Back in the summer of 2007 I joined Twitter and while four and a half years isn’t very long, it’s forever ago in technology times.  The micro blogging service was quirky and no one really had any full understanding as what they were supposed to do with it.  It wasn’t long before I asked WTF was I thinking using Twitter? and vowed never to update it again.  Well, I have, and a lot.  By 2008 I was finding useful reasons to use it and for all intensive purposes, it’s a staple in my tech life and virtually everyone I know.  Twitter is so large now that I see TV commercials who no longer advertise their website or even Facebook page anymore, they are simply promoting the use of a #hashtag, this goes for major networks too.

Just over three months ago I joined SponsoredTweets, a site that links advertisers and tweeters together.  The company has some very high profile celebrities and some quick searching on Google made everything here seem pretty legit.  You fill out a short profile, including tags of things that both interest you and that you talk about on a regular basis.  Based on the date you joined Twitter, the number of followers you have in relation to the number you follow and a few other specifications, SponsoredTweets suggests a price for you per tweet.  When I initially signed up I had about 920 followers and it’s suggest price per tweet for me was $1.27 based on the tags I chose. When an offer comes in, you can accept or deny it, then use the given guidelines to write a tweet which will both include a link to what the advertiser wants and a disclaimer of your choosing, such as #ad, Ad:, #sponsored and a few others to indicate this is indeed an affiliate link.  When you accept and write your tweet it’s then sent for review by the advertiser, if they approve it SponsoredTweets will automatically tweet for you within a given time frame that the sponsor chooses.  Provided a few people click the links, you’ll get paid.  Wanting to actually see if I could make money, I set my asking price to $1.00 and waited for offers from advertisers to come in.  The site also has an available advertisers section that will show several lower paying offers, sometimes as low as $0.05.  These offers pay per click when they get tweeted as opposed to the pay per campaign method when you set the price.  If you get 40 clicks on a link at $0.05 you’ll make $2.00.  Because I couldn’t wait to see if any offers would come in I took a few of these lower paying offers ranging from $0.05 to $0.15 per click and saw an average of 2-10 clicks per campaign.  It’s important to note that I only chose ads that I think people who follow me would be interested in reading.

SponsoredTweets actually doubles your price per campaign and that’s what they charge the advertisers, so an advertiser would have to pay $2.00 if they wanted me to tweet something. After a month and a few successful programs I saw my suggested price to charge per tweet jump to $1.98, so I adjusted my price up to $1.50 and found that a full week went by without an offer.  I changed it again to $1.25 and got one offer the following week then moved it back down to $1.00 and the offers started to flood in again.  My suggested price after being with the program for three months is $2.93 however I’m still sticking with $1.50 because I feel I get more offers at this price range and an advertiser is more likely to spend $3 several times with me than $6 once.

So the nitty-gritty, am I making money?  Well my Twitter account is up to 1,003 followers at the time of writing, I’ve done several dozen sponsored tweets and made just about $30.  The payout threshold is $50 although they allow withdraw prior to that for a $2 penalty.  Total time invested is maybe 10 minutes per month and at $10 per month my actual pay rate is $1 per minute or $60 per hour.  I’m fine with that ratio and will continue to use SponsoredTweets for the future.

How has the reaction been?  Actually, it’s been pretty favorable.  I made a disclaimer tweet when I signed up so my followers would know I was doing this and have actually had some really good @replies to the tweets, mostly because I stick to computer, technology, entertainment and photography sponsored tweets, which is what I’m tweeting about all the time anyway.  I’ve not changed any other aspect of my tweeting habits but am aware that the more followers I have, the more interaction I get, the better the chances are an advertiser will choose to use me.

Sign up for SponsoredTweets now and give them a try, this actually is not paid for by them.  Follow me on Twitter @mikepanic.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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Full disclaimer, I get paid to write articles for other sites, I understand nothing in life can be free and those who create work, tangible or not, should be compensated.  Randomn3ss has been a passion of mine for years as a way to explore my own writing and more specifically in this case, there is no option on The Morning Call’s website to leave comments for the article, which I find odd, so I’ll rebut it all here, piece by piece.

The Morning Call’s publisher is quoted as saying,

the decision to begin charging for digital content is based on readers’ strong demand for local news, features and sports on the Internet and mobile devices

That’s fine, but it’s been free since at least 1996, the earliest date the Wayback Machine has a cache of.  So to establish a timeline, that’s 15 years of publishing content online. In those 15 years we as a society have drastically changed how we choose to read and consume material and now have more options than ever.  It is not the readers’ strong demand for content, it’s more a matter of how we want that content, and when we want to read it.

