R U Tweeting yet?

While On the Road to $1M is temporarily on stand-by, I’m collaborating with a new blog on everything Twitter-related.

Feel free to drop by at http://i-tweet.org

 

Should I Change WP Theme?

Help: Should I Change WP Theme?

I’ve arrived at a crossroads -not in my life, but in my blogging life, which is also important. I’ve decided to move my blog to my own domain. This is something other bloggers suggest you should do as soon as you start posting, but I always figured I could deal with the hassle later on.

Now, however, I’ve reached the point where I want to have more control over my site. I’d like, for instance, to be able to add Amazon affiliate links to my book reviews, which is not allowed in WP.com. There have also been some developments in my online experience and in the road to perhaps not $1 million but hopefully a small amount of passive income, and it feels right to start talking about them from a new platform.

So the decision is taken, I’m migrating to my brand new private domain. The question now is whether to change the WP theme or not. Initially I though I’d change it, since this one seems to be quite common -I’ve come across two other blogs that use it- and has a slightly amateurish feel. I poked around a bit, went to a couple of websites, and finally came around a very nice one -which you can see here. I don’t particularly love the colors, but the structure is great, and the overall feel could be changed with some basic customization.

And just when I thought I’d made the decision to go for that theme, I took another look at the current one, and realized I’ve grown quite used to it. It feels like it’s my baby I’ll be separating from!

At this point I could use a couple of objective opinions. What do you think, should I change or should I keep the current theme? You can let me know HERE. I’ll take a decission after considering any suggestion, and you’ll be able to see the result very soon. Thank you!

 

45,000 Deaths per Year Linked to Lack of Health Insurance? It’s Their Fault for Being Lazy!

Or this is at least how I interpret Kiplinger‘s coverage of the health care debate. But let’s start from the beginning: A study by Harvard Medical School researchers has found that nearly 45,000 deaths every year can be linked to the lack of medical insurance and the inability of those lacking coverage to access good health care [link to Reuters story].

The final figure of almost 45,000 people has been obtained after analyzing data from 9,000 patients tracked by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. As all statistical results, it will be subject to some margin of error, but its implications can hardly be overstated:

• Lack of medical insurance is responsible for more deaths than drunk driving and homicide combined.

• According to the study, the uninsured have a 40% higher risk of death than the insured.

• The finding adds to the factors that led to the US being ranked 37th in a recent World Health Organization health-care ranking, slightly better than Cuba and below all other industrialized countries.

And this takes me back to a disturbing paragraph I read in Kiplinger’s October 2009 editorial, where Janet Bodnar writes:

I received an e-mail from an interest group helpfully providing me with a list of horror stories from people who couldn’t get affordable health coverage. I forwarded the message to contributing editor Kim Lankford, our expert on health insurance -who proceeded to suggest solutions to all their problems. […] [She wrote back:] “I wonder how hard these people tried to find better deals”.

This, I have to admit, is a work of genius. With one single sentence, Ms. Lankford brushes aside the so-called horror stories of 45,000 people every year, including those of the freelance cameraman with a burst appendix; the 51-year-old mother with undiagnosed heart disease; and the 26-year-old with unusual fatigue who died lacking health insurance -these three cases were covered this morning on CNN’s front page [link to CNN’s “Dying from lack of health insurance”].

Let me state my position on this debate clearly: I don’t condone the use of scare tactics by any of the two sides. And I’m not acquainted enough with the latest version of Obama’s proposal for reform to say that it’s the perfect solution. I’m sure it isn’t. But I don’t have any doubt that our system is broken, and I’m glad that the possibility of reforming is at least being talked about.

To suggest that the people who don’t have health insurance and end up dying for it just aren’t trying hard enough to find bargain-priced plans in our “quite healthy market” -Kiplinger again- is outrageous. And guess what? In countries like the U.K. or France, which spend a much lower fraction of their GDP in health insurance than we do, how hard you look for affordable coverage isn’t even an issue, since every citizen has the complete coverage that only the richest in this country can afford.

So this is my message to Kiplinger: while you -hopefully- reflect on the wisdom of minimizing the health-care drama into a simple “people should try harder to find better deals”, I’m canceling my subscription. Please be a little more sensitive next time.

