Got A Tank To Fix?

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http://www.site.ww2mv.com/

Steve Gorham has spent most of his life renovating homes. Now, he restores World War II tanks.

"It's a one-of-a-kind job," Gorham said yesterday while taking a break from working on a Czech OT-810 halftrack at Northeast Military Vehicle Services in Milford. "I wake up every morning and am excited to go to work."

Gorham, 49, of Upton, was an unemployed carpenter three years ago when he discovered Northeast, a new company founded by Shrewsbury resident Andrew Sanclemente. The company started in Hopkinton but moved to Milford, near Interstate 495, about a year and a half ago.

Sanclemente, 41, a software engineer, has been collecting World War II vehicles since the mid-1990s. As he became immersed in his hobby, he realized there was a need for a business that restores the historic combat machinery.

"I was fascinated with the equipment," Sanclemente said as the buzz of a saw reverberated throughout the company's warehouse. "When you're driving these, you really understand what it was like for soldiers."

Sanclemente's father, Alphonse, grew up in the Plains section of Milford and was a mechanic in the Army Air Corps in World War II.

Repairs vary significantly in cost and can take a few days for quick fixes or several months for major jobs such as the Czech halftrack, which Sanclemente and his crew of four full-time employees and several part-time workers are turning into a German tank.

Most people collect tanks to display at parades, shows and other events. But the Texas man who owns the halftrack has a more unusual use: wild hog hunting.

Although the halftrack - an armored vehicle with wheels and tracks - is getting extensive renovation, tiny indentations made when the machine was peppered with enemy bullets will not be restored.

"They add character," Sanclemente said. "You remember what the soldiers went through."

His company repairs vehicles from throughout the world. The biggest challenge is finding parts for the equipment - any part that cannot be found is made from scratch, a process that often begins with making a wooden template.

Although rewarding, Sanclemente said collecting military vehicles is an expensive hobby. A World War II tank can cost between $150,000 and $500,000. German tanks, which are very rare, can cost more than $1 million.

The machines were among the first items some collectors sold during the recession, which hit as Sanclemente was trying to establish his new business.

"The economy has not helped at all," he said, noting the price of tanks has dropped 25 percent in recent years. "You've got to find that niche."

Joe DiAntonio, a Milford resident and World War II Navy veteran, praised the company for keeping history alive. Seeing the tanks at shows and parades should get people thinking about the sacrifices soldiers are making right now in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

"By at least having these vehicles around, it makes people aware of what they are going through," DiAntonio said. "When you see the size of the tank and the gun coming out, think, 'This is what our boys are going through every day.' "

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[Via - Milford Daily News]

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The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

10+ Unusual Ways To Make Easy Money On The Internet If You Love Writing.

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

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10 Books Like Freakonomics

Did you like Freakonomics? Here is a list of 10 books like Freakonomics

1. Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics

In Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets, Bonner and freelance journalist Lila Rajiva use literary economics to offer broader insights into mass behavior and its devastating effects on society. Why is it, they ask, that perfectly sane and responsible individuals can get together, and by some bizarre alchemy turn into an irrational mob? What makes them trust charlatans and demagogues who manipulate their worst instincts? Why do they abandon good sense, good behavior and good taste when an empty slogan is waved in front of them. Why is the road to hell paved with so many sterling intentions? Why is there a fool on every corner and a knave in every public office?

2. A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation

Why do markets keep crashing and why are financial crises greater than ever before? As the risk manager to some of the leading firms on Wall Street–from Morgan Stanley to Salomon and Citigroup–and a member of some of the world’s largest hedge funds, from Moore Capital to Ziff Brothers and FrontPoint Partners, Rick Bookstaber has seen the ghost inside the machine and vividly shows us a world that is even riskier than we think. The very things done to make markets safer, have, in fact, created a world that is far more dangerous. From the 1987 crash to Citigroup closing the Salomon Arb unit, from staggering losses at UBS to the demise of Long-Term Capital Management, Bookstaber gives readers a front row seat to the management decisions made by some of the most powerful financial figures in the world that led to catastrophe, and describes the impact of his own activities on markets and market crashes. Much of the innovation of the last 30 years has wreaked havoc on the markets and cost trillions of dollars.

3. Poop Culture: How America Is Shaped by Its Grossest National Product

Poop Culture is an excellent book about a topic that is largely (and unfairly) ignored. Perhaps the greatest asset and the greatest weakness of the book is its breadth. The author covers many different approaches to the topic–from the psycho-social elements of poop (i.e. shame) to the history of the toilet to cultural symbolism to poop in art to the economic/ecologic effects of the way we as a society deal with our poop. It’s at once odd and heartwarming to see a diagram of the best way to poop (squatting) or talk of South Park in the same book that also contains theoretical musings on Jonathan Swift and Marcel Duchamp.