The article goes on to boast some rather impressive stats, including a 62% spike in page views from 2005 to 2010, of which I don’t attribute much to the website as I do to how we consume our information.  It’s faster, easier and more likely for the large majority of readers to consumer information at their jobs, either at lunch or on company time than it is to get up early and read a paper at the breakfast table.  Readers are also more likely to read more articles in a digital version because each article contains links to other articles.  Some more impressive stats are mentioned, like August 2011′s page views at 18 million.  These are important numbers.

As the article continues, the publisher gets on his soap box and spouts some crap about how amazing it is that the growth is due in part to the in-depth local news coverage and that forthcoming they intend to provide readers with innovative new ways to read content and get weather on whatever device they want to.  Right here is part of the ignorance that will bury The Morning Call.  More on this in a minute.

When The Morning Call switches to paid content, non-paying readers will only be able to see 10 pages per month.

Directly quoting from the article:

A drop in revenue from print advertising helped drive the trend to charge for content, as well as the realization that advertising based on Web page views cannot sustain independent local journalism, especially in a bad economy, said Ford Risley, head of the journalism program at Penn State University.

Risley noted that news gathering is a labor-intensive and expensive business.

This is an interesting note, because the economy was great in 1996, even after the dot com bust of the 2000′s it was still great. What’s really going on here is that The Tribune is using The Morning Call as a guinea pig to see if paid content will work on their larger newspapers.

Aside from shifts in technology and advancements in how we consume information, The Morning Call, under control of The Tribune has always been a step or five behind where it needs to be.   Wikipedia reports daily readers of printed material around 94,000 and Sunday’s paper at 121,000.  That’s actual papers delivered to paying customers.  The people I know who personally pay for the paper rarely actually read it, much less the entire thing.

The newspaper industry has, up until 20 years ago, had free reign on profits and margins, double dipping if you will. They charge advertisers based on the number of subscriptions they have and charge the consumers for the content, which is then laden with advertisements.  No one has successfully done this with a website that supplies news and that is because unlike start-up’s and venture capitalists out of Silicon Valley, no one in the publishing world ever listens to what the consumers want.

The Morning Call’s website has always been out-dated, poorly laid out and riddled with horrible advertisements.  The latest version of the site is designed around a fairly friendly 980 pixel width, happy to suit most peoples computers.  Ads crammed on both sides of the body of most articles bring the actual content readability down to just 362 pixels.  This article has no less than 14 ads on it, not including more ads linking to internal The Morning Call articles that are not related at all to the content of the story.  The page is so heavy with ads that even on my FiOS Internet connection it takes almost 6 seconds to fully load everything, watching all the ads load in the status bar of Firefox for confirmation.

A key to generating revenue from any website via affiliate marketing or ad sales is to not only target the consumer but to not forget that they first came to your site to read the information.  The Morning Call is making it difficult to actually read the articles, regardless of their high traffic rates.

Taking a look at the numbers, 100,000 subscriptions to the printed version means that roughly 1 in 8 people from The Lehigh Valley subscribe to the paper, an amazing accomplishment, one that really couldn’t be much better in my eyes.  Then you look at the 18 million page views.  The rough math says that every single person in The Lehigh Valley viewed about 23 pages of The Morning Call’s website that month.  That number is astounding.  Anyone running a commercial website would be thrilled with these numbers, yet The Morning Call says they are broke and now need to charge for online content.  They are broke because they have poor delivery of online content and can’t make ad revenue stick, that’s the real reason.

Constant change to the newsprint and online version of the site has left readers wondering where articles can be found, and how can they find them.  The website is confusing for the older generation who are moving from print to digital.  The photo galleries are horrible, forcing one to view a single photo at a time then click the dreaded next button, in some cases 20 or 30 times to see all the photos.  This is done to increase the page views but it hinders the user experience, greatly.  The lack of moderation in the comments is appalling, especially in cases where people have passed away due to causes other than natural death.  Viewing The Morning Call on a mobile phone or tablet is painful because the web designers didn’t integrate browser awareness technology which would know I’m on an iPhone and adjust automatically for me, instead I need to remember to go to mobile.mcall.com.  This is especially annoying when following @mcall on Twitter and clicking a link from my phone, again the normal site is so ad-heavy that it’s nearly impossible to actually get to the content and because the site isn’t smart enough to push me to the mobile version, I’m left with a bad experience.  This doesn’t even touch on the horrible Twitter practice that The Morning Call has where it primarily act as a talker, using Twitter to deliver the new articles on the site, not writing actual tweets of interest and rarely engaging with their audience.

My personal feelings is that The Morning Call can and will see the same decrease in numbers as when Mayfair moved from a free event to a paid event.  Furthermore, no where does it say that if I pay for a digital subscription will it be ad free.  I wouldn’t mind paying a few bucks if the content was ad free, or if there wasn’t equally as good and free content out there.  You’ll see a huge spike in sites like WFMZ and Lehigh Valley Live, without a doubt they will benefit from The Tribunes poor choice.

