Froodee

Living. Blogging.

Four Ways To Save Money Without Noticing It

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Have you ever thought about saving money without noticing it? It’s simple. Just take a look at some of the less important things in your life and see if you can cut back.

1. Drink more water.

Get a bottle, fill it up with drinkable water. Bring it with you wherever you go. Drinking water is healthier and filling. If you are full, you are less tempted to buy coffee and soda.

2. Visit the library instead of buying a book.

Books are expensive. People often buy books to put on a bookshelf and prove how educated they are. Consider going to the library and borrowing a book instead. You can read some of the latest best seller books without spending too much. [Read more…]

Saving Money on Food At Home

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How do you save money on home food? Here’s a set of solid tips.

1. Invest in a good, basic cookbook. There are many cookbooks around which showcase many different ingredients. Focus on one that provides information on cooking using basic ingredients – those which aren’t expensive.

2. Invest in a set of good leftover containers and use them. Cooking in bulk gets you multiple meals. This makes cooking more efficient because it saves you time and effort. Many foods also freeze very well – this allows you to keep the food in storage for weeks. When you’re hungry, just open the container,pop them in the microwave and Viola! – Instant meal.

3. Find out how long ingredients last. Many fresh vegetables go bad relatively quickly but many other foods can be stored for months or years, so if you know you’re going to use them, stock up. For instance, sugar lasts nearly forever. Have a lot of it stocked up. Canned vegetables last for years, and most frozen items will last at least 6 months.

4. Discover recipes for new ingredients. You may find that foods you’re not used to cooking with are sometimes on sale, and thus worth buying (maybe turnips, Brussels sprouts, or some odd cut of pork will be insanely cheap). Know a lot of recipes and you’ll be able to figure out something tasty to make with the cheap food you buy.

5. Examine and monitor your meat expenses. Beef, pork, chicken, fish, shellfish – any type of meat is often expensive. To cut on meat expenses, try learning how to cook cheaper cuts of meat (e.g., chicken legs work just as well as chicken breasts in most recipes), avoiding recipes that call for expensive meat (e.g., scallops, prime cuts of beef) except as a special treat. Better yet try to reduce meat consumption. One of the easiest ways to reduce your meat consumption is to learn to cook non-Western cuisines: many of these dishes have no meat in them at all (e.g., Indian dals, pilafs, and yogurt salads), and others (e.g., curries and stir-fries) use meat as just one ingredient among many.

6. Realize that many recipes are flexible. Don’t treat recipes as though they are cast in stone. If your recipe calls for green bell peppers, and when you get to the store you find that they’re $5 each, consider alternatives. The end recipe will not be exactly the same as the one in the cookbook, but it can often taste just as good.  This does require some cooking finesse as ingredients that serve a direct functional purpose in a recipe cannot be substituted out (e.g., you can’t substitute broccoli for peppers in a stuffed pepper recipe, and can’t substitute corn starch for flour in a bread recipe). If you’re a beginner, don’t worry too much about this, and instead just focus on finding recipes that use the ingredients you have.

7. Consider growing your own produce. While this is certainly not something everyone can do, consider growing your own fruits and vegetables at home. Things like herbs, tomatoes, berries, squash, and tree fruits (e.g., lemons, avocados, peaches) can be much cheaper and tastier when grown at home. You need to hone your gardening skills for this.

Eat heartily in your next meal but always watch your budget!

Multiply Your Sales Today!

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Elaine, an online entrepreneur, just sold another piece of bead jewelry. This last sale was worth at least $20. The order came as a message on her website. The confirmation was sent through by cell phone text message. A bank deposit payment was made by the buyer and she shipped the item by courier.

Compared to Amazon.com and other large online stores, it is a crude way to conduct e-commerce. But it works for her and she gets more than 40% profit for each sale.

She is like many others who have learned to sell their products through multiply.com. She explains that her friends laughed at the idea at first. When she started getting orders through her website, she realized it was really worth pursuing. Marketing through social networking sites, at least on multiply, apparently work!