TALKBACK

• What’s your opinion on this issue? Is it true that all uninsured people could find affordable, quality care if they tried?

PLEASE SHARE YOUR OPINION HERE

 

Moms Can Be Driven, Ambitious Workers Too

Working moms will think this title just states the obvious, but unfortunately not everybody agrees that a woman who’s had a baby and taken time off work can come back and be as valuable and committed a worker as she was before. This is why I was delighted to find out that this year’s US Open winner, Kim Clijsters, is a mother -and one who took two years away from the game while she had her baby. If you can regain your place in elite women tennis after two years of semi-retirement, then surely you can go back to your office job and perform at the same level as your male peers? Apparently, the answer is not straighforward.

US Open Winner Kim Clijsters with Daughter Jada

The topic of working women becoming mothers has interested me since I took my first job in corporate America. From the very beginning I realized that here the assumption is that a woman will delay having children for as long as possible, so as to maximize the number of years she can spend fully committed to advancing her career.

Most of my female friends in corporate jobs who dared having a kid in their early 30s complain about having become invisible on their return to work -in some cases less than 10 days after giving birth. They’re understood to have revealed a strong preference for their family life over their job -as if the two things had to be mutually exclusive-, and are no longer considered serious contenders for career advancement.

Worst of all, these assumptions are not only held by men, but also by a majority of women. I’ve heard female colleagues scorn another one who’d had a baby -what had she been doing in this line of work, where full commitment is taken for granted, when all she wanted to do was be a mom?

I’m sad to say that they may have a point in their anger. They fear that the behavior of those who became mothers will reflect badly on them: their bosses could worry that any other woman in the team may be thinking of having a baby soon, and put forward a man -the safe bet- whenever the next promotion comes along.

Unfortunately, I don’t see this state of affairs changing any time soon. We can of course hope for a time when corporations will realize that moms can be devoted workers, and that giving them some flexibility to juggle their job and their children’s needs can benefit everybody involved. But, realistically, from the inside I see no indication that we’re even moving in this direction.

For my part, I’ve given some thought to the possibility of leaving my job and starting my own business once I decide to have kids -for me, delaying motherhood for the sake of my job is out of the question. This is perhaps the easy way out, but I know it’s being considered by an increasing number of women. Many of the mother-entrepreneurs profiled in Secrets of Millionaire Moms mention the flexibility to organize your work-time around your family commitments as one of the reasons why they decided to work for themselves.

Besides, what’s the alternative? Being the last to leave the office and working 60-hour weeks so as to dispel any doubt that you’re as dedicated as the men and the non-mothers? Every time I see a co-worker pathetically reminding everyone that she didn’t turn off her Blackberry during labor, or how easy it was for her to get back to work two days afterwards, I make the same promise to myself: I’ll do everything in my power to never be in their position.

In the press these days:

• 09/15/2009 @ MoneyCNN.com:
  Have a Baby and a Career Too – Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg urges working women not to pass on the next promotion to start a family.

TALKBACK

• If you’re a working mom, what was your experience going back to work after having your baby?

• How do you think the challenges facing working moms could be addressed?

PLEASE SHARE YOUR OPINION HERE

 

Product Review: Featured Users

This post is part of the series Getting Twitter Followers: What Works and What Doesn’t, reviewing some of the methods you can use to get Twitter followers.

You can find other posts in the series here.

If you’ve used any system to increase your Twitter followers and want to share your experience, please send me an e-mail or leave a comment below.

Featured Users

On the road to $1M rating:

Let me start this review with a disclaimer: I’m just evaluating Featured Users as a tool to attract Twitter followers. Their website says that advertising with them is “a great way to get more Twitter followers and support your favorite Twitter apps”. So if your main objective is to support the applications that display Featured Users banners, then you may be happy with the results. On the other hand, if you just want to get new people to follow you, then Featured Users is a downright waste of money.

Advertising in Featured Users works in the following way: you pay a fixed amount to have a small banner with your Twitter profile displayed across a network of Twitter applications and websites [You can see the list of participating websites here]. People who find your description interesting click on the banner and are directed to your Twitter page, where they can choose to start following you.

