Welcome to Smuggle Me

If you are looking at starting a small business then you need to take advantage of all the free advice for small business owners. Let me just show you one example of things you can learn for your small business. The minimum wage was just increased here in Nevada. A blog recently wrote about the effect that the minumum wage increase will have on small businesses. This is great information that could help you as a small business owner understand the various things that are going on around you that you might not know otherwise.

Networking has always been about learning from the other business professionals around you. With the power of the internet, you can now network with business people and not have to leave your chair. I have a feeling that a new breed of business owner is going to be created in the digital world.

Today I found out that PayPerPost will be announcing tomorrow their purchase of Performancing. Here are some of the key details of the acquisition.

Included in the purchase:
Performancing’s network of 28,000 professionals (mostly bloggers)
Performancing Metrics
Performancing Exchange

Not included in the purchase:
Performancing for Firefox blog editor
Performancing Partners Ad technology

I’ve personally run across a number of Performancing blog posts that I found useful as a blogger. However, I don’t see how PayPerPost is going to keep this type of great blogger content going. That’s the sad part for bloggers. PayPerPost is offering performancing metrics users an opportunity to get paid to review performancing metrics and exchange platforms.

While it’s a good thing for PayPerPost to have 28,000 more bloggers that could start doing PayPerPost, I wish that PayPerPost were getting more advertisers. Maybe advertisers don’t want to come to PayPerPost because they don’t have enough bloggers or at least a diverse enough set of bloggers. Although, it’s always been my philosophy that PayPerPost will be most successful if they can attract as many advertisers as possible. I can guarantee you that bloggers will swarm to PayPerPost if enough advertisers are putting money on the table.

The real question is whether PayPerPost is going to take all these new bloggers and provide targeted ad placement for their advertisers. This type of targeted blog advertising will make PayPerPost significantly more valuable to advertisers.

I think each one of us is well aware of what an advantage it is to be able to just carry around a few credit cards instead of worrying about getting out enough cash or carrying a dirty check book. Even merchants should be thankful for credit cards, because they don’t have to deal with bounced checks. Add in the miles you can get from credit cards and they are well worth your time. I think we all know these advantages, but credit cards are changing every day. Take a look at some credit card news to see how crazy the credit card industry is. It’s huge and the credit card companies are the big winners. The credit card holders are the big losers.

Let me give you some credit card advice. Do NOT EVER pay interest on a credit card. Do not EVER pay a late fee. Do not EVER EVER EVER pay an annual charge. If you follow these three rules then you will love having a credit card because it will provide you a lot of convenience and will also provide you with some added benefits in the form of miles, points and a great credit rating when you might need to buy a house or something important like that.

I know that many may say that these three rules are unreasonable. All I can say is that it’s not if you plan well. the first one may be the hardest to follow. Although, I only have one suggestion. Live within your means. I guarantee you that I could help each one of you find ways to reduce your budget and save money so that you could live within your means. By doing so you won’t have to worry about paying interest. In fact, in many cases you can start earning interest. Then, you are the one with the power. I know the world tries to tell you that you can have what you want now if you just use credit. Well, ignore it, because all credit really is is giving you what you want now, rather than waiting.

I can’t tell you how liberating it is to not have any debt and it’s powerful to actually have money in the bank.

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