Author and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes says the Republican presidential candidates should follow his economic plan to get America back on track.
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الأربعاء، 13 يناير 2016
Steve Forbes on the Presidential Candidates' Tax Plans
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I Felt Dumb for (Probably) Wasting $10 on Powerball Tickets, Until I Read This…
So you already know this week’s Powerball lottery is the biggest in history.
And that you shouldn’t pick your lucky numbers — or trust people who say they can increase your odds of winning.
You probably even know what to do if you win the lottery (ie: try to not be like these guys and lose it all).
What you might not know? Where all that ticket money goes.
I didn’t either, until I read this article from The New York Times. I’m glad I did, because the answer made me feel much better about the $10 I probably wasted on Powerball tickets…
Where Does Your Lotto Ticket Money Go?
Forty-four states participate in the lottery, says the Times, with these states earning the most money: New York, which earned $3.1 billion for state programs in 2014; Florida, $1.4 billion; California, $1.3 billion; and Massachusetts, $971 million.
More than half of the participating states “dedicate part or all of their lottery revenue to education programs,” reports the Times.
For example, in Florida, where The Penny Hoarder is based, the money goes towards college scholarships. More specifically, 65% of ticket sales goes to the winners, 27% to education funds, 5.5% to retailers, 1.4% to vendors and 1.3% to operating expenses, according to the Times.
Once I read that, I breathed a big sigh of relief; at least my $10 is going to a good cause.
But, There is a But…
To be fair, the article also notes two points made by lottery critics:
1) That states “have used lottery money not to increase funding, but to supplant it,” simply using lotto funds to “plug up the hole in a kind of shell game.”
2) That the lotto is a tax on the poor, since lower-income people tend to spend a higher percentage of their income on the lottery.
I totally agree: There are many better ways to spend your money than on lottery tickets.
(In fact, we’ve written a whole post on how to make money with the cash you would’ve spent on tickets.)
The thing is, though: The lotto, especially when it’s this big, is kind of fun.
If you’re feeling guilty about the money you spent on tickets — as any true Penny Hoarder probably is — I hope knowing where your money’s going makes you feel a little bit better.
And if you’re one of the many, many people who end up with losing tickets, don’t forget they could be worth thousands!
To read the full New York Times article about the Powerball jackpot and odds, click here.
Your Turn: Did you play the Powerball? Do you feel guilty about it?
Susan Shain, senior writer for The Penny Hoarder, is always seeking adventure on a budget. Visit her blog at susanshain.com, or say hi on Twitter @susan_shain.
The post I Felt Dumb for (Probably) Wasting $10 on Powerball Tickets, Until I Read This… appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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Hey, Gamers: Amazon Prime Just Became an Even Better Deal. Here’s Why
Amazon Prime, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:
Fast, free shipping. Exclusive savings for parents. Early access to lightning deals. Unlimited streaming TV and movies…
As if we needed another reason.
Save 20% on Video Games
Amazon just rolled out a brand new offer for Prime members: 20% off new video games, starting at pre-order and ending two weeks after their release.
Discounts are automatically applied at checkout, so there aren’t any annoying codes to remember.
And, if you already put in your order for Final Fantasy: Explorers or The Division, don’t worry — they’ll automatically extend the deal to all existing Prime pre-orders.
Game On
This deal applies to any physical new release video game. Sorry, PC-players — it won’t work for your digital downloads.
Plus, Amazon offers a pre-order price guarantee.
“Whenever you pre-order a video game, the price we charge when we ship it to you will be the lowest price offered by Amazon.com,” the site says.
So you can rest assured you’re getting the very best deal… and the quickest delivery.
In fact, Amazon will even offer release-day delivery, depending on your location.
Get the full details over at Amazon, and don’t forget that you can try Prime free for 30 days. After the trial period, you’ll pay $99 per year.
But it easily pays for itself — especially if you’ve got a gamer in the house!
Your Turn: Are you an Amazon Prime member yet? Will you take advantage of this deal?
Disclosure: You wouldn’t believe how much coffee The Penny Hoarder team goes through. This post contains affiliate links so we can keep the grinds stocked!
Jamie Cattanach (@jamiecattanach) is a junior writer at The Penny Hoarder. She also writes other stuff, like wine reviews and poems.
The post Hey, Gamers: Amazon Prime Just Became an Even Better Deal. Here’s Why appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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Oil Prices Just Hit a 12-Year Low. Here’s How Cheap Gas Prices Will Get
The news is aflutter with dropping oil prices, which hit a 12-year low yesterday — before closing at just over $30 per barrel.
A barrel of oil is now cheaper than a good bottle of wine, dinner for two or a week of macchiatos.
