Ok, here is what I found to be best in the last month in the personal finance blogs I read. By the way I am open to hear about a new blog if you want to share. Just hit the comment and let me know.

One of the best articles as usually comes from The Simple Dollar - he has a very original list of 24 ways to save money.

The bloggers keep being quite frugal in the last few months, probably due to the recession. The Silicon Valley Blogger suggested 8 simple ways to save a thousand bucks.

Punny Money is always funny, so check his The Five Stages of a Product’s Life: Saving You Money on Replacing Expensive Household Items.

And before the idea to save money obsess you, check the article on My Dollar Plan the frugal things that she won’t do.

David at MyTwoDollars explains How Do Credit Card Companies Charge Interest on Your Balance

Money Smart Life has excellent tips on preventing identity theft – make sure to check them.

Money Crashes explain how to use a Calculator For How Much House You Can Afford.

Lazy Man has written a good post exploring the future of personal finance tools.

People write so much on frugality that they forget the most important thing in finance. Tisha Kulak reminds about it – Invest – Don’t Splurge Inheritance Money.

Generation X Finance made a good investigation on the past 10 years investing in the stock market.

Don’t worry about the recession – it has benefits too

The DINKs ask: When To Borrow Against Your Home?

If you want to learn more about the stock market investing, Blueprint for Financial Prosperity has build a nice resource list.

If you are under 30, Accumulating Money suggests what to do before reaching that age.

At the end, if you are a blogger or affiliate marketer you may find the short URL service from my friend Benson useful.

If you have not read The Basics of Domain Investing better do so first, as that will help you to understand this post better

Photo by LightFusionStudio.com at Flickr

There are several keys to successful domain investing:

• Finding good domains which can bring profit
• Buying the domains at good price
• Getting the most profits of the domain names
• Flipping the domains at good price (optional)

This article concentrates on the first item and especially on buying existing domain names. (Registering new domains is a topic that has to be discussed separately) You can’t make good profits if you don’t obtain good domain names. It’s like expecting to make money by real estate investing when buying overpriced hotel in a crowded sea resort.

The Characteristics Of A Good Domain Name

Most of the things that make a domain name or a website a good investment can’t be faked which is the good news for you. A good domain is:

• Old. In the Web the older adomain is, the better, because the search engines consider older domains to be more trusted. Use the Web Archive to check what has been hosted on the domain in the past and ensure there has not been some spam or illegal site
• Short. The shorter the domain name is, the easier people will remember it. This means more returning visitors and more traffic. All 3 – letter .com domains are now taken for this reason.
• .Com Whatever people say, .com is best. When you recall a domain name but can’t remember the extension, you usually try with .com first. A .com domain means more type-in traffic. A .com domain can be sold easier than any other domain name. After .com, prefer .net, .org and country specific domains like co.uk. The least value have the less popular extensions like .info, .name, .mobi, .biz etc.
• Keyword Rich. A keyword rich domain is a domain which contain related keywords in it. This helps the domain to rank better in search results. For example sharkinvestor.com is a keyword rich domain containing the words “shark” and “investor” and ranks very well when you search for shark investor (some will argue that the search engines can’t recognize the 2 words because there is no dash, but my experiments show the opposite). If a domain can be both keyword-rich and short, then cool. If you have to choose between short and keyword-rich, prefer short, memorable and brand-able domain name.
• High PR and more links. Prefer domains with Google PR 3 or more. Get SEO For Firefox to check these things easier
• With existing traffic and revenue. It’s much better if the domain you are buying already hosts a site and that site already makes money. This of course makes the price of the domain higher.

Finding Good Domains or Websites

If you publish an ad “I am buying domains and websites” you are likely to receive a lot of offers for low quality domains. People who respond to such ads often can’t sell their domains to anyone else or are too squeezed to publish their “domain/website for sale” ad. Instead of waiting sellers to contact you, try the following ways of finding good domains:

