Go Daddy’s $5.99/year domain names

Register a new .COM domain name for only $5.99 at www.GoDaddy.com . Offfer ends December 31st, 2006.

I’ve bought three domain names from Go Daddy for $6.20, $8.95, $8.95 respectively. Plan on buying at least one more domain name for future web sites. I’m considering whether I should take advantage of this promotion and buy a name now. I can park the domain somewhere for later use and maybe try to experiment domain parking. I read that you can get money with this domain parking stuff although I have no idea how.

I have 3 more days to decide. Will update after 12/31.

TravelJo! launched

A week ago, I launched TravelJo!, an online travel site publishing airfare, accommodation, car rental, vacation packages deals. And no, I’m not a travel agent and TravelJo! is not a travel agency. This web site is strictly making money via another online $$$ experiment method: affiliates.

Why affiliate travel site?

1. No particular reason. I’ve known about affiliates for some time, and it’s either now or later I implement it.
2. I like traveling, so I won’t bore myself out searching, picking, and posting travel deals and tips. (What will be the fate of me if I choose to affiliate-sell toilet-related products, for example.)

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Method: Affiliatess

Status: Unsure

Ebay 15 cent insertion fee, one-day only!

I know I’m an Ediot (Ebay’s idiot). But I will give it another try relisting my unsold items. Normally it costs 20 cents to list an item and more if the starting price is too high (among tons of other imposing fees.)

Ebay has a promotion today: 15 cent insertion fee and no extra charge for high starting price. I will take advantage of it and hike my startin price ridiculously high. Yah, it didn’t sell when it was low, so what the heck!

See my listing.

Amazon MarketPlace Purchase: Sold another book

Two days ago, I sold another book for about $13.84. I emailed my mom to ask her ship the book and received a confirmed email from her today. Hehe, who knows mom can be a really good personal assistant.

Our invoice problem

1. She has a very old computer (too bad she and my dad burned both computers I gave them.) This “handout” computer (from my cousin) doesn’t have any USB port, thus can’t be hoooked up with a printer. Amazon MarketPlace Purchase requires seller to pack a hardcopy invoice with the item. Without a printer, my mom can go to the public library, but she has to drive for 15 minutes, stumbles around the library’s printing GUI, pays 15 cent. This process can takes up to an hour, for a piece of useless paper. Not worth it.
2. Or she can give my printer to my cousins and ask them to print. She only has to drive to their place to pick it up. Take less time, but still take some time.
3. So I resolved to method #3. I faxed her the invoice. I can fax for free without having a fax machine so there is no cost. My ability to cut and paste quick is simply amazing, so there is no lost time to prepare an invoice. Problem sovled right? No. My mom reported that the paper are jammed and the fax machine only spat out stupid text.
4. Do you know what my mommy does next? “Daughter, I hand-wrote the invoce. I wrote exactly what you send me in the mail. My handwriting was really neat and pretty.” She told me. Huh? Hmm! The buyer might not care getting a handwritten receipt, but Amazon might get MAD at me.

Experience with AMPP

So far, I make the most money selling old books on Amazon as other online media have not made me any money yet. It took some time in the beginning to create a mini inventory, list my books on Amazon, but after that I just had to wait for orders to come. The only setback with listing on Amazon as a regular seller is that my listing will be gone within two months, which is sometimes around mid Jan.

Amazon has been fast when informing me (email) about their payment. The money is normally in my bank account about a week unless AMMP combines two or more payments. I like the fact that AMPP doesn’t enforce a minimum payment.

Ideas, Lessons & CarriedOut

#1: Created an online saving account for my mom (CarriedOut)

I want to give my mom some of the money for helping me out though she doesn’t care. Asian mothers like doing things for FREE for the children so much, at least my mother. She is my most zealous free-doer of all time.

1. I set up an online saving account for her and tie both her and my bank accounts to this online saving.
2. I transfer my money to this saving.
3. She can transfer the money to her existing bank account or let it sit.