We love to celebrate a low price per barrel of crude oil… but what does it actually mean for us?
Crude oil prices are the greatest driver of the price of fuel at the pump. So, cheaper crude means cheaper gas.
How Low Will Gas Prices Go?
Just how low can we expect the price of gas to drop in 2016?
The average price of gas in 2015 was the second-lowest in a decade, according to AAA. And we’re kicking off 2016 with average gas prices below $2 per gallon across the country.
Gas prices haven’t been this low since 2009.
What’s better? Experts expect prices to stay down throughout the year.
The average 2015 gas price was $2.40 per gallon, and “the average annual price for gasoline in 2016 could … possibly even drop five to 15 cents a gallon lower,” AAA’s Christine Delise told CBS Baltimore.
The 2016 annual average could be as low as $2.03, according to the U.S. Energy Information Association forecast, reports ABC.
Where Is the Cheapest Gas?
Today’s average is $1.95, and gas prices range from a high of $2.83 in California to as low as $1.63 in Missouri, according to AAA’s daily report.
The geography of higher and lower gas prices stays pretty consistent. So if you live in California, you probably won’t get to celebrate those sub-$2 prices anytime soon.
But it looks like (at least for now) we can rest easy and plan this year’s Spring Break and summer road trips without blowing our budgets on gas — especially if we use these apps to find the cheapest prices nearby.
Your Turn: How have falling gas prices affected your day-to-day life? What’s the lowest price you’ve seen this year?
Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Writer’s Digest and more.
The post Oil Prices Just Hit a 12-Year Low. Here’s How Cheap Gas Prices Will Get appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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Sky Talk customers get longer to cancel over price hikes
Sky Talk customers, who were moved to the provider’s new home phone packages in December - resulting in price hikes for some - now have longer to cancel following intervention from the regulator.
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Woodford plans new share issue
In an announcement to the London Stock Exchange on Wednesday (13 January), the board of the Woodford Patient Capital trust has indicated that it intends to issue a fresh tranche of shares for the popular trust.
Woodford heading towards new share issue
Feed Copy:
In an announcement to the London Stock Exchange on Wednesday (13 January), the board of the Woodford Patient Capital trust has indicated that it intends to issue a fresh tranche of shares for the popular trust. 'The Woodford Patient Capital Trust has successfully deployed the proceeds of its initial public offering and has a substantial ongoing pipeline of investment opportunities. 'With the current market conditions in mind, the board is currently looking at ways it can raise additional capital in the year ahead and will consult with, and gauge interest from, investors,' the statement says. Launched in April 2015, Woodford Patient Capital raised a record breaking £800 million during its initial offer period. This significantly surpassed the trust's £200 million target and made it the largest initial public offering (IPO) for a UK-listed investment trust in market history. Star manager The star status of manager Neil Woodford secured the trust's popularity and shares have traded at a significant premium to net asset value (NAV) since its launch, from a high of more than 15 per cent to 5.2 per cent as of 12 January. This is despite the trust shedding close to 14 per cent of its share price value and more than 8 per cent of its NAV over the six months to the same date, as a number of its biotechnology holdings have plummeted - particularly scandal-stricken US firm Northwest Biotherapeutics. Commenting on the board announcement, Mark Dampier, head of investment research at Hargreaves Lansdown, says: 'Neil Woodford believes there remain plenty of unexploited opportunities in early growth businesses and he now wants to consider raising further money specifically to take advantage of these. In his view there are some outstanding investment cases, but they will not be around forever.' The trust's board has already issued new shares since Woodford Patient Capital's IPO, creating 27 million shares between August and September 2015, increasing the trust's market capitalisation to £815 million as of 12 January. Shares tumbled 2 per cent following the announcement on Wednesday as a fresh share issue is likely to further reduce the trust's premium to NAV, indicating that current shareholders may be banking profits while shares remain at a premium. Dampier adds: 'A new large tranche might cause the trust's share price to fall to a discount in the short term. However, the fact that Woodford believes the investment case remains so strong is good for the long-term investor, although there are no guarantees of future performance.'
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Want More Effective Content Promotion? Choose From These 15 Tools
Content marketing is different these days.
You used to be able to publish blog posts on just about anything, and you’d get at least some traffic.
But now, you won’t get any.
Content creation levels are at an all time high as more and more marketers start to understand how effective it can be.
This has created a phenomenon known as “content shock.”
Now, if you want to really succeed, you need to do two things.
First, you need to create truly great content—there’s just no way around it any more.
But second, you need to promote it.
You need to find the people who would find your content useful and get it in front of them.
The more you promote a piece of content, the higher your return will be from it.
