Making Money on the Internet

What Internet activism looks like

Cory Doctorow at 1:21 PM Tuesday, Sep 28, 2010

Anil Dash hits one so far out of the park it attains orbit in this response to a silly Malcolm Gladwell column that decried Internet activism as incapable of achieving meaningful change. It's all must-read stuff, but here's the bit that made me want to stand up and salute:

Today, Dale Dougherty and the dozens of others who have led Maker Faire, and the culture of "making", are in front of a
movement of millions who are proactive about challenging the constrictions that law and corporations are trying to place on how they communicate, create and live. The lesson that simply making things is a radical political act has enormous precedence in political history; I learned it well as a child when my own family's conversation after a screening of Gandhi turned to the salt protests in India, which were first catalyzed in my family's home state of Orissa, and led to my great-grandfather walking alongside Gandhi and others in the salt marches to come. Today's American Tea Partiers see even the original "tea party" largely as a metaphor, but the salt marches were a declaration of self-determination as expressed through manufacturing that took the symbolism of the Boston Tea Party and made it part of everyday life.

To his last day, my great-grandfather wore khadi, the handspun clothing that didn't just represent independence from the British Raj in an abstract way, but made defiance of onerous British regulation as plain as the clothes on one's back. At Maker Faire this weekend, there were numerous examples of clothing that were made to defy laws about everything from spectrum to encryption law. It would have been only an afternoon's work to construct a t-shirt that broadcast CSS-descrambling code over unauthorized spectrum in defiance of the DMCA.

And if we put the making movement in the context of other social and political movements, it's had amazing success. In city after city, year after year, tens of thousands of people pay money to show up and learn about taking control of their media, learning, consumption and communications. In contrast to groups like the Tea Party, the crowd at Maker Faire is diverse, includes children and adults of all ages, and never finds itself in conflict with other groups based on identity or politics. More importantly, the jobs that many of us have in 2030 will be determined by young people who attended a Maker Faire, in industries that they've created. There is no other political movement in America today with a credible claim at creating the jobs of the future.

Make The Revolution

Has the White House been influenced by a convicted domestic terrorist for its attack on the Chamber of Commerce?

The latest assault on the Chamber has been spear-headed by none other than the President himself and picked up by David Axelrod, MoveOn.org and all the usual Astro-Turfers who receive marching orders from the DNC.  It’s become part of the standard talking points for cable-news pundits and their well-programmed guests and has been the new rallying cry for the left as they try their best to explain the imminent electoral disaster that looms on November 2nd.

But one group was well ahead of the curve on this movement to stop the Chamber of Commerce.  In fact, they even own the URL “StopTheChamber.com”.  That group is the infamous Velvet Revolution headed by convicted violent criminal and bomber, Brett Kimberlin.  In her extensive and detailed article on Kimberlin and his past violent crimes, Liberty Chick noted that left-wing blogs and main stream media organs routinely site Kimberlin and his partner, Brad Friedman as legitimate sources and as normative “watch-dogs” over-seeing right-wing election shenanigans.  The problem is, Kimberlin is a convicted domestic terrorist who has been described as a habitual liar by those who have looked into his past.

And yet, the mainstream Democrats clinging to any strategy to stop the bleeding over the next two weeks are latching on to the Stop the Chamber narrative that was first hatched at Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution site last year.

At first glance, the StopTheChamber page looks like a clearing house for various, unfounded attacks on the Chamber of Commerce by Velvet Revolution and by politicians who repeat their assertions.  But, it doesn’t take you long to see the prominent “Donate Now” button in the center of the page.  And, it looks like it’s working.  The bottom of the page lists over 4,000 names of individuals who appear to be supporters of the movement (we have no idea if any of them realize they are putting money in the pocket of a convicted violent felon).  Interestingly, the first name on this list of individual supporters is Bill Moyers.

The Stop the Chamber campaign appears to be nothing more than a fund-raising operation that solicits donations and then produces press releases and an advertisement in the style of a Wanted poster soliciting “tips” on the CEO of the Chamber, Tom Donohue.  It seems to be a two-pronged fishing expedition:  One is fishing for “tips” that prove “criminal behavior” by Mr. Donohue and the Chamber (an expedition that has proven to be fruitless as of now), the other is fishing for donations to continue the campaign’s valuable work.

How Kimberlin has been able to pass himself off as a legitimate and respected part of the national political dialogue is a question that deserves exploring, if not some serious soul-searching from our friends on the left who appear to be ready to latch-on to anyone who might be effective for them regardless of how many disgraceful skeletons inhabit their closets.  But what is truly outrageous is how eagerly our President and his associates have followed this man’s lead in pursuing this fruitless enterprise of demonizing the Chamber, demonizing Karl Rove and demonizing the Tea Party despite the lack of evidence to substantiate the obscene charges they are leveling.

We have already heard David Axelrod’s new standard for making these accusations.  When asked if he had any proof that the Chamber was involved in campaign fraud, he responded by asking CBS’ Bob Schieffer: “Do you have any proof that they aren’t?”  That is the President’s closest advisor turning the Constitution and the Magna Carta on its head for the sake of winning a vote or two.

If they are willing to do that, then they are surely willing to align themselves with a habitual liar and convicted bomber like Kimberlin.  The question is:  Other than this site, who else will be willing to call them out on it?

reputation management

Fox <b>News</b> Digs Up Obama&#39;s Past &#39;Shovel Ready&#39; Remarks | Mediaite

In this weekend's NYT Magazine cover story President Obama revealed to Peter Baker that he has discovered there's no such thing as shovel-ready projects.” This in stark contrast to the manner in which campaign Obama had pitched the ...

Facebook, Microsoft Kinect and Yahoo <b>News</b> of Note

Facebook, Microsoft Kinect and Yahoo News of Note Here are some stories worth reading on TMCnet today:Jaclyn Allard explains Microsoft has a Facebook, Gartner, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Social media, Twitter, Wall Street Journal.

<b>News</b> - Bosnia Lifts Ban on Angelina Jolie&#39;s Directorial Debut <b>...</b>

Now on track to shoot there next month, the star "feels like a huge weight has been lifted," a source says.

Money Making Schemes

Newsmax sent out an email today to
its mailing list touting the presence of Sarah Palin in “a special pre-election
webcast series we will be airing exclusively online” starting October 12.
According to the email, the webcast, to be called “Make America Great Again,”
will be hosted by Michael Reagan and feature Palin as well as “other opinion
leaders such as Dick Morris.”

Morris, of course, has been a longtime
marquee participant in shilling for Newsmax’s money-making schemes. Like
Palin, Morris is a Fox News contributor, making her at least the third Fox News
employee to team up with Newsmax; the other is Bill O’Reilly, who did an
interview featured in an informercial for yet another financial
product (though Fox News denied that it knew O’Reilly would be used in that way).
Palin has also previously touted Newsmax as one of the news sources she reads.

It wouldn’t be Newsmax, though, if
it wasn’t using people like Palin to try and sell you something.

If you sign up for this webcast, you
are directed to a web page (PDF) that gives you the opportunity to upgrade your Palin experience --
for a price, of course. You can continue to pay nothing and receive only “Brief
Clips of the Exclusive Interviews With Governor Palin, Dick Morris, Mike
Reagan, and the Entire Lineup of Important Guests” and “Limited Access to the
‘Make America Great Again’ Attendee Website.” Or you could pay $9.95 to be a
“VIP Member” and receive “Unlimited Access to the Make America Great Again
Campaign, PLUS” a copy of Palin’s forthcoming book.
You also get trial subscriptions to Newsmax’s magazine and one of its financial
reports, which has the usual caveat that you must cancel before the trial
period ends to avoid being automatically charged for a year’s subscription to
them.

Or you can pay Newsmax an extra $20 not
to send you the magazine and newsletter; a $29.95 “Book Subscription” gives you
“all of the benefits of VIP access as noted above, as well as Sarah Palin’s
upcoming new book, but you will NOT receive free trial subscriptions to Newsmax
magazine and The Franklin Prosperity Report.” Seeking payment for not doing
something is an interesting money-making strategy, and it’s a big clue as to
how much the profitability of Newsmax’s promotion depends on people forgetting to
cancel their trial subscriptions.

The web page also gives previews of
the webcast series, which looks like it will be mostly about attacking Obama, reinforcing right-wing talking points,
and encouraging conservatives to vote in November. It also sycophantically
calls Morris “the top political strategist and the man Time magazine referred to as ‘the most
influential private citizen in America’
” – which, as we’ve previously noted,
it did just before Morris resigned in disgrace from Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election
campaign.

Newsmax may not be selling financial
schemes for once, but it sure has a connection with Fox News that it has no
problem exploiting.

As thousands of demonstrators marched in European capitals on Wednesday to protest recent austerity measures, officials in Brussels proposed stiffening sanctions for governments that fail to cut their budget deficits and debt swiftly enough. ("Workers In Europe Protest Austerity Measures", New York Times, 9/30/2010)

Oh, do the super-rich hate the sound of "class struggle." Dare to utter the words and they'll reach for their red-baiting paint guns and spray you silly with invective. It's un-American. It's socialistic. It's an insult to democracy and freedom.

But try as they might, they can't paint over the reality, which the new Fortune 400 listings make so clear: Wall Street billionaires have more money than they'll ever be able to use--at a time when more than 29 million of us don't have that most basic necessity, a full-time job. A hidden class war got us to this point. It's not hidden anymore.

Once upon a time there was a tangible connection between the plutocrats and the rest of us. Carnegie, Mellon and Rockefeller built sprawling enterprises that employed tens of thousands of workers (even if they did treat them brutally). But today's billionaire financiers, about 100 of whom are on the Fortune 400 list, have a tough time explaining how their money-making schemes produce any jobs at all. Very few of us have a clue about how they even make their money.

