Free Stuff
Cheap Address Labels
Jan 17th
One thing that I grow tired of doing is addressing envelopes. While I can’t get around writing the mailing address, I can use return address labels to avoid writing out my address on every envelope. I’ve been doing a lot of ebay sales lately and my mailing volume has increased significantly in that time.
Vista Print has some great cheap address labels available and I order quite a few different business supplies from them including business cards and some stationary. If you keep an eye on their website you can catch some great deals like free products and you only pay a small charge for shipping and handling.
Right now the address labels start as low as $7.99 for 140 (5.7 cents each). Make sure when you place your order that you take advantage of the special offers they will display to you along the checkout process – that’s where you can pick up some real steals. You can also grab 250 free business cards right now by themselves or add them to your address label order and save on the overall shipping.
Win a RuffPC From John Chow!
Dec 24th
John Chow is potentially giving away a RuffPC to one of his readers. Check out the contest terms and get entered to win a new RuffPC laptop.
Technorati Tags: shaun carter, john chow, ruffpc, laptop
Free Hotel Suite At The Four Winds Casino
Nov 28th
I was comped a suite at the Four Winds Casino in New Buffalo Michigan this past weekend and despite the room being free, I was not very satisfied. My stay was plagued with problems, not only with me but as I waited in line to ask questions of the front desk attendant several other guests were lodging identical complaints.
The room itself was very well appointed, comprised of a lounge, fridge, microwave, whirlpool tub, two flat panel televisions and a very large enclosed shower. I took some pictures when I first got into the room:
Notice the minimum room rate posted on the door – $1,000? I laughed when I saw that.
The problems I experienced during my stay included:
- Wireless Internet was not working in the rooms (no explanation or information given from hotel staff except it has been broken for a while and sometimes works only in the lobby). There were no ethernet cable hookups in the room either. The only way to access the Internet from a room would have been to access the dataport in the phone if I had a dial-up account.
- Rooms were extremely warm and setting the thermostat to the coldest setting didn’t do any good. I heard other guests complain about this issue and request fans to be placed in their rooms only to be told that there were no fans for guest use.
- Video checkout and hotel information via the televisions was not accessible because of “no signal”.
- I tried several times to make phone calls from my room only to have the phone cut out after about two minutes into each call.
- The coffeemaker in my room did not work.
The Four Winds opened in August and apparently still has not managed to work out the kinks in their system. Judging by the quality of the room layouts and furnishings, the hotel could be competitive for the AAA diamond award somewhere around the 3-4 diamond range (similar to the Soaring Eagle Casino in Mount Pleasant Michigan). But the poor service and lack of working amenities will kill any chance this hotel has of earning any meaningful rating.
Ironically, yesterday (just the day after I returned from my trip) I received a call offering me a free room this week at Four Winds. Well, even though the room is free – I’d rather stay somewhere with working Internet and a temperature controlled room and pay for it than have to put up with those problems in a free room. Or better yet, I’ll only be making day trips to this particular casino in the future.
Technorati Tags: four winds, soaring eagle, casino hotel, casino, resort, michigan, shaun carter, new buffalo, mount pleasant, gambling, rooms, AAA
I Won at John Chow dot Com
Nov 2nd
John Chow held his last drawing for the RSS contest between himself and Shoemoney and I won a prize! I won a 1000 directory submission from SEO Next. Here’s a list of the rest of the winners, including the big $1,500 prize winner.
Grand Prize Winner
Congrats to Keith Dsouza of Techie Buzz for winning our $1,500 grand prize which include the following:
- A 2GB iPod nano
- $750 blog redesign by Adriaan Pienaar of Adii
- $400 review by John Chow dot Com
- Ad in the John Chow dot Com RSS feed
1000 Directory Submission Package Winners by SEO Next
The Other Winners
- Contest Beat – 1 hour of free Blog Consultation with BlogLOUNDER
- Silent Babble – text link and review by Online Cash Flow
- Online Cash Flow – 125×125 button ad by Etienne Teo
Technorati Tags: john chow, shaun carter, prizes, rss, contest, free, ipod, directory submission, reviewme, blogging, shoemoney, winner
Winners of the two $25 Barnes & Noble Gift Cards
Oct 25th
Congratulations to Shawn Knight and Rob Schultz for winning the Barnes & Noble gift cards that I provided for John Chow to gave away during his RSS subscriber competition with Shoemoney.
Last Chance To Win Gift Cards
Oct 21st
I have donated a couple $25 Barnes & Noble Gift Cards for John Chow’s RSS contest with Shoemoney and tonight is the last chance for you to enter. There are a couple other prizes up for grabs in tomorrows drawing and as long as you stay subscribed you will continue to be entered to win the many prizes John has to give away through the rest of the month!
Technorati Tags: john chow, prizes, giveaway, contest, sweepstakes, barnes and noble, gift cards, free, shoemoney, shaun carter, rss
Shoemoney RSS Competition Prizes
Oct 19th
Shoemoney has come forward with a contest of his own to rival that of John Chow’s to see who reigns supreme at the end of the month by gaining the most RSS subscribers.