I’ve written about content promotion strategies quite a bit before because they are really important.
But there’s another issue:
Content promotion takes a lot of time.
In many cases, it takes longer than it does to create the content itself.
This means efficiency is key.
And to achieve efficiency, as well as consistent results from your promotion efforts, you need tools.
Tools help automate boring, repetitive tasks and give you insight into the relevant data by helping you analyze it.
Tools are what this post is all about.
I’ve put together a list of 15 tools that can help you promote content more effectively.
I’m positive that at least a portion of them will be brand new to you and worth a try.
Get more responses by sending more effective emails
Effective modern promotion should be based around email outreach.
You need to make connections with influencers, site owners, and writers and get them to take a look at your content.
If your content is relevant and high quality, you’re all set.
The most difficult part in this type of strategy is creating those connections and getting them to open and read your emails.
There are a few tools that will help you either get a better open rate, save time sending emails, or get a better conversion rate (converting views into reads and responses).
1. Nimble: Nimble solves a big problem of keeping track of everything you know about a contact.
Plus, it can save you a ton of time.
The tool has a few really useful features.
The main one is the “contact record” function. When you add a contact to the tool, it will pull up any easily findable information on that contact (like social media profiles on all the big networks):
You can go into any individual contact at any time and see all their social profiles as well as the information collected.
On top of that, it functions almost as a typical CRM (customer relationship management) tool by allowing you to add tasks for a person (for you or your team) and to keep track of your past communications with them.
One of the most useful parts of all this is that the tool actually draws information from all of those social profiles and somehow cuts out a lot of the redundant information. You end up with a really concise and useful profile of each contact:
2. Yesware: Before I found tools such as Yesware, I always had a huge question on my mind when I sent outreach promotional emails:
Are they actually reading my emails?
When you’re first starting out, you might get a low reply rate from the emails you send.
Before you jump to the conclusion that your emails need to be written better, it helps to know if people are getting or opening the emails.
If they’re not getting the emails because they end up in the junk box or promotions tab in Gmail, that’s an issue you can fix.
Or they might be getting the emails but not liking your subject line, so they don’t open them. And this, of course, kills your overall reply rate.
Finally, you may see that your emails are getting opened but aren’t generating a response. That’s when you know you need to write better.
You need to optimize all three of these areas to maximize your promotion success.
Enter Yesware.
It’s primarily a Gmail plugin, and it allows you to track the specific times when your emails are opened by someone as well as if that someone takes an action (clicks a link or downloads something attached).
You can activate it by checking the little Yesware box at the bottom of any email you send.
This allows you to look into whether or not specific people are opening your emails.
On top of that, Yesware provides several insightful reports. They allow you to look at the performance of your emails as a whole.
If you’re sending a consistent number of emails and are trying to improve your process, these kinds of reports will make it obvious whether your results are improving or not.
3. BananaTag: This is another tool that is primarily a Gmail plugin (although it can be used with other email clients), and it works very similarly to Yesware.
I’ve tried them both, and they both work well, so it’s a matter of personal preference which one you choose.
It works the same way: you just check the BananaTag box at the end of an email you’re sending. It will track when emails are opened and what actions are taken.
At any time, you can look at the detailed performance of a single email or look at an overall report of opens and other activities:
4. FollowUpThen: When you start sending (and receiving) hundreds of emails in a short time period, things get hectic—fast.
At first, you might be able to keep your inbox fairly clean, but as soon as you don’t respond to a few right away, they start to build up.
This tool is the solution to that and a really simple way to keep your inbox clean so that you don’t miss important messages and are not stressed out.
Here’s how it works:
When you don’t want to deal with an email right away, for whatever reason, you simply forward it to an email address controlled by the tool.
There are tons that you can choose from. But here are some examples:
- 2hours@followupthen.com
- 3days@followupthen.com
- 4weeks@followupthen.com
- 3m@followupthen.com (3 months)
- 11am@followupthen.com
- 1132am@followupthen.com
- mar30@followupthen.com
- 22april@followupthen.com
All you do is send the email to one of those addresses, and it will resend you that original email when you’ve specified.
Keep in mind that you could also BCC one of these addresses when you send out an email if you want to make sure that you follow up with the recipient.
Here’s an example of it in action.
Let’s say you get an email from me about a new post. You’re super excited (right?), but you just don’t have the time to read the post right now.
Instead of letting it wait around in your inbox, possibly forgetting about it, you forward it to “3days@followupthen.com”.
Now, you can clear the email from your inbox and know that it will be back in three days when you’ll have more time.
5. BuzzStream: BuzzStream is probably the most established email outreach tool there is. It’s been around for years and is a really useful tool.