What if anything can fix this?  The Tribune needs to stop treating the Internet like a printed paper and hire some consultants and more importantly, bring a few qualified user experience people in to redesign a site that is better for the readers.  Take the focus off selling ads and back to providing readable quality content, after that the click-through rate of the ads that remain will drastically increase.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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My recent online shopping experiences have helped reinforce this. Growing up in the mid-80′s I remember seeing Made in America and Buy American campaigns on packaging, commercials and seemed to be a pretty common slogan in stores, who were proud to sell American made products.  I don’t know when this trend stopped, but it is kind of a shame.  Just as shameful though, American companies are giving Americans a reason to shop with the Chinese.

Over the last two weeks I’ve made three purchases online, and in each case I shopped via Google Shopping and in one case, eBay.  The first item was spark plugs for my car.  I figured it would be good preventative maintenance to do them since I’ve owned my current car for nearly 10,000 miles and am not 100% when they were changed last.  I used the Internet to first research what the best ones would be, then checked my local auto parts store.  By local, I mean it’s barely a mile down the road and they stock nearly everything I could want.  Sure enough, they had them in stock and ready for pick-up, for $3.99 a piece.  Curiosity got the best of me and I checked the parts store that’s a few blocks from my work, again in stock, but slightly cheaper at $3.79 a piece.  Needing only four, it wouldn’t be a huge savings, but enough of one to warrant choosing one over another.  Since I didn’t need them right now, I opted to also search online stores.  To my amazement, dozens of options came up, most all of them much cheaper than local.  I ticked the box in Google’s advanced search for Free Shipping and new results were shown to me, and again ticked an option to let me sort by price, least expensive to most expensive.  A company I’ve never heard of offered them for $1.99 a piece, free shipping, a 50% savings over my local options.  After verifying that the ordering card was secure (look for https:// in the browser), I placed my order using a credit card.  Sidebar: never use a Debit card online, credit cards give added protection in cases of fraud.

A week and a half later my rear brakes started to make some noise and I determined it was time to replace the pads.  Again looking at my local options, they didn’t have a product I wanted, so I was forced to use the Internet, not a problem.  eBay tends to be a great place to get quality automotive products for cheap, and that’s where I ended up, finding a listing with a Buy-it-Now option, promptly paid and included a message to the seller that I would appreciate if they could ship them out the next day, being Monday, so I could replace them as soon as possible.  This was an American based business who also sold on eBay.

That same night I blew a headlight in my car, having aftermarket HID headlights meant once again, no local option would work.  I chose to buy from the company that makes my lights, who have a California mailing address.  This order was placed within an hour of the brake pads on Sunday night.

Monday morning I got an email from the headlight company saying my order was received and should be shipping soon.  It wasn’t a standard order confirmation email, much more personal, which I appreciated.  I wrote back and relayed that I was driving with one bulb out and would appreciate if they could get it in the mail sooner than later.  A few hours later I got shipping notification and a tracking number from DHL that my headlight bulbs were leaving Beijing, China.  No information about my brake pads was sent.

Tuesday it dawned on me that a week and a half had passed and my spark plugs weren’t yet here.  Notification finally came that a shipping label was generated for the brake pads, but they had not yet been picked up.

Wednesday comes and the tracking info for the headlights, coming from China, indicates they’ve already made it to the US and were three quarters the way across the country already, delivery was expected to be Thursday.  Wednesday after work my spark plugs were in my mailbox, just under two weeks after I ordered them.

Thursday comes and my brake pads are scheduled for delivery on Friday, but here’s the kicker.  They originated from less than 150 miles from my home.  Meanwhile, my headlights were delivered from half way around the world!

Now, I’m not 100% certain if the company I bought my headlights from is an American based business with a warehouse and shipping department in China, or a Chinese company with an American business front-end to handle the money.  Neither the headlights nor the brake pads had expedited shipping paid them, nor was it drastically inflated from what I’d expect to pay.

The company from which I bought my spark plugs on mailed them via USPS Priority Mail, which delivers in 2-3 days (6 days a week, unlike FedEx or UPS), so they clearly sat on my order for a few days.  The brake pads didn’t actually go out until late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, again meaning the company sat on my order for nearly 48 hours.  The headlight company in turn, had my item picked, packed and shipped within 8 hours.

This isn’t my first experience ordering items from China either.  In the past, most orders have arrived within 5-7 business days without a bloated shipping charge and in every single case, they’ve shipped the item within hours of it being placed.

