Lockout? You've got to be kidding!

      By Adrian B- With the NFL still deep in "talks" and not very close to a resolution, the NBA is gearing up for it's own full-fledged lockout. Fans everywhere are getting pretty sick of the nonsense. The owners want more revenue while the players want a bigger piece of the pie as well...this ads up to a stale mate. As the NFL season approaches and team practices are meager, even if  the league comes to an agreement in the near future, the season may be filled with injuries and amateur play due to the players lack of motivation to get in shape and get ready for the season. Fans are not impressed with the two sides bickering over salary. With the NFL near the peak of its popularity, a lockout would have a devastating repercussion. Fans want football...not cry baby millionaires and billionaires.

     The NBA also very popular, will suffer greatly from an impending lockout. A simultaneous lockout of the NBA and the NFL would be a horrific nightmare for the avid sports fans. It may on the other hand, be a  good thing and bring both sides back to earth. Athlete's salaries across the boards are out of control.  For the NBA, the Dallas-Miami series made the championship, one to be remembered, and arguably one of the most exciting series ever. The NBA has been in desperate need of support, and just when it was making a comeback, the fans will (more than likely) once again be sorely disappointed.

      Do you think that either league will come to an agreement? What will become of the two leagues? Is Baseball next?

Take your pick and see which one is more popular:

Lessons I've Learned in Real Estate:

Where do I begin?

    Contributed by Alfred- I recently interviewed Alfred, a resident and entrepreneur from  Northwest Indiana, trying to get him to reveal some of the secrets of his success in real estate. He rents properties as well as flips homes and has done it successfully. During our interview, I managed to learn a lot of great tips in successful, real estate investing. 

    The first topic topic we discussed was "finding a house". How do you find a house to buy? Where do you begin to look? He suggested the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) as a good place to start. The MLS lists all the houses that are for sale in your area, with a few minor exceptions. He picks 75-100 homes and begins to narrow them down. His strategy involves strictly buying foreclosures ranging from $20-$100K(depending on the area), fixing them up and selling them for a nice profit. It sounds simple, but real estate can be tricky and you need excellent agents, loan officers, contractors, and brokers. They can make or break a real estate investment.
     Once narrowed down to a few houses...he personally goes out and looks them over, then he narrows it down to one home. Once he performs a brief inspection on his final choice, he then hires a professional inspector to look for damage to key spots in the house; such as the foundation, the roof, or termites in the studs. Those are probably the three  biggest turn offs of a foreclosure purchase. After the inspector okay's the home and assures him that none of the big three problems exist, he proceeds to meet with his agent to begin the purchasing process. However, before finalizing his decision on a house he checks into the yearly property taxes. This is huge and often overlooked by real estate investors. Investors can end up finding themselves drowning in taxes after they purchase the foreclosure and can lead to losing the house. (FYI: you must also realize that the taxes will be higher than their previously listed price since the house will not  be owner occupied.)

     

  ***Please check back for the second segment of "Lessons I've Learned in Real Estate"***

Thank you Alfred for your contribution to W.S.I.

Please feel free to comment below regarding any questions you may have.

God Bless the Soldiers of the Armed Forces!

Happy 4th of July!!!

     We would like to take a moment to thank all those who have served in the armed forces. We couldn't enjoy the freedoms that we have today if not for the sacrifice of men and women willing to die for their country. I hope you will take the time to be thankful for the soldiers who have served in the past or those who currently serve, whether at home or overseas. We also would like to thank the families of those soldiers for their sacrifice as well. We appreciate their willingness to give up their loved ones to military service. May we never forget the prices they have paid, and lives that were lost, so that we can live freely in the USA. God Bless the USA!!!