Its main goal is to save you time by helping you find contact information and send emails in bulk.
To start with, you can add domains or people to the tool that you’d like to connect with.
Then, the tool will find as much contact information as possible so that you can choose from the different options.
Then, you can select as many of those contacts as you’d like and pick a template (that you create) to send them. The tool will automatically fill in details like name and site name if you include it in the template.
Finally, it’s created mainly for marketers, so it has a few nice features like being able to set the stage of your relationships.
This helps you keep track of the people you shouldn’t contact again, those you need to contact, and those you might want to follow up with.
Finally, there’s another really cool aspect of the tool.
It integrates right into your browser. That means you can automatically pull all the information on any page you come across. Next, you can import these pages into your BuzzStream account, and it will begin pulling additional contact information.
There are many sites that this is useful for; one of them is BuzzSumo (which we’ll look at later in this post).
You can do a search on BuzzSumo to find popular content and then import all those popular websites into an outreach campaign.
If you’ve ever done an outreach campaign from scratch, you can understand how this tool will save you several hours per week.
6. ContentMarketer.io: This is a more recent alternative to BuzzStream, and it’s specifically geared toward content marketers.
It has a beautiful design and is really user friendly, so you can start using it immediately.
Once you start a project in the tool, you have three functions to choose from (the big blue buttons at the top):
The first feature, “scan a post,” lets you enter one of your posts to allow the tool automatically find website owners who publish relevant content. You can then reach out to them to try to get a link.
The next feature is the “research contacts” function, which is pretty self-explanatory. The tool finds email addresses and social media accounts of contacts you add.
The final function is the “outreach” component, which allows you to send emails quickly using your own (or their suggested) templates:
Again, this can save you an incredible amount of time, and it combines three important functions in one simple tool.
Get more views from social media with these tools
There are many goals of content promotion, but most of them revolve around getting more traffic.
As you might know, social media sites are one of the best places to find traffic for your new content.
There are some things you have to do manually, but there are now a ton of great tools that will help you save time on social media and get better results.
7. Narrow.io: This is a new tool, but it seems to have a lot going for it, which is why it’s on this list.
I haven’t used it extensively myself, but others have reported being able to use it to grow their Twitter followings up to 2,160% faster.
The tool has one goal: get you more Twitter followers.
What sets it apart from all the other tools that have the same goal is a slightly more sophisticated algorithm.
You can find users who might be interested in your business by searching for relevant keywords and hashtags.
With this information, the tool will create an audience you can target.
Then, Narrow will follow those users and even favorite relevant tweets.
If those people don’t follow you back, Narrow will unfollow them automatically.
There is a risk: Using tools to automatically follow and unfollow people could get your account suspended. However, you can lower your risk by not being very aggressive.
Additionally, the creators of the tool claim that they have actual people manually doing the following and unfollowing, which may circumvent the rules. Just remember that there is still probably some risk.
Also keep in mind that there are no free accounts. You can get a 7-day free trial, but then you’ll have to shift to a paid account.
8. Topsy: This is another tool that is a must if you use Twitter for content promotion.
Topsy is basically a high quality Twitter search engine. I don’t know if you’ve ever used Twitter’s internal search engine, but it’s mediocre at best.
Here’s how you use Topsy.
Say you just wrote an article about content marketing.
Ideally, you want to promote this article to people who already have an interest in content marketing.
Search for “content marketing” in Topsy, and it will bring up a list of results of the most shared content marketing articles on Twitter.
Notice that you can specify the time range on the left sidebar. This is really useful if you’re writing about time sensitive topics.
For example, if someone was interested in a beginner article on content marketing a year ago, they’re probably way past that stage by now.
But if they shared a beginner’s guide last week, chances are that your new content (if it’s for beginners) is perfect for them.
Next, you need to do something with these results.
Click the orange “# more” link on any of the results. This will give you a detailed breakdown of everyone who shared it on Twitter during that time period.
If you have limited time, focus on reaching out to the “influential only” users because they have many more followers than the rest.
Once you have a list of people who might be willing to share your content (as well as read it themselves), it’s up to you where you go from there. Here are a few basic strategies:
- Follow them, then send them a direct message if they follow you back, and ask if they’re interested in your content
- Tweet at them (include “@username” in the Tweet), and share your content
- For influential users, click through to their websites and find their email addresses. Send them an email about your content.
9. Tweetdeck: This is the final Twitter tool, I promise. It’s actually offered by Twitter itself.
It’s a great tool to monitor your Twitter activity all at once, similarly to HootSuite.
You can have as many columns as you’d like, but you’ll probably only want 4-5 so that they all fit on your screen at once.