4. The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World

I think that I have read all of the recent “economics of everything” (Harford’s phrase) books and this one is, in my view, the best. I also try to keep up with recent research in applied economics and found some gems in these pages that I had missed. The author alludes to about 200 papers and books from recent economics research and presents them in the most reader-friendly way, all in about 200 pages. I call that very efficient. Harford’s summary is also a useful antidote to all the “behavioral economics” that the popular press has picked up. The idea that some of us depart from rational choice on occasion is hardly news. The point of this book, that the rational choice model, has amazing power range is worth reiterating.

5. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon warned that our minds are wired to deceive us. “Beware the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall–they are the real distorting prisms of human nature.” Chief among them: “Assuming more order than exists in chaotic nature.” Now consider the typical stock market report: “Today investors bid shares down out of concern over Iranian oil production.” Sigh. We’re still doing it.

6. The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas

The book indeed is like Freakonomics in that its purpose is to reveal the economic rational behind everyday matters. It is different from Freakonomics in that it follows a “top-down” approach: each of the book’s chapters corresponds to a basic economic principle (for example supply and demand for a chapter, and signals and asymmetric information for another) that is explained via real world examples. So if one can say that the goal of Freakonomics was in reaching the bottom reason/motive of particular phenomena, it can also be said that the goal of The Economic Naturalist is to elicit fundamental economic principles through questions and answers. In this sense the book is more educational.

7. Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist

The book is full of fascinating stories in which psychology meets economics. The author applies the above concepts and ideas to a wide, wide variety of everyday situations, such as chess, doing the dishes, UN diplomat parking violations, bonuses in the workplace, petty crime, expercise programs, student drinking, tardiness, RSVP’s, meetings, going to museums, buying paintings, reading, buying music, toilet seat positions (a very, very important topic), gift giving, pickup lines, personal ads, marriage, being tortured, recognizing liars, gym memberships, shopping, eating and restaurants and getting the best food, “The Seven Deadly Sins”, sexual intercourse, beggars, charitable giving, and tipping. WHEW! WOW!

8. The Wisdom of Crowds

In 1906, Francis Galton, known for his work on statistics and heredity, came across a weight-judging contest at the West of England Fat Stock and Poultry Exhibition. This encounter was to challenge the foundations of his life’s study. An ox was on display and for six-pence fair-goers could buy a stamped and numbered ticket, fill in their names and their guesses of the animal’s weight after it had been slaughtered and dressed. The best guess received a prize. Eight hundred people tried their luck. They were diverse. Many had no knowledge of livestock; others were butchers and farmers. In Galton’s mind this was a perfect analogy for democracy. He wanted to prove the average voter was capable of very little. Yet to his surprise, when he averaged the guesses, the total came to 1197 pounds. After the ox had been slaughtered, it weighted 1198. James Surowiecki takes Galton’s counterintuitive notion and explores its ramification for business, government, science and the economy. It is a book about the world as it is. At the same time, it is a book about the world as it might be. Most of us believe that valuable nuggets of knowledge are concentrated in few minds. We believe the solution to our complex problems lies in finding the right person. When all we have to do, Surowiecki demonstrates over and over, is ask the gathered crowd.

9. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

Like Thoreau and the band Devo, psychology professor Schwartz provides ample evidence that we are faced with far too many choices on a daily basis, providing an illusion of a multitude of options when few honestly different ones actually exist. The conclusions Schwartz draws will be familiar to anyone who has flipped through 900 eerily similar channels of cable television only to find that nothing good is on. Whether choosing a health-care plan, choosing a college class or even buying a pair of jeans, Schwartz, drawing extensively on his own work in the social sciences, shows that a bewildering array of choices floods our exhausted brains, ultimately restricting instead of freeing us. We normally assume in America that more options (”easy fit” or “relaxed fit”?) will make us happier, but Schwartz shows the opposite is true, arguing that having all these choices actually goes so far as to erode our psychological well-being. Part research summary, part introductory social sciences tutorial, part self-help guide, this book offers concrete steps on how to reduce stress in decision making. Some will find Schwartz’s conclusions too obvious, and others may disagree with his points or find them too repetitive, but to the average lay reader, Schwartz’s accessible style and helpful tone is likely to aid the quietly desperate.

10. Crimes Against Logic

This book deserves the widest possible exposure in America, especially so close to the election, because it an excellent primer on how to guard yourself against the faulty reasoning that governs so much modern political discourse - and avoid adopting it yourself. I first heard about the book because one of its points was mentioned in an essay. The point was basically that just because someone has a motive to hold a certain position doesn’t necessarily mean that the position is false. This seemed pretty obvious, but as I turned to the media I was amazed at how often politicians use this method, and how easily I had accepted their claims if they lined up with my political preferences.

