My Personal Finance Blog

If you work on a computer, a computer disaster is just waiting for an opportunity to happen. Yes, that sounds dismal, but computers should not be trusted too much. Even techies and data backup fanatics like myself are not safe; we are just more aware of the dangers than most computer users, and we know they are a reality. You will have something bad happen, it’s just a matter of time if you have not already had some kind of computer disaster experience.

My own computer disaster was just over a year ago, and ironically, I have been warning others about the dangers of computer disasters for years. I was working on projects just like any other normal day when it happened. Suddenly, the computer started acting weird, and then I received a cryptic error message that said something like this, “Your computer is totally screwed up. You will need to reinstall the operating system.”

Since the computer was locked up, I had to no choice but to restart, hoping it wasn’t really that bad. Upon the attempted restart, my computer was worse than the day it was made. As far as that computer knew, my hard drive was missing and the operating system did not exist either. Being a knowledgeable computer tech, I knew of several ways to access “lost” data. Every one of those techie methods failed.

So I proceeded to find a computer disaster recovery program just like any computer guru would do in this situation. I found a recovery program and then ran it. I was able to recover the drive, but, the most recent data, and the job I was working on when the computer failed, was unrecoverable. This recovery program was impressive. It recovered a drive that was completely inaccessible before. It recovered almost all of the data. That is an unusual level of success in this situation.

Guess what the recovery program was not able to recover. It effectively recovered all of the data I had already backed up, but almost none of the new (in progress) data was recovered. It was as if my computer selected everything that was not yet backed up and made only that data unrecoverable. It seemed like a conspiracy, but computer disasters are like that. The fact that any of the data was recovered is more than should be expected, but I wanted my new data, and I never did get it.

I can’t help but think of all the data loss horror stories I have encountered. It’s especially sad that four out of every five businesses that experience catastrophic data loss never recover. Eighty percent, and please read that again, 80% go out of business!

Data backups are your only defense if you lose your primary data. I was able to recover my data, but I had backups so I was not worried. I did learn to follow my own advice and back up more frequently, simply because I lost so much new data in this computer disaster experience. You will never be sorry when you have good computer backups, but you could very well be sorry if you don’t.

The reality is, you cannot afford to gamble with data loss. I have dedicated a section of my web site to computer disaster prevention and computer data backup for quite some time. Now I can give personal testimony that taking the necessary precautions is extremely important. You can’t stop all disasters from happening, but you can prepare for the worst so they don’t wipe you out. It could very well save your business.

The economics of publishing books in electronic form are too good to ignore.

When you consider the cost of marketing, publishing, shipping, and returns of printed materials vs. the cost of marketing and shipping an e-book the two are just not in the same league.

The cost of having a book printed and published exceeds $20,000 for about 3,000 copies. Again the cost of an e-book is $0.

How to sell and deliver your books to the reader?

To get your printed book sold you will need to market the book-to-book stores. To get in the bookstore you need a favorable review of your book. The review process works like this:

The author sends out press releases to book reviewers representing the genre of the book. If the reviewer becomes interested in the press release, the author will receive a request for a “review copy.”

The author digs into the stash of books, pulls out a copy, attaches a reviewer or a media kit, and pays for the postage. On a $5 book that may add another $5 in shipping materials as well as postage. Many reviewers will ask you to ship your books by overnight express. The author may find himself spending up to $18 – $25 per reviewer!

Experts in the self-publishing field, state that you must send between 300-500 review copies to target genre reviewers before your book has a chance to become a hit. If you send out 500 book copies at a minimum of $10 per book, you have spent another $5,000 of your money.

Now you have to market the book. It’s your job as the self-published author to get the books into the store, and it is your job to move the books from the store to your customers.

Many self-publishing marketing experts feel it takes around $30,000 per title to effectively market a book.

So here is the rundown of what it costs.

What it costs to print and sell a self-published book

$20,000.00 to print and place a cover on your book.

$ 5,000.00 to send books to reviewers

$30,000.00 to market each book effectively.

$55,000.00 is your total investment.

Out of your initial 3,000 run of books you have already given away 500 leaving you with 2,500 copies to sell.

Assuming your retail price is $20 per book and you can maintain that retail price for one year, the most you will bring in if you sell every remaining book is: $50,000

If you subtract the $50,000 you incurred as expenses you will have a net income of only $0.

