Dropbox - Secret Uses

Dropbox is a service that lets you sync files to different devices, share files, and backup files.  2GB are free with additional 250MB for each friend you refer.

Share Passwords
One of the main ways to use Dropbox is to use it to share files with your friends and colleagues.  Often times you and your friends or colleagues need to sign up for a certain account and you both need the password to this account.  Instead of dangerously emailing the password back and forth to each other, why not use Dropbox along with Truecrypt to keep your passwords safe and shared.  Truecrypt creates an encrypted file that you can then store on Dropbox.

Version Control
Programmers often use version controlled software like CVS, SVN, and Git.  What this software does is lets you revert back to any revision of a file that you want to, compare differences, and save a new version.  Similarly, Dropbox lets you view past version of your saved files.  You can then restore past versions if you want to revert back to a previous version.  Simply right-click on a file in your "Dropbox" folder, then select "Previous Revisions".  It will open a webpage in your browser where you can see all the revisions you have made along with an option to revert to any version.

Use it as Another Hard-drive
As previously stated, Dropbox is a service that lets you sync files to different devices, not necessarily an online storage service like box.com.  This is because files on the server are also on your hard-drive.  However, there is a way to make Dropbox act like Box.com and store the files only on the server.  There are actually 3 ways.

Method 1 - The Unorthodox
To make Dropbox act as an online-storage only you'll need two accounts.  I'll call them your MasterUser account and your MobileUser account.  Store all your files in your MasterUser account.  Your Mobile account will have ZERO of your files.

Lets say you buy the Macbook Air which only has at this time, 128 GB for storage space.  So you want to store as little as you can on this laptop.  Install Dropbox on the Macbook Air and log in with the MobileUser account.

Now comes the tricky part.  Lets say you want to edit a file on your MasterUser account.  What you can do is:

1. open a browser (on any computer)
2. log into Dropbox as MasterUser
3. Share with MobileUser whatever folder/file you want to edit
4. The file should automatically appear in the Macbook Air's Dropbox folder at this time.
5. Edit the file from your Macbook.
6. Once you are done, repeat steps 1-3 except unshare it with MobileUser this time.
7. Now your Macbook doesn't have any remaining files from Dropbox.

Method 2 - The Not Useful Way
Or of course, you can always just sign up for Dropbox and not install it on your computer and always use the web browser to download and upload your files.

Method 3 - The Right Way
The right way to have some files only on the server and some files synced with your computers is through the Advanced Settings.  To get to the Advanced Settings, click on the dropbox icon, click on Preferences,  then go to the Advanced Tab:

Once on the Advanced tab, click on Change Settings for the Selective Sync.  Here you can uncheck folders that you want to sync on this specific computer.  Click on the Advanced button to see subfolders.  Once done, click on the Update button.

Lessons Learned: Good to Great by Jim Collins

I recently read the book, Good to Great by Jim Collins.  There are a lot of summaries out there like:
http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/16/good-to-great-why-some-companies-make-the-leap-and-others-dont
http://www.wikisummaries.org/Good_to_Great:_Why_Some_Companies_Make_the_Leap..._and_Others_Don%27t

This post is more like some things I learned and want to keep in mind.

First Who Then What
With the right people, you can go in any direction regardless of what changes may happen to the company.  If you all have a desire for what's best for the company and a similar vision as to what is best, "who" is better than "what".

The 3 Circles
This is a good, fast way to determine what you/your company should do.  If you are passionate about your work, you won't give up easily.  If your work brings in money, you can keep doing it.  If you can be the best at what you do, you will eventually be successful.

Hedgehog Concept
To be the best at something you usually have to focus all your efforts in one area.  This is the hedghog concept. Be the best at your core work.

The "Flywheel"
We often hear of companies that shoot to greatness almost overnight.  The fact is that they've been working at it for a while now and are only being noticed now.  They constantly push and push until it's easy to keep the flywheel going.

If you find some of these topics interesting, you'll find Good to Great interesting.

EE Bond Interest Rates - Which Bonds Should I Cash?

I have some bonds ranging from 1988 to 1998 that I needed to cash.  I didn't know which ones to cash though.  My initial thought was to cash the older ones first since it had the most value.  I found out otherwise.