You can remove any of them at any time and add new ones by clicking the “add column” button on the left sidebar:
There are a ton to choose from, so you can really customize it to stay updated on the parts of Twitter you care about.
In addition, you can send tweets right from the tool and even schedule them beforehand (although other tools are easier if you need this function often):
How does this factor into your promotion?
First, you’ll want to tweet out your content to your followers, and not just once, but multiple times over the following few weeks and even a few times sporadically after that.
It’s nice to be able to schedule all of these activities at once, which you can do with TweetDeck.
The other side is monitoring. There are a few ways you can use this tool to your advantage.
The first is by monitoring tweets of your content. If someone is nice enough to share it, you’ll want to favorite it, retweet it, or reply to it. In addition, you can connect with any of that user’s followers who liked it as well.
Another great way to use it is to set up a search column for a main term in your content.
For example, I would set one up for “content promotion tools” if I was promoting this article. Then, when someone tweeted asking or saying something about some good promotion tools, I could reply with a link to this post.
10. Buffer: If you want to save time scheduling your social media sharing on any of the main social networks, Buffer is the tool to go with.
It’s probably the only tool used by almost every professional social media marketer.
Buffer lets you schedule posts on all major social networks:
- Google+
To top it off, you can schedule one post to be posted on multiple networks at the same time.
It can save you a lot of time, which you can then use to send more emails.
The first thing you’ll need to do when you create an account is to set up your posting schedule for each network (they can all be different).
You can choose how often you post on any specific day of the week, and you’ll never need to do it again after the first time:
The main component of your Buffer account is your “queue,” which contains all the posts you want posted in the future to one or more of your social media accounts.
Once you add posts to your queue, Buffer will post them at the times you specified.
You can add posts to the queues of any of your profiles in the tool itself. Just type it in, and click “add to queue.”
On your main queue page, you can also see all the posts you currently have in your queue and edit them if needed:
But if you had to do it all manually, it’d still be kind of a pain.
That’s why you install the Buffer browser extension.
Then, when you’re on a page you want to share, you just click the icon in your browser (or any sharing icon on the page).
Immediately, you can add a post to your queue (for multiple social profiles if you’d like):
On top of that, you can tell Buffer to schedule the post multiple times by going to the power scheduler:
When you publish a post, visit it, and schedule your own sharing of it right away. It’ll take less than a minute this way, whereas it would take several minutes with most tools or if you were to do it manually.
Finally, Buffer also offers some good insights through its analytics. It will track how often posts are viewed, shared, and clicked:
This lets you try out different posting styles, and then you can continue using the ones that work best.
11. Image Sharer plugin: The last tool in this section is a plugin by SumoMe.
Including images in your social media posts automatically makes them more successful. People are attracted to images and are likely to share them.
This plugin makes it easy for your blog readers to share your pictures on their favorite image-based social networks.
Once you install and activate the SumoMe image sharer plugin, all of your images will have sharing buttons added to them (you get to pick which networks you want displayed):
When a visitor clicks one of the buttons, a pop-up for that network will open, which will let them make a post that includes the link to the page and the image selected.
Not only does this make it easier for your own readers to share your content but it also guarantees that you will get more traffic from those shares (since the images get more attention).
Get more high quality backlinks (and the SEO traffic they bring)
The final class of tools in this post focuses on helping you get more links to your content.
Links are a hugely important part of any promotional campaign. Often, links bring you immediate traffic, but they also bring you steady, long-term traffic because they help you rank better in search engines (that’s SEO 101).
12. Citation Labs: Citation labs isn’t actually a single tool; they offer many:
However, there are two in particular that are very useful for what we want here.
The first one is the broken link builder tool.
I’ll break down the main features for you quickly here, or you can just watch this 2-minute video:
The tool is very simple to use. You add in a keyword or multiple keywords that describe the topic of the content you created:
Then, the tool will bring up a large list of broken URLs. These no longer work the way they’re supposed to.
But there’s one more column of the results that is crucial: the number of links that point to that broken page.
The idea here is to contact as many of those sites that link to the broken page as possible and tell them that their link no longer works. Then, you can suggest your new content as a replacement.
The closer your page is to the old content, the more successful you will be.
For more in-depth guidance, check out my guide to broken link building.
The link prospector: This is the second Citation Labs tool that can be useful here.
Again, you search for a keyword that matches your content.
This time, the tool brings up a list of pages and websites that you might be able to get links from:
Some of these will be resource pages. You can just email them and ask them to add your content.
Others might be guest posts. In this case, you will have to pitch your own guest post topic, and then you might be able to link back to your original piece of content.
This tool returns several types of content that are relevant to your content, so if you can get links from any of them, they’ll be useful.
