MAKE MONEY ONLINE POSTS: 01/18/16

الاثنين، 18 يناير 2016

Silvio Calabi: Could the Golf R be the perfect car?

Every now and then we stumble upon a car that seems to have it all: Power and performance to make us smile? Oh, yeah. Behavior and style we could live with for years? Yes, it’s easy to drive and to park — and looking at it doesn’t hurt either. Room for four? That too, with four doors and a space-sensitive footprint. Comfort and convenience? Plenty of both, across town and on long trips. Efficiency and economy? Check. The latest active and passive safety and driver- [...]

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Cars We Remember: 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge Ram Air IV that got away

Q: Greg, I enjoy your articles very much and when I read your article on “Long lost opportunities” and the one’s that got away it really struck a chord with me. When I was just a “kid” in 1974, I bought a used car that was priced right. For $1000 I became the proud owner of a 1970 Pontiac GTO Ram Air IV 400 Judge with factory traction bars, a Hurst 4 speed and active cowl induction. With the gas and oil crisis in full swing, muscle cars were on the [...]

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Are You REALLY Ready to Get a Dog or Cat? Here’s One Thing You Need to Do First

Thinking about adding a furry friend to your family this spring?

Besides the time and emotional commitment (trust me: You’ll develop ALL the feelings when you look into those loving eyes for the first time), you also have to account for the financial obligations.

Even if you adopt a shelter animal — which you should probably, definitely, please do — the first year of pet ownership comes with many costs you may not have considered.

Which is why — before getting a new pet — it’s important to make sure you’re prepared to be a responsible and financially solvent owner.

To help, The Simple Dollar created a pet cost calculator.

How Much Does a Dog Cost?

This new tool makes it easy to determine how much your fuzzy bundle of joy is going to cost.

First, select whether you’re getting a dog or a cat.

Then answer a series of quick questions about its projected medical, grooming, food, equipment, logistics and training needs.

Based on average costs for each, the calculator spits out an estimated cost for your first year of pet ownership.

So, if I finally adopted that adorable little pitbull puppy I’ve been dreaming of, my first year’s costs would be around $1,160. More than I expected — but not terrible.

Now if only I could get over my fear of commitment…

Your Turn: Do you want to get a pet this year? Did this calculator help?

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 Are You REALLY Ready to Get a Dog or Cat? Here’s One Thing You Need to Do First appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Savings update: top rates keep on falling

Sylvia Morris

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Fixed rate deals continue to fall both on bonds and cash Isas.

Tesco has cut the rate on its one-year fixed rate cash Isa from 1.75 per cent to 1.31 per cent for new savers. The best deal is now 1.65 per cent from Virgin Money, Leeds Building Society and Shawbrook Bank.

Savings update: top rates continue to fall

Feed Copy:

Fixed rate deals continue to fall both on bonds and cash Isas. Tesco has cut the rate on its one-year fixed rate cash Isa from 1.75 per cent to 1.31 per cent for new savers. The best deal is now 1.65 per cent from Virgin Money, Leeds Building Society and Shawbrook Bank. On easy access cash Isas, Coventry Building Society pays a top 1.5 per cent while Virgin Money Defined Access Isa pays 1.41 per cent. The latter limits you to three withdrawals a year. Both accept transfers from other providers. Easy-access accounts On taxable bonds, the best one-year fixed rate deal comes from RCI Bank at 2.06 per cent before tax (1.65 per cent after). With this French-owned bank your money is covered by the European compensation scheme which gives €100,000 (around £76,000), rather than the UK scheme. The next best deal is 1.91 per cent (1.57 per cent) from Paragon Bank. On easy-access accounts you can earn 1.65 per cent (1.32 per cent) at best from internet accounts run by both RCI and ICICI banks. Paragon Bank pays 1.46 per cent and Shawbrook 1.45 per cent.

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Silvio Calabi: Could the Golf R be the perfect car?

The 8 Most Important Skills for Content Promotion (and How to Learn Them)

The bar has been raised.

Creating great content isn’t enough anymore if you want your content marketing to be successful.

Today, you need to not only create that content but also promote it.

Many marketers have started to wake up to this fact, which is a good thing.

However, just because they recognize that promotion is important doesn’t mean they know how to do it effectively.

In my experience, only a small percentage of marketers possess the skills that make them effective promoters as well.

The big problem is that if you don’t have these skills, you’ll struggle to learn how to promote effectively.

The reason for this is that there isn’t much help out there.

When it comes to creating great content, you can study the content your favorite blogs publish and attempt to replicate it.

But it’s next to impossible to understand all the work that goes on behind the scenes to promote that content unless the creators are generous enough to share it with you.

It takes a special kind of marketer—the cream of the crop—to learn both from resources (like blog posts) and experience.

These are the complete content marketers that get the results everyone else wants.

Honestly, I don’t know if you’re one of them—maybe not yet.

The good news is that you can become one of them if you’re willing to learn new skills.

In this post, I’ll explain in detail the eight most important skills needed for effective content promotion.

If you recognize all these skills in your own work, you’re probably doing pretty well.

If you see you’re lacking a few of these skills, I’m going to show you exactly how to acquire and develop them.

Are you ready to put your skills to the test?

If so, let’s dive in.

1. The best content marketers all have this skill…

This first skill might be the most important.

Critical thinking.

As a marketer who is still finding your way, you’ll be spending a lot of time learning about different tactics you can use to promote your content.

These might be email outreach tactics, link building tactics, or social media tactics…you get the picture.

But not all marketers who try a specific tactic will succeed with it. You probably know that already from firsthand experience.

It’s not because of luck or skill. Although these factors may play a role, the main factor that determines how successful you are with a tactic is fit.

Some tactics work in some niches and situations better than in others.

If you blindly try different tactics, you’ll have some success but not as much as you’d like.

The really good marketers, or the ones who seem to “get it” really quickly, are the ones who can critically think about a tactic.

They don’t just read a blog post and think, “This is pretty cool; I’d better try it!”

Instead, they think about questions like these:

Why does this tactic work?
What niches would it work best in? why?
Will this work for my content?
Can I can tweak it in any way to make it even more effective?
How can I test this?

Understanding a tactic before using it is different from just applying it blindly. I hope the reason behind those questions is clear.

Once you truly understand the tactics you learn, all of a sudden you are able to see where they fit together in an overall strategy.

The good news is that no one is born with critical thinking skills—these skills are developed.

And even better news is that you probably already have some, but maybe just need to consciously use them more often.

Regardless of where you are, let’s go through a complete example of how you would approach a tactic in real life.

Examining infographics with critical thinking: Here’s the situation: you come across an article I wrote about creating and promoting infographics.

Of course, your first reaction is excitement when I explain how infographics can be used to get thousands of visits.

And they can, for sure. But not in all situations.

After you read the post, you want to ask yourself the same questions I listed above.

Q: Why does this tactic work?

