Worst Wall Street Months in History

Floyd Norris had an article two days ago that listed the worst months for the market in U.S. history. I'm not a believer that the stock market is a barometer for the overall health of the economy (I think the stock market operates on momentum and emotion, where the economy tends to slog forward or backward with fewer rapid ups and downs), however it is interesting to see how this crazy month has stacked up historically. It should be noted that the

1. October 1987, -21.8%
2. August 1998, -14.6%
3. September 2008, -13.8%
4. September 1974, -11.9%
5. November 1973. -11.4%
6. September 2002, -11.0%
7. November 1948, -10.6%
8. March 1980, -10.2%
9. September 1946 -10.2%
10. August 1990, -9.4%

Article @ NYTIMES

Image: ralphunden

Top 20 Entrepreneurial Quotes

The cheap revolution has a nice list of inspirational quotes from entrepreneurs that motivate him. I have listed the top 5 from his list below. I'm partial to #15, myself.

1. I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work - Thomas Edison, inventor and scientist
2. The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary - Vidal Sassoon, entrepreneur
3. Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't - Anonymous
4. A good idea is ten percent implementation and hard work, and luck is 90 percent -€“ Guy Kawasaki, entrepreneur, investor, author
5. Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle and a victory - Mahatma Gandhi, political and spiritual leader
6. Failure defeats losers, failure inspires winners - Robert T. Kiyosaki, author, entrepreneur, investor

Do you have any favorites? You can read the whole list over at The Cheap Revolution.

Pay Per Post, is it Ethical?

SPONSORED POST

Has anyone had experience using Pay Per Post? What are your thoughts? I recently signed up for their blog marketing service and am planning to give it a test drive this week. For those of you who haven't heard or seen any of the posts around on blogs the premise is rather simple. Advertisers pay for people to talk up or even simply to link to their blog.

One of the major drivers of the phenomena is the Google algorithm PageRank. Page Rank rewards people who have lots of inbound links and people are gladly willing to pay for those links to get boosted up in the Google rankings. The concept of Pay Per Post at first seemed very counter-intuitive to me and something that I flatly would not try... and may abandon very quickly depending on how this little experiment goes. During my experiment all posts that are sponsored will be clearly marked at the top of the page so as no to fool anyone and won't spin anything positively unless I truly believe it. I am not going to take any opportunities that make me talk up something I don't believe in.
So why am I embarking on the experiment? First off, I'm curious as to what opportunities are offered out there and which advertisers are using Pay Per Post programs to get some Google Love. Second, well I'm a very poor college student and figured that I may be able to pick up a little extra free cash flow in the process of my experiment on top of the full time job.

Anyone else have experience with any of these services? What do you think? Keep the conversation going...

Stock Market Flirts with 14,000

The market finished at a record high today, although not quite at 14,000. It had traded earlier in the day at that level but did not reach that peak before closing. The market is up over 12% for the year and now some analysts are forecasting 15,000 before the end of the year. When you look at the statistics it is a little bit astonishing. The market moved from 13,000 to 14,000 in a mere 57 days. Additionally, the market has closed at a record 57 trading days this year. This is pretty amazing since oil has been marching upwards.

Of course there are still people losing money in the market and hedge fund pros getting paid gobs of money to lose money for their clients. I think now is still a good time to get into the market although I'm not about to steer you astray and offer stock tips.

If you are looking to get in the market you can open up a brokerage account by tomorrow and start investing. Fidelity and Charles Schwab are perennial favorites, while brokerages like TradeKing and OptionsXpress don't have minimum account balances or service fees.

Head over to the library or half.com, there are plenty of good investing books that can school you in what a P/E ratio is and teach you how to tell if a stock is overvalued. Or pick up "The Intelligent Investor," the book that Warren Buffet has said is one of the best. After you get your feet on the ground with the basics you can read up on what the pro's are doing. For those of you who have cable (and can stomach his personality) Jim Cramer's Mad Money is a solid show for beginners run by a guy who made a killing by running a hedge fund.