References
I had no idea how complicated the interest rates for bonds were until I read the following pages.
http://www.savings-bond-advisor.com/series-ee-savings-bond-interest-rates/
http://www.savingsbonds.com/bond_basics/ee-savings-bonds.cfm
http://invest-faq.com/articles/bonds-us-savings.html

I decided to make some graphs to help me understand all that mumble jumble.  If you are new to bond interest rates, please read one or more of the links above.  This page is meant to be a supplement to those pages.

Bond Interest Graphs
The interest rate is the y-axis, the years is the x-axis.  The dotted orange line means the Treasury can change the interest rate.  The dashed green line is the bond's original maturity date.  The bond is guaranteed to double in value by the end of the original maturity date.  Bonds then earn interest specified by its specific rules until the 30 years is up.

EE Bonds issued May 2005 - present earn a fixed rate interest (x in the graph) for 20 years.  Then it can be changed by the Treasury.

EE Bonds issued April 2003 - April 2005 have an interest rate (x) based on 5-year Treasury securities.

EE Bonds in this period have an interest rate (x) based on 5-year Treasury securities.

EE Bonds issued May 1995 - April 1997 have an interest rate (x) based on 5-year Treasury securities.



EE Bonds issued March 1993 - April 1995 are guaranteed to have a minimum rate of 4% per year.

EE Bonds issued November 1986 - February 1993 earned a minimum of 6% for the first 12 years and a minimum of 4% since then.

EE Bonds issued November 1982 - October 1986 earned a minimum of 7.5%! for the first 10 years and a minimum of 4% since then.

Conclusion

Seeing how the older bonds are going to keep getting 4% interest until they've matured at 30 years and the newer bonds are currently earning less than 2% (based on bond interest rates in 10/2011), I've decided to cash the bonds that I need starting from the most recent back to May 1995.  

Lessons in Starting a Business

This post documents the lesson's I learned in business.  It will continually grow as I learn more and more.


Create an Operating Agreement that is effective in keeping the members of the company responsible for doing their duties.

For example, if Person A is responsible for approving timesheets, make sure Person B is responsible for asking Person A about the timesheets.  In other words, you need 1 person (a CEO) to make sure everyone else is doing their job.

Nothing is more frustrating than working all hours to finish a product only to realize that the marketing guy didn't advertise the product.

Have an Exit Strategy - As Jack Donaghy from the show "30 Rock" said, "no wonder your career is being held back by a lack of foresight and an addiction to dysfunctional relationships, you have no exit strategies."  Upon entering any type of deal, you need to have an exit clause.  This is essential if you want to keep your friendships and have a amiable separation.

Make the exit clause as detailed as possible so that nothing is left to be decided when the actual event happens.  And don't think it won't happen. Anything can happen:  Your spouse could get sick and you may need focus all your time on him/her, you may have a friend that desperately needs your business expertise, you may just flat out loose interest.  Act as if the buyout is happening right now and make sure both sides get a fair deal as best you can. 

Document Everything so that anyone can reproduce the outcome of your actions over and over again without having to try to ask you what you did or research how its done.

Have you ever opened a box of Legos that is supposed to make a huge city?  Then you look at the directions and you end up making the city in several minutes.  Have you ever tried not reading the directions?  It would take you a lot longer and you probably won't have the exact city as shown on the box.  Relating this back to your business...  Ever did something so great that you keep doing it over and over?   How about writing it down so that someone else can do it for you.  Or if you have a partner, write it down so that if you ever can't do it, your partner can.  The end product of whether you do it or someone else does it would be exactly the same if they followed your instructions.  

This theory of "franchising" your business is explained more in Michael Gerber's Emyth.  Among other things, it teaches you that your business should be a system that consistently produces the same customer experience each and every time without taking time from you.

Watch out for GainSaver Scam

My company's iMac broke this past week and we needed to buy a new mac.  Our bank account only has less than $1000 in it so we opted to look for the cheapest mac which is a mac mini.  On Amazon it is cheaper than $699.  With free shipping and no tax it comes out cheaper than an educational discount (10%) at the Apple Store.  That sounded like a good idea until another member of our company found GainSaver.

GainSaver is a website that sells used macs for VERY cheap.  We saw a mac mini 2.0 ghz for as low as $389.  You can customize everything from the harddrive space to the ram to the airport card.  They say they check every piece of hardware that comes in so you're guaranteed to get a good piece of hardware.

