November 2007 Winners- Floyds Best Bloggers Award

Glitter Graphics - GlitterLive.com

In The Blogosphere there are Bloggers that shine a little brighter, always helping others, using kind voices to enrich this Beautiful World we share. Each of these Winners deserves to be applauded by their peers! Thank All of You for Your Amazing contributions to the International Blogging Community!

And the Winners for November 2007 Are:

From MyBlogLog

TNT-Computer TNT (Tips and Tricks)

JJL-Nature Shows and Dreams

Renato d'Oxaguia

oylinki-News, Tips and Information Blog

PetLvr-Battling Depression

From BlogCatalog:

Sn0wTigressJ0-The Laidback Buddhist

purpleladycentre - ART FROM THE HEART

luckyme -Pick Your Potion

urikalish -Urikalization

LadyBanana-Lady Banana

From Blogging to Fame

Deborah Petersen-Life in the Fast Lane

KIM BARKER-laketrees

I have Saved the Best for Last! You have to see this to believe it!:

GREG LUNGER-
Cosmic Photo Art

Congratulations to all the Winners!

If you are a winner, copy the Blue Ribbon to your site and Link it to this Post!

Judges:
You have been hand picked as the Cream of the Crop by:

Floyd Craig and William Thomas

Previous Winners From BumpZee Are:
malawika
parisukat
sidewinder
KiwiPulse
Johblogs
Previous Winners From MyBlogLog are:
Imhar
cooper
carolynloveman
Texas_Jam
Oggin
whydowork
MissladybugNeoAuteur
Previous Winners From BlogCatalog Are:
Lynda Lehmann
coreyirwin
Wilbau
Reasonable Robinson

Previous Winners (Sept. 2007):

Previous Winners From BumpZee Are:

hotdogman
karenlim
thanate
Suzie
ejcooksey

Previous Winners From MyBlogLog are:Shinade

zublizainordin

MorganLighter

ndpthepoetress

francoyong

Previous Winners From BlogCatalog Are:

RennyBA

gerryPlanetEarth

sandydg350762

Gurushabad

robinsonjoel

"Green" WordPress Blogs Up For Grabs-Support Conservation

In order to fund our continuing efforts to Educate and Promote Conservation of our Beautiful Planet, Two WordPress Blogs Have been created and will be auctioned off to the Highest Bidder! This is your chance to own a Beautiful "Green" Blog and to support us as we continue our work! We need Sponsors and Benefactors!

The Blogs are: The Coral Reefs
You can buy it Here:
EBay Item number: 260177522689

The Second New WordPress Blog for sale:
Natural World Site
You can buy it here:
EBay Item number: 260177170410

starting bids are 25.00 (costs of domain name and ebay ad)
Please dig deep and support our work!
Floyd Craig and William Thomas

You can also help by making a small donation here:

MYTH-A million dollars will cover you

MYTH
A million dollars will cover you
A million dollars has long been the retirement portfolio gold standard, and why not? That's a rich sum. But let's get the bad news out of the way quickly. If you earn six figures and have no intention of living on an austerity budget when you stop working, you may need far more than $1 million to support yourself for the rest of your life. The reason $1 million isn't all it was once cracked up to be: As a rule of thumb, you should plan to withdraw no more than 4% of your portfolio in your first year of retirement - otherwise you risk running out of money too soon. You can nudge up your withdrawals slightly each year for inflation. So if you want an annual income of $80,000 - the retirement inflow needed to maintain the lifestyle of a worker earning $100,000 - and you and your spouse will collect $20,000 or so a year in Social Security benefits, $60,000 will have to come from your own savings. At a 4% withdrawal rate, that works out to a nest egg of roughly $1.5 million. Of course, that's just a ballpark figure. With a pension or part-time work or more modest expectations, you can get by with much less than seven figures. The only number that really counts is the number you personally need to save based on your goals and resources. So start figuring. Use the savings calculator to the right to find out whether you're on track.Update these calculations every few years or whenever you have a major lifestyle upgrade. As you draw closer to the finish line, this exercise will give you an increasingly accurate picture of your target, million dollars or not.
How much you really need to save

