• Large Market – Bullion Vault has, literally, the largest online gold market in the world, featuring roughly $1.6 billion worth of gold. Not only does this guarantee that gold stock will be available, but it also implies reliability in the services offered by this company.
• Low Charges – Any time you place a large investment on gold, there is a “middle man” which will take a certain percentage of the investment. At Bullion Vault, however, this percentage is very low – a maximum of .8%, and 0% for purchases exceeding $30,000.
• Flexible Buying – Due in part to the massive stock managed by Bullion Vault, at this website you are free to buy any amount of gold that you choose at a given time. The site boasts past purchases ranging from $100 to $8,000,000.
• Secure Storage – With this site, you have access to three high security vaults – one in New York, one in Switzerland, and one in London – all of of which, together, manage all of the gold dealt with by this site. You can select the vault you are most comfortable with and easily have any gold you have purchased stored there.
• Flexible Hours – Unlike trading in person or in the stock market, at Bullion Vault you can input transactions literally 24 hours a day, each and every day. This can save you from issues that arise from forgetting to withdraw or spend money on potential investments, and allows you more flexibility with your gold purchasing endeavors.
• Live Prices – You will also have access to up-to-date gold pricing in accordance with national markets. This means that if you are an investor or someone who works in finance, you can still trade on this site based on the knowledge you have from the overall financial climate and national gold markets, which can certainly be convenient.

Look for undervalued stocks. The most successful investors look for stocks that haven’t been realized yet and invest before they become popular. This requires due diligence and hours of research, but the payoff will be immense. Highly valued stock, though unlikely to lose you money, is going to grow extremely slowly and will earn you very little revenue. Promising stocks from companies that are either new to the scene or revamping their operations are the way to go.

Buy stocks from companies you understand. Understanding the process of a business’s services or the nature of its products is an integral part of knowing when to buy and sell. If you don’t understand the process and fundamentals of who you’re investing in, it will be difficult to anticipate market trends and changes in consumer confidence, which are all-important in investing.

Try to anticipate the next bull market. This is similar to looking for undervalued stock except this time you’re applying that research and due diligence to the market as a whole. Look for low interest rates and a rise in industrial production. When you see those bellwether signs, it generally means the economic conditions are ripe for a strong market and consumer spending. During a bull market you should try to be heavily invested in retailers, media companies, and leisure companies of many varieties. Also look into technology companies during a bull market, as venture capitalists and investors are feeling chipper. Find healthy computer chip manufacturers, software companies, information technology companies, etc.

Look at your investments as long term propositions. If you’re investing with the expectation of making a quick buck, you will probably be disappointed. Investing is like a game of chess: it takes a while and it’s critical that you plan several moves in advance.

View your investments as assets, not money. Similar in philosophy to the last tip, investing should be viewed as a way to add value to your overall financial portfolio. Don’t expect to use your investments as an ATM machine. Use it to fund things like retirement savings and college funds.

Investing in the stock market has earned many people vast fortunes and will continue to do so. If you do the legwork and approach it in the right way, investing in stocks can help you to prepare for your own financial future.  

What is Crodwfunding

It’s a way for the “crowd” to fund various projects where each contributes small amounts. As usual you can read more detailed definition on Wikipedia.

A large number of the current crowdfunding platforms that exist support various artistic projects – like new book or movie – and the backers get rewards in return. For example tickets for the movie, signed copies of the book etc. While this is good thing, it’s not really investing.

There are few types of crowdfunding sites that will be interesting for you as an investor:

• Equity based – where you get equity, usually in a legal entity formed for all the backers of the given project or company
• Profit based – where you “bet” on the success of a given project, usually by buying in bulk at discounted price, and make fixed profit when the product sells.

I could add “impact based” for investments you make solely for the purpose to make the world a better place. But this type works best when combined with the other two approaches.