The total price of our mac mini would have been about $500 (with 2gb of ram and decent harddrive space).  But wait.... A couple things weren't quite right.

They have a 10% off special that ends "tonight at 10pm".
Yet we were ordering at 11pm HST.  Clicking on the details of the special revealed that the special was available until January 2012.  A bit shady if you ask me.

Diagnostics Testing (optional upgrade for $25)
With this upgrade GainSaver says "Make sure your equipment has passed our rigorous Diagnostics Testing program. GainSaver thoroughly tests all of your computer's critical hardware components before shipping."
Uhh.... so if we don't want to spend an extra $25 for diagnostics testing will we be getting untested hardware even though the site says "... been fully tested and certified by GainSaver's trained Apple technicians to verify every major component is in 100% working order" .  Things were getting fishy.

Research
Doing some research we found a site, http://www.brenthobbs.com/gainsaver.htm,  that complained about not receiving their product, but also not getting charged for it.  The author suspected that they were just out to get his credit card information as their customer service was not very helpful in getting him his order.  He also posted on an Apple forum where he got some supporters and a fake glowing review of GainSaver.  Company's often find bad reviews of their service and post a fake review saying how great the service was.  No one on the forum was fooled.  Apparently, that fake post was just a small sample of what they can do...

Fake Reviews
Another website called Reseller Ratings lets users post reviews on reseller sites.  It showed that GainSaver's overall rating was a 8.13/10 (or 4/5 stars).  Note that this rating is as of 4/20/2011.  There were posts of customers not receiving their product, getting the wrong item, and basically having no real customer service.  There were also posts of 5/5 stars saying they got their product for cheap and got it on time, etc, etc.  After reading through the first page I wanted to see the older posts because maybe they were really bad when they first started and cleaned up their act recently.  So I clicked on Page 4 which I thought was the last page (it's the last page next to the arrow).  This is where I read a really shocking review:

There is something VERY wrong with resellerratings.com's system. In the first 3 years of reviews for gainsaver.com, a total of 80 reviews were posted, nearly all of them negative, and until November 2010 their overall customer satisfaction rating was ZERO. (http://www.resellerratings.com/seller_rating_history.pl?seller_seo_name=GainSaver)

Now, 3 months later (as of 2/15/11) there are nearly 400 reviews. About 200 of them were posted on just 2 days (1/21 and 1/21/11) virtually all of them glowingly positive. And miraculously their rating is now 8.15. What's wrong with this picture?

The dozens of negative reviews consistently report the same problems:
1. Products unavailable at advertised prices followed by a "bait & switch" offer for more expensive products
2. Products arriving broken or else they malfunction within weeks
3. Unresponsive, rude customer service
4. Products, refunds and "rebates" never arriving or requiring much time and aggravation to resolve
5. Customers being stuck with return shipping cost for damaged goods or company error

There is clearly a pattern here.

I have placed 3 orders for multiple Mac Minis & imacs for a youth program. Each time Gainsaver has canceled the order, saying that the products were not available then quoting me a much higher price for the same items with very minor upgrades. When I said that I wanted the computers I ordered for the price listed on the website, not the $200 more a piece that they tried to charge me, the sales rep laughed and said "You'll never get them for that price". So why have they continued to be listed on the website?

After reading this, I looked back in the history and saw for myself that on January 20-21 there were pages and pages of 5/5 star reviews.  Looking at the history of ratings it showed that from January 2011 the ratings picked up.  I'm posting it here because in a couple of months the chart will no longer show the  jump from 0/5 to 5/5 in 1 month.  The top bar is April and it goes all the way down to October.  October and November had very bad customer satisfaction and likelihood of future purchases.  December/January it jumped up.  GainSaver will probably have a much better rating in a couple months because the rating only goes back 6 months.  Once that happens they'll have a lot more credit cards.

More Fake Reviews
GainSaver is an accredited Better Business Bureau business.  How?  Maybe it's because they resolve all their BBB complaints, but really, I have no idea.  The reason I bring up the BBB is that they have a "TrustedLink Community" that hosts customer reviews of their own.  And of course, on this site you see GainSaver as having 4/5 stars for their 95 reviews.  However, you still see the mass of complaints with 1 stars.  How did they do this?