• Online marketplaces. These are auction sites where webmasters list their domains and sites for sale. Other investors like you bid on them and try to win the auction. The marketplaces are an easy way to find domains and have a couple of disadvantages. First, you compete with many other buyers which makes it hard to make a good deal. Second, the people who go there to sell are usually people in the business. They know how much their website or domain costs and want to get the best price possible. Often there are cheaters who try to fake traffic and revenue details. My favorite marketplaces are Site Point and SeDo.
• Search engines. If you have chosen a niche in which to invest you can search for sites in that niche. Look for ones that rank between 3rd and 10th page for your selected keywords and see if they are well SE optimized and monetized (you may need to study SEO or ask an expert to evaluate for you). Some sites may have great content but not be optimized or monetized well, which gives you the chance to buy them at low price, improve their SEO and monetization strategies and make very high ROI. Then you can either keep such sites for revenue or flip them for much better price. By searching in the engines you will find only developed sites – not empty domain names. This strategy is involved and time consuming.
• Topical Directories. Do you want to buy a domain about mortgage credits? Search the web for “financial directory” and you will find the top directories with many sites listed. Use the previous strategy to pick good deals. The directory search is easier to do and has one advantage – some of the sites may be just expired domains which can be bough or registered for pennies. As the domain have been already listed, you’ll not need to re-list and it will have some SE value
• Social networks. Join a social network like Facebook and browse the groups or networks for the topic you are interested in. Many of the members of the group have website URLs in their profiles. Some of these domains will be of good quality, but under-monetized or under-optimized. Make a private offer and buy.
• Link pages of good sites. Find good sites (ranking in the 1st page of Google for competitive keywords) and find their pages with links to other sites. These links may have very good value, so the sites linked there are potential good deals – especially (again) if you can improve their monetization/SEO practices.

So many people are buying tons of books on “Making money online” and try to build web business from scratch. This requires a lot of work, happens slowly and very often does not happen at all. Most of these books suck anyway. It is so much better, faster and smarter to find existing domains, improve them and make profits. You’ll need to learn some internet marketing and SEO for that, but it’s less that you need to learn how to make it from scratch.

Based on the performance of several investments I am watching (many of them are reviewed in the Picks category) I would advice against investing in them at the moment.

Here are they:

1. GalleonFX. This year their performance is pathetic. Since my investment in July 2007 I am not in profit, but in 30% loss. See the full review about them.

2. TradeWindowFX. I don’t have particular reason to suspect them, but then don’t update their performance for months. Not very professional. Read the full review here.

3. East Europe Mutual Funds. (see the pick) The show is over here. There is no more huge profits to be made, most funds lost a lot in the last 6-9 months.

4. Best Trading Systems Managed Forex Accounts. (the pick is here). The site is down for months.

5. Fx Master Managed Forex Accounts. (picked here). This account is removed from StrikerFX for unknown reason and I could not find other actual information online.

6. Fx Street Managed Forex Programs. (picked here). They have been canceled “due to recent internal human resources changes”.

All the other opportunities reviewed in The Shark Investor Picks still look promising.

The most straightforward method to earn supplemental income is through doing some extra work. I don’t advocate it as being the best, but it’s one of the least risky and most predictable things you can do.

I know most people in personal finance say “don’t work for money, make your money work for you” and I fully support this position. But that’s easier said than done. If your income barely covers your expense, you have a little chance to succeed by passive investing.

Photo by arimoore at Flickr

So let’s get down to Earth and explore how you can really make some money.

Are your skills good for freelancing?

Almost every job out there can be done part time and outside of a company. But you’ll have much easier time if your profession is within the following areas:

• Creative – all kind of designers, copywriters, musicians, fashion folks, illustrators, photographers etc
• IT – programmers, software engineers, web developers, support services, SEO experts etc. This is the hugest field in freelancing. If you have a job in IT and you have never freelanced, you are missing a lot of opportunities
• Marketing – all kind of sales staff, marketing specials, statistical experts etc
• Finance and accounting – everyone who knows their stuff goes here
• Business consulting – managers, consultants, HR etc
• Legal – lawyers and everyone who is qualified to give legal advice
• Engineering – architects, CAD/CAM specialists, automation engineers etc
• Medical – in most countries doctors can do freelance
• Educations – teachers, instructors etc
• Transportation – drivers, mechanics etc
• Physical work – gardeners, baby sitters, construction workers and so on

It covers pretty much everything. Maybe only the government servants will have harder time finding freelance opportunities. Is your profession not included? Let me know to think together.

Finding freelance work

There are many different strategies for finding freelance work. If there is enough interest in this topic, I will elaborate them in further posts. For now, let me just outline:

1. Finding work locally Networking with friends and relatives you can find clients for your services in your local area. In the business world the word of mouth is one of the most powerful tools for generating sales. So kindly ask your friends to tell their friends and relatives that you are providing some service (giving legal advice, fixing washing machines, making websites, creating logos or whatever). Using the network effect you can find really a lot of customers. If needed, offer your service for free the first few times and give your best to do it good. Then the world will spread better.

2. Finding work worldwide If you are doing a mental work and especially if you are in the IT sphere, you have one huge advantage against everyone else. You can freelance remotely through Internet all over the world. There are forums, freelance bidding sites, auction sites, job boards and many options for finding jobs.