[Via - MadConomist.com]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

Site X Review

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Coupons For Godaddy

Product Naming

Site of the day - PickyDomains.com, world's first risk free naming agency

SiteX Review

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

SiteX is a site where you can get a ton of freelancing jobs. It is one of the largest freelancing marketplace on the internet. The total value of contracts at SiteX was $16 million for the month of April 2011, so you can imagine that it is a really huge business.

There are plenty of jobs at SiteX for almost all the categories that you can think of. Personally, I know about writing jobs – they have more than doubled in the last year itself and perhaps will keep increasing. Since there are so many jobs to choose from, you can find the jobs where your skills are in demand and apply for those with your expertise. For example, some writers are better at creative writing while some are good at writing sales copies. Since there are many jobs, you can always find some that are tailored to suit your skills.

In terms of getting paid, SiteX perhaps has the best system in place. There are two kinds of jobs – hourly and fixed price. If you are working on an hourly job, you can post the hours you work at SiteX. You will need to install their special software which allows it to track your activity: keywords and mouse clicks. If the activity is above a certain threshold and the random screenshots taken by this software show that you are working and not browsing the internet unrelated to the job, you are guaranteed to get paid. This is a very good safeguard in place which new freelancers especially like (those who are skeptical about the whole system!) Since freelancers are guaranteed to get paid, it is certainly a positive aspect of SiteX review that no other site can beat.

The feedback system is wonderful at SiteX and is much more revealing about both employees and employers than at similar sites like Elance or Guru. After the assignment is done, the site will ask both the parties involved to give a feedback on a scale of 5 for different parameters like quality of work, communication, deadlines, etc. In addition, both parties should leave a comment that appears on the profile page. This is a very good resource for both employees and employers to work with long-term SiteX members only so that there is little or no chance of getting scammed.

BlackSocks.Com Review

New Domain Parking Strategy Increases Payouts Up To 1000%

Revolights.Com Review

Business Name Generator

IconWanted.Com - The Search For Free Icons Is Over

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Fwix.Com

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http://fwix.com/

Revenue 2010: $1 million
Revenue 2011 (projected): $5 million

Darian Shirazi was on a train in Bosnia during a trip through through Eastern Europe when homesickness set in. He not only wanted to know what was happening back in his native California, but also in the lands he was passing through. He began thinking of ways to organize news online by the places to which it was relevant. Shirazi, a veteran of Facebook and eBay who dropped out of University of California-Berkeley, launched Fwix in October 2008 as a news aggregator that attaches locations to online content, a process known as geotagging. “We take an article and determine that piece of content’s location or where it’s talking about,” Shirazi says. Fwix then sells that data to companies, including Groupon, the New York Times, and NBC, that use it to target online ads to local consumers. The 25-employee company has 10 clients and handles 300 million data queries per month, Shirazi says. Although he's raised $6.75 million in venture capital, the name Fwix is a mark of leaner days. “I didn’t have a ton of money, and I wanted to buy a cheap domain [name],” Shirazi says. It doesn’t mean anything

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - BusinessWeek.com]

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The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

10+ Unusual Ways To Make Easy Money On The Internet If You Love Writing.

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Site of the day - PickyDomains.com, world's first risk free naming agency

City Slips Shoes

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http://cityslips.com/

What it does: Sells portable shoes
Founders: Katie Shea, 24, and Susie Levitt, 24 (pictured left to right)
Based: New York
Revenue 2010: $1 million
Revenue 2011 (projected): $1.2 million

After watching countless women walk home barefoot at the end of a long night in heels, New York University finance students Susie Levitt and Katie Shea started a company to make easily portable shoes. Working with contract designers and manufacturers in the U.S. and China, they created a pair of flats that fold up to fit into a pocket-sized zip pouch. When women pop on the shoes, the pouch unfurls into a tote bag to carry the high heels they just shed. The pair began selling CitySlips in 2009 and are now in 500 retailers, including Neiman Marcus, Dillard's, and Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY). Shea says they have broad appeal: “A 16-year-old leaving her senior prom will grab a pair of CitySlips and put them in her clutch bag, and then there’s my grandmother who will wear them leaving church." Launched with $15,000 in personal savings and a $100,000 private loan, CitySlips sells shoes that retail for $10 to $58, depending on the style and material. Shea says the company turned a profit in 2010 and now has about five independent sales reps, but Shea and Levitt remain the only full-time employees.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - BusinessWeek.com]

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The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

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MyHolySmoke.Com - Shoot Your Loved One

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You




http://www.myholysmoke.com/

Sometimes, the best way to remember those who've passed on to the great unknown is to look at photographs. Or write a poem. Or leave flowers at their headstone. Or shoot them out of a gun.

