Monday 29 August 2016

The dangers of smoking e-cigarettes....

Many smokers have been drawn to claims that e-cigarettes are a safe substitute for standard cigarettes because they deliver nicotine without the harmful chemicals and toxins in tobacco smoke. Some e-cigarette supporters say these products can help smokers to quit or cut down the amount of tobacco they use. What’s more, e-cigarettes supposedly do not expose others to the dangers of second-hand smoke.



Yet many health experts have sounded alarms about e-cigarettes, calling for more study and control. Much of the debate has been about nicotine, the key—and addictive—ingredient in most e-cigarettes. Issues have included uneven delivery of inhaled nicotine, quality control problems such as poor labeling and leaks that can expose e-cigarette users to toxic liquid nicotine, maintaining a person’s addiction to nicotine, and uncertainty about effects on health over time.

Thursday 25 August 2016

Labor Day 2016

Labor Day is observed in the U.S. on every first Monday in September as a day to recognize the contributions of American workers of all industries to the U.S. economy. It is also meant to give workers a well-earned day off to relax at home or to get out for recreation.

This year it will be held on the 5th of September 2016, and on the 4th of September 2017.



To many, Labor Day marks the end of the summer season, even as Memorial Day marks its beginning. Many see Labor Day as their last chance to get out and take a vacation before summer is gone, and many workers get a two-week annual vacation period with Labor Day Weekend right in the middle of the two weeks off.
Most U.S. schools restart classes, after the long summer break, about a week before Labor Day. Others schools, however, resume classes on the day after Labor Day, thus allowing families to get in their last taste of summer before the school year gets underway.

Check our next post on The best Labor Day Sales in the US and Canada!.....


Thursday 18 August 2016

Google Adsense hacks for larger payouts!

What is Google Adsense?


Adsense is the best advertising placement service on the market. The ads come from google and can be placed anywhere on your site. it is free and earns website owners money based on clicks as well as impressions on the site.


How do I qualify for Adsense?

To qualify for Adsense, you must first have a site or blog that has at least 10 but about 20 posts at about 500 to 1000 words in length. Each post should be of good quality and be accompanied by at least 2 images and should be active for a period of no less than 6 months, (at least one post per month). Your site or blog should have the following:

  • A header
  • A Favicon
  • A search box
  • A body that contains content
With all of the above information in check, you should apply for Adsense and be accepted within the week.


How do you use Adsense to get the largest payback possible?

Now, Adsense though it is the best method of monetization on the web, it is the trickiest. The secret is, getting the ads to be extremely well targeted to your content and this will by extension target it best to your visitors. 

Adsense will recommend a type and size of ad for you to place on your site, but it is in your best interest to do what is best for your site, this means to find the type of ad that would blend in best with your sites content. Yes, you want people to see the ad and click on it, but you do not want it to stick out like a sore thumb as this will drive away your readers. A great way to acheive this is with Link Ad units. 

This type of ad, is extremely well targeted to content and as such it would also be to your readers and have the largest click through rate that any of the ads on the Adsense program. Because these ads are so well targeted to the content of the site it is serving visitors almost think they are clicking on just more content on your site for more information VS when they are met with a massive image and text ad that may or may not have any relevance to the content that they are reading.

Tuesday 16 August 2016

How much are your old Pokemon cards worth?!

Parents remember all those pesky cards that you were nagged into purchasing that your kids loved playing with...well karma has come right back around in your favor and you can now cash in on them all and make quite a mint.

Let's have a look see on what some of these poke-cards are going for shall we:






It has to do with the fact that since they are the “source” card for all translated versions, non-Japanese collectors have a particular obsession with obtaining cards that have not yet or will never be released in their own country. This can be seen with promotional cards released only in Japan, which often go for high prices overseas like the 15th Anniversary Full Art Pikachu, the newer Battle Festa Pikachu, and the older CoroCoro Shining Mew. 

How are Japanese cards priced? Even though cards from Japan can’t be used in tournaments outside of the country, foreign collectors should know that they’re still used for tournament play inside of Japan. That’s why playable cards have much higher resale values. The problem for non-Japanese collectors bidding on auctions is that since they aren’t part of the competitive Japanese Pokémon card player community, it can be difficult to know when you’re looking at a deal or not. However, there is an easy way to tell how much a Japanese standard format card should be worth. (Standard format means the cards that can be used in current tournaments.) There are an endless number of Western websites that sell English language Pokémon cards and the prices on those sites can give you a general idea of how much the Japanese cards are worth if you go by this simple pricing rule: English Pokémon EX Card Price x 50–66% = Japanese Pokémon EX Card Price and English Trainer Card Price x 150–200% = Japanese Trainer Card Price (This is especially true for Full Art cards and Gold cards).

