Mar 23
AndrewBusiness, Life in Digital Ads, Blogging, money
Every fine, computer-savvy individual has a blog these days. Many of them exist (however overtly or not) to make income, to host ads, or to sell a product. For the record, I myself am hocking a book called What Do You Say to the DJ? but I don’t make any money from ad service on this site particularly.
When smartremarx.com was first published as a blog, the ad service was intended as much for an experiment to see if I could make money as to give the site a “professional” vibe. At the time, ads distinguished the site from a livejournal environment which for years was the blog standard. The numbers in the beginning (both subscribership and impressions) weren’t large enough to generate any useful income; we are talking pennies a day. Though both subscribership and impressions have increased, the income has never materialized, largely because I refuse to follow the gold standard for blog success.
The blogs with the most success have found a profitable niche, one central theme that dominates every post. As the market has become saturated with blogs, a few have managed to rise above as leaders even within an oversaturated market place, by tenacity, volume or ingenuity.
Now imagine writing about every possible topic depending on the whim of the day and the way the wind blows, and you have yourself a corner store of blogs. That is the paradigm that smartremarx has followed since the first day. As a model for profitability, I don’t recommend it. As the blogosphere has become a crowded place, there is nothing that distinguishes my writing from anybody else’s except…me. So no longer am I looking to advertise a niche expertise, but I’m essentially selling myself as the main attraction. In fact, at some point, it could easily become a sort of Seinfeld model, about nothing at all whatsoever.
To make profitability even less likely, just about every website out there, whether it’s a fan page, a news service or entertainment site is running ads across its flanks. The saturation of ads has made readers virtually immune to them. No amount of placement or design is going to make earning ad revenue any easier in the future.
I have thought trying to follow the model that generates income. I know from experience, that I get the most hits when I write about Dunkin Donuts. Believe it or not, that single topic has probably made 40% of the revenue I have generated from this site since its inception, even though the number of posts on Dunkin Donuts has been about 4% of the total. It illuminates to me that model can work. The secret isn’t that much of a secret. It starts with writing about what people want to read about; and if you do it well, you create search hits and increase traffic to your site. Increase the frequency of your content without decreasing the quality, and all of the sudden, you have a model for profitability. (Of course, the dirty secret of any blog is that most of the information is stolen and tweaked from somewhere else on the web, but if that is the only way you can generate content, that’s between you and your readers).
There are many ways to refine the model from that point, but the essence of how to make it work requires a niche focus, reliable content and readership loyalty. Of course, if you really want to be an income generating site, you also need scalability, search engine website site optimization and other tools.
Ironically, I am afraid that if I stick to the model too closely, it will degrade the product itself. On this website at least. After all, if I can’t stick to a topic from one week to the next, forcing myself to do so may eventually reflect negatively in my writing. That leaves me, for better or for worse, writing on whatever hits my fancy on any particular day. It won’t make me money; I think I’ve known that for a long time. In the absence of a profitable strategy, I would need a phenomenal boost in traffic to see revenue gains. A long term goal, maybe.
But hey, in the meantime, there is always that book to promote.
Sep 25
AndrewBusiness Credit, Credit Line, Interest Rate, Loans, money
Despite an increasing concern about the overall health of our economy, and the effect on home loans, financial aid for students and consumer credit, I still routinely get offers for unsecured loans, credit cards and car loans. The news is fraught with tales of credit card companies reducing credit lines, lenders cracking down on home refinancing offers, and consumers struggling to pay for basic expenses. The suggestion is that banks are going to be more careful in extending credit to avoid be saddled with any additional bad debt.
While that might be the case as an overall strategy, that hasn’t prevented me from getting three offers this week so far. HSBC, a bank I have been with for years, recently sent me an e-mail offering me a $4,000 loan for whatever ails me. Oh, the e-mail suggested I may have emergency expenditures to cover. At least today I don’t. It also smacked too closely of spam. Both for failing to specify even a minimum interest rate (presuming on my eligibility for the loan as it did) and for encouraging me to “apply now” with “instant approval” letting me know “we’ll speed your money to you.”
