Redhead Ranting

Have you checked out Bizzclick for your blog?

Filed under Blogging by Jen on January 30, 2012 at 2:18 pm {no comments}

Have you tried Bizzclick for your blog? Bizzclick is a new pay per click agency for bloggers who are looking for a way to earn a little extra money with their blogs or websites. Bizzclick offers opportunities to both publishers and advertisers using their network to monetize their traffic.

If you are a blogger you could monetize your website by becoming a publisher on the Bizzclick network. Bizzclick for publishers works pretty easily. All you do is sign up and Bizzclick provides the appropriate advertisers for your blog. If you write about dog trainers then Bizzclick would provide pet related advertisers to your blog.

In a similar way, if you were to become an advertiser on the Bizzclick network you would choose which blogs and websites you want your business ads shown. Bizzclick for advertisers is as easy is plugging in a search form when it comes to finding the right advertisers for you.

Bizzclick offers 24/7 support, an online community for it’s members and Bizzclick also offers a generous affiliate program for everyone you refer to Bizzclick.

Check out Bizzclick so you can start making money on your blog or website today.

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Stay at Home Mom

Filed under All of the Other Stuff by Jen on January 30, 2012 at 2:01 pm {no comments}

This guest post from Lewis Beck

When I decided to quit my job and stay at home with my new baby, my husband and I both knew we would have to make quite a few sacrifices. It is going to be completely worth it. First of all, we would barely have enough of my salary left over after paying for daycare that it made sense for me to work. Second of all, when it came time for me to go back to work and leave my baby I just found that I couldn’t do it. To be able to make this work, we’re both aware that we will have to really watch our budget. It is not going to be without its stress, but we know this is the right decision for our family. I’ve started doing things I never thought I would, like clipping coupons and scouring the internet for the best sales on diapers, for instance. One pretty awesome thing I discovered while trolling around on the internet is that because we live in Texas we have the ability to select our energy providers and can choose the provider that offers the cheapest rate. We have been able to save a ton of money this way, and it’s taken some of the pressure off. Check out Green Mountain Electric Information to see if you might be able to save some money as well.

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Bank of America: What’s the Deal?

Filed under Things that piss me off, WTF? by Izzy Woods on January 27, 2012 at 10:07 am {2 comments}

Image via Wikipedia

Apparently the Bank of America have chosen this moment to announce a gimmicky new ‘deals’ service. It’s called ‘BankAmeriDeals’, and as well as having a ridiculous name, seems to be a ridiculous new way for the bank to try and squeeze just a little bit more hard-earned cash out of its long-suffering customers. This new venture is supposed to be similar to the Groupon deals website, with Bank of America’s account-holders being given offers when they log on to their accounts.

Well, now that all sounds quite nice of them, doesn’t it? Money off shopping just for logging into your bank account? Except for a few pretty obvious problems. First of all, apparently they will choose which offers to give you based on your spending. So if they see lots of transactions at Walmart, then that’s what they’re going to give you. Great, so these aren’t actually treats at all, just an encouragement to spend more on everyday groceries that you were just going to buy anyway. You can also bet your bottom dollar that they’re making money out of this themselves somewhere, probably giving details of your shopping habits to the stores they’re working with. Isn’t that really just a major privacy breach? You can opt out of the scheme, they say, but not everyone’s going to realize why they should.

Now is not the time

Then you’ve got the biggest issue: is this really what a failing, struggling bank should actually be doing? I have my doubts. This is a bank that only exists because us taxpayers provided it with billions of dollars in bailout money. Since that bailout back into 2008, there doesn’t seem to have been any significant change in the way Bank of America does things. According to CNN Money the bank is still struggling to stay solvent, despite an ongoing cost-cutting operation. Despite making thousands of people redundant, the Bank of America’s operating costs have actually risen in the last quarter. Of course, they haven’t made any commitment to cutting the pay of their investment bankers. You know, the ones who got them (and us) into this mess in the first place.

In that context, is it really appropriate for Bank of America to be wasting their staff time and money on a gimmicky deals scheme? Perhaps this is the attitude that led to all their problems: the idea that you can just paper over the cracks, you can just make everything look as if it’s OK on the surface and the fact that it’s nothing like OK can simply be ignored. If I was in charge of Bank of America, I’d be spending my time hauling their investment department over the coals, not thinking up new ways to try and get ordinary people to give me their money through some cheap bribes.

Weasel words

The thing is, Bank of America are just one of many companies who really seem to think that they just need to throw out a few scraps and they’ll have us all on their side. It’s the politician’s mentality: just say a few clever words and you’ll have the public eating out of your hand. Never mind the substance, never mind the things that really matter. The 2008 crisis proved that the wealthy really were living in an entirely different world to the rest of us. The failure of the banks was, when you look back on it now, inevitable. And those in charge of those banks could surely have seen that, if they’d chosen to look. But they just didn’t seem to care. Perhaps because they knew that we would be there to deal with the consequences of their failure.

Rather than changing their attitude, turning themselves around and rebuilding from the bottom-up, all they are doing now is to try to cover up their misdemeanors with gimmicks. Rather than becoming more like us, the banks are pulling further away. They just don’t want us to realize it. It’s almost impossible to know can and cannot be trusted amongst today’s cohort of bankers, businessmen and politicians. There are calls for the Bank of America to be broken up but what are the chances of that happening? The fact is, it won’t. They’ll just continue to try and make us believe they’ve spent our taxes well, while their executives go home each night to caviar and champagne and shake the last cents from the change jar.

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Izzy is a freelance writer with an axe to grind, so would like to thank Jen for entertaining her own ranting (even though she’s not a redhead!). When she isn’t waxing lyrical on the financial system, she writes on behalf of numerous companies including a leading sectional sofa company.