The reason for the difference in prices is because the Japanese Pokémon community has relatively less collectors and more players, which leads to a higher demand on Trainer cards and playable Pokémon staple cards (cards that are used in nearly every deck) for deckbuilding, whereas the pull rates for EX cards are much better than in English booster backs. Japanese Pokémon Booster Packs: 

The number of cards in a Japanese booster pack = 5 Number of booster packs in a Japanese booster box = 20 Standard pull rate for RR/SR/UR cards in a Japanese booster box = 2–4 How does this compare with English Pokémon card? Number of cards in an English booster pack = 10 Number of booster packs in an English booster box = 36 Standard pull rate for exR/SR/UR cards an English booster box = 2–8 What are the differences in rarity between Japanese and English cards? Japanese Card Common (C): 

Regular common cards Uncommon (U): Regular uncommon cards Rare (R): Holographic cards Rare Rare (RR): Regular art EX Pokémon Super Rare (SR): Full Art Pokémon and Trainers Ultra Rare (UR): Gold items and Pokémon English Cards Common (C): Exist in non-holographic and reverse holographic Uncommon (U): Regular uncommon cards Rare (R): Regular rare cards Holo Rare (HR): Holographic rare cards Ex Rare (exR): Regular Art EX Pokémon Ultra Rare (UR): Full Art Pokémon and trainers Special Rare (SR): Gold items and Pokémon What about Pokemon promotional cards? A special group of Japanese cards fall under the promotional category and are given out at tournaments, as magazine freebies, at Pokémon events, or as gifts when buying Pokémon merchandise at one of the Pokémon Centers. Rarely are they valuable due to broad distribution and uselessness for players. There are some exceptions, though, that hardly ever make it outside of Japan, either because of their value to players, like the Muscle Band card which was given out at the Battle Festa 2013 to players that did very well and has since reached a top price of up to $50 USD.

Sounds to us like it's a great time to pull out the calculators and plan you next family vacation, if you know what we mean!

Thank you for reading and be sure to check out our other articles! 

Friday 12 August 2016

Debt and Education

Earning a college degree can be a pathway to higher wages and better employment opportunities, but for those who fail to graduate, those prospects quickly fade. And at a time when a majority of students finance their education with loans, dropping out of school comes with greater risks.
Yet a series of studies by Third Way, a think tank, show that many colleges and universities are leaving students with no better than a 50/50 chance of graduating or finding work that pays more than what someone with a high-school diploma can expect to earn. The findings build on a body of research advocating for greater focus on college completion, rather than just access to and affordability of higher education.

Approximately 22 percent of students who take out loans at public colleges were unable to begin paying down their debt three years after leaving school. The same is true for 19 percent of students at private institutions. The people having the most difficult time repaying their loans are those who never earned a degree, which makes it difficult to find work that pays enough to cover the debt.
Student loan defaults are concentrated among people with less than $10,000 in debt, mainly because these borrowers are less likely to have completed their degrees. Small-dollar loans account for nearly two-thirds of all defaults, according to the White House.

Thursday 11 August 2016

Some Olympic Athletes are actually poor!

More than 11,000 athletes from around the world have descended on Rio de Janeiro, hoping to take home Olympic glory for their home countries.

Unfortunately, only a handful will achieve those dreams—and what’s worse, some might go bankrupt in the process, and sadly, very few of them have any financial support from their government of the local financial institutions.

Historically, the United States doesn’t spend a ton on its athletes, and even less so for the Caribbean countries. For the 2012 Olympic Games in London, for example, the U.S. Olympic Committee had an expense budget of nearly $800 million, of which just 10.3%—or roughly $81 million—directly supported the athletes, according to a 2013 study from U.S. Athletic Trust. That includes stipends, medical benefits, and tuition assistance, among other perks.

Even if they win an Olympic medal, athletes aren’t guaranteed a rich payday. The USOC awards team members a bonus for winning a medal: $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver, and $10,000 for bronze. But the odds of bringing home a medal are long: The 530 U.S. athletes who competed in London in 2012 brought home 103 medals.

It’s a common misconception that Olympic athletes all benefit from endorsement contracts and sponsorships. While that’s true of Olympic celebrities like Michael Phelps and Simone Biles, who have inked lucrative deals, many sports (especially those that don’t enjoy great media attention and air time) don’t pay well, even for athletes at the top of their game. Which means that many sporting superstars struggle to pay the bills for their quest for Olympic glory—not to mention the costs of traveling to Rio to compete—balancing their demanding training and competition schedules with a full-time career, or a series of part-time jobs. American hurdler Kerron Clement, who took home medals in Beijing and is competing in the Rio Games this year , has worked as a model and an actor; in 2011, he appeared in the music video for Beyonce’s hit “Run the World (Girls).” Emil Milev, a six-time Olympian in pistol shooting, is a physical education teacher at an elementary school in Tampa, Fla., according to USA Shooting.

Then there’s cyclist Mara Abbott, who’s just as likely to be found pedaling at high speeds as working at the local farmer’s market in her hometown of Boulder, Colo. She pulls six-hour shifts two days a week. She also teaches yoga and pens a column in the local newspaper, the Daily Camera, writing about everything from her passion for cycling to local politics. She says balancing an assortment of side gigs with her training isn’t as difficult as being able to find a full-time position that is accommodating of her schedule. “Finding jobs that allow you to travel and be gone so much is a bit more of a challenge,” Abbott says.