Holy Smoke has a very niche business. For $1,250, they'll cram the incinerated leftovers of your dead amigo into a nice load of ammo. And there's something for everyone! One pound of human ash plus your bereaved cash will yield 250 shotgun shells, 100 rifle cartridges, or 250 pistol cartridges. But wait, there's more:

(Mantle-worthy, finished, wooden handcrafted boxes with labels are available for an additional $100.00 per box for either shotshells or cartridges.)

And what will those labels say, I wonder? "My aunt is in these shotgun shells."

An account of the company's creation by one of its founders reveals that he is clearly some sort of lunatic:

My friend smiled and said "You know I've thought about this for some time and I want to be cremated. Then I want my ashes put into some turkey load shotgun shells and have someone that knows how to turkey hunt use the shotgun shells with my ashes to shoot a turkey. That way I will rest in peace knowing that the last thing that one turkey will see is me, screaming at him at about 900 feet per second."

Yes, this sounds normal and not at all fucking creepy and sick. If I could have my ashes inserted inside a hydrogen bomb, however, then we'd be talking.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

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[Via - Gizmodo]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Site X Review

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Site X is currently the most popular online design contest marketplace. Like others, it relies on the concept of crowd sourcing in bringing together a pool of designers from all over the world and small to medium-sized businesses, which needs design solutions. While it’s hard not to be impressed with Site X, it’s also hard not to realize that the “design crowd” concept is not exactly an innovation these days - having people work on your designs before you select which designer will get paid has become essentially commonplace.

If we’re going to give this Site X review all the attention it deserves, we’re going to have to judge it based on its own merits and compare how those merits stack up to others. And how does it stack up?

Cost.
Site X is definitely an invaluable site for anyone trying to start up businesses. The site runs on crowd sourcing – designers compete to win your business. The amount you will end up paying for the winning design (listing fee, 10% of the prize and the offered prize) will usually be cheaper compared to the amount you will be paying for hiring a professional designer, plus you get to see way more variety of designs.

Risks.
Money-Back Guarantee. This feature is available if you opted for holding a regular contest. With any regular contest, if you do not like any of the submitted designs, you have the option not to choose choose one and you get your money back.

Difficulty.
Easy To Use. The project creation area for contest holders is very intuitive and quite simple and user-friendly. One nice feature I like is how it gives you an estimate of the expected number of submissions based on the budget you entered.

How Many Samples Should You Expect?
Huge Pool of Quality Designers. Crowd sourcing is not crowd sourcing without a crowd. If there is one thing particularly impressive with Site X, it is that you get a lot of designer participation. Site X has a HUGE pool of actively participating designers, many who are quite good In fact, a guaranteed prize contest can have as much as 1100+ entries. This in itself beats paying one overpriced in-house designer.

BlackSocks.Com Review

New Domain Parking Strategy Increases Payouts Up To 1000%

Revolights.Com Review

Business Name Generator

IconWanted.Com - The Search For Free Icons Is Over

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Socks By Mail

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You



http://www.blacksocks.com

Forget all that business about Twitter, BlackBerry apps, and the Palm Pre: the real news is that BlackSocks.com, which has sold over a million socks through the mail in Europe, has come to the U.S. For the not-too-bad price of $89 annually, you can get three pairs of men's calf-length socks mailed to you every four months.

That's not all the company sells. You can get a subscription for knee-length socks for $115, cashmere calf-length socks for $229, and ankle socks for $89. The company is locked into only selling black socks by a URL that probably seems a little limiting to them now. However, the site also sells Euro-style underwear by subscription, as well. You can order a "trial pack" of any items from the site, if you're not ready for the commitment of a year's subscription.

So far, over 80,000 people in 70 different countries decided to buy 'sockscription' to this service.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

* - do you own a business? We'd like to profile your website, too.

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

We Want To Write About Your Business!

Would you like us to write about your business? We are offering a deal that no other blog owners do – for $35, review of your business, site or service will appear on NicheGeek, Uncommon Business Blog, MadConomist, PickyDomains (News/Blog section) and Sahio.Com. Pageranks for these sites vary from 3 to 5 and combined daily readership is around 2500-3000 unique visitors.