Believe me when I tell you that will be the hardest you have ever worked for free.

Are these figures realistic? Yes, they are! Ask any self-published author what it cost to print and sell books.

Now let us use an example of creating or publishing an e-book and bringing it to market.

We will assume that you will want your own web site. It is possible to sell e-books without one, but lets look at all of the possibilities.

Let’s assume that you have a computer and word processing software. You will need that anyway to self-publish your book the traditional way.

What it costs to publish and sell an e-book?

Cost of a Web site with secure credit card ordering is $50 per year. A good hosting company RD-Webhosting Cost of an Internet provider is $240 per year. Adobe Acrobat Software is $269 (One time charge) Create as many e-books as you want with this setup. Marketing costs. You can get by using “sweat equity” in other words you don’t need to spend anything. (You just saved $30,000 Congratulations!) I will explain marketing later on. Cover Graphics. You don’t really need any unless you are posting to Amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com. There are people who will charge $100 or less to create an attractive e-book cover for you. Let’s estimate on the high side of $200. You can use software like Paint Shop Pro or other graphic design software or take a picture, scan it into your computer and use that as your cover art. Review Copies. There are e-book reviewers. You send the reviewers e-mail attachments that include copies of your e-book. Your cost to send it is $0. Think of how many reviewers you can service on the Internet. You will be happy to send out a review copies when you are not paying $10 or $20 per reviewer. Once you own your e-book publishing software, the cost to “print” the e-book in digital form as an Adobe Acrobat, ASCII text, or as a Microsoft Word Document is $0. Your total cost of the e-book production run of 3,000 e-books and your cost of sending these to 500 e-book reviewers including the total marketing costs for one year is $784. Now that you own the software for your next e-book projects, the total cost for each successive e-book is $200.If you sell that $20 book for only $10 as an e-book thus giving your reader 50% savings, you will bring in $30,000. Many on-line e-book sellers are selling e-books at only a 20% discount compared to the printed and bound versions. If you follow that model you will receive $48,000 with out of pocket expense of only $784. I am assuming a print run of 3,000 e-books in this example. An e-book is a digital file. If you have orders for 10,000,000 copies for the year, the cost will still remain at $784 for the first year! Do you see why this may be the best time in your life to consider finishing that novel or to begin selling e-books and booklets on-line?

When considering having your equipment installed, one common idea is just to get your electrician or contractor to install it or to just do it yourself.  Formerly from the retail world, I’ve heard this a hundred times and every time, the explanation as to why to avoid this gets overlooked.  Before you get blinded by the idea of a cheaper price or the cost efficiency of “winging it yourself”, think a little further in.

When faced with the choice of either a team of professionals who know the ins and outs of the products they are installing or someone who knows how to put screws in a wall and mount something up, without even considering price, who would you choose?  Of course you would choose the people who know what they are doing based solely on those facts alone.  Now, allow me to throw two curve balls at the topic. 

The first curve ball is, of course, the price.  The home theater installers give you a price of, let’s say, $600 to mount your TV and run the speaker lines and mount your new surround sound.  You talk to your contractor or electrician and they say they’ll do it for $400.  Obviously, the installers are at a disadvantage with price.  Most people simply stop there and chose.  Here is why you shouldn’t. 

Now the second curve ball is product knowledge.  What does the job actually entail?  The first one being that they are mounting up an internet ready TV and setting up your surround sound receiver.  To put it bluntly, you do not need to be a rocket scientist to plug stuff in.  Red to red and green to green and this looks like it would be plugged into here and viola, its hooked up! That is usually what you would get with the electrician or the contractor assuming they do not have a fundamental understanding of how to efficiently set this equipment up.  Do they understand the differences in frame enhancer modes?  Do they know how to connect your TV or blu ray player to your wireless network for streaming?  Or tougher, do they understand how to setup an AV receiver?  Do they know the differences between Bitstream and PCM?  How to assign secondary amps?  Do they understand how to assign video up-scaling for specific inputs?  It may sound like I’m wording those in the most complicated ways, but when you look into the submenus, those exact words are what you see.