#2: Selling stuffs and don’t have to worry about handling inventories. Leave it to a trusted person, my mom for example (Idea)

 

Method: Selling on Amazon MarketPlace Purchase

Video: Children see, Children do

There is not much to say as the video has said it all, loud and clear. I am a believer of making the world a better place through children’s education. We’ve whined and bitched too much about many shitty things adults do, their inability to change and open to new things. Instead, we should focus more on building a strong foundation for kids because unless adults are nature’s windfall accidents, they–at one point in time—were kids.

Ebay Store

I chatted with an old friend of mine last night for two hours, catching up on each other’s life. T., his name, got married in July of this year to his long-term girl friend, the same one he introduced to me five/six years ago. All our mutual friends except one were at the party. I wasn’t as I lived in Europe at the time.

Marriage life has served him just right. He loves the new independent and responsible life. Of course, he sure does love his wife. We studied the first two years in college together. Another friend and I joked that he was a one-woman-only man, that if he has a girl friend or a wife, he’s stick with her for life.

We traded questions back and forth, and I found out he nows operates an Ebay store, selling Networking equipment etc.

Ooh la la! I cried as if I went to Ebay heaven. Do you remember my previous post about my Ebay blunders? A month ago, I tried to auction old books on Ebay and didn’t make a damn cent. I even lost money in the process. => I’m an official Ediot. Still, I will make at least a few more Ebay attempts selling god-know-what.

Here is a quick note of my free Ebay consulting session with my friend.

• He only sells and does not auction his items as “I will be out of business soon.” Some of his items are priced over $10,000.
• People, who have no business, auction their stuffs.
• Books (old books) are not popular on Ebay.
• He accepts Paypal, Wire Transfer, Money Order & Cashier Check (watch out for fakes), COD Check (pay on delivery).
• Doesn’t like Paypal as it charges a lot of money per transaction. (how much is 3% in $10,000?)
• Prefer wire transfers as they charge a flat fee.
• However, wire transfers are good only for high-valued transactions. In my case where each item only costs a few dollars, Paypal is better.

I tried to convince him to install Skye and buy a headset so that we can talk next time as I plan to ask him a bunch of Ebay related quetions for FREE.

I offered to fixed his company’s web site (the poor guy is learning the boring HTML, creating the entire site by the traditional html coding (Huh?) and hates every second of it.) He told me he didn’t want to burden me with his problem. So typical Asian man.

Preparing for a new site

I’m preparing to launch a new site; a strictly commercial-oriented site. All the sites I’ve had so far are personal and semi-personal. I’ve applied some of the monetization methods on three of these sites but not made much progress. There are still many ways I haven’t tried yet, however, so I am not that worried.

This time, I sure do have a plan, a business model and a more practical head instead of my usual impulsiveness when I started most of my previous sites. “Uh. I have to make this site…I have to create this blog.”

For the past few days, I had some trouble deciding the technology for this site.

1. Should I use community software to make a forum? I installed, studied and tested a few CMS software but voted against it as some did not meet my requirements or required too much learning time, which I don’t have much right now.
2. Should it be another blog? At first, I thought a blog would not look too professional.
3. What software I use if I build a website: I thought of XSitePro but was not sure if my site really needed all its features. Then I used Dreamweaver and cranked out a 5-page design. But in the end, I opted against it as I would have to spend a lot of time designing and updating static pages.
4. Okay, a blog it is. There are tons of successful commericalized blogs out there, so a blog can be a good idea. Plus, I’ve been playing around with blogging technology for months now, so I’m not at all intimidated when it comes to tweaking and fixing my blogs. With a blog, I can spend more time focusing on content rather than all the technical nonsense.

What do I want from this new venture? (A mental reminder me of why I do this in the first place)

• Receive steady flow of income.
• Test out another method of blog monetization
• Create something new
• Push me one step closer to my goal of making money via the internet.