MYTH-Everyone has debt

Mary and Martin Pearsall

MYTH
Everyone has debt
Mary and Martin Pearsall have lived frugally, saved regularly and invested wisely in their 30 years of marriage. They've also managed to avoid the kind of crippling debt that can spoil the best-laid retirement plans. They steered clear of credit cards by living within their means, and they've dutifully paid the mortgage on their $250,000 Colorado Springs house. They now owe just $64,000. "We've been careful without being draconian," Martin says. "We would never accumulate debt we couldn't handle." Martin worked as an Episcopal priest until last year, and Mary has been a personal trainer and a business consultant. Now, with the help of a sizable inheritance from Martin's mother, they have a portfolio worth over $1 million. With no major debt to hold them back, the Pearsalls plan to scale back their work lives soon and travel, as they've been hoping to do for ages. "I want to be disencumbered from having to be somewhere," says Mary.For most people, during a time of economic growth and soaring markets, it's easy to believe that income will keep rising faster than debt payments. But in retirement you can no longer count on that unlimited potential for better pay. If you don't cut your debt load while you're still working, says Marilyn Dimitroff, a financial adviser in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., you will face the worst possible scenario: a retirement saddled with mounting debt and only a limited income to repay it.
Debt reduction planner

MYTH- You can't get rich with a 401(k)

Pam and Tim O'Friel

MYTH
You can't get rich with a 401(k)
When Tim O'Friel graduated from college, his brother gave him sage advice: Put as much as you can in a 401(k) and don't touch it. O'Friel took that to heart, saving 15% of his salary until he reached the IRS max ($15,500 in 2007). After 13 years of steady contributions, O'Friel, a contract negotiator for a manufacturing company in Thousand Oaks, Calif., has a 401(k) worth more than $200,000."It's not play money," he says. "I'm not trying to beat the market." O'Friel's hands-off approach became even easier a few years ago when Fidelity, his 401(k) administrator, started offering target-date retirement funds. He jumped at the chance to let professional managers keep an eye on his portfolio. O'Friel put all his money in Fidelity Freedom 2030, the fund that's geared to the year he plans to retire. He's confident in the fund's asset allocation - currently 83% in stocks, 17% in bonds - and he's happy not to have to consider it. "I need my investments to be as safe as they need to be and as risky as is appropriate," O'Friel says. "And I do my best not to think about it."
When will you be a millionaire?

Retire Rich: 13 myths, Myth No. 1

Bill Scott

Myth No. 1: You need a big income to build a big nest egg. Other myths busted: A million bucks is your magic number and what it takes to retire early.

MYTH
You need a big income to have a big nest egg
With planning, discipline and a little ingenuity, Bill Scott has built up retirement savings and real estate equity worth about $800,000 over the past 20 years. At the same time, the Alexandria, Va. single father hasn't neglected college funding for his eight- and 12-year-old daughters - both have 529 accounts worth $25,000.How did he do it? When he joined the Marines after two years of college, Scott started saving $100 a month for education, thinking he'd eventually return to civilian life and finish school. He ended up staying in the Marines, but he didn't stop saving. "I never missed the extra money because I never let myself have it," Scott says. "As I had more, I increased the amount I saved."Still, Scott feared that a master sergeant's pension and a small nest egg weren't enough to retire on. So seven years ago, he started buying properties to rehab and rent out. He's now pulling in around $5,000 a month in rent. Being a landlord on the side isn't for everyone, but it's helped Scott fund his retirement-- and his daughters' education. "You have to be creative," Scott says. "The biggest thing is to have a realistic goal and then find out how to achieve it."
Savings calculator

Make Money From Your Pictures

In Order to Earn on the Net, You must do your research! This is a sample article from:

Net Hustlin' Make Money Online

The Blog is creative and contains some very cool info about earning online!

Sample Article: Excerpt from: 10 Funnest Ways to Make Money Online

See also: How to Write a Successful Ebook Monday, October 8, 2007

Vume

Vume (pronounced view-me) offers an ad revenue-share for pictures uploaded on their site. The pictures have to be 100% created by you. The upside to using Vume is it offers you a lot more exposure with their easy interface. The style of the website is much cleaner than some other sites offering the same service. The downside is that Vume is ranked 57,000 on Alexa, which is low in comparison to the others. They have only been around since April 2007 so they may see a lot of growth in the upcoming year.

