900 Active Credit Packs Will I Go For Diamond

900 Active Credit Packs - Will I Go For Diamond?

Well I hit 900 Active Credit Packs!

Not my most flattering picture, but at least Tess looks good!

Anyway I now have a dilemma. I could maintain my 900 packs for the rest of this month (2 weeks), in fact I could maintain that for ever if i wanted.

That amount of packs alone would earn approximately

$2200 or £1400 A MONTH!

Thats right, My Advertising Pays could provide that.

Now I did say I was considering doing that, just to bring a little extra in whilst we move house...

HOWEVER...

IF...

I continue to build up my packs, its perfectly reasonable to assume I could be on 1200 packs not long after the New Year, and that is very tempting!

So, what would you do?

My gut feeling is to continue now as I am so close to the goal of maxing out at 1200. Ive already proved the system, made sales in the Traffic Exchange and withdrawn money several times.

This is, potentially life changing stuff folks.

Yeah it may not be in the realms of the top earners, the big names in internet marketing or the the online gurus that claim all sorts of stuff.

BUT, to an ordinary guy like me, this is paying off the mortgage earlier,

helping my kids financially and planning for my familys future.

Potential financial freedom.

Im sure weve all thought about this and looked for ways to reach those goals.

There are no guarantees in life, but personally, I think Ive found one way to get that little bit closer to what I hope to achieve.

Below is a short video and one My Advertising Pays members story of how he achieved his goals...

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When Incentives Go Wrong The Cobra Effect

A story goes that during their colonial rule of India, the British rulers were unhappy with the number of venomous Cobra snakes rolling around the streets of the capital Delhi.
They wondered- how could we get rid of these snakes?
They followed a financial route- offering a bounty for every dead cobra presented to the authorities. This seems perfectly rational- under colonial rule the natives were not exactly the most well off or comfortable people, so most would certainly be willing to kill snakes in exchange for payment. And the British were right, for a while- the number of cobras on the streets decreased initially.

But of course, we wouldnt be recalling this story if nothing went awry. After a while the British found that more cobras were on the streets, despite the same number, if not more, of Indians presenting them dead cobras. What was happening?

The answer was simple but ingenious. The natives were offered financial incentive to kill snakes for the British- but they were now not just from the streets of Delhi, but from farms- cobra farms specially created by the locals to provide a supply of cobras that could be killed and then exchanged for money. Of course some of these cobras managed to escape the farms and go onto the streets, explaining the lack of drop in number despite the incentive program.

This is an example of the Cobra Effect (named after this story)- the name given to a situation in which an attempted solution to a problem makes the situation worse rather than better.
Want to see a modern day example of the Cobra Effect? Check out the article on how it affected Mexico City here.

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The Great Penny Debate Part II Why The Penny Needs To Go

Welcome back. Here in the second instalment of the debate on Pennies, we shall look at a selection of the arguments against the penny and for its abolition.

1) Value for Money
Many pro-pennyists counter-argue the idea that pennies are bad value for money for the government with the claim that, while pennies may well be financially inefficient, this doesnt mean their abolition will improve the financial efficiency of the Mint- in fact it may worsen it. They argue that should the penny be abolished, demand will rise for the next lowest coin- the silver nickel, worth 5 cents, which actually loses more money per coin than the penny. So, the argument goes, more investment will have to go into a bigger loss-making product should the coin be abolished.

With the cost of producing a nickel at 7.7 cents, and that of a penny at 1.26, this is theoretically true. Take the cost of making one dollar with either coin- it would cost (7.7*20) 154 cents to create a dollar with nickels, but just (1.26*100) 126 cents to do so with pennies. A 28 cent difference, quite decent proof that the penny is more cost-effective to produce. But this hits a snag- these figures are correct, but as of 2008. Seven years ago.

Today, the tables have figuratively turned. As of late 2014, a Nickel costs 8.1 cents to produce (a 3.1 cent loss), whereas a penny costs 1.7 cents to produce (a 0.7 cent loss). This may not seem to be a game-changing difference from 2008, but it makes all the difference. Today, making 1 dollars worth of nickels costs 162 cents. Making the same from pennies costs 170 cents. The prices of the two have crossed, to the point at which nickels are now more cost-effective than pennies- rendering the pennies causing greater financial inefficiency.

2) Productivity
Just as the potential rounding tax could have tiny but compounding impacts upon the spending of consumers, there already exists a tiny but recurrent way in which we lose because of pennies- not in terms of money, but time. Whether its spending time rummaging in our pockets for a few remaining pennies, or waiting to receive them as change, it wastes time- not in the short term, but the seconds add up and become minutes, minutes, over the course of a year or two, hours. Hours that can be spent being more productive, whether its a store employee gaining more time to perform other duties or the customer having more time to spend in town and buy other stuff.

Its difficult to imagine seconds making such a difference, but added up in the long term, they can. Economist Robert Whaples quantifies the losses that the penny can cause. Using the average American wage of $17 an hour, he evaluates every two seconds of the average Americans work time to be worth a cent, and thereon estimates that time lost due to the complications brought on by pennies can cost around $300m per year to the US Economy.

Whaples proposes that rounded sale prices would help improve productivity of the economy as a whole, not by giving one significant boost but by trimming the excesses, the little seconds of time wasted because of the business of handling pennies.

3) Are they Useful?
Have a look at this menu here. The price of a full dinner with multiple courses, at just 25 cents, is one that you might think is ridiculous, but that was how things were in 1900, the year this American bistro menu comes from.

Go forward to 1931, and food was still ridiculously cheap in comparison to the modern day. A penny could buy you an egg, or a pound of flour.

Today? Well, if you can find anything that I could buy with a penny in any store today Ill give you one (not that youd probably appreciate it). The fact is that pennies were not always the lowest valued coin- until 1857 you could get a half-cent, and currencies throughout the world have seen smaller denominations than a penny (think, for example, the British shilling). But over time, they have been taken out of circulation, for a number of reasons, but primarily because of inflation. Rising prices nullify the value of all denominations of money- and at one point we must re-evaluate whether any certain coin is necessary. We have very little use for pennies- so why should we carry on keeping them in circulation?

Economist Greg Mankiw summarises it effectively, stating "the purpose of the monetary system is to facilitate exchange... the penny no longer serves that purpose."


RECOMMENDED READS

2014 Biennial Report to the Congress (US Mint) http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/PDFs/2014-rd-biennial-report.pdf

Congress Looking At Steel Pennies And Nickels (2008) http://www.nbcnews.com/id/24491928/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/t/congress-looking-steel-pennies-nickels/#.VR2wlZPF8yA

How Much Does It Cost to Make A Penny? http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/12/15/just-how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-penny/

The Pennys End Is Near http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/07/penny_sense.html

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