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Money « MandarinMusing.com

Archive for the 'Money' Category

Personal Finance: Invest your Savings in Gold

Housing bubble burst followed banks going bankrupt. What next? Tax revenue collected will decline as unemployment rises further, and the US dollar will weaken further and will not have much value in the months to come as more investors worldwide will invest in more tangible commodity assets like gold rather than volatile paper money, or in the next strongest currency.

Bullion dealers are seeing business revving up in this global meltdown and many have sold their houses in return for gold as historically gold prices have never gone down to zero, even if they dip periodically. 2008-2009 have shown increasing trends in the gold price in commodity terms.

Year     USD/Troy Ounce
2000    272.70
2005    513.00
2008    865.00
2009    925.00 -1200.00 (Current-Expected)

London has the world’s largest market for gold trading, and in 2008, the value of gold trading rose 58% to a record $20.2 trillion (£13bn), according to trade body International Financial Services London (IFSL).

Americans are overpaying on American Gold Eagle coins by hundreds of dollars due to the huge mark-up by dealers, or even if they are bidding on eBay. Yet, it seems like a good proposition for short term gains. For long term gains, it would make more economic sense to invest in gold mining stocks or gold bullion bars that trade close to their bullion value.

For those who do not know, South Africa China is the highest producer of gold in the world since 2007, and may soon overtake India, the highest consumer of gold today in gold consumption also with the demand for gold being triple in 2008. China has an estimated $1.3 trillion invested in dollar-denominated investments, a mere 0.9% of its reserves in gold (600 tonnes), whereas US has 77.3% of its foreign reserves in gold. To increase China’s reserves even marginally, China will have to mass-purchase bullions which will skyrocket the prices to way more than the expected $2000. Gold is the only back to back the yuan as the dollar’s status as a reserve currency will decline sharply, and China is all set to do it.

Gold prices in India have hit record highs over the past few weeks, partly reflecting a sharp depreciation in the value of the rupee that has made dollar-priced yellow metal a lot more expensive, and more people are selling their gold jewelery or exchanging old jewelery which is good for short-term gains. But bad for long term gains as the price of gold is only expected to rise to as high as $1200 per oz by the end of 2009.

It’s time to act – Diversify your virtual gold portfolio, invest in gold mining stocks and hold your gold until you get the best value selling it.

AuctionAds – eBay Auction Ads Launched by Shoemoney

auctionadsShoeMoney and MediaWhiz, the owners of Text Link Ads, have finally launched Auction Ads

Features:

Google AdSense and Auction Ads can run alongside
Auction Ads promises 100% revenue to the publisher of the ad currently

Auction Ads can be chosen with keywords selected by publisher
Auction Ads are well-suited for niche sites
Auction Ads got more than a 1000 subscriptions on the day of launch
Auction Ads would increase bidding on ebay
Auction Ads pay on the 1st of every month, no waiting for 15-30 days
Auction Ads may not work well if your content does not match the ebay ads
Auction Ads may pay you only at the end of an auction

The buzz is big, let’s see if it lives up to the hype. If you’ve used eBay affliliates programs before, do share your views here.

Google Doesn’t Know How To Spend All Its Cash?

google Google Inc. is accumulating mounds of cash from operations, so how is it going to manage cashflows now?

At the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, Eric Schmidt ruled out big mergers and acquisitions. Currently Google invests heavily in huge data centers and networks to expand the range and depth of its Web services. In 2006, Google purchased the most popular Video Sharing site YouTube for a whopping $1.65 billion. What’s left to invest in? If other big companies are going to Google, should Google bother to go to other companies? If yes, where?

Initially risks were taken and they paid off, now its time to retain the numbers that investors are clinging on to.

Ads by Google: “Put your Ads where the Money Is”

Google Adsense If Google ads makes you ogle, you sure are going the right way… use Google Adsense intuitively, if you feel a strong urge to click a particular ad, more than likely, others will.

Here are some quick tips that might do the trick!!

Visibility of ad: Do not dump your ads right at the bottom of your website, unless you have a website where scrolling is not required.

Hot spots: left side of your page and the middle.

Best sizes:
336×280 large rectangle
160×600 wide skyscraper
300×250 inline rectangle
728 leaderboard

Contextual ads: Filter all the useless advertisements from Competitive Ad Filter link below the AdSense Setup tab using the entire URI/ URL of the website starting with www.nameoftheuselesswebsite.com.

Optimize: Use all the three Google ad units if you have a lot of traffic, else cut it off, you don’t want your ads jumping on your audience.

Link/menu ads: Build interest with link units in your navigation or menu area.

Blend your ads with your design: Match the headings and body of your ads with the headings and body of your posts, both in terms of colors and fonts, to some extent.

Multiple websites trial: Check ads in multiple locations to see what works well for your site. You could try using multiple Blogger accounts for experiment/ test.

Google compliance: BEWARE. Placing images in context with ads side by side could be the end of your Google Adsense account. Check the example below.

Google non-compliant ad