For about 2 years I have been blogging.  At first it was really fun and exciting.  But as time went on I started to feel more and more confined by my subject matter.  It was a business blog, but I wanted to have a nice and in depth look at business.  I soon started making each entry very long and very in depth and it became much more like work and less fun.  Back in August I helped someone else create a blog, but I did the mistake of doing it with my account on wordpress.  They did some things on their blog that made the people at wordpress unhappy.  So they shut down all of my blogs.  This one, the ones for a few of my clients and even my wholesale computer blog.  I quickly got this one back up and running, and re-branded it “The Biz Guy”  But then I decided to take a break from blogging for a bit, relax and come back with something fresh.

The break is over, and I am back.  I have tons of fresh ideas, fresh content and I would really like to you subscribe to my blog.  I will strive to create something interesting a few times a day.  I have also decided to be much more real.  Before I often tried to be politically neutral, and neutral on many different controversial topics, and that HAS ENDED.  You will get my opinion, how ever wrong you may think it is.  I will point out the idiots and the business blunders as I see them.  Everything will still be written from the perspective of me, an entrepreneur, an über geek, a Christian, a right-wing constitutionalist, a world trailer, an avid reader, and a patriot.   Hang on it will be a fun ride.  Subscribe by clicking a link up there in the top right.

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So many people have been wondering why I have not been blogging for a long time.  Well one of the main reasons is that I have been totally distracted by a game that I found called Evony, it is really interesting.  It is a game where you build a city, you create the economy, then you build up armies and fight other people.  

It is a lot like Age of Empires, even with similar graphics, but it takes place in “Real Time”.  Everything takes hours and hours to build, and some research things can take two weeks.  At first I did not like how it was so slow, then I started to like it.  It does not give people a major advantage by how many hours per day that they play, it is more designed for the person who wants to log on every day for 30 minutes and relax, just like me.  Some days I use it for more than 30 minutes, but other days I know I can set all the things to build and then spend a day or two away from the game.  Also because I fix computers and design websites most of the day I can sit here and do a few clicks on the game while waiting for software to install, or when I am on the phone.  It really is quite relaxing.

There are two nice things that make the game really interesting.  First is the market.  You can buy and sell resources with other players.  But what is really cool is that it is a true market, it works just like the stock market.  In fact the market interface is like E-Trade in the Nasdaq level 2 part.  You can see what other people are selling and bidding at and you can choose where to set your price.  You can even play the market and move prices up or down by moving huge volume, and then reverse the trend a bit later to make money.  I tried it a few times but it was too much work to do that.

The next really cool thing is that you join alliances, and your alliance will team up with other alliances and you organize to war against other people.  You also get to chat with your alliance members and after a while they start seeming like friends.  I have played a few other online multiplayer games but none of them really got me into it like this.  Our alliance has leaders and also people who think they can lead but fail, it is really a good microcosm of the business world.

So if you ever play you can look for me.  I am on server 7.  My username is AzDragon, and my towns are in a place called Lombardy.

There also is a good business lesson in Evony.  Basically that success comes from daily activity towards your goal, just like in business.  Every day for my business I place ads, make and receive phone calls, research the industry, and hopefully make sales.  In Evony, you build armies, upgrade buildings, and attack computer and human players.  But in both over time you get stronger and stronger, you start to have more and more success, and eventually you reach a point where you would be considered successful.

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Well I have moved my blog to my own server.  I have actually wanted to do this for a while because it is much more flexible and more powerful.   But on tuesday it become necessary because wordpress decided that my blog was just advertising.  I am sure they did not read it, because as most of my readers know there is very little advertising on here, and tons of great content, IMHO.

So I went off to recreate my blog.  I was able to install wordpress.org on my server with ease, took under a minute.  Then I found the theme I used before.  Then I started to look for my old blog entries, I was able to find over 100 online, and I have been reposting them into this blog using the original posting date.  For most of the entries the old cached version did not have the photos so they are missing now.  So far I have taken about 25 of my most recent entries and a few of the older more popular ones and put them back up.  It will be a long process to put them all up, and some older,  less relevant ones will not be reposted.