Make no mistake, I love my country and I support it and the people who work and live here, however, when customer service is clearly lacking, I will seek out other sources.  If you run an American company that sells a product or service, you need to deliver the absolute best possible customer service along with a competitive price or your business is going to fail.  I chose to buy spark plugs from an unknown supplier because I didn’t have to actually drive to a store and saved 50% by doing so.  The 50% savings did however come at a near two week delivery time.  I chose to buy brake pads online because I didn’t like the brands available to me locally, the Internet helped enable that and as a result, I got the brand I wanted at a competitive price, but the time it took to actual pack and ship my order was unacceptable.  My intentions on buying light bulbs was, from what I thought was an American company (and still might be), that shipped me a product from China faster than anyone in the USA has.

Price is no longer the only consideration for shoppers.  Some, like myself, can wait for an item to be shipped if the savings are worth wild or the product is not available locally.  In these situations, the global marketplace is available, and repeat business a consumer gives will be based on the first impression.  That first impression, if it’s lackluster as was my case with two companies, means I won’t ever use them again.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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All the info, details and fees can be found for this upcoming promotion set to start June 16th can be read here.  Take special note to the asterisks at the bottom, excluding Video Game Systems.

As always, review all of eBay’s fees before you list an item as you can typically expect an average sale to cost you at least 10% of the sale price.  I’m excited about this, it means I can try to sell something on eBay for free at the price I want to get, if it doesn’t sell I haven’t lost any money and can put it on Craigslist and deal with the low-ball offers people offer there.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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Smoking Butts

I saw a man picking butts up off the ground at the park the other day.  Smoking is a gross habit that many people are addicted to, but that doesn’t mean you should be picking butts out of ashtrays or off the ground to save a few bucks.  Depending on where you live, a pack of smokes can cost you upwards of $7,  so it’s easy to understand why the people in the park are picking butts up off the ground.  Then again, maybe they’re just keeping the park clean, but I doubt it.

Car Engine Cooking

If you’re fortunate enough to have a car that is, your engine is a great source of heat that can easily be harnessed for cooking.  When going from point A to Point B, why not go ahead and have your meal prepared by your car just in time for arrival.

Here’s a Car Engine Cookbook called Manifold Destiny, the self-proclaimed One and Only car engine cookbook.

Free Rent…a.k.a. Camping

There are hundreds of campgrounds across the United States where camping with a tent is absolutely free, usually on state or government land.  There are dozens of guides out that do list free campgrounds, but if the economy is slumping, and you can’t find a place to sleep other than in your car/oven, then I doubt you’d be buying a guide, or have the cash to get gas.

Rest Areas

Most states allow sleeping in their rest areas, as long as you are in a vehicle.  I have traveled all across the United States more than once and have been quite content pulling into a rest area for some much needed shut-eye.  Only once have I ever been asked to move by a police officer, and that was in New Jersey when I was parked on a bridge.  I must have been extremely tired.  It looked like a parking space to me.  Don’t leave home without first checking out the Rest Area Guide to the United States and Canada.

Another great place is CouchSurfing.org.  Who says you have to be travelling to hitch a couch for a night?

Bus Tours on the Cheap

If you happen to get bounced out of a town for vagrancy and find yourself in a new locality, why not put some spare change to work and hop on a city bus for a tour of your new found home?  For about fifty cents, you can most likely get a good look at your new digs from the inside of a city bus.  If you’re really interested you can spring for the ten cent transfer and get another slice of the city, possibly scoping out some thrift shops and a soup kitchen or two.

Soup Kitchens

Most towns have a soup kitchen that’s available to anyone at all.  There are probably half a dozen that I can think of within ten miles or so of my home.  I don’t frequent them, but I have seen the gatherings when it’s time for dinner to be served.  If you’re in need of a hot meal, and you can make it to a soup kitchen, I think it’s the way to go.  Most are subsidized by local grocery stores, churches, and local organizations.

Dumpster Diving

Dumpster diving is similar to riding a moped, we’ve all done it but no one wants to admit to it.  There are lots of great treasures to be had in dumpsters.  Try your hand at dumpsters behind department stores, electronics stores, and even furniture stores.  Just one good item that’s been tossed could bring you a pretty penny from a pawn shop.  The pawn broker doesn’t need to know that the printer is broken, or that the chair you brought in isn’t an antique.  Just collect your cash, say have a nice day, I’ll see you when the first payment is due, and head on out.  He’s just going to sell it anyway.

Act the Part

It’s getting warm out now, and in our local park there is no shortage of free entertainment.  There’s a man on a bench daily that plays the banjo, a one-man band that dances a funny jig, and sometimes the city will even hire entertainment for the pedestrians.  If you have a particular flair for music, singing, dancing, or the hot new thing, Live Tweets!, then get yourself an old hat, throw it down next to a banjo-playin’ hobo, and get to it.