Method: Affiliates

Proofread old posts

This morning, I discovered an effective way to catch those final grammar and spelling mistakes on my posts. I subscribed to my own blogs. I’m not sure why this method works for me except that by reading my own subscription, I was forced to see from my readers’ perspective, thus perhaps spotting out mistakes I might miss, being in the authoring mode. In addition, playing the audience’s role makes me more alert to the quality of my posts because “Oh, this is how readers see them.”

But maybe, reading and writing at 7 in the morning when I’m most calm have enable to be more alert.

-catching those mistake bastards.

Paypal and other payment methods

I opened a Paypal accountout of the whim some years ago as Paypal name was hot at the time. Then I let my account sit for the next two years and deleted every single email Paypal sent me.

In January of this year, I applied for a remote data analyst position and was asked if I used Paypal. This was the only reason that I remembered about Paypal. Right after, I tried to access my account to see if it was still valid. I couldn’t sign in because at the time I lived in Bosnia, which belonged to one of Paypal’s restricted regions (all former Yugoslavia countries except Slovenia.)

I returned to the US for a few months, and the idea of selling on Ebay crossed through my mind, so I started selling some old books. It was obvious which payment method I used: Ebay had Paypal built in to the user account, Paypal is popular with US bidders and I already had a Paypal account and didn’t want to spend extra time searching for an alternative payment method.

Prior to Paypal, paying other people and receving money from them were done through the following methods:

1. Cash: Easiest. But you have to be in person to pay or receive cash.
2. Check: More efficient than cash, but there is delay when sending and receiving the check plus the additional it takes to clear the check at the bank. The delay time can takes up to 10 business days. And we haven’t address the problem with bounce check.
3. Money order: I never tried money order but my mother used to pay her rent using this method. So I guess other businesses accept this payment as well. It cost a little more than a dollar buying from the post offices and only 10 cent from Walmart (California). It’s easy to cash at grocery stores, post offices and banks, etc. However, unless you hand the money order, you might lose all money if the note is lost in the mail.
4. Cashier check: Similar to money order.
5. Credit card: You have to own a mini credit card machine to authorize credit card payment. I bet it will costs you a great deal to set up your own card processing services. It’s only efficient if you have an established business or close many transactions per month. Besides, people might not want to give out credit card numbers to any strangers they do business online. It makes sense right as you wouldn’t freely give your numbers out either. Fraud.
6. Wire money: I’ve never done this, so can’t say much. I know that wiring money through Western Union costs around $20 at least per transaction.
7. Online payment: As mentioned before, I use Paypal. So far I have positive experiences with them. Once you have a Paypal account, you can sending money to other Paypalers using their email addresses. It’s free to send money, but Paypal charges receivers 3.9% (the rate can change now, so double check) of each transaction. Anyway, I only did a few small transaction so can’t vouch for Paypal all that much. Also, there are lots of complains about Paypal, so you should do more research. Other than that, try it!

The list might not be complete. I update as I learn about other payment methods.

Death of a could-have-been doctor

If the Asian elders had their wishes, I could have been Miss. Doctor this year provided that:

1. I graduated from high school when I <= 18.
2. Finished my first bachelor when I <=22.
3. Got accepted to a medical school after step #2.
4. Passed all exams and advanced each year.
5. Graduate from medical school at 26.

Now I will spend at least three more years to study in my chosen specialized fields, interning in some clinics and hospitals , etc.

Wow! How much specialized can I be? This specialization process will break my little scattered head.

Time does fly by so fast. It seemed like yesterday when I agonized over the choice of studying or not studying medicine. Too many years of studying, too many books to read, too many hours spending in a confined box. I’m glad I didn’t succumb to the pressure of having to make the family–or should I say extended family including uncles, aunts, grandfather, step-grandmother, second-cousins–proud for having a Miss Doctor in the family. Oh boy! Have I done that, I sure would have spent the past 8 years in hell.

I hate medicine. I hate hospitals and drugs. I barely go to the hospitals and took aspirins only once. I can cut dead chicken, but don’t let me do that on your body parts.

…Nuff said. Just a quick eulogy for the forseen “death” of could-have-been Miss Doc a.ka. Miss Me.