The Crowdfunding Sites I Use

Before I share my experience here is a long list with lots of crowdfunding sites. Feel free to have a look at it and explore it. I’ll talk only about the ones I used:

Appsfunder

URL: http://www.appsfunder.com/
This site lets you invest in the development of mobile apps at early stage. The possible returns are really high, sometimes up to 3-5 times your investment. The guy behind the site, Pascal, has great reputation. I exchanged few mails with him and I think he is honest and good guy.

Unfortunately the site does not seem to work very well. There are only few projects and they usually don’t get funded. When the project is not funded the deal doesn’t happen and you don’t make profit. Worse, their automated system doesn’t work well and the Paypal preapproved payment happens in every case so you’ll have to contact them for refund. They refunded me so I have no doubts in their honesty but it just doesn’t work well.

Appbackr

URL: http://www.appbackr.com/

Appbackr works in very similar fashion. You buy in bulk copies of Android or Iphone mobile apps. When your copies sell (you don’t have to sell them yourself, the developer takes care for that), you make profit. The profit is fixed to 27% for apps in development and 54% for apps in concept stage. I already have one package bought and sold in about 3 months, and made 27% profit. This isn’t bad at all, that makes 9% non-compounded ROI per month.

But it’s not all roses. My other apps currently backed have about an year before they return the profit, if that happens at all. While 27% – 54% is great return even for an year you should have in mind that there is considerable risk that your copies will never sell, and you can lose your investment.

In general these sites bring more security to the app developers. Regardless the risks I’d love to see more similar sites that let you invest in other kinds of software, info-products or even tangible goods.

Symbid

URL: http://symbid.com/
I love this site! I made 3 small investments in it and looking further to make more, regardess that I don’t know when/if I will see profits. It’s a typical equity based crowdfunding site that lets you invest in innovative companies and projects and own shares in them. And this time there are all kind of projects – not just apps, or not even just software. For example the project I invested most in is WakaWaka – a solar lamp for people who live in places where electricity is luxury. I believe both in the commercial success and the social impact of this project.

Symbid is a dutch site but it allows investors from all over the world, and you can buy shares with credit card. While many project descriptions are in Dutch, there are enough English ones to choose from.

Kiva

URL: http://www.kiva.org/

This is not really investing but I decided to include it. You won’t make profits with Kiva. In fact you may want to donate few bucks to help its operations. It lets you lend money to small businesses in poor area of the world. Not only it lets you help the economy in these countries but your loans are returned, and you can lend them again, or even withdraw them if you don’t want to lend anymore. I really like this concept, because lending works better than donating. Lending helps people without turning them into lazy bastards. I’m trying to make a small loan every month. Soon I should be able to re-lend only based on the loans paid back and without getting anything else out of pocket.

Other Interesting Ones

I think the following sites also deserve attention:

http://www.crowdcube.com/ – equity based site, all kind of interestng companies and projects. Unfortunately it’s only for UK investors.

http://www.kickstarter.com/ – maybe the most popular reward-based crowdfunding site. I think it’s only for US projects.

http://www.inventure.org/ – if you are looking to make impact, you can invest in various social responsible projects. You can’t make profits, but returns can be reinvested in other projects.

That’s it so far. Any others that you know and I don’t?

Vault Deposit: The traditional way to store cold-hard valuables such as jewelry and gold, the decreasing prevalence of these forms of assets has forced banks with vaults to look for other ways to use up their space. Objects such as antique furniture and valuable paintings are increasingly being welcomed into these insured spaces in exchange for the fee of storage.

Self-Storage: For valuable items too big for a bank vault, self-storage is the next best option. This is also a great choice for those who desire around-the-clock access to their assets. While selecting big city locations such as  New York storage facilities is ideal for security purposes, most every storage center is tightly monitored and climate controlled.

Put to Some Use: There’s no problem with simply putting that century-old Tiffany lamp to good use in your home where you can keep an eye on it. If you have a strong alarm system and your item is bulky, such a arrangement is as secure as any. The obvious risk is of course damage caused by rambunctious kids, flood, or fire.