Finally, you can see what the big institutional investors are doing for free by checking out what are the most active options. Head over to Yahoo!Finance and Market Watch which are tremendous resources to get you started.

Have something to add? Leave a suggestion in the comments or email me.

Image Credit: Helico

The Entrepreneur Urge

Sure the failure rate for new businesses is high, but that doesn't undermine the fact that starting a business is right up there with owning a home in living the "American Dream." So if you are thinking about striking off on your own what do you do so your dream doesn't go up in flames like so many other start-ups.

Well aside from ironing out a good business plan here are some things you can do to get yourself started.

• Don't Wait Till You Are Sure it Will Work: Nothing is guaranteed so might as well try. But, don't bet the farm unless you are willing to lose what you bet. This is the biggest reason people never start a company based on the great idea they have had for years -- individual risk tolerances and family issues prevent lots of people from ever trying.
  
  
• Weigh Your Risks: What is the worst thing that can happen? Running a business is a ton of work, but it also has a lot of reward and is less risky than many people make it out to be. Many young people will live their corporate lives without job security or a pension, not to mention social security. If your company might cut you free as soon as business slows down, why not take things into your own hands? Of course, you get to enjoy a lot more upside if you succeed and you are the guy in charge too.
  
  
• Pick a Name: It is important that you do some research to see if your business name has been taken. Search through your state's corporate records (most all of them have databases online) to see if your name is already in use. Check to see if your domain is already reserved (GoDaddy.com is great for this, especially if you Google for some coupons first). If your domain is taken you can run a Whois search to see who owns it and when it expires and try to have a firm like GoDaddy grab it if the expiration date is approaching for about $30.
  
  
• Get Some Legal Advice: Now if you are going it alone this might not be a big deal, you can form an L.L.C. for about $100 by filling out some paperwork online and receive a tax identification number. But, if you are going into business with a partner / family member / stranger you really need a buy-sell agreement. The agreement tells how the business will be wound up. If your partner leaves will they control the company even though they are absentee. What if a relationship sours and someone wants out. A buy-sell plans for those events that you can't envision while you are excited about your business prospects (kind of like a will or prenup).
  
  
• Choose Your Business Entity: Depending on your state you likely have plenty of options, whether it is an L.L.C. or L.L.P. that give you the tax advantages of a partnership (pass through taxes), but none of the pesky liability of a partnership.
  
  
• Test the Waters: You can start small. Most businesses start as side pet projects and run that way until the entrepreneur can gain some assurance that his or her idea won't be a total flop. A domain name costs $10 and hosting just a few more dollars per month. If you have an all-in-one printer, laptop, and phone you can replicate most of the modern conveniences that renting an office would provide... now if you want to manufacture widgets this might not apply to you.
  
  
• Get Some Credit For Your Company: Limited liability is great, but not if you have to personally sign for every document. Banks and other lenders won't extend credit to your new start-up without a personal guarantee because they know how risky a new business is. Head over to Staples and open up a business credit account. Buy some pens or something each month for about 6 months and ta da you have a credit history for your new baby.
  

Post your comments and any tips you have for aspiring entrepreneurs and I will incorporate them in the next draft of my musings.


Image: Jon Cage @ Flickr

Top Adsense Earner Ranking List

Surprisingly, there are a select few people out there who make gobs of money by monetizing their websites with Adsense (note: I am NOT one of them). I can't give you advice on how to do it, but I did stumble across a list from 2006 of the top Adsense money makers and it's pretty mind boggling. It helps you understand how Google can make it's ridiculous numbers quarter after quarter.

1. Markus Frind (PlentyofFish.com an online dating site) $300,000 per month. I know that sounds ridiculous, but then he shows of a $900,000 check from Google.
   
   
2. Kevin Rose (Digg.com online news aggregator) $250,000 per month.
   
   
3. Jeremy Shoemaker (Shoemoney.com search engine marketer) $140,000 per month. He shows off his check here.
   
   
4. Jason Calacanis (Weblogs.com network of blogs) $120,000 per month.
   
   
5. David Miles / Kato Leonard (Freeweblayouts.net myspace templates) $100,000 according to the Washington Post, but the figure is not all Adsense - not that it matters because 100k is pretty good.
   