After scoring a few dollars, and with a hot meal in your belly from the soup kitchen or from your own cars engine, then you can afford that book on free campgrounds.

Free Entertainment

Now that you’ve been the entertainment, it’s time to get yours.  Libraries and book stores offer a great source of  free entertainment.  Heck, some bookstores even have nice comfy chairs to fall asleep in for hours at a time. Many libraries now offer free internet access, book readings, and even movies are shown once a week.  I would highly recommend you use these free sources of entertainment, but beware their cafe’.  They are extremely overpriced, but you may be able to score a sample if the Barista is in a good mood.  The “I forgot my wallet” should probably work.

Check out HoboModo Daily

Frequent the HoboModo section of  GizModo’s DealzModo Gadget Deals of the Day online.  There is no better source for the locations of free services, products, and eats. Why just yesterday, there was a coupon code for a free 8×10 photo from Walgreens, a free 2-Piece Grilled Chicken Meal at KFC, and a free magazine subscription.  If you don’t care for the magazine, get it anyway.  It could come in handy for kindling, padding for your refrigerator box bed, or to shoo flies away from the dumpster while you dive for goodies.

Do your local hobos a favor and keep a few printed folded up copies of this list in your pocket when you go to the city center or local park and throw one in the hat when you pass by.  You might just be giving them some much needed information.  A dollar or two wouldn’t hurt either.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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In this article we feature a few tips and tricks that save money by cooking at home with what we already have.   Whether cooking for one, or a family, you will see that there are several ways to get more from what you already have in your pantry.

Larger Quantities, Less Often

Buying food in bulk will save you money, but allowing it to go bad before you use it will cost you even more.  Not everyone is a big fan of leftovers, but for me, it’s a reality.  I’m a single man living alone, so it’s difficult to cook one meal for dinner daily, since I eat lunch at work and rarely eat dinner.  The food I do cook for dinner will often provide me two to three lunches since most recipes will easily serve four.

Grains and Legumes

Take a look outside what might be your normal comfort zone of supersized meals with 64oz Big Gulp soda’s and look at the wealth of foods currently and seasonally available to you.  Most of the US assumes that with dinner they will get a 6-8oz portion of protein, usually in the form of meat, poultry or seafood, while a vast majority of the world makes do by sharing that same 6-8oz portion of protein with their entire family by using grains, legumes, and starches.

Rice and beans will fill you up, provide you with much needed energy, and they store very well.  The same goes for dried pasta.  I’m partial to Basmati rice and buy it in a 10lb burlap bag. The last bag I purchased was right around $18.  Compare that with boxed instant rice or gourmet rices that sell for $6 in a one or two pound box and you’ve got one really good deal.  Store it in an airtight container and it will last you a very long time.  Long grain rice takes a bit longer to cook than instant rice, but it tastes better and is more nutritious.  Buy beans in bulk the same way.

Use A Crock Pot

A good crock pot will cost you around $30, will last for years, and takes minimal effort to cook with.  Search Google for crock pot recipes, sometimes called slow cookers, of which you will find thousands.

One of my more favorite uses is for lentil soup, which has only a handful of ingredients tastes great, and costs only a few dollars to make.  This recipe makes enough to feed eight people, and is freezer-friendly.  I also use my crock pot to make macaroni & cheese, BBQ pulled pork and countless other great eats other than soups.

Eat Seasonal Foods

Local farmers’ markets as well as the grocery stores are packed full of fresh locally-grown foods.  When foods are in season, especially locally grown, it often tends to be the least expensive and best time to buy.  Towards the end of summer my local farmers’ market has incredible deals on yellow flesh peaches.  Last summer I got about 12 pounds of peaches for $6, which is much more than I could eat in a weeks time.  When they were ripe I cleaned them, sliced them up, and placed them in small zip-lock bags and stacked them in my freezer.  They now get used right out of the freezer as part of my smoothie recipe, or I can thaw them out and make a cobbler, pies, or peach turnovers.  Bananas also freeze well.  When they get to be a bit too ripe, freeze them for banana nut breads, banana pancakes, or even smoothies.  This way you will have fresh fruits and vegetables all year long.

Freeze Leftovers

I’ve mentioned freezing a few times.  It’s not a bad word.  Properly sealed food will keep for 2-6 months in your freezer.  Like most people, I get sick of eating the same thing day after day, and I’ll use the previously mentioned lentil soup as an example.