Loaned for Display: If you own precious antiques or some other form of culturally significant items, a great option would be to loan these items for museum display or art gallery purposes. Insurance agreements for such situations are typically iron-clad, and you can always count on your valuables being there at the end. In addition, the item’s existence as a former museum piece adds value.

Material investments are an unlikely choice in the age of stock options, but they remain one of the most assured of ways to secure wealth via ownership. If you have material assets and have no idea what to do with them, consider the aforementioned ways to hold and maintain your goods. At a time when more paper-based forms of wealth seem to not be as safe as they once were, valuable materials are an alternative option worth looking into.

We’ve previously discussed examples of government resources that can help you fix your personal finances. But when it comes to investment decisions, there’s no shortage of further information and advice courtesy of the American taxpayer. Various government agencies hold enormous amounts of useful information aspiring investors can use to make their decisions as smartly as possible. The following are six investor resources provided by the federal government that are sure to help you head in the right direction:

Taking the Mystery Out of Retirement Planning

Unlike many other life challenges, figuring out the complexities of retirement does not get easier with age. Should you opt for a traditional 401(k) or open a Roth IRA instead? Plenty of online resources exist that promise to provide you with the tools you need to sort out retirement woes safely and securely, but why go any farther than the objective
breakdown provided by your tax-funded federal government? The Department of Labor is sure to have all the information you need to get started.

FTC Investment Schemes Breakdown

Whether it’s invention promotion firms, day trading techniques, and traditional investment risks, the Federal Trade Commission arms American citizens with a whole host of tips and guidelines as to how
to protect themselves from the possible threats attached to dubious investment opportunities. Before embarking on such a scheme, put the FTC to good use and see what you’re getting yourself into.

GinnieMae

There’s a lot going through the minds of potential home owners these days. While a home remains one of the smartest investments out there, making sure you’re getting yourself into a secure situation
has become much more complicated as foreclosures and tightened lending has decimated the housing market. Before settling on a particular mortgage, or even doing your research on which neighborhoods to look into, consult the Government National Mortgage Association’s website first.

The New Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

The information potential investors can mine from the newly created CFPB is admittedly low at the present moment. But give it a few years to pack on consumer-instigated investigations and get to the bottom of allegations regarding mortgage repayment plans, credit card scams, and private student loans, and you’ll be sure to get the information you need. In the meantime, contribute by submitting any and all complaints you have regarding various financial institutions.

Federal Reserve Consumer Help Hotline

Any issues you have with a particular bank or financial institution ought to be brought to the attention of the Federal Reserve. Any common negative occurrence regarding these institutions will be posted in the “Find an Answer” section of the Consumer Help page of the Federal Reserve website. When in doubt regarding the particular policies of a bank or other lending organization, see what the Fed has to say about the situation.

TreasuryDirect.gov

The forgotten T-bond: how little faith the American people have in the wealth of their future! While I won’t try and talk you into such a seemingly risky investment decision, apart from the fact that the
Chinese certainly see no risk in U.S. Treasury bonds, the Treasury Department’s website does a good job providing investors with all the facts and figures regarding the buying of bonds, notes, bills, and any other direct investment in the future of the federal government.

With American approval of the government at record lows, it’s somewhat reassuring to know that the federal government still has a reasonable about of informational authority regarding where Americans
invest their money. The federal government exists solely to serve the interests of the citizenry of the United States of America. Take advantage of these services, because as a tax payer, you’re paying for them whether you use them or not.

For instance, how many of those reading this right now are stressing over retirement? Don’t know which is going to pay off more for you down the line? Before visiting a paid consultant, have you checked out the endless array of retirement calculators that exist on the Internet? You can plug in your variables and get a reasonably accurate projection just like that. Chances are a human you pay to give you advice will end up utilizing a similar tool to come to his or her conclusions – and charge you for it.