To be completely honest about it, these are things that people, such as myself, know like the back of our hands.  Why?  It is our jobs to know it.  I am pretty sure that I could somehow figure out how to run and electrical line or put up studs and dry wall, but I will not pretend to know how to do it quick and efficiently without reading a manual.  I would admit that I may not be the right guy for the job and recommend you to someone like your contractor or electrician.  That is what they do and what they know.  Home theater equipment is what WE know and what WE do.

Your contractor or electrician may be very well versed and skilled in their profession and definitely has a lot of knowledge in their trade.  Just be aware that the knowledge may not always translate over into the home theater world.  The man skilled with running electrical through your home may not know the right ways to get your home theater running the right way.  They both deal with electricity but are vastly different.  The man skilled with building may be able to mount your TV, plug it in and turn it on, but will it be set up the correct way for your family’s needs?  Every part of the reason you chose that TV will not magically be turned “on” or to the correct setting when the set is powered on.

As a consumer, it is your prerogative to make your buying decision based on value.  Value is an equal amount of price AND performance.  If you buy the cheapest car, do not expect power this and leather that and performance this.  Don’t be foolish and try to convince yourself that don’t need certain things solely because they cost more.  After all, when you purchase the home theater you and your family have been waiting for, getting the right people to hook it up and set it up will mean the difference between you getting a fraction of the experience or the full performance that you paid for.  As my grandfather once told me; Pay a little more now or pay a lot later.

Money has always caused a huge dilemma in many of our lives, subscribing to the best financial newsletters seems to be the only way that you can stay on top of the financial world and all of the problems that everyone is facing. It seems as if things are not going to get any better at the present moment.

There are a plethora of people that are being subjected to losing everything that they have. Millions of people are enraged with the present state of the economy, while thousands are left without a job and no where to turn. No one knows when things will finally begin to pan out, therefore you need to do something about it now!

Studies are showing that by the time that the newest additions to our present day work force are ready to retire they will not be able to. The programs that pay for retirement programs are going to be depleted of funds. This basically means that people are going to have to continue working until they meet the end of their existence.

The only way to ensure that your family as well as yourself will make it through these trials and have a brighter future is to begin to invest. The best financial newsletters will allow you to see what some of the best investment decisions to make for today are, and get you on your way in a positive direction.

It seems as if EFT’s are presently the best form of investment to go with. The EFT’s resemble the mutual funds of prior, but have many more perks and can inadvertently save you a lot of money. There are no maintenance fees to worry about and you do not have to worry about having to pay extra taxes just because you choose to invest.

The world is a crazy place, people who are trying to look out for themselves and store a little money aside for their future are having to pay money back during taxes because of their smart choices. Yet, there are many people who show no concern and they are reaping all of the benefits.

The best financial newsletters will allow you the opportunity to get a head start on everyone else. You will be able to peruse over your investment options in order to choose the right one for you to pursue in the present status of our economy. You should not anticipate on any Government funded programs being able to help you, they are busy trying to get their own budget straight, let alone millions of other peoples expenses.

The best financial newsletters will take you through the exciting world of finances. They will teach you what you need to do to ensure that the rest of your life is taken care of, regardless if the Government has money to pay you to retire or not.

The best financial newsletters will show you all of the great things that you need to know about investing as well as show you some details of the benefits of doing so. Do not allow yourself to fall subject to having to work your entire existence just to make it, invest now before it is too late to do so.

There will be millions of people still working to make ends meet. Do you truly want to be one of those people? The best financial newsletters will help you learn how you can be someone on the greener side of the grass with no worries and financially set for the rest of your life.

Have you ever worried about how your family’s future? You realize that everything isn’t always going to be good. Maybe in the future, you will find many bad things which even you never predict about it. The unpredictable things seem horrible of course though not all of them are bad. But, it’s not wrong action if you prepare about anything that probably will be happened in your life, such as hospitalizing because of accident or a disease suffering.

We never know that whether we have enough money in that moment or not. Although we collect money much now, but your needs always increase. This is time for you to think about having life insurance. With life insurance, you don’t need to worry about money when you hospitalize. You just use the life insurance to help you pay the hospital fees and your family financial will be safe.

There are online life insurance which can be used by you. You can find the company that provides it and choose the suitable insurance plan. The payment of insurance must be suitable with your condition. Your job is the important consideration before choosing life insurance. You also must understand about how the insurance works. It will make you know how will your financial covered by the insurance.