But we are clued in to the way our society is splitting apart. What's good for the Wall Street tycoons is not good for America. The wealthy may loathe hearing about "class struggle," but we're in the middle of one -- and it's a doozy.

Back in the 1800s (and onward), "class struggle" meant the economic conflict between the interests of working people and those who owned "the means of production." But that construct proved too rigid to describe a complex modern economy. Companies are often run by managers who aren't owners. Most middle managers and supervisors also are workers, not owners, though they may identify with upper management. In glamor industries like Hollywood and sports, some workers are far richer and more powerful than the managers and owners. And many workers are "owners" through stock purchases made individually and through their pension funds.

"Class struggle" also doesn't capture the symbiotic relationship between workers, managers and owners. Yes, we fight over everything from plant shutdowns to job safety and health care benefits. But we also have common interests - workers want to keep their jobs, and for that they are dependent upon "owners." Instead of class struggle, we often see workers lobbying alongside owners for policies that might keep their industry afloat. This worker-boss connection is often much stronger than any sense of broad class solidarity among workers across the country. Most of us define ourselves as middle class, not working class, and we don't see ourselves at war with the business owners.

Until now. The financial crisis is squaring up a new class struggle: The handful of financial elites versus the rest of us. Where's our common interest? What's good for them (a $10 trillion bailout) costs us jobs and public services, and deepens the public debt. Financial elites have effectively hijacked our economy and there will be hell to pay to get it back.

Beginning in the mid-1970s the twin policies of financial deregulation and tax cuts for the super-rich laid the groundwork for the rise of financial industry billionaires. We were told these policies would fuel an enormous investment boom that would cause all boats to rise. Not quite. Income certainly gushed to the top fraction of one percent. But then we entered the financial industry Twilight Zone: The super-rich accumulated so much money that they literally ran out of investments in normal industries that produced real goods and services. Wall Street, now a deregulated Wild West, rode to the rescue by creating all manner of new paper investment opportunities. Instead of buying a piece of a factory or company through stocks and bonds, you bought derivatives. Or you gave your money to hedge funds where you could "earn" outsized returns with little risk -- just what the super-rich craved. Unfortunately, the entire enterprise was built upon layer after layer of leverage. The result was an unstable upside-down pyramid of "structured finance" balancing on a very narrow base of real tangible assets.

All of this worked just fine until it didn't. You know the rest of the story. When housing prices stopped rising, these paper assets - the CDOs and all the rest - went up in smoke, incinerating the rest of the economy in the process. (Please see The Looting of America for an easy-to-read account.)

On their long way up, financial industry billionaires grabbed our economy by the cojones-- and they're not letting go. Here are a few of the indicators:

1. Financial sector profits dramatically increased in the past several decades, peaking at over 40 percent of all corporate profits just before the economic collapse. Now the industry's profits are chugging back up again.


2. After the inevitable crash, the financial sector and its investors had all the political clout they needed to ensure their swift rescue by the government. Instead of paying a hefty price for wrecking the economy with their bad bets as dictated by free market principles, they got bailed out at taxpayer expense.


3. The 2010 financial reform bill did not break up financial institutions that were too big to fail or too interconnected to fail. It also didn't rebuild the Glass-Steagall Act's wall between investment banks and depository banks. The six largest banks are now bigger than ever.


4. Congress rejected our calls for a windfall profits tax or financial transaction tax to help pay for the financial sector's catastrophic damage to our economy. Instead Wall Street elites are again reaping enormous profits, leaving 29 million unemployed and underemployed people in the dust.


5. To pay for our rising public debt we're being told to tighten our belts so that they don't have to tighten theirs.

Economists assure us that the financial sector's role is to prudently move excess savings into investment. But that's not how Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, the largest private equity funds and the largest hedge funds are raking in their billions. Their real cash cow is their secretive daily practice of "proprietary trading" -- the equivalent of gambling in a rigged casino. This has nothing to do with investing in industries that might put our people to work. So our paltry economic growth is generating financial industry booty, not jobs.

Our billionaires might want us to think of them as great statesmen working to help our nation prosper and grow. But in reality, they're busily siphoning off our nation's wealth -- and blocking all efforts to regulate or tax their destructive behavior.

Wall Street's class warfare doesn't just target workers. While many top multinational corporate CEOs are in league with the big financiers, most of the medium and small business owners now struggling to find the capital to stay alive have few friends on Wall Street. Workers, supervisors and middle managers alike now live in fear that they'll lose their jobs -- and it's all because of the financial shenanigans on Wall Street. You don't have to be a Marxist to know that we bailed out the very people who wrecked our economy. You'll find precious few defenders of Wall Street anywhere in America.

This new class struggle will soon begin playing out on some new battlefields. The weight of the U.S.'s massive debt (created by the financial crisis and our failure to tax the super-rich the way we used to) will be put on our backs. The financial elites, along with their richly funded think tanks and compliant political hacks, will tell us to privatize Social Security, reduce its benefits and extend the retirement age. We'll be told we must cut funding for schools and health care services. We'll have to live with a crumbling infrastructure and a deteriorating environment -- because, well, the money just isn't there.

But if we call for raising taxes on the super-rich to prevent these dire developments, they'll bring out their paint guns and scream "socialism!" -- and threaten us with more economic catastrophe. Of course, they can fly their private jets over our collapsing infrastructure and send their kids to private schools. And they have no worries about jobs, health care or retirement, since they and their families have more money than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes. Talk about a class struggle!

The Wall Street billionaires utterly refuse to accept any blame for our economic woes. They simply can't believe that their billions came from fatal flaws in our system rather than from their own genius. They'll fight to the end to convince us and themselves that they are indeed God's gift to our economy. (Wouldn't you if you had a billion dollars?)

It's time to make them pay their fair share for the damage they've done. That will help finance the massive jobs programs we need to put our people back to work. Of course, the super-wealthy can afford to pay. Only their pride will suffer.

In truth most of us would prefer to duck this fight. We just want to find a job, or keep the one we have, be with our families and cope with what life throws at us while enjoying as much of it as we can. We don't want to go to war with the richest people in the world, even though we greatly outnumber them. But we can't avoid this battle--it's coming to our doorsteps. The Dow may hit 12,000 but unemployment will haunt us for a decade to come. We can't afford the brutal cuts to retiree benefits, healthcare or education that they're pushing on us.

It will take a lot of time and effort to figure out how to fight back and win. But don't despair. As the old union song suggests, the toughest question always is "Which side are you on?" In the new class struggle, that decision has already been made for us.

Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.

bench craft company reviews

Mine Coverage Taxes BBC <b>News</b> Budget - NYTimes.com

The BBC will cut back on some of its coverage plans for the rest of the year because of the high cost of covering the mine rescue in Chile.

Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>

Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...

Fox <b>News</b> Remains Far Ahead Of Cable <b>News</b> Competition During Pre <b>...</b>

Fox News Channel finished #4 in prime time on all of cable (total viewers) last week - the week before their ratings are likely to increase even further thanks to the miner rescue coverage. Here's a look at the rest of cable news:

bench craft company reviews

Newsmax sent out an email today to
its mailing list touting the presence of Sarah Palin in “a special pre-election
webcast series we will be airing exclusively online” starting October 12.
According to the email, the webcast, to be called “Make America Great Again,”
will be hosted by Michael Reagan and feature Palin as well as “other opinion
leaders such as Dick Morris.”

Morris, of course, has been a longtime
marquee participant in shilling for Newsmax’s money-making schemes. Like
Palin, Morris is a Fox News contributor, making her at least the third Fox News
employee to team up with Newsmax; the other is Bill O’Reilly, who did an
interview featured in an informercial for yet another financial
product (though Fox News denied that it knew O’Reilly would be used in that way).
Palin has also previously touted Newsmax as one of the news sources she reads.

It wouldn’t be Newsmax, though, if
it wasn’t using people like Palin to try and sell you something.

If you sign up for this webcast, you
are directed to a web page (PDF) that gives you the opportunity to upgrade your Palin experience --
for a price, of course. You can continue to pay nothing and receive only “Brief
Clips of the Exclusive Interviews With Governor Palin, Dick Morris, Mike
Reagan, and the Entire Lineup of Important Guests” and “Limited Access to the
‘Make America Great Again’ Attendee Website.” Or you could pay $9.95 to be a
“VIP Member” and receive “Unlimited Access to the Make America Great Again
Campaign, PLUS” a copy of Palin’s forthcoming book.
You also get trial subscriptions to Newsmax’s magazine and one of its financial
reports, which has the usual caveat that you must cancel before the trial
period ends to avoid being automatically charged for a year’s subscription to
them.

Or you can pay Newsmax an extra $20 not
to send you the magazine and newsletter; a $29.95 “Book Subscription” gives you
“all of the benefits of VIP access as noted above, as well as Sarah Palin’s
upcoming new book, but you will NOT receive free trial subscriptions to Newsmax
magazine and The Franklin Prosperity Report.” Seeking payment for not doing
something is an interesting money-making strategy, and it’s a big clue as to
how much the profitability of Newsmax’s promotion depends on people forgetting to
cancel their trial subscriptions.

The web page also gives previews of
the webcast series, which looks like it will be mostly about attacking Obama, reinforcing right-wing talking points,
and encouraging conservatives to vote in November. It also sycophantically
calls Morris “the top political strategist and the man Time magazine referred to as ‘the most
influential private citizen in America’
” – which, as we’ve previously noted,
it did just before Morris resigned in disgrace from Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election
campaign.