Speaking of calculators, the Federal Reserve website includes one for figuring out the optimum credit card debt repayment plan for you to follow to avoid owing on your lack of responsibility in college for the rest of your life. This is just one of several such instruments the government provides the public for free that help individuals come up with better assessments about their futures. Even if the United States government isn’t providing the exact tool you need, other English-speaking nations provide mortgage and other loan repayment calculators you can use – just convert the currency and adjust interest.

But let’s avoid not giving credit where credit is due. Despite the seemingly aforementioned sidelining of financial and investment advice found on blogs, it’s be both hypocritical and inaccurate to see these resources are not adequate in finding the tools you need. Not only is this very article an example of this, but financial and investment agencies tend to always inform clients and potential clientele about the free tools they have that can be found online. For instance, the Twitter page of Cavalry Portfolio Services includes a link to the FTC’s free credit report offering provided to American citizens.

It’s obvious that countless resources exist online that can help you take control of your finances and position yourself for a smarter investment future. What’s even more obvious is the importance of taking advantage of these instruments. Squeezing something out of nothing is the beginning of the path to responsible finances.

Advantages of Investing in Property with Family

One of the primary advantages of investing in property with family members is that you can pool all of your resources together and buy a more expensive piece of property than you could usually afford. Since each family member that invests in the property has a stake in it and an ownership interest, you get to divide the risk amongst a number of different people too. You are not stuck having to shoulder the entire loan and are able to split the mortgage payment up equally among all family members involved. This reduces the chances that you will fall behind on the mortgage or risk defaulting.

Another advantage of having family members invest in a property is that you have a greater financial backing. This increases your chances of getting approved when doing a home loan comparison. You can always use the credit scores of the stronger family members so you can get the lowest interest rate possible on a loan or home refinancing. This can result in lower mortgage payments and you get the advantage of being able to make some money with your closest family members.

Disadvantages of Investing in Property with Family

Unfortunately investing in property with family members is not completely positive. There are some drawbacks to doing business with family. One disadvantage is that family members may have a hard time separating business dealings from personal life. Some family members may not treat the venture as professionally as they should. This could result in missed mortgage payments or a failure to cover responsibilities and duties.

Doing business with family members can also lead to hard feelings. If things go sour with the investment property, then it can damage the personal relationship that you have with each other. Nothing makes a relationship turn badly as quickly as borrowed money and ruined credit, right?

In short, if you do buy an investment property with other family members, make sure you all understand the risks, rewards, and emotional aspects of the purchase. Good luck!

Barcode Scanner

Since Quick Response Code (QR) scanning is fast becoming the fastest way to access applications and information for your smartphone, this app provides an easy-to-use QR scanner for your convenience.

Easy Uninstaller

Not only is installing apps a part of living with a smartphone, but removing the ones you don’t like is, too. This little app is much easier to use than the default App Manager that comes with the phone.

Facebook

Social networking has changed the world. If you feel compelled to update your Facebook page several times a day like millions of other folks, this app will allow you to do just that. It will also  keep you informed of what your virtual friends are up to as well.

GO SMS Pro

While there’s a basic Android app that allows you send text messages, those who text frequently will like this advanced text messaging app that dramatically simplifies and speeds up the process.

Lookout

Protecting your smartphone from malware, spyware and viruses is just as important as protecting your PC. This app can help keep your investment secure and safe. Features allow you to back up your data online, update the app automatically and more

Loot

This simple app allows you to manage your personal budget much like you do your check register. Features allow for multiple bank accounts, recurring transactions, funds transfer and more to help you keep up with various aspects of tracking your money.
These are only a few of the thousands of Android applications available, but each one offers a valuable feature to help you make better use of your smartphone and better manage your life.

It is often the case that a vast amount of money has been spent on buying a historic car so it seems logical that car insurance be purchased to protect it from any damage. In years gone by, the largest number of insurance claims on historic vehicles has come from either theft or fire. Evidently, these are two of the most obvious reasons for needing car insurance along with damage in traffic accidents.

