Five Cents Ten Cents

Sunday, June 10, 2007

How to save money on movie tickets with Safra card


safra_logo
Originally uploaded by panzergrenadier
Safra is one of the few benefits that NSmen can enjoy for their 2-2.5 years plus 10 years of reservist for the nation, for the subscription of $65 for 2 years (or $32.50 per year), NSmen get to use the Clubhouses F&B, sports and swimming facilities, you also get to watch movies at Golden Village cinemas for the low cost of $8.00 on weekends instead of $9.50.

Real deal for movie lovers
This is a real deal for those of you, who like me, LOVES movies! I can watch almost 1 movie a week if there are good films around. Summer releases usually sees blockbusters such as "Spiderman 3", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "The Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" hitting our screens around the same time. And which hot-blooded male who grew up watching "Transformers" *cue robotic voice: robots in disguise....!* would want to miss the screen version of our old favourite cartoon of Megatron vs. Optimus Prime!

Why did I post this deal here instead of the Military Life blog? Well this IS about saving money as the $1.50 discount off the normal weekend movie ticket price of $9.50 represents at 15.8% discount. If you just watch about 21 movies in a year, you would have saved the equivalent of 1 year's subcription to Safra. ;-) The best thing is that it appears that there is no restriction on the number of tickets that you can buy based on Safra's website below.



Don't forget to bring your Safra card to Golden Village Cinemas
So remember to bring your grey coloured Safra membership card down to your nearest Golden Village cinemas when you are watching movies because every dollar you save is a dollar you earn!

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Is emailcashpro a scam?

I was thinking the EXACT same thing when I first encountered emailcashpro.

I was sceptical. I was doubtful. And I was curious!

For those who have tried internet marketing programs, you will realise there are 1001 different types of programs available online now. What works and what does not? The reality is that we need to give it a try to see how it goes.

Tentative steps into the big grey world of internet marketing
My foray into the world of internet marketing started when I discovered that you can monetise your blog by putting AdSense advertisements on the valuable real estate that is the blog. Following the collapse of the dot.com bust, one of the key lessons learnt from that episode was that no matter how good or bleeding edge the technology was or is, you still need to have a viable business in terms of some actual goods or services that is transacted so that value creation can be sustained and meaningful exchange of benefits can take place.

First steps with AdSense
I put in AdSense to my personal blog ganxiezhu and didn't touch it for some time. Then I realise I had to login to my AdSense account to be able to view my account and I realised that I had $1.09 there after 2 months of relative infrequent posts. This piqued my interest and I started to lurk around different forums to see if it was the real deal. After a couple of weekday nights of research, I realise that Google is not valued at USD 500+ a share for nothing. The whole idea of delivering advertisements to content providers websites i.e. blog publishers or website content publishers and only charging advertisers for each click (or conversion) from the page impressions garnered is one of those paradigm shifts in value delivery that one has to try it out to believe. I will post more about my AdSense adventure with real figures and background commentary on how I got there ;-)

So is emailcashpro the real deal?
But let's concentrate on emailcashpro for this post.

Emailcashpro is also a form of advertising. Instead of using the Google model, Emailcashpro's business model is essentially selling advertisers eyeballs using targetting mailing lists of consumers who sign up for specific areas of interest.

http://www.emailcashpro.com

From the horse's mouth
This is how it works (source: http://www.emailcashpro.com)

"How it works

Step 1: Sign up as a member for FREE

Join EmailCashPro as a member for free and select the kind of emails you are interested in receiving.

Step 2: Read emails that you are interested

Receive Paid Emails that match your profile and interest. These emails will have subject headlines that start with **SoloAd**, followed by a description of the content of the Paid Email. Browse through the subject description. If you are interested in the subject, click on the link in the email to view the content. Click here for a screenshot of a sample Paid Email you will receive.

Once you click on the Paid Link and visit the advertiser's website for 30 seconds, your account will be credited with 1 point. Your accumulated points will then be converted into cash credits on the first week of every month. The conversion is done based on 40% of our total earnings for the previous month. This means we share 40% of our total revenue with our members! Our conversion for the last few months ranges from 0.55 cents to 0.75 cents.

Step 3: Share good stuff with your friends

The most powerful part of EmailCashPro is our 4 level referral system. When you refer other people to join EmailCashPro, you will receive 50% of your referral's earnings on level 1, 20% of your referral's earnings on level 2, 15% of your referral's earnings on level 3 and 10% of your referral's earnings on level 4.

Never underestimate the power of cents. With our 4 level referral system, your income can easily be in the order of $100s a month!

“I’d rather have 1 percent of 100 people’s efforts than 100 percent of my own.” - J. Paul Getty, one of the world's first billionaire.

You can easily build your referral team by sending invitation letters, informing your friends about our latest members only offer or by sharing interesting Paid Emails with them. More details are provided in your Members Login Page.

