Acai Berry Diet

Ever heard of Acai berries? The first place I heard about them was in my Booster Juice smoothee. After running at the gym, sometimes I'd stop there and get a BJ (lol) with protein and acai in it.

The berry comes from a palm tree, found mainly in South America. Over the last few years, there has been an explosion in demand for acai because of its "miraculous weight loss" properties.

Like every single thing ever written on the internet, take this information with a huge grain of salt.Although there are some nutritional benefits to eating concentrated acai berries, there are plenty of people who believe they can eat the fruit and continue to pick breakfast, lunch and dinner off the McDonald's Dollar Menu. If this were true, there would be no fat people.

Like any diet, acai berries provide a healthy, nutritional supplement to your healthy eating and exercise routine. However, there is no documented, scientific evidence that they influence dramatic weight loss, cure diabetes, or increase penis size. In fact, if you’re looking for anti-oxidants, you’re better off drinking a glass of red wine. These are claims made by affiliate marketers who are trying to make an easy, sleazy dollar from you.

Nevertheless, these outrageous claims still circle around the internet, especially among middle aged women. In my opinion, you're better off buying frozen fruit, low-fat yogurt, and protein powder from Wal-Mart to make one delicious (and healthy) smoothee.

The significance of home equity loans

I've talked before about the importance of owning property. Whether you live in the place you own, or you're renting it out, it's nice to have your monthly rent payment going towards something rather than "down the drain."

Aside from that psychological boost, there is a financial advantage to owning your own home. Obviously, you're increasing your net worth, but you are also eligible for a home equity loan.


Essentially, you're borrowing money against the value of your house. A home equity loan is generally used to pay off big purchases, like medical expenses, a college education, or a super nice car (?).

The interest rate is generally fair, at a little over prime. You must have a good credit rating, and the cash is delivered in a lump sum payment (very nice).

Alternatively, you can get a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC). This is similar to the home equity loan, in that  you are also borrowing money against your house. However, rather than receiving a lump sum payment, the borrower is given a line of credit within which to work: it's pretty much like having a large credit card.

Abusing the Home Equity Line of Credit is often faulted as one of the reasons for the subprime mortgage crisis: essentially, people were exploiting this generous line of credit in order to buy less-than-important items, such as boats, cars, and prostitutes.

After the mortgage crisis in the United States, many American banks froze HELOC lending, as so many homes had been suddenly reduced in value. Banks like Chase are now facing lawsuits over this freeze.

To sum up, owning a home can be a lifesaver when you have to pay off medical bills or college tuition. It's nice to have the security of a large amount of collateral under your feet whenever the situation arises.

Online degrees

Are you reading this alone, in your computer chair, in your crappy apartment? Well, maybe you should consider getting an online degree to make bank.

There are a number of online universities and training programs that will give you a 'quality' education (for a price). 

The most famous one is the University of Phoenix, which has a countless number of commercials and online ads claiming that you can start your life fresh, get a degree, and find a rewarding job. It's that easy!

But should you really take these programs? The answer, for University of Phoenix, seems like a pretty resounding NO. 

A simple google of "University of Phoenix scam" comes up with some scary posts, like this one, where one man claims that his degree consisted solely of him paying $50,000 to fill out a bunch of thoughtless papers and get a useless degree.

Unfortunately, students at many good universities also experience this 'scam'. The online University of Phoenix takes it one step further, however, by accepting ANYONE into their program. Here's an example from the aforementioned article:

"1. They enroll anyone and everyone meaning if you can't get accepted at any 2 year or 4 year college, they will accept you, even if you failed your S.A.T. exam.

2. You don't have to take any SAT or other scholastic achievement college entrance examinations to enroll.

3. You don't have to take the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) to enroll in graduate level study.

4. The majority of colleges and universities in the U.S.A. state that if you have been out of college for 10 years, all of your college credits that you have earned become expired, meaning, you have to start all over again, as a freshman with 0 college credits. University of Phoenix Online will still accept your college credits even if you've been out of school for 20 years.

5. They will take life experiences as college credit.

6. They enroll people with extremely bad English grammar and writing skills.

7. They say that they'll train you and teach you job skills like how professionals do it in the real world and they don't.

8. Classes are an easy 5 weeks of typing papers and relying on the person with the most knowledge to pass the learning team.

9. Classes are taught by facilitators, not instructors or teachers."

Sounds way too sketchy for me! However, if you're looking in getting a few shady looking degrees under your built in order to apply to some equally shady jobs, then by all means, look into more online degrees. 

Get paid to blog

Just a quick money-making tip for today! If you enjoy blogging, and have free time, you might want to check out some paid blogging jobs for some extra money.

There are some websites that do this, but the best one I've found is http://www.bloggerjobs.biz/

Just taking a quick browse through their top jobs, I've found a couple that could be for me. Social media expert? That's easy.

Sites like this are especially useful if you know a lot about one particular subject. I'll have to think about that and browse some more, but it sure would be nice to be paid anywhere from $20 to $100 per blog post.

Online Dating Part 2 - Getting Laid Quickly

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Online Dating

Single?

Socially awkward?

Ugly as fuck?

Maybe you should consider finding your love online. According to a recent eHarmony statistic, one in eight couples now find each other online through dating websites. Whether they get married is another story, but sites like that have made it their business to get you laid.