Newsmax may not be selling financial
schemes for once, but it sure has a connection with Fox News that it has no
problem exploiting.

As thousands of demonstrators marched in European capitals on Wednesday to protest recent austerity measures, officials in Brussels proposed stiffening sanctions for governments that fail to cut their budget deficits and debt swiftly enough. ("Workers In Europe Protest Austerity Measures", New York Times, 9/30/2010)

Oh, do the super-rich hate the sound of "class struggle." Dare to utter the words and they'll reach for their red-baiting paint guns and spray you silly with invective. It's un-American. It's socialistic. It's an insult to democracy and freedom.

But try as they might, they can't paint over the reality, which the new Fortune 400 listings make so clear: Wall Street billionaires have more money than they'll ever be able to use--at a time when more than 29 million of us don't have that most basic necessity, a full-time job. A hidden class war got us to this point. It's not hidden anymore.

Once upon a time there was a tangible connection between the plutocrats and the rest of us. Carnegie, Mellon and Rockefeller built sprawling enterprises that employed tens of thousands of workers (even if they did treat them brutally). But today's billionaire financiers, about 100 of whom are on the Fortune 400 list, have a tough time explaining how their money-making schemes produce any jobs at all. Very few of us have a clue about how they even make their money.

But we are clued in to the way our society is splitting apart. What's good for the Wall Street tycoons is not good for America. The wealthy may loathe hearing about "class struggle," but we're in the middle of one -- and it's a doozy.

Back in the 1800s (and onward), "class struggle" meant the economic conflict between the interests of working people and those who owned "the means of production." But that construct proved too rigid to describe a complex modern economy. Companies are often run by managers who aren't owners. Most middle managers and supervisors also are workers, not owners, though they may identify with upper management. In glamor industries like Hollywood and sports, some workers are far richer and more powerful than the managers and owners. And many workers are "owners" through stock purchases made individually and through their pension funds.

"Class struggle" also doesn't capture the symbiotic relationship between workers, managers and owners. Yes, we fight over everything from plant shutdowns to job safety and health care benefits. But we also have common interests - workers want to keep their jobs, and for that they are dependent upon "owners." Instead of class struggle, we often see workers lobbying alongside owners for policies that might keep their industry afloat. This worker-boss connection is often much stronger than any sense of broad class solidarity among workers across the country. Most of us define ourselves as middle class, not working class, and we don't see ourselves at war with the business owners.

Until now. The financial crisis is squaring up a new class struggle: The handful of financial elites versus the rest of us. Where's our common interest? What's good for them (a $10 trillion bailout) costs us jobs and public services, and deepens the public debt. Financial elites have effectively hijacked our economy and there will be hell to pay to get it back.

Beginning in the mid-1970s the twin policies of financial deregulation and tax cuts for the super-rich laid the groundwork for the rise of financial industry billionaires. We were told these policies would fuel an enormous investment boom that would cause all boats to rise. Not quite. Income certainly gushed to the top fraction of one percent. But then we entered the financial industry Twilight Zone: The super-rich accumulated so much money that they literally ran out of investments in normal industries that produced real goods and services. Wall Street, now a deregulated Wild West, rode to the rescue by creating all manner of new paper investment opportunities. Instead of buying a piece of a factory or company through stocks and bonds, you bought derivatives. Or you gave your money to hedge funds where you could "earn" outsized returns with little risk -- just what the super-rich craved. Unfortunately, the entire enterprise was built upon layer after layer of leverage. The result was an unstable upside-down pyramid of "structured finance" balancing on a very narrow base of real tangible assets.

All of this worked just fine until it didn't. You know the rest of the story. When housing prices stopped rising, these paper assets - the CDOs and all the rest - went up in smoke, incinerating the rest of the economy in the process. (Please see The Looting of America for an easy-to-read account.)

On their long way up, financial industry billionaires grabbed our economy by the cojones-- and they're not letting go. Here are a few of the indicators:

1. Financial sector profits dramatically increased in the past several decades, peaking at over 40 percent of all corporate profits just before the economic collapse. Now the industry's profits are chugging back up again.


2. After the inevitable crash, the financial sector and its investors had all the political clout they needed to ensure their swift rescue by the government. Instead of paying a hefty price for wrecking the economy with their bad bets as dictated by free market principles, they got bailed out at taxpayer expense.


3. The 2010 financial reform bill did not break up financial institutions that were too big to fail or too interconnected to fail. It also didn't rebuild the Glass-Steagall Act's wall between investment banks and depository banks. The six largest banks are now bigger than ever.


4. Congress rejected our calls for a windfall profits tax or financial transaction tax to help pay for the financial sector's catastrophic damage to our economy. Instead Wall Street elites are again reaping enormous profits, leaving 29 million unemployed and underemployed people in the dust.


5. To pay for our rising public debt we're being told to tighten our belts so that they don't have to tighten theirs.

Economists assure us that the financial sector's role is to prudently move excess savings into investment. But that's not how Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, the largest private equity funds and the largest hedge funds are raking in their billions. Their real cash cow is their secretive daily practice of "proprietary trading" -- the equivalent of gambling in a rigged casino. This has nothing to do with investing in industries that might put our people to work. So our paltry economic growth is generating financial industry booty, not jobs.

Our billionaires might want us to think of them as great statesmen working to help our nation prosper and grow. But in reality, they're busily siphoning off our nation's wealth -- and blocking all efforts to regulate or tax their destructive behavior.

Wall Street's class warfare doesn't just target workers. While many top multinational corporate CEOs are in league with the big financiers, most of the medium and small business owners now struggling to find the capital to stay alive have few friends on Wall Street. Workers, supervisors and middle managers alike now live in fear that they'll lose their jobs -- and it's all because of the financial shenanigans on Wall Street. You don't have to be a Marxist to know that we bailed out the very people who wrecked our economy. You'll find precious few defenders of Wall Street anywhere in America.

This new class struggle will soon begin playing out on some new battlefields. The weight of the U.S.'s massive debt (created by the financial crisis and our failure to tax the super-rich the way we used to) will be put on our backs. The financial elites, along with their richly funded think tanks and compliant political hacks, will tell us to privatize Social Security, reduce its benefits and extend the retirement age. We'll be told we must cut funding for schools and health care services. We'll have to live with a crumbling infrastructure and a deteriorating environment -- because, well, the money just isn't there.

But if we call for raising taxes on the super-rich to prevent these dire developments, they'll bring out their paint guns and scream "socialism!" -- and threaten us with more economic catastrophe. Of course, they can fly their private jets over our collapsing infrastructure and send their kids to private schools. And they have no worries about jobs, health care or retirement, since they and their families have more money than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes. Talk about a class struggle!

The Wall Street billionaires utterly refuse to accept any blame for our economic woes. They simply can't believe that their billions came from fatal flaws in our system rather than from their own genius. They'll fight to the end to convince us and themselves that they are indeed God's gift to our economy. (Wouldn't you if you had a billion dollars?)

It's time to make them pay their fair share for the damage they've done. That will help finance the massive jobs programs we need to put our people back to work. Of course, the super-wealthy can afford to pay. Only their pride will suffer.

In truth most of us would prefer to duck this fight. We just want to find a job, or keep the one we have, be with our families and cope with what life throws at us while enjoying as much of it as we can. We don't want to go to war with the richest people in the world, even though we greatly outnumber them. But we can't avoid this battle--it's coming to our doorsteps. The Dow may hit 12,000 but unemployment will haunt us for a decade to come. We can't afford the brutal cuts to retiree benefits, healthcare or education that they're pushing on us.

It will take a lot of time and effort to figure out how to fight back and win. But don't despair. As the old union song suggests, the toughest question always is "Which side are you on?" In the new class struggle, that decision has already been made for us.

Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.

benchcraft company scam

Mine Coverage Taxes BBC <b>News</b> Budget - NYTimes.com

The BBC will cut back on some of its coverage plans for the rest of the year because of the high cost of covering the mine rescue in Chile.

Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>

Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...

Fox <b>News</b> Remains Far Ahead Of Cable <b>News</b> Competition During Pre <b>...</b>

Fox News Channel finished #4 in prime time on all of cable (total viewers) last week - the week before their ratings are likely to increase even further thanks to the miner rescue coverage. Here's a look at the rest of cable news:

benchcraft company portland or

benchcraft company scam

benchcraft company scam

Mine Coverage Taxes BBC <b>News</b> Budget - NYTimes.com

The BBC will cut back on some of its coverage plans for the rest of the year because of the high cost of covering the mine rescue in Chile.

Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>

Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...

Fox <b>News</b> Remains Far Ahead Of Cable <b>News</b> Competition During Pre <b>...</b>

Fox News Channel finished #4 in prime time on all of cable (total viewers) last week - the week before their ratings are likely to increase even further thanks to the miner rescue coverage. Here's a look at the rest of cable news:

benchcraft company portland or

Newsmax sent out an email today to
its mailing list touting the presence of Sarah Palin in “a special pre-election
webcast series we will be airing exclusively online” starting October 12.
According to the email, the webcast, to be called “Make America Great Again,”
will be hosted by Michael Reagan and feature Palin as well as “other opinion
leaders such as Dick Morris.”

Morris, of course, has been a longtime
marquee participant in shilling for Newsmax’s money-making schemes. Like
Palin, Morris is a Fox News contributor, making her at least the third Fox News
employee to team up with Newsmax; the other is Bill O’Reilly, who did an
interview featured in an informercial for yet another financial
product (though Fox News denied that it knew O’Reilly would be used in that way).
Palin has also previously touted Newsmax as one of the news sources she reads.