When I first heard about the Featured Users concept I thought it sounded like a good idea, and decided to give it a try. And though I’m not usually much of a compulsive buyer, that day I went for the most expensive package: I bought 11,500 impressions of my profile for $100.

Once all the impressions had been used, I logged on to Featured Users to evaluate the results. I anticipated they’d be disappointing, as my total number of followers had barely moved from the initial 400. They turned out to be even worse than I expected.

The 11,500 impressions had translated into 48 people clicking to see my Twitter page -implying a dismal click-through rate (CTR) of 0.475%. It’s not possible to know how many of those actually became followers, but even in the best-case scenario I’d have paid $100 for 48 of them, which works out at a whooping $2 per follower.

Was the low CTR due to my profile being unappealing to those who saw the banner? Yes and No. Certainly my CTR was well below average. However, according to Featured Users’ numbers, even the average user would have seen less than 100 people click on her ad. In the best-case scenario -where all those who click become followers- she’d have paid $1 for each. This seems outrageously expensive to me.

You could argue that those who click on a banner displaying a profile are more likely to be targeted followers -interested in what you have to say. But bear in mind that it’s possible to get 100 targeted followers in less than 15 minutes for free: just search Twitter for a couple of keywords related to the topics you care about. You’ll get a list of tweets containing those keywords. Browse through them and follow the first 200 users whose tweets provide genuine information -it’s very easy to spot and avoid the ones just trying to sell you something. That’s it: next time you log in you’ll find that more than 50% of them will have followed you back.

Is saving the hassle of manually following 200 people worth $100? Judge for yourself. For me, the answer is a resounding no.

 

Book Review: Secrets of Millionaire Moms

Secrets of Millionaire Moms

Learn How They Turned Great Ideas Into Booming Businesses

On the road to $1M rating:

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and the saying applies literally to Tamara Monosoff’s Secrets of Millionaire Moms: if you can look beyond the shabby cover and the flat, black-and-white inside layout -betraying that the book was originally published in ebook format- you will be pleasantly surprised.

Monosoff draws on her own experience as an entrepreneur and those of 17 other women -all of whom decided to turn their ideas into start-ups and eventually grew them into multimillion-dollar companies- to illustrate the steps needed to create, manage, and grow a business.

The first original aspect of the book is that all the profiled entrepreneurs are women, many of them in their 50’s and beyond -while I think it’s safe to say that the typical image of a self-made, millionaire entrepreneur would be that of a man. And there is a further catch: as the book title suggests, all these women have kids, and have had to work hard at achieving the elusive work-life balance, coming up with ingenious ideas to be able to enjoy their children while they worked hard on their businesses.

The fact that the book focuses on moms doesn’t make it any less of a business book. Apart from a chapter about juggling family and business, all the topics covered are of prime interest to anybody considering starting their own venture: how to turn your life-fantasy into a workable business plan, the importance of understanding the finances, how to raise capital, administer assets, or manage employees.

I think that most readers would define Secrets of Millionaire Moms as female-oriented. Being told from a female perspective, it often touches on issues that are typically considered of more interest to women. For instance, references abound to the internal critic that continuously reminds you of the reasons you can’t do something -it’s usually assumed that this nefarious inner voice is more commonly a problem for women, although I suspect that many men will be acquainted with it too. There’s also a discussion of the guilt factor from being away from your kids which, if the readership of blogs on the topic is anything to go by, is also of greater concern to women than men.

This is not to suggest that men won’t find the book useful and enjoyable. The times when a man could -and would want to- spend all his life working while leaving his wife to take care of the household and the family are long gone. Men entrepreneurs will at some point in their lives come across the difficulty of juggling work with family life, and the fact that a business book tackles this topic head on should be welcomed as a refreshing novelty, in step with modern times.

In the end, the book is extremely inspiring without lacking realism: while it continuously underlines the importance of believing in yourself, it doesn’t hide that being an entrepreneur can sometimes be difficult -you may have to spend birthdays away from your kids, have money troubles, feel anxious and stressed, or be obliged to fire employees. The ultimate message, however, is a positive one. All interviewees agree that the sacrifices they made were worthwhile, and more than compensated by the gains in terms of flexibility, outlets for their creativity, and financial independence.

