Mobile sites
January 22, 2008
I bought a couple of .mobi domains during the domain landrush period. The names aren’t too bad and after seeing this travel site for sale on sitepoint it has given me some motivation to do something with them.
I never liked using a mobile phone to browse the internet, but I know it can be useful particularly if you are out and looking for a bar/restaurant. I just checked my .mobi domains and it looks as though they are getting some traffic, which is always a good start.
Google has also released Adsense for mobile phones, so I think this could be something worth looking into, particularly as the market won’t be as competitive as the www.
Where is the best place to retire
August 4, 2007
Where is the best place to retire? Mexico? Thailand? I am sure everyone has there own opinion, so I have added a poll to my site.
You can see it on the left side of my blog, you may need to scroll down a bit to see it. It is a bit of fun, but I am trying to experiment with a bit of stuff here on my blog.
Facing foreclosure site finally sold off
August 1, 2007
Casey Serin formally of iamfacingforeclosure.com has sold off his domain for $50,000. He did have one offer at one stage of $20,000 and a share of future revenues but he didn’t go through with that deal. The content was not included in the transaction, making it a fairly decent sale for just a domain. It will be interesting to see if the owner can maintain page one for foreclosure.
Casey bought eight properties all with 100 per cent financing in the space of a year and attempted to flip them for a profit. Unfortunately for him the market turned and he was not able to sell the properties, even to break even. At close of most purchases he took out equity in the properties and used the cash to finance renovations and sometimes personal expenses.
He overstated his income from his job and said that he would be living in the properties. Australia is the same as the US in that interest charges are different for investment properties. It is for these factors that, now he is under investigation by the FBI, although no charges have been laid.
I got right into the story downloading all of the podcasts. Casey managed to draw a huge following of mostly “Haterz” and even built up a whole new vocabulary and a bunch of colloquialisms. The caseyhaterz forum which sprung up pretty late in the picture, has hundreds of members and thousands of threads focused solely on Casey’s story.
I don’t know what the moral of the story is, but if you commit any type of fraud it is probably not a good idea to blog about it.
A-ha moments
July 15, 2007
I think it is interesting to look back and try to find the moment when you discovered something like a new way of making money. You discover something you had never heard about before or haven’t given it any thought. It could be from reading a magazine or newspaper article or reading something on an internet forum.
I can remember the time I was reading a post on a Japan forum, by a guy who was boasting how he had just made $3000 selling a Japanese antique on ebay. Just that one post turned on a light for me and I got into buying and selling Japanese antiques. I had never given it a thought up until that day.
I remember just after I had started this blog, I did a search on “make money blog” and I found Probogger.net
I have lots of different ideas every day for new businesses and the last few days I have been thinking a lot about this one idea. I have had the idea for quite a while, but I came up with something related, while I was reading the 4 Hour Work Week. If I go through with the idea, I could say that was the A-Ha moment. The more I think about it, the more I can see the potential.
I have registered a couple of domains that I could use and have started doing more research.
I enjoy travelling, but it would be nice to settle down in one place for a while.
Business Ideas: Internet payment processors
June 30, 2007
Other than discovering various beautiful spots around the world, travel is a great way to meet new and interesting people. In my hotel in Vientiane the capital city of Laos I met a fellow Aussie who runs his own internet payment website, kind of like Paypal.
He is a solicitor by trade, so he has no technical skills. He is good evidence that anyone with a good idea for an internet business can successfully set it up and get it running without needing the technical knowledge. Sometimes I get the feeling that people who have great technical skills are actually the worst people to start an internet business. They generally have too much pride and want to do all of the design and programming of the website.
This results in the project getting delayed and by the time it is complete they don’t have the energy or possibly the finances to market it properly. I don’t want to downgrade people who have great technical skills, but with the ability to outsource website design and programming functionality it hardly seems worth the trouble of trying to do it yourself or employing an individual to do it.
A payment processor seems like a great business to run. Once it is set up, you basically just receive a commission for every transfer completed. Get a few big ecommerce websites using your service and you have the perfect cash generating system. Paypal doesn’t cover every country around the world, so I believe the market is still pretty much open.
Carnival of Money Stories #15
June 25, 2007
Welcome to the 15th edition of the Carnival of Money Stories. Andy has asked that I only include personal money stories and money experience - always be sure to check the submission guidelines! I had a very long list of articles to get through, but was able to find some new and interesting blogs. One lesson I learned was that a touch of humor helps to make your article stand out from the others.
My New Choice will be hosting the next carnival and you can submit your articles here.
Real Estate
Daniel asks whether he should get into the Thai property market: Jumping into Thai real estate market head first
Midnight Raider writes why they decided to buy their own property instead of renting: Homeownership Made Sense For Us
Mr Credit Card writes how his mortgage feels like credit card debt: My Mortgage Feels Like Credit Card Debt (Ask Mr Credit Card’s Blog)
Banking
MoneyChangesThings writes how her honesty resulted in his account actually being credited $300: My Ethics Reward: $300!.
Scams
Sheppard Salter writes on some new business scams: More Scams That Sabotage The Simple Life
Investing
Super Saver writes about his latest stock purchases: Buy Stocks Now? - Build Intestinal Fortitude
Allen Taylor looks at which years are better for investing: Making Big Money By Looking At The Seasons Of Investment.
