How to Leverage Crowdsourced Content to Exponentially Grow Your Audience

Isn’t it a pain?

You spend all that time researching and writing a post, but people would rather tweet Seth Godin’s 100-word posts—in thousands!—than to share yours.

There’s a good reason for this, though.

Seth is a ridiculously successful entrepreneur. He’s written over 17 bestsellers and shows no sign of slowing down.

So while some of his posts may seem simple (maybe you could’ve written them), people love them because they trust his opinion.

You don’t build this kind of success, trust, and audience overnight, however—it takes years of hard work.

But what if you could get Seth (or an expert in your niche) to write some content for your website? It would get a lot more attention than your writing normally does.

And it’s possible, I promise. 

You can even take it a step further by getting several experts with large followings, whom your target audience instinctively trusts, to help you write content.

This is called crowdsourced content.

The reason for the name is pretty obvious: you generate content from a crowd. Technically, the crowd could be anyone, including influencers in your niche.

Crowdsourcing has been growing in popularity ever since KickStarter exploded as a platform for people and companies to crowdsource investments for products.

The amount of money raised through crowdsourcing has nearly doubled every year since 2009:

And it shows no signs of slowing down. In 2014, crowdfunding grew by 167% to $16.2 billion in raised funds, and in 2015, it will continue to grow to an estimated $34.4 billion.

We’re not talking about crowdsourcing product development (that’s an interesting topic for another day). What we’re talking about is using the connectivity of the Internet and the work of several others in order to create remarkable content that grows your business.

There are 3 main benefits of crowdsourced content:

1. Reach a larger audience: People share things they feel invested in. When they contribute to content, most are happy to share it with people they know. In the case of influencers, this can be a huge audience.
2. Connect with people: Whether you want to connect with an influencer or an audience member, creating a great piece of content together is a great way to open a dialogue and start a relationship.
3. Build your authority: The more you’re associated with other people in your niche that readers trust, the more you become an authority. I told you that it takes a long time to build up authority, and employing this tactic can accelerate it a bit.

So crowdsourced content is the best thing ever, right?

While it has some massive upsides, it also has some limitations.

First of all, it’s not easy. I’m going to show you how to create effective crowdsourced content in this article, and trust me, it will take you several hours to put together a great post. Secondly, you can’t solely rely on crowdsourced content for two reasons.

If you’re constantly crowdsourcing your content, your website will lose your voice, which is something you need to have to develop a loyal following. Additionally, you will run out of sources or annoy the ones you have if you’re always asking them for help. You can’t do a crowdsourced post more than once every few months.

That being said, a crowdsourced article is a powerful tactic that you should have at your disposal. I’ll show you later how it should fit with your content strategy to get maximum benefit from it. For now, let’s look at how you should approach creating crowdsourced content.

Pick one of two types of crowdsourced content

As a general rule, there are 2 types of crowdsourced content.

The first type involves surveying or polling your target audience. This is typically most useful when you already have a sizeable following. You can find out what their problems are and write an article such as “The X Biggest Mistakes Made by [Audience],” or “The X Biggest Problems of [Audience].”

Carol Tice does it very well. She regularly tries to find readers with useful stories and combine them to create articles that resonate with her other readers:

To a smaller degree, I like to do this as well when possible. For example, in my post on the 11 Things You Should Do After You Publish a Post, I included an example of a comment left by Maham to illustrate a point.

The second type of crowdsourced content is where you ask experts to answer a question, and then you compile their responses. This is commonly referred to as an “expert roundup.” At its core, it’s just like an interview, except you’re only asking one (or a few) questions, and you’re posing it/them to multiple people.

While polling readers and users is a great way to get feedback and create some good content, it won’t do much for blog growth. However, this second type of content leverages your experts’ authority and capitalizes on their audience to help your blog.

That’s why I recommend that small- and medium-sized blogs, those focused mostly on growth, start with crowdsourcing content from experts. And that’s exactly what I’m going to focus on for the rest of this article.

The way you do it is extremely important. Some crowdsourced articles get barely any shares, while others get thousands. I want you to achieve the latter.

I’m going to take you step by step through the process you should follow to maximize your results from an expert roundup.

Step 1: Pick the right question

Pick the wrong question, and you’re done before you even started.

Seriously. If you pick a bad question to ask your experts, they just won’t respond.

Guidelines for choosing a question:

1. Don’t pick a question that’s too simple.
2. Don’t pick a question that’s too complicated.
3. Don’t pick a question with an obvious answer.

If a question is too simple, it’s not worth answering. For example: “Do you think businesses should create a blog?”

That’s a yes or no question, and literally everyone will say yes, so it’s a pointless question.

If a question is too complicated, it’s too much work for an expert to answer. A question such as: “What is the best step-by-step process to promote a blog post?” would take thousands of words to answer.

Finally, if the answer is obvious to a particular expert, they’ll realize that your main goal is to try to get them to send you traffic, and not to create a great piece of content (which it should be). For example, if you asked an expert who blogs about email marketing: “What is your favorite marketing channel?”, the answer would obviously be email marketing, so why would you ask this?

Your question should be not too simple, complicated, or obvious, and be a question that your target audience cares about.

The best way to find a good question is with some simple keyword research.

Before we get started, make a list of keywords in your niche—they can be pretty broad.

For example, keywords for a nutrition site might be:

• healthy eating
• exercise
• cooking tools
• best diet

Now that you have your keywords, let’s see where you can get ideas for your question(s).

Idea source #1: Quora

Enter your first keyword into the search box. Click on “Topics” on the left menu to find the most popular relevant topic. Assuming you picked a popular and broad keyword, you’ll find a group with at least a few thousand followers:

When you click on a topic, you’ll see a mixture of current and past relevant and popular posts. Look at the questions that have the most “upvotes,” preferably at least a few hundred.

Remember, you need to look for a question that can be answered by someone giving their opinion because that’s the main point of having experts answer it.

The question “How do I ensure I’m eating well for university on a $30 a week budget?” has 546 upvotes, so it’s a popular question that people want answered.

However, this question is far too open-ended and complicated to ask an expert. What you could ask instead is: “What is your favorite healthy meal that can be made for under $2 per serving?”

For now, just note down the popular questions on a spreadsheet so you can come up with one later. Go through as many keywords and groups as you can.

Idea source #2: Reddit

As always, Reddit is a great way to see what people are most curious about.

If you’re not familiar with Reddit, it’s a community site where users can submit questions and links, and the rest of the community votes on them. We’ll be looking for questions that come up a lot and get a decent number of upvotes.

Start by searching for your keyword in the sidebar:

The results will come from a variety of communities called subreddits.

You can either click the subreddit there to filter out results for that specific community, or you can navigate directly to that subreddit.

If you choose to filter the results, you’ll only see the most relevant results for your keyword. Look through these, and note down popular questions.

From these results, it’s clear that questions about snack ideas are very popular.