It leaves you quite a bit of work to do yourself, but it will save you some time finding good sites and pages to target for links.
13. Ahrefs: You can’t do scalable link building without access to a good link database. There are a few different options, but Ahrefs has arguably the most complete database of links.
You can test it out with a free account, but it will be pretty limited. Eventually, you’ll need a paid account, which costs a decent bit. If you want a slightly cheaper option, you can opt for the next tool—Majestic.
There are two main parts of Ahrefs.
The first is the content explorer, which is still relatively new.
When you search for a topic, the tool returns the most popular content in its database that is relevant.
You can sort by the number of social shares on any of the major networks as well as by the number of sites that link to the content.
The most basic way to use this information for promotion is to sort by linking domains and then to look at who linked to each of those results. Then, do email outreach to each of those linking domains, and see if they’d link to your content as well.
The second main part of Ahrefs is the link database, which is what it was originally known for.
Type in any domain or URL into the tool:
It will then return you a ton of useful linking information.
This pairs up nicely with the content explorer because then you can find all the sites that link to each piece of popular content.
You can also order the links by authority so that you only spend time reaching out to pages with a high URL rating that will have a significant effect on your search rankings.
14. Majestic: This is a realistic alternative to Ahrefs when it comes to a link database. It doesn’t have the content explorer, but it has one of the largest and most useful link databases there is.
It works almost in the same way as Ahrefs does. You input a URL or domain, and the tool returns all the link information it has:
You’ll notice that the tool splits the URL and domain ratings into citation flow and trust flow. It makes it really easy to spot spam links because their trust flow numbers are always much lower than their citation flow numbers.
Again, you can use this in a similar way. Find content that is similar to yours and that has backlinks to it. Then use Majestic to find those backlinks and contact them to try to get one to your content.
15. BuzzSumo: I saved a good one for last. BuzzSumo is probably the best tool when it comes to finding popular content around a topic.
It’s very similar to Ahrefs’ content explorer but was created long before it and for this single purpose.
Again, you use the same basic strategy for promotion.
Type in your content topic in the tool:
You’ll get a list of the most popular content based on shares on all the major social networks.
Then, you can either put those links into a link database tool (like Majestic), or you can click on “view sharers” to see who shared the content on Twitter (and reach out to those users).
Conclusion
You should always be developing your skills as a marketer.
However, to fully utilize your skills, you need the right tools to help you out. You wouldn’t ask carpenters to build a house with a spoon; instead, you’d give them hammers and saws.
These content promotion tools will help you get more traffic in less time—both are very good things for you as a marketer.
If I missed a content promotion tool that you love, I’d appreciate if you shared it below in a comment. It might be a useful one I’m unfamiliar with, and everyone else reading might like it too.
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Rite Aid Might Owe You $50! Here’s How to Find Out
Did you know you may be eligible to receive free money or other benefits from a class-action settlement?
It typically takes just a few minutes to file a claim, and you could be entitled to cash, products or other compensation.
Last month, I told you about nine settlements currently accepting claims. This month I’ve found six more great options. I know you’re busy, so let’s get started!
1. Earth Friendly Products
If you’re like me, you read labels and do your best to purchase natural cleaning products that don’t have harmful ingredients.
Well, if you purchased Earth Friendly Products labeled as “all natural,” “100% Natural,” “Naturally-derived,” “Plant-based” or something similar, you may be entitled to up to $25.
The Earth Friendly Products settlement resolves a class action lawsuit alleging the so-called “natural” cleaning products include methylisothiazoline (MIT), a powerful allergen and skin irritant.
You must have purchased the products between Jan. 23 and Nov. 5, 2011 to be eligible for payment.
The deadline to file a claim is Feb. 15, 2016. Find out if you qualify now!
2. Norton Download Insurance
Did you purchase Norton Download Insurance or Extended Download Service for Norton Products between Jan. 23, 2005 and March 10, 2011?
You may be entitled to free cash!
Symantec and Digital River allegedly misrepresented that these services were necessary if a customer wanted to re-download their software more than 60 days after purchase.
You can file a claim to receive a cash payment of up to $50 for each download service you purchased.
The deadline to file a claim is Feb. 18, 2016. Learn more.
3. Rite Aid Pharmacy Records
If you paid Rite Aid a $50 or $85 fixed records charge for pharmacy records after Jan. 1, 2005, you may be entitled to a $25 or $50 Rite Aid gift card for each fee you paid.
A settlement has been reached after Rite Aid allegedly charged customers unreasonable and arbitrary fees. The amount bears no relationship to the actual cost Rite Aid experiences processing records requests.
The deadline to file a claim is March 7, 2016. Find out more.