With the new location I decided to go with a new name, more of a brand name…. “The Biz Guy” is great, because that is what I want to be about business, but I wanted a more edgy name than the “The Business Blog”  I was able to update all my feeds to reflect the new location.  I will no longer get the 100-200 people a day I got from google, maybe google will find the new location, but I doubt it.

If you have linked to my blog, please update your links.  I really need the traffic now.

Thanks for the 2 years of readership.

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For over 5 years I have always wanted to be more involved in investing in real estate.  I have helped out many people with their investing, but the amount of investing that I have done for myself was not enough.  Sure I bought a few properties but nothing that was a turnkey money making solution….well that is UNTIL NOW.

Over the last few months I have spent countless hours educating myself, working on my connections, and working on a new website for Capital Active.  Well it is done now.  I have a functional site up and running.  But the REAL work was done finding and securing assignments on over 30 awesome wholesale deals.  You heard me right, you can now click HERE and find over 30, way below fair market value properties that you can invest in or simply buy for your own use!!!  This has me really excited.  It was a lot of work but it is worth it.

On top of having all of these great deals, I also have lined up people to help home buyers buy these homes, and if you are an investor we can help you find a tenant.

The readers of this blog will have the FIRST shot at buying these houses from me.  If you are interested in any of these please contact me ASAP, I hope these will go fast, they should because they are killer deals.

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Everyone wants to be a millionaire.  I always had it as a goal, a first step.  First I wanted to do it by the time I was 25, then I set it for 30.  Now I have a goal of doing it while I am 35.  But this time I have a firm plan to get there.

First off most people think that if you are one you will be set for life.  In many cases that is correct, but in most cases it took risk to get the million and most people who have it take those same risks and lose it.  There are ways to earn without too much risk, but mostly that is very slow.  Other people simply go crazy, they get the money too easily and spend it all.  Over 80% of lottery winners have a negative net worth just 5 years after they win.  They get this huge lifestyle, and then spend spend spend, and when the money runs out they borrow like crazy.

I personally know a lot of millionaires.  I don’t know of any who made the money trading time for money or having a job.  I know a few who won it, but the VAST majority worked hard, ran a business and invested the profits.  Some are in farming, some are in insurance, other have a business in one form or another but most are in real estate.  And all of the millionaires that I have asked about this invest heavily in real estate.  Time and time I hear that no matter how you make your millions that real estate is the best place to store the money.  Another common factor among those that have made and kept millions is that they live WAY below what you expect.  They drive older cars, they don’t shop at the fancy shops.  Most of them live on less than 60k per year.  That is still 5,000 per month.  While they were making their money they lived on much less.  Those people you see shopping at all the ritzy malls and spending thousands of dollars are usually people who earn a lot, and spend even more and have a negative net worth.

So what does it take to have a net worth over a million dollars.  I define it as all assets, at the price you could sell it for today minus all debt.  It is hard to value a business so I usually set that as valued as 8 times last years earnings as long as you project those earnings to go on.  Using that measure I actually was a millionaire once during the years that my business was really profitable, but I could not project that computers would become a commodity and that my business would start to lose money at huge rates until I was in the hole.