You could derive the following questions for your experts from them:

• What is your favorite healthy snack for traveling?
• What are the 3 cheapest and easiest snacks you know of?

If you go to the main subreddit, you’ll see posts about all relevant topics (not just your keyword).

To see the most popular questions, click “order by top”:

Do the same thing as before, noting down any questions that you think you might be able to turn into an appropriate one for your experts.

Idea source #3: Google Keyword Planner

While it’s a basic keyword research tool, it’s still really useful for a task such as this.

Type in your keyword, and click “Get ideas”.

Then, click on the “Keyword ideas” tab, and start noting down popular keywords that lend themselves to questions:

Based on the above results, you could ask: “What do you think is the most important healthy eating habit?” or “What is your best healthy eating tip?”

Overall, it’s really not that difficult to find a good question to ask. You can find several good ones with each method. The tricky part is transforming it into the right type of question of the right difficulty.

The reason why you’re looking for popular keywords and questions is because the more popular the question you ask, the more interested your target audience will be in the answer.

Not only will it be an interesting article for people to read (more subscribers), but it will also lead to more sharing and traffic.

Step 2: Decide who you will ask

This next step is just as difficult as the first one.

You need to target experts based on the question(s) you want to ask.

I get hundreds of requests every month to participate in expert roundups. Some of them are asking me about topics such as nutrition and technology, where I’m not known as an authority. Obviously, I never answer such questions.

Not all examples are that obvious though. Experts who write about nutrition are very different from experts who write about healthy recipes or fitness. The influencers you ask your question(s) must regularly write about that topic.

If you target the wrong people, you will get a dismal response rate.

Your best targets: past participants

Not all experts like to participate in these roundups—or not very often. The good news is that unless you’re in a very uncommon niche, other bloggers have already filtered out these people for you.

The idea is to find experts that regularly participate in roundups.

Start by Googling “expert roundup + [keyword]”

Depending on your niche, you will have to search for several keywords relevant to your question.

Go through at least a few pages for each term.

For each relevant roundup you find, write down all the experts that participated in it.

If you’re in a niche such as marketing, you’ll have no trouble finding hundreds of experts. In those cases, scroll down to the comments and see which of the experts commented (or shared). It’s likely that they’ll at least comment on your roundup as well.

Find some fresh blood

In addition to the same old faces that participate in many roundups, it’s a good idea to find a few low- to mid-level bloggers to include.

Since they don’t get asked very often, they’ll be more likely to participate and eager to share the article. Plus, it gives you a chance to get new opinions that your readers may not have heard before.

To find these hidden superstars, you will have to do some digging. You can employ three methods.

Method #1

Use BuzzSumo’s Influencer search. Enter a general keyword related to your question. In my example, I chose “healthy”. Use the filters as shown below to include only bloggers and influencers.

What you’re looking for are influencers who aren’t extremely well known. Ideally, they’ll still have at least a few thousand Twitter followers (which you can see on the right).

Add as many quality experts as you can, and repeat the process for any additional keywords.

Method #2

Next, we’re going to use twtrland. Create a free account, and enter a key term in the search bar.

This tool is designed purely for identifying influencers on Twitter, which is perfect for this. A free account only shows 50 results per keyword, but you should still be able to find at least 10-20 new influencers (try a few keywords).

Method #3

Finally, head over to Alltop. This site is a directory of blogs organized by niche. The other good thing about it is that almost all blogs were added by their owners, which means they’re highly active in promoting them (and more likely to participate).

Try to find your niche/topic in the menu to make sure you don’t miss any relevant blogs. If you can’t, search for your keyword:

Either way, you’ll get a page of relevant blogs. You can click on the site titles to visit them.

I left this method till last because it takes more work.

At this point, you need to check whether your question is appropriate for these experts, so look through a few posts to make sure it’s a good match.

Additionally, see if they have any following by looking at the number of comments and/or social shares.

Don’t stop until you have at least 50 quality experts in total. More is always better.

Find their email addresses

You will need to contact all the bloggers/experts at some point with your question.

Start by going to their sites and seeing if they publicly list their email addresses. Most likely, they don’t.

The simplest way to get their email addresses is to join their email lists. Go to their homepages or blog posts and look for a signup form somewhere. Any good blog will have one.

You should get a few emails from their personal email addresses within the first few days of subscribing—perfect.

If for some reason you can’t find an email address, opt for a Twitter or LinkedIn account instead.

Engage your experts to boost your success rate

If you send 50 emails, would you rather get 20 or 30 responses? Obviously 30.

The biggest mistake most people make when trying to do an expert roundup is sending cold emails.

“If I know the person that’s sending the pitch…, I’m 20x more likely to contribute.” — Brian Dean

In general, the bigger the expert, the more you need to do to get on their radar.

You need to find a way to stand out enough that they know who you are by your name or at least don’t think you’re a stranger.

Here are some ways you can use to establish contact in almost any niche:

• Leave thoughtful comments: Unless they only get a few comments per post, you’ll need to leave thoughtful comments—ideally, near the top of the commenting section of each post. There are four or five names I recognize just because they’re always leaving me detailed comments within an hour or two of me publishing a post on Quick Sprout.
• Mention them in articles: While you can’t do this for everyone, you can mention some experts in your other blog posts. Send them a quick email, telling them you featured some of their work, or mention them on a social network by using an “@” or a “+” symbol, depending on the network.

• Submit their best content on Reddit (or similar site): Then send them a quick email once it gets a few comments and upvotes. Tell them you submitted it and that the commenters would probably appreciate a response if your influencer has a spare minute.

The key thing in any of these methods is to do something useful or valuable for the expert and then let them know about it in a non-pushy/polite way. Don’t be limited to just these three techniques if you have other valuable skills you could offer.

Step 3: Pitch perfect

If it’s your first time doing this, the first two steps probably took at least a few hours. You’ll get faster over time.

Now you need to contact your experts through the email addresses you’ve gathered (it’s okay if that took a few days).

Just to set your expectations, you need to realize that even very successful bloggers get only 50-60% reply rates when they do expert roundups. If you have an unknown blog, it’s going to be at least a bit lower (but it should be over 30% if you follow everything here).

When emailing, the most important things to keep in mind are:

• keep it as short as possible
• make the question clear
• don’t seem desperate
• be polite/sincere

I’ll give you a template you can use, but as always, you should take the concepts here and create your own. That way, your email won’t look as everybody else’s.

Subject: Expert roundup for [website]

Hi (name):

I’m a big fan of your blog. You’re my go-to resource when I want to learn about [specific topic they write about – get this right!].

I’m creating an expert roundup, and you were one of the first names to come to mind that I’d love to include. Here’s my question for you:

[question]

If you could provide a 50-100 word answer, that’d be fantastic.

I’ve invited X other experts to add to the article. [Expert 1, 2, and 3 have already agreed – optional].

I’ll craft a great custom bio for you to attach to your response.