A full crock pot of lentil soup will easily last me for lunch and dinner for nearly 4 days. At the end of those 4 days I’d never want to see another lentil again.  Making less than that in my crock pot isn’t an effecient use of energy, and not eating it all within a few days wastes food, thus throwing money away.  I will often use recycled chinese take out soup containers to put single servings of lentil soup in and freeze about half of the batch.  This allows me to pull a bowl of soup out of the freezer a month from the day I made it and still enjoy it without having to make a whole new batch.  Once you do this with a few items you’ve cooked in bulk, you can easily rotate through your own frozen food selection.  Be aware that certain foods freeze better than others.  Not all fish tastes good frozen and reheated, and the same goes for rice.

Freeze extra breads until you have enough to make homemade croutons for soups or salads.  Make your own seasoned breadcrumbs from extra breads or bagels.  They are much better than in the store and will save you at least a dollar or two.

When making pancakes, I use my electric griddle and make a large batch so I have plenty to freeze for later.  This way, I can just pull out a stack of pancakes and quickly heat them up for breakfast.

Use Substitutes

There are many foods that are fantastic substitutes for their more expensive counterparts, and they are sometimes healthier as well.  A perfect example of this is margarine for butter.  Margarine contains half the calories of butter, and is roughly one third the price.

Make Stocks

My freezer is always “stocked” with stocks.  I will buy five or six whole chickens when they are around 69 cents a pound, and process them at home.  I break down the chickens and make several separate packages of breasts, thighs and drumsticks, and wings.   All of the bones go into my large stockpot with a couple of carrots, an onion, celery, and it all gets covered with water and cooked on low, just enough so I can see a bubble once in a while, and then strained into a delicious chicken stock.  I separate the stock into smaller containers and freeze them for future recipes.  This is not only less expensive than store bought chicken broth or boullion cubes, but there is almost no sodium or preservatives, and I know it’s made of entirely fresh components.  (For you vegans out there, you can make some fantastic vegetable stocks the same way).

Small amounts of vegetables can be frozen for “soup starters”, such as carrots, onions, celery, corn, and even tomatoes.  It’s easier to dice the vegetables first so they can just be thrown right into the pot to cook

For a great tasting rice or pasta, use a vegetable or chicken stock instead of water to cook it in.  You will be amazed at the flavor!

Turn Off the Heat!

It’s a misconception that pasta needs to boil until the second it’s removed from the stove.  This is simply not true.  When I add pasta to boiling water, I stir it until it comes to a boil.  After one full minute of stirring and boiling, I turn off the heat, and don’t even cover it.  Boiling water is roughly 212 degrees.  Maybe one degree different if you live on Mount Everest.

In the time it takes for the water to come down to the ambient temperature, it will already be cooked.  This will not only will you save energy, but you will reduce the risk of having the pasta stick to the bottom of the pot.

More Than One Use…And a Little Imagination

Making stocks from chickens is a perfect example of this, but there are dozens of ways to use “by-products” for future dishes.

I went shopping two days ago and bagels were on sale for one dollar.  Most people see toasted bagels with cream cheese when they look at a bagel.  What I see is very inexpensive baked bagel chips, perfect with onion or everything bagels.  I also see bagel pizzas, hearty soup and salad croutons, and breakfast sandwiches.  All of which I make at home for a fraction of the price.

Corn Tortillas are extremely cheap where I shop, so they are a staple in my pantry.  I can buy a stack as long as my arm for less than two dollars.  Cut into triangles and baked or fried, I can make about twenty dollars worth if bought in a bag, and still have enough left over for taquitos, Mexican pizzas, or tacos.

And while i’m on tortillas, throw them in with the chicken stock you just made, and the vegetables you pulled from the freezer, a little cumin, salt and pepper, and you will have an amazing chicken tortilla soup.

Save Some Dough

Making bread at home is easy, cheap and tastes better than store bought.  The smell of bread baking at home is second to none, and the flavor is nothing like store bought.  At home I make cinnamon raisin breads, sourdough, white breads, baguettes, flatbreads, Naan, and even pizza dough and hamburger and hot dog buns.  It takes a little practice to be proficient, but nothing can replace the satisfaction and flavor of any of these homemade bread products.

Yeast is relatively inexpensive.  Rather than buy 1/4 ounce packages for a dollar at the grocery store, you can buy a one pound block of quick-acting yeast at a restaurant supply store for around seven dollars.  Much less than the $64 a pound of yeast will cost if you buy it in small packages.

I’m sure you have flour, salt, and sugar at home. These are all that are needed to start baking breads, and saving you a huge amount at the grocery store.  I use unbleached all purpose flour, but you may also want to  try some whole wheat flours for a more healthy option.  Add some rolled oats, flax seed, sunflower, sesame and poppy seeds, and you can have an Artesian bread that you would pay $6 for in the stores.

Any baked bread or prepared dough can be frozen, so feel free to make a little extra for pizzas, rolls, and even breads.  I cut them into softball size portions, wrap them tightly and pop them in the freezer for later.