Please watch one of these two videos in honor of our soldiers:

Song in both videos: "God Bless the USA" is sung by Lee Greenwood

Can you make money blogging? Part 2

In case you didn't read the first segment, click here>>> Can you make money blogging? Part 1

       By Adrian B- In the first segment we discussed the basics of blogging, picking topics, the importance of keeping up with your blog. In this segment we will discuss getting ads on your site and getting other peripherals on your blog. First let's discuss peripherals, add-ons and gadgets. Along with articles, a blog should have other interactive "stuff", for lack of a better word. It should have something like polls, click-able icons, games, free downloads, job opportunities, sports updates, stock updates, picture slide-shows or other things that will provide daily interactivity. People like to go on sites where there is good information, interaction and where they can voice there opinion...everyone likes to say what they think. There are tons of apps that you can place on your site for free...some will even make you money, and money is always a good thing. Next, you should always make it easy for others to share your articles or to email it to a friend, all of that should be able to be done right from your blog. Now let's get into placing ads on your blog. The most popular and maybe the most lucrative, in my opinion, is the Google's Adsense...not to be confused with Adwords. They are totally separate. Adsense does all the ad placement on your site. I know what you're thinking. How does Adsense choose what ads to put on my site? Adsense basically scans your blog and based on keywords within the articles or titles and then places relevant ads accordingly. For instance, if you post an article about a awesome sports car you liked, ads such as "custom tint" or "buy a 2011 Camaro" or "Autozone" might appear on your page. Google Adsense does have some stipulations that you will need to comply with so you don't get banned from Adsense. There are other companies out there that offer free advertising: Clicksor, Adbrite, Bidvertiser and others. Google's is the most well known of all the ad options and can definitely be trusted. I caution you not to go too crazy on the amount of ads on your page...an overwhelming barrage of ads may deter people from coming back and may slow your site down considerably.
     So what are the cons of blogging and does it cost anything? There is one potentially big con...it takes a lot of time, especially at first because you are trying to get a lot on your blog to attract viewers and keep them on your site for more than 30 seconds. However, your Google blog can be synced with your cell phone so you can text articles and they will post on your web page (not recommended too often). The other con is that the ratio of time to income is horrible at first until you can get a consistent, high volume of traffic. Regarding cost...it's totally free. Google Blogger is completely free. So you can breathe a sigh of relief. Oh, and on top of that, you can be completely "web design illiterate" and still succeed at blogging. Back to the cost subject, I would recommend eventually switching to a real website later once you have too many people visiting the site and it's severely lagging, then and only then would there be costs for web hosting and domain name purchase. Don't worry, even then it's not much per month...maybe $5-$15 per month. It's very affordable to most anyone. The downside is that things to get a little more complex when you do that, but don't let that scare you from starting a blog.
    I hope this has helped anyone interested in potentially blogging.  

Please check back for "Part 3" and feel free to comment or email any questions you may have.

I encourage you to mark the check boxes below if you liked this post.

***DON'T FORGET TO USE THE GOOGLE +1 ON POSTS YOU LIKE. THANK YOU!!***

China's Jiaozhou Bay Bridge- World's Longest!

    The Jiaozhou Bay Bridge is a whopping 26 miles long! This amazing architectural phenomenon is quite the achievement. It completely dwarfs all the other bridges that  it rivals. In fact, the bridge is so long that the human eye cannot see it from end to end. It simply disappears off into the distance.

Click on the pictures to enlarge them>>>

$100 Million Dollar ATM Receipt Found!

$99,864,731 Receipt found at ATM

Article directly from yahoo.com- "Scrooge McDuck lives. An ATM receipt showing a balance of nearly $100 million dollars was discovered at an East Hampton Village bank.

A customer found the receipt hanging out of the ATM's slot. The customer who found the receipt showed it to financial blog Dealbreaker.com. The receipt, dated June 18, doesn't list the account holder's name but does indicate that the person has $99,864,731.94 in a personal savings account (that's after a $400 withdrawal and a $2.75 service charge). The East Hamptons is a well known playground for the very wealthy.

Is the receipt a mistake of some kind? Perhaps. Anyone with that amount of cash would know that keeping $100 million in a savings account isn't the wisest investment move. Savings accounts earn paltry interest rates and are only guaranteed by the federal government for amounts up to $250,000.

A buzzy article from The New York Post speculates that the holder of the account may be billionaire mogul David Tepper (Forbes lists him as the 208th richest person in the world). When contacted by The New York Post, Tepper denied ownership of the receipt and pointed out that he "would never do something as irresponsible as leaving $100 million in a savings account."

"Maybe it really was Scrooge McDuck?"