I loved reading a business book written by a woman who was able to achieve her dreams through hard work. While I cannot stress enough that both male and female readers will enjoy the book, it’s still harder for us women to find entrepreneur role models. Thanks to Secrets of Millionaire Moms, I’ve found several to add to my list.

You can leave a comment here

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Book Review: Double Your Income Doing What You Love

Double Your Income Doing What You Love:

Raymond Aaron’s Guide to Power Mentoring

On the road to $1M rating:

The title of Raymond Aaron’s book is misleading. I thought it would discuss strategies to turn your hobby or passion into a profitable business. Instead, it deals with how to set goals and strategies to achieve them -whether the goal is to double your income, give more to charity, or improve your relationship with your spouse, is up to you.

The book introduces a method to systematically analyze your life and set up goals related to different aspects of it -family, work, personal fulfillment. Then you have to work on those goals. Aaron suggests different strategies to help you put a stop to procrastination and start taking steps -however small- in the right direction.

If you’ve read Brian Tracy’s Goals! -or, for that matter, any other book on goal setting or beating procrastination- my summary of Double Your Income may sound familiar. Indeed, the two books share not only the overall theme -how to achieve your goals- but also many of the specific advices -goals should be written down to increase accountability, overwhelming tasks become doable when broken into small steps, etc.

So what’s the unique proposition behind Double Your Income? Unfortunately, the book’s selling point is what I liked least about it: according to Aaron, his method is inspired by the Law of Attraction.

If you’ve seen my post on the Law of Attraction and the ensuing discussion, you know that my main objection to it is the way it presents otherwise sensible ideas wrapped up in a mixture of pop-psychology and mysticism. I agree that clearly defining and thinking about our goals makes us more likely to take a first step and eventually achieve a better life. But I don’t agree this is because thinking about our goals sets the Universe in motion to deliver what we really desire and deserve.

Aaron, however, is a firm proponent of the Law. Every single paragraph of Double Your Income had me cringing with notions such as the following:

• The Law of Attraction holds the secret to “achieve your goals effortlessly”.

• It is essential to phrase statements in the positive for the Universe to “deliver [what we] really desire”. Conversely, by making negative statements -and therefore “invoking the Law of Attraction badly”- we become doomed to receive things we don’t want.

• There is “spiritual proof that you have a life mission”.

I don’t understand the need to contaminate ideas that make perfect sense by themselves with simplistic pictures of a Universe that will deliver our dreams just by the power of positive thought -or, as Aaron puts it, automagically. Let’s be honest: success won’t come without effort. And “the Universe” won’t decide our fate based on our positive or negative attitude -we achieve things not by tweaking our life outlook but through simple hard work.

There’s one more thing I disliked about Double Your Income: every two pages you’re directed to Aaron’s website for complementary material. Once there, you’re asked to provide your email address before you can see the content. Soon afterwards you receive the first email asking you to sign up for Aaron’s expensive 17-month mentor program. This left me wondering whether the book was no more than an elaborate sales letter.

Because of my misgivings, I cannot strongly recommend the book despite all the useful, common-sense techniques it teaches to help define your goals and work on them. Nevertheless, if you’re a Law of Attraction devotee or can cut through all the mystical mumbo-jumbo, you may actually enjoy it. In either case, I’d love to hear your opinion of it -if you’ve read the book, you can leave a comment here.

 

Getting Twitter Followers: What Works and What Doesn’t

This post is the first of a series reviewing the multitude of products and services that promise to get you thousands of Twitter followers.

If you’ve used any of these services and want to share your experience please send me an e-mail or leave a comment HERE

Next post in the series:

• Featured Users.

I must admit I first joined Twitter looking to publicize my posts. As a beginner in the blogging world, I was struggling to generate traffic. Experts will tell you that as time passes your audience will slowly build up, but I was impatient, and Twitter seemed the perfect vehicle to attract readers: I just had to broadcast the title of my post and those who found the topic interesting would click on the link.

After a couple of months on Twitter, I had become a devotee of the site for very different reasons. I had found several personal-finance bloggers whose posts I now read assiduously -such as @MoneyEnergy or @fiscalgeek. I was also talking regularly with people whose interests had nothing to do with my blog: new moms, college students, photographers. And I was enjoying every minute of it.