Also you can only grow your net worth from your personal profits each month.  If you have $3,000 in monthly expenses you need to deduct that from your income before you see if you have enough.  For me I have about $3,000 that I must spend each month to stay current.  About half of that is servicing debt, and could be gone if the interest rates were not so low.  If I am starting with a net worth of zero and I want to be a millionaire in 2 years I need to pack away about $42k per MONTH.  That is a crazy number, and that is why people with jobs don’t hit it.  Even if you had 8% interest on your side and you wanted to do it in 10 long years you would need to save over $7,000 per MONTH.  This is why less than 1% of the people are millionaires.  Even if you earned $120k per year and spent only $3k per month it would take you 10 years of constant effort.  The biggest problem is that when you earn that much, you usually hang out with other people who earn that much, and they start talking about their new cars, second homes and their vacations, and you feel “less than” for living on such a meager $3k per month and you can not maintain it.  It is like a bucket with a ton of holes in it, the more water you pour in the faster the holes take it out, and it never really gets full.  So the answer is clearly not a job, even a high paying one.  You have the limit of how much you can earn because of who you work for and with.  So a business is really the only answer, but to have a good business you need to be as good or better than all of the other businesses out there, or you need to have an idea that really sets you apart.  If you have a really great idea that can duplicate all over the world you can even become an instant billionaire.  This is what they folks at YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have done.  The first ones cashed out when the company was only 7 months old.  The second two have yet to cash out, though twitter just sold 2% of the company for $200 million, making the company worth over $10 billion.  But it is hard to come up with such an idea, most usually stumble upon it early.

So now we all have an up hill battle to climb.  So if you want to be a millionaire in 2 years from today you need to come up with an idea that makes you $50k per month on a constant basis.  Or if you want to build and sell a business you need make one that earns $125k-$150k next year, and that number is AFTER your take from the company because the company will need your or someone like you after you sell it.  The way you design a million dollar company is much different than the way you design a company that just pays your bills.

When you are looking for a large net worth you need to keep in mind the laws of large numbers.  One of the easiest ways to get there is to sell a product over and over.  Even if you only make $10 each time you do it, that means that you need to sell 100,000 items.  So plan your business accordingly.  If you need to sell 100,000 items that means that about only one out of every 1,000 households needs to buy your product.  Depending on your product that may mean that only 1% of the population even needs to know about your product.  But to even get 1% penetration may be a hard thing to do.  But one good viral video could do it for you, or one good endorsement.  Thousands have made it rich this way.

You can also get there by helping others reach for their dreams.  Imagine if you could help people earn a living and you got a cut of what they did.  For me this was always by hiring sales people.  I basically would set their wages to where they would get 40% of the profits that they generated.  I would pay for their phone, a place for them to work, I would help them close deals and I would design the products that they sold, I would even pay for them to have a base salary in case sales were slow that week.  The more successful they would be the more successful I would be.  If I have 3 or even 4 of these people it would keep me busy.  Imagine if I had 30 or 40, and if they averaged making $2000 for themselves per month, that means that each one would make me $3000 per month.  That alone is a million in a year!  Becoming a millionaire is REALLY a team sport.  I don’t know anyone who has worked to get a million who did not have a team behind them.  Most people I know help out people all of the time because the more people they help the more they make in the long run.

If you want to make it rich selling something, or helping other people get rich you need a system to manage the entire thing.  A system is really the key.  The good part is with a little math you can start to think about the system now, you can design the system now that will take you to the millions you want to have.  A good system with the right principles will take you there.  Run a simulation on your system, if it does average will it get you to where you want to be, is your system too small?  Is your system too hopeful, does it require that something unknown will happen to catapult you into your success, if that is the case it probably will not happen.  You can’t predict such things.

I really hope this helps you put your dreams in perspective.  And I hope you start to think how duplicating a successful system will get you there.  You need to focus on people, you need to focus on results.  Your plan must have the muscle to get you to your goals.

When you get your millions remember the little guys, remember to give back.  Millionaires are some of the nicest, most humble and most generous people I know.  Most millionaires are not they greedy people the movies and media make them out to be.  They usually are very humble because they know that peopled helped them along the way, and that being nice to people and helping others is the key to their success.  They feel lucky that they made it.

As always, please subscribe, and if you liked this blog please comment, I read them all personally.

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Well the stats are rather convincing.  Look HERE for all of the stats. For houses priced under $175k there is very little inventory and prices are going up.   WOW, this makes me feel much better.  What is most awesome about this is that most sellers still don’t know, so there are plenty of really good deals out there. 