Step 4: Receive cheque in your letter box

Once your account reaches our minimum payout of S$11, you can request for a cash-out from us. For Singapore members, you can cash out your earning through cheque or paypal. For International members, you can cash out through paypal. All payment will be made in Singapore dollars."

A form of MLM?
It is essentially a form of multi-level marketing in the sense that they also use the concept of downlines as you can see in Step 3. However, unlike traditional forms of MLM, emailcashpro does not require any upfront fee except for your time to enrol more email consumers to expand their eyeballs. However from what I read in forums and posts, it is not easy to make money purely from reading emails as it is literally only a couple of cents for each email and advertiser's website visited. To make serious pocket money, one has to invest in time and effort to sign up more referrals.

Conclusion
I think emailcashpro is worthwhile to give it a try mainly for the educational aspects. I am still a relative newbie in terms of internet marketing techniques and it's good to see for yourself why certain systems work and why others do not. Also, based on my experience, it does not look too good to be true because they do not promise millions. They only hint at making hundreds per month which is not terribly exciting to those who want to MMM (make more money) fast!

If you think you want to try emailcashpro, do sign up on the big button conveniently located above and many thanks! My first $10 of proceeds will be donated to my toastmasters club so I will only benefit after slogging out beyond earning the first $10.

Be well and prosper... And don't forget to click! :-)

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

How to save money attending quality courses on public speaking and communication


IMG_6337
Originally uploaded by panzergrenadier
Have you ever received unsolicted emails, flyers or brochures advertising training courses before?

Receiving training flyers and brochures
I'm sure many of you have received such invitations! Some of them are quality courses, some of them are mediocre but most of them costs considerable amounts of monies.

In my organisation, the fax machine regular spits out unsolicted faxes to attend public communication courses for about $400-$500 a day conducted by overseas trainers. That's the going rate for attending professional courses on how to be a better speaker and communicator.

Open secret about where to get value-for-money training
Here's a open secret I would like to share with you about public speaking and communication training. You can avail yourself to quality training by experienced public speakers (and many are full-time trainers by profession!) for as little as $0.50 per day! For the price of less than a cup of coffee or tea, you can be trained by experienced toastmasters by joining a toastmasters club!

Why join toastmasters
If you ever have a problem:
  • articulating your ideas to your boss, supervisor or colleague;
  • explaining something to your spouse, children or family member;
  • convincing someone of the validity of your ideas, your approach, your method;
  • standing in front of your customers, clients or business partners;
  • making a thank-you or acceptance speech at a dinner, a function or a wedding
Join toastmasters!

I can say, sincerely from the bottom of my heart, this is not a marketing gimmick or ruse. I have been a toastmaster for close to 5 years and I have moved from being a Competent Toastmaster to a Competent Leader to a Advanced Communicator Bronze. I have participated in Humourous Speech Contests, Evaluation Contests, International Speech contests. And I have won contests at the Club, the Area, the Division and competed among the best in Asia at the district for the Table-Topics contest.

Toastmasters provides value-for-money training
Toastmasters works and is a value-for-money programme that teaches you:
  • Fundamentals of public speaking
  • Overcoming fear of speaking in front of an audience
  • How to think on your feet and respond to virtually any topic that is thrown at you
  • The secret to crafting any type of speech
  • How to capture the audience's attention
  • And much, much more
So long as you are serious about becoming a better speaking. So long as you are willing to invest at least once a month (if not more often) to attend a club meeting. So long as you are willing to attend so many education workshops on public communication and leadership for as low as $8 for a 2 hour workshop, toastmasters is for you!

Special offer for visitors to fivecentstencents blog
I invite all visitors to my blog to attend the Open Alumni Toastmasters Club's Education Workshop on THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING at a discounted rate. Just quote this code word "fivecentstencents.blogspot.com" and you can bring along a friend to this meeting free-of-charge (buy 1 get 1 free!).

Part I: THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
  • Learn the skills and techniques of public speaking to boost your career and life
  • Learn how to control the butterflies within you to impress, persuade and to inspire
Part II: THE ART OF CONFIDENT LIVING
  • Learn about skills and techniques of living confidently
  • Learn about how to expand your life exponentially
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Patrick Chang, currently the Membership Director of Asia Professional Speakers - Singapore, is a public speaking trainer with more than 20 years of training experience. He is the founder of SimplySpeaking, an organisation specialising in public speaking and presentation training. In 1998, Patrick began providing public speaking training and has since trained more than 1000 participants including students, undergraduates, school parent volunteers, teachers, corporate executives, business owners, statutory boards, MNCs, community clubs and toastmasters clubs.

Date
: 14 June 2007 (Thursday)
Place: The Corporate Office
(Near Tanjong Pagar MRT and Raffles Place MRT)
Level 9, Great Wall Room
138 Robinson Road
Singapore 068906
Time: 7.30 pm to 9.30 pm
Investment: $8 only (Each paying participant can bring 1 friend for FREE! Just quote fivecentstencents.blogspot.com)
(Light Refreshments will be served)