Share-a-PicShare-a-Pic lets you put your own adsense on your galleries which means you keep the profits from the clicks. They are also ranked higher - 2,700. The downside is that the layout is horrible. There are annoying pop-ups and there are no member profiles or comment options. To use the forums you have to have at least 5 successful galleries. I'm guessing this is to keep the people who haven't made money from scaring off new users. Here is their 90's looking public gallery:My suggestion is to link your galleries to your myspace, blogs, and other sites if you want to make money with this site.

FlixyaIt has similar features to vume only with more traffic. There are comment options, member profiles, and rating systems for the pictures. You put your own adsense on the site, which means 100% revenue. The only downside is flixya also has their own ads up so the site tends to look flooded with ads.Places to sell your photographyRoyalty-free stock photography sites are the easiest ways to sell your photos on the web. Many web designers use their services.

These are the three most popular sites that are hiring photographers:

ShutterstockBuyers subscribe for a period of time and get unlimited downloads.

IStockPhotoPhoto prices range from $1-$15. Photographers make 20% of the profit.

FotoliaPhoto prices range from $1-$3. Photographers make from 33%-80%, depending on their rank

More information about stock photography is available at photosecrets.com

Online holiday spending sees big gains

glitter-graphics.com

Online shoppers spent more and ordered later during the 2006 holiday season, according to new statistics.
The record for single-day online sales at U.S. sites was broken on December 11 at $661 million, according to comScore Networks. That record was then broken two days later, with $667 million spent online on December 13. In 2005, the record was $556 million spent on December 12.
Growth in online spending was up about 26 percent overall from 2005, according to comScore Networks. The company analyzed whether the growth was in the number of buyers or the dollars spent per buyer. It determined that approximately 17 percent was due to an increase in buyers and about 7 percent was attributable to the dollars spent per buyer, according to Andrew Lipsman, a senior analyst at comScore.
The strongest growth came in the jewelry and watches category, which saw a 66 percent increase in the amount of money being spent, followed by video games, event tickets and video game consoles, said comScore in a report. Apparel and accessories, at 33 percent, showed the least growth.
"We noticed a change in high-ticket categories like jewelry, specifically items like watches and in-excess-of-$10,000 diamond rings. People are really willing to purchase these high-ticket items over the Internet now," Lipsman said.
Many online retailers extended their guaranteed shipping date (the last date eligible for an item to arrive in time for Christmas), and shoppers appear to have taken them up on that offer. There was a marked increase in sales between December 16 through 18, compared with those same dates in 2005, suggesting that people have increased trust in online retailers' ability to deliver goods on time, according to comScore.
The move essentially extended the online holiday shopping season, giving online retailers more time to compete with brick-and-mortar stores for purchases.

Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving--rumored to be the biggest online shopping day--turned out to be a myth. It ranked 12th among U.S. retail sites, with online shoppers spending about $608 million on that day, according to comScore. The company does not include travel, auctions or large corporate purchases in its holiday retail spending statistics.
In terms of the number of online transactions, MasterCard ranked December 11 as the busiest shopping day. Amazon did as well, saying it sold over 4 million items on that day. MasterCard had three other Mondays ranked in the top five as of its mid-season analysis; it ranked "Cyber Monday" as the fourth busiest online shopping day in terms of transactions.
Top online retailersResearch analyst comScore also ranked the most successful online retailers for 2006.

Amazon.com came in first in terms of dollars spent between November 1 and December 26, the holiday shopping season. Dell.com, Yahoo.com and Walmart.com came in second, third and fourth, respectively. They were followed by Ticketmaster.com, JCPenney.com, Apple.com, BestBuy.com, VictoriasSecret.com and CircuitCity.com.
In terms of growth in sales between 2005 and 2006, however, BestBuy.com was No. 1 and Walmart.com was No. 2, according to comScore.

Both online and in stores, LCD TVs were the most popular consumer technology retail items for 2006, with consumers spending a total of $924 million on them, according to the NPD Group. Digital cameras, notebook computers and MP3 players followed as the next biggest selling consumer technology items. Plasma TVs came in fifth at $393 million. Those top five categories made up over 42 percent of total volume for consumer technology sales. In 2005, items were more diverse, with the top five only representing 33 percent of overall volume.
Amazon.com released its own statistics recently on popular holiday items.
Not surprisingly, the most popular electronics item was the Apple iPod in various models. The most popular PCs purchased from the online superstore were the 13.3-inch Apple MacBook in white and black, and the Sony Vaio 15.4-inch notebook. In the category of computers and video games, the Nintendo DS Lite in "polar white" was the bestselling item, while the Nintendo Wii appeared the most on Amazon.com wish lists. Other top sellers were the Canon Powershot Digital Elph cameras and Garmin GPS systems.