Various factors are taken into account when quoting a price on car insurance. With over 30 years experience in arranging policies, the insurance broker company understands the particular needs that historic car owners have and would need from their car insurance.
The competition for car insurance companies is fierce which is why knowledge and research are essential. For those with a homeowner’s insurance policy, the chances are that historic cars will be covered to a certain extent. Considering the amount spent on a historic car, it is usually worthwhile to insure it with a policy which will protect it fully, along with the garage it is stored in to ensure your investment is covered entirely.

By implementing a few security measures, car owners can keep the cost of their insurance policy at a minimum. The installation of fire and burglar alarms for obvious reasons as well as climate control systems which monitor temperature and humidity are ideal for historic car owners looking for a low-cost car insurance policy.

For those who own a historic car, insurance is a necessity. Car owners contemplating leaving their historic cars unprotected should not take the risk. Most car insurance companies now adapt their insurance policies for historic cars so that they can guarantee great cover at competitive rates.

Membership sites offer content available to members only, typically paid. Recently (or not so) they are getting popular because of several reasons:

• Instead of working hard for traffic and monetizing it with ads and affiliate offers you need to sustain a small number of paying members in order to generate decent revenue.
• Instead of asking for one time large sum for an ebook or course you can collect small but ongoing payments from your members.
• Paid content is perceived to be of better quality than free content (although that’s not always the case).
• Even in a paid membership site you can have affiliate offers and your members will be more responsive to them
• Having paid product with recurring payments opens your door for affiliates. Affiliates love recurring payments.
• You don’t need to have finished product (like ebook) to start your membership site. You can start with some content and then build and add to it while your members are in.
• You can get feedback from your members and adapt your content to it.
• You can run a private community which is another reason for the members to stay subscribed.
• Selling a successful membership site is very easy – website buyers on Flippa kill for such a thing.
• You can easily turn top members into content creators (in exchange of free membership) and thus get some of your content created for free.

Is placing your best content behind a door a viable business strategy?

A lot of advantages, eh? Maybe I’m even missing some. Running a membership site seems like a super-lucrative and easy to run business. At least people like Brian Clark who built TeachingSells probably want to you to believe so.

The truth is, running a membership site is a lot of hard work without guaranteed success. If you don’t plan to devote it serious amount of time, work, knowledge, and at least some money, better stick to creating Adsense sites or at best an e-book.

What Does It Really Take To Create and Run a Membership Site

I’ll try to cover all the steps and give some resources. Don’t think of this as a rebutal why you should not run a membership site – it’s more a guide how to do it right.

1. Marketing research.

If you have ever created a content site you know it takes a lot of research to come up with good keywords and content ideas. Membership sites are slightly different because they can’t rely on much search engine traffic (since all or most of your content is protected). Still keyword research is an option to figure out what people search for and whether they would be willing to pay for information about it.

Then you need to check what content is freely available for the niche and think whether you can create better content.

Finally, don’t forget to think about relevant blogs and sites where you can promote your membership site because if you just create it and wait for people to join, it won’t happen.

Here is a great discussion on Warriorforum about the niche selection process.

Don’t forget there are hundreds of tools and thousands of very experienced marketers researching niches all the time and throwing 5 membership sites for breakfast. Finding untapped niche with potential is nearly impossible, so you’d better focus on niche that has some (not much) competition where you can stand out with good content or quality marketing.

2. Content creation

No, you can’t outsource the content for cheap and you can’t use PLR articles. Sure, there are some BS marketers who do it, but they use a lot of grayhat SEO tactics which are not sustainable. You don’t have their networks of sites, you don’t have their budgets, and I’m sure you don’t have their impudence to sell crap.

