money Archive

When Microsoft first launched their cashback search, I called it a copy of Fatwallet. Good Internet dealhunters know all about Fatwallet and how they share the affiliate commissions they earn with you. I’ve earned hundreds of dollars using Fatwallet over the years. For example, if you fly with Jetblue, start your purchase with Fatwallet and earn 2% back on the ticket.

Dealhunters have loved Bing Cashback – there have been events where people have earned upwards of 35% back on eBay purchases. I’ve earned a few hundred dollars and overall the process was very easy.

Sadly today, Bing has announced that they will be terminating the Bing Cashback program effective July 30. Bing SVP Yusuf Mehdi noted in the post that they never saw the broad adoption that they were looking for. It will be interesting to see if Bing search takes a hit once cashback is removed. I know many dealhunters who would perform hundreds of searches to find the best cashback percentages.

Mehdi notes, “In lots of ways, this was a great feature – we had over a thousand merchant partners delivering great offers to customers and seeing great ROI on their campaigns, and we were taking some of the advertising revenue and giving it back to customers. But after a couple of years of trying, we did not see the broad adoption that we had hoped for.”

Looks like we are back to using Fatwallet and eBates for cashback going forward.

Slickdeals members have posted their earnings – here are a couple of the top earners:

• nafaught – $2800
• kimcheefondue $2373.59
• TheEdge $1286.11
• chuckd (and mom)- $6828.32

Leave a comment if you used BCB and how much you saved.

Earlier this morning Venturebeat editor Owen Thomas noticed that some credit card numbers from purchase sharing service Blippy were shared on Google. You can see Owen’s tweet to Blippy staff asking about the issue and here’s the Google search results.

I went through all 16 pages of results on Google and it looks like there are only a few credit card numbers that are repeated many times. From what I can tell, the overall actual credit card numbers shared are less than 10 although this is just from one search query – no idea if other queries would provide more numbers.

I have emailed the Blippy team for more info and will update this post when I hear back.

In other Blippy news, they just announced a new round of funding yesterday – Techcrunch notes a valuation just near $50 million.

Update: Owen has just posted regarding this issue on Venturebeat.

Update 2: If you change the timeframe on the Google search results, it looks like this data is at least two weeks old. The numbers only appear in the “all time” results.

Update 3: VentureBeat spoke with Blippy founder Pud – read the full email here – it appears as I noted above, it was only for 4 credit cards during their very early days. I’m not sure how that changes how Blippy users will feel about any cc numbers being publicly shared.

Here’s a sample from Google – I crossed out the actual credit card numbers.

It’s all over the place lately – the television ads, the billboards, the radio ads…it’s the 2010 US Census. That’s right – it seems you can’t consume any media without hearing, “We can’t move forward until you mail it back…2010 census.” All I can think when I hear the jingle is, “how much are we spending on this and how can we do it cheaper and more efficiently?” Well, tonight I learned that we will spend $15 BILLION on the census over the period from 2001-2013. I’m not into politics but I am into business and am sure we could create a much more efficient data collection system and then use that money so much more wisely – just imagine if we used that money for public transit or education!

I do understand that we need to figure out how many people are inside the borders of the U.S. and where the people are located so monies are properly allocated. I finally received my 2010 census form on Tuesday.

I am splitting this post into two areas: general census questions and a “wtf technology” section. First up…general questions:

• You mean the U.S. government can’t figure out how many people are in each household by using tax forms?
• Apparently some people received a postcard and then the form – I only received the form
• The form asks for my date of birth AND for my age – you mean to tell me that our government systems can’t figure out that if I put 12/1/1950 for my dob that my age is x? Hell, my coding skills are average and I could work that up in a few hours max
• Instead of paying census workers to go from home to home, why not require anyone getting government assistance (except in certain circumstances) to work x hours on the census?
• We have a president who used Twitter once – and we are mailing hundreds of millions of forms around the country? We have a postal service that says they have no money and we are injecting all these documents into the system?

Now on to the technology side and my suggestions on fixing the census system.  Why in 2010 are we sending forms via the mail back and forth? The form is amazingly simple – for those outside the U.S., here’s what they ask for each person inside the house:
Continue reading “Things I Don’t Understand: The 2010 US Census” »

Yesterday I wrote about the need for live video streaming at “infomercial conferences“. On my content ideas pad I wrote, “spend $20k” — this is the amount that it costs to present on stage at the DEMO conference which was held earlier this week.

