The business community has been using Smartphones for awhile now, example Blackberry. With the new crop of Smartphones like the iPhone and Samsung Instinct, many small business owners can also get work done on the go. Since I live in Canada the iPhone was not an option as the cell company Rogers has a monopoly on the phone, and very expensive data rates.  The only other choice I had was either go with a Blackberry also more expensive for data or get a Samsung Instinct. The prices offered by Bell Canada for this phone were very reasonable. The data plan was only $10.00 for unlimited mobile browsing and I added a cheap $20.00 phone plan as I do not use my cell for to many calls. The data plan was what I wanted and the price was right. The Samsung Instinct has a limited browser, you can see full HTML pages just not like the iPhone. The other problem with the phone is that some web sites crash the browser and it restarts the phone. Other then that the phone work great and has many features. This phone allows me to check my email and update some of my blogs while I am out. Since I do not need to look for a wi-fi spot this has saved me a great amount of time.

If you have a business that depends on the Internet or email then get a good Smart phone it will save you a great amount of time. Having the Internet on my phone has also saved me money when shopping, I can look up a price and know right away if the store is giving me a deal or not.  As a Canadian I sure do hope more cell phone companies startup  as Rogers has the only GSM network. If we get a second company with GSM then prices might go down and Apple might ditch the evil Rogers.

What is a blog about making money if you do not take the time review the all time daddy of money making Warren Buffett. The other day I started to read a new book about Mr. Buffett called The Snowball. This is a heavy book with lots of great facts about Warren Buffett.

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

If you want to get a little low down on his climb to the top then this book is worth every penny. As an avid book reader with limited time I try to read as many biographies as I can fit in. This is a great book and if you want to know more about Warren or how he made his money then add this to your book list.

If you work from home sometimes it’s nice to get out. When I need a little bit of inspiration I go down to the local Starbucks. With all the news about Starbucks closing stores it still seem a great number of people do make Starbucks their third place. When I sit there I notice countless people on there laptops and on the phone doing deals. Some people use Starbucks as an office and can sit there almost all day. Then their are those who use it for meetings. When I use Starbucks I seem to get alot done in a short amount of time. Where else can you pay $2.00 and stay for hours without getting kicked out.

Today I started a To-Do list for 2009 and yes make more money is on this list. There are many steps that I need to take to increase my online money efforts. Just a little background on some sources of my income. The first income source is ebay it was my first online venture that worked. The problem with eBay is that it take a lot of time and effort. I need to find items to list then do the whole prep work of getting pictures and descriptions and then all the email that needs to be answered. Then when you do make a sale you need to pack and ship the item. In the end sometimes it seems like you are working for nothing when running an eBay business. The new To-Do list reflects my need to make more money online from other sources. Then there are the blogs. The blogs also take time and I spend many hours reading researching and getting new ideas to share. The blogs make a small amount of money and that money is more for mainting the service then an actual income. There are a few other business like and ecommerce site and a few other sites I run. These are the my other income sources apart from eBay. In order to make more money I will need to update some of my web sites and promote them a little more. My goal would be to have at least $2000 a months clear in passive income. This is a very realistic goal online and with a little work can be achieved. It would be nice to earn more, but I am happy to have just enough to pay the bills with out having to work for the man. The goals I am setting for 2009 are all within reach. If I work hard at them I know I can complete all of the items on my To-Do and reach my goals. The importance of goal setting is what makes some men rich and some men never seem to get anywhere. If you already have goals great, if not get started today.

Many people use www.craigslist.org to buy and sell goods. It is the perfect marketplace to sell items that might cost to much to ship. If you are willing to have people come by the house and pick up an item or can meet somewhere public, then this site is for you. When you look through the ad’s there are all types of listing you might even find stuff for free. This week I sold by old bike and the guy picked it up no hassle. The craiglist page is set by the city or country that you want to find goods. If you were in New York city then just click on that city you will only see ad’s for items in this location.

This is also a good feature I recently found an item for free in another city that I visit often and then sold it on my local site. You may ask how does craislist make money, well they charge for certain business listings like job post and small business oppurtunitues. The rest of the ad’s are 100% free. Those who have never been to craigslist find the layout very odd it looks like a web site from 1995, but the ease of use and the stuff you can do make up for the bad design. One other use for craigslist is for those who need to outsource a job, you can place an add in the local area and sometimes get great rates for the type of work you need done. In order to sell on craigs list you do not need to sign up, you just post your add and then confirm an email message to verify that you did request the listing. Try looking around it’s a great site.

For anyone trying to sell a product or service online, you must understand search advertising. The most popular program is adwords from google. With their program you pay per click to advertise your product or service through googles vast sites and partners. Many web sites have seen great results from using this type of advertising. With some of the sites I run I have used adwords to promote my sites, even this blog is promoted with adwords. In the last few days I tried yahoo and microsofts search advertising for a new site I started up. No results yet to measure the power of the other serach sites. What I would like to know is how to use these programs more efecctivley. If anyone out there knows and tips to get better results please share.

With one of my sites that sells products I might try shopzilla which works the same as the google adwords program, but instead adds your product to a search result for people who are comparison shopping. I will post my result for shopzilla once I do somemore research and sign up for an account.

The popularity of the ipod has created a new form of media called podcasting. With the power to broadcast for a low cost to millions, podcasts have become big business. At first only a few geeks were putting out podcast, but now even big companies have gotten in on the action. The small business owner can also benefit from the low cost to enter. If you have a product or service to promote you can create a podcast related to your business. This is a great way to build brand awareness and provide customers a branded message. You can also advertise on other peoples podcast and there are a few companies that can help you start a campaign. With one of my sites I am looking into using this new form of advertising. I am in the process of getting the prices and details for my first go. Since I can track users by coupon codes I will be able to measure the success rate of my advertising. When the ad’s have been running for a few weeks I will post the results on this blog.

Welcome,

This is the first post for Vendingmatic. This blog is about using the internet as your own vending machine. There are many people making money on the internet and I will update this blog with new ideas for you to try and make money online.

Since this is the first time I have used WordPress I might encounter a few problems while I learn to use the software. The first thing I need to do is change a few colors and start adding content. As a new blog I will also need to figure out the SEO to get the site indexed by the big search engines. Well I will keep doing some research and should have some interesting post soon.