   
6. Tim Carter (Askthebuilder.com carpenter advice) $30,000 per month.
   
   
7. Joel Comm (get rich quick guru and author of "What Google Never Told You About Making Money With Adsense) $24,000 per month.
   
   
8. Shawn Hogan (Digitalpoint.com ISP software) $10,000 per month.
   

I guess I need to get moving...

Links
Top Adsense Earners @ John Chow

Get $$ For Your Unwanted, Broken or Old Cell Phone

I wish I would have stumbled across this a little sooner since I just got rid of my phone for free, but TerraPass has partnered with RipMobile to give people gift certificates for their unwanted, broken, or just plain old cell phone. You just click the make and model and print the shipping label. When RipMobile receives the phone they send you a gift card. Pretty easy. The phone doesn't have to be working as far as I know because the service breaks them down and recycles the parts. Might be something to check out if you have a couple in your drawer collecting dust anyways. My Sony Ericcson w600i will net me $45 - which is pretty good for a piece of tech garbage. I found a mention of the company in WiredMagazine as a best product of '06 so I'd guess it is on steady financial footing. RipMobile also recycles TV's, computers and other tech gear for cash too.

Link
RipMobile

Get Rich and Have Better Sex (at least if you are a woman)

Generally I am not a big fan of articles on MSN. As a rule of thumb I think they are of little substance and a lot come off as if they were written by a paid representative of some corporation hawking a product. This article follows along with my rule of thumb thinking MSN articles are of little substance, but at least it's entertaining.

Apparently there was some study done (by some a group academics who are more than likely way to qualified to be researching this no doubt) that said rich individuals have better sex and lead more adventurous sex lives than their less affluent counterparts. If that isn't a good reason to start saving more money and moving up the corporate ladder what is? My favorite part of the study is that when asked what the best that money allowed them to have in their sex lives women said higher-quality sex. The men? Oh, so stereotypically said multiple partners simultaneously.

Some caveats: 1) while both sexes who were studied reported better sex lives, the wealthy women did so at a much higher percentage than the men, 2) the average net worth in the study was $89 million - so if you are reading this you probably weren't a member of the study group. The group studied had an annual income of greater than $9 million too.

Link
The Rich Have Better Sex

Incentive Recycling from RecycleBank

Many communities make scads of money from their curbside recycling programs. With the price of metals rising and the processes to recycle many other materials improving it's easy to see why. Would you like to get a little bit of a kickback for taking your recycleables down to the curb? I thought so. RecycleBank has introduced a incentive based program where you fill up one of their provided containers in 35, 64, and 94 gallon varieties and they pick it up and give you rewards. The company will credit you up to $35 a month that can basically be converted into gift certificates. The program is only currently available only on the East Coast in Delaware, Philadelphia, and New Jersey. The company has a strong environmentalist sell so the website shows the trees saved and oil saved by the program.

Link
RecycleBank

The New Hot eBay Items

One type of company that I rank right up there with Pay Day Loans as far as over promising services to people who don't know much better are the Sell it on eBay variety. There are also countless books, e-books, CD's, etc claiming they can teach you the secrets about how to make a killing on eBay.

Although I am a frequent eBay user, I typically buy things there because they are cheap. To get to the cheap good stuff I have to wade through about 10 pages of knock offs, overpriced buy it now items and overall crap. I rarely sell things there unless I have low expectations about what I will receive. Aside from the aforementioned shortcomings, it is a great resource to find stuff that is hard to find or unique. Many people do make a sizable income there (generally by selling in volume).

Apparently the new hot (and large markup) items on eBay lately have been iPods, plasma TV's, Wii's semi-designer clothing. I was floored recently when I read in the Wall Street Journal that a lot of limited edition short run Target and H&M clothing has been selling at double, triple and 5x retail. I'm no fashionista and this is obviously not something everyone should try, but if you have an eye for fashion and are into eBay could be something to play around with.

Link
Gold in Your Closet WSJ