I want to make my money in real estate and I see that the time is getting short.  I spent over 10 hours today working on my real estate business.  Tomorrow I plan to do at least 8 hours.

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The other day Adrian posted a great blog entry that really got me thinking.  His idea is that the number one most important lesson to be learned by people who want to be rich or be better off is not delayed gratification, not saving, and not any of those other things that all the books tell you.  Instead it is the concept of actually respecting your money.

Please read his blog, it is good, but I want to take it even farther.  I think that you respect for money is based mostly on what you learned from your parents.  When I say respect I mean that you value money, you value the stuff that you own that you bought with your money.  I have found that most rich people I know have a deep respect for money.  Some of the richest people I know watch where they spend.  They almost never throw anything away, they will have a sale first.  This is not being frugal, these people will invest in very expensive quality items that will give them long term enjoyment and even have a residual value.  They will buy things, but when they do they make sure that they get the best value.  They also think long term, and they look at the total cost of something, including the financing cost.

For years I have been in retail sales, owning my own computer company.  I have always had the hardest negotiation with those that were rich.  They would fight for every dollar to get the best deal, and I would give it to them.  But the people who could barely afford my services would never ask for a discount.  I have had friends who are always out of money, but they would ask me to go out to a restaurant with me and they would spend 2-3 times as much as I did.  I value my money, so I look for the best value when I spend it, at a restaurant that means usually having a coupon and usually I order one large item that will fill me up.  But most people order a smaller item, then the add on the salad, an appetizer and then if that is still not enough they add on dessert.  This same guy also had his car break down, it was going to be 400 to fix it, so he decided that it was time to get a newer car.  He found a car that was worth about $7000 and he bought it from a dealership that caters to people like him, he paid over $11,000 after he traded in his old one, and he agreed to 24% interest.  He did not need this car now, and I had connections he could had used to get it much cheaper BUT he needed it THAT DAY, he could not wait, and he paid the price for it.

Needing gratification now is the KEY that keeps most poor people poor.  Companies know this.  Car dealerships are told to get people to fall in love with the car then tell them that they need to buy it now to get that one.  One of the most profitable segments in our economy right now are the rent to own stores, just pay a bit now and you can take these new items home.  The typical price is about 350% the price you would pay if you just bought it at walmart today.

But the other most common trend among these people is that they never would think of starting their own business.  They usually don’t think about selling their old stuff, they simply give it away.  A friend of mine is in charge of cleaning up houses after they give their keys to the bank, and it is astounding how much stuff of great value they leave behind.  They leave furniture, toys, TV’s, computers, clothes lighting, and boxes and boxes of stuff.  Why did they not sell this stuff, and pay their mortgage…we will never know.

People that respect and value their money are able to live much much longer with out money.  A lot of people who own businesses now are also hurting, they have lost their business, they have lost their credit, yet almost all of them that I know are doing quite well, they manage to find money to pay the bills each month, they sell things, they dabble in freelancing for other companies, they do consulting, but the bottom line is that they do what they need to to keep afloat.  Then I know other people, who have never had that drive, and they sit at home all day playing video games, and they do nothing other than look for handouts.

This fundimental view of money does a lot more than effect our personal lives, it also shapes our nation.  Because the rich and poor spend money so differently they often scratch their head when they look at eachother.  When I had a lot of money, yet I would still buy things on sale, and I drove a modest SUV and such, many people wondered why I did not spend more, why I was also so “cheap”, it was not logical to them.  And then I look at them, and how much they spend when they have nothing and I can’t understand it, it is not logical to me.

To me and others the most frustrating part of people not respecting money is when it is your money that they are not respecting.  At this time our governments are spending money at record levels, our money, and they are doing it with very little respect.  They give money away, they waste money all over the place.  Right now they are spending our kids money, but soon they will start spending ours.  The plan to start taxing energy soon, and many other things.

