This week the owner of a company that sells iPod battery replacements contacted me about my web pages. He wanted to take over the pages from me so that he could use them to promote his company or place banners on my site. I said I still wanted to control my site, but he could advertise there. Rather than place additional ads, I agreed to replace the current Google ads with ads for his company. I like AdSense ads because they are text and never too garish. His ads are more like regular banners but I said I didn’t want any animation, garish colors, or pop-ups. He also wanted to have me place the banners at the top of each page, which I didn’t want to do. And he asked that I change some of the content on the page. I didn’t do that, but I did make a few changes on my own that should help him out without hurting any other companies I link to.
Passport
My passport expired in 2005 and I needed a new one before the Ireland trip in July. After hearing horror stories about long delays last summer that forced people to cancel their vacations, I didn’t want to wait any later than this week, so I went ahead and filed today. Since it had been less than 15 years since my old passport was issued, I was able to file through mail and save a $30 fee for a new application, but still had to pay $67 for the passport itself. I got pictures at Walgreen’s for $8 (not a good picture, but it’s for a passport) and mailed in the application, pictures, check, and my old passport in a padded envelope. They said it should take four to six weeks, so I think they have worked through their backlog.
The State Department’s passport site (doesn’t render correctly in my SeaMonkey browser, but looks okay in Internet Explorer)
4th Quarter Report
I re-started my Amazon Associates revenue on November 1 since I wouldn’t be paid for November until 2008. As I wrote earlier, things started kind of slow, but ended up doing fine. In addition to the camping stuff, I sold a 160 GB iPod for which I earned $13.80 in commissions. That was my most expensive item, but two others included a digital camera and a USB hard drive. The things I sold the most of were 12 Maxell battery packs, 7 TuneJuice2 packs, and 6 EZGear Powersticks. From my Sony car stereo page I sold 7 PAC adapters at $30 each. Total earnings were $109.98 from Amazon in the two months I was selling stuff. That still puts me slightly ahead of my target of $50 per month to keep below the IRS limit of $600 per year.
High Speed Internet
Last year when AT&T bought Bellsouth they had to agree to make DSL available for only $10 per month to existing phone customers who did not yet have DSL service with Bellsouth. They started offering this in July or so. But they also were required to offer DSL service without phone service for $19.95 per month to anyone in the Bellsouth service area. My plan was to wait for this and then drop my home phone service (about all I use my home phone for is dial-up internet and receiving unsolicited phone calls from my credit card company and non-profit organizations). The DSL service would actually cost less than my phone line. According to today’s paper, they started offering this on December 20, calling it FastAccess DSL Direct. The plan is actually DSL Lite, their slowest service with speeds “up to” 768 kilobits per second. My dialup is up to 50.6 kbps and right now is 48 kbps, so it should be a big speed upgrade even though AT&T offers plans of up to 3,000 kbps and 1,500 kbps.
The only catch is that you have to pay $75 for a modem. If you order DSL service over the web you can get a rebate of the $75, but you can only order the stand-alone DSL service over the phone. AT&T has to offer the $19.95 service for 30 months, so over a couple of years I wasn’t worried about the $75 for the modem. I called the toll-free number, 1-800-626-9149, waited on hold for about 20 minutes, and was ready to order. They were even going to cancel my phone service at the same time. I asked if there was any way to order this online so that I didn’t have to pay $75 for the modem. They said I could go ahead and order DSL lite online, get the modem, file the rebate, and then call AT&T and have them cancel my phone service and start giving me the $19.95 deal. So I’m going to try that. I can’t do it right now because they initiated an order for me and I have to wait a couple of hours before that order will be out of the system. It’s like waiting 2 hours to go swimming after you eat lunch.
Roth IRA
In January I decided to put my 2007 Roth IRA contribution in Vanguard’s total international fund. The total fund includes some exposure to emerging markets which was a very good thing since Vanguard’s emerging markets fund was up 40% compared to 11% for developed markets. This lifted the total fund up to 14% for the year.
The growth half of the S&P 500 index fund did very well with a 15% return, vs. 7.5% for the 500 index (my small cap value index fund actually lost about 4%). Whereas last year my do-good FTSE Social Index fund had outperformed the growth index, this year it got walloped and FTSE actually lost a little bit of money (-0.5%). So I will lose my social conscience and put that money elsewhere. I didn’t mind when there was a little bit of a spread between the two, but 15.5% is just too much.