It wouldn’t be Newsmax, though, if
it wasn’t using people like Palin to try and sell you something.

If you sign up for this webcast, you
are directed to a web page (PDF) that gives you the opportunity to upgrade your Palin experience --
for a price, of course. You can continue to pay nothing and receive only “Brief
Clips of the Exclusive Interviews With Governor Palin, Dick Morris, Mike
Reagan, and the Entire Lineup of Important Guests” and “Limited Access to the
‘Make America Great Again’ Attendee Website.” Or you could pay $9.95 to be a
“VIP Member” and receive “Unlimited Access to the Make America Great Again
Campaign, PLUS” a copy of Palin’s forthcoming book.
You also get trial subscriptions to Newsmax’s magazine and one of its financial
reports, which has the usual caveat that you must cancel before the trial
period ends to avoid being automatically charged for a year’s subscription to
them.

Or you can pay Newsmax an extra $20 not
to send you the magazine and newsletter; a $29.95 “Book Subscription” gives you
“all of the benefits of VIP access as noted above, as well as Sarah Palin’s
upcoming new book, but you will NOT receive free trial subscriptions to Newsmax
magazine and The Franklin Prosperity Report.” Seeking payment for not doing
something is an interesting money-making strategy, and it’s a big clue as to
how much the profitability of Newsmax’s promotion depends on people forgetting to
cancel their trial subscriptions.

The web page also gives previews of
the webcast series, which looks like it will be mostly about attacking Obama, reinforcing right-wing talking points,
and encouraging conservatives to vote in November. It also sycophantically
calls Morris “the top political strategist and the man Time magazine referred to as ‘the most
influential private citizen in America’
” – which, as we’ve previously noted,
it did just before Morris resigned in disgrace from Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election
campaign.

Newsmax may not be selling financial
schemes for once, but it sure has a connection with Fox News that it has no
problem exploiting.

As thousands of demonstrators marched in European capitals on Wednesday to protest recent austerity measures, officials in Brussels proposed stiffening sanctions for governments that fail to cut their budget deficits and debt swiftly enough. ("Workers In Europe Protest Austerity Measures", New York Times, 9/30/2010)

Oh, do the super-rich hate the sound of "class struggle." Dare to utter the words and they'll reach for their red-baiting paint guns and spray you silly with invective. It's un-American. It's socialistic. It's an insult to democracy and freedom.

But try as they might, they can't paint over the reality, which the new Fortune 400 listings make so clear: Wall Street billionaires have more money than they'll ever be able to use--at a time when more than 29 million of us don't have that most basic necessity, a full-time job. A hidden class war got us to this point. It's not hidden anymore.

Once upon a time there was a tangible connection between the plutocrats and the rest of us. Carnegie, Mellon and Rockefeller built sprawling enterprises that employed tens of thousands of workers (even if they did treat them brutally). But today's billionaire financiers, about 100 of whom are on the Fortune 400 list, have a tough time explaining how their money-making schemes produce any jobs at all. Very few of us have a clue about how they even make their money.

But we are clued in to the way our society is splitting apart. What's good for the Wall Street tycoons is not good for America. The wealthy may loathe hearing about "class struggle," but we're in the middle of one -- and it's a doozy.

Back in the 1800s (and onward), "class struggle" meant the economic conflict between the interests of working people and those who owned "the means of production." But that construct proved too rigid to describe a complex modern economy. Companies are often run by managers who aren't owners. Most middle managers and supervisors also are workers, not owners, though they may identify with upper management. In glamor industries like Hollywood and sports, some workers are far richer and more powerful than the managers and owners. And many workers are "owners" through stock purchases made individually and through their pension funds.

"Class struggle" also doesn't capture the symbiotic relationship between workers, managers and owners. Yes, we fight over everything from plant shutdowns to job safety and health care benefits. But we also have common interests - workers want to keep their jobs, and for that they are dependent upon "owners." Instead of class struggle, we often see workers lobbying alongside owners for policies that might keep their industry afloat. This worker-boss connection is often much stronger than any sense of broad class solidarity among workers across the country. Most of us define ourselves as middle class, not working class, and we don't see ourselves at war with the business owners.

Until now. The financial crisis is squaring up a new class struggle: The handful of financial elites versus the rest of us. Where's our common interest? What's good for them (a $10 trillion bailout) costs us jobs and public services, and deepens the public debt. Financial elites have effectively hijacked our economy and there will be hell to pay to get it back.

Beginning in the mid-1970s the twin policies of financial deregulation and tax cuts for the super-rich laid the groundwork for the rise of financial industry billionaires. We were told these policies would fuel an enormous investment boom that would cause all boats to rise. Not quite. Income certainly gushed to the top fraction of one percent. But then we entered the financial industry Twilight Zone: The super-rich accumulated so much money that they literally ran out of investments in normal industries that produced real goods and services. Wall Street, now a deregulated Wild West, rode to the rescue by creating all manner of new paper investment opportunities. Instead of buying a piece of a factory or company through stocks and bonds, you bought derivatives. Or you gave your money to hedge funds where you could "earn" outsized returns with little risk -- just what the super-rich craved. Unfortunately, the entire enterprise was built upon layer after layer of leverage. The result was an unstable upside-down pyramid of "structured finance" balancing on a very narrow base of real tangible assets.

All of this worked just fine until it didn't. You know the rest of the story. When housing prices stopped rising, these paper assets - the CDOs and all the rest - went up in smoke, incinerating the rest of the economy in the process. (Please see The Looting of America for an easy-to-read account.)

On their long way up, financial industry billionaires grabbed our economy by the cojones-- and they're not letting go. Here are a few of the indicators:

1. Financial sector profits dramatically increased in the past several decades, peaking at over 40 percent of all corporate profits just before the economic collapse. Now the industry's profits are chugging back up again.


2. After the inevitable crash, the financial sector and its investors had all the political clout they needed to ensure their swift rescue by the government. Instead of paying a hefty price for wrecking the economy with their bad bets as dictated by free market principles, they got bailed out at taxpayer expense.


3. The 2010 financial reform bill did not break up financial institutions that were too big to fail or too interconnected to fail. It also didn't rebuild the Glass-Steagall Act's wall between investment banks and depository banks. The six largest banks are now bigger than ever.


4. Congress rejected our calls for a windfall profits tax or financial transaction tax to help pay for the financial sector's catastrophic damage to our economy. Instead Wall Street elites are again reaping enormous profits, leaving 29 million unemployed and underemployed people in the dust.


5. To pay for our rising public debt we're being told to tighten our belts so that they don't have to tighten theirs.

Economists assure us that the financial sector's role is to prudently move excess savings into investment. But that's not how Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, the largest private equity funds and the largest hedge funds are raking in their billions. Their real cash cow is their secretive daily practice of "proprietary trading" -- the equivalent of gambling in a rigged casino. This has nothing to do with investing in industries that might put our people to work. So our paltry economic growth is generating financial industry booty, not jobs.

Our billionaires might want us to think of them as great statesmen working to help our nation prosper and grow. But in reality, they're busily siphoning off our nation's wealth -- and blocking all efforts to regulate or tax their destructive behavior.

Wall Street's class warfare doesn't just target workers. While many top multinational corporate CEOs are in league with the big financiers, most of the medium and small business owners now struggling to find the capital to stay alive have few friends on Wall Street. Workers, supervisors and middle managers alike now live in fear that they'll lose their jobs -- and it's all because of the financial shenanigans on Wall Street. You don't have to be a Marxist to know that we bailed out the very people who wrecked our economy. You'll find precious few defenders of Wall Street anywhere in America.

This new class struggle will soon begin playing out on some new battlefields. The weight of the U.S.'s massive debt (created by the financial crisis and our failure to tax the super-rich the way we used to) will be put on our backs. The financial elites, along with their richly funded think tanks and compliant political hacks, will tell us to privatize Social Security, reduce its benefits and extend the retirement age. We'll be told we must cut funding for schools and health care services. We'll have to live with a crumbling infrastructure and a deteriorating environment -- because, well, the money just isn't there.

But if we call for raising taxes on the super-rich to prevent these dire developments, they'll bring out their paint guns and scream "socialism!" -- and threaten us with more economic catastrophe. Of course, they can fly their private jets over our collapsing infrastructure and send their kids to private schools. And they have no worries about jobs, health care or retirement, since they and their families have more money than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes. Talk about a class struggle!

The Wall Street billionaires utterly refuse to accept any blame for our economic woes. They simply can't believe that their billions came from fatal flaws in our system rather than from their own genius. They'll fight to the end to convince us and themselves that they are indeed God's gift to our economy. (Wouldn't you if you had a billion dollars?)

It's time to make them pay their fair share for the damage they've done. That will help finance the massive jobs programs we need to put our people back to work. Of course, the super-wealthy can afford to pay. Only their pride will suffer.

In truth most of us would prefer to duck this fight. We just want to find a job, or keep the one we have, be with our families and cope with what life throws at us while enjoying as much of it as we can. We don't want to go to war with the richest people in the world, even though we greatly outnumber them. But we can't avoid this battle--it's coming to our doorsteps. The Dow may hit 12,000 but unemployment will haunt us for a decade to come. We can't afford the brutal cuts to retiree benefits, healthcare or education that they're pushing on us.

It will take a lot of time and effort to figure out how to fight back and win. But don't despair. As the old union song suggests, the toughest question always is "Which side are you on?" In the new class struggle, that decision has already been made for us.

Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.

benchcraft company portland or

benchcraft company scam

Mine Coverage Taxes BBC <b>News</b> Budget - NYTimes.com

The BBC will cut back on some of its coverage plans for the rest of the year because of the high cost of covering the mine rescue in Chile.

Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>

Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...

Fox <b>News</b> Remains Far Ahead Of Cable <b>News</b> Competition During Pre <b>...</b>

Fox News Channel finished #4 in prime time on all of cable (total viewers) last week - the week before their ratings are likely to increase even further thanks to the miner rescue coverage. Here's a look at the rest of cable news:

benchcraft company scam

bench craft company reviews

Mine Coverage Taxes BBC <b>News</b> Budget - NYTimes.com

The BBC will cut back on some of its coverage plans for the rest of the year because of the high cost of covering the mine rescue in Chile.

Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>

Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...

Fox <b>News</b> Remains Far Ahead Of Cable <b>News</b> Competition During Pre <b>...</b>

Fox News Channel finished #4 in prime time on all of cable (total viewers) last week - the week before their ratings are likely to increase even further thanks to the miner rescue coverage. Here's a look at the rest of cable news:

benchcraft company portland or

Mine Coverage Taxes BBC <b>News</b> Budget - NYTimes.com

The BBC will cut back on some of its coverage plans for the rest of the year because of the high cost of covering the mine rescue in Chile.

Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>

Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...

Fox <b>News</b> Remains Far Ahead Of Cable <b>News</b> Competition During Pre <b>...</b>

Fox News Channel finished #4 in prime time on all of cable (total viewers) last week - the week before their ratings are likely to increase even further thanks to the miner rescue coverage. Here's a look at the rest of cable news:

benchcraft company portland or

Mine Coverage Taxes BBC <b>News</b> Budget - NYTimes.com

The BBC will cut back on some of its coverage plans for the rest of the year because of the high cost of covering the mine rescue in Chile.

Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>

Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...

Fox <b>News</b> Remains Far Ahead Of Cable <b>News</b> Competition During Pre <b>...</b>

Fox News Channel finished #4 in prime time on all of cable (total viewers) last week - the week before their ratings are likely to increase even further thanks to the miner rescue coverage. Here's a look at the rest of cable news:

how to lose weight fast benchcraft company scam
benchcraft company portland or

benchcraft company portland or
benchcraft company portland or

Mine Coverage Taxes BBC <b>News</b> Budget - NYTimes.com

The BBC will cut back on some of its coverage plans for the rest of the year because of the high cost of covering the mine rescue in Chile.

Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>

Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...

Fox <b>News</b> Remains Far Ahead Of Cable <b>News</b> Competition During Pre <b>...</b>

Fox News Channel finished #4 in prime time on all of cable (total viewers) last week - the week before their ratings are likely to increase even further thanks to the miner rescue coverage. Here's a look at the rest of cable news:

benchcraft company portland or

Every year millions of Americans make resolutions to start self-improvement projects. We all want to make it past the first month, and then the next and the next. But then at some point we find ourselves back in our old routines. What makes us fall back into our old routines? What can we do to ensure that this year we won't have to make the same resolutions again? Lets take a look at the Top Ten 2010 New Years Resolutions, followed by some strategies on how to keep them.

Lose Weight

The motivation behind losing weight is about feeling better and looking better. This is your motivation. Keep that in mind every time you want to give up. Losing weight doesn't have to be difficult at all. Write down a weekly schedule consisting of your meals (be creative, but watch those calories to make sure they don't go over the average daily calorie intake 1200 for women and 1600 for men). Also write down a schedule of when you will workout so that you don't have fall into time constraints later. Tell your family about your weight lose plan so that they know when you will be working out and they can help you stick with it. A wonderful and very useful site with tons of free tools is http://www.sparkpeople.com/. Spark People is probably the best online weight lose site, its like a free trainer. It can help you track your progress, and help you with meal plan ideas. Just remember it may be weeks or months before you see results but keep in mind a mantra, it can be anything you want or you can use, "feel better, look better" and then just imagine this in your mind. It works well as a motivational boost anytime you need it.

Be Happier

Happiness is not as easy to quantify or plan out. Start by doing small things like going to bed earlier and thus waking up well rested. Then try to examine your life more closely. Are there things you do that you don't like or understand? Well try to become mores introspective. Meditation is an excellent tool, useful for both body and mind exploration. With all of these things keep in mind that challenges and novelty are key elements of happiness. Taking time to reflect, and making conscious steps to make your life happier really does work.

Make More Money

There are many strategies you can take to make more money. First you've got to ask yourself "How much more do I want to make?" Then you ask yourself, "How much time can i invest in trying to make more money?" I'm sure you're familiar with the saying, "Work less. Make more. Do what you love." In the beginning however, I think the saying should be, "Work more. Make More. Do what you love." In reality you will probably need to make more of a time commitment to strategize and find techniques that work best for you. You can become a blogger, and by learning effective marketing and traffic techniques you will make money. Two good blogs to get advice on blogging are http://www.johnchow.com/ and http://www.problogger.net/. You can also learn to make money by searching this site for "make money" and many articles will help you do that. You can read some articles that go into depth from people who have succeeded. These methods are not overnight money making schemes but they do work they just require your time and a little bit of energy.



big seminar 14

Mine Coverage Taxes BBC <b>News</b> Budget - NYTimes.com

The BBC will cut back on some of its coverage plans for the rest of the year because of the high cost of covering the mine rescue in Chile.

Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>

Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...

Fox <b>News</b> Remains Far Ahead Of Cable <b>News</b> Competition During Pre <b>...</b>

Fox News Channel finished #4 in prime time on all of cable (total viewers) last week - the week before their ratings are likely to increase even further thanks to the miner rescue coverage. Here's a look at the rest of cable news:

big seminar 14

Mine Coverage Taxes BBC <b>News</b> Budget - NYTimes.com

The BBC will cut back on some of its coverage plans for the rest of the year because of the high cost of covering the mine rescue in Chile.

Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>

Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...

Fox <b>News</b> Remains Far Ahead Of Cable <b>News</b> Competition During Pre <b>...</b>

Fox News Channel finished #4 in prime time on all of cable (total viewers) last week - the week before their ratings are likely to increase even further thanks to the miner rescue coverage. Here's a look at the rest of cable news:

big seminar 14

Making Free Money Online

Fundraising is a key component for most social good campaigns and projects. Thanks to the the Internet and the social web, raising money for a non-profit, community project or charitable organization or relief effort is easier than ever before.

The web makes it possible to get your message across and collect money from people all over the world and to include your social graph in the process.

If you have an idea or a cause that you want to bring awareness to and raise funds around, there are lots of great online tools to help get you started. Whether you want to raise money for a local community center or help fundraise as part of a broader social good campaign, these tools make it easy to get the word out and collect the funds you need./> id="more-380180">

1. FirstGiving

The U.S. subsidiary of JustGiving.com, FirstGiving lets users raise money for any non-profit in the GuideStar database.

It’s free to create a basic account, but if you pay $300 you can fully customize your donations page and link them back to your own website. FirstGiving lets you create fundraising around upcoming events, marathons and walk-a-thons too, which is a nice touch. The processing fee for donation is 5% plus another 2% for credit card transactions.

2. Crowdrise

We mentioned Crowdrise in a recent post about alternatives to Facebook Causes and it is a great tool for both charities and general purpose fundraisers.

Once you start a project, you can share your project’s link via Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook, Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter and e-mail. You can also earn points from the community based on your project and your overall campaign. Crowdrise also has an ongoing series of promotions and sweepstakes that you can add to your project to sweeten the incentive to give.

3. Kickstarter

Kickstarter is most often used by aspiring creatives to fund projects but it can also be used for great effect for local social good community efforts.

Kickstarter is unique in that if your goal amount isn’t reached, none of the money is collected. This “all-or-nothing” approach often leads to Kickstarter campaigns being more active and more involved than a traditional “donate widget.”

A great part of Kickstarter for the social fund creator is the ability to reward donors at certain levels. Much like PBS and NPR offer trinkets if you give a certain amount, Kickstarter lets its project creators do the same thing. You can get really creative with your different donor levels to drive people to give more.

4. WhatGives

WhatGives offers a great widget you can use on Facebook or on your personal webpage to collect donations for your non-profit. WhatGives is nice because aside from integrating well with Facebook, all donations are handled through PayPal.

You need to be a registered non-profit with an approved PayPal account, and all donations are channeled directly into that account. You can customize the platform and embed it as a Facebook app or on your blog or website.

5. Change.org

Change.org lets users create programs to generate actions from others. This can be as simple as signing a petition or writing a letter, or as generous as donating money. For non-profits in the GuideStar database, you can create your own donation pages to collect funds and also draw attention to other action items.

Change.org is very focused on making it easy to virally spread a message, and the site itself also acts as a portal to different organizations and awareness campaigns.

6. Chipin

Chipin is one of the most popular donation widget tools on the web and it’s a great way to collect money for a good cause. We love the Chipin widget because you can see instant progress on donations, and it accepts many forms of payment.

Unlike many of the services on this list, Chipin isn’t just for non-profits or community organizations. You can use it for any project you want.

7. Razoo

Razoo has options for individuals, non-profits, foundations and corporations to raise money for their causes. Individuals can choose to create a fundraising page for any registered non-profit that Razoo recognizes (they have a database of about a million) and non-profits can create custom pages for their organizations and connect with supporters and encourage them to create their own fundraising pages.

What we love about Razoo, in addition to its simple interface and great UI, is that it also offers donation matching for corporations or foundations looking for an easy way to raise money.

8. Convio

Convio offers software for online fundraising and membership, and while its target audience is probably bigger groups or organizations, it’s still worth a look.

For example, Convio’s TeamRaiser lets organizations make it easy for volunteers to create their own websites for tracking and attracting donations.