So essentially, you are getting links and visitors from 5 different well ranked and widely read blogs for seven bucks each. Our requirements are as follows:

1. Legitimate websites only. No MLM, no e-books, no scams, no infobusiness, no investment opportunities, no diets, no supplements, no pharma.
2. SEO links only if applicable and organic looking (limited to 1, not counting URL of your website).
3. If we do write up, there is a $15 fee ($50 total). If you provide review, the price is $35, but we have to OK it first. The review you provide must look as a neutral business article, NOT blatant advertisement. Giving us a previously published review is OK (as long as we approve it).
4. If you want to provide 5 different reviews for the SAME website there is no extra charge. If you want to give us 5 different reviews for 5 different sites you own, there is $5 extra charge for each review you provide or $15 for each review we write.
5. Payments are done via PayPal, credit card, MoneyBookers, bank transfers or checks.
6. If you want to test our service, before paying full $35/$50, that's fine. For $10 we'll publish review your provide at one of our blogs (most likely NicheGeek.com), so you'll be able to look at traffic/SEO effect the review generates, before paying the full amount. If you are satisfied, you simply pay the remainder to have you review published at the remaining four sites.
7. This is a SPONSORED REVIEW service, NOT paid links service. All poorly written submissions or SEO-centered submissions will be refused. Your review must have the same general tone as all other materials published at our sites. Once again, think news article in business journal, not infomercial.

If you are interested, send us an email to david[AT]DepriceDotCom with URL of your website.

Here are detailed stats for each site.

PickyDomains.com - PageRank 5, Alexa rank 82,000, daily visitors - 900-1100 (however, less than half visit news section)
NicheGeek.com - PageRank 3, Alexa rank 150,000, daily visitors 800-1500
Madconomist.com - PageRank 3, Alexa rank 400,000, daily visitors - 400-1500
UncommonBusiness - PageRank 3, Alexa rank 750,000, daily visitors - 250-300.
Sahio.com - PageRank 3, Alexa rank 5,000,000, daily visitors - 50.

Daily visitors is a number of people who visit the ENTIRE site in a single day, not just the main page. Traffic at Nichgeek.com and Madconomist.com can go up to 5-50K per day for a short period of time, when one of the posts lands on the front page of Reddit, Digg or other social networks. This has happened a number of times in the past.

http://digg.com/news/story/Top_10_stupid_online_business_ideas_that_made_someone_rich
http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/mmtbj/somebody_did_not_get_number_9/

For each website, except PickyDomains.com, your review will appear on the front page and will be treated as all other blog posts (meaning we won't hide it and it will capture most visitors possible.) All posts/links are permanent.

You WON'T FIND prices that low anywhere else on the net.

10 Great Books About Underground Economy, Working Under The Table And Surviving When Economy Sucks

1. Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

In this revealing study of a Southside Chicago neighborhood, sociologist Venkatesh opens a window on how the poor live. Focusing on domestics, entrepreneurs, hustlers, preachers and gangs linked in an underground economy that “manages to touch all households,” the book reveals how residents struggle between “their desires to live a just life and their needs to make ends meet as best they can.” In this milieu, African-American mechanics, painters, hairdressers, musicians and informal security guards are linked to prostitutes, drug dealers, gun dealers and car thieves in illegal enterprises that even police and politicians are involved in, though not all are criminals in the usual sense. Storefront clergy, often dependent “on the underground for their own livelihood,” serve as mediators and brokers between individuals and gang members, who have “insinuated themselves—and their drug money—into the deepest reaches of the community.” Although the book’s academic tenor is occasionally wearying, Venkatesh keeps his work vital and poignant by using the words of his subjects, who are as dependent on this intricate web as they are fearful of its dangers.

2. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Economics is not widely considered to be one of the sexier sciences. The annual Nobel Prize winner in that field never receives as much publicity as his or her compatriots in peace, literature, or physics. But if such slights are based on the notion that economics is dull, or that economists are concerned only with finance itself, Steven D. Levitt will change some minds. In Freakonomics (written with Stephen J. Dubner), Levitt argues that many apparent mysteries of everyday life don’t need to be so mysterious: they could be illuminated and made even more fascinating by asking the right questions and drawing connections. For example, Levitt traces the drop in violent crime rates to a drop in violent criminals and, digging further, to the Roe v. Wade decision that preempted the existence of some people who would be born to poverty and hardship. Elsewhere, by analyzing data gathered from inner-city Chicago drug-dealing gangs, Levitt outlines a corporate structure much like McDonald’s, where the top bosses make great money while scores of underlings make something below minimum wage. And in a section that may alarm or relieve worried parents, Levitt argues that parenting methods don’t really matter much and that a backyard swimming pool is much more dangerous than a gun. These enlightening chapters are separated by effusive passages from Dubner’s 2003 profile of Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, which led to the book being written. In a book filled with bold logic, such back-patting veers Freakonomics, however briefly, away from what Levitt actually has to say. Although maybe there’s a good economic reason for that too, and we’re just not getting it yet.

