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In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned the cost of job schmoozing and how I had bought some golf clubs in order to play in the annual golf tournaments. I don’t regret my decision as it’s always nice to have your own. Like a man/woman’s power suit, I just think it’s something you should have in your closet.

Yeah, it’s shallow but that’s me.

My next purchase to “play the part” is the iPod Touch which is a stripped down version of the iPhone. The 16GB or the 8GB, I haven’t decided yet. As a point of reference, I can get the 16GB from Futureshop for $449.99 CDN and the $329.99 CDN for the other. I already have a 1GB Nano and I also have a 4 GB Palm LifeDrive PDA. When I’m on vacation, I don’t like to lug my laptop so I only take my Palm to watch movies, read e-books and listen to music. It also has Wi-Fi but it is flaky and the hard drive is incredibly slow. Still, I choose it over the Nano because it has all these extra features and it came with a universal charger. I’d have to buy one for the iPod separately for travel. The Touch seems to be the ideal candidate to replace the two although I still face the same charger issue and it doesn’t have a built-in camera (but neither does my PDA).

I wasn’t into this whole iPod craze until last week when some colleagues of mine were talking about the iPhone. I still haven’t seen one yet but some of them had gone down to the States for a preview. They couldn’t stop marveling how wonderful it was. Well, I’m supposed to be the one in tech and “plugged in” but I had no clue what they were talking about. I don’t have a Blackberry for work purposes like they do and I’ve only been issued a cell phone - and a pretty simple one at that. I felt really left out and in the dark. That is not a good feeling when it’s your livelihood, however tangentially. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman in a man’s domain that I feel the need to walk the talk?

So not only am I shallow but I’m insecure. Freakin’ great.

Thankfully, I can afford this new toy as I usually don’t make extravagant purchases; just things I feel are important for educational/development purposes - however unconventional. Believe it or not, this is one of those times.

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Poor earnings reports and Black Monday anniversary flashbacks contributed to a 366.94 point drop from the Dow Jones industrial average Friday, which spilled over to a 330.37 point loss from the TSX. This echoed the International Monetary Fund’s outlook which downgraded Canada’s expected growth for 2008 from 2.8 to 2.3 percent due to the influence of our credit challenged American neighbors. The news was worse for the U.S., as its expected growth forecast dropped from 2.8 to 1.9 percent. The Reuters article on the World Economic Outlook for Canada and the U.S. can be read here.

That being said, Canadians know the resilience of our southern neighbors and although things look bleak, maybe they are able to stave off a recession. According to an article by CNN, investors aren’t scared off yet, even after a tumultuous third quarter. And as reported by the Montreal Gazette, it was reasoned that Canada might not slump with the U.S. should the dire predictions ring true. The Canadian economy is not as dependent on the U.S. as it once was. We are a nation of commodities and we have buyers in the Chinese and the Indians with our Petrodollar. On a macro economics level, it’s the same story: it’s always good to have your supply in demand.

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Since starting Money Relations, this blog has allowed me to learn a multitude of topics that go beyond the niche of personal finance and investing. To become a “serious” webmaster, you need to concern yourself with content, marketing and search engine optimization. For most bloggers, it’s hard enough to come up with the content, let alone worry about the other aspects. For those who are unaware, search engines, like Google, take content and the amount of incoming links to a website in consideration when returning search results. The links act as votes in favor of your website for a particular keyphrase. Obviously, the more incoming links you have (hopefully from quality websites) the better off you are of getting organic hits from search engine results pages.

I was approached to write a review for a new company called TNX.net that helps with this type of link building. The TNX system (pronounced “thanks”) allows advertisers to buy links from publishers’ web pages. The concept is not new but it throws in the twist of introducing a point system. Points are the currency to buy and sell links within TNX. Obviously, there is a monetary value behind the points and at the time of writing this post, advertisers can buy links at 1000 points for $1.2. There is a tiered system of how many links you can buy with your points. For example, with 20,000 points, you can buy:

20 000 different PR0 pages from different websites
400 different PR1 pages from different websites
200 different PR2 pages from different websites
100 different PR3 pages from different websites
40 different PR4 pages from different websites
20 different PR5 pages from different websites

Conversely, link sellers can sell their points back to the TNX system at 1000 points for $0.64, or to other TNX users. Another option is to hold onto the points as the cost per thousand points is expected to grow by 2% every week for both publishers and advertisers.