We start by going back to April 3, 2009.  The start of the "5-star-review employee".  I went to the last page (the actual last page this time) and started looking at the dates for all the 5-star reviews and noticed a trend.  From the first Friday in April (4/3/2009) through the last Friday in May (5/29/2009) you can see a 5-star review for almost every weekday.  None on the weekend.  I estimate about 35 to 40 5-star reviews in this time period alone.  So in their 2 year history about 40% of the reviews came in those 2 months.


We bought the mac mini from Amazon.

Well, after all that we went straight to Amazon.  There's no price on reputation.  Just knowing you'll receive your product within a week, knowing you can contact customer service and talk things out, and knowing you can return your product if you're not satisfied is worth a small premium.  It's one thing to look for a deal, but you need to be careful.  I decided to write this post because it's the first time I've seen a scam for myself.  It's usually in news articles, forums or a friend got scammed.  This one is still up and running and it scares me that we were so close to purchasing.  If it were a few months later, we might have.


Unfortunate experiences
Below is a list of complaints that I have found from various people around the web.  It's amazing  (sarcasm) that such a "great, A+ BBB company" gets so many bad reviews.  Not only are these reviews bad, but they have similar complaints.  Just saying... Beware!

• http://www.ripoffreport.com/computer-service-repair/gainsaver-steve-harp/gainsaver-steve-harper-steve-47657.htm
• http://www.consumeraffairs.com/online/gainsaver.html
• http://askville.amazon.com/Gainsaver-body-experience-website-guys-scam/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=64454545
• http://gainsaver.pissedconsumer.com/gainsaver-sales-fraud-no-refunds-20100901196698.html
• http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/wwwgainsavercom-c61227.html
• http://www.scaminformer.com/scam-report/gainsaver-products-are-not-what-i-ordered-they-send-you-c14416.html
• sooo many more, but let me google it for you.

Where Did My Money Go?

Have you ever wondered where your money has all gone when you look at your bank account?  Ever been asked to "upgrade" something for "only $10/month"?  This post is all about finding where that money went and why $10/month may not be so cheap.

The $10 upgrade
Let's say you have broadband internet and are paying $50 / month.  You see a special where you can order cable on TV and internet in a bundle and it would only cost $80.  So you get it.  The cable company calls later asks if you want to upgrade to digital cable for just $10 more / month. Wow, ok.  All these new channels for only $10 sounds great.  Then you get a new TV so hey might as well get HD cable for another $10/month.   A few months down the line your friend has DVR and you get jealous that he or she can record shows and watch it any time they want to.  The cable company offers this for only $10 more / month.  Wow that's cheap.  Ok get it.

By all means, if you can't live without DVR or HD, that's fine, but think about a time when you didn't have this or if you could go an alternative route.  If you didn't have HD, DVR, or cable for TV your bill would be $50.  Now that you do have it your bill is $110.  You would've saved $60 / month or $720 per year.  Sorry, that's for another post.  For this post, I'm just trying to point out that $10 upgrades sounds fine one at a time, but when you add up all the upgrades, it starts to do just that, add up.

The One time yet Reoccurring Cost
These types of costs are things like car registration, dentist bills, Costco memberships, etc.  They don't hit you every month, but they do have a cycle.  I for one didn't pay attention to these costs as they did not occur very frequently.  It was almost like a one time cost.  If you break it down however, it gets pretty interesting...

Breaking it Down

• A $50 annual Costco membership costs only $4.16 every month
• A $60 semi-annual dentist visit (horrible copay) costs only $10 every month
• A $240 annual Car insurance costs only $20 every month

Below are my expenses along with the honey's expenses broken down per month.  This is a list of as many things I could think of that takes money from my pocket.
Update:  A few more things that, depending on your budget, may impact where your money went.  Think of the reoccurring necessities like toilet paper, paper towels, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, laundry detergent, etc.  Alone, they are inexpensive, but together multiplied by their frequency of purchases adds up to you saying "Where did my money go?"  So you may want to include those into your breakdown of your spending.

All Expenses

This is what it would've looked like if I just looked at my monthly statements.

