I saw this video posted up on John’s blog and thought it was pretty interesting. Some of the different ways that people count money around the world just don’t make as much sense to me as the way that I count my money, which isn’t exactly like the way it is depicted for North Americans in the video.

Then again, seeing how I can be considered a dot com entrepreneur, I don’t really deal all that much with physical cash anymore. It’s all about numbers on a computer screen and lines in a credit card bill. The only time that I deal with a large amount of cash would probably be when I play poker, but even then, I’m small potatoes compared to some of the other people at the table.

But I digress. I’d love to hear from some international readers as to whether the above video is accurate. Jorge? Etienne? Your thoughts?

As I’m sure you know all too well, there are countless ways for you to spend your money. You could invest in the stock market and hope that your money grows into, well, more money. You could donate to charity and help your fellow man. Or you could just blow it on something stupid, like gambling in the casino. The irony is that sometimes the best ways to spend your money are also the worst.

I previously described the 10 best ways to spend a dollar, but what if you have more than 100 cents to spend on something? Let’s have a look at the top 5 best (and worst) ways to spend your money. Yes, they’re the best and the worst at the same time.

Cars and Car Modification
Some people are perfectly satisfied with a vehicle that can get them from point A to point B in a reliable fashion, but why is it that these same people are known to swoon over features like air conditioning and an MP3-playing car stereo? Auto enthusiasts will remind you that there is no better feeling that ripping down a race track in a Ferrari F430 or some other supercar. It’s a thrill and it’s enjoyable.

At the same time, cars can be the worst way to spend your money. Nearly all cars significantly depreciate in value the moment they leave the dealership. An even worse investment are some of those car modifications that people like to do — exhaust systems, engine swaps, body kits, and so on — because these lose their monetary value almost immediately. And let’s not forget about gas prices. Even so, you can’t deny the pleasure derived from having (and driving) a hot ride.

Decadent Food and Drink
Might I interest you in a $60 burger? Or how about some duck confit and Larry Albright trout? They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach and let me tell you, I love to eat. There isn’t much that makes me happier than a nice dinner.

At the same time, isn’t it a little hard justifying the cost of a $60 hamburger when you know that money could be spent much more wisely elsewhere? That money could be used to invest in the future, help the less fortunate, or pay for something a little more necessary. Fine dining is an exercise in excess, but it’s one that I simply must indulge in.

Consumer Electronics and Gadgets
I don’t recall the exact figures, but consumer spending on electronics, gizmos, and other gadgetry is very much on the rise. People are spending more money on their iPods, high-definition televisions, cell phones, and other personal electronics than ever before. I guess I should be thankful that I review technology for a living, because I get to enjoy new tech toys without paying for them.

While considerable enjoyment is derived from having the latest cell phone, this enjoyment quickly diminishes when said cell phone becomes obsolete in 2 months. Piling up with electronics is a considerable waste of money and it can’t possibly be good for our landfills. But you just can’t help but to want a new camera, new stereo, or new computer accessory, can you?

Travel and Holidays
What are you doing when you go on vacation? You’re spending money left, right, and center! When you start to think about the flight, the hotel, the dining out, the excursions, the transportation, and all the other costs associated with taking a holiday, the Vegas trip starts to sound pretty expensive. And that’s before the gambling and the loss in wages! (Don’t forget about opportunity cost.) In the end, you typically have nothing physical to show for your spending other than some random tourist-themed trinkets.

Ah, but the memories are invaluable! If it wasn’t for worldly travel, I wouldn’t have eaten life-extending black eggs or survived the Great Wall of China. It is important to experience cultures other than your own, if only to truly realize that not everyone speaks English.

Designer Clothing and Shoes
For the life of me, I cannot justify buying a $100 t-shirt. Yes, there is a distinct difference between a finely-tailored Italian suit and one that you get off the bargain rack at the thrift store, but for everyday clothing, it’s largely unnecessary. The cheapest clothing will be of poorer quality, but you can’t tell me that your $200 pair of jeans is five times better than my $40 pair.

When I was younger, I loved getting new shoes. These days, while I still enjoy getting new shoes, I’m more about scoring a deal on last year’s style at the outlet mall. Maybe that’s just me. In any case, it’s fine to indulge in a luxury item now and then, but some people really stretch their budgets just so that they can buy a Gucci purse. Talk about status-obsessed!

Where Do YOU Spend Your Money?
I’d love to hear about your vices and how you decide to spend your money. Are you terribly frugal or are you an absolute spendrift?

No, this post has nothing to do with the unforgettable Seinfeld episode. Instead, I’m taking a look at another way that you can earn a living online. Beyond the Rhetoric tends to focus on blogging and freelance writing, but there are several other strategies that you can take to