3. Ragnar’s Guide to the Underground Economy

Through detailed case studies Ragnar shows you how carpenters, woodcutters, farmers, housecleaners, computer consultants, mechanics, lawyers, vendors, locksmiths and others are cashing in on today’s booming economy - and keeping what they earn by not paying taxes. From these undergrounders you’ll learn how to locate work, get paid without supplying identifying numbers, prepare a realistic budget, advertise your services or product and finance your project when you can’t go to the bank. You’ll also learn the pitfalls of working off the books and what you can do to prepare for them.

4. How to Survive Without a Salary: Learning How to Live the Conserver Lifestyle

I thought that this book was so funny in places that I haven’t laughed so hard, so much, for a long time. Charles is a skilled writer; the book is very readable, intelligent, thoughtful,and well organized. It contains a copious (even prodigious) amount of tips, for a 200-page book. Very practical, and at the same time touches on abtruse philosophical areas, especially at the end of the book.

Hey, I used to think I was cheap. This guy is CHEAP. His anecdotes include waiting for it to rain to take a shower instead of installing indoor plumbing. He had a big hole in the floor of his entryway, or somewhere in his house, into which the kids and a few guests fell. He refused to spend one cent covering the hole, until a neighbor told him about a steel grate they threw away years ago, so he went to the dump and found it.

The point is that you can learn from a top-notch “conserver”; an applied example I would give is to buy two gallons of milk when it’s on sale and freeze one for later use (works well!). This guy probably drinks powdered milk though.

I disagree with his economic analysis; prudence CAN be a vice, as any virtue most certainly is in its extreme, or even overdone. But Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is not just about “McPimple Burger” or keeping up with the Joneses. Any system on a mass scale is going to have gaping faults, and the weaker of us might succumb to our basest impulses. But perhaps Long goes a bit too far the other way…

At any rate, he sounds like an economic anarchist. Very well thought out book, great advice.

5. Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets

In Freakonomics, many people were fascinated by a section that described how most crack cocaine dealers lived at home with their mothers. Why? They make less money than minimum wage. The source of that factoid was research conducted on site by Sudhir Venkatesh, author of Gang Leader for a Day, who describes in this book how he did that research and came to make decisions one day for part of the Black Kings gang in Chicago.

In the process of reading this book, you’ll learn more than you ever expected to know about the ways that the poorest people support and protect themselves. You’ll also find how drug-dealing gangs are both a help and a hindrance to the poor.

More powerfully, you’ll be exposed to the great difficulties involved in observing the lives of the poor and the gangs that spring from them. The moral and ethical dilemmas this book presents are almost beyond belief.

6. Under the Table and Into Your Pocket: The How and Why of the Underground Economy

Under The Table And Into Your Pocket: The How And Why Of The Underground Economy by Bill Wilson will provide the non-specialist general reader with a complete education on a facet of the American economy rarely (if ever) covered in school. Beginning with an introduction to just some of the ways governmental regulations strangle business, overtax the little guy, and enable Washington to be the drunken big spender that it is today (if you overpay your taxes by $7,000 and don’t reclaim it within three years you’re out of luck - but underpay it by $7,000 and the IRS can and will come after you no matter how much time has passed!), Under The Table proceeds to demonstrate how the little guy can circumvent taxes by doing business away from Big Brother’s prying eyes. From boarding houses and flea markets to roadside merchants and dominatrix work, Under The Table covers the benefits, disadvantages, tips, tricks, techniques and much more of common underground ways to earn a living. Under The Table is emphatically not a legal guide; neither the author nor the publisher assume any responsibility for the use or misuse of information contained within - but the eye-opening ins and outs of a truly free economy make for quite fascinating and advantageous reading.

7. Deep Inside the Underground Economy: How Millions of Americans are Practising Free Enterprise in an Unfree Economy

Are you fed up with giving so much of your hard earned cash to the government, then watching it get spent on ridiculous pork-barrel special-interest projects? Would you like to hold on to more of your money for your own special-interest boondoggles? The underground economy continues to grow in spite of ever-widening atttempts by the government to regulate and tax everything we do. Millions of Americans are practising fee enterprise in today’s increasingly unfree tax society. This is the most comprehensive how-to book ever written for those entrepreneurial individuals who have decided to end their slavery to a wage and to government taxation as well. Discover how you can keep more of what you earn for yourself. Here you will find complete and up-to-date information on the ins and outs of guerrilla capitalism and the underground economy in this country.

8. Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, and Street Scavenging.

In December of 2001 Jeff Ferrell quit his job as tenured professor, moved back to his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, and, with a place to live but no real income, began an eight-month odyssey of essentially living off of the street. Empire of Scrounge tells the story of this unusual journey into the often illicit worlds of scrounging, recycling, and second-hand living. Existing as a dumpster diver and trash picker, Ferrell adopted a way of life that was both field research and free-form survival. Riding around on his scrounged BMX bicycle, Ferrell investigated the million-dollar mansions, working-class neighborhoods, middle class suburbs, industrial and commercial strips, and the large downtown area, where he found countless discarded treasures, from unopened presents and new clothes to scrap metal and even food.

9. McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld

In McMafia, Misha Glenny draws the dark map that lies on the other side of Tom Friedman’s bright flat world. That connected globe not only brings software coders and supply-chain outsourcers closer together; it’s also opened the gates to a criminal network of unsettling vastness, complexity, and efficiency that represents a fifth of the earth’s economy, trading in everything from untaxed cigarettes and the usual narcotics to human lives and nuclear material. Glenny’s a Balkans expert, and he begins his story there, with the illicit–but often state-sponsored–underworld that grew out of the post-Soviet chaos, but he soon follows the contraband everywhere from Mumbai and Johannesburg to rural Colombia and the U.S. suburbs. It’s not just a hodgepodge of scare clips, though: Glenny reports from the ground but follows the leads as high as they go, showing how the dark and bright sides of the flat world are more connected than we imagine.

10. Living Well on Practically Nothing

Living Well on Practically Nothing: Revised and Updated Edition is for people who need to live on a lot less money. If you have been fired, demoted, retired, divorced, widowed, bankrupted or swindled - or you just want to quit your job and remain financially self-reliant - this book is for you. In it are hundreds of tips, secrets and necessary skills for living well on little money. Chapters include: Save Up to $37,000 a Year and Live on $12,000 a Year; Low-Cost Computers for Fun, Profit, and Education; Some Ways to Live on No Money at All; A Day of Cheap Living; A New Career or Business for You; Fix Things and Make Them Last; and Protect Your Investments and Make Them Grow. From cover to cover, this book is stocked with proven methods for saving money on shelter, food, clothing, transportation, entertainment, health care and more. The author left the “system” in 1969 and has worked for himself ever since. Let him show you how you, too, can live happily, comfortably and with complete financial freedom.

Woman Creates Fashion Line For People With Down Syndrome

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You



http://www.downsdesigns.com/

When Karen Bowersox’s granddaughter was born with Down syndrome, she saw the challenges her mother faced trying to find clothes that fit her properly. After extensive research she still could not find any clothes made specifically for people with Down syndrome and so took matters into her own hands, launching her own fashion line Downs Designs.

Bowersox’s goal is to produce clothes for people with Down syndrome that suit their body shape as well as being stylish. In 2010, she hired a designer to develop a new size of clothing which she calls “down sizing”. They started with a basic range of adult-size jeans and long-sleeved t-shirts, and used Down syndrome models to ensure the sizing was correct. Many factories were reluctant to produce their designs due to the irregular sizing, but they soon found a willing supplier in China. Sample garments were taken to the National Down Syndrome Conference in Florida, in order to get feedback and make final adjustments. The products proved popular — with easy-to-use fasteners and specific tailoring around the knees and elbows — and are now available to buy via the website. There are full instructions online about taking measurements and calculating sizes, and free phone consultations are available. Sale items start at USD 30 and the range covers adults, teens and kids. Downs Designs have plans to expand with more designs and a range of outerwear.

As we’ve seen many times in the past, personal experience is so often the catalyst for innovative solutions. One to be inspired by!

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - SpringWise]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

The Pioneer Woman

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You



http://thepioneerwoman.com/

Ree Drummond, known to many as the Pioneer Woman, is a mom with an amazing family on a ranch who decided to start a blog detailing their adventures. She didn’t spend tons of money to set up a website, and she didn’t have a major plan, except to share with others about her everyday life on the ranch, as a pioneer woman. She knew who her target audience would be, and she built an audience because she’s real. Ree Drummond can relate to many women, and people trust her. She has developed a large following from her website and blog. She was able to launch a cookbook, and this opens the door to reach even more people. She is now known all over the place, as a respected cook, a writer, a standout mom, and now has her own cooking show on the Food Network. She found her niche and went for it.

As a woman you have to figure out what your strengths are, and prove why you deserve to be standing by the men in your field. The most important thing is to be true to yourself, and that means being you. Stick to what you do best and you can never go wrong.

For more unusual ways to make money, read how PickyDomains.com helps find a business name.

[Via - Forbes]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

BenePark Review

http://benepark.com

BenePark.Com is a recently launched Finnish domain parking service where 90% of all accepted sites get at least $5 in ad revenue each and every month. This is 5 to 10 times the industry average. Most parking services (like Sedo.com, for example) simply load the page with ads, which immediately leads to Google downgrading domain to a ‘junk’ status. Which, in turn, leads to domain being omitted in the search engine results. And that means that such companies are capable of monetizing type-in traffic only.