Shoe garnered $13,000 worth of prizes from his readers and is giving them away to people who subscribe to his blog by e-mail and also through an RSS feed reader. This tactic is very interesting as it will generate more than one RSS reader for each person who participates.
Here is a full list of prizes:
So what do you have to do? Its VERY SIMPLE:
1) Make sure you are a email subscriber and your account is active (you have confirmed). THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT
2) Sign up and add shoemoney.com rss feed to the following services: (you can get up to 1 entry per service per day).
3) Every day for the next 14 days there will be a “Click Here To Enter Todays Contest!” Link within the RSS Feed. You simply click on that link From your rss feed reader service and then enter your name and your email you subscribed to in feedburner.
Technorati Tags: shoemoney, john chow, shaun carter, contest, rss, prizes, money, gifts, sweepstakes, feed reader, subscribe, free
Welcome John Chow Newsletter Readers!
Oct 15th
If you are here because of the prize I am giving away for John Chow’s RSS competition with ShoeMoney, I welcome you. John put a link to Shaun Carter dot Com in his newsletter because of the two $25 Barnes & Noble Gift Cards I am giving away. It turns out John will be offering these prizes to lucky readers of his newsletter and RSS feed by e-mail.
“Subscribing to RSS by Email only take a few seconds and it may win you some great prizes as well. FeedBurner gives separate stats for feed and email subscribers. While there are over 9,000 readers subscribed to the feed, only 272 are subscribed with RSS by Email. The nice thing is FeedBurner lists all the emails. Therefore, I’m going to give away some prizes to RSS by Email subscribers. Let’s begin with two copies of An American Hedge Fund and two $25 Barnes & Noble gift cards by Shaun Carter.
This Friday, I will select four random readers who subscribed and confirm their RSS by Email subscription, to be the winner of the prizes listed above. With only 272 RSS by Email subscribers, your chances of winning are pretty good. More prizes will be drawn later so sign up now!”
So if you would like to win those gift cards, or one of many other prizes listed below, sign up for the RSS by e-mail at JohnChow.com!
$50 of cold hard cash by Preblogging.com- Two books (The Search and Wikinomics) by Piggy Bank Pie
- A free review by CashQuests (value $80)
- One hour of free blog consultation (value $60) by Blog Louder
- Two $25 Barnes & Noble gift cards by Shaun Carter
- $144 webhosting package from Tribune Hosting
- Two text links and a review (value $50) by Online Cash Flow
- One 125×125 banner (value $15) by Etienne Teo
- Five 1000 directory submission packages (value $550) by SEO Next
- The biggest prize of them all: a complete WordPress blog redesign valued at $750 by Adriann Pienaar of Adii. The winner will get a custom, unique blog design (unlimited revisions by the client). The design will be supplied to the winner as a widget-ready WordPress theme. You can see some of Adriann’s work here.
I am hoping to win the blog redesign or the directory submissions. Good luck to all!
Technorati Tags: john chow, shoemoney, contest, rss, feed, free, money, prizes, shaun carter, blog
Want to Win Some Free Stuff?
Oct 4th
I have contributed two $25 Barnes & Noble Gift Cards to a contest being offered by John Chow. He is competing with ShoeMoney.com to see who can gain the most RSS subscribers during the month of October. The loser has to put a very embarrassing link to the other’s page on their homepage. I am a regular reader of JohnChow.com and an occasional ShoeMoney.com reader, but I only subscribe to John’s RSS Feed and am rooting for him to win.
If you would like to get your hands on over $2000 worth of prizes he is offering you need to check out his page about the contest. It’s so easy to do, and the prizes are great so you should definitely take advantage of it. I’m entering and if any of you happen to win something from the contest be sure to let me know!
Technorati Tags: john chow, rss feed, shaun carter, prizes, barnes & noble, prizes, free, contest, drawing, gift card
Impact of Lower Interest Rates
Sep 23rd
Now that the Fed has lowered the fed funds rate 50 basis points I’ve already noticed the impact on my personal finances. My ING Direct savings account has seen its interest rate drop from 4.5% to 4.3%, this should trickle down through the credit markets and allow for cheaper mortgages, auto loans and credit card as well. With the reduction of the prime rate to 7.75%, several credit cards are now sporting lower interest rates to those with excellent credit.
InstantCredit.cc allows you to search through different credit cards until you find the one right for you, all at no charge. Some credit card categories available include:
Business – Be sure to check out the American Express Gold Rewards Card for business, it is currently offering 25,000 bonus points redeemable for a FREE airline ticket after you make your first purchase. I just got my bonus points credited to my account last week and look forward to using them! Get approved for the card in as little as 60 seconds online!
Technorati Tags: credit cards, instant approval, shaun carter, instant credit, interest rate, federal reserve, loan, mortgage
