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I have the solution to my previous post about the amount of unused gift cards…and for getting the gift card you really wanted: Cardavenue.com. Not only can you purchase gift cards from a handful of retailers, but you can sell and trade your not-exactly-the-one-I-wanted gift cards. One’s garbage is another’s treasure…or however that saying goes. When buying and/or trading gift cards and gift certificates, Cardavenue has a guarantee system in place called CardAssure. The process includes verification of card values as well as a $100 guarantee per transaction…with a $10 deductible. Trade your Dave & Busters card for a Blockbuster Video card, or your JCPenney card for a Best Buy or Circuit City card.
This screen shows the summary of information. This user wishes to trade this $100 Home Depot gift card for a Bed Bath & Beyond or Best Buy card. The thing that sticks out in this whole service are the fees, particularly for trading gift cards. Below is the schedule of fees:
Cardavenue does not charge Buyers of gift cards.
*Note to sellers: If you decide to accept credit card payments, PayPal will charge PayPal Premiere members 2.9 percent + .50 per transaction.
Let’s assume for a second that you want to sell your gift card. We’ll use a $100 gift card, with an ending auction price of $90. How do Cardavenue’s fees stack up against eBay?
Bottom line in my opinion…when it comes to trading gift cards, sure you pay a fee, but what’s the difference in selling your gift cards for a fraction of the value anyway. Looks like Cardavenue is the new marketplace for gift cards.
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Don’t fret! Before you dig your claws into me for writing that title, allow me to posit that my statement is obviously subjective. Hey. He’s amazing, and I thought it was certainly warranted based on what I’ve seen (about a hundred times since 1995 by the way). I’m what they call a “Montiac”.
mon·ti·ac (mÄ’ntÄ“-Äk’) – noun
any intemperate or overly zealous or enthusiastic person…when pertaining to Monte Montgomery.
It sounds like a bad thing? Give me a sec. I’m not nearly as devoted as most Montiacs, many of which have seen him about a hundred times this year alone. What makes him so special? Well, he sports a battered Alvarez acoustic, and an ability to confuse even the most avid guitar players with his finger and pick style of play. Oh, and he’s not a bad songwriter either. Unfortunately, he hasn’t attained the commercial notoriety of the greats like Clapton, Hendrix, Beck, Van Halen, Satriani, SRV, Page…the list goes on. While I don’t consider myself a guru or qualify myself as worthy of ranking him up there with those names, I definitely believe he’s deserving of such respect. Have a look at this video. It’s old and poor quality, but in my humble opinion, the best version of Monte’s rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing that I could find (my favorite includes his former bass player, Lonnie Trevino, Jr., who actually sang the song and did it absolute justice). While it might be considered taboo for me to say that Monte rips the best version of the song I’ve ever heard period, you can certainly understand why the thought crosses my mind after watching this.
Here’s one more version just for comparison’s sake: Monte Montgomery Little Wing
Read more about Monte on his Official Website and on his fan website, The Full Monte. I’d highly suggest seeing Monte live. You won’t be disappointed.
For more dates, click here. By the way, a good starter CD would be Mirror
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Since about 1998, I’ve been using Marketocracy to keep track of stock recommendations, tips, etc. They start you off with $1 million in bogus cash with which to shop around (which equals a Net Asset Value [NAV] of $10.00). So, if you read the SmartMoney Mag article about the Where To Invest In 2007, you can pick and choose stocks you would have purchased if you had the money. I managed to get my NAV up to about $22.00 with a portfolio that included 50% solid, bonafide stocks, and the rest with speculative stocks. After abandoning my portfolio for a couple of years, I had to rebuild my account back from just under a $2.00 NAV. Ouch. I’m at about $14.53 now.
Stocks are categorized in a variety of formats including industry, percentage held, and by how they are being traded by other Marketocracy managers. There are also helpful forums to discuss your stock picks or queries. There are over 60,000 users to date and counting.
Membership Benefits include
And if you are interested in Premium Membership, you can get additional perks like real-time service and research for as little as $12.50 per month..and they give you 30 days for free to try it out.
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According to an article in BusinessWeek today, “the Web’s most visited site lags Google by billions in advertising revenue, and it’s going to take more than its new ad-delivery technology to close the gap”. Well, maybe so. But its about time someone ponies up against the ad giant.
It’s difficult to put a dollar figure on how much Yahoo stands to gain from Panama because the company does not reveal how much of its overall advertising revenue comes from search. Using data on total search queries, released by comScore, Caris & Co. analyst Tim Boyd estimates that Yahoo made on average between 10¢ and 11¢ per search in 2006, bringing in a total of $1.61 billion for the first nine months of the year.
Microsoft has its own ad network in the works. TechCrunch wrote an excellent post about it back in August.
Both articles allude to Yahoo!’s “catching up to do”. Google sealed a deal in August to advertise on Myspace while Microsoft did the same with Facebook. That’s 100 million and 9 million users respectively. That’s alot of eyes on your ads. As I mentioned in my post about “Where To Invest In 2007″ (Yahoo! is one of the companies recommended by SmartMoney Magazine), good news is that advertising is expected to grow 20% annually for the foreseeable future. According to research discovered Daniele Guerini on seekingalpha.com, Yahoo generates $0.04 per US search vs $0.11 at Google. Panama could definitely help reduce the gap significantly. A reduction of the gap to a more reasonable 30% discount [$0.077 per search] would generate approximately $800M of extra revenues based on the number of searches…revenues generated at no extra cost.
I’ve got my popcorn ready…this should be an interesting year in the battle for ad dollars.
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Well, Kwanza begins tomorrow…but the commercialization of the holidays isn’t over. All the good sales start up again tomorrow as well. If you didn’t get that one item you wanted, arm yourself with giftcards and head out to the shops. Sure they’ll be packed, but what’s new. I’ve already gotten emails from Bed, Bath & Beyond, Linens & Things, Best Buy, The Sharper Image, and Target…just to name a few. And don’t leave out amazon.com
Whatever you decide to do with your day tomorrow, have a safe and happy holiday regardless of what it is you celebrate…yes, even Festivus.
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A friend of mine showed me this video last night. And I figured since he made me watch, you should too. Don’t worry. I’m not just going to post videos for the remainder of the year. Not only is it the holidays, but I’m moving. So, time is limited…and I don’t have my internet access up and running yet. Enjoy…and if you’re not impressed, you can make up for it by watching the Justin Timberlake SNL Video.
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Apparently NBC has created a new benchmark in broadcasting…and it wasn’t on an NBC channel. If you saw last week’s episode of SNL with Justin Timberlake as the host, you laughed your @$$ off at this video. Prepare to laugh harder. I’m a huge SNL fan…mainly of the older cast stuff. I put this episode up there with any of the Alec Baldwin episodes, which is saying alot for me. It’s no Bill Brasky or Russell & Tate, but over 1 million YouTube viewers watched this UNCENSORED version of the skit in just 4 days of being added. And by posting this version of the skit on YouTube, NBC has figured out a way to get past the censors that keep it from being really, really funny. I present to you…
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