I’ve tossed up a Christmas theme as I’m a fairly festive person and I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to all of you. Christmas can be a troubling time for alot of people financially (Hell, I remember buying peoples presents at the dollar store a couple years in a row) and so I wanted to remind everyone that the profitable facebook campaign I posted a while back is still going strong on Maxbounty. Feel free to try it out if you have not yet!
Also, I don’t think I’ll have the opportunity to post much in the coming weeks due to the holiday season so here are a few blogs that I have frequented to keep you well read over the holidays!
1) Bryn.Me - Bryn odly enough lives only a couple of blocks away from me and does some good work with Facebook Social Ads. He’s been on ClickConsultants Radio Show a couple of times now answering questions for the curious.
2)Neilsweb.com - He touches on pretty much everything about affiliate marketing. I read his blog purely because he points people in the right direction as to what they should be reading. Look out for Zac’s advertising link on his page though - don’t get caught clicking through to the king of cluelessness.
3) Madppc.com - Brad likes to talk and I like to hear him ramble.
Filed Under (Finances) by Ross on 10-09-2008
I’ve realized that there are alot of young people reading my posts and therefore I think it’s a good time post something non-facebook related yet very important to an entropreneur. How to manage your finances.
Finances can be a very tricky thing to keep track of by yourself without proper guideance and alot of willpower. Personally my willpower comes from my anal retentive wife who makes me keep track of how much I make per week.
Step 1:
Open up the appropriate bank accounts. I’ve got FOUR (yes 4) bank accounts to make tracking my money easier.
- Company chequing account - The money is deposited into this account and you pay yourself a weekly wage out of it.
- Family chequing account - Money from the business chequing account is deposited to it weekly. You need to pay yourself a weekly salery so if you run into hard times (say all your ads bomb majorly) you have a few months to figure things out.
- Tax savings account - Money towards taxes goes into this account. I’ll cover later on how much you should be putting in. I personally have this account setup as a high interest GIA which pays me 3.25% annually. It’s a pretty easy way to make a couple extra grand for just putting money into an account.
- Family Savings account - You NEED savings. Shit happens and life can go down the toilet. You need to make sure you have the financial backing to deal with it. If your car breaks down or your house has a major foundation issue - you’re covered.
Prior to opening the bank accounts, do some research for what type of accounts your bank offers. For example, both my company and personal chequing account have unlimited withdraws, meaning the only fee I’ll ever have to pay is the monthly charge. Mind you, I havn’t paid that monthly charge as most banks wave the monthly bank fee if you keep a certain amount of money in your bank account for an entire given month. Usually this number is around $3000-$5000. It’s well worth it to keep that money in your bank accounts at all times as it will save you around $250 a year!
Step 2:
- Calculate how much in taxes you should be paying. I set aside 45% of my profit towards taxes based on how much I make. You are going to either have to hire an accountant or do a lot of research to figure out how much you should be saving for taxes. Different countrys have different tax rates, that is why it is imparative that you find out for yourself. It is always better to overdue how much you save for taxes.
- Create a monthly spending budget for yourself. This includes rent, utilities, food, entertainment, gas, insurance, debt repayment and pretty much anything else you spend money on regularly per month. On that money base your weekly wage for yourself. The biggest mistake I see people doing, is living off of what just comes in. It’s impossible to have a good budget without knowing how much you are going to make.
Keep in mind I am NOT an accountant, however this is what works for me. There are different methods of accomplishing the same things.
Filed Under (Finances) by Ross on 09-09-2008
Ever since I’ve started this blog (and made the mistake of giving out my AIM), I’ve been hurassed by people asking me how much I have made using Facebook social ads. All of these people have been met with a firm fuck off and mind your own business as my finances are my private information. I don’t know how you all were raised but finances are a personal thing that should bairly be shared with family members let alone complete strangers. The only person in my family that has a clue at how much I make is my mother who happens to be my (certified) accountant and financial advisor.
Money should have absolutely no baring on who a person is and whether or not the information they provide is legitamit. Either the information I write down is useful and makes you money, or you move along. I have found this blog quite useful just for myself as a type of journal to write down things and put them in perspective, much like a log or a journal.
Rather than discuss how much I have actually made from Facebook Social Ad’s (as you can blatently tell I’m not going to ever do that) I’ll show you the things I’ve been able to buy because of it:
- A new car - 2003 Saab 9-3 Linear (click to see it). My wife needed a car that she could drive and wasn’t comfortable driving the manual transmission in our other car.
- Pay off all my debts aside from half my student loans. Prior to starting affiliate marketing, I and my wife both had about $90,000 worth of debt.
- A new house. Although we are currently still living in our shitty little apartment, we’ve been preapproved for a mortgage of over $300,000. Not bad for a first house eh?
- A honeymoon. My wife and I had to delay our honeymoon for an entire year due to lack of funding. We partied it up in the Dominican like nothing else.
- A bitching computer setup. A Quad-core AMD Phenom (I <3 AMD), two 22″ samsung monitors, a sweet ass desk (which was actually free thanks to a friends failed living arrangement) and a $300 keyboard and mouse set.
- Alot of other miscellaneous crap.
Anyways, as you can probably tell I make more than enough to live comfortably in a single income household and that is all you need to know.