The deadline for an answer is [date – at least a week]. I really hope you are able to contribute.

Thanks,

[Name]

An alternative way to collect the responses is to include a link to a Google form that you create.

You can include whichever fields you like. Only include what is necessary, though; otherwise, some experts might see the forms and decide it’s too much work.

I recommend including:

• Name – so you know who’s answering
• Email – only if you don’t have everyone’s email already
• Question – obviously you need to include your question
• Specific requests – ask them if they’d like to promote anything or link to a specific place

When people submit their answers, they will be sent to a Google Sheet that you can use just like any other spreadsheet:

This will save you some work going back and forth between emails.

Important: After someone replies and answers the question, send them another email as soon as possible thanking them for contributing, and tell them that you’ll notify them when the article goes live.

Step 4: Craft an article that stands out

Now that you have your responses, hopefully at least 10-20, you can create your article.

Start with the headline. The rules for creating a strong headline here are the same as for any other article, but it’s much easier in this case.

The reason that it’s easier is because you’re limited in your options. You already have:

• A number of experts
• The fact that they are experts
• The topic from your question

That doesn’t leave a whole lot of wiggle room.

If my question was: “What is your favorite healthy snack for traveling?”, my headline would be something like: “22 Nutrition Experts Reveal the Best Healthy Snack for Traveling.”

Write an intro to introduce the topic, then summarize the results if you can (will depend on the question):

Next, you just need to present the answers in an attractive layout. There are no specific rules as long as you are consistent.

Here’s an example:

Get your experts’ pictures from your their About pages or Twitter profiles.

To write a good bio, you should have two or three sentences that explain:

• who they are – not all the readers will know everyone
• a highlight – say something notable about them (get from their About page)
• any promotions – if you’d like to highlight a book or product

Don’t get lazy here. A good presentation will have a big effect on the number of shares and amount of traffic you get.

If you have a lot of experts (20+) and want to go the extra mile, sort the experts by categories.

To wrap up your content creation, you need to add click-to-tweet links throughout the content.

Install the TweetDis plugin. Then, select a good quote in each expert’s answer, and click the shortcut button in the WordPress menu.

In the options, click on the dropdown arrow beside “Add” and choose “hint”:

When you’re done, your text will look to your readers like this:

If you pick a good sentence for each influencer, you’ll get quite a few extra tweets from your readers.

Step 5: Be clever with your promotion

The whole point of an expert roundup is to leverage the authority of your experts, so we’ll start with that.

Send out your thank-you emails

As soon as you publish, send an email to each influencer thanking them for participating, linking them to the post, and asking them to share it.

Here’s a template you could use:

Subject: Expert roundup is published!

Hi [name],

Thanks again for being one of the X great experts who contributed [what their opinion was on – e.g., their favorite snack]. The roundup is now up at:

URL

Please let me know if you’d like me to make any changes to your section.

If you’re happy with it, I’d really appreciate it if you shared it with your audience. I created a custom Twitter link that already has the title and link filled in if that makes it easier:

http://ctt.ec/Tab7Y

If I can ever help you share your work, just let me know, and I’d be happy to help.

Thanks so much,

[name]

To make that custom Twitter link, you’ll need to use ClickToTweet. Create an account and then fill out the form with your Tweet info:

When you click on “Generate New Link,” you’ll get the HTML code for the link. Just copy the actual link from it, and paste it in the email.

Email some more—to your list

Even if you don’t have a huge email list yet, this is still a great piece of content that they will be interested in.

Let the experts first share and comment, and then promote your post to your list a few hours later.

Contact commenters of other recent articles on the same topic

If you have the time, you can try this effective strategy to add highly engaged members to your readership.

The idea is to find other recent articles on a very similar topic. Anyone who has commented on these articles is probably still interested in the topic, and since you have a way better article, they’ll be happy to hear about it.

You can contact them to let them know about the article. You can also gently nudge them towards commenting and joining your email list.

To start, Google your article topic. Be specific:

To filter the results to last week, click on “Search tools,” and then change “Any time” to “Past week”.

Open these links, and scroll down to the comment sections. Depending on your topic, you may not find any commenters that link to their sites (you can use their contact form). Even if you don’t, this only takes a few minutes to check.

If you do find someone, send them a quick email like this:

Hi [name],

I saw that you commented on [article title] on [website] a short while ago.

I thought I’d drop you a quick line and let you know about another article you’ll probably like. I rounded up X experts and got them to reveal [topic].

If you’d like to check it out, here’s the link:

[URL]

Let me know what you think about it. If you’re interested in more content like that, just sign up for email updates.

Cheers,

[Your name]

Alternatively, if the site uses Facebook comments or Disqus, try to leave a (non-spammy) comment that includes a link to your roundup.

Share it on social media

Just like any other post, you should promote this roundup according to your social media strategy. This means sharing it during the next few weeks.

Like I said before, you can also tag your experts on social media if they haven’t shared the post yet:

Tag only a couple of experts each time you share the post so that you’re not bothering the same people over and over again.

In addition, find a relevant subreddit, and submit the post. Expert roundups typically do pretty well in most subreddits, which could drive another few hundred visitors to the post.

Step 6: Repeat and scale

I told you at the beginning that creating great crowdsourced content wasn’t easy.

That being said, it can produce great results for growing blogs.

If expert roundups work well in your niche, I recommend repeating them on a regular basis: somewhere between two to four times a year. Schedule them in your content calendar because it can take three to four weeks to put them together, as you’ve seen.

If you get exceptional traffic or links to your first roundup, you might be tempted to create them more often than that. But when you do them too frequently, you’ll either have to keep including the same people (many will get annoyed after a few requests), or you’ll have to include lower quality experts (which won’t produce the same results).

If you’d like to scale up your expert roundups, you’ll need to contact more experts. If you put together an article that featured 50, 60, or more experts on a really interesting question, it could have a long-lasting effect on your traffic.

To do so, you’ll probably need some help. Think about hiring a virtual assistant to complete the easier parts of this process. Show them this article, and have them find influencers and collect their contact information.

Additionally, they may be able to do some of the groundwork (creating bios, leaving comments) so that you could create your article without working on it for weeks or months.

Conclusion

If you don’t have authority, borrow it. I just showed you how.

Crowdsourced content is only going to get more popular in the future as other marketers and companies recognize the massive potential it has.

Most influencers get dozens of requests every month to participate in expert roundups but typically choose only a few to contribute to. If you do everything I laid out here, you will be one of them.

Have you ever put together an expert roundup? Let me know how it went in a comment below.

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Frugality and Self-Confidence

One thing I often do when I’m looking for inspiration or new angles for The Simple Dollar is simply go back and read my journals and other writing from before my financial turnaround.

Honestly, that stuff is often fairly painful to read. I can just see the huge financial mistakes I’m making, whether I discuss them directly or not. I see huge expenses barely even mentioned because, honestly, they didn’t bring me any deep joy or fuel any internal passion.