Infographics work because they are attractive, easy to consume, and can convey complex information quickly.

On top of that, really good ones stand out and get extra attention.

Because infographics are so shareable, you’ll get a ton of traffic if you can get the initial views to them. Providing an embed code underneath the infographic makes it easy to share (and gets you extra links).

Q: What niches would it work best in? Why?

Infographics are an image-based type of content. Therefore, they probably work best in image dominated niches. Think clothing, design, food, and even marketing to a degree.

The most important factor mentioned was that the topic needs to be interesting, which means that viewers need to care about it.

In “boring” niches like heating or bug removal, which are not that interesting to people (in general), it’s going to be tough to get the infographic to spread.

Q: Can I tweak it in any way to make it even more effective?

The reason why the effectiveness of infographics seems to be declining is that they’re becoming more commonplace.

So, if I can come up with a way to make mine more unique, I should be able to get better results. Perhaps, I can make a gifographic instead.

Q: How can I test this?

To test this tactic fairly, I would need to produce at least 5-10 professionally designed infographics.

This means I’ll likely need a budget of around $2,000-4,000.

I will then determine its effectiveness by looking at a few key metrics:

cost per subscriber
cost per link
cost per visit

Then, I will compare those metrics to the metrics of other tactics I’ve used to determine if I should produce more infographics.

End questions. In reality, you’d probably want to ask yourself even more questions.

How many readers of this blog or any other marketing blog honestly do this after reading about a tactic?

While I have some of the most active readers I’ve ever seen, which is great, I would guess far fewer than half of the readers who read a post do this.

If you want to develop critical thinking skills, you simply need to practice thinking. Ask yourself hard questions and try to get the best answers you can.

It’s okay if they’re not perfect; you’ll get better over time.

2. How far can you dig?

One question that I get all the time is: “How long does it take you to write your posts?”

Truthfully, it doesn’t take that long. Typically, I can do the actual writing in about 3 hours plus some time for editing.

But creating a post takes longer than that. It also takes a lot of research. Some posts, of course, will require more research than others.

Research is one of the most undervalued skills in a content marketer. Research is definitely important when it comes to creating content, but it is probably even more important when it comes to content promotion.

A lot of modern day promotion is based on email outreach, and it’s important you understand some basic numbers.

Most effective tactics will have a conversion rate of 5-10%. That means that for every 100 emails you send, 5 to 10 will end up in links. The actual percentage will depend on a lot of factors, e.g., your niche, copywriting skills, and quality of content.

Keep in mind that the conversion rate I quoted above is for the best tactics. Most tactics will have a lower conversion rate.

What does this mean in terms of research?

It means that you’ll have to send a ton of emails as part of your promotional campaigns. You’ll want to get at least 20-30 links to the content you’ve spent a few hundred dollars on creating.

In most cases, that means you’re sending 400+ emails, sometimes thousands.

Over time, that number won’t seem that big, but at first, I understand why that would seem like a ton.

In reality, there are two big components to this:

sending the actual emails and
researching hundreds or thousands of good prospects

The research usually takes more time than sending the emails, at least until you establish key relationships in your niche.

Since you’re dealing with hundreds or thousands of data points, it’s crucial that you work efficiently.

This usually means working with tools and knowing how to use them effectively.

For example, you could manually search for resource pages to target for a link. You could probably create a list of 100 in an hour or so.

Or you could simply find a similar type of content, plug it in a tool such as Ahrefs or Majestic, and have a list of hundreds or thousands of targets in seconds.

Work smarter, not harder (when possible).

3. Are you able to determine what is and isn’t important?

By now, you understand pretty well what promoting consists of.

And to be honest, it’s an insane amount of work.

You could easily hire someone (or multiple marketers) just to do promotion for your content.

In most cases, you can’t do that.

Instead, you need to find a way to balance content creation with content promotion while running other parts of your business as well.

Introducing the 80/20 rule: The skill I’m focusing on in this section is your ability to identify which of your actions produce the most results.

There’s a fairly established rule called the 80/20 rule (or Pareto principle).

It states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort. And it applies to just about everything.

One of the things it applies to is content promotion:

80% of your traffic will come from 20% of the links
80% of your links and traffic will come from 20% of your promotion tactics

In almost all cases, if a sample size is large enough, these numbers will be fairly accurate. They may differ by 5-10% in each direction, but the effect remains the same.

Using the 80/20 rule to eliminate fluff: The reason why I showed you this rule is because it’s possibly the most effective way to save a lot of time without losing much in the way of results.

In fact, you can often get better results in less time once you understand how the rule works in your case.

By breaking down your efforts and results, you can determine which of your efforts are contributing the most to your results.

Then, you can cut out all the rest. Why spend 80% of your efforts on only 20% of the returns you want?

Instead, use that extra time you freed up to double or triple down on that 20% of activity that actually produces results.

Here’s what it might look like in practice…

Track all your efforts and results, then eliminate waste: You never want to guess what is and isn’t effective.

Instead, start by tracking what you do to promote content, how much time you spend on it, and what you get in return for that effort.

Tracking time is pretty straightforward, but you’ll have to track your other metrics using tools such as Google Analytics (for traffic) and Ahrefs (for links).

Here are some hypothetical results:

The traffic per hour value is calculated by dividing the traffic from that activity by the time spent on the activity.

I used traffic as the main goal for this promotional campaign, but yours could be links, social shares, or whatever else you’re looking for.

Finally, you can calculate the percentage of results value by dividing the traffic per hour value by the total “traffic per hour” amount (e.g., 300/1466 for email outreach). This is a fair comparison since they are all based on a “per hour” basis.

What we see is that almost all of the results come from email outreach and emailing subscribers (about 88%). Those two activities take up 5.5 out of 11.5 hours of effort, or a little under 50% of the total effort.

This also illustrates that it doesn’t matter if there’s a perfect 80/20 ratio. You just want to see which activities are producing the least from your efforts.

In this case, you could cut out over half of your effort and lose only about 12% of the results, a great trade off.

Even if this time was spent just on more email outreach, you could take your total traffic from 2,500 to about 3,500 (a 40% increase).

If you wanted to spend more time emailing your subscribers, you could do it indirectly by spending the extra time trying to get more subscribers. This could be done by creating lead magnets or by employing other tactics to try to improve your conversion rate.

The bottom line is that you need to be efficient.

Find any effort that isn’t producing results (like screwing around on social media), and cut it out. You don’t have time to waste if you want to be a good content promoter.

4. Social skills on the Internet?

Marketers come from all sorts of backgrounds.

A large portion of the new generation of Internet marketers was attracted to the profession because it offered a chance to make money without truly interacting with people.

Or at least that’s what they thought.

If you want to be a legitimate and successful marketer, you need to have at least basic social skills.

You need to know how to communicate with co-workers, influencers, and your readers in a way that doesn’t seem awkward or manipulative.