If you’re organizing a social good fund for a big charity walk or event where volunteers go door-to-door to get donations, check out Convio because it makes managing that process much easier.

9. Facebook Causes

Causes is an increasingly common way for individuals to raise money and start their own funds that are tied to a non-profit. Because Causes is so well-integrated into Facebook, it makes getting the word out and raising awareness and funds for your cause that much simpler.

10. StayClassy

A newer player in the arena of online giving, San Diego’s StayClassy is focused not just on helping non-profits collect donations online, but also manage events and campaigns, track their fundraising results and plug-in.

The world of online fundraising is vast and diverse. What tools have you used when starting your own social good funds? Let us know in the comments.

Brought to you by the class='blippr-nobr'>Mashableclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable & 92Y Social Good Summit

This post was brought to you by the groundbreaking Social Good Summit. On September 20, as global leaders head to New York for United Nations Week — including a historic summit on global issues known as the “Millennium Development Goals” (MDGs) and the annual General Assembly — Mashable, 92nd Street Y and the UN Foundation will bring together leaders from the digital industry, policy and media worlds to focus on how technology and social networks can play a leading role in addressing the world’s most intractable problems.

Date: Monday, September 20, 2010/> Time: 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. ET/> Location: 92nd Street Y, New York City/> Tickets: On sale through Eventbrite

/>

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, PinkTag

For more Social Good coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Goodclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Good channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Your awkward family photos already make for hilarious comedic relief on the popular blog Awkward Family Photos. Beginning today, those photos will also score you at least 33.3% off your next family vacay to Orlando and potentially much more, as Virgin America has partnered with the meme blog to promote its upcoming new service to Orlando.

Virgin America is encouraging families to upload their most awkward photos to Awkward Family Photos (AFP) for a chance to win four roundtrip tickets to anywhere the airline flies. Submissions will be accepted via AFP and Virgin America’s Facebook Page through Oct 5, at which time the 20 most uncomfortable finalists will be selected and put to a public vote.

AFP voters will decide on the winner of that prize, but one California entrant will also be handpicked by Virgin America and AFP to win an Orlando family getaway including flights and accommodations. “The winners will be whisked in style from Los Angeles onboard Virgin America’s celebratory flight and greeted on arrival in Orlando at a red carpet welcome party hosted by Virgin Group Founder Sir Richard Branson,” according to the announcement.

The grand prizes are enticing, but even if your family’s awkwardness is not the most awkward of all (perhaps a good sign), you can still get the 33.3% family discount (for parties of three to six people) on a Virgin America Orlando flight. The same discount applies to Awkward Family Photos lookie loos who vote on their favorite submissions.

Prizes aside, the Virgin America Orlando promotion is quite interesting given the airline’s unorthodox choice for a contest partner. Instead of a Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter or class='blippr-nobr'>Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook-driven campaign, Virgin America is opting to partner with a niche blog for a specialized purpose.

AFP, like many other many meme-oriented blogs and viral sensations, survives by making money through advertising, online stores and book sales. When Internet users vote with their attention, a meme is born. Virgin America appears to see opportunity in affiliating their brand name with an online pop culture phenomena, potentially paving the way for more big brand meme partnerships to come.

At the end of the day, the AFP photo contest is an interesting twist to social advertising and promotion norms that celebrates and supports class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet memes — what an awkwardly appropriate way to launch a new city.

Image courtesy of Awkward Family Photos

For more Business coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Businessclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Business channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Dr. eric seiger

Today&#39;s <b>News</b>: a slick unofficial iPad app for The Guardian newspaper

When The Guardian newspaper released its Open API, interesting and potentially cool things were bound to happen. Developers love great content and great ...

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/14 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning, AP! The theme continues today with respect for everything Chiefs (except anything remotely associated with the passing game). Oh, and Pollard seems miffed. Here's your Kansas City Chiefs news. Enjoy.

CDMA iPhone <b>news</b>: Verizon&#39;s network is ready and India wants <b>...</b>

Oct. 13, 2010 - The Wall Street Journal is all about the iPhone these days. The publication recently posted about how Verizon will be getting the iPhone in 2011 and they've.

eric seiger do

Fundraising is a key component for most social good campaigns and projects. Thanks to the the Internet and the social web, raising money for a non-profit, community project or charitable organization or relief effort is easier than ever before.

The web makes it possible to get your message across and collect money from people all over the world and to include your social graph in the process.

If you have an idea or a cause that you want to bring awareness to and raise funds around, there are lots of great online tools to help get you started. Whether you want to raise money for a local community center or help fundraise as part of a broader social good campaign, these tools make it easy to get the word out and collect the funds you need./> id="more-380180">

1. FirstGiving

The U.S. subsidiary of JustGiving.com, FirstGiving lets users raise money for any non-profit in the GuideStar database.

It’s free to create a basic account, but if you pay $300 you can fully customize your donations page and link them back to your own website. FirstGiving lets you create fundraising around upcoming events, marathons and walk-a-thons too, which is a nice touch. The processing fee for donation is 5% plus another 2% for credit card transactions.

2. Crowdrise

We mentioned Crowdrise in a recent post about alternatives to Facebook Causes and it is a great tool for both charities and general purpose fundraisers.

Once you start a project, you can share your project’s link via Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook, Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter and e-mail. You can also earn points from the community based on your project and your overall campaign. Crowdrise also has an ongoing series of promotions and sweepstakes that you can add to your project to sweeten the incentive to give.

3. Kickstarter

Kickstarter is most often used by aspiring creatives to fund projects but it can also be used for great effect for local social good community efforts.

Kickstarter is unique in that if your goal amount isn’t reached, none of the money is collected. This “all-or-nothing” approach often leads to Kickstarter campaigns being more active and more involved than a traditional “donate widget.”

A great part of Kickstarter for the social fund creator is the ability to reward donors at certain levels. Much like PBS and NPR offer trinkets if you give a certain amount, Kickstarter lets its project creators do the same thing. You can get really creative with your different donor levels to drive people to give more.

4. WhatGives

WhatGives offers a great widget you can use on Facebook or on your personal webpage to collect donations for your non-profit. WhatGives is nice because aside from integrating well with Facebook, all donations are handled through PayPal.

You need to be a registered non-profit with an approved PayPal account, and all donations are channeled directly into that account. You can customize the platform and embed it as a Facebook app or on your blog or website.

5. Change.org

Change.org lets users create programs to generate actions from others. This can be as simple as signing a petition or writing a letter, or as generous as donating money. For non-profits in the GuideStar database, you can create your own donation pages to collect funds and also draw attention to other action items.

Change.org is very focused on making it easy to virally spread a message, and the site itself also acts as a portal to different organizations and awareness campaigns.

6. Chipin

Chipin is one of the most popular donation widget tools on the web and it’s a great way to collect money for a good cause. We love the Chipin widget because you can see instant progress on donations, and it accepts many forms of payment.

Unlike many of the services on this list, Chipin isn’t just for non-profits or community organizations. You can use it for any project you want.

7. Razoo

Razoo has options for individuals, non-profits, foundations and corporations to raise money for their causes. Individuals can choose to create a fundraising page for any registered non-profit that Razoo recognizes (they have a database of about a million) and non-profits can create custom pages for their organizations and connect with supporters and encourage them to create their own fundraising pages.

What we love about Razoo, in addition to its simple interface and great UI, is that it also offers donation matching for corporations or foundations looking for an easy way to raise money.

8. Convio

Convio offers software for online fundraising and membership, and while its target audience is probably bigger groups or organizations, it’s still worth a look.

For example, Convio’s TeamRaiser lets organizations make it easy for volunteers to create their own websites for tracking and attracting donations.

If you’re organizing a social good fund for a big charity walk or event where volunteers go door-to-door to get donations, check out Convio because it makes managing that process much easier.

9. Facebook Causes

Causes is an increasingly common way for individuals to raise money and start their own funds that are tied to a non-profit. Because Causes is so well-integrated into Facebook, it makes getting the word out and raising awareness and funds for your cause that much simpler.

10. StayClassy

A newer player in the arena of online giving, San Diego’s StayClassy is focused not just on helping non-profits collect donations online, but also manage events and campaigns, track their fundraising results and plug-in.

The world of online fundraising is vast and diverse. What tools have you used when starting your own social good funds? Let us know in the comments.

Brought to you by the class='blippr-nobr'>Mashableclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable & 92Y Social Good Summit

This post was brought to you by the groundbreaking Social Good Summit. On September 20, as global leaders head to New York for United Nations Week — including a historic summit on global issues known as the “Millennium Development Goals” (MDGs) and the annual General Assembly — Mashable, 92nd Street Y and the UN Foundation will bring together leaders from the digital industry, policy and media worlds to focus on how technology and social networks can play a leading role in addressing the world’s most intractable problems.

Date: Monday, September 20, 2010/> Time: 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. ET/> Location: 92nd Street Y, New York City/> Tickets: On sale through Eventbrite

/>

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, PinkTag

For more Social Good coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Goodclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Good channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Your awkward family photos already make for hilarious comedic relief on the popular blog Awkward Family Photos. Beginning today, those photos will also score you at least 33.3% off your next family vacay to Orlando and potentially much more, as Virgin America has partnered with the meme blog to promote its upcoming new service to Orlando.

Virgin America is encouraging families to upload their most awkward photos to Awkward Family Photos (AFP) for a chance to win four roundtrip tickets to anywhere the airline flies. Submissions will be accepted via AFP and Virgin America’s Facebook Page through Oct 5, at which time the 20 most uncomfortable finalists will be selected and put to a public vote.