Instead, I see a lot of worry.

I see a lot of worry about what other people think about me. I se a lot of concern about whether I’m up to the task at work. I see a lot of tension about all kinds of things, from my own marriage to my relationships with my friends, from my career to my own happiness, from my quality as a community member to (later) my quality as a father.

Underlying all of it was a sense that I was not really doing any of these things well at all. I felt I was not good at my job. I felt like I wasn’t good as a husband. I felt I wasn’t a good friend. I felt like I wasn’t a good father. I wanted to be better at those things, but in the end, I didn’t feel like I was good at those things.

My solution? I didn’t have actual self-confidence, so I chose to “fake it until I could make it.”

I chose to act like the people around me that I perceived as successful.

What did that mean? It meant buying expensive clothes so that I dressed like the people who I felt were successful. It meant buying an expensive vehicle so that I had a vehicle like the people who I felt were successful. It meant buying gadgets (like the nascent smartphones of the day) so that I had the things in my pocket that I perceived a successful person having.

I tried to look successful and confident, and I threw a lot of money at doing so.

But it didn’t work.

Even worse, I felt really burnt out by the end of the day, so I would often throw myself into expensive hobbies and buy lots of stuff in order to make myself feel a burst of happiness.

The end result of all of that was a lot of money spent on stuff to either try to impress others and put up a false sense of confidence or to try to make myself feel better about what I perceived as myself not actually being good enough.

Both of those things were caused by one central issue. I lacked self-confidence.

I did not believe in myself with regards to many of the aspects of my life. I didn’t feel like I was “good enough.” So I tried to paint on an appearance of believing in myself by buying lots of things that made that image, and when I went home and felt like a fraud, I would spend money on frivolous things just to feel better.

Self-confidence – or the lack of it – was the central ingredient in both parts.

Over time, though, I began to realize a few things. These things started to really occur to me during the period when I was making my financial turnaround, so they really went hand in hand.

First, there were simply some things I was good at and other things I wasn’t good at. I am good at writing computer code. I am good at learning a lot of material pretty quickly. I am good at taking a big collection of ideas and organizing them into something that’s readable and doing that pretty quickly. I am good at making others laugh. I am good at connecting with children. I am good at self-deprecation and making others feel comfortable. I am good at being reliable.

On the other hand, I am not good at making small talk. I am not good at tolerating some behaviors. I am not good at keeping the house perfectly clean. I am not good at keeping my thoughts to myself at times. I am not good at perfectly remembering sequences of past events (and this has caused me real trouble in the past). I am not good at talking positively about things I don’t know about and thus don’t naturally feel positive about.

In other words, I’m good at some things and not good at other ones.

For a long time, it was hard for me to accept that. I wanted to be seen and perceived as being good at everything and so I put a lot of effort into methods for covering up the things I wasn’t good at. However, I didn’t perceive myself as actually being good at very many things.

So what did that lead to? Eventually, I realized that people are going to value me mostly for the things that I am good at. I am the guy who can code well and can lighten a room. I am the guy who makes their children laugh and the guy who picks up information quickly.

At the same time, no matter how much I “cover it up,” I can’t make the things I’m not good at disappear. The only way I can truly make them vanish is through a lot of self-improvement work. Anything other than that is paint, and paint eventually flakes off.

Because of that, I began to realize that it was kind of a fool’s errand to spend a lot of money trying to “hide” the things about myself that I didn’t like. People will see them anyway. Some people will judge me based on them regardless of what I do. Many more will judge me instead based on the good things, and some on the total package.

What does that add up to? I started to become happy with what I was good at, and I started worrying less about most of the stuff I wasn’t good at. I am good at some things, and that’s well worth being happy about. I don’t have to be good at everything as long as I’m good at some things.

Sure, there were – and still are – things that I want to improve, but having things you’re not good at and things that you want to improve doesn’t undo the things you are good at.

In short, I started building a little self-confidence. I began to feel good about the things I was good at and accept many of the things that I was not good at. I don’t need to be good at everything. I just need to be good at some things and be happy that I’m good at those things.

More importantly, when I genuinely begin to feel concerned about a negative aspect of myself, I start to do the necessary self-improvement to actually fix it. Simply covering it up doesn’t solve the problem and it really doesn’t even disguise it over the long term. The best solution is always to put in the real work to fix it and to genuinely improve yourself.

As I began to realize those things, several changes naturally happened in my life.

I began to feel far less incentive to spend money on certain things. A car became not a tool to impress people, but merely an object to get me from point A to point B. Thus, I didn’t need an expensive car. Clothes became not a tool to impress people, but merely something to keep myself warm and covered. Thus, I didn’t need many expensive clothes. Gadgets became not a tool to impress people, but merely a tool for communication. Thus, I didn’t need the latest and most expensive gadget (my smartphone is at least two generations old, for example). I didn’t need to buy name brands for most things at the store – they’re just names on a box, essentially meaningless.

I began to focus on genuine self-improvement. Obviously, the first big “improvement quest” I took on in my life was improving my finances. After that, my next big “improvement quest” was entrepreneurship. I’ve moved on to other personal improvement projects – many of them have involved deeply studying specific topics so that I understand them better – with the goal of making myself a better person and actually solving flaws I see in myself. I will never be perfect or anywhere close to it, but I can become better. The way to become better is to invest time and effort, not necessarily money.

The natural outcome of these two things combined had a really interesting effect. It made me quite frugal. I began to realize that the most valuable resources I have are my time and effort and natural skills, and buying stuff almost always just creates distraction that eats away at that time and effort. Not only that, the more money I spend, the less control I have over that time and effort, so that’s a big disincentive to spend money on things that do not bring me value.

Improving my self-confidence made me more naturally frugal, and the core to that improvement was recognizing that I do have some good traits (and some not-so-good traits), that people will value those traits, that spending money can’t truly hide those not-so-good traits, and that only time and effort can fix them.

Spending money doesn’t make you a better person. It doesn’t even make you appear to be a better person over the long haul. What it does do is cause you to lose more control over your time and effort, which makes it harder to actually build a better life for yourself.

Spend some time thinking about what you’re actually good at, and be proud of those things. Don’t worry so much about the things you’re not good at – and if one of them really bothers you, put in effort to genuinely make that better.

The post Frugality and Self-Confidence appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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15 Frugal Ways to Enjoy Life

These pick-me-ups cost very little but can add to your enjoyment.

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Get Off Your Phone: Why Face To Face Still Matters

As we become increasingly tied to our mobile devices, columnist Melissa Feemster explains why marketers shouldn't forget the power of in-person meetings.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Audio: How to Help Your Parents With Their Money

As parents age, they often need some financial management help. 

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Want to Earn 4 Free Flights Every Year? Learn From These Expert Travel Hackers

I’m betting most of you would jump on the chance to travel around the world for free. Who wouldn’t, after all?