TNX also offers an affiliate program.

Having researched TNX and read other reviews, I decided to give TNX a try. The set-up process was extremely easy and it literally took less than a minute to sign up and to add my blog as a publisher.

I went through the motions of adding an advertising campaign but I need a defined strategy before I go ahead with that. From what I see, it’s an easy 3 step process as well. There is also Live Support where you are able to “chat” with a real person in case you have any questions and then have the transcript emailed to you. It was great service!

Although the signing up process was easy, I found it difficult to gather information about the company for this review. If I was a prospective registrant, the first thing I would like to see is how much the points are worth to buyers and sellers. After all, that is TNX’s main draw and it should go on the home page. I would also like to see what I can do with the points. I had to do some digging for the point system seen above for the 20,000 points shopping spree. This information should be front and centre.

I would also liked to have seen more transparency of requirements for the publishers. Although there is a FAQ, I found this within member pages: Webmasters are not allowed to add “nofollow” tags, use frames, Javascript or other methods to hide the links from search engines. Fair enough. TNX allows publishers to review the links they permit onto their website but this is still an important aspect given Google’s stance on buying links. I believe that buyers and sellers can make their own decisions, and as long as both parties have quality sites, this should not be an issue.

TNX has been successful in ranking highly with search engines for their competitive keywords such as “text link ads”, “text links”, etc. and they offer their tips in the highly respected webmaster forum, DigitalPoint.

There is also a promotional offer of 2000-5000 free points by TNX in DigitalPoint and you can buy some free links to give the system a try, but first you need your TNX id. To join TNX, please consider my referral link.

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I’d just like to write up a short mention that I have reached my 3rd month blog anniversary. I’ve passed the first blogger hurdle! I didn’t think I could post that regularly on financial fluff but I’ve been good about keeping a 3-4 posts per week routine.

At this juncture, I’d like to thank the readers for feeding into my blogging narcissism.

I’m out of town the rest of the week but I’ll return next week with my specialty… more of nothing in particular. Who knows, maybe I’ll get panhandled again.

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Yesterday, I got panhandled. I’m out of $3.00.

Usually, I try to avoid panhandlers by specifically crossing the other side of the street but this time I was unprepared. I was walking to the bus stop to get to work when a lady comes out of the bus shelter and asks in a rather frantic voice if she could have enough for bus change. She mentioned something about forgetting but I could see that she had a transfer ticket in her hand (where I am from, you keep the ticket and you can make a transfer to another bus without extra money). Bottom line, she was probably off to work too and was looking for money to go home. But why ask me, a total stranger? Why not ask her coworkers at her place of employment? I gave her the money and a few seconds later, the bus came. She quickly got on the bus leaving me grasping at my purse, change purse, and an open umbrella (it was raining) to struggle with. I don’t think she even thanked me. Some gratitude!

This pretty much left me steaming the whole day. I should have said no, I don’t have any change. But despite the fact that I have quite a smart mouth on me, I am incapable of on-the-spot lying. I am only susceptible to those who ask me a direct question. It doesn’t work if someone just sticks their hand out.

Another example: not long ago, I was again waiting at the bus stop after doing some shopping. This scrawny looking kid, comes up to me. Very nicely, he said that he was sorry for disrupting my day shopping and if I could spare some change.

I blinked.

I wasn’t used to this type of panhandling. And just like I had imbibed some truth serum, I said yes. I handed him a fiver. He thanked me and said he wasn’t using it for drugs and alcohol. Doh! It actually never entered my mind. He asked me a question and I answered. It was a good thing that I had the five bucks or I would have been compelled to give him a twenty. But I felt better about giving him the money than the other lady due to his manners. So how do I categorize this type of spending? Charity or stupidity?

Charity, Stupid :: 8 Comments »

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