This comes down to basic human interaction, especially in emails.

A lot of promotional success comes down to building relationships with people, and if you can’t hold a conversation, in any medium, it’s going to be tough to succeed.

Most people have these basic social skills, but if you think yours can be improved, read Ramit Sethi’s The Ultimate Guide to Social Skills, which is by far the most useful guide on the subject I’ve come across.

5. The ability to care about others will take you far

It’s a harsh truth.

No other website owner truly cares about your content.

So, when you email them asking them to take a look at it and give you a link of some sort, it’s tough to get a positive response.

That’s why good marketers never just ask for things.

Instead, they provide value upfront.

They do something nice for an influencer, and most people return the favor. It’s called the rule of reciprocity.

That’s a very simple concept that every marketer should know.

What really sets good marketers apart, however, is empathy.

Empathy just means that you’re good at viewing things from the perspective of others and understanding how they feel.

It’s an important skill in all parts of marketing, but especially promotion.

It’s another one of those skills that help you understand when certain tactics should be used.

For example, consider broken link building.

The idea is that you find broken links on someone’s website and then you let them know about the broken links and suggest yours as a replacement.

It’s a completely valid tactic in some cases…

Empathy allows you to understand what people care about.

The guy managing a resource page in your niche? He probably cares about keeping the page as up-to-date and useful as possible.

Why? Because the whole page is dedicated to links that help the visitor. If those links are dead, it has a big impact on the usefulness of the page.

Here’s an example of what one might look like.

What about the guy running a small blog? He also probably cares about broken links.

What about me? If someone emailed me telling me that I have broken links on Quick Sprout, how much would I care?

To be honest, not very much. I have hundreds of articles on Quick Sprout, so it’s inevitable that I’ll have a few dead links here and there.

I realize that dead links aren’t good for readers, but it’s honestly a small concern compared to all the other work I currently have to do for the site (and my other sites).

So, when people email me about dead links (they do quite often), they are not going to get my attention.

They’ve failed to understand the value I place on the broken links.

The reciprocity principle can work on just about anyone, but first, you need to give the other person something they value.

Can you develop empathy? I’m of the opinion that you can develop empathy just like any other skill.

However, it’s probably the most difficult skill to teach because I can’t just give you a guide or offer a course on it.

Instead, the only way to get better at it is to consciously put yourself in someone else’s shoes as often as you can.

Try to guess what they care about, and if possible, confirm it by having a conversation with them.

My best advice would be to pick five people you know every day, and answer questions like these for all of them:

“What are the things I value most in my life?”
“How much do I care about my professional life?”
“How often do I try to do something nice just to try to be a good person?”
“How loyal am I to my friends?”

You’ll probably have to do a little bit of Internet snooping for each person to answer these questions. Hopefully, you’ll begin to notice that you start thinking from another person’s perspective automatically when you’re trying to contact someone to promote your content.

6. A sloppy marketer is an unproductive one

Even though this article isn’t directly about promotion strategies and tactics, you’ve still gotten a good glimpse at what effective promotion looks like.

One of those things was the scale that you need to achieve.

A single piece of content may often have an entire campaign created around it, consisting of hundreds or thousands of emails.

Mix in a few different tactics, and there is a ton of data you need to keep track of.

This skill is a basic one: organization.

If someone asks you why they should hire you, they won’t be impressed if you tell them you have amazing organization skills. That’s because it’s expected.

If you can’t keep track of what you’ve done and what you have to do, there’s no way you’ll be able to run an efficient promotional campaign.

I’ve gone into it in great detail in the past, but for now, understand that there are three main components to organization as a marketer:

Attitude - You need to want to be as productive as possible for yourself, your boss (if you have one), and your readers. This means you understand the importance of organization and put in the effort required.
Technology - I write a lot about different tools you can use to be a more effective marketer. There’s a reason for this. Tools are a key part of working efficiently and staying organized. Even basic tools such as Google Docs and Trello go a long way when it comes to keeping track of things.

3. Adapting - Staying organized is a commitment. You need to commit to staying up-to-date with relevant tools. You have to commit to keeping track of all your work, even on days when you feel a bit lazy. When something new is added to the promotional campaign, you need to find a way to fit it into your organizational structure.

When you have thousands of emails to send and keep track of, you need to have an organizational system in place.

I realize it’s not fun, but it ensures that you reach all your targets and that you don’t do anything stupid like email the same person twice asking for links.

7. Will your content promotion be effective in the future?

A sign of a good content marketer isn’t how much they know.

That’s because in a field such as marketing, knowledge goes stale quickly.

What worked even a few years ago doesn’t work now.

What’s more important is that you are continuously learning.

One part of that is reading other marketers’ blogs. Since you’re here, I’m guessing you have that covered.

Even just reading one post a day adds up quickly.

I suggest using a tool such as Feedly so that you don’t waste time monitoring when posts come out (or just become an email subscriber of your favorite blogs).

A good portion of marketers do that first part.

What they don’t do is experiment.

Marketing may not be a field of science, but you constantly need to test different tactics and strategies.

You need to be able to quantify what does and what does not work effectively.

For the most part, this involves split-testing.

For example, you might want to determine the effectiveness of sending an initial email to someone without asking for a link in that first email.

To do this, you would send some emails that did ask for a link right away and some that didn’t.

Then, once you had a valid sample size, you could compare the results.

From there, you could continue to test different approaches.

It’s crucial to test on a regular basis because all tactics will become less effective over time. It’s up to you to try to find more effective tactics before they become “ruined” by all the other marketers out there.

If you’re new to testing, it can seem intimidating, but it gets simple once you know what to do. Here are some guides to testing that will walk you through the entire process:

8. Can you lead AND follow?

Content promotion campaigns can take many different forms.

One component that often changes is the role you have to take.

Sometimes, you’ll do all the work yourself. That’s pretty straightforward—you just do things the way you like.

But you might be part of a marketing team and will likely need to follow instructions.

Even more common, you might find yourself having to lead. I say it’s more common because even if you do all your marketing yourself, you can start hiring freelancers to help you with certain parts of promotion.

Or you might want to hire content creators so that you can spend more time on promotion.

Here are a few good guides on managing help effectively:

Conclusion

Don’t get me wrong, content creation is incredibly important.

However, as far as the overall content marketing effectiveness goes, content promotion is often more important.

Furthermore, there’s a smaller percentage of marketers who know how to effectively promote content, so it really separates them from the rest.

If you want to be the best content promoter you can be, you need to develop all of the skills I went over in this article.

Take a minute to honestly assess your skill level in each area. Then, come up with a plan to improve it, but focus on your biggest weaknesses first.

If you’d like to share your results or you have any questions about the skills, I’d love to hear from you in a comment below.

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You Won’t Believe How Badly Our Boss Needed New Glasses — Some of This is Just Ridiculous

Our boss just spilled coffee everywhere and ruined a birthday party.