But many people don’t take advantage of frequent flyer memberships and travel rewards cards. Whether actively or accidentally, they’re not involved in the world of “travel hacking.”

Why? Because getting from dream to dream vacation takes a lot of work. Many wannabe travel hackers end up disappointed when earning and redeeming points and miles takes more time or know-how than they have.

What if there were a service that made it easy for you? That held your hand through the complicated world of frequent flyer miles and rewards points and credit cards?

Meet Chris Guillebeau. At age 37, he’s already visited every country in the world — and he did it all using miles and points. Now he helps others fulfill their travel dreams with the Travel Hacking Cartel, a service he co-owns with Stephanie Zito and Tyler Tervooren.

Here’s how it works: Once you’re a member of the Cartel, you’ll receive alerts when lucrative travel deals, discounts and promotions pop up. You can opt for emails (between three and seven per week) or text messages (about two per week), or you can just log on to the membership site and see all of the deals at any time. You’ll also have access to travel hacking tutorials to help you better understand the world of miles and points.

Membership costs $1 for a 14-day trial, and $15-39 per month after that. It also comes with a unique guarantee: Earn 100,000 miles — enough for four plane tickets — in your first year of membership, or get your money back.

I sat down with Chris and Stephanie to chat about everything from why Chris started the Cartel, to the craziest ways they’ve earned miles and points, to how to start travel hacking from scratch.

When did you start travel hacking? Was there a lightbulb moment when you realized you were really on to something?

Chris: The first time I was upgraded on an international flight [to Paris in 2002], I was like, “Wow, there’s this whole other world out there. I want to do this again — but I don’t want to spend the $4,000 it costs for this ticket.”

Stephanie: I didn’t grow up traveling, and I always felt like travel was out of reach. My family drove to Florida twice a year from Pennsylvania for my entire childhood. I used to think, “If I get to go to Paris before I die, that would be the best thing ever.”

The few times in my early years that I was able to travel for free, it just really made it clear that travel was something that was accessible.

What led to you found the Travel Hacking Cartel?

Chris: I founded Travel Hacking Cartel way back in February 2010. I started it for two reasons:

1) I had had this project of my own of trying to visit every country in the world, which I eventually succeeded in — and I did that through travel hacking. It really made the whole thing very affordable and feasible to me in a way that it wouldn’t have been otherwise.

2) I had this great community of people that were asking a lot of questions about it… I felt that there was so much information out there, but it was very overwhelming.The whole goal [of the Cartel] is just to give people this turnkey program if you don’t want to spend 20 hours a month — like we do — searching for this stuff.

Are the majority of Cartel members redeeming points for aspirational awards — like Paris — or for simpler things, like visiting family?

Chris: I think people tend to transition… and their vision expands. Maybe at first, they want to visit their family in Iowa — but over time, they realize, “Holy cow, I’ve got all these miles and now I’ve learned how to best redeem them. And it’s actually going to be very cheap for me to go to Japan, or Ireland, or Australia, or somewhere else that before I’d never really thought much about.” The more people do it, the more they realize what’s possible.

What’s the craziest thing you’ve done to earn miles and points?

Chris: I did a hair loss appointment, even though I’ve got a pretty decent set of hair. If you made an appointment and had a consultation, you could earn 20,000 Delta SkyMiles.

I purchased more than $100,000 of dollar coins from the U.S. Mint (back when it was possible to  buy money at face value). You had to do it in installments, so I’d buy $3-5,000 worth of money and then go and deposit it at the bank. There was one time the UPS guy left $2,000 of coins on my front porch, and I live in kind of a busy neighborhood… I’m glad I found it and not somebody else!

I bought $5,000 worth of useless stickers once because they had a multiplier — so I spent $5,000 and earned 800,000 miles. I spent two and a half years flying around the world basically from that one purchase.

Stephanie: Once we bought an $8,000 refundable ticket we weren’t going to fly on — because there was a deal that if you bought a ticket, you could pay to multiply the miles. And they were two separate transactions, so if you bought a refundable ticket, then you could pay for the mileage multiplier, and once the miles credited to your account, you could cancel the refundable ticket and keep the miles. But it was a little nerve wracking because you had to sit on an $8,000 ticket!

What’s the craziest way you’ve spent your miles?

Stephanie: Chris and I just used miles to fly on the Emirates A380 with the shower on board in first class.

Did you use it? What was it like?

Stephanie: It was amazing! It had a hair dryer!

Chris: It was a shower at 40,000 feet! That’s a plane ticket that literally cost $25,000. Obviously, in a million years, we’re never going to spend $25,000 on a plane ticket.

But we were able to acquire these miles with credit card applications. I think we had to buy some extra miles (we spent about $500), so our total cost for that trip — it’s a 14-hour flight from Los Angeles to Dubai with a very exclusive cabin and nice lounge access on the ground — was less than $1,000 for both of us. That was 90,000 miles, and for only 10,000 miles more, we could add a stopover to anywhere in Asia — so we decided to keep going. We stopped off in Dubai, and then a few days later, we flew on to Singapore.

Stephanie: Not everyone wants to fly to Singapore in first class. The biggest takeaway is if you can figure out how to fly first class on a $25,000 plane ticket for essentially free, you can figure out how to go anywhere. Whatever that trip is that you want to take.

Let’s talk numbers: can you estimate how many miles you’ve earned? How many miles can Cartel members expect to earn?

Chris: We’ve served more than 20,000 people in the Cartel since inception. In a related course that Stephanie and I just taught, people earned enough miles in 45 days to take 23 one-way trips to the moon.

Stephanie: My dad has always been a business traveler, and he retired last year. He used to earn all his miles from flying traditionally. Once he started doing some of the things I was teaching him to do, he earned 300,000 miles in a year — which is three times what he was earning when he was flying every week for business. I would say an expectation is that you could easily earn 100,000-500,000 miles a year.

Chris: Yeah, I like that. The reason we have the 100,000 mile guarantee is it’s very specific and we believe it’s very obtainable. We do hear stories of people who earn a half million miles in a year, but that takes a little bit more time.

For me, over the past five years, if not more, I’ve earned at least one million miles a year. The point is the bulk of that is not through traveling. I do travel quite a bit; I go to 20 countries a year. But 200,000 of those are from travel and 800,000+ are through the different kinds of promotions we talk about in the Cartel.

How do you select the deals that end up in the Cartel?

Stephanie: A lot of the deals we do are things that people can take advantage of from different places: credit card bonuses, deals and discounts from hotels, online activities and quick deals.

American [Airlines] just had their own dream trip promotion, where you could watch six videos and get 1,000 miles. It’s quick stuff like this that if you weren’t paying attention, you would never see. And the beauty of what we do is that we pay attention. We hand-select these deals: if it’s not really good value, we don’t serve it to the Cartel. We do the thinking for you.

Our aim is to curate and serve up the best available and most applicable deals to our members — not bombard them with every single sale or promotion that is happening in the travel industry.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about travel hacking?