My money indeed.
It’s hard to know what to make of such an offer. For one, the lack of an interest rate is troubling. It suggests that HSBC is appealing to the desperate mindset, someone who would look at a 12, 13 or 14% interest rate and not think twice about it. And to my mind, if the interest rate was competitive (for the sake of argument, at least single digits) then the e-mail would say so. Wouldn’t that be a selling point? What about repayment terms, when does HSBC want the money back?
All of this is disclosed when you apply for the loan, something I had no intention of doing, even out of of mere curiosity of those prickling details. But the entire e-mail was cloaked in a strange overtone of subterfuge that I have never associated with HSBC before.
In the mail, I got checks from my credit card. Checks are cash advances against your credit line (and cash advance line) that you write to yourself, or to anyone you like and it works just like a checking account. Except that to use the checks, you automatically get charged a fee that is 3% of the cash advance amount. 3% not that bad. On $1,000 advance, it’s a mere 30 dollars. The overall terms were six months from the date of issue at a 1.5% interest rate.
The problem is of course, the credit card company wants you to think of the checks like a bank account withdrawal, instead of a cash advance. It’s an old trick -- believe me that I understand that cash advance checks have been around for decades. But in the credit-anxious world we live in, I’m reluctant to conclude what kind of message this is sending to consumers. Why does my credit card company need to tell “getting cash is as easy as 1…2…3…” with three blank checks attached?
The other offer I received this week was a car loan offer, one of those pre-approved loans where pre-approval really means close to nothing and they just yanked my address off of some list and slapped it on a mailing label. There was nothing stunning about the terms, it wasn’t an attractive offer. And of all things, the wording was a little generic, like a half-hearted attempt to convince me that I needed a new car.
The notable thing about these three offers is that they were all from banks that I have a relationship with. But it is unlikely that they are aware of my stellar payment history, or that I have no revolving debt or that I am an educated consumer who reads the fine print and understands the terms of the loan. I have no reason to think those things matter any more now than they did before the credit crisis. I am just an e-mail address, an apartment unit, someone whose contact information was readily accessible and had shown interest in credit offers by virtue of having done business with them in the past.
What that suggests to me is that lenders are still looking to capitalize. Okay, so maybe home equity lines of credit are harder to get, and maybe credit lines are lower (or being reduced.) But the fact remains that credit cards and lenders make their money by extending credit to people. Interestingly, the banks see it as a good thing that consumers have to be more responsible in applying for credit and managing their debt, but where is the demonstrable responsibility on the part of the lenders?
The net effect of the credit crisis is that lenders can pick and choose whom to do business with. Consumers with full-time employment, little to no current debt and high FICO scores. But isn’t that the way it was always supposed to be, it’s just now the lenders themselves are caught in the vice grip of having to enforce their own standards? But the barriers to obtaining loans are not in and of themselves indicative of responsible lending habits. To my mind, consumers have the responsibility to look out for themselves. But if banks are serious about responsible lending, they could start by not extending offers of credit to being with.
Sep 17
JeremySociety and Culture 401k, growing up, maturity, money
So on Monday, in the midst of the stock market’s tanking, I had a conversation with one of my friend’s that culminated in his saying “I don’t even want to look at my 401k,” a sentiment with which I vehemently agreed. And then I realized that we were actually having a conversation about our 401k’s. I guess I should feel lucky because I’m over 30 while he is 29. That makes him a bigger loser than me, right? When did subjects like 401k’s, mortgages, and mutual funds insert themselves into our lexicon? But there they are, wedged firmly between the sex jokes, toilet humor, and celebrity gossip.
A good financial manager will tell you that it’s never too early to start worrying about your retirement. While I agree in principal, it scares me a little that I’m worried about and talking about these things at my tender age of 32. I feel like my strategy should simply be to contribute regularly to such accounts and then just sort of let them go off and do their growing and compounding thing while I negligently check the statements once in a while. Instead of “Oh shit, I hope there’s enough in my checking account to cover the rent after I spent so much on drinks tonight,” it really is now “my stock in Apple has lost 25% of its value in recent weeks.” This additional layer of maturity has crept up on me when I wasn’t looking.