Abbott’s costs to attend the Rio Games have been covered by USA Cycling, the sport’s parent organization, as well as the USOC. However, not all Olympic athletes get their trip to Rio de Janeiro fully funded.

Are you poor and don't know it!

There are really two ways to be poor. Some people just don’t earn much money. Almost 15 percent of Americans, or 47 million people, live below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Then there are the people loaded up with debt. Even people with good jobs can owe so much on credit cards, student loans, or mortgages that, on paper, they’re worth less than zero.

Add up all their possessions – cash, property, retirement accounts – and subtract all their debts, and one in seven Americans ends up in the red.
Overall, U.S. households have $12.3 trillion in debt, according to another New York Fed report, released this week.

At least Americans are doing better at managing their debt than during the dark days of the housing bubble that led to the Great Recession. The total debt load is up 10 percent from the middle of 2013 but 3.1 percent below its 2008 peak. The biggest improvement since the recession has been in housing debt, which is still more than $1 trillion below its peak.

Credit cards have become more manageable as consumers have paid down debts (and switched to debit cards), regulations have gotten stricter, and banks have become more cautious about giving cards and other credit to borrowers with low credit scores. In mid-2008, 68 percent of Americans had at least one credit card. That’s now at 61 percent. Credit card balances have fallen, and since 2008 total credit card debt is down 14 percent, to $730 billion. Delinquency rates have fallen to levels not seen since the tech boom years of 1999 and 2000.

Still, about 14 percent of U.S. households have a credit card balance of more than $10,000, and student loan balances have soared. From the middle of 2008 to the middle of 2016, Americans’ total student loan debt went from $590 billion to $1.26 trillion.

It turns out credit cards and student loan debt are the main reasons Americans are ending up with a negative net worth. Mortgages are a minor factor, the New York Fed found. Only 19 percent of people with negative net worth are homeowners, compared to 75 percent of those with positive net worth, which if you think about it is kind of a good thing.

People with negative worth are a diverse group that defies stereotypes of the poor. One in eight has a graduate degree, and 43 percent have a college degree, only a few points lower than those with positive wealth. Their average income is $39,077. That’s less than half of households with positive net worth, but it’s high enough to suggest the group’s income ranges from the very poor well into the solidly middle class.

Those with negative net worth can be split into three groups of equal size. A third are in the hole by less than $12,500, their debt dominated by credit cards. Another third owe $12,500 to $47,500, net of their assets. And a third owe a net $47,500 or more. For these last two groups, student loans dominate the debt burden.

It doesn’t feel good when your net worth is a negative number. But many of these debtors aren’t necessarily doing something wrong. It can make sense to borrow when you’re young – to get an education, buy a home, or even sometimes to meet emergency expenses – as long as you’re pretty sure you can pay it off later when you’re earning more money. The average age of those with negative net worth is 43, compared to 51 for those with positive net worth.



Monday 8 August 2016

Fouseytube(DoseofFousey), iiSuperwomanii, Alex Wassabi, Roman Atwood, Swoozie

As the title of this article shows, above are a list of the most amazingly talented, and positive Youtube influencers. These young adult have turned Youtube into more than just a creative outlet that one can benefit from financially, to a place where they can in-act a positive change in society. They all embody truly good natured characteristics and pure positivity despite the everyday struggles of life that they may encounter. 


Fouseytube or Dose of Fousey has been in the business for a while like his circle above and has as a result of hard work amassed quite the following. He even though is young and could choose to do anything with his money that he desires, often chooses to give it away helping others, whether by tip or act of charity. He believes in positivity and one love, much like his fellow Youtuber and friend iiSuperwomanii....

iiSuperwomanii is a world renowned superstar and constantly finds new ways to use her fame to make a difference in the lives of women the world over. Her campaign #GirlLove is just her latest project in her attempt at making the world a better place, filled with more positivity and agape love.

Alex Wassabi, may not be as much of a celebrity as his friends are but he is just as big, if not a bigger Youtuber in some instances that a lot. Alex Wassabi is a man in the business of making people happy, which is why he started his Youtube career, and why he has gained tremendous success and a massive audience. He continues to spread positivity through his slice of internet real estate which brings us to Mr. Roman Atwood.


Roman Atwood is a man with a mission and that mission is to influence as many minds as he should to live a positive life and spread the positivity worldwide. Roman is going about this with just two words and they are "SMILE MORE". Simple enough and to the point. It works on the premise that if you just wake up everyday and smile, trying your best to keep smiling throughout the day, each day should be better and better, until all you have are just great days. He also, reinforces to his audience the value of family, which is something that every generation could always use a gentle reminder of. 

Swoozie is a bit less conventional that his peers, but he also is a man on a mission of positivity as he is a beacon of light for young people worldwide that have struggles everyday with sexual peer-pressure. He is a virgin in his mid twenties and still going strong. He is waiting till marriage the way it was meant to happen. That's right folks his parents got it right. And now he can be an amazing example for young people worldwide because of their good work.

If you are interested in any of the the above Youtubers, please be sure to check out their videos and become a subscriber. They are positive people with a positive message. Help them spread it and show some support.