Thankfully, we know what the problem is, and we have the perfect solution…

Do you know someone who’s fumbling through life instead of forking over the cash for new glasses? Tell them they can save money by buying glasses online.

GlassesUSA offers a wide selection of frames, virtual try-ons, fast shipping, a generous return policy and lower prices than shopping in stores.

Use the coupon code PENNY50 for an additional 50% off your frames, plus free shipping. (That means you can get a pair of glasses for as little as $24!)*

Sponsorship Disclosure: A huge thanks to GlassesUSA for working with us to bring you this content. It’s rare that we have the opportunity to share something so awesome and get paid for it!

* Fine print: Premium tagged and marked down frames not eligible for discount. Basic single vision lenses included. Lens upgrades at additional cost may be required for stronger prescriptions.

The post You Won’t Believe How Badly Our Boss Needed New Glasses — Some of This is Just Ridiculous appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Questions About You Need a Budget, Eggs and Milk, Timeshares, Old Hobbies and More!

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Second home
2. You Need a Budget changes
3. Taking frugality too far
4. Frugal sketching supplies
5. Timeshare info sessions for freebies
6. Food staples when money’s tight
7. Stock downturn and rebalancing
8. Milk and eggs on sale
9. Thoughts on Kasasa
10. Why panic because of downturn?
11. Keeping financial success a secret
12. Letting go of old hobbies

Most weekdays, I get up early to write – sometime between 5 AM and 5:30 AM. This gives me somewhere between one and two hours of writing while the house is pretty quiet. My wife usually gets up and starts her daily routine around 6:30 AM and the children sleep in until almost seven.

This is the most productive period of my day, at least at the start of it. I’ll usually drink a big glass of water, eat a piece of fruit, and settle in for about 80 minutes of solid writing in a very quiet house, which is incredibly valuable.

Then, I’ll hear the sounds of my wife stirring down the hall. She’ll get up and take a shower, so I can hear the shower running. I know then that my morning writing session is running short.

Then, the children start to wake up. Invariably, my oldest child wakes up first. He will usually come into my office, opening the door quietly if I have it shut, and just stand there for a minute until I look at him. Then he will usually wave or something and then go downstairs to play or read a book. I know then that my time is very short.

About ten minutes later, my daughter and youngest son wake up. They usually stick their heads in and yell “HI DAD!!!” They have no qualms about interrupting.

At this point, I know I need to write down whatever spare strands of thought I have in my head so I can pick them up later. Because within a couple of minutes, my wife usually stops in and says, “I’m going to leave for work in a few minutes… can you get the kids some breakfast?”

Of course, then I go downstairs, get everyone breakfast, take care of the inevitable last minute emergencies (like making sure everyone has clothes and they’ve brushed their hair and they can find gloves), and make sure the children don’t dawdle so long that they miss the bus.

It’s funny. Every single weekday morning follows almost the exact same routine. You’d think it would get boring after a while, but it’s been happening more or less the same way for years and I never get tired of it.

Q1: Second home

I own a home. They say the second home is easier to buy than the first because of equity you may accrue. My question is, when is the right time to get that second home? Mortgage on the first home is 350,000. Current market value seems to be 700,000. I am a teacher six years in. And have no savings aside. Still paying down $24k in a secured line of credit. I am dating a girl for a year and a half. I am 31 and she is 29. Should/When should I buy the second home?
– Neal

On a strictly financial basis, you do have enough for a down payment on another home, as the $350,000 equity in your home could probably be used for a down payment on another home of similar value.

My question would be whether you’re wanting to just upgrade your current home or whether you want to simultaneously own two homes, and if it’s the latter, what you intend to do with the unused home. Is one going to be a rental? Is one going to be a summer home?

Overall, I think that’s a horrible idea unless you have a lot of money in the bank. If you are a teacher, you are likely not drawing an enormous salary. I am not sure how you are affording your current house, honestly, without some help from somewhere. Since I don’t know what that additional income is like, I really can’t recommend any kind of house buying move here.

I’d suggest you sit down and figure out exactly what you want and why you want it. What are you hoping to get from this second home that you don’t have right now? Could those needs/desires be met in a different way than owning another home?

Q2: You Need a Budget changes

I don’t know if you have heard, but YNAB has gone from a pay for upgrades system to a monthly fee system for their product. I’m wondering if you would still recommend this as a budgeting product, or if the fee structure is something that would steer you away from it? If so, what would you recommend instead?
– Mary

I understand completely why a software company would want to move to a fee system. It is pretty hard to sell a software package twice, especially one for personal use, and once you’ve sold to a lot of people in your market, it’s hard to keep revenue coming in. I also want to say that You Need a Budget is a very good piece of software, one that I use all the time and really value.

For me personally, I’m sticking with You Need a Budget 4 for now, and possibly for good. The software does pretty much everything I want it to do without the fee system involved. I have no reason to upgrade.

As long as YNAB 4 is still available, that will be my recommendation to people. When it stops being available, then I’ll have to reconsider, but that appears to be still in the future.

Q3: Taking frugality too far

How can you tell when you’ve crossed the line from frugal into cheap? I spend a lot of time each week doing things to save money and sometimes I worry that I am being a total cheapskate. Especially wondering when it comes to DIY projects.
– Karen

I think there are several sins that you are taking frugality way too far.

First, if your frugal choices are causing you to be socially isolated, particularly from people you care about, then it might be a problem. Basically, if you’re choosing to save money rather than maintain a personally important relationship, then you might want to rethink things. Of course, sometimes you may find that you are becoming less compatible with someone, but that doesn’t mean the answer is to simply be less social. You should seek out newer relationships as a replacement.

Another sign that you might be overdoing frugality is if it is having a negative impact on your health. If you’re choosing not to eat because food costs too much or you’re not going to the doctor for a serious ailment because of the costs, frugality is probably getting in the way of your health.

Yet another sign of frugality swinging into cheapness is if you’re giving up things that are really central to the joy in your life to save money. Frugality is about bang for the buck, not giving up everything so your bank account goes up.

If you’re doing those kinds of things, then you’re becoming a cheapskate, which isn’t a positive thing.

Q4: Frugal sketching supplies

My daughter is in tenth grade and has some impressive sketching skills. She can do things that look almost lifelike with a few supplies and some time. The problem is that she’s pretty picky about sketchbooks and paper and pencils and pens and such. I think that her skills will translate into some kind of career someday, but for now they’re really expensive. Do you have any tips on finding art supplies on the cheap? Or is there something else I should be doing as a parent?
– David

I have a few friends who are accomplished artists but still manage to be pretty frugal about things, so I asked them for advice. The suggestions I got were numerous.

First, they suggested that she practice specific elements on junk paper and save the good paper for complete finished sketches. So, if she’s trying to work just on nose shapes, she should work that out on the cheapest paper you can find and save the much more expensive good paper for final sketches. One of my friends said she spends 95% of her time working on things on scratch paper, so she actually doesn’t go through much good paper at all.