You need high quality content and the best way to do it is to be an expert in the niche you are building a membership site for. But it’s very unlikely that you’ll be able to match your existing expertise with the results of your marketing research. Unless you are one of the lucky exceptions, here are your real options:

• Outsource the content creation. Again, you can’t do it with cheap writers from Elance. You need real experts to create it and real experts cost a lot.
• Gain expertise. This is surely one of the options for the poor guy but of course it requires a lot of time and efforts.
• Joint-venture with an expert. This is an option for someone like Brian Clark, but most webmasters who have no proven success track record will have their JV requests ignored. And how do you find these experts at first place? Finding someone form your local friend circle is good option. Finding a stranger on the Internet is not – if you find her, she probably has already successful blog/site/internet presense and won’t be likely to JV with a stranger.
• Turn existing academic/dry content into good, easy to perceive interactive content. This is one of the good options. See how dry are most Wikipedia articles or how dry academic papers are. If you turn such content into nice, understandable, graphical content people may like it and may be willing to pay for it. Of course it requires a lot of work and good understanding of the matter.

Don’t underestimate content creation. Starting a membership site with mediocre content will result in very short customer life span (1 billing cycle), a lot of refunds, and bad PR.

3. Creating the site

You can’t throw some cheap Joomla or WordPress site and expect people will pay for it. First you need software. E.M.M.A. membership site software is a good solution and costs $39. There are also many others, but mostly more expensive scripts.

Then you need decent design. While you may leave your membership site simple (although softwares like E.M.M.A. allow adding themes), you need professional design at least for your sales page. And preferably professional copy. Consider few hundreds for both unless you are good enough to do them yourself.

4. Hosting the site

Unless your site becomes very successful, a shared host or VPS will do the work. Don’t forget the mailing however, if you plan to send newsletters or other automated emails you may get in trouble with your hosting company.

If you are optimistic for your traffic levels you can use some cloud hosting platform as they offer quite a hassle free and easy to setup environments.

Don’t forget you should regularly backup member data and keep it secure. Make sure no credit card info is stored on your server and the members passwords are encrypted. You don’t want important data to get exposed if your site gets hacked, and you don’t want member acounts to get lost.

5. Marketing

This is one of the hardest parts. What do you think, you’ll post your site to Digg, do a couple of tweets and people will start enrolling? Come on, it won’t happen. Marketing a membership site is really hard. There are many methods to do it but most of them require hard work and creativity. I’ll mention only these I believe are most efficient:

• Blog. A successful blog is a great tool for marketing a membership site and offers a very natural logic of upgrading from free general content to premium paid one. You know however that creating a successful blog is a full time job too, don’t you?
• Participating on forums. NOT spamming. You need to establish yourself as an expert on 2-3 niche forums. Depending on their size you can hope for 5 – 50 members to join monthly.
• Affiliate program. Affiliates really love membership sites because of the recurring payments, but recruiting them is also work. One of the cheap ways to start is at Clickbak. You will still need to promote, don’t expect affiliates will find you and choose you just because you are listed there.
• SEO is not a good option for membership sites because it’s hard to rank site with hidden content. One option is to keep some articles and snippets of articles free so search engines can index them and people can land on them and then be invited to join (similar to SEOBook)
• Paid advertising. One of the real advantages of memebrship sites as opposed to free content sites is that you are selling something. Therefore paying for advertising makes more sense as soon as you can be in profit. You can pay for PPC ads like Adwords, but also consider alternatives like posting ads directly on niche blogs and sites, systems like Adbrite, Infolinks, Facebook ads etc.
• Guets posting. If you can’t gain a free link from a site and don’t want to pay for ad you can try to guest-post to gain links. These links are rarely clicked and the effort is not always lucrative, but at least it does not cost money.

Online there are bunch of guides about how to promote a membership site but most of them are BS and make it sound easy when it’s not. I can’t find anything worth linking to.

Disclaimer

I’ve been working on my Smart Investing for Working People membership site for some time, and have put it on hold because I was not happy with the content. I have not given up, but I know there’s a lot of work behind now and the launch.

I have several successful content sites. In my opinion building a free content site is easier. In terms of revenue however membership sites have greater potential. A content site build by 1-2 persons very rare can exceed few hundreds of monthly revenue. While good niche membership sites often make $5 – $10k or more (and I’m not talking about gurus like Aaron Wall at SEOBook).