I was scheduled to have arthroscopic shoulder surgery today, to repair the anterior labrum tear from my dislocation this spring. But I’m at home instead, due to a fascinating series of failures to answer my one simple question: “How much will this cost?” In my mind, for a non-emergency procedure, that seems like a completely [...]
If you’ve shopped online at all in the past 4 years, you’re probably familiar with RetailMeNot.com. The online coupon aggregator generates millions of page views each month and enjoys top Google ranking for almost every “_______ coupon” query. This is a company that literally prints money — an estimated $30 million in 2010. Most of [...]
Continue reading about RetailMeNot.com and the Greatest Affiliate Success Story of All-Time
If you’ve shopped at Safeway any time in the last few years, you’ve probably been asked to make a donation to some charity when you checked out. Some shoppers get really offended by this, but each year Safeway raises millions of dollars for breast cancer research and a host of other causes. In 2009, their [...]
Here’s an update on my experiment with peer-to-peer lending with Prosper.com. The micro-loans have been active for 6 months, so it’s a good time to review the performance. My Prosper numbers: Initial investment: $5000 Interest payments received: $393.18 Charge-offs: $25 Net Gain (interest minus charge-offs): $368.18 Approximate annualized rate of return: 14.7% I’m pretty happy [...]
Continue reading about Prosper.com 6 Month Update: Earning 14.7%
“Experiencing higher than normal call volume.” I doubt it. I think it’s far more likely you laid off customer support personnel in the recession and don’t have the workforce to handle customers any more. If you are frequently “experiencing higher than normal call volume,” I’ll let you in a little secret: that’s the new “normal,” [...]
Continue reading about Experiencing Higher Than Normal Call Volume
RIP Shoes ‘R Us. After 5 years of loyal service, it’s time to retire. The replacement is a shiny new model with lots of cool features. Just like you could at ShoesRUs, at ShoeSniper.com you can shop the inventory of all the major shoe stores in one place, and see their shipping rates, sales tax [...]