4. Toyota Corolla
If you’re a current or former owner or lessee of a 2009 or 2010 Toyota Corolla, you may be eligible for benefits from a recent settlement.
Toyota settled the suit alleging some Corollas’ electric power steering systems caused the cars to suddenly veer in one direction during normal use.
If you qualify, you may be eligible for reimbursement of the costs you paid to install a re-tuned electronic control unit. Or, you may qualify to have the part installed for free or for a discount.
The deadline to file a claim is March 15, 2016. More information is available here.
5. Wells Fargo Inspection Fee
Wells Fargo has settled a suit alleging it improperly assessed property inspections when a mortgage borrower fell behind on payments.
The bank concealed the fees from consumers, labeling them as “Other Charges” on mortgage statements.
If you had a mortgage serviced by Wells Fargo, and owe or paid for a bank-assessed inspection fee between Aug. 1, 2004 and Dec. 31, 2013, you may be entitled to compensation.
The deadline to file a claim is March 16, 2016. Click here to learn more.
6. Justice Stores
If you’ve purchased merchandise from a Justice store between Jan. 1, 2012 and Feb. 28, 2015, you may be entitled to up to $20 in cash or a $30 Justice voucher (or more if you have proof of purchase).
The retailer is offering benefits to consumers due to a settlement over claims it misrepresented items as 40% off, when this “sale” price was actually regular price.
Even if you filed a claim for an earlier Justice settlement in Ohio, you may still qualify for benefits from this one.
The deadline to file a claim is April 4, 2016. Learn more.
Your turn: Have you received money or products from a class-action settlement? Let us know in the comments below!
Anne Bucher is the Managing Editor at TopClassActions.com.
The post Rite Aid Might Owe You $50! Here’s How to Find Out appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.
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The “Billion Dollar Lottery” and You
Unless you’ve been in a media blackout for the past few days, you’ve heard that the Powerball lottery has set a new all-time high for a jackpot, breaking the billion dollar mark for the first time. The jackpot for Wednesday’s drawing is estimated to be around $1.5 billion, which is a huge chunk of change.
It’s been hard for me to avoid it, actually. I know quite a few people who have purchased tickets, including people who would never normally play the lottery, and it’s been pretty hard to read a newspaper or a news website without hearing breathless talk about this lottery.
In all of the hubbub, a few things have really stood out to me as items worth thinking about regarding the lottery.
The Real Value Is in the Anticipation
Let’s look at the value proposition of buying a single $2 ticket for Wednesday’s Powerball drawing.
The odds of winning the grand prize, which is $1.5 billion or a share thereof, is 1 in 292,201,338.
The odds of winning $1 million is 1 in 11,688,053.52.
The odds of winning $50,000 is 1 in 913,129.18.
The odds of winning $100 via four matching numbers is 1 in 36,525.17.
The odds of winning $100 via three matching numbers and the Powerball is 1 in 14,494.11.
The odds of winning $7 via three matching numbers is 1 in 579.76.
The odds of winning $7 via two matching numbers and the Powerball is 1 in 701.33.
The odds of winning $4 via one matching number and the Powerball is 1 in 91.98.
The odds of winning $4 via simply matching the Powerball is 1 in 38.32.
Overall, the odds of winning any prize are 1 in 24.87. That’s not good odds. 24 out of 25 tickets will be absolutely worthless. In $50 worth of tickets, the most likely outcome is that 1 of them will be worth anything at all and that one is likely to be a $4 winner.
Obviously, buying a lottery ticket is a pretty terrible idea from a financial standpoint. It verges on throwing money away, at least in terms of the odds of having any sort of return on that money. The odds are incredibly strongly against you.
So why do people buy?
It’s all about dreams and anticipation. If you hold a lottery ticket in your hands, there is at least some chance, no matter how small, that you could win a large prize. Because of that, it affords people the opportunity to dream of what they might do if they did win as well as the anticipation of waiting to see what the numbers are when they are drawn.
I genuinely don’t have any sort of problem with that. People spend more than that on frivolous things all the time. The thing to remember is that you can get those same dreams and anticipation from a single $2 ticket as you can from $50 worth of tickets.
Of course, you’ll get the most value from such a ticket by purchasing it early in the cycle. If this lottery were to happen to roll over again, pushing the jackpot into the $2 billion range, the people who would buy a single ticket for the dreams and anticipation are best served by doing it first thing in the morning on the next day, giving them three days to dream with that ticket in their pocket.
Anything more than that basic purchase is simply a waste of resources that will end up costing you far more than it will ever bring you. Additional tickets don’t add more to the anticipation or improve your odds beyond changing the utterly microscopic to the slightly less microscopic, but they do begin do have a real impact on your finances.