Chris: That it’s too hard or that the miles aren’t worth it anymore. People often say, “I had miles, I tried to use them for a trip, but the airlines said there was no seats available. It’s a game, and it’s rigged, and I can’t win.”

Stephanie: Airline miles aren’t impossible to use. It just takes a little bit of knowledge. If you understand the system enough to leverage the points you have, you can easily use them.

I know travel hacking is a lot of work — are there times when you wonder if it’s worth it?

Stephanie: If you care about travel, it is worth it. Once you set up a little bit of a framework for yourself, Chris and I call it “earn miles while you sleep.” You can earn miles through shopping and paying your bills — all these different things you don’t have to think about, but can still reap the benefits from.

What about people from outside of the US? Can they do much travel hacking, and can they join the Cartel?

Stephanie: We have people from 43 countries in the Cartel. One misnomer is that people think you can only do this if you’re from the US, because that’s where all the big bonuses are. I think it’s a lot easier if you’re in the US, but we’ve met so many people who are doing this — no matter where they’re from or where they want to go.

Is there anything else you want people to know about travel hacking?

Chris: This kind of world is constantly changing. That’s a big part of what we do in the Cartel: keep people up to date about this stuff. Because it does change month to month, sometimes even more often than that.

Also, we use the phrase “travel hacking,” which is obviously a little bit provocative — but we’re not really taking really advantage of travel companies or banks. This is a huge, huge business for them: They’re in the business of issuing credit cards and building long term relationships with consumers, and for the most part, they want people to earn miles. In some cases, if it’s difficult to redeem the miles, they’re the ones who have made it difficult. We’re just trying to help people better use the system.

Other than joining the Travel Hacking Cartel, of course, how can someone start on their miles and points journey TODAY?

Stephanie: Don’t try to do everything. Pick one trip you know you want to go on — something easy and attainable — and focus your mileage earning to begin around that.

When you look at all the information out there, and you want to do everything, it feels overwhelming. If you pick a place and starting point, by the time you’ve reached that goal, you’ve kind of learned the system and by that time, you’re ready to invest more time into bigger things.

Your Turn: Are you eager to start travel hacking?

Sponsorship Disclosure: A huge thanks to Chris, Stephanie and Tyler 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!

The post Want to Earn 4 Free Flights Every Year? Learn From These Expert Travel Hackers appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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6 Things New Parents Waste Money On

Your baby really doesn't need shoes or a bunny-themed nursery.

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Now You Can Embed Auto-Play Facebook Video On Your Site

With a little html code work, you can enable Facebook videos to play automatically with sound muted outside the social network.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Best Apps to Send Money

Photo: Square Cash

If you’ve ever wasted your breath on the phrase, “The check is in the mail,” now’s the time to stop: Several apps allow you to make simple mobile payments instead. These apps streamline the mobile payment process, often requiring only the email address or mobile phone number of the recipient. They may also be the cheapest way to send money — in fact, many of the services are free.

Also known as peer-to-peer payment services, money-sending apps are handy in a number of situations. Whether you want to send a monetary gift for your niece’s birthday, painlessly split a restaurant bill with friends, or even pay your rent without ordering a new checkbook, the best way to send money may just be one of the apps below.

The Best Apps to Send Money

Below are six of the best apps for simple mobile payments. All have their own pros and cons, but their shared strength is certainly convenience. None of the apps below requires you to have a specific banking relationship, though many banks have their own payment services — more on those in a moment.

Venmo

Venmo offers an impressively seamless and low-cost way to send money to anyone with an email address or phone number. The app also integrates with Facebook and your phone contacts so you can see who else is using Venmo. You’ll even be able to see what your friends are paying for with Venmo in a newsfeed when you open the app. Much like Facebook, you can “like” or comment on their transactions. (If you aren’t feeling so social, don’t worry — the amount spent isn’t public and you can also turn off the feature entirely.)

Receiving mobile payments is always free. Sending them is also free if you’re using your Venmo balance, a linked bank account, or a debit card from one of about 30 major banks. Otherwise, there’s a 3% fee if you use a credit card or other debit card.

Bottom line: Venmo is as much a social app as it is a financial one. You may find this aspect fun — or completely unnecessary. Default settings are public, so if you’d rather not broadcast your transactions to friends, you’ll need to change them, or choose another app.

Square Cash

If you can send an email, you can send money via Square Cash. All you need is your recipient’s email address and your own debit card number. The recipient doesn’t need a Square Cash account, and there are no middlemen to slow down the transaction, which is immediate.

You can even set up a “$Cashtag” that is essentially your own URL for accepting payments. Share it on social media or in the real world, and payees can quickly enter their debit card number and the amount they’re paying. Square Cash has also recently partnered with Snapchat, allowing you to send mobile payments through the popular chat service, too.

Square Cash doesn’t charge a dime unless you use the business version of the service, Cash Pro. Then you’ll pay 1.5% per transaction.

Bottom line: Square Cash is free — hard to beat that — and it’s the easiest-to-use service on our list. Since there’s no Square Cash account, you don’t have the extra step of withdrawing money from that account. However, if you don’t want to send or receive cash via debit card, you’re out of luck.

Also, you’ll want to make sure you have as much security as possible to protect your email account, since anyone who has access to your email will be able to access your debit card without knowing the number.

Dwolla

With Dwolla, you can send money to anyone with an email address, phone number, or Dwolla ID. You’ll need to link your bank account to Dwolla, and you can keep a balance using the service for future payments. Features include mass pay, which lets you send thousands of payments at once, and recurring payments.
Dwolla also offers a range of services for businesses and nonprofits; paying $250 a month, for instance, can get a business next-day transfers, higher transaction limits, and priority customer support.

Dwolla won’t charge you for any transaction under $10. Over $10, there’s a flat 25-cent fee that either the sender or recipient can pay.

Bottom line: Dwolla seems a bit more geared toward businesses than individuals, but it’s still a strong offering. The 25-cent fee is low, especially if you’re sending a significant amount (but consider that bank transfers are free with Venmo, PayPal, and Google Wallet). Your recipient will need to sign up with Dwolla, too.

PayPal

You may not have heard of the other apps on this list, but chances are you have a PayPal account. PayPal is definitely the most entrenched player in the market, and you can send a substantial amount of cash via the service: up to $10,000. You can also send money abroad to anyone with an email address or mobile phone number in more than 190 countries. PayPal even supports more than 20 currencies.

PayPal is only free if you’re using your PayPal balance or a linked bank account for transfers. Otherwise, it’s not the cheapest way to send money: You’ll pay 2.9% per transaction plus a flat 30-cent fee when you use a debit or credit card. Outside the U.S., there is a fee ranging from 0.5% to 2% for PayPal- and bank-funded transfers, or 3.4% to 3.9% for debit and credit card transfers.