So think about how much you respect you money.  I would love to hear what you think, please leave a comment.

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The world as we know it is over, unless something drastic happens in the next 24 hours or so.  For the entire history of our nation business has been the engine that has spurned our growth.  And the engine of big business has been the ability to raise and borrow money.  This has been done by selling bonds, basically chunks of debt.

This is how corporations work.  A corporation is a business owned by the stockholders.  Most companies sell stock to raise money to start out with, this is called an IPO.  But after a while if you keep selling stock you dilute the amount that each person owns.  It is basically like taking on more and more partners in your company, meaning you own less, and you control less, and these partners share in the profits.  So most companies find it much cheaper to borrow money by selling bonds.  These stakeholders do not share in the profits or any upside in the company, but they also are the last to be hurt by and failure in the business.  As the business operates they also accumulate other debts, to vendors and to employees.  If a company fails it is just like a small business that fails.  The owner equity is wiped out first, the assets are sold and the bond holders get paid first and in full, and then if there is any money left over the other debts are paid.  Only after all of this is paid does the owner get anything.

In the history of large American business many companies have gone bankrupt, and it has always worked this way.  Almost every time the stock is wiped out.  Some companies survive by getting bought out, others simply restructure and are able to get out with little pain.  But here is the big change.  In recent times the government has gotten involved in being the largest bond holder of many companies, but the government does not look our for the best interest of US the tax payers, they don’t mind taking a loss.

See a few weeks ago Chrysler declared bankruptcy, and their stock was wiped out.  The company basically had three large creditors; The Government, the Union for future pension and health insurance payment, and the bond holders.  Lucky for Chrysler they found a buyer in Fiat for 35% of their restructured company, the problem is that this buyer is only willing to pay much less than what the company actually owes.  The Government is not really looking to get their money back so they are willing to take a major loss, the problem is that the Government used TARP money to invest in Chrysler and that was illegal, but that is a mute point now, they are just rolling over.  But the problem is that the Government and Obama have decided that the BULK of the money should go to the Union, heck Unions are the ones that put democrats in office.  So the Government decided to write the plan in such a way to pay only 29% of debt owed on the 42.5 million of debt of the bond holders, the people who should be first in line.  While the unions are getting 55% ownership in the new company, and the federal government is getting 10%.  A group of the bond holders spoke up and rightly said that they were not being treated right, that they should be first in line, not last.  The one Justice of the Supreme Court of the US saw it this way also and decided to stop the sale to Fiat under this current plan.   A huge amount of pressure came from the White House to allow the Fiat sale to go on, and the Court caved today and let it go on.

Now what this does is it creates a terrible precedent in US law that bond holders are no longer first.  This means that the people who invest get in bonds get none of the upside and much more of the downside risk, all for very little return.  This move will freeze the bond markets even more, in a time that we need them very much.  This also sets up the precedent for when GM finally gets done with their restructure.  The correct thing to do would be to wipe out the Unions.  These unions are the root cause for the failure of these companies.  Line workers start at more than $70 per hour in pay and benefits, many with tenure make well over $100 per hour.  And then they retire with a huge pension and a huge health care bill.   With such a high labor cost the average vehicle made by GM had over $7,000 in labor cost.  Newer, non-union plants owned by Nissan, Toyota and such have average labor costs per vehicle under $1,500.   So if GM wanted to make a vehicle for a cost of $20k (Sales price much higher), they would have much less money to work with to buy materials and make profits, in fact they have not made profits for many years, and now pay thousands per vehicle to cover their debt.  So if you spend only half that as your competition on the parts going into your product then your product can not be as good for the same price.  So during the 80’s and 90’s they just built a lower quality car, and recently they started building a much higher quality car, but at a much higher price.  In both situations it caused a steady march of customers away from these companies, and a vast loss in market share, making it even harder to do business.  The unions were like a boa constrictor, killing the company by squeezing tighter and tighter, but the Obama plan for GM is to give the unions over 90% of what they were promised, and they have taken no real concessions, not even a payout.  While the Government is willing to take only 60% of what GM owes the tax payers, and what about the bond holders.  Well they are going to get somewhere between 19% and 29% of what they are owed.  This is crazy really.  But this is payback to the unions for supporting the democrats, and a step into the much more socialist America that we find ourselves in.
If secured creditors keep loosing their rights then our capital markets will simply fall apart.  I was getting hopeful about our economy recently but this will really put a crimp on things.  It also does that help that the federal government needs to issue over $100 billion in bonds each month just to stay afloat with all the spending that is going on.  How much longer will people keep trusting in these bonds, when you see interest rates start to go up you will know that the trust is fading, and when that happens there will be even more trouble for us.