Having met just one of these people would have made my Twitter adventure worthwhile. But while I still wanted to drive traffic to my blog, I had less than 400 followers -hardly enough to get more than a couple of visits whenever I announced a new blog post.

I decided at that point to do something about it, and started researching the best way to add followers to my account. In the process I discovered several things:

• Most of the programs promising to bring in hundreds of followers are completely ineffective or downright scams -they just want to get your email address and have no intention of actually getting anybody to follow you.

• There’s a big difference between bringing in untargeted followers -which are relatively easy to get, but may not be at all interested in what you have to say- and targeted ones.

• As appealing as having thousands of followers seemed to me in the beginning, sometimes I doubt it’s really worth it. At some point it becomes difficult to keep conversations -you feel overwhelmed, in the middle of a crowd where everybody tries to talk on top of each other.

This post is an introduction to a series where I want to review the services I’ve used to increase the number of followers in my account. If you’ve ever used any of them -whether you still have those followers or have resorted to unfollowing 90% of them, as I’ve seen some people do when trying to keep up becomes too hard-, your contribution would be very useful to other readers looking to increase their Twitter following. Please consider writing a comment to this post or e-mailing me directly to share your experience.

And remember to come back tomorrow to read the first review.

TALKBACK

• Have you tried to get more people to follow you on Twitter?

• Do you think trying to get thousands of followers is silly, and would rather stick to the few select ones you currently have?

PLEASE SHARE YOUR OPINION HERE

 

Book Review: Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing:

Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business

On the road to $1M rating:

Crowdsourcing, the fascinating first book of Wired writer Jeff Howe, analyzes the transition currently taking place online from content created by professionals to that created by the community -think, for instance, of the thousands of user-generated videos populating YouTube.

A very recent phenomenon, crowdsourcing is the result of the expansion of Internet, together with the ongoing democratization of the means of content creation: the wide availability and falling prices of digital cameras and blogging or editing software means that an amateur photographer, journalist, or film director can produce content sometimes rivaling professional quality. Moreover, through the Web they can reach an audience of a size previously only dreamt of by the most successful and prestigious authors.

Through sketches of real-life conversations, success stories of Internet companies, and a wealth of data, Howe takes us on an enthralling trip through the origins, the present, and the future of crowdsourcing, raising many thought-provoking issues on the way: will the rise of the amateurs make professionals redundant?; will amateurs be able to maintain the same standards of quality?; does the crowd need a benevolent dictator to organize it?

Crowdsourcing and businesses

Howe is optimistic about amateurs’ ability to coexist with professionals in the long-run and to deliver high-quality products. He reviews several business models that prove that it’s possible to employ what the crowd has to offer -from content-creation to expertise in obscure fields- to create a union that is valuable for all parties involved:

• Sites like YouTube, Digg or Flickr rely on users not only to provide all the content, but also to organize it -whether by adding tags or voting on its quality or relevance.

• The website InnoCentive posts projects from Fortune 500 companies such as P&G to a network of 140,000 amateur scientists. This diverse scientific community has sometimes been able to solve problems that had got the companies’ R&D departments stumped for months. Those who come up with a valid answer to a problem are rewarded with prizes ranging from $10,000 to $1,000,000.

• Established companies with a business model unrelated to the crowdsourcing concept -such as Dell, Heinz, or Amazon– are finding ways to both capitalize on and engage the crowd, from organizing contests to create their TV advertisements to relying on users to rate the products they offer.

• While the book doesn’t cover this type of businesses, I’d have been interested in an analysis of sites like Zopa, were members of the community lend money to each other, therefore sidestepping the banks as providers of borrowing and investement products.

When the crowd is not so wise

Howe’s optimism is partly justified by the mere existence of the businesses mentioned above, which show that crowdsourcing can be a mutually beneficial exercise for them and the community as a whole. The book, however, doesn’t dwell on the potential problems of delegating decision power to the crowd, two of which I think are particularly important:

• 10 minutes browsing the videos posted in YouTube are enough to realize that much of the content created by the crowd is of very poor quality. Howe argues that the community itself is best suited to sort through the masses of mediocre videos and come up with the best, but I’m not so convinced. While YouTube has delivered a couple of pop music hits, very often the most popular videos involve naked celebrities or clips of animals doing funny things -amusing but hardly of any artistic value. The same can be said of some of the articles that make it to the front pages of Digg or Reddit.com.

