Posts Tagged ‘Money’
Question Asked: How Much Does Money Weigh?
According to the US government (other countries will certainly vary), a single note (regardless of denomination) weights roughly 0.032653 ounces. Which means there’s roughly 490 notes in a pound.
So, how much would a million dollars weigh?
- 2,040 pounds (if all one dollar bills.)
- 408 pounds (in five dollar bills.)
- 204 pounds (in ten dollar bills.)
- 102.04 pounds (in twenty dollar bills.)
- 40.81 pounds (in fifty dollar bills.)
- 20.40 pounds (in hundred dollar bills.)
How much would a billion dollars weigh?
- 2,040,816 pounds ($1 bills)
- 408,163 pounds ($5 bills)
- 204,081 pounds ($10 bills)
- 102,040 pounds ($20 bills)
- 40,816 pounds ($50 bills)
- 20,408 pounds (in $100 bills)
So, if you were thinking of knocking off a bank and saying “Give me a million in $50s and $20s), and thinking you were going to run off into the sunset carrying it, it’s heavier than you probably expected. 40 pounds may not seem that heavy, until you’ve been carrying it for a while. You wouldn’t get far.
Question Asked: What Is The Highest Earning Band Of All Time?
To clarify, before I delve into this; I’m classifying “band” as a group of people (men or women, or any combination thereof) who play musical instruments together.
Example of a band: Boston.
Example of a non-band (and therefore disqualified): Backstreet Boys
No instruments - No band.
With that said, some of the highest earning bands in history are:
- The Beatles - having sold over 1.3 billion copies of their records, they are without doubt, the highest earning band in the history of the planet.
- The Rolling Stones - sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 million records, not even half of The Beatles. However, “The Stones” have a huge fan following, who’ll gladly shell out $200 for a ticket to a show.
- U2 - U2’s success is unparalleled in today’s day and age.
- The Grateful Dead - I think this is because my boss has seen them roughly 36,000 times.
- Velvet Underground - Also notable as the highest amount of money paid for a single vinyl record, on eBay, in history.
- Led Zeppelin - historic, ground breaking, and filthy stinkin’ rich.
The list goes on, and dwindles down there from there, really dropping off, montarily, after Led Zeppelin.
Hope that answers your question.
Question Asked: How Do I Make Money With A Website?
The obvious first thing you’re going to need, is a website. I’m assuming you already have one, but if not, here’s how to get started: click here.
Assuming you have a website, you’re well on your way. Now, the next thing you should know is quite simple: if your website sucks, no one’s going to visit it, and you’re not going to make any money.
Have a good, quality website, that gets updated often, with content people care about. While millions of people are blogging nowadays, if you’re blogging about your personal life, not enough people are going to care, to come to the site, and click on your ads to make you any money, anyway.
With that said, we’re going to go through this answer assuming you a) have a website, and b) it doesn’t suck.
The first place you should start is with Google AdSense. For people who are new to the online “trying to get rich quick” world, AdSense is the easiest place to start, and generally had a pretty good payout, depending on the content of your site.
With targeted pay per click type ads, the content of your site plays a valuable role into how much you’ll get paid per click. AdSense ads that get shown on your site are ads that other companies pay to have displayed on the Google network. Ads from lawyers, for example, would pay much more than ads for a toothbrush. So if your site is about legal matters, you’ll see ads for lawyers, and result in getting a much higher cost per click, than if your site’s about toothbrushes.
Once you’ve got AdSense running on your site, you should start to see some money coming in. If you use FireFox, there’s a great plugin called AdSense Notifier, which updates every so often with new numbers. That makes it so you don’t have to go login to Google’s site to see how much money (if any), you’ve made.
In addition to AdSense, some other ad networks you may want to look at, to display banners on your site, are Commission Junction (cj.com), and LinkShare (linkshare.com). These two companies will allow you to apply to different companies (Netflix, Apple, Best Buy, etc.) to display their banners on your site. These banners work in a bit of a different way than AdSense.
While AdSense pays you when someone clicks on your ad, these banners are generally cost per purchase. Which means a million people could click on your ad, but if no one buys something from that company, you don’t get any money.
The upside is, the payouts are generally higher, in some cases 4 or 6%. If someone clicks through to Best Buy and buys a $2000 computer, and you get 6%, that’s much bigger than a dime from an AdSense click.