That scares me a little bit. Does that mean that there’s a time when words like “bonerrific” (uttered in conversation by one of my friends today) will become unacceptable? I always expected that poop jokes would eventually evolve into conversations about diapers someday (which is not yet!), but I never considered that another aspect of my being might be lost along the way. I like stupid humor. I like sitting around talking about boys. I like the fun and silly things. They occupy places in my life that I don’t want to swap out for money and responsibility.
Yet still, right at this very moment, a 26 year old friend just IMed me with “I’m also anxiously watching my bank’s stock tank.” Right after making a joke about a quote in the New York Times reading “Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is expanding its back-door channel.” So I guess it’s not just me. Maybe my generation has started to simply incorporate financial thinking into our beings. And that means that maybe there’s some hope that I only have to be mature part of the time and that it’s okay to be the other 16 year old me the rest of the time. Maybe the next generation of 16 year olds will grow up thinking about their money market accounts daily. In the meantime, I can still say poop
He he, I said “poop.”
Feb 26
AndrewBusiness Credit, Credit Cards, money, Personal Finance, TJX
Recently, the news surrounding the TJX Companies, Inc. and the leak of personal customer information has been dire. The company first reported in January that personal information of its customers had been stolen between May 2006 and January 2007. It affected customers who completed credit and debit card transactions in the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada at its stores including Home Goods, Marhsalls, and T.J. Maxx. And while consumers were stewing about the company taking so long to disclose the breach, TJX announced that the data theft dated as far back as July 2005.
As severe as the data breach has been for TJX, the company is hardly the only organization that has suffered from an embarrassing loss of its customers’ personal information. And these types of data thefts are hardly limited to retail companies. UCLA announced that 800,000 records were compromised when a hacker bypassed security features and tapped into an institution database. And in Austin, TX, a thief obtained a laptop from a Seton Healthcare Network employee that contained 7,800 records with social security numbers and birth dates of patients.
And truthfully, these are just a few instances when many more similar circumstances have already occurred and possibly incidents that the general public doesn’t know about yet. The lesson here for consumers is that we have to protect ourselves as much as possible. While incidences of data theft from companies are out of the hands of individual consumers, there are still preventative steps you can take to minimize your risk when your personal financial information is stolen.
Open Your Mail
It seems obvious, but when you receive information from financial institutions by mail, whether it is your bank, a creditor whom you have a business relationship with, a solicitation or invoice, read carefully the information in the letter.
Look for inconsistencies in your credit card and bank statements.
If you receive an unexpected communication from a creditor, carefully read the information and find out why it was sent to you. A denial of credit from a credit card company is a clear reason for concern if you didn’t apply for the credit card.
Also, if monthly statements do not arrive as expected, that is another possible indication of suspicious activity.
Take Advantage of Online Access of Your Accounts
Waiting until the mail arrives is no longer enough. Weekly checks of your accounts using online access (which is available at no cost for most credit cards and bank accounts these days) is essential. Current balances and recent purchases are usually updated immediately in real time, and you can typically check your account 24 hours a day. In terms of detection, this is an effective means of monitoring your account activity and looking for discrepancies.
Check Your Credit Report
You are entitled to one free credit report from each major bureau, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, each year. Don’t order your free credit report from all three companies at the same time. Pick one credit bureau every four months and pull the report just from that company. That way, you get three credit reports a year at no cost. You can order the reports for free from www.annualcreditreport.com/.
While it is true that consumers cannot protect themselves from data breaches at companies we do business with, it is also true that we can take steps to protect ourselves as much as possible. That means being diligent with reviewing credit card and bank statements, and taking advantage of free opportunities to monitor our financial accounts. Get in the habit of these defensive practices and you can keep the damage to a minimum when your personal financial information is stolen through no fault of your own.
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