  There is a danger, articulated by Andrew Keen in The Cult of the Amateur -tellingly subtitled “How blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today’s user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values”-, that we’ll enter an “age of mass mediocrity where the mob replaces experts and we all become collectively dumber”.

• A related, more dangerous problem occurs when the crowd is manifestly wrong. The housing bubble that started to burst in 2007 is a good example: Most people shared the utterly unreasonable expectation that housing prices would continue to grow forever. The role of the crowd was to reinforce such beliefs, leading to escalating home prices and the eventual collapse of the whole housing market.

Despite some misgivings about Howe’s blind face in the community, Crowdsourcing is the book I’ve enjoyed most this year. It made me think about where the Internet revolution is going, and the consequences it will have for the way we do businesses, in ways I’d never considered in the past. If you’re lucky to be looking for an entertaining holiday book, I definitely recommend it.

TALKBACK

• Have you read this book?

• The new collaborative creativity opens up many possibilities for businesses and individuals. Do you think these outweigh the problems? What could be done to avert or minimize the risks?

PLEASE SHARE YOUR OPINION HERE

 

Book Review: Getting Loaded

Getting Loaded:

Make a Million While You’re Still Young Enough to Enjoy It

On the road to $1M rating:

I’ve mentioned previously how valuable I think it would be for kids to get a basic financial education before they go to live away from home. And for those interested in the topic, this book is a fantastic place to start. Getting Loaded is specifically targeted to young people, and it’s a thorough introduction to the main financial issues they’re inevitably going to encounter in the following years: from credit cards to taxes, investing, insurance, pension plans, or buying a home.

As I said, the book is mainly targeted to people of around college age, but it works for older ones as well -I learnt a lot from it about such things as umbrella insurance policies and disability insurance. The quest to reach a young audience, however, sets its tone, which is funny, at times even annoyingly so: each single paragraph seems to contain at least one joke, which occassionally left me with the impression that the author -Peter Bielagus- was trying too hard. He nevertheless deserves praise for trying to make personal finance -not the most alluring topic- accesible to the young.

The book makes a remarkable effort to warn teenagers and 20-somethings against all those things we now wish we had avoided, like getting swamped in debt if you go to college or not taking the opportunity to contribute into your first job’s 401(k) -particularly if it came with matching contributions.

Of course Bielagus is aware that a typical 20-year-old will have a list of a thousand things on which to spend their first wage, which probably doesn’t include contributing to their pension. But instead of telling them to save because “it’s good for you” or “you’ll be happy you’ve done it when you retire” -who can imagine retirement when they’re 20?- he puts forward these hopefully more convincing -and less long-term- arguments:

• Starting to save while young allows you to rip all the benefits of compound interest. (Granted, this sounds very much like “you’ll be happy you started young when you retire”, but maybe seeing the actual numbers can inspire some young readers to take action).

• Keeping your finances in place can help you achieve your dreams. In other words, instead of longing for the day your parents will buy you a new car, why not make a specific plan, find out how much money you actually have, how much you could save if you gave up cable t.v. or started working part-time, and how long it would take to put the money together to buy the car yourself?

• Your savings may even provide you with extra money to spend on the other things on your list. (Several chapters in the book cover the basics of investing, an activity that could yield good retuns to readers willing to be patient).

For added value, the book throws in extra tips that young boys and girls can use to reduce their -or their parents’- tax bill or get a discount when buying their first car. It even makes a convincing case for them to start their own business -a suggestion I liked so much that I dedicated a whole post to it.

I was very pleased with the book overall, but of course I don’t know what younger people think about it. If you’re a teenager and have read it -or if your teenage kids have given it a shot-, I’d be very interested in hearing your opinion.

In the press these days:

• 09/19/2009 @ Yahoo! Finance: ABC News Video
  Early Money Education

TALKBACK

• Have you or your kids read this book?

• Did you find it useful? Would you recommend it to a teenager interested in learning about personal finance?

PLEASE SHARE YOUR OPINION HERE