell them what my idea is, how it will start, how it will make money, and where I want it to go 6 months, 1 year, 3 years down the road. It shows not only that I’m serious about pursuing the idea (as in I’m willing to invest that kind of time into it), but that I’ve taken the idea past the whimsical, “Hey, I wonder if this would work” phase.

    So right now, some of my projects are in limbo until I can get them on an actual track. It’s a minor set back, but it’s something I’m glad I learned now, as opposed to when I am out of school and have so much more to lose.