Next, they suggested constantly watching for sales on the types of art supplies that she uses and buying them then, even if you won’t need them right away. This is apparently especially true for the things that she does, which usually involve pencils and pens and paper, which can easily be stored.

I asked them where to find sales and they said to watch the local stores, Amazon, Michaels, and art supply store websites like Blick. Just visit them regularly and look for sales.

They also suggested using some of the better supplies as gifts for gift-giving occasions instead of buying them endlessly. Get her some of her nicest sketchbooks for Christmas, but if she needs some in the middle of May, get lower-end ones or encourage her to spend her own money.

This all seems like very good advice.

Q5: Timeshare info sessions for freebies

The neighborhood I live in seems to be a target for people selling time shares. I’ve had salespeople come to my door and leave flyers wanting me to come to meetings about timeshares. “Come have lunch on us and learn about Holiday Joe’s Beach Destinations” or whatever.

What are the ethics of going to these meetings? I’ve gone to a few and they usually require you to sign in with your contact information and then afterwards they pester you nonstop. But the lunch is usually good and free and sometimes they have raffles. I have no interest in time shares so when they call me afterwards I just say “not interested” and hang up. But I know I am not interested. Is this an okay thing to do?
– Jill

I see no problem with doing this. Honestly, for them the cost of the lunch is worth it to have a random person listen to their presentation. They have people like yourself cooked into their signup rate, I’m sure. If not, then their business model is terrible.

Some people suggest sharing bogus information at such presentations. While there’s nothing they can really do about you sharing false information with them, it seems fairly dishonest as an approach. Part of the value exchange here involves your contact information.

That being said, it would not be worth the value of a free lunch to have to sit through a presentation like this and the pressure sales tactics that would follow. That’s just not enough value for me. I’d rather make a sandwich at home for a dollar or two and then spend the rest of that time doing something fun.

Q6: Food staples when money’s tight

What did you and Sarah do when buying groceries when money was really tight? Like how would you handle it if you only had $25 or $30 and had to feed your family for a week?
– Jenny

Honestly, I’d go to the store and load up on whatever produce and meats were on sale. Then, if I still had money left over, I’d buy things that provide a lot of good nutrition at a low cost, like dry beans and bananas.

Even today, if you apply that approach at the store, you can walk out of there with several heavy bags of food for $25-30. Of course, this food will require some effort at home to prepare – you can’t just pop open a bag of dry beans and start munching, after all. I think that’s something many people overlook in their food purchases. They’re often paying a lot more for convenience, like paying for about 4 ounces of beans and 12 ounces of water when buying a can of beans versus spending less than that for a pound of dry beans that they actually have to *gasp* cook themselves (even though it’s really simple).

Money still stretches pretty far at the grocery store once you turn away from the convenience foods and the higher-end fresh items and focus on the low-cost produce and meats and the staple foods like dry beans. That stuff is inexpensive and it goes a long way.

Q7: Stock downturn and rebalancing

I’m not (too) worried about the recent drop in stock prices but I am worried a little bit about future contributions to my retirement plan. I currently put in 80% stocks to 20% bonds, which is what I have been doing from day one. This was advice given to me by my plan manager and matches up with what everyone recommends in books and such. Should I change that now because of the downturn?
– Kevin

I wouldn’t change that a bit.

What you’ve probably found over the last several years is that, although you were contributing at an 80% stocks to 20% bonds ratio, that’s not actually what you currently have in your account. Assuming your stock dividends were being used to buy more stocks, your actual ratio in terms of what you own is probably something like 87% stocks to 13% bonds.

As the market goes down, all that’s going to happen in your account is that the percentage of stocks will slowly go down and the bond percentage will slowly go up. Even if it actually reaches 80% to 20% within your account again, all that would mean is that over the period you had invested, those investments did equally well.

Honestly, if that’s the investment approach you’ve decided on for your situation and risk level, you should ignore what the market is doing right now and just keep trucking along with it. You’ll be fine.

Q8: Milk and eggs on sale

Milk and eggs are both on sale this week at the grocery store. I plan on having lots of scrambled eggs for breakfast!

But then I had a question. Is there anything you can do long term to get the most value out of eggs and milk? Obviously the stuff goes bad after a while. I think you can freeze milk, right? What about the eggs?
– Kerry

You can freeze eggs with little problem. If you let them thaw slowly in the refrigerator and make scrambled eggs with them, you’ll honestly not be able to tell the difference.

Milk is a bit trickier. It seems to undergo some noticeable changes after freezing it, at least if you’re drinking it. Some of the non-water materials in the milk seem to clump up a little, almost as if it became a bit non-homogenized. The flavor and texture seem to be a little off if you drink it straight, though it seems to be fine as an ingredient in other things.

Using milk and eggs as ingredients in other things that are frozen seems to be fine. We often make homemade ice cream and gelato, for example, and freeze it in containers for fairly long periods. If you’re looking for a use for extra milk and eggs and have an ice cream maker, make some right now for use in the spring when it’s warmer and ice cream is more palatable.

Q9: Thoughts on Kasasa

Any thoughts one way or another on Kasasa? My local credit union offers Kasasa accounts. Seems like a nice return but way too many hoops to jump through.
– Mel

First of all, what’s Kasasa? Kasasa is essentially a cooperative program among credit unions to give them some leverage with larger groups like Visa or Mastercard. Given that credit unions are about providing benefits to members rather than profits, these benefits usually pass back to the customers.

Kasasa accounts usually offer a great interest rate, but they come with some particular usage requirements. The most common requirement is that you use your debit card to pay for purchases a certain number of times per month. If you meet that threshold the previous month, you get the great interest rate in the coming month; if you don’t, you usually get a crummy rate.

My feelings on these kinds of accounts hasn’t changed. If your normal usage of your debit card and your account matches up with what Kasasa demands, then it’s worth using it.

However, if you don’t normally do things in the way that Kasasa would want, or you could do it but you’d have to keep track of your purchase count and so on, then it’s not worth it at all. You’ll earn a little more, but it won’t be enough to make a big difference.

Let’s say your Kasasa account earns 3% interest, while a normal account earns 0.5% interest. Over the course of a year, on an average $1,000 balance, you’re talking about a $25 difference. If that means that you have to track your purchases or sometimes make more purchases to make the cutoff, it’s not worth it.

Q10: Why panic because of downturn?

Maybe it is just my personal mindset but I don’t understand why people get really panicked when the stock market drops a little. It’s not as if America is on the verge of collapse any time soon. The value will come back. I mean, I understand why the market drops a little sometimes – people buy in too much and then decide to sell because of some bad news or something. What I don’t understand is the fear and panic that goes on when it happens?
– Erin

For starters, some people have a lower risk tolerance than others. When they see the value of their investment jumping around like that, they get nervous and want their money to be somewhere that doesn’t jump around like that.