Bottom line: There is a certain comfort in going with a known entity such as PayPal for your mobile payment. If you need to send some serious cash (up to $10,000 per transaction, with no cap on total transactions) or send it abroad, you can do that here. However, the fees are high for card-funded transactions. Also, if you need to send money to someone without a PayPal account, they’ll have to sign up for one to receive your payment.

Google Wallet

You can send and receive money via Google Wallet if you have an existing Google account; if not, you’ll need to sign up. After that, you can link your bank account or debit card to your account and use them to send money to any email address. Gmail users can even send money in email messages.

You can also keep a balance in Google Wallet and link that to a Google Wallet card, which you can use to make purchases and ATM withdrawals. Some merchants and phones also support a Tap and Pay function that lets you keep your real wallet in your pocket.

It’s free to send money through Google Wallet if you’re using your Google Wallet balance or a linked bank account. The fee is 2.9% per transaction if you’re using your debit card.

Bottom line: Google Wallet has a lot of nice extras that make it far more useful than just a way to send mobile payments. However, you won’t be able to send money using a credit card, and the debit-card payment fee is fairly high. Google’s allowance of up to 10 days for a bank transfer is also disconcerting.

Facebook

Facebook announced in March that it would start allowing users to send mobile payments via Facebook Messenger, promising the feature would be unveiled “over the coming months.” Sending money will be as easy as clicking a small dollar-sign icon in Messenger, entering an amount, and adding your debit card information. The recipient will simply have to add his or her own debit card information to receive the payment. The service is free.

Bottom line: Given Facebook’s reach, this service could rival or eclipse Square Cash for ease of use. The fact that it’s completely free won’t hurt, either. Of course, you’ll have to be comfortable forking over your debit card number (the service won’t allow any other payment type) and you’ll both need a Facebook account.

Facebook will allow users to add a PIN number to ease security concerns, and all Facebook users can take advantage of login approvals that require extra verification if you’re on a different computer or mobile device.

	Platforms	Fees	Speed	Limits	Keep balance in app?	Other notes
Venmo	iOS, Android	3% for credit cards and non-major debit cards; free for major debit cards and bank transfers	1-2 days	$299.99 weekly for unverified accounts; $2,999.99 weekly for verified accounts	Yes	Facebook-like news feed shows friends’ transactions
Square Cash	iOS, Android	Free (1.5% if using Square Cash Pro)	1-2 days after first linking card; after that, usually instant	$250 weekly for unverified accounts; $2,500 weekly for verified accounts	No	Supports debit cards only
Dwolla	iOS, Android	25 cents per transaction over $10 (can be paid by sender or recipient)	3-4 days	$5,000 per transaction; no cap on total sent	Yes	Supports bank transfers only
PayPal	iOS, Android, Windows Phone	2.9% plus 30 cents for debit and credit cards; free bank and balance transfers	3-4 days	$10,000 per transaction; no cap on total sent per verified account	Yes	Allows international transactions
Google Wallet	iOS, Android	2.9% for debit cards; free bank and balance transfers	Up to 3 days for balance and debit cards; 3-10 days for bank transfers	$10,000 per transaction; $50,000 per 5-day period	Yes	Integrates with Gmail; can get Google Wallet card to pay with balance; no credit cards
Facebook	iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry	Free	1-3 days	Unknown	No	Supports debit cards only

 

Mobile Payments with Major Banks

Keep in mind that a bank transfer may be the best way to send money if you want to pay someone who does business at the same bank that you do. It’s fast — usually less than a day — and typically easy to accomplish through your bank’s online portal or app.

Most banks are also streamlining the process of sending money to others regardless of where they bank, though. Here’s a rundown of your peer-to-peer payment options at some of the nation’s major retail and online banks. Most of these services are free for customers and available via each bank’s mobile banking app.

• Ally: If you bank with Ally, you have free access to Popmoney, which allows you to send simple mobile payments to anyone as long as you have their phone number, email address, or bank information. There is no separate Popmoney account — your requests are linked straight to your Ally accounts.
• Bank of America: Bank of America uses clearXchange for peer-to-peer payments via its online banking portal. Under the transfers tab, customers can select a “send money” option and enter the recipient’s email address or phone number. If the recipient isn’t receiving money through a participating bank, they will have to register with clearXchange.
• Capital One 360: The Person2Person service lets Capital One 360 checking customers send money to anyone with an email address. The money is available almost immediately if you send it to another Capital 360 customer; otherwise, it takes up to two business days.
• Chase: Chase QuickPay allows Chase customers to send and receive money for free. (Non-Chase customers can also use the service to send money if the recipient has a Chase checking account.) All you’ll need is a valid email address and the email address of the other party.
• U.S. Bank: U.S. Bank’s Pay a Person is powered through Popmoney, and allows customers to send money to anyone with an email address, phone number, or valid bank account. However, there are fees to use the service, and they depend on how much you send your money and how fast you want it sent (options are immediate delivery, next-day delivery, or standard delivery, which takes up to three business days).
• Wells Fargo: Wells Fargo customers can access Wells Fargo SurePay under the transfers tab of their online banking portal. They can send mobile payments to anyone with an email address or phone number in one to two business days. Recipients will be required to register with the service to receive the payment.

Don’t see your bank listed above? Check its website to see whether it offers some sort of peer-to-peer payment service. Remember, this may be your cheapest way to send money since most banks don’t charge their customers for these services.

Simple Mobile Payments are a Few Clicks Away

Whether you need to send your friend $25 for a concert ticket or your contractor $5,000 for a hefty home repair, there’s an app that’s up to the task. In fact, the most difficult part of sending mobile payments may be convincing the recipient that they’re legit — PayPal may be the only app on this list with widespread name recognition. Assuming you can get friends and family on board, any of the apps I profiled above are great choices for a simple mobile payment.

The post Best Apps to Send Money appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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Changes to the driving licence counterpart - your complete guide

Laura Whitcombe

drivinglicence.jpg

You can discard the paper part of your driving licence from 8 June 2015 when the DVLA will stop issuing them and they become invalid.

You can now discard the paper part of your driving licence as from 8 June 2015 the DVLA has stopped issuing them and they have become invalid.

If you need to update your name, address or renew your existing licence, you will be issued with a new photocard only - the paper counterpart will be retained.