Consistently reoccurring monthly bills

The difference between your bills that consistently reoccur and the bills that you pay once in a while or that slightly vary every month is where your money goes.  For us it was almost $500 / month.  This is the google docs version of the spreadsheet I used to figure all this out.

How Crazy Ideas Make it in the Online World

It's amazing how last minute Christmas gifts, Valentine gifts, Birthdays and most importantly Gag gifts can make the online vendor think of the craziest ideas.  Some of the products listed in this blog are good, some not so good.  They all have one thing in common.   They are weird and crazy.

Go-Girl

This is an interesting and unique product that will probably outlast all others on this page.  It basically lets girls stand up and pee.  What a concept!

Go the F**k to Sleep

This children's book that's not really a children's book is currently at the top of the Amazon.com's bestseller lists and it's not released yet.  "Go the Fuck to Sleep" combines cute rhymes with expletive-ridden pleas.  The author,  Adam Mansbach, was inspired by his adventures in getting his daughter to bed.  Here is a quote from the book:
"The eagles who soar through the sky are at rest / And the creatures who crawl, run and creep. / I know you're not thirsty. That's bullshit. Stop lying. / Lie the fuck down, my darling, and sleep, [...] The cubs and the lions are snoring,/ Wrapped in a big snuggly heap. / How come you can do all this other great shit / But you can't lie the fuck down and sleep?"


How to Good-bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?

Let me first say that I have not bought this book myself.  This book has 4.5/5 stars by 50 people at the time of this writing.  Doesn't that make you want to find out more?  Well, here's a short version of the summary:


"I think constricting anus 100 times and denting navel 100 times in succession everyday is effective to good-bye depression and take back youth. You can do so at a boring meeting or in a subway... Furthermore, he can make love three times in succession without drawing out. ... It can burn out the dirty stickiness of his body, release his immaterial fiber or third attention which has been confined to his stickiness. Then, he can shoot out his immaterial fiber or third attention to an object, concentrate on it and attain happy lucky feeling through the success of concentration. ..."

After reading the summary I was curious as to see what the hell everyone is raving about.  I mean, it's gotta be a good book if it got rated so well.  After reading the reviews, which I suggest you do, I had a great laugh.  I'm actually tempted to buy this book. It sounds really hilarious.  I'm sure it would cure whatever depression I have for the time that I'm reading the book.


Guardian Angel
This is an interesting product.  As of right now it has 31 ratings.  The product features are:

• Eliminate Chronic Pain
• Stimulates 344 points of pressure in the hand
• Produces the same benefits of traditional acupuncture without a costly visit to the Dr. or the use of needles
• Relieves fatigue, stress, insomnia
• Promotes organ regeneration

"Promotes organ regeneration"...  interesting.  What's more interesting are the comments for this product.  It seems as though no one takes this seriously:

"I have no idea about what this thing is suppose to do but it's a wonderful surrogate for my dead hedgehog. RIP Mr. Prickles" - 441 out of 447 people found this helpful

Another comment that is really a fictional story with the title "May have Hatched. Don't Know What Came Out." - 385 out of 391 people found this story helpful

There's a lot more comments like these for the Guardian Angel.  I wonder how many this product actually sold?


Poopsenders.com

Yea, you read it right.  For as little as $12.95 + $6.95 shipping you can send some cow dung to a friend or enemy.  If you're feeling a little more devious you can get the gallon size or poop from another animal.  They say they will never tell the recipient who sent the package, but for legal reasons can't let you write your own message.
From their site:
The TOP TEN reasons to send some one a package of poop:

1. To your ex-husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend
2. Neighbors pet crapping on your lawn
3. For your mean boss
4. For a salesperson or mechanic that ripped you off
5. A Last minute gift for some one who has everything
6. A gag gift
7. For a rich gloating friend, to knock them down a peg
8. To the teacher that gave your son/daughter a D
9. Some one left you negative feedback on your auction
10. You just don't like them

I think it's a genius and unique idea.  Lots of legal risks involved though so I hope they did their homework.  I noticed this site a few years ago, so it seems that they are doing decent being up that long.


Spotted Dick
Hmm... not for me...   Here's a sample of the directions:
...To Open: To prevent spurting, hold cloth over can opener when removing can top marked open this end first. Run a knife around the inside on the can.  Turn can over onto a plate, open other end and press out...










Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz

Very costly milk.  For $29.99 you can get a gallon of milk!   It's not just milk though, it's Tuscan Milk.





Wheelmate Laptop Steering Wheel Desk

Interesting pictures of traffic accidents are the alternate product images.  The description clearly states to not use the product while driving.








Relaxman Relaxation Capsule

For just $39,995.00 you can have your own relaxation capsule.  Or you can pay $39,999.99 for the un-reviewed version.   I'd stick with the cheaper one.  Nothing wrong with this product, if you can afford it that is.  This comment left by one "Sailoli" used this product very efficiently.


"One drawback, when it was delivered the capsule had no bolt on the outside. But I'm handy, so I installed one.

I have been locking the wife and kids into the chamber from 7pm to 7am every evening, and boy am I relaxed. This really works."







more to come...

The Complete Guide to Getting Traffic on Your Site (in progress)

This posting will be updated regularly as I learn more and more on getting traffic.  I have learned a bunch of things so far and have forgotten half of it.  So this post is for me to remember what I learned.  Much of these methods involve something called "backlinking".  It's basically commenting/posting on another website and having a link back to the site you want people to go to.  It's a relatively simple concept and something that everyone wanting traffic should be trying to do.

Join Social Networking Sites

Joining sites like twitter and facebook will definitely help spread the word about your site.  If the content isn't good though, it may only reach as far as you're furthest friend.

Posting on Facebook:
 When posting on facebook and you want everyone to know about your post, you can click on the lock and choose to share with "Everyone".

Posting on Twitter:
Twitter already posts to everyone.  I find that it is better if I post links back to my blog using the full URL rather than a shortened one.


Submit to Directories
An easy way to get backlinks to your website is by submitting them to directories.  This is like putting your phone number in the phone book.  It's fast, effective, and best of all, FREE.  Google and Yahoo are the obvious choices when submitting to a directory, but did you know there were more?  There's a seemingly infinite number of directories out there.  This website lists the top 100 directories along with their google page rank: http://www.tipsntutorials.com/Top-Directories/.
Other sites include:

• Dmoz
• The SEO King
• SoMuch.com
• The Living Link Web Directory
• Great Directories

I found a tool that can submit your website to directories almost automatically.  It basically lets you enter all the information in one place and submits them to their list of directories.  It prompts you to enter the category and captha word if needed.  This tool needs to be set up on a web server, please contact the developers on the page if you need help setting it up (I am not associated with them):  http://www.seopanel.in/


Posting Comments
No, I'm not talking about spamming.  Posting legitimate comments on pages with a similar topic will help support your online presence.  Many times you can put your site URL in your profile and have your name link back to your site.  You don't need to paste a link inside your comment to get traffic.  Posting interesting comments may get readers to wonder who you are and what your website is.

An interesting article at Daily Tech shows how you can search for websites that allow comments.  In Google, you can search for urls with specific attributes and also look for comments.  For example:

site:.com inurl:blog + “post a comment” + Keyword

Since it's pretty hard to promote something without your comment
looking like spam, I modified the search query they gave and came up
with these two:

site:.com inurl:money + “post a comment” + url

site:.com inurl:money + “post a comment” + website
Basically these two searches search for any websites with ".com" and
"money" in the url. The next two items are keyword searches. So it
looks for those words on the page. I added "url" and "website"
because when the comments allow you to put in your website, they
usually use those terms.
As you can see, from the first search, the first hit is this website:
http://www.bethkobliner.com/beths-blog/2011/2/3/this-week-on-slate-our-newlywed-money-dilemma.html
That website allows you to enter in your website and then post a comment. So you can just comment on the article even if it's not about your specific topic.  You can be a interested person commenting on the blog and have your website as a link in your name at the same time.

Just a warning if you are trying to post comments for backlinking, Google does not value links in the comments as much as it does in the actual post.  Also some comments add an attribute called "no follow" to their links.  This attribute causes search engines to not count the link in your comment as a link to your website as noted here. 