Keep Well Stocked

As I look around my kitchen, I see homemade spice blends, several bags of assorted beans for soups, several kinds of rice, a wealth of baking supplies, and seven shapes of dried pastas.

Any of these items, paired with a protein, can easily be stretched to save you cash, while feeding a whole army.

For proteins I have boneless center-cut pork chops I cut from a boneless loin bought for $1.49 a pound, and several bags of chickens that were 69 cents a pound that I broke down and portioned when I got home.

So save those small amounts of food that you would have otherwise thrown away, and soon your pantry and freezer will be well-stocked with foods that can be combined to create delicious dishes with just a little imagination.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to making more from what you already have.  Hopefully you will find some of these tips useful, and they will help you stretch your shopping dollar as they have mine.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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Major news outlets including TV, newspaper, local media and magazines send out tweets with links to their articles, this allows people to stay up to date on current events.  Some, like @reuters have sent out nearly 25,000 tweets, often sending bursts of 10-30 within only a few short minutes of each other.  That’s a lot of information to digest, and the main reason why I don’t follow any major news outlet on Twitter.  For those of us who have tweets sent to our phones via SMS or use an app on iPhones, this leads to an unmanageable amount of information to deal with.

News outlets are only part of the problem, many other Twitter accounts are used solely to spread spam, bad links, or sell you something.  The problem is, Twitter has such an open API that forcing someone to pay for what they are already doing or have already incorporated into their online presence might prove hard to do.  There is talk of premium services, which can only mean worse things for the vast majority of “free” accounts as I see it.  I’d imagine premium services would be faster delivery of tweets, tweets delivered at a specific time or an unlimited amount of tweets per day or month.  What else could they possibly offer? What’s a price point that would entice someone to pay for the premium service? Would @guykawasaki pay $100 per month for it?  How about $500 per month?  With nearly 100,000 followers, every message he sends out is transmitted that many times, more if they are also sent to followers cell phones or retweeted, not only does that cost money from a server side, Guy often is promoting one of his online sites or answering a question from one of his followers, either way, it’s usually to gain traffic.  @the_real_shaq is approaching one half million followers and power user @kevinrose is responsible for shutting down his fair share of websites due to bandwidth limitations whenever she sends a link out to one of his 350,000 followers.  While Shaq and Kevin usually tweet about what they are doing or to stay in touch with fans and rarely push their own sites, Guy, Reuters, CNN, ABC, etc. do just that, advertise with little regard to the users who follow them.  Who should pay and why?

Speculation on the value of Twitter has ranged from $10 million dollars to nearly $1 billion dollars, yet the company turns a zero dollar profit, they actually don’t make money, it was never part of their business plan.  Like YouTube several years ago, it was built out of a need, to fill a hole, and now it’s struggling to figure out how to make money after they’ve declined several buy out options.  In my opinion, YouTube has suffered in the quality from a user perspective since Google bought them, as most videos have ads on them, which you must click to close.  Sure Google brought HD, more bandwidth and a better search algorithm to the plate, but in the end, it’s a better experience to watch a video at Vimeo than YouTube.  I won’t even bother going into a rant about how unstable Twitter is now, I’ve seen the fail whale too many times this week alone.

If this is the only way Twitter can generate income, so be it, just as long as they don’t start throwing in worthless tweets from bots in the hopes of generating income.  This paid pro account will be the tipping point to the success or failure of Twitter, as I’m sure there are a dozen other similar services ready to take their spot with a similar user interface and a real business model laid out.

Ironicly, as much as it sounds like a bitching session, this article will be tweeted from my account, @mikepanic, automaticly thanks to the open API and a plugin done for me.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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Amazon is one of the most well known and respected online retailers out there, and they just posted their most profitable quarter ever, proof that even during a recession there is money to be made and profits to be had.  While doing so, they’ve slowly crept into the food market, offering mostly non-perishable items for sale, both brand names and some lesser known companies.  Today on their site I took notice to an ad much like you see on the side here, offering 40% off groceries.  Could it be true?  Would Amazon still offer free shipping on orders over $25?  Some poking around through the grocery section led me to find out that yes, they do offer free shipping on a good portion of the food items they sell, and the prices are in-line and cheaper than my local grocery store!

What’s more amazing is that some of the products I buy on a regular basis are heavy, like this 6-pack of 32oz basmati rice, qualify for free shipping because it’s over $25.  That’s 12 pounds of rice!  I eat rice 2-4 times per week, and not having to haul it home, rather have it delivered would be awesome!  Five more minutes poking around the site and I realized that I could get most of the items that I keep in my cupboards for the same price as my local grocery store or less, and have them delivered to my house.  The time savings plus gas savings would really add up.