For others, they buy completely into the panicked tone that some financial writers get into when the stock market gets jittery. If you read mainstream financial news online right now, much of the talk seems very panicked and scary, as it always does when the stock market drops a little. Some really buy into this and whip themselves into frenzied fear.

Still others are really risky investors and speculators who are doing things like buying derivatives and selling things short. A poorly timed market drop can be extremely painful for someone who is leveraged like this – like “lose all of your money in a few days” kind of painful – though a person in that situation can make a lot of money very quickly if things go well.

If you add those factors together, it becomes clear why the fear factor exists. It just doesn’t add up to enough for most people to really do anything with their money. Just stay the course. Eventually, the market drops enough that everything appears to be on sale.

Q11: Keeping financial success a secret

My wife and I are going to pay off our 30 year mortgage at about the six year mark in March. That will make us debt free and then we can really start hammering hard toward our big goal of retiring early. So excited about this!

Problem is I can’t share this news with my family. They have a deep distrust of anyone with money in the bank and basically view anyone with a windfall as someone to cozy up to for gifts and stuff. Since Marcia and I are both frugal people it’s easy to seem on the surface as though we’re struggling financially and I don’t want that to change because I don’t want to deal with the “moocher” behavior I’ve seen many times.

Other than that, my family is full of wonderful and caring people but I just feel sad that I can’t share this good news with them.
– Joe

I can understand that sentiment. It hurts, but you’re probably better keeping the news to yourselves.

The important thing to remember is that none of this is really their business in any way. They don’t need to know your financial state. They don’t have any reason to really know. The only reason you would share this news with them is to celebrate, and they likely don’t have the same motivation to celebrate as you would.

Just keep it to yourself. It’s awesome news, but it’s news that you really have no reason to share other than to get some slaps on the back and smiles.

Q12: Letting go of old hobbies

I seem to jump from hobby to hobby every year or two. That means I usually accumulate stuff related to a particular hobby then move on to another one and just put the old hobby stuff aside and then eventually into a closet. Whenever I come across old hobby stuff I look on it fondly and don’t want to get rid of it but then I don’t really do anything with it either because I’m not as into that hobby any more. How do you let go of old hobbies?
– Stacia

This is something that happens to me on occasion. I have several semi-discarded hobbies like this that are floating around.

For each of those hobbies that ends up in that kind of moribund state, I pare down what I own for those hobbies to the point where I could still dabble in it if I wanted to, but I don’t need every odd piece of gear that I ever owned.

For example, let’s say you were really into playing the guitar ten years ago. You owned several guitars, piles of tablatures, an amplifier, and so on. What you might do is keep just one guitar and a set of strings for it, sell off the rest of the stuff, and look up tablatures online if you need them.

Another example is what I did with my old collection of Magic: the Gathering cards. I kept just enough to have a few decks around to play with if I ever felt like doing so, plus a few very sentimental cards. I sold everything else. I can still play Magic if I like, but I don’t have half a closet full of cards.

I can go on with example after example like this. Just pare down your possessions related to the hobby so that you could still pick it up at some level if you ever chose to. I’ve done this with many hobbies, ones that I’ll pick up again one afternoon a year or so.

Got any questions? The best way to ask is to follow me on Facebook and ask questions directly there. I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). However, I do receive many, many questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.

The post Questions About You Need a Budget, Eggs and Milk, Timeshares, Old Hobbies and More! appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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How I Make Money as a Blogger: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Affiliate Marketing

Over the past five years, I’ve taken a personally inflicted crash course in making money blogging.

I’ve experimented with freelancing, self-publishing ebooks, creating online courses, offering coaching and selling digital products.

Everyone and their cousin seems to want to know the best way to make money blogging. And you want to know how to make money right away.

Can you get started if…

you’re not an expert on a subject?

you don’t have a massive audience?

you don’t want to publish books, create products or run courses?

You can! Here’s a simple blueprint to make it happen.

Make Money Online Through Affiliate Marketing

“I like that I get to earn a bit of money just by pointing people toward stuff I genuinely think they’ll want or need,” says Sophie Lizard, creator of BeAFreelanceBlogger.com.

“And I like introducing my readers to new resources and helpful experts they might not have heard about before.”

At BAFB, Lizard helps readers learn how to get paid to write blog posts and sells online courses, ebooks and coaching. And as an affiliate, she makes money recommending other people’s products to her readers, mostly by emailing her list of subscribers.

In its simplest terms, online affiliate marketing for bloggers means:

You write about a product or service.
You link to it with a special tracking link.
When your readers click the link and make a purchase, you get a commission on the sale.

Imagine you just read the perfect how-to book on cooking Indian food, and you want to recommend it to others.

Write a blog post or email newsletter reviewing the book, and link to the book with your Amazon Associates link. If your review convinces a reader to buy, you’ll get a piece of that sale!

Affiliate marketing happens on a spectrum, from an average Joe sharing a link on his blog or social media to a massive publication making special advertising deals through marketing agencies.

So, how can you, as a new blogger, make money from affiliate marketing?

Why I Love Affiliate Marketing

Of all the ways I’ve tried to make money blogging, affiliate marketing is my favorite.

The number-one reason I’ve been more successful as an affiliate than as a publisher, coach or anything else is that it’s easier to sell someone else’s product than my own.

Self-promotion is challenging for the person doing it — and it’s not too palatable for the person watching it.

Whether it’s a tweet about a blog post or an email promoting an online course, my readers are far more receptive to my promotion of someone other than of myself. And I’m much more comfortable touting someone else!

“There are always a few people who reply all excited, saying that what I just linked to is exactly what they needed — that’s a feel-good moment for me,” explains Lizard.

From the reader’s point of view, this is simple: When they see you bragging about someone else, that someone instantly has some social credit. They’re good enough for you to promote.

And it’s just plain less annoying for the reader when you share resources from other people than when you constantly tout your own wares.

Lizard also points out that “sometimes I’ll get a grouchy email from someone who wants me to apologize for telling them about anything with a price tag.” But those are less common, and her readers overall have remained receptive to a promotional email “every month or two.”

Affiliate Marketing in 2016

Why talk about affiliate marketing in 2016? Isn’t that a thing of the past?

Back in the ancient times of blogging — say, 10 to 15 years ago — you could create a blog and litter it with ads and affiliate links and bring in decent money.

It was fairly easy: People were looking for things on the Internet, and there wasn’t much there.

In that landscape, your blog was like the one gas station on a dusty two-lane highway between Idaho and Utah.

It didn’t matter that the coffee has been burning for three days and the bathrooms have a permanent puddle of hopefully water on the floor — people would stop, because it was the only business they’d seen for 75 miles.

Now, we live in more of a Starbucks-on-every-corner era of blogging. Readers have more choices online than they can comprehend, and they’ll likely stop somewhere familiar before even knowing what’s down the block.