If you want to explore this option have a look at FreelanceSwitch’s monster list of freelance sites.

One disadvantage when freelancing online is that you’ll have to deal with competition from countries with low standards. Instead of trying to beat them in price, try to brand yourself and offer quality. That’s another huge topic which can be explored further.

3. Getting the work find you When you are bidding on a freelance auction or contacting a potential buyer though another channel, you are in the position of the interested party. The buyer is the one who defines the rules. He or she may have tens of others potential candidates to choose from.

When the buyers approach you, the things are entirely different. They already have decided that they would like to use your services for one or another reason. You have the chance to set a higher rate and your rules.

Getting to this position is the harder part. You’ll need to work first for your name before letting the name work for you. One thing that’s going to help you is of course word of mouth from past customers. But online you would want to attract a wider market. So you’ll have to make yourself noticeable. How? By establishing name – writing a popular blog, offering freebies, writing a book, getting interviewed, getting your site found by the search engine, having a popular product… Again we have a lot of things to explore further.

Getting Paid

If you have been an employee most of your life you have probably get used to be paid on time and without troubles. When you enter the world of business, even just through freelancing you may experience some issues with delayed payments, discontent clients who don’t want to pay or simply cheaters.

That’s why you need to be extra careful about getting your payment when freelancing. You may need a written contract, sometimes partial payments as the work progress or using an escrow service like Escrow.com.

Growing Further And Using The Money

A mistake many people do is to start freelancing for extra money that are then spend on shopping. There is nothing wrong with spending some money, but if you are freelancing this way you are doing nothing to grow or improve your financial situation. Do you really want to sacrifice your free time just to buy some things?

From investor’s viewpoint, you would freelance to earn money for meeting your financial goals. Eventually, you would do it just few months in the years or occasionally with the idea that the money earned will be invested in some assets. Don’t fall into the trap of losing your free time and all the meaningful things in life just to work more and make more money. Know why you are taking each freelance work and what you are going to use the money for (preferably for investing).

One great thing about freelancing is that along with earning money you are getting better in what you do and building a brand of yourself. With the time this will allow you to do this better, faster and charge more. Eventually you may even reach the point to leave your job and start freelancing or grow the freelancing into a side (or full time) business.

Have you ever done a freelance project so far? What is your profession and do you think you could freelance?

As my guest post has just been published on Generation X Finance blog, I wish to welcome the fellow readers coming from it.

If you just arrived here, let me shortly introduce you The Shark Investor. This is an investment and personal finance blog with a stronger focus on aggressive investing.

Do you want to know more? Please visit the About page clarifying what this blog is all about. If you like it, you can subscribe by email or RSS reader.

I will appreciate if you vote in the poll as well.

It’s been a while since the last pick I have posted because I am focusing more on conceptual articles and supplemental income ideas due to the results of this poll.

But I know many readers have free money and want to invest them for good profits, so I have not forgotten what gathers us all here. I’ve been quite disappointed by most managed forex accounts I am observing, that’s why I am looking more into other kind of trading programs (like Futures and Options).

So, here we go:

Balanced Volatility Program by Crescent Bay Capital Management (David Bedford)

Minimum account size: $10,000

Return in 2007: 34.45%

Return in 2008 (YTD): 18.14%

Biggest Drawdown so far: -7.84 %

Date of inception: August, 2007

This program grabbed my attention because of the relatively small account size and drawdown. The main negative point I see so far is the short track record. So it’s as risky as most of other picks I post.

If you want more information about this offer, you can do so on Crescent Bay site.

Do you have experience with them already? Please speak.

When was the last time you regret about investing your money somewhere? And when was the last time when you regret for not investing them? To me the first happens very rare, but the second – every day. Missing good opportunities is not the only mistake that small investors make.

Photo by pshutterbug at Flickr

Keep your eye on any of the following:

1. Investing more than you can afford
Any chance that you have not done that ever? I do this mistake all the time. I see a good investment opportunity and am ready to arrange funds for it even if I am not in the best financial situation at that moment.

If you can’t evaluate your financial assets and foresee your future expenses and income, you won’t be able to do good financial planning. As a result of this you’ll often miss investment opportunities or will get opportunities that you can’t really afford. Know your financial situation.

2. Not following a strategy
It’s easy to start jumping from opportunity to opportunity. The reality is always giving us more opportunities that we can handle and it’s very hard to evaluate them all and choose the best.

There are two ways to solve this problem – the first is always to take the right investment decisions. For most of us this is not achievable.