Money: Friendly Finance

glitter-graphics.com

There's a new crop of Web sites for folks who get lonely using Quicken. Social-networking finance sites help members track their money while they kibitz with others to see how they are doing. At wesabe.com (Spanglish for "we know"), financial behavior is shared but identifying details are not. Members can consolidate their financial-account records, chat about shared goals like saving for a car and learn whether they are spending more or less than average on groceries, clothes or beer. At geezeo.com, users can put all their financial info in one place and get it sent to their cell phones, so they can check balances before they shop. Two other sites, buxfer.com and billmonk.com, let social groups track money together. The sites can be used to set up a budget for a shared summer rental or to remind buddies they still owe you for that dinner out last month.
—Linda Stern

Got Bad Credit? Six Credit Cards that can keep you charging and won’t make you pay through the nose.

Has your credit rating taken a few knocks lately? Here are six cards that can keep you charging and won’t make you pay through the nose.

Oct. , 2007 - For years cheap credit-card offers filled American mailboxes, promising to finance our every consumer whim. Not anymore. The ill effects of the subprime mortgage mess and the global credit crunch are trickling their way down to consumers’ wallets. Card issuers aren’t as solicitous as they used to be, says Credit.com communication director Emily Davidson. “They’re tightening standards for accepting new customers and lowering credit limits.”

Maintaining a decent credit history is more crucial than ever. Unfortunately, that’s hard to do if you’re saddled with a high-interest-rate card. Rates as high as 19.9 percent are not uncommon these days, especially for people with a few blemishes on the credit report. With rates like that, it’s easy to fall further down the debt spiral: overborrowing or missing a payment can lower your credit score, triggering your interest rate to rise and forcing you to chip away at interest and principal that may take a lifetime to eliminate.
How do you avoid that trap? The obvious answer: live within your means. “If you’re late with payments or run up your cards to their limits, your score falls,” says Craig Watts, a spokesman for Fair Isaac, the company that measures credit scores. And before you start cutting up your cards, think for a minute about how you’ll rent your next car, reserve your next hotel room or book your next flight. It’s not easy to do any of those things without a credit card.
But what if you’ve already started to slip behind? Don’t worry. Securing affordable credit is possible. While the median credit score is 725, according to Fair Isaac, about 15 percent of cardholders in the United States score between 650 and 700. In that range credit bureaus consider you a moderate risk, a person with a “fair” credit history—not “bad” but not exactly “good.” Below 650 you’re best off with a secured card, in which case you put up the cash beforehand, says Davidson.
But there are still attractive deals for people with only fair credit. To find them take a look at sites like Credit.com, which groups card offers for those with blemishes on their credit history. Credit.com showcases six cards that can keep you charging without making you pay through the nose:
Capital One Platinum MaxIf you’re worried about missing a payment and getting jacked up to a default rate, this card is your shining knight. Your 16.9 percent APR is locked for three years—“no matter what.” There is no balance transfer fee and a low $19 annual membership fee.
Citi Platinum Select MasterCardThis card has features of more prestigious plastic but can be easier to get. You’ll enjoy a relatively low 14.74 percent APR, and a zero-percent introductory rate on transfers for six months, plus no annual fee.

Capital One PlatinumThis card has a $29 annual fee, but it may be well worth the price for travelers or if you plan to transfer a balance. It offers a zero-percent introductory rate until April, no balance transfer fees, no foreign transaction fees and a low 8.9 percent APR.
Citi Bronze AAdvantage MasterCard Here’s an option If you’re keen to earn American Airlines miles with your purchases, though the current offer is a steep 17.74 percent APR.

AT&T Universal Savings & Rewards CardConsider this new card if you use AT&T. You’ll get points and a low 13.74 percent APR on purchases, and a zero-percent APR on transfers for 12 months with no annual fee.

Orchard" target=_blank>Orchard Bank Prime Platinum Master CardBank is known for its roster of cards for people with bad histories. But if your credit is fair you can wangle a reasonable 15.99 percent APR, zero percent on transfers for six months and no annual fee. If you apply and don’t qualify, you’ll get a subprime card offer.