Saving Money
MoneyNing has an interesting article on whether we actually waste time trying to save money: Maybe We Spend Too Much Time Saving Money
Smith has an interesting article on why getting a summer job is not always the best option for students: The Economics of a High School Student
Silicon Valley Blogger has an interesting article on the costs of beauty: How To Look Good On A Budget: The Business of Beauty
Frugal Living
Christine Kane has a very thought provoking article, something which I can strongly relate to: Are You Saving Money or Wasting Time?
Eric Stanley writes how he saves money by using coupons and making his own meals: Free Up 2,000 A Month - Easily
Matthew Paulson has an article on buying second hand jewlery, but I don’t think many women will agree with him: Buying Jewelry On the Secondary Market: It’ll Save You Thousands
Brett McKay has a funny article on why he hates cars: I Hate Cars
Personal Finance
Nina writes about her first argument over money with her partner: Sleeping with Money: Our First Big Money Fight
And to finish on a touch of humor:
Madeleine Begun Kane writes a limerick: Married To Money
Don’t let your possessions own you
June 18, 2007
I have started a new category to my blog on Mobile Living. It is to write about my experiences working while traveling around the world. I finally bought a PDF version of the the “4 Hour Working Week” by Tim Ferrris from Powells. I am not sure why, but Amazon weren’t selling an electronic version. Some of the things he writes about I am already doing, but some other things I think I believe I can work into my life and business.
I have lived overseas for more than 10 years now and have moved house more times than I can remember. I have never owned any expensive furniture. I know my family laugh at me because I don’t like buying “stuff”. Whenever I moved I tended to just buy the minimal amount of household goods to live comfortably. I have also been surprised by the amount of free furniture and electrical goods I could get from friends. This worked especially well in Japan where you actually need to pay people to dispose of furniture and electrical goods. I was even able to sell some of the items I got for free.
Space being a premium in Japan they sleep on futons, which are nothing more than a fairly thin mattress and duvet. They also sit on the floor at a low coffee like table called a “kotatsu” which has a heating element underneath the table to heat your legs during winter. Adopting the Japanese Zen minimalist approach is one way of avoiding buying a lot of stuff.
If you would like to travel more for longer period of time, it is important not to accumulate or grow attached to your possessions. You need to ask yourself, are they really that important? They could very well be the things which are holding you back, if you would like to go traveling for a long period of time. Storage is fairly expensive and unless you pack things away well, they will slowly deteriorate. It is probably cheaper to sell or give things away and buying new household goods on your return. Electronic items like TVs and DVD players only get cheaper and eventually have no resale value.
Renting your place as a furnished property, presents new problems. Tenants may not treat your furniture well and some places have laws which you need to follow, like making your furniture fire-proof. Another option could be lending items to your friends and family. Again there is no guarantee they will take good care of them.
Overseas property site review
June 14, 2007
Disclosure: The following is a paid review. You can get your website reviewed right here for just $60.
Propertymartoverseas is a European based international property website. They claim to have over fifty thousand listings in 68 countries, which is a pretty impressive volume. Looking at the properties in Australia they are mostly the type that are fairly expensive apartments that are marketed to overseas investors.
I searched next for property in Thailand and the results returned properties from a number of different countries, including India, Greece and the US - but not Thailand.
The website has property country profiles from around the world. I took a look at the profiles for property in Japan and Australia and the information is a simple introduction to the countries with some information on the current state of the market. Many countries have different laws and regulations for foreign investors and I think it would be better if they provided this kind of information on their website.
The company also publishes a property magazine which is distributed in the UK where your properties can also be listed. They also have a property news section on their site which has some interesting articles for overseas investors. The section would have more value if they provided an RSS feed.
In summary the site is a good resource for people contemplating purchasing an overseas property, but the site lacks any advanced listing features, like virtual walk throughs and property maps that are fairly standard on property websites these days.
Property management business
June 12, 2007
I just came back from a trip around the beautiful Halong Bay. One thing about traveling is that not only do you get to see some interesting places, but you also get the opportunity to meet some interesting people from around the world.
One couple I met on the trip, have a property management business in Nelson, New Zealand. They manage 180 properties in the city. They have a great deal of experience in real estate investing and property management. Some of the tenant stories were pretty amazing. Some of the properties they manage are for people on low incomes and government benefits, so I am sure you can imagine the types of problems they have to face everyday. During their trip, one of their properties became vacant after a tenant was sent to jail!
They didn’t go into too many details, but it sounded like they also had a sizeable property portfolio of their own. You could spend thousands of dollars on property investing seminars, but I believe that you just can’t compare a seminar with spending time talking with an experienced investor. He told me is part of a property investing group, that regularly meet to discuss property and investing.
I am fairly sure that wherever you are in the world you can find such a group and meet up with experienced investors. A much better option than paying thousands of dollars to a property guru.
Wifi business idea
June 5, 2007
If anyone has been reading my travel blog you will know that I am in Hanoi, Vietnam now. I have found the number of cafes that offer a free Wifi service to be pretty amazing. I don’t know if it is just me, but when I was in Australia, I saw very few places that were advertising Wifi.
I am sure that there are a few cafes that would like to offer Wifi, but don’t want the hassle of setting it up or maintaining it. I believe there could be a good business opportunity to start a Wifi outsourcing business to restaurants/hotels and coffee shops.
There are probably some cafe owners that would be worried that their business could suffer from offering free Wifi. You could find that people come in with their laptops, order a single drink and take up the seat of a potentially higher paying customer. To get around this, cafe owners could make a Wifi corner or only offer the service outside of busy times.
Once you have installed and set up the modem for the business, there wouldn’t be too much else to take care of, but you could still charge them a monthly rental fee.