BenePark.Com takes a different approach. First, domains have to be approved, prior to being accepted into the system. Then BenePark turns an empty domain into a regular webpage. This is done by placing relevant content onto the page, which is not limited to text only – videos, for example, are added as well. As a result of this ‘transformation’, domains parked with BenePark turn into regular sites. Because content is updated and new links are been placed for the parked domain, search engines start treating them as regular sites. Which means that type-in traffic isn’t the only type of traffic for BenePark domains, as over time domain’s pagerank and search engine traffic increase.

If you have domains you’ve purchased and don’t plan to develop soon, consider parking them with BenePark.com

Revolights

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You


http://revolights.com/

The idea for Revolights came to inventor Kent Frankovich as he rode his bike in the dark, and wondered why the headlight — meant to illuminate the path he was cycling on — was so far away from the ground. His research led him to some gruesome statistics revealing that the majority of nighttime bike-car collisions are due to cyclists’ inadequate side visibility, as well as drivers’ inability to recognize bicycles on the road. This pointed to a need for “a single product that combines path illumination and effective, unique signaling (I am a bike) to shared road traffic” with the aim of significantly increasing biker safety.

Frankovich and his team have been developing a prototype that consists of two hoops containing LEDs, that clip onto bicycle rims. The lights blink on and off at a rate controlled by the speed of the cyclist, and are powered by lithium-ion battery packs mounted to the hub. The effect is that front half of the front wheel and rear half of the rear wheel are illuminated, which projects light both in front, behind and to the side, increasing visibility for the cyclist while making them visible to others on the road. The project was launched on Kickstarter in August, where it quickly exceeded its funding target of USD 43,500 by over USD 160,000. Revolights hopes that the product will be available by the end of the year, at a suggested price of USD 220.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - SpringWise.com]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

How Atomic Lead Extractor Can Help Marketing Specialists?

What are the responsibilities of a marketing specialist? They plan, design and execute marketing campaigns that are meant to help the company increase their sales. They do market research and prepare reports about new products and new trends on the market. They also analyze effectiveness of various marketing campaigns and do lots of other routine work. Those who have first-hand experience with marketing know that the most tiresome and time-consuming task is searching for new contacts, creating a database of potential clients and partners. The time spent on these tasks can be used for a more creative work.

I know that marketing specialists hate such boring tasks as searching for new contacts! There are quite a few ways to automate it and Atomic Lead Extractorseems to be a very good solution. With this software sales staff and marketers can improve their efficiency and let the software find contact information of prospects and partners. Atomic Lead Extractorcan find and save email addresses, phone numbers, Skype, MSN, Yahoo, AIMandICQ usernames.

One way to use the software is to enter the URL of the website(s) you are interested in and have Atomic Lead Extractor scan them for contact information. You can also enter some keywords and the software will use search engines to find websites that match your query and then quickly extract the data you need.

Atomic Lead Extractor will be a good help for everyone who is interested in finding new partners and customers. With this software marketers can avoid manual search for information on the web. Since the process is automated it will take minutes and not hours.

With this product you can find clients for any business, for examples, an online shop, a café, hotel, real estate agency or a car wash. Imagine you opened a coffee bar and want to attract new clients. With Atomic Lead Extractor you can gather information about the registered users of your city forum and then send mass emails or bulk SMS inviting them to visita new place in their city. The key is to offer a promo code so that your message is perceived as valuable and you could track results.

The software can export the collected data to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, text files or clipboard. In case you need more information about the prospect you can see the address of the page where each contact was found.

You can receive more information about Atomic Lead Extractorand download a demo on the vendor’s website.

Bloove.Com - Quite Possible World's Coolest Mobile Agent

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You


http://bloove.com

Bloove is a cool new free mobile backup and content management system. What makes it especially handy is the fact that it requires no hardware whatsoever – no cables, no Bluetooth, no IR ports, etc. The system is entirely is web based. Here is how it works.

First, you create online account. Then you download Bloove agent. Now you are able to manage contents of your mobile phones (contacts, SMS, settings, bookmarks) and save them online. This is also where you can edit things, because this is obviously more convenient than performing the same task with the phone itself.

Should anything happen to your phone (suppose, you lost it, when traveling abroad), you can get a new phone, go online via GPRS, 3G, Wi-Fi, etc, log into your account and have access to all that data. If needed, you simply synchronize or restore data to your mobile. This is MUCH more flexible than the usual ‘back it up onto your PC’ approach.

The only downside is that Bloove is free for one account/one phone only. If you want to have multiple phones linked to one account – that’s gonna cost you $60 a year.

[Via - Uncommon Business Blog]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You