Free sites - The best free dating website to use is PlentyofFish.com
Unfortunately, because it's free, it's attracted a lot of creepers/pedophiles/girls-who-actually-have-dicks
You take with the good with the bad and maybe - just maybe - you'll end up with a mate. Let's hope she doesn't look like the 'chick' above.

Paid sites - eHarmony
Apparently, eHarmony is now responsible for about 5% of marriages in the United States. That's insane. They place a lot of emphasis on their unique, in-depth questionnaire that will find you your perfect match in the online dating world. They have plenty of success stories to back them up. Clearly, they're the number one playa in the industry. 



Oh, and eHarmony also has sections for those who only want to date Blacks, Christians, Jews, and old people (lol). I guess this is assuming you're of the same faith, but I'm sure it's useful for the KKK and such.

All right I can kinda see the Jewish nose

But how much does eHarmony cost? It doesn’t cost anything to fill out the eHarmony questionnaire, receive your Free Personality Profile, and be matched up with prospective partners. You only pay when and if you want to communicate with one or more of your matches. eHarmony offers four subscription rates:

• $59.95 for one month
• $110.85 for three months ($36.95 per month)
• 173.70 for six months ($28.95 per month)
• $251.40 for 12 months ($20.95 per month)

That's pricier than I thought it would be, but I guess true love is priceless (should I work for eHarmony or what?)

The next big company is Match.com, who will pair you up with a bang-buddy for only $29.99 a month. The into to their site is pretty clever - apparently they've picked the top 30 or so singles on their website and liberally sprinkled their lovely faces on the opening page.

See all these beautiful people you can meet? Well, prepare to be introduced to people who look about half as cute as they do. Such is the nature of the beast, I suppose.

This is exactly what's going to happen

Now, if any of my readers are married, you may be thinking MY PARTNER WILL BE REALLY PISSED IF I LOOK FOR SEX ONLINE. Fear not, there's a website for you too.

Ashley Madison is a dating website that has been featured on several crappy TV shows (see above). It's a service that discretely hooks up horny married people with other horny, married people (or prostitutes - see above).

If a girl sends you this picture online, she's not a girl

This discreet dating site has three different packages for you slimy people: $49, $149, and $249. The former gets you enough 'credits' to contact 20 people, while the other packages have scalable numbers of credits. Just like in real life, the more you pay for, the more you fuck.

If you just don't care, have no morals, or are really drunk on a Friday night, Craigslist is probably your best bet. It's filled with people just like you (and rapists).

Tiger Blood

Hey did you hear how much coke Charlie Sheen did?

Enough to kill two and a half men.


Also, check out this video for a good Charlie Sheen lol:


youtube

Seriously, does anybody else think this guy is just trolling the entire celebrity media? I can't stand Two and a Half Men, but the stuff that Charlie Sheen is doing now is hilarious to me.

Google Finance

I like money, you like money. When I can't find something to spend my money on, I like to put my money to work for me.

I have a little bit of money right now that's just sitting in a savings account, and I'd rather be making more than a measly 2% (!). However, I've never really ventured into the stock market, or even shopped around for different mutual funds.

Enter Google Finance. In five minutes, I set up a portfolio of 15 different stocks that have been recommended to me by various websites. My plan is to watch their performance over the next month or so, and then make decisions on where to invest based on that.

The best part? Google also lets you have some 'play money'. E.g. I've selected $10,000 to be placed in a few of the stocks that I think will do well. I'll let you know how that goes, but after 3 days I'm down about $50. Whatever.

Check Google Finance out! Maybe one day you'll be a millionaire.

How to make money from buying domains

Remember a little while ago when I made a post on making money from domain names? Essentially, you buy a domain name for a cheap price now, and then sell it for a higher price later.

The next level of this money-making venture is to actively search out popular domains that are coming up for auction and transform them into something useful: you can just put a bunch of ads on the page if you want.

The key is to buy a domain that everybody is already going to.This traffic may come from search engines, or backlinks to a site that once existed at the URL.


Google has a service for this called Pagerank (named after founder Larry Page), which lists websites according to their relevance within a certain topic. It uses complex algorithms and other things that fly way over my head, but it essentially ranks sites based by the number and quality of links that are directed to that website.

Anyways, the money-making part: there are several plugins which will scan the auctions of domain-registry websites like GoDaddy.com and automatically sort through the domains based on their PageRank (which is publicly available). These plugins are incredibly useful because they put all this information right in front of you with just a click, as seen in the picture to my left:


These plugins are not free, but they're not nearly as expensive as one may think. The one I'm using only costs $9.99 because it shows auctions that expire in one day as opposed to auctions that expire in 5 (I don't understand why you would pay more to see auctions that are farther away...?)

Doing a quick search, the best one I've found is at FFPlugins.com

It's clean, professional, and really straightforward, which is way more than I can say about the other plugins I tried. Using their GoDaddy Auctions Plugin, I bid for a couple of sites right before they expired, and they are now making money for me through adsense. It's kinda strange how much traffic you can get with a high PageRank, but I'm not complaining.

With the two domains I've bought, I've made more money in a week than I make in a week at this website (Shelby's Shells, unfortunately, does not have a high PageRank). Check it out if you're serious about this money-making stuff.


Once again, the link is here if you're interested