Archive for December 2008
End Of Year Tax Saving Tips
12/30/2008 | 
Author As the year 2008 comes to an end, it is once again time to optimize for next year’s tax return. Here is an article I saw on dumblittleman that gives 9 year end tax tips.
Personally I do the following:
- clean out unwanted clothes for donation. One thing to note, however, is that the rules for tax write off have changed. Previously one can donate up to $250 worth of clothing and file on their tax returns without receipt. However, the rules have been changed that you must have a receipt to write off any donated clothes.
- Contribute to 401k, Roth IRA and IRA. Even though each one is different they can each work toward saving taxes. 401k is offered by an employer and the contribution is taxed differed until money is withdrawn. IRA is similar to 401k with two exceptions: everyone can contribute to IRA and tax benefit of an IRA decreases when your income increases. Personally I like Roth IRA the most. It allows you to contribute after tax dollars but the earnings will not be taxed when you start withdrawing from the accounts. (though it won’t save you taxes currently).
- Selling losing stocks to offset capital gains. In a normal year everyone will have winning stocks and losing stocks in their porfolio if they diversified correctly. 2008 is one of the worse years in stock market history, but you will still need to sell your stocks in order to write off. Personally I will write off $3000 worth of losses to met the limit allowed by the tax code.
- If you are planning on giving your love ones some money over the holiday, please note the limit for gift is currently $12,000 per year. Anything above $12,000 will be deducted from your life time limit of 1,000,000.
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Optimizing Keywords for Adsense
I recently came across a blog by momscashblog regarding how to optimize keywords for Adsense in order to receive higher payout. (The post states she received information from another blog called Adsense Addict)
Here is a quick summary:
- Use the Google Adwords keyword tool to find a list of similar keywords. You want those keywords with high advertiser competition.
- Check out the payouts for each phrases.
I played around with it a little bit, and it seems like most of the payouts are fairly low. However, there are areas where the payouts is higher than others such as credit cards, web hosting solutions. (Note: These generally offers large amount of kick backs for affiliate marketing traffics too).
It is definitely an article that is worth reading.
Keeping your eyes on the prize
I saw this video through one of the RSS feed that I read regularly. It shows some times in order to accomplish a task in will take the utter most amount of concentration. I particularly liked when he mentioned how he hated the process but enjoyed it once the sculpture is complete. As they say, “The end justifies the mean”. Pretty cool video.
Google Adsense for Domain Program
Earlier this week Google opened up their Adsense for Domain program to anyone who has a registered domain. (Previously it was only available to large publishers) Adsense for domain is an domain parking program in which Google takes over your page and display their ads with relevant ads. (Which means the title of your domain should contain keywords.) There are a lot of domain parking websites out there but most of them serves googles ads. As a result, they act as the middle man and take an extract cut. Check it out if you bought some domains previously but currently don’t have the time to develop them into the blogs/sites you would like.
As a test, I signed up for three domains and configured them for adsense for domain. I will report back after a few months to whether this will be a good way to park the domains you are currently not using.
Take a look if you are curious what Google domain for adsense look like:
www.ehrreporting.com
www.ehrreporting.net
www.blogsemantics.com
John Chow Give away – Win Traffic Secrets 2.0
John Chow is currently giving away a copy of traffic secrets 2.0, John Reese. For those that don’t know who John Chow is, he is one a very savvy blogger who is very knowledgeable in the area of making money online. He offers a lot of tips regarding how to build a successful blog.
The content of Traffic Secrets 2.0 contains 12 interactive CD-ROMS, two bonus CD-ROMs, a 387 page training guide, a workbook and a bunch of step-by-step action blueprints. For those of you who is just starting to blog, this represents a tremendous amount of expert knowledge. So go over and enter yourself into the contest and start making money online!
Draw Your Animals and Bring Them to Live
I came across this website recently that seems like perfect for stimulating a kid’s imagination and creativity. The concept is simple, it allows the user to draw two dimensional objects and the website will add movement to the two dimensional to make it look like it is moving. Essentially create a virtual world for kids to enjoy by animate their drawings.
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$5 Nielsen/NetRatings Cellular Phone Survey – Must Qualify
http://survey.acnielsenonline.com/wix/p270084168.aspx
Thanks for your participation! You’ve qualified to receive a $5.00 check!
In order to receive your $5, you must fill out this mailing form. Please note that you will receive your check in 8 to 10 weeks. If you do not fill out this form correctly, we cannot guarantee that you will receive your check. This incentive is only for US residents. We cannot ship your incentive to a non-US address.
Save money with RetailMeNot
RetailMeNot(RME) is an Australian based coupon site that launched late 2006. It contains coupon codes to all the popular stores such as Amazon, JCPenny, Enterprise and much more. According to the website it now contains discount code for 20,000 online stores.
Personally I used this site a lot for my shopping/coupon needs and I have saved quite a bit. However, its coupon codes are hard to browse through at times. The site will be able to provide a much better service if they have a way to oraginze the codes in a more coherent way.
RME does have one aspect that makes it quite unique. For their generic discussion forum, they are allowing a user to enter a Google Adsense ID in which 50% of the time the user’s Adsense will be used instead of the RME’s Adsense ID. Using this way, they can now offer a way for non technical people to generate small amount of cash through Adsense and encourage participation.