Francine Hardaway wrote a column yesterday on Fast Company asking if a big launch event (like DEMO) is worth it for a small company. The column is a must read as Francine goes over the list of pros and cons for spending $20k (more like $30k all-in) for 6 minutes on stage at DEMO. The net comes down to something I very much agree with – if your product or service is in the social media space, it’s not the place to be. I would add that if your p/s needs early adopters, it’s also not the place to launch. If your product or service is enterprise-related or is a gadget, it might be worth looking at DEMO as part of a launch package.

Robert Scoble wrote one of his best posts this year yesterday where he asked, “where oh where did the great startup launch go?” Robert goes into detail about how Bug Labs launched their gadget versus using a large conference to launch a startup. Robert wonders if his readers can name one of the companies that launched this week at DEMO. I watched every single presentation (some live with a “press-only feed”) and I think I can only name a couple of them. I don’t fully agree with all of the steps Robert suggests, but overall his list is strong.

Continue reading “How Would You Spend $20k?” »

Typically corporate trips are great – you get to use someone else’s credit card for travel and meals. There’s only one time that corporate travel sucks – and that’s the time it takes to put together the expense report for the trip. As a former accountant and auditor, I got the bonus of having to review and let employees know when their steak and vodka was over the corporate limit.

Startup ExpenseBay aims to make reporting expenses easier and less painful. ExpenseBay allows you to connect to your personal or corporate credit card. Your transactions are downloaded into ExpenseBay and then you can assign them as needed into the different categories (e.g. meals, hotels, escort services, etc.). The mobile app also allows you to note cash transactions as they happen which is typically the biggest issue with expense reporting. 

You can attach receipts into each expense transaction which makes it easy to submit the expenses once complete. In addition, expenses can be submitted into your account via email.

ExpenseBay connects directly with some of the popular corporate accounting and expense reporting packages. They can also provide in-house company expense report management.
Continue reading “ExpenseBay Helps You Deal With the Horror of Expense Reports” »

PO Box and mail forwarding service Earth Class Mail has announced a new partnership today with check processor Bank Serv. The new partnership will allow Earth Class Mail customers to have checks deposited electronically and automatically when checks arrive in their mailbox. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

The electronic check deposit program is available on the Professional account which is priced at $39.95/month. The check deposit service is an additional $35 a month and each processed check costs $2. The cost per processed check goes down the more checks you process per month. While I haven’t done the math, you would need a good number of checks (or a few very large checks) to make the service cost effective.

Earth Class Mail staff, including founder and Chairman Ron Wiener, were part of a video series called “Startup Junkies” which you can watch on Hulu. I think the series is well worth watching if you run a startup as they take you through some of the thoughts around VC funding, team building, development, leadership, office locations, expanding, purchasing capital machinery and marketing. Interestingly it seems most of the people in the video are no longer listed on the executive team page. Also keep in mind that the series was produced for television. I’ve embedded the first episode below.

In other Earth Class Mail news, the Portland Business Journal is reporting Sarah Carr has been named as the new CEO.

Continue reading “Earth Class Mail Partners With Bank Serv for Electronic Check Deposits” »

We’ve written before about the big deals you can sometimes find using the Bing cashback search. Tonight I found (via Fatwallet) that you can grab 15% on some purchases at Dell by starting at Bing.

Click here to view the search results for Dell on Bing. At the top of the results, you will see a sponsored result for Dell that displays the “Bing Cashback” link. Click that link and the Bing Cashback page will be displayed and then you can select if you want to browse products on the Business side or the Home side.

Here are the terms and conditions that were provided to me tonight:

• Shop at Dell Today and Earn 15% Bing CashBack
• Offer applies to purchases on Dell Home & Home Office and Small & Medium Business on this visit only.
• Purchases from Dell Outlet, Dell Public or Large Enterprise stores are NOT eligible for this offer.
• Dell reserves the right to end or change this offer at any time.
• View all Bing.com CashBack terms and conditions.

Fatwallet users are reporting that the cashback works on any product (e.g. laptop, monitor, mp3, tv, etc.) but as always, check the current terms and conditions before making any purchase to verify that the Bing Cashback applies to the specific item(s) you are interested in.

I haven’t used Bing Cashback yet, but if the 15% is around on Sunday, I may finally purchase a Wii.