You’re down the block, in the little artisan coffee shop. You don’t do nearly the volume of business as the nearest Starbucks.

But your regulars are die-hard fans who will try your latest Flavor of the Day even if it’s peppermint-caramel-raspberry, because they trust your taste. And this is the key to affiliate to marketing.

Making money as a small blogger in 2016 is less about being the only one in your niche and more about cultivating a community of fans around what you uniquely offer within that niche.

Making money online is less about being top of a niche and more about community.

(Click to tweet this idea.)

How do you do that? Here’s a simple step-by-step guide I recommend to anyone just getting started blogging.

1. Build a Email List

There are endless ways to grow a blog and make money online.

Nothing’s guaranteed, and none are perfect, but I can tell you what works for me and what is highly recommended by most experts I’ve seen: Build an email list.

In a world where Buzzfeed screams louder than a hangry toddler and Google changes its algorithm faster than you can say “Panda,” being heard above the noise is your blog’s biggest challenge.

An email list cuts through that noise.

Readers subscribe to hear specifically from you, and your emails land in their inboxes. That elevates what you’ve written to a level of importance much higher than it would achieve on your blog alone.

2. Gain Subscribers Through Guest Blogging

Growing an email list, too, can be done in numerous ways. My favorite is through a combination of guest blogging and offering an enticing freebie. Here’s the simple formula:

A. Create a freebie your desired audience will love.

It could be a short PDF ebook, e-guide or worksheet; an audio or video recording; an infographic; or access to an exclusive group.

Or anything you can imagine — get creative.

Before even launching her blog, Lizard grew her email list by offering a free ebook of blogs that pay freelancers at least $50 per blog post — an irresistible resource for her target audience!

She still offers the freebie, though over the years it’s grown to a list of 75 blogs that pay $50 to $2,000 per post, plus additional resources.

B. Set up a free email list.

The easiest way to start an email list is through Mailchimp, because it’s free up to 2,000 subscribers — and really easy to use.

C. Pitch and Write Guest Blog Posts

The process for pitching guest blog posts is the same as pitching an article as a freelance writer.

The only difference is you’re usually looking for compensation in the way of a link rather than money — but that shouldn’t be part of your pitch, anyway.

D. Link to Your Email Sign-Up from Guest Posts

For this promotional step, focus on blogs that give you a bio with a link from your guest post. Use a line of that bio to promote your freebie and link to your email sign-up page.

This can be as simple as the sign-up page automatically created by Mailchimp, if you don’t want to create your own landing page.

Do this for a while before even starting your blog. Focus on building your email list, so when you do start blogging, you’ll have an audience already built in.

Set a target number of subscribers you want to reach before you’ll launch your blog. Most sources I’ve seen recommend hitting at least 1,000 subscribers to make affiliate marketing worth your while.

I like the number, because it’s feasible for new bloggers, even though it may seem daunting if you’re brand new. It’s also enough to start making money, even though it’s small potatoes in the grand scheme of the Internet.

Once you hit your target threshold of subscribers, you can get to the fun part: making money!

3. Become an Amazon Associate

A simple way to start affiliate sales is by becoming an Amazon Associate. Because Amazon sells just about anything, this will fit regardless of your field of interest.

Whether it’s an e-guide on self-publishing or the best blender for green smoothies, you can make money from Amazon by recommending the resources you love to others.

Amazon affiliate sales don’t usually bring in a lot of income, because Amazon is known for its low prices, and your cut is typically around only 7%. But it’s easy to sign up and get links, and a way to hone your blogging and promotional skills.

Similarly, you can join an affiliate marketplace like ClickBank, ShareASale or e-junkie and find a plethora of products to promote.

4. Promote the Products and Services You Use

When you’re comfortable with promotion and understand which kinds of products your readers will purchase, look into better affiliate programs. A commission of around 50% for higher-priced products or packages is not uncommon.

But you probably don’t want to just pick random products. I’ve found the best affiliate opportunities to be the products I’m already using.

“My golden rule,” says Lizard, “is to only share an affiliate link for things that I would’ve shared anyway, even if there were no affiliate program and no potential income in it for me.”

As you learn more about your niche, you’ll probably read books, follow blogs, participate in courses and join a membership community or two. Can you make a commission for recommending these to others trying to learn the same things?

Often, the person selling these products will make it easy for you to sign up as affiliate. Who better to promote their offer than someone who already uses (and, hopefully, enjoys) it?

As Lizard puts it, “The fact that I could earn a little money from the promotion is just a nice bonus.”

5. Find Affiliate Opportunities in Your Network

Once you gain some traction, affiliate opportunities could start to find you.

For higher-priced offers like member programs or online courses, the creators will often reach out to recruit affiliate partners directly, rather than make their program open to anyone. This helps ensure higher payouts for each affiliate.

The guest blogging you did to build your email list should go a long way in building connections with influential bloggers. Stay in touch and stay on their radar, and next time they’re preparing for a launch, they may come to you.

These offers are the ones that help me make a few hundred dollars each month just from sending a few emails. For bloggers with larger email lists, these launches mean thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

All of this without ever selling anything of your own!

Affiliate Marketing Can Help You Earn Passive Income

After years of experimenting, I now look back and wish I would have started affiliate marketing through my blog sooner. It’s proven my best bet to make extra money without directly trading hours to earn it, as I would with freelancing or coaching.

“Creating products and courses takes time upfront that you can’t always be sure will pay off,” Lizard explains.

The same goes for coaching and other income you have trade your time to earn. “…the time and energy you’ll spend … is much more than what it takes to write and send a couple of emails about an affiliate product.”

Affiliate marketing is less stable than other ways to make money blogging, though, Lizard cautions.

“Affiliate marketing takes no greater effort than freelance blogging,” she says, “but the big difference is that you don’t know how much you’ll earn from an affiliate campaign until the sales figures come in.”

Lizard points out that freelancing is “one of the most straightforward ways for bloggers to make a reasonably predictable income month after month,” and it remains her main source.

Affiliate marketing is a smart addition to your other blogging efforts.

Even as I’ve shifted my focus away from running my blog, the website still sees traffic daily. That means even when I’m not directly working on the blog, I can still earn money from affiliate sales.

That’s a pretty cool way to make some extra money to save for future projects!

Your Turn: Have you tried affiliate marketing at your blog? What tips do you have to add?

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 How I Make Money as a Blogger: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Affiliate Marketing appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Eight Landlord Horror Stories That Will Dash Your Dream of Owning Rental Property

Investing in rental property is one way to grow your net worth while building equity in a tangible investment – a home or structure you can touch, feel, and even live in if you needed to. And if you do it right, you’ll end up with a paid-off property that was entirely financed with someone else’s dollars. Better yet, your property will – hopefully – appreciate in value over time.