The second way is to have a strategy. This is what I do. I have set specific goals, amounts that should be invested, target ROI and limits. When I see an opportunity I know does it fit my strategy or not. If it doesn’t fit, usually I’ll skip it without regret.

Create a strategy and follow it.

3. Not using other people’s money (OPM)
If your income is not very high, it’s unlikely that you’ll reach huge profits from your investments. Many good investment deals have higher threshold and may never be accessible to you… unless you use other people’s money. Most small investors are afraid to do that and can never grow.

If you think the only way to do this is to create an investment club, you are wrong. The banks, your friends and relatives, leasing, other credit institutions – this all OPM. Most people think it’s wrong to buy things on credit but they are only half right. If you have something to do with your money – something which brings higher ROI than the credit card interest – then don’t hesitate to buy everyday things on credit.

Use OPM for better results.

4. Following the crowd
When the mass media start screaming about a financial crisis it’s already too late. If you read in the newspapers that the home prices or stock market is falling, it’s already too late to act. Many small investors follow the crowd and become a part of all the disappointed people who lose a lot in bear markets.

Avoiding this is actually simple. If everyone is doing the same thing on the market that same thing will get devalued sooner rather than later. So when everyone start buying houses, you beg to differ.

Watch closely what the masses do. And then do the opposite.

5. “Investing” in strangers. Many small investors get disappointed by the results of their conventional investments. That’s good because disappointment is the first step to taking action. But very often when you start looking for alternative opportunities you will be presented with fake offers. They come from strangers and in most cases you will be asked just to wire money somewhere (or worse – to send e-currency) and wait for the profits. In most cases you’ll get involved in a pyramid/ponzi scheme.

Don’t invest in strangers. Always know whom you are giving your money to and have full control over it

6. Bad diversification In every single guide about investing you’ll read “diversification is the key”. But do you really follow the advice? Most small investors have enormous share of their assets invested in real estate. Others heavily put their money on index funds or other mutual funds. How bad the things can go when a recession start? The falling home prices drag the stock exchange and funds with them. So even if you diversify between real estate and funds you are still at huge risk.

Diversify in different classes of assets. If you diversify in real estate, stocks, precious metals, foreign currency, education, brick and mortar or web business, CDs and commodities you will always be protected. (The downside of such diversification is that you’ll rare achieve high returns though)

7. Buying liabilities instead of assets Many people confuse assets with liabilities. Some buy new car thinking it’s an asset, other move to a larger home or buy a vacation house thinking it’s an asset. Really, sometimes buying a car or vacation home is an asset, sometimes it’s a liability – it all depends on the purpose of using. Just because someone else makes money from an asset, doesn’t mean you’ll be making money from the same.

It’s really simple: assets put money in your pocket, liabilities cost you money. Don’t mess both.

8. Procrastination How much money do you keep scattered in debit cards and bank accounts and doing nothing? Many small investors keep unused money waiting to collect bigger amount so they can invest in something big.

What stops you buying highly liquid assets with this money? You can always sell the assets when you have enough for the “big deal”.

Don’t be passive waiting for the “big deal”. Always invest your free money (or you are very likely to spend it for junk)

9. Accepting investment advice and referrals from amateurs. This may sound like “don’t read this blog”, but fortunately I am not giving you investment advice *grin*. Many investors will read blogs and review sites online and blindly follow the advice given. But there is no such thing as generic financial advice – what is appropriate for my financial situation and goals may be absolutely inappropriate for yours. Another problem is that many internet advisers recommend investment opportunities for financial gain – they may receive commission if they refer you as client, so such publishers are not always objective.

Don’t accept advice where and how much to invest. Take the decisions based on your specific monetary goals

10. Missing opportunities We all do this. We miss opportunities because we are afraid not to lose money. But losing money is not such a big problem, if you gain a lesson. Don’t miss good opportunity because of fear.

Train your investment courage not to miss good deals.

Exactly one month ago I conducted a quick poll with you. Do you remember it – What is the main hurdle on your way to financial success?. If you have missed to vote, the poll is still open, please do it.

As I wrote at the time on posting it, I did not create the poll just for my pleasure. I wanted to understand what really is troubling you the most on your way to achieving your financial goals. On the second place are 33% of the readers who lose money because of bad investment decisions. We are already working hard on this together, don’t we? It’s a long process and I believe we’re all learning and doing better with the time. And don’t forget that making mistakes and losing money is not that bad.

The Big Problem

A bit surprising, but at the time of writing this post the leading issue is not earning enough – voted from 58% of this blog readers. So it seems like I am putting too much effort into finding investment deals which many can’t afford.

