Endless Gibberish

Remember Kiva.org? Basically Kiva allows you to sponsor small business around the world (typically in third world countries) with microloans. It’s sort of the same premise as Prosper.com but you don’t charge interest on the loans. It’s basically charitable loaning in that you’re enabling people to accomplish their goals.

Back in November I decided to loan Alma Nelly Ruiz LLanas of Nuevo Leon, Mexico some money to purchase merchandise for her small business. The loan amount was $750, I only funded $25 because that was the max Kiva allowed at the time because of their explosive popularity.

Every month or so Alma would make a small payment and as of today, she has paid back all her lenders in full. I wouldn’t be too disappointed if she failed to repay me, after all it is charitable loaning.

However the best part in her paying me back isn’t having the money back. It’s that the money can be loaned out to another person to help them with whatever their business needs are. In my eyes the “money” is already donated so what I’m doing is putting it to work. Kiva hasn’t cleared the funds yet so until then I’ll have to wait to choose another small business prospect to give to. My lender page is here.

Getting paid to “surf the web” is back. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out like AllAdvantage (which went bust during the …well dot com bust). Anthony over at Hustler Money Blog referred me to AGLoco, at first I instantly saw the similarities to AllAdvantage. AllAdvantage was a get paid to surf the web company where you downloaded an advertising viewbar to be displayed on your desktop and you got paid $0.50/hour for viewing ads. With the collapse of internet advertising, the company also went under.

So what’s different about AGLOCO and is it worth my time? AGLOCO makes money a number of ways in addition to advertising (product/software distribution, commissions on sales, etc.). I will admit the real way to make decent cash is to refer as many people as possible. The big difference is that AGLOCO doesn’t have a set advertising payout rate, so I guess they determine that rate based upon how much they recieve for the advertsing, product/software distributions, etc.

So why did I join? The #1 reason is it costs nothing to join. A real pyramid scheme would have users pay a fee to join and the only ones who benefit are those at the top. Since Amazon.com doesn’t offer cash rebates through Fatwallet or Ebates I might as well use AGLOCO since they claim they’ll be able to get you kickbacks from companies like Amazon.com for shopping there. Currently the viewbar is in beta, but you can sign up for an account and refer your friends/family to AGLOCO.

You’ll run into people who don’t want to sign up under your referral because they’re selfish or whatnot. People signing up under your referral aren’t in any disadvantage in any way whatsoever. Tell them they need to get over their zero sum thinking, your gain isn’t at their loss… everyone wins.

Okay, I’m not really too sure what eMax is all about. The concept is about using large numbers of people as leverage “to obtain truly compelling prices from some of the most popular national chain stores, restaurants, and service providers.” The site is still in beta and there’s not much to do besides sign up.

The only compelling reason for me to join was that you only need a name and e-mail address to sign up and they offer you 3 free shares in their company. The shares may be essentially worthless not, but this reminds me of the time TravelZoo offered free shares and they survived the dot com bust. People who signed up for the free shares promotion are sitting on a small windfall of $500 to $1600.

Okay, back to eMax. You get 3 free shares for signing up with just a name and e-mail address. You also then get 1 share per referral. You can have a maximum of 10 shares so you can refer 7 other people for 7 additional shares.

Also, sign up for the iPod raffle giveaway so you can “double dip”. Each member you refer will net you a free share and another free ticket into the ipod raffle. Right now I’m not counting on the shares being worth anything, but rather more at the chance to win an ipod. eMax looks like it will be interesting if it pans out.

I chose to participate because it costs nothing, only required my name and e-mail… and might turn out interesting in the future.

MyFico.com’s 6th year anniversary. Use the code 6YEAR to get 20% off any purchase at myfico.com.

FICO scores are the scores most lenders use in credit decisions which is calculated by Fair Isaac’s “secret” formula. FAKO scores are other scores sold by the credit bureaus that generally aren’t used by lenders in credit decisions.

Don’t believe me? Google “FICO vs FAKO”

…and basically every other fantasy portfolio contest for that matter.

Snippet from CNBC’s “Million Dollar Challenge” website:

“In CNBC.com’s Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge, you play the market starting with $1,000,000 CNBC Bucks. Every day you’ll be ranked based on the size of your portfolio, and each week we’ll award a winner $10,000 for earning the largest weekly percentage gain. At the end of ten weeks, the weekly winners, plus the ten highest ranked players – will qualify for THE FINALS.”

So the premise is that the portfolio with the highest percentage gain each week will win $10,000. The problem is that since it’s not real money, people will create multiple accounts and take crazier than hell risks. The contest generally isn’t about investing ability but rather who’s the luckiest gambler. Five out of the top ten players are “nancy beaumont”, either there are a lot of people named “nancy beaumont” or someone created a bunch of accounts and hit it big with them all.