You’ll probably want to keep the ads on your site fresh, without having to update pages and templates and whatnot. To do that, you’d want to get an ad management system. I recommend OpenX (openx.org.) Once you’ve installed this on your server (which is super easy), you can begin dynamically serving ads on your site, just by dropping your banners into the system. It’ll generate some code that you put on your site, and that’s it. When you have more banners to add, you simply drop them into the OpenX system, and it rotates the banners on your site for you, automatically. Easy as pie to keep new banners running all the time.
Some things you should know about trying to make money online with a website:
- It doesn’t happen overnight; it’ll take years in some cases to make a profit off a website.
- Good content is key; people won’t come back if your content’s uninteresting.
- You need a steady stream of traffic to make any real money; Ten visitors a day isn’t going to cut it.
- Never click on your own ads; most companies will throw you out of their program if they catch you doing this.
- Don’t ask your friends and family to click on your ads; that will also get you in trouble.
- Advertisers may not accept your application; some companies are picky about who they accept. Don’t take it personally.
- Eventually people will come to you to advertise; when your site starts getting thousands of visitors a day, sometimes people will come to you to buy ads.
- Be fair when charging advertisers; while you want to make a profit, you also want the advertiser to renew their contract again. Overcharging them will put money in your pocket up front, but won’t bring the advertiser back next month.
- Always check out your competition; if a website similar to yours is doing something cool this week, out-do them.
- You can never post too much; the more you post, the more reasons people will have to come to your site, and the more money you can potentially make.
Just remember, it doesn’t happen overnight, and don’t cheat the system. It takes years, sometimes, to see any real money coming in from a website.
In some cases, if you’ve got a really great website, some big company will come along and want to buy you. That, I think, is the ultimate dream of everyone who owns a “for profit” website, myself included.
Hope that helps, and best of luck with your (new?) website.
Question Asked: How Long Does a Savings Bond Take to Mature?
There’s a lot of different series types of savings bonds, but the type that people typically buy for gifts (usually for children), are EE bonds.
An EE bond takes about 17 years to fully mature.
When you buy a bond, you pay 50% of what the face value is. For example, if you buy a $100 savings bond, you pay $50 for it, and hold onto it for 17 years, and it’s worth $100.
If you’re not sure if it’s been long enough or not. The treasury website has a calculator (here).
It may sound like easy money, buy a bond, hold onto it for 17 years, and double your money. It’s not quite that easy, really. EE bonds have an annual limit of $10,000 dollars, which means you could only make an extra $10,000 per year, when your bonds mature.
Plus, if you do the math out, the percentage rate on a 17 year savings bond isn’t really quite as good the 50% that it would seem. If you take the 50% and divide it out over the 17 years, it’s just shy of 3% per year. A high interest savings account (ING Direct, for example) can give you that interest on a monthly basis, and would probably be a wiser investment.
Hope that answers your question! Do you have a question? Be sure to Ask MJ!
Question Asked: What’s the Best Way to Save Money?
In today’s day and age, I’d say to walk or bike anywhere you need to go, that’s feasible to do so. Driving nowadays will surely deplete some savings, quickly.
With that said, some great other options are:
- Only spend money when you need to, don’t buy impulse items. If you go to a store, have a clear vision of what it is that you want to purchase.
- Put money into an ING account, or another high interest savings account. Big banks like Bank of America won’t pay you the type of interest that your money deserves to make.
- Open a 401K through your employer, and chose wise stocks to have them invest your money in. This won’t pay off until you retire, but it will most likely pay off in the long run.
- Hide money from yourself. Give it to your significant other, and tell them not to give it back to you regardless of how much you beg.
- Bring your lunch with you to work. As someone who goes out to lunch every day, I can’t imagine how much money I’d save if I brought my own lunch.
Saving money is hard, for pretty much everyone (Bill Gates excluded, of course). Everyone always feels like they’re worth more money from their employer. Saving money’s always proved difficult for me, mainly because I like buying myself stuff so often. Breaking the “I need to have that” habit is tough, but rewarding. Try reducing the amount of CDs or DVDs that you buy yourself. Maybe stay home, and have dinner there, instead of going out.
There’s a zillion ways to save money, but the “best” really depends on you, and how you spend money. The next time you’re in a store, and have Vanilla Ice’s Greatest Hits in your hands, ask yourself “Do I really need to buy this?” Do that every time you want to buy something. You’d be surprised how infrequent you actually need something.