There are only two downsides that I can think of.  The vast majority of items I looked at were 2-packs, multi-packs or semi-bulk items, so if one bottle of ketchup lasts you 6 months, it might not be cost efficient to buy it online.  The other thing is the free shipping is qualified only for super saver, 5-9 day delivery.  That means you need to buy ahead of time, assuming it will take a full two weeks to show up.

I’m curious to know who is currently buying groceries online, or who would consider it?  Check out everything Amazon has at 40% off here.Similar articles that might also interest you:

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This brings me into how I’ve saved a ton of money purchasing my prescription glasses this year online.  It’s been 3 years since my last eye checkup and my glasses had seen better days.  I’ve read in the past on a few sites you can save tons of money buying online, but I’ve been a bit wary to do so.  After going to a few places to try frames on locally and seeing prices of $150-400, some even higher, just for the frames, I researched online even more, and booked an appointment with my local Opthamologist.  The appointment was normal, fast and in 20 minutes I had a prescription for glasses, which of coarse they try to sell you there locally.  I declined and left, already knowing what styles looked best on me.

After some research, I ended up on www.39dollarglasses.com, a pretty simple and straight forward site that offers $39 glasses and frames!  Too good to be true I thought, so I spent more than an hour reading through the whole site and looking at the terms of service, more on that in a minute.  You won’t find name brand glasses, in fact you won’t find any names on the glasses, which is fine by me.  They have a somewhat limited selection, which I think works better for them, and I headed right into the semi-rimless and found a pair instantly I liked, but would they fit?

They have PDF files of all their glasses online so you can print them out, cut the frame out and hold it up to your face.  Sounds silly but I did this, and it really helped.  Additionally, they offer some suggestions based on your face shape and show a model with a sample pair on.  But what if I don’t like them?  The terms of service say they will accept returns and in most cases they can cut your lenses to fit a different pair of frames for no extra charge.  Perfect.

After some thought and more reading through the site, along with emailing the frames to several friends for their feedback, this is the pair I ordered:

Filling out the prescription information was straight forward, and luckily I could read my Doctors handwriting, with one minor exception.  They need to know the distance between your eyeballs in millimeters.  Not much of an issue since the same PDF that has frames also has a ruler, so print it, cut it, look in the mirror with it held up to your face and it will give you the proper number.

The frames I chose were $59 (with glasses), and while the site is called $39 Dollar Glasses, only about 1/4 are actually $39, the rest vary with prices as high as $119 for bendable rimless titanium glasses, still a steal compared to $300+ for frames only from a local store.  There are several upgrades available, all for additional money, like lighter and thinner lenses, advanced anti-glare, tints, and more.  I chose none of them, only the glasses and the clam-shell case that came free.  After filling out the remaining billing and shipping information, the order was complete.  This was on a Thursday night, and I had read that most glasses are done in 2-3 days, so the anticipation started to build.  I chose the cheapest shipping method, USPS Priority mail, but options are available for faster should you need it.

One week later, the following Thursday, my glasses showed up here at work, where I had them shipped.  They were in a cloth case, inside the hard sided clamshell case, stuffed inside a padded envelope.  They arrived perfectly fine and as pictured on the site.  Now, the moment of truth, would they fit, would they look good, would I like them?

Yes, yes and yes.  I know my head is shaped kind of funny, so I was worried about them being wide enough and it looks like I picked the right pair.  They look great, I’ve been wearing them for nearly two full weeks now and the prescription seems spot on, with zero headaches or other problems often associated with new glasses.  My co-workers and friends have all complimented me on how great they look.  I’ll probably order sunglasses from them at some point later on in the year now, based on the great experience I’ve had.

The one thing I did notice, which I may try to take advantage of with sunglasses is, $39 Dollar Glasses will cut lenses into your existing frames for just $39.  If I happen to find a pair of sunglasses I like locally, I may just buy them and send them in for custom lenses, but this could be really helpful if you like your current frames or have scratched them really bad.

Total out of pocket expense for lenses and frames was about $65.  Compared that with my expectations to pay roughly $200 for name brand frames and $100-200 for lenses from a local store and I saved more than $330.  Buying glasses online isn’t for everyone, but this has been a very pleasant experience for me.

www.39dollarglasses.com

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Photo by: Yogi

But, don’t show up at the doorstep of the house you are at to beg for money and ask where you can valet park your private fucking jet!  Not only did the auto exec’s fly in on private jets, they didn’t even jet-pool!  A quick Google search shows that a private jet can cost around $4,000 per hour!  Checking a few major ticket sites online, It shows that it is roughly one and a half hour to fly from Detroit to Washington D.C., or $6,000 each way.  I can book a 1st class ticket for a wee tad over $800, roundtrip! ZOMGWTF?!Similar articles that might also interest you:

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