Paper part of driving licences to be axed from June

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You can discard the paper part of your driving licence from 8 June 2015 when the DVLA will stop issuing them and they become invalid. The move is part of the government's aim to cut down on the amount of red tape. If you need to update your name, address or renew your licence, you will be issued with a photocard only. However, while drivers are advised to bin the paper counterpart of their licence from 8 June, the changes do not apply to drivers in Northern Ireland, who will need to keep their papers. The purpose of the counterpart up until now has been to include licence details that couldn't be included on the photocard – such as penalty points or the types of vehicles your are allowed to drive. Paper driving licences that were issued before the photocard was launched in 1998 will remain valid. What happens to speeding tickets or other fines? New penalty points (endorsements) will only be recorded electronically so if you commit an offence you will still have to pay a fine and submit your licence to the court. It's how the court deals with the paperwork that is changing. For photocard licences, the court will retain the paper counterpart and only return the photocard to you. For paper licences, the court will return it to you but they won't have written or printed the offence details on it. This means that from 8 June 2015 neither the photocard driving licence nor the paper licence will provide an accurate account of any driving endorsements you may have. Instead, this information will be held on DVLA's driver record, and can be checked online, by phone or post. A free-to-use View Driving Licence service will let you see what details are held about you and the Share Driving Licence service will become available before the counterpart is abolished for anyone needing to check driver records (with the consent of the driving licence holder). What about proving I can drive to an employer or car hire firm? After 8 June 2015, if you are hiring a vehicle or you drive for a living and you are asked to provide evidence of your driving record (entitlements and/or penalty points), you will be able to do this online for free by accessing our Share Driving Licence service. This service is currently in development but will be available at http://ift.tt/1RXyA7W before the counterpart is abolished. The service should be used by both paper and photocard driving licence holders and will also allow you to download a summary of your licence record which can be printed or shared. Alternatively you can call DVLA and give permission for your driving record to be checked verbally by a nominated person/organisation. From 8 June 2015, you may wish to check with the hire company what they need to see when you hire a vehicle. If you are asked for evidence of what vehicles you can drive or confirmation of any penalty points, you will be able to request a unique 'licence check code' from Gov.uk, which will allow you to share your driving licence details or you can download a summary of your driving licence record. The code will last for up to 72 hours and will allow the hire companies to make any necessary checks. This means that if you are travelling abroad and won't be collecting your hire vehicle as soon as you arrive, you may have to log on to the Gov.uk website to generate your code from outside of the UK. All drivers can also request their code by calling 0300 083 0013. This also applies if you have a paper licence that was issued before 1998.

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Free fibre broadband for a year from Sky

Laura Whitcombe

broadband.jpg

Sky has launched a year-long free fibre broadband deal for new and existing customers.

Sky has launched a year-long free fibre broadband deal for new and existing customers.

The superfast broadband (up to 38Mbps) deal has a 25GB monthly usage cap, which Sky said is enough for 540 hours' browsing and online gaming, listening to 300 music albums and watching eight standard definition movies.

Free fibre broadband for a year from Sky

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Sky has launched a year-long free fibre broadband deal for new and existing customers. The superfast broadband (up to 38Mbps) deal has a 25GB monthly usage cap, which Sky said is enough for 540 hours' browsing and online gaming, listening to 300 music albums and watching eight standard definition movies. It should take no longer than a few seconds to download an album and just over three minutes for a movie. A £30 set-up fee applies and landline costs £16.40 a month. There is no obligation to continue with the deal, which reverts to £10 a month, at the end of the 12-month free period. The deal represents a saving of £186.13 over a year when compared with the closest comparable services from BT, according to Sky. The company also pointed out that research by Ofcom found that Sky Fibre has the most reliably consistent speeds and the fastest peak time speeds for up to 38Mb fibre broadband. For households consuming more than 25GB of data a month, Sky has launched an unlimited Fibre deal at £10 a month. No set up fee applies. Both deals take about two weeks to get up and running and require a new router, which will be sent out in three to five working days. Ernest Doku, telecoms expert at uSwitch.com, said: "Fibre broadband needs an awareness boost, and Sky's deal might help. Less than a third of standard broadband users believe they can get superfast fibre broadband in their area, despite it now being available to almost eight in 10 UK households." But he warned: "Anyone interested should note the 25GB download limit. To put that in context, you could stream around four films in high definition for that amount of data. "Given that fibre is designed for heavier users, it might not be enough for families or people who are avid streamers and downloaders of games, movies, box sets and music." The Moneywise verdict from Laura Whitcombe: "I'm a Sky customer and currently have the Original bundle deal, which comes with unlimited broadband at a cost of £7.50 a month. I called customer services to find out if the free 12-month deal would be suitable for me. It wasn't. My monthly data usage seems to fluctuate around 60GB. There are two adults in my house. We browse the web through smartphones and laptops early in the morning, at evenings and weekends, watch programmes on Netflix a few nights a week and download a few TV shows a week for the commute. I was surprised we used so much more data than the free 12-month deal allows. The adviser I spoke to quite rightly suggested the Unlimited fibre deal would be better for me. So it would cost £2.50 extra a month for much faster download times. It's tempting, especially because I don't have to pay the £30 installation cost but I'm not really up for the hassle of being sent a new router at the moment so I'm leaving my package unchanged for now."

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A third of children worry about money

Hannah Nemeth

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One in three children in the UK admit that they worry about money, according to a new survey.

One in three children in the UK admit that they worry about money, according to a new survey.

While 89% of parents have money worries, they fail to hide their anxiety from their children with almost three-quarters of children saying they are aware of their parents' concerns, the annual Halifax pocket money survey has revealed.

A third of children worry about money

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One in three children in the UK admit that they worry about money, according to a new survey. While 89% of parents have money worries, they fail to hide their anxiety from their children with almost three-quarters of children saying they are aware of their parents' concerns, the annual Halifax pocket money survey has revealed. The poll of 1,200 children aged between eight and 15 and more than 500 adults found that one way of dealing with financial worries was to borrow money. Almost a third (29%) of parents confessed to borrowing money from someone they knew, while 16% of children have also done so. What is more, a quarter of children say they have lent money to someone they know, with 30% saying they've even helped their parents out financially – a 2% increase on last year's survey. Now that personal finance lessons are taught in secondary schools – which the 11 to 15 year olds in the survey would have had – it was disappointing to see that the new curriculum has had little impact on a child's understanding of day-to-day finances. Asked if they had to explain what a loan was, only 56% of children could do so, while only 36% could explain what a credit card was – both down 1% from last year. There was no change in the number of children who could explain what debt (54%) or tax was (26%). On a more positive note, 90% of children understand that their parents earn money through work, and almost two-thirds would like to know more about current accounts and savings. And children seem to have picked up the savings habit, with 70% saving some of their pocket money and 10% saving all of it. The traditional moneybox is where 45% of children keep their pocket money, while 42% use a bank account. Emphasising the important role that parents play in teaching their kids about money, the survey found that 60% of children would prefer to learn about money from their parents, while 20% believed school was the best place for financial education. Giles Martin, head of Halifax Savings, said: "Parents need to be very aware just how much of an impact their own feelings about money can have on their children's views and habits. While finance is now being taught in schools, children don't want their mum and dad to take a back seat. "Talking about money at home can be a great way for children to start building an understanding of the importance of good money management. Pocket money can be a great tool for parents to teach their children the basic life skills of earning, and saving money."

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Coca-Cola removes labels to make a point

Coca-Cola wants everyone to imagine a world without labels. And as an example, the beverage company is dropping its own.

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