AFP voters will decide on the winner of that prize, but one California entrant will also be handpicked by Virgin America and AFP to win an Orlando family getaway including flights and accommodations. “The winners will be whisked in style from Los Angeles onboard Virgin America’s celebratory flight and greeted on arrival in Orlando at a red carpet welcome party hosted by Virgin Group Founder Sir Richard Branson,” according to the announcement.

The grand prizes are enticing, but even if your family’s awkwardness is not the most awkward of all (perhaps a good sign), you can still get the 33.3% family discount (for parties of three to six people) on a Virgin America Orlando flight. The same discount applies to Awkward Family Photos lookie loos who vote on their favorite submissions.

Prizes aside, the Virgin America Orlando promotion is quite interesting given the airline’s unorthodox choice for a contest partner. Instead of a Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter or class='blippr-nobr'>Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook-driven campaign, Virgin America is opting to partner with a niche blog for a specialized purpose.

AFP, like many other many meme-oriented blogs and viral sensations, survives by making money through advertising, online stores and book sales. When Internet users vote with their attention, a meme is born. Virgin America appears to see opportunity in affiliating their brand name with an online pop culture phenomena, potentially paving the way for more big brand meme partnerships to come.

At the end of the day, the AFP photo contest is an interesting twist to social advertising and promotion norms that celebrates and supports class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet memes — what an awkwardly appropriate way to launch a new city.

Image courtesy of Awkward Family Photos

For more Business coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Businessclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Business channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

eric seiger

Today&#39;s <b>News</b>: a slick unofficial iPad app for The Guardian newspaper

When The Guardian newspaper released its Open API, interesting and potentially cool things were bound to happen. Developers love great content and great ...

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/14 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning, AP! The theme continues today with respect for everything Chiefs (except anything remotely associated with the passing game). Oh, and Pollard seems miffed. Here's your Kansas City Chiefs news. Enjoy.

CDMA iPhone <b>news</b>: Verizon&#39;s network is ready and India wants <b>...</b>

Oct. 13, 2010 - The Wall Street Journal is all about the iPhone these days. The publication recently posted about how Verizon will be getting the iPhone in 2011 and they've.

eric seiger dermatologist

eric seiger do

eric seiger

Today&#39;s <b>News</b>: a slick unofficial iPad app for The Guardian newspaper

When The Guardian newspaper released its Open API, interesting and potentially cool things were bound to happen. Developers love great content and great ...

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/14 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning, AP! The theme continues today with respect for everything Chiefs (except anything remotely associated with the passing game). Oh, and Pollard seems miffed. Here's your Kansas City Chiefs news. Enjoy.

CDMA iPhone <b>news</b>: Verizon&#39;s network is ready and India wants <b>...</b>

Oct. 13, 2010 - The Wall Street Journal is all about the iPhone these days. The publication recently posted about how Verizon will be getting the iPhone in 2011 and they've.

eric seiger dermatology

Fundraising is a key component for most social good campaigns and projects. Thanks to the the Internet and the social web, raising money for a non-profit, community project or charitable organization or relief effort is easier than ever before.

The web makes it possible to get your message across and collect money from people all over the world and to include your social graph in the process.

If you have an idea or a cause that you want to bring awareness to and raise funds around, there are lots of great online tools to help get you started. Whether you want to raise money for a local community center or help fundraise as part of a broader social good campaign, these tools make it easy to get the word out and collect the funds you need./> id="more-380180">

1. FirstGiving

The U.S. subsidiary of JustGiving.com, FirstGiving lets users raise money for any non-profit in the GuideStar database.

It’s free to create a basic account, but if you pay $300 you can fully customize your donations page and link them back to your own website. FirstGiving lets you create fundraising around upcoming events, marathons and walk-a-thons too, which is a nice touch. The processing fee for donation is 5% plus another 2% for credit card transactions.

2. Crowdrise

We mentioned Crowdrise in a recent post about alternatives to Facebook Causes and it is a great tool for both charities and general purpose fundraisers.

Once you start a project, you can share your project’s link via Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook, Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter and e-mail. You can also earn points from the community based on your project and your overall campaign. Crowdrise also has an ongoing series of promotions and sweepstakes that you can add to your project to sweeten the incentive to give.

3. Kickstarter

Kickstarter is most often used by aspiring creatives to fund projects but it can also be used for great effect for local social good community efforts.

Kickstarter is unique in that if your goal amount isn’t reached, none of the money is collected. This “all-or-nothing” approach often leads to Kickstarter campaigns being more active and more involved than a traditional “donate widget.”

A great part of Kickstarter for the social fund creator is the ability to reward donors at certain levels. Much like PBS and NPR offer trinkets if you give a certain amount, Kickstarter lets its project creators do the same thing. You can get really creative with your different donor levels to drive people to give more.

4. WhatGives

WhatGives offers a great widget you can use on Facebook or on your personal webpage to collect donations for your non-profit. WhatGives is nice because aside from integrating well with Facebook, all donations are handled through PayPal.

You need to be a registered non-profit with an approved PayPal account, and all donations are channeled directly into that account. You can customize the platform and embed it as a Facebook app or on your blog or website.

5. Change.org

Change.org lets users create programs to generate actions from others. This can be as simple as signing a petition or writing a letter, or as generous as donating money. For non-profits in the GuideStar database, you can create your own donation pages to collect funds and also draw attention to other action items.

Change.org is very focused on making it easy to virally spread a message, and the site itself also acts as a portal to different organizations and awareness campaigns.

6. Chipin

Chipin is one of the most popular donation widget tools on the web and it’s a great way to collect money for a good cause. We love the Chipin widget because you can see instant progress on donations, and it accepts many forms of payment.

Unlike many of the services on this list, Chipin isn’t just for non-profits or community organizations. You can use it for any project you want.

7. Razoo

Razoo has options for individuals, non-profits, foundations and corporations to raise money for their causes. Individuals can choose to create a fundraising page for any registered non-profit that Razoo recognizes (they have a database of about a million) and non-profits can create custom pages for their organizations and connect with supporters and encourage them to create their own fundraising pages.

What we love about Razoo, in addition to its simple interface and great UI, is that it also offers donation matching for corporations or foundations looking for an easy way to raise money.

8. Convio

Convio offers software for online fundraising and membership, and while its target audience is probably bigger groups or organizations, it’s still worth a look.

For example, Convio’s TeamRaiser lets organizations make it easy for volunteers to create their own websites for tracking and attracting donations.

If you’re organizing a social good fund for a big charity walk or event where volunteers go door-to-door to get donations, check out Convio because it makes managing that process much easier.

9. Facebook Causes

Causes is an increasingly common way for individuals to raise money and start their own funds that are tied to a non-profit. Because Causes is so well-integrated into Facebook, it makes getting the word out and raising awareness and funds for your cause that much simpler.

10. StayClassy

A newer player in the arena of online giving, San Diego’s StayClassy is focused not just on helping non-profits collect donations online, but also manage events and campaigns, track their fundraising results and plug-in.

The world of online fundraising is vast and diverse. What tools have you used when starting your own social good funds? Let us know in the comments.

Brought to you by the class='blippr-nobr'>Mashableclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable & 92Y Social Good Summit

This post was brought to you by the groundbreaking Social Good Summit. On September 20, as global leaders head to New York for United Nations Week — including a historic summit on global issues known as the “Millennium Development Goals” (MDGs) and the annual General Assembly — Mashable, 92nd Street Y and the UN Foundation will bring together leaders from the digital industry, policy and media worlds to focus on how technology and social networks can play a leading role in addressing the world’s most intractable problems.

Date: Monday, September 20, 2010/> Time: 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. ET/> Location: 92nd Street Y, New York City/> Tickets: On sale through Eventbrite

/>

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, PinkTag

For more Social Good coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Goodclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Good channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Your awkward family photos already make for hilarious comedic relief on the popular blog Awkward Family Photos. Beginning today, those photos will also score you at least 33.3% off your next family vacay to Orlando and potentially much more, as Virgin America has partnered with the meme blog to promote its upcoming new service to Orlando.

Virgin America is encouraging families to upload their most awkward photos to Awkward Family Photos (AFP) for a chance to win four roundtrip tickets to anywhere the airline flies. Submissions will be accepted via AFP and Virgin America’s Facebook Page through Oct 5, at which time the 20 most uncomfortable finalists will be selected and put to a public vote.

AFP voters will decide on the winner of that prize, but one California entrant will also be handpicked by Virgin America and AFP to win an Orlando family getaway including flights and accommodations. “The winners will be whisked in style from Los Angeles onboard Virgin America’s celebratory flight and greeted on arrival in Orlando at a red carpet welcome party hosted by Virgin Group Founder Sir Richard Branson,” according to the announcement.

The grand prizes are enticing, but even if your family’s awkwardness is not the most awkward of all (perhaps a good sign), you can still get the 33.3% family discount (for parties of three to six people) on a Virgin America Orlando flight. The same discount applies to Awkward Family Photos lookie loos who vote on their favorite submissions.

Prizes aside, the Virgin America Orlando promotion is quite interesting given the airline’s unorthodox choice for a contest partner. Instead of a Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter or class='blippr-nobr'>Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook-driven campaign, Virgin America is opting to partner with a niche blog for a specialized purpose.

AFP, like many other many meme-oriented blogs and viral sensations, survives by making money through advertising, online stores and book sales. When Internet users vote with their attention, a meme is born. Virgin America appears to see opportunity in affiliating their brand name with an online pop culture phenomena, potentially paving the way for more big brand meme partnerships to come.