How does that work? Multiply, like Friendster, is a social networking website. It has some features like blogging and a photo gallery. When visitors drop by a website in Multiply, those with multiply accounts can invite the website’s owner. Once within the invitee’s network, the website owner is able to see all their existing contacts. When she updates her website, everybody in the contact list is notified.

As Elaine sells items and updates the images on your website, everybody in her entire network is informed about it. The curious are enticed to drop by and see what products are for sale. That’s free marketing for her!

More important, she can also see which visitors dropped by her website (similar to the mybloglog plugin). When she clicks on an visitor avatar, she can see their website, their contacts and photos. She can then again invite the new contacts and automatically add them to her network. The network grows larger and the potential customer base increases! It’s a virtually self propagating marketing system.

Elaine is happy about it and is now planning to offer PayPal and other more payment options. “It’s going to be worth it.” she says as she uploads another bead jewelry image on her site.

How The Mozilla Foundation Makes Money

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The Mozilla foundation is one of the most popular free software organizations. It is known for free applications FireFox and Thunderbird.

The foundation earned $52.9 Million in 2005. How did it make that much money? It has a strong partnership with Google which they leveraged effectively.

Google pays Mozilla an amount for each user that performs a Google search from Firefox. Exactly how much Google pays, we don’t know for sure but I’d wager that it’s somewhere in the range of 1 cent to 5 cents per click.

Mozilla then made Google as the default search engine on all Mozilla FireFox downloads. It is the default web page once you open up the browser. Since searching for information is one of the most common activities on the Internet, almost all FireFox would simply use the default search interface.

The latest browser share data looks even more promising for the foundation.

According to the latest statistics from w3counter.com, Firefox’s market share is going gangbusters with the open source browser capturing over 25 percent of the browser market.

According to the World Internet World stats website, there are 1.1 Billion internet users in the world. If 25% actually use Mozilla, then that would be around 275 Million Firefox users. If all those users searched using the FireFox search engine, then at 1 cent per click that’s potentially over a Million dollars for Mozilla this year.

It’s such an effective business model that many websites are now trying to emulate it. Using the Google Adsense for search bar on their websites, web business owners gain a bit of income as well.

The Mozilla business case is an example of what’s called ‘loss-leader’ economics. A loss leader is a concept (sales or economic) that means you give something away for free at a loss (in Mozilla’s case for free) with the hope that it will later lead to revenue. Through this method, Mozilla has not only entrenched both itself in Web browser community at large, but made a hefty income as well.

Are You Motivated Enough To Become Rich?

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Let’s talk about motivation.

My mom learned how to swim because she was pushed off a sea port’s ledge when she was five years old. Luckily, she kept cool, didn’t panic and figured out the natural body movements that would allow her to float. She needed to learn immediately or she would’ve drowned. THAT’s motivation.

One of my favorite entrepreneurial books, The One Minute Millionaire, tells the fictional story of a mother who would lose custody of her kids if she didn’t get a Million Dollars in 90 days. Be a millionaire or lose your kids? That’s motivation.

Have you seen the movie The Pursuit of Happyness? It is based on the true story of Christopher Gardner, who struggled to break into the stock brokerage business as an intern, despite a rocky financial situation. Gardner was in poverty but was motivated to wealth because he had a son.

People often think about the HOW. How does one become rich? I think, however, that before thinking of HOW to generate income, people should really ask WHY first. Why do you want to be wealthy? Why do you need money? What motivates you? What drives you?

This is a crucial question because if one is not truly motivated, there is a tendency to relax and allow things to run its course. Being pushed to the edge makes one creative. It forces one to really figure out ways to make money. It is simply – make money or else…

I plan on getting married with my 5-year girlfriend. I love her dearly but I do not yet have the financial resources to start a family. There are many expenses involved – the wedding, the house, the kids… I have to reach my financially stability very soon. I have to become rich. She can’t wait forever, right?

Am I motivated or what?

Now let’s talk about what motivates you. Are you motivated? Do you REALLY want to be rich?

Why?