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When you are looking to join a MLM you may find that some are VERY VERY complex while others are very simple.  Well I love math, and I always lean towards the very simple ones.  Complex MLM’s tend to not do as well as others, and also you never really know if it is all correct.  Some MLM’s are so complex that you are never quite sure what you are going to be getting paid.  I love math and I like to take a company comp plan and test it by pushing it to the max.  With most comp plans it is easier to do that by flipping it over, seeing how much the company has committed to pay out for any one sale.  Next I look at the MLM from a break even point.

So on to the math.  The MLM is called eFusjon.  My first thought was that they could not spell, I even had to Google how to spell it just to write this blog.  First off this business model is unique to anything that I have seen, it is very interesting and it is PURE math.  And I love math.  The way it works is very simple, you get paid $5.27 for each active person that is in your downline.  It is a 3 wide system, you have a left, center and right person.  But this is where it gets interesting, you share your left and right spot with other people who are to the left and right of your sponsor, the first one who fills the spot gets it.  If they put someone in under you then you are paid $1.20 per month on those people.  To be able to earn money you need to have three active people who you personally sponsored, and if they go inactive for 60 days their spot is erased.  The payment goes for 15 levels deep.  So when the whole system is full that means that 15 people are making $5.27 on your order, and as long as you are not in the center that other people get paid $1.20 off of your orders.  From my count this can be a VERY huge number, well if the company had millions of people in it and no one dropped out meaning that you had 15 levels full of people above you there would be (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14+15) 120 people who get the $1.20 override.  People.

So this means that on a $120 order that the company must pay out as much as $199.05 in commissions.  This is probably why they stopped paying $10 (Personal) and $5 (Sides) like when the company first started, because at that rate they would actually loose money on each order even with only 30,000 people in the company.  Of course a full system is over 100,000 people and only then would they start to pay out such huge numbers, but it will still be only half that get generate that much commissions for their upline.  I figure they need about 500,000 or so members for the system to stop working, and thus for them to be forced to change the system, I predict they will choose to change it once there is about 200k or so people in the company.  That may be some time from now, as there is only 30k at this time.  Also if people drop out that will also make holes in the chart which will also save the company money.  Of course they also need to produce the product for the $120 amount, and pay all of their bills.  One other thing that may save them is the fact that someone must recruit 3 before they get paid, and many never will do that.

The product is an energy drink, and it is healthy, and if I would buy it in the stores I would probably be willing to pay up to $1.50 or even $2.00 for a can, but I am really cheap.  Others would pay $3 with ease for a quality product that does what this does.  So lets say that it is worth $2 a can.  Well their price, with shipping and other fees is $166, for 48 cans.  So in my book you are getting $96 in product and paying $70 to participate in the MLM.  Now with a payback of about $5 for each person on your team you need 14 people to break even.  But it is much easier, because your upline can only put three people under each person so they must put people under you, and you get the full $5 for people in your direct upline, and $1.20 for people from the sides.  So if you find an active team you can quickly be in positive range.  If you find a superstar who can bring in 100 people in a short time then you would be making $500 a month.