At the end of the day, the AFP photo contest is an interesting twist to social advertising and promotion norms that celebrates and supports class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet memes — what an awkwardly appropriate way to launch a new city.

Image courtesy of Awkward Family Photos

For more Business coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Businessclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Business channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

eric seiger do

skin

and vein center

Today&#39;s <b>News</b>: a slick unofficial iPad app for The Guardian newspaper

When The Guardian newspaper released its Open API, interesting and potentially cool things were bound to happen. Developers love great content and great ...

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/14 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning, AP! The theme continues today with respect for everything Chiefs (except anything remotely associated with the passing game). Oh, and Pollard seems miffed. Here's your Kansas City Chiefs news. Enjoy.

CDMA iPhone <b>news</b>: Verizon&#39;s network is ready and India wants <b>...</b>

Oct. 13, 2010 - The Wall Street Journal is all about the iPhone these days. The publication recently posted about how Verizon will be getting the iPhone in 2011 and they've.

eric seiger dermatologist

skin

and vein center

Today&#39;s <b>News</b>: a slick unofficial iPad app for The Guardian newspaper

When The Guardian newspaper released its Open API, interesting and potentially cool things were bound to happen. Developers love great content and great ...

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/14 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning, AP! The theme continues today with respect for everything Chiefs (except anything remotely associated with the passing game). Oh, and Pollard seems miffed. Here's your Kansas City Chiefs news. Enjoy.

CDMA iPhone <b>news</b>: Verizon&#39;s network is ready and India wants <b>...</b>

Oct. 13, 2010 - The Wall Street Journal is all about the iPhone these days. The publication recently posted about how Verizon will be getting the iPhone in 2011 and they've.

eric seiger

Today&#39;s <b>News</b>: a slick unofficial iPad app for The Guardian newspaper

When The Guardian newspaper released its Open API, interesting and potentially cool things were bound to happen. Developers love great content and great ...

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/14 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning, AP! The theme continues today with respect for everything Chiefs (except anything remotely associated with the passing game). Oh, and Pollard seems miffed. Here's your Kansas City Chiefs news. Enjoy.

CDMA iPhone <b>news</b>: Verizon&#39;s network is ready and India wants <b>...</b>

Oct. 13, 2010 - The Wall Street Journal is all about the iPhone these days. The publication recently posted about how Verizon will be getting the iPhone in 2011 and they've.

eric seiger dermatologist

Today&#39;s <b>News</b>: a slick unofficial iPad app for The Guardian newspaper

When The Guardian newspaper released its Open API, interesting and potentially cool things were bound to happen. Developers love great content and great ...

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/14 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning, AP! The theme continues today with respect for everything Chiefs (except anything remotely associated with the passing game). Oh, and Pollard seems miffed. Here's your Kansas City Chiefs news. Enjoy.

CDMA iPhone <b>news</b>: Verizon&#39;s network is ready and India wants <b>...</b>

Oct. 13, 2010 - The Wall Street Journal is all about the iPhone these days. The publication recently posted about how Verizon will be getting the iPhone in 2011 and they've.

how to lose weight fast big seminar 14
big seminar 14

big seminar 14
big seminar 14

Today&#39;s <b>News</b>: a slick unofficial iPad app for The Guardian newspaper

When The Guardian newspaper released its Open API, interesting and potentially cool things were bound to happen. Developers love great content and great ...

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/14 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning, AP! The theme continues today with respect for everything Chiefs (except anything remotely associated with the passing game). Oh, and Pollard seems miffed. Here's your Kansas City Chiefs news. Enjoy.

CDMA iPhone <b>news</b>: Verizon&#39;s network is ready and India wants <b>...</b>

Oct. 13, 2010 - The Wall Street Journal is all about the iPhone these days. The publication recently posted about how Verizon will be getting the iPhone in 2011 and they've.

big seminar 14

There are many different ways to make a few bucks online, all it takes is for you to pick one and dive in. Trying to make money online is too enticing to pass up because if you have an internet connection, the opportunity is there waiting to be taken. There are a number of different paths you can take to make money online and some of the more prevalent ones are: using affiliate links, Google adwords and adsense, running a website and writing articles.

It's too bad the internet is flooded with scam sites that promise if you pay them money, they'll send you kit that will teach you to become rich from the internet. The reality is that you don't have to pay a site to show you how to make money online, it can practically be done for free aside from paying for a domain name, it just depends on what you want to do.

The first method I was introduced to was using Google adwords to draw visitors to affiliate links. Setting up a profile on something like Clickbank, Linkshare, or Commission Junction allows you to set up a referral program. These programs are with various sites that sell products and when you include a link to that site, anyone who clicks on it and buys something gives you a small percentage of that sale. What's nice is a that using these sites is free (except Commission Junction suspends your account if you don't make sales. Guilty!). Adwords campaigns are those text boxes on the right hand side of the browser that show up when you search for something. Whiling creating a campaign, you include a list of keywords that users type in that pull up your adwords campaign. These keywords are shared among other people and whoever pays the most for them is listed higher in the search results.

Adwords is far from free, it's pay-per-click advertising which means if someone types in a keyword and clicks on your campaign when it pops up, you are charged a certain amount of money depending on how much you are willing to pay for a keyword. If you choose to pursue making money with adwords, I advise investing time reading the information and tutorials on the adsense website as well as the material written by people with a successful adwords track record.

Running your own website can make you some money online, though it does require at least a little bit of HTML and web design savvy. You could always pay someone to design it for you, but what's the fun it that? I think it's imperative to know the ins and outs of your own website and not constantly rely on someone else whenever a problem arises or if you want to change something. Creating a website isn't as intimidating as it used to be. Free web editors allow you to experiment with the look of your site. Most of those are WYSIWYG editors, which stands for What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get, meaning the editor treats web design more like a text editor that allows you to copy and paste, drag and drop, and insert media with little HTML knowledge. Sites like Wordpress.org help by offering templates and even a control panel, so you can add content like articles and videos to new pages with ease.

But how can you make money with a website? Well, there are a few ways. One being ad revenue through Google Adsense. Adsense ads are usually boxes with pictures or gifs that advertise something on another site that create revenue for you when someone clicks it. Adsense can contain advertisements ranging from MMORPGs, smokeless cigarettes, or weight loss methods. There is no cost to you to create and maintain these ads. I have mixed feelings about adsense; on the one hand it's a great way to generate a little revenue when people on your site click on relevant ads that interest them. On the other hand, the internet is absolutely flooded with garbage adsense spam that ruins site credibility and corrupts content. I get so tired of different ads using the same pictures for completely different products or services and even respected sites have reduced themselves to crowding their pages with adsense. Like everything else, adsense in moderation goes a long way.

Besides using adwords on your website, you can make money selling someone else's product if you don't have your own. Just like adwords, you'll have to join an affiliate program with the sites mentioned earlier and can pick which websites to promote from the ones available. Not every website is connected to an affiliate site, so if you can't find a specific site you want to use, you'll have to find one that offers a similar product or service. Once you find a site, it's as easy as creating a link with the affiliate site and including it within the content of you own website. That link can be in the form of a URL or a text hyperlink. Someone who clicks on the link and makes a purchase earns you a commission. These commissions can be very low, so making money this way requires a high volume of sales.

Last but not least is making money online by writing articles. Get those creative juices flowing and write about something you enjoy and get paid for it. You can put these articles on your own site to draw visitors and revenue from your adsense ads or text links, or you can submit them to websites that can pay you in different ways. One way is an upfront payment that gives the site rights to your work, meaning you can publish it anywhere else, not even your own site. Another is payment based on the number of views the article generates, which can be a couple bucks for a thousand views. Some may even link your Google Adsense account to the article, so revenue is generated based on visitors clicking ads shown along with the content. Some sites I like to use are Associated Content, MintArticles, and Bukisa. There are a slew of sites to choose from, so I suggest submitting a few articles to one and seeing how well they perform. Sites like Associated Content are held in high regard do a good job of getting your articles noticed.

So there you have it. It doesn't take a genius to make money online, but it takes persistence, patience and a bit of creativity. There's no "get-rich-quick" method and it takes a while to start generating income for everyone. Personally, I treat it as a hobby and would be doing it even if there was no money because I enjoy writing and if you enjoy it, eventually the money will follow.



big seminar 14

Today&#39;s <b>News</b>: a slick unofficial iPad app for The Guardian newspaper

When The Guardian newspaper released its Open API, interesting and potentially cool things were bound to happen. Developers love great content and great ...

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/14 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning, AP! The theme continues today with respect for everything Chiefs (except anything remotely associated with the passing game). Oh, and Pollard seems miffed. Here's your Kansas City Chiefs news. Enjoy.

CDMA iPhone <b>news</b>: Verizon&#39;s network is ready and India wants <b>...</b>

Oct. 13, 2010 - The Wall Street Journal is all about the iPhone these days. The publication recently posted about how Verizon will be getting the iPhone in 2011 and they've.

big seminar 14

Today&#39;s <b>News</b>: a slick unofficial iPad app for The Guardian newspaper

When The Guardian newspaper released its Open API, interesting and potentially cool things were bound to happen. Developers love great content and great ...

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/14 - Arrowhead Pride

Good morning, AP! The theme continues today with respect for everything Chiefs (except anything remotely associated with the passing game). Oh, and Pollard seems miffed. Here's your Kansas City Chiefs news. Enjoy.

CDMA iPhone <b>news</b>: Verizon&#39;s network is ready and India wants <b>...</b>

Oct. 13, 2010 - The Wall Street Journal is all about the iPhone these days. The publication recently posted about how Verizon will be getting the iPhone in 2011 and they've.

big seminar 14