So, if you must play the lottery, do so really early in the period between drawings and buy only a single ticket. Doing so maximizes the real value that you get from that ticket.
If You Win, Take the Annuity
Let’s say you were to actually win that $1.5 billion jackpot. You would be offered two choices: a lump sum payment of $930 million, or thirty payments of $50 million each over the next thirty years. The latter option is commonly called an annuity.
If you sit down and run the numbers on these options, you’ll discover that the annuity is going to earn you a roughly 2.843% guaranteed annual return on your money. That’s substantially better than most savings accounts, but not as good as you would get investing it in other things over a thirty year period – at least, according to the history of things like the stock market or real estate markets.
Here’s the problem, though: the vast majority of Americans aren’t actually very good with their money. I like to quote the fact that 76% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck (which would include an awful lot of families earning well into the six figures), but I do so because it illustrates a key point: people don’t manage their money very well.
“But I’ll have almost a billion dollars,” people might think. And that’s true, except every scammer and long lost relative in the world would be heading your way pretty directly upon hearing the news. If you add into that the evidence that most Americans aren’t very good at managing their own money, as described above, and you’re taking a pretty big risk in taking that lump sum payment. If you have the willpower to lock up most or all of that money after taxes in such a way that you can’t or won’t touch the balance, then it might be a good move, but remember that 76% of us can’t even keep our checkbook balanced.
Because of that, I would strongly encourage any large lottery winner to take the annuity option instead of the lump sum option. The annuity option ensures that you’ll spread out that money over a long period of time no matter what you choose, while having that giant lump sum all at once would make it easy to just burn through all of it much quicker than you think.
If I Win…
Honestly, I did not buy a ticket for this Powerball drawing. Why not, if I think it is reasonable to do so for the anticipation of a $2 ticket?
To put it simply, the thought of winning the jackpot does not fill me with positive feelings. Sure, my family would be financially independent at that point (and my children… and my grandchildren, most likely), but I mostly feel apprehension about winning that lottery, the media attention it would receive, and also how I would relate to family and friends. The people in my life are the most important thing to me, but I know that if I won that much money, those relationships would change and not for the better.
So, for me, the biggest value of the ticket – the dreams and anticipation – don’t really add up to much. So I didn’t buy a ticket.
But let’s say that I did, and let’s say that I won. What would happen next?
First of all, I would take the lump sum payment. I already know that I have the willpower not to spend money. We’ve been living on about half of our family income for years. Not only that, I don’t actually have that many big dreams that I want to fulfill, other than a nice home in the country. That, along with a few specific charitable donations, would be my only significant purchase.
Next, I would invest 98% of the money almost immediately. The lump sum payment would be $930 million. Next April, I’d owe a pretty hefty tax bill, but over the ensuing time, I’d invest virtually all of that money, paying the taxes only when they are due. Then, I’d tell the people who came at me asking for money that the money was already out of my hands.
I would eventually hire a financial advisor, but that advisor would be very carefully screened. I’d look at financial advisors who aid the extremely wealthy and help them to preserve their wealth. I actually feel as though I could easily manage my own wealth, but I do have concerns about tax issues.
Then, I would live off of part of the return on my investments. Let’s say that I kept $500 million after all taxes were paid, which seems roughly reasonable. I’d invest most of that in the stock market in a highly diversified way, so the value of it would go up over time, but I’d also earn dividends at a rate of about 2% per year. That’s about $10 million a year, which is far more than I can even conceive of spending. Likely, I’d pay the taxes on that, keep a fairly small portion of it to live on (maybe 20% of what’s left, but probably less than that), and roll the rest back into the investment. This would likely all be handled within a trust that would give us perhaps $1-2 million per year to live on.
Why not spend all of that money? First of all, I can’t even conceive of things I’d even want to spend my money on that would suck down more than a million per year. I have no interest in buying or owning or experiencing the things that the very wealthy have or experience. I don’t want a yacht. I don’t want a mansion. I might buy a second house somewhere, but that’s a maybe. I’d travel, but I don’t really have any interest in traveling exorbitantly. I’m just not wired for that stuff, I guess.
Final Thoughts
I don’t need to state again and again how lotteries are a bad value proposition. You don’t get a good return on your dollar when you buy a ticket. All you really get is a bit of wishful thinking and anticipation, which is honestly not a terrible way to spend $2, but multiple tickets don’t really help that value proposition.
Instead, keep that cash in your pocket. Use it to pay a little bit more on your next debt payment, or stick it in your Roth IRA. You’ll get more value out of it that way.
Good luck!
The post The “Billion Dollar Lottery” and You appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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