Just Another Writer

I really love how much easier it has gotten to have a home business over the past few years. Gone are the days of standing in line for hours at the post office. I purchase
online stamps, which can definitely be a timesaver. As someone who has sold quite a bit of goodies on eBay and Half.com, these perks mean a lot. There’s a gadget that I have my eye on now, as I still sell books. It’s the Dymo LabelWriter 400 Turbo, which is pictured above. It is a device that will make labels at the speed of light. Well, actually, I don’t remember what the speed of light is, but it can print 55 labels per minute, which is pretty darn fast, whether it takes you to another galaxy or not.

You don’t have to be one of those super-organized people to love this thing, either. We all know those people are freaks, and aren’t to be trusted. You’d be amazed at how often ordinary people print labels. We need them for files and folders, envelopes and packages, and to label our children for field trips. The thing I really like about the LabelWriter 400 Turbo, though, is that it can print…
postage! How cool is that? Imagine it spitting out those stamps at a rate of one per second! Post office, beat that!

Another bonus is that when you are
printing, you can your own fonts and graphics. These will be printed directly from programs like Word and Outlook, among others. Now that’s a timesaver!

The Dymo site has other labelwriters to choose from as well, and is very easy to navigate. Best of all, the 400 Turbo is affordable for the average small business owner or super-organized OCD person.

Photo by Marie ll, another grrrl.
$25 may not seem like much, but believe me, it all adds up. I try to make at least a little bit of extra money every day. If you think about it, either spending or earning $25 bucks a day adds up to over $9000 a year. I’d rather earn it!

Anyway, this latest thing is an alternative to PayPal, called Revolution Money Exchange. I heard about it at Wise Bread and decided to give it a try. The fact that they give you $25 for signing up was incentive enough.

Signing up was really quick, and the money was credited to my account within an hour. If I want to add my bank account, it can be direct deposited, or I can request a check. Not bad for three minutes work!

They have an affiliate program as well, although I’m not sure that I like it. You get $10 for every person you can get to sign up, but here’s the catch, you can only use their email form to send people emails asking if they’d like to sign up. And if they do decide to sign up, they have to use the exact same email address that you entered in the form. It’s a lot of work, and unless you know people who are almost sure to go for it (and who don’t have a zillion different email addresses) it’s probably not worth it. I sent a couple of invitations out, but only to people who met that criteria. You may know more people in the market for a PayPal alternative than I do. If so, $10 bucks a pop isn’t bad. They have a $500 limit per year.

Anyway, $25 more bucks in the vacation fund…

I’m digging the whole “make money online” thing. While I haven’t become a millionaire, nor do I expect to, the money I’ve made has really come in handy. I also tutor after school, so I have two extra sources of income now. It’s such a change from how I used to live my life. Before I could get credit cards, I went to pawn shops. When I was in college, I pawned a box fan for $5.00. It was hot that summer. Now that’s desperation.

Once I got a steady job, though, I could qualify for payday loans and credit cards. I have to say that for me, credit cards are a very, very bad thing. Being much more convenient than the pawn shop, I proceeded to buy a houseful of furniture, a useless Master’s degree, and too many books.

Having (finally) learned my lesson the hard way, I no longer have any. I feel much more liberated having money in savings. And once I have it in savings, I am reluctant to part with it unless it is for something worthwhile. I mean, I’m not going to dip into my savings account because they’re having a sale at Dillards, you know?

So, making money online has reformed me, in a way. Having the means to finally save money is what it took to change my attitude about money. Ironic.