So here we go, this blogs need a little shift.

Let me reveal myself a little bit first, for the first time here. I did not pick the “low income” option in the poll myself, but my income is also never high enough (I just have even worse issues to deal with when it comes to finances). As I am not working on a salary for already more than five years, I have always been researching for ways to add supplemental income streams. Unlike most people though, I don’t get satisfied with researching and am actually trying everything which seems promising. So I’ve got a bit of experience.

Trust me, earning good additional income is not as easy as many online gurus want you to believe. But it’s pretty doable especially if you have patience.

So, What Ideas?

I wanted this blog post to be just a quick note, but see how it turned into a long introduction. Let’s get to work:

I am opening a new category here on the blog called Supplemental Income where I am going to post ideas and experience on bringing additional income.

If this is your main issue, let’s solve it.

Roughly, the ideas will gravity around the following lines:

• Making money doing some work. I don’t like this too much, but if you badly need it, it’s a less risky way to earn. I’ll share a lot of things about freelancing and consulting. Please use this as last resort. Trading your free time for money is not a good idea unless you do it hunting a long term goal
• Growing assets. My favorite. Check this article for more details.
• Making money online. Pretty often that goes along with growing assets, but there are also ways to make money without creating real business. Will be discussed as well.
• Deals that require no investment. That’s the dream of every opportunity seeker. I don’t claim to have great success with such deals, but they are not to be overlooked for sure
• Do it yourself. Some of the things we buy are 3-4 times more expensive than their real cost. Sometimes it’s not hard and is even fun to do them yourself. Such activities may sound like saving, but they are actually income producing.

I hope to help you to increase your income without losing your sleep. Investing is a way to do it, but if you lack funds now, we’d better work more on improving this situation. Bear with me and we’ll hunt some fresh fish together.

I don’t often participate in blog carnivals, neither bother you much with them, but this one has some real value. Visit the carnival at USNews and note that my real estate post was also included.

You’ll see some posts of the best personal finance bloggers there, so it’s worth reading. Almost as good as my monthly “link love” selection *grin*.

Real estate investing is dumb. Really, see what happens after a mortgage crisis. If you just buy real estate because everyone says it’s cool you are making a stupid mistake. Real estate investing is dumb when done in the way everyone does it.

Photo by lumaxart at Flickr

If you put some thought into it however it might turn into a tool offering one of the best risk/ROI ratios in the investment world. I have two general strategies which work in almost every real estate market and almost independently on the current market conditions. The strategies are simple and not secret and they are quite involved. This is what makes them so good – no matter how many people know them, very few are those who use them well, so there is plenty place for you if you wish to try.

Buying Land And Homes Around Expanding Cities

In most developed countries like UK people live around the big cities instead in them since years. Same tendency is now seen in East Europe and Asia which opens big opportunity for investing in land around the big cities. There is opportunity in the Western countries as well, but you need to work harder in finding the right places. In the developing countries there is an exact pattern which shows you where and when to invest. Here is how the raise of the land prices happen in most cases:

1. The country economy starts growing fast. People start having more money
2. People move to the big or capital cities and start buying homes. Home prices start increasing quick for 2-3 to 5 years
3. The home prices in the big cities become too high for many citizens, the cities gets crowded. At this stage the people start looking for homes near the cities instead in them and the price of homes and land there increases quickly

So, basically when everyone invest in homes in the big cities because the ROI has been high for several years, it’s time to start looking for property around the cities. In a short period of 2-3 years the prices of the near-big city homes increases more than the home prices in the cities have been raising in the best market time.

This strategy requires careful research and watching the home prices in the big cities of developing countries. You can try to apply it in USA as well but guessing which will be the next expanding city is a tough task.

Buy Land And Change Its Purpose

This strategy is simpler to explain but requires more work on your side. Agricultural land is cheaper than the land for commercial or residential buildings. Often it is much cheaper. And pretty often its purpose can be changed. If the land is around a city or town, has good infrastructure and there is a different (building) purpose around it, most countries laws will allow you to change the land purpose. Most common practice is to buy agricultural land and change its purpose to a land for residential property – this can double or triple the land’s price.

There is a lot of bureaucracy, fees and risk in doing such purpose change. It highly depends on your country and state local laws. But if you are willing to do some work, research and spare no expenses on legal consulting, you can see a return of 100% in an year or less doing this.

Can you share other timeless strategies for real estate investing? Don’t run away from good opportunities only because they require work to implement. If an opportunity requires more work and research this is a sure sign that the lazy investors will be out of the deal making it much better for you.