Sounds like one heck of a deal, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, the reality of growing a real estate empire can be harsh – if not absolutely shocking. From evicting tenants to cleaning up their filth, landlords are constantly charged with fixing messes that would scare off almost anyone with common sense.

Landlord Horror Stories That Will Make You Seriously Reconsider Investing in Real Estate

Almost every landlord has a horror story to share, a gruesome, annoying, or downright disgusting tale that cost them sleep – and probably a whole lot of money.

Think you have what it takes to become a landlord? Here are eight landlord horror stories that may make you think again:

That time your tenant decided to have a bonfire… in your house

Brandon Turner of Bigger Pockets.com shares his tenant trauma:

“This tenant was the very first tenant I ever put in place. For eight years he lived in this property, mostly as a good tenant. But then something changed. He stopped paying and became irrationally angry over our insistence on rent being paid. After several late notices and conversations, we finally filed for eviction. He slowly moved all his stuff out of the home while the eviction date came closer. Finally, after all his “good” stuff was moved out, I left on a business trip to Charlotte, N.C. That’s when I got the text: ‘Your house is on fire. You need to call me.'”

“I didn’t know if it was a joke or something serious, but I only had a few moments to ponder this when the phone rang. It was the fire department, who was putting the fire out. Apparently, a box was left on top of the stove… and the burner turned on. Accident? On purpose? We’ll never know. But the fire destroyed the kitchen completely and the smoke caused damage throughout the remaining house. In total: $61,000 in damage. It’s a good thing I had insurance!”

Toilet trouble

“Back in the days of answering machines, where you could hear the message, I got a call at 2 a.m. from a Ms. Rosalina,” says Ryan G. Wright of DoHardMoney.com.

“I didn’t pick it up,” he continues, “but I heard the following: ‘I hope this is the right Ryan Wright, I’m calling all of them in the phone book and I am halfway through. My toilet is really backed up and I have bad diarrhea, but I can’t use the plunger because my old boyfriend broke both of my wrists.'”

One tenant, many problems

Brad Chandler of Express Homebuying shares this tragic and frustrating experience renting in the nation’s capital: “I managed a section 8 community in Southeast Washington, D.C., years back. We had a tenant who had issues and liked to start problems. We believed at the time she may have been a prostitute and drug and alcohol abuser. We tried everything to get her evicted, but because D.C. is so tenant friendly, it was impossible.”

Chandler continues: “When she got mad at our office she would turn on her water, block the drain, and flood the apartments below her – she lived on the third floor. She did this three times in six months. We were left to pay for and clean up the damage and we still couldn’t evict her. One day she got in an argument with a gentleman outside of her apartment door, in the hallway. It turned physical and she pushed the man over the railing. He ended up dying. Still, we couldn’t evict her. A few months after that she was run over by a bus not far from the community and she died.”

Rats and turtles and snakes, oh my!

“I had a friend who wanted me to manage a single-family house that had become too much for him,” says Chad Carson of CoachCarson.com. “So one afternoon we visited the brick, ranch-style house with a basement. The tenant warned us before entering that they were doing a little side-project with animals in the basement. Of course we went there first since my friend officially did not allow pets! When we reached the top of the stairs, we saw two bright red, rat-sized eyes staring back at us from below. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

“As we descended, the sound of hundreds of squeaky rat wheels could be heard coming from below. Our red-eyed rat had friends! And to our shock, on the other side of the room stood dozens of aquariums containing many varieties of slithering snakes. This underground pet store also harbored large tubs full of water, exotic turtles, and amphibians. The tenant soon moved without paying the last month of rent, but a hoard of escaped rats lingered in the house and continued the horror story for many more months.”

When you seriously dodged a bullet

“I bought my very first investment property in 2008,” says Tammy Bauer of Because 789. “It was a house with an upstairs suite and a basement suite. My first good applicant for the basement suite worked in construction and had wonderful references. I offered him the suite, he accepted, and I cancelled my ad. The next day he told me he wouldn’t be able to take the suite since he decided to move to be closer to his children.

Five months later, I was watching the news and a man had held his former girlfriend (the mother of his children) captive in a cabin in the woods for 5 days. She escaped and ran for safety. The man who kidnapped her was the man I had offered the basement suite to five months earlier.”

A special present in the closet

“Our very first tenants were a young, married couple with three small kids. Shortly after moving in to our newly remodeled house, they purchased a black lab looking puppy. Kind people we are, we didn’t throw a fit,” says Coleen Kramer Beal, CLTC.

“It’s a long story, but seemingly the father was at home for long periods of time alone with his children because he ‘couldn’t work.’ He apparently let them run wild. The screens were knocked out of the windows, coloring on the walls, and holes in the walls. He put a lock on the outside of their bedroom door so he could seemingly contain them. When we found the house abandoned after their failure to pay the monthly rent, we discovered poop in the closet. The downstairs room (and the new carpet) looked like they had slaughtered the dog. All the new carpet throughout the house had to be ripped up and replaced. It was a disaster.”

Eviction encore

“One of the most shocking tenant situations to me was when we evicted a couple because they were consistently late on rent, abusive to my other tenants (it’s a fourplex), and were trashing the place,” explains Casey Fleming, author of The Loan Guide.

“We spent several thousand cleaning it up, and when we went to shop the unit to new tenants, the couple had broken in, moved back in, and claimed that we would have to evict them again,” Fleming says. “Fortunately, the police cooperated and removed them, but we had to spend several hundred more to clean it up again. That was a new one for me.”

That time the SWAT team got involved

“Vacations in Hawaii and landlording don’t mix,” says Todd Tresidder of Financial Mentor. “On one trip I got news that the SWAT team had surrounded my investment apartment complex. Fortunately, no guns were fired and the drug dealer went peacefully. It turned out a long-standing, excellent tenant had a grandson temporarily staying with her and he was a serious bad apple.”

And if you think you can dodge landlord headaches by employing a property management company, that’s not always the case, Tresidder says. “Almost unbelievably, the management company lied through their teeth claiming it never happened –all the while I received threat letters from the city saying I had to clean up my building or they would take it away from me.”

Final Thoughts

Being a landlord isn’t for the faint of heart. Besides the everyday headaches of property maintenance, you either have the cajones to deal with unthinkable circumstances and incredible hassles, or you don’t – there is no in-between.

Related: What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a Landlord

Sadly, a handful of bad tenants – or even just one awful one – can completely foil your dreams of investing in real estate. For a lot of people, the risks are just too great. Because, let’s face it, dealing with poop, arson, and crazy people isn’t everyone’s cup of tea — not at any price.

If you’re considering investing in real estate, you should know what you’re getting into. The rewards can be great, but the reality can be downright crappy.

Would you ever want to become a landlord? Why or why not? If you have a landlord horror story, please share it in the comments!

The post Eight Landlord Horror Stories That Will Dash Your Dream of Owning Rental Property appeared first on The Simple Dollar.