Get another Blog
Two blogs are better than one.  One blog linking back to another blog is even better.  It's called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  Search engines look for links linking to another blog.  The more links you get linking to your blog, the better rank your website is.  You can also just do random postings on other blogs or websites.  Here are a few websites that I have posted on:
Squidoo.com
http://www.squidoo.com/magic-shoelaces
http://www.squidoo.com/superbowl-food-statistics
http://www.mymonkeydo.com


Digg
Digg is a site that lets you "Digg" or like a website.  The more people like the same website, the more exposure it gets.  Digg your website and others...  Follow people in hopes that they will follow you back... Then when you Digg a website, your followers will see what you digg.  Reddit is another site that is similar to Digg.  Reddit seems to be more popular than Digg now.

Free Advertisement
This one doesn't get you much traffic, but any exposure is good.  If you see a computer in a store with access to the internet and open to use, go on the computer and navigate to your website.  Once there you can leave it on your blog for the next person to see.  Also if you want, you can set the home page, add it as a bookmark or shortcut, etc.  I wouldn't overdo it though as it will start to look like spam.


Also trying these out:
Technorati
Reddit
Making your own blog ring

The Smart Passive Income and Other Blogs

Searching for ways to make money online led me to a few people's blogs.  Normally I look at these blogs and say, "yea, yea, you make money from this blog because you are popular and have a lot of readers."  One day though, I ran into two different blogs where the bloggers explain that they only started a couple years ago, had a full time job, and is now making more money online than at their full time job.  Both of these blogs explained that they were laid off from their jobs.  One worked for a brokerage firm, and one was a programmer (like me!).

Inspired
From that point on, I was pretty confident that I could at least make some spending money from a blog.  I may not be as successful, but some extra money for my honey with a chance of more to come is enough motivation for me.

http://christianpf.com/how-to-make-money-with-a-blog/
http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/about/

Rich Dad Poor Dad

Rich Dad Poor Dad is a book by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Letcher, first published in 2001.  It tells a story about how Robert Kiyosaki had both a rich dad and a poor dad growing up in Hawaii.  His poor dad (his real father) worked all his life as an educator only to end up broke.  His rich dad (his friend's dad) was a ruthless entrepreneur that built his empire and became one of the riches men in hawaii.   Throughout the book he has lessons of financial advice and "secrets" that only the rich know.

It's been a best selling book in the past and is still being sold today.  When I first read this book in 2003, it changed the way I looked at money.  This book has had its share of critics (since it was a best seller) from real estate professionals and others but you can't deny some of the lessons this book teaches.

The Rat Race
The Rat Race as this book introduced to me, is described as a the life that a "poor" person leads.  The term is used to describe an endless cycle of getting money and spending it, then needing more and spending that.  In a rat race, rat is stuck in a course/maze/treadmill that is never ending.  The rat goes faster only to end up in the same spot.  Similarly, a working adult earns their money from a 9-5 job, spends their money on mortgages, car payments, food, and other bills, then needs to get more money.  Then if an individual gets more money, they spend more money.

I Save as Much as I Did When I Was 10 Years Old
Over the years, I've earned more and I've spent more...

• When I was 10 years old, I got an allowance of about $5 / week.  I saved some of it some weeks and other weeks I spent it on comic books.  That's it.. no other expenses. 
• When I was in high school I got a $20 / week allowance.  I spent it on video games, food when out with friends, and watching movies.   I don't think I saved too much in high school.
• When I was in college I got a huge increase in income, getting about $100 / week from a part time job.  I spent it on video games, food, movies, cell phone bill, high tech fancy gadgets, gas.  In college I was still living at home, so I probably save a little.
• After college to present I got another huge increase in income getting as much as about $1K / week from a full time job and more.  I spent it on food, cell bill, gym, gadgets, car payment, mortgage, ... and so on.   Currently, I'm pretty much living paycheck to paycheck.

I've went from getting $5 / week to $1K / week and I'm still wanting more.  As I get more, I want more... I'm convinced it will never end. 

General Lessons

The book has a lot more lessons throughout like Assets vs Liabilities and surrounding yourself with people you want to be like (the rich).  A lot of critics complain about the details in how he made his money.  The book isn't about how he made his money though, it's about the lessons he learned.  It's about the general theories and mindset it takes to get to being rich.

Amazon  - $7.99 Rich Dad Poor Dad

Ebay -   - From $2.25 Rich Dad Poor Dad

Borders - $10 Rich Dad Poor Dad