So after looking at all of this, and crunching the numbers it all comes down to the team you are joining, and how many people you think you can bring in yourself.  So I looked at that.  The team that was showing me this has been in the company for less than 45 days, and they already have over 850 people.  They 2.8% of the entire company, and they are a group of builders that should have no problem putting in a 100’s per month.  Next the my good friend Fred was going to be directly above me, and he put in over 80 people in his last MLM in only 3 months, and that MLM was much harder to put people into.  Next I looked at the people I know, and how it would be easy to put at least a dozen of them in, and then they will put people in also, building a large group.  I know I need 14 people to make it even in my mind.  And with all of this I figured that 14 would be easy to get, I can probably even do it this month.  I need 32 to make this business totally free, and I think I can do that in the second month.  So I made the leap and I joined.  Most MLMs are built on math but most people who join them never look at the math.  I have looked at over 20 MLMs in the last 2 years and I have only joined 3 of them, simply because the math did not work on the others.  On those other ones there was no component of your upline building your team so on those I did not make money.   If you want to join in on my team will also receive the benefit of all of this, CLICK HERE to sign up, we will help you build into profitability ASAP.

I try to keep my personal brand to be that of Emerald Computers, the company that feeds me and pays my bills.  Most of the time that is all that I mention to people.   When I was looking at the math for efusjon I also took Emerald Computers into consideration, and that I may be able to sell computers, services, or websites to many of these people because of the fact that this company is very heavy into online marketing.  This made it a very easy decision, just from the few people there I already made two new clients who I should see this week.

One more final thought, another interesting part of this companies comp plan is the fact that you can sign up again and again under yourself.  So you can go a few levels, then you see a superstar, so you join again, and now you are double dipping, getting paid twice on their team.  It costs you $150 each month for each position so if you can create locations that pay more than that per month it is to your benefit to do so.  Plus you get more product to use.

I hope this helps, and I welcome any and all comments.

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For years now my printer of choice has always been a laser printer.  I like the faster speed, more quiet printing and the quality of the output.   The drawback of any printer is that it needs to use ink or toner.  Companies know that you need it, and they also know that they can make a cartrage that works perfect stop working by design.  Designing a way to make something stop working is one of my most hated things in the world.

HP is by far the worst offender at this.  They design their printers to count the pages, and then stop working when they reach a specific number and force you to buy more ink, even if your cartage works perfect they make it stop working by putting a chip on it that tells the printer that is has printed enough pages, even if it is still half full.  This makes is almost impossible to refill or even recycle the cartridges, they simply need a new chip that can only be had from HP.  Lexmark recently sued a company that made chips that worked with their printers.    In Europe these chips are ILLEGAL, because it blocks recycling.

For this reason I have avoided all HP printers for many years.  So I have this trusty brother printer.  It was a really good deal and prints fast and with high quality, but today it stopped working.  It flashed the toner light, and said toner low.  I was just finished with a print job and it worked perfect, nice and perfect then all of a sudden it stopped.  I had to print something really important so I kept turning off and on the printer, I even took out the toner a few times and it would power up and do a test then say flash the toner light.  After I while I decided to search the web and after a ton of research I found that other people were able to fix this.

How brother steals your money

It is so simple.  Look at the photo, in the center there is a hole, the printer shines a light into this hole, it bounces off of a mirror on the other side and then a detector will tell you the toner is bad if it sees light.  But as you can tell the whole is rather high up.  So you could have toner for 100’s more pages left in there.  So I simply took a black sticker, folded it up and blocked the whole, and guess what, my printer prints perfect now!

I know that they are out there to make a buck, they don’t make money on the printer, but they sell the toner cartridges for WAY too much money to compensate.  They design them to fail and this makes them last much less.   This makes the cartridge cost more, due to the added complexity of the mirror and lens.  It makes the printer cost more to make.  It even makes them put more in the landfills.  But it lets them sell many more cartridges.  At least brother is easier to fool than HP.

If you are reading this because you have the same problem I know this will help.  I would ask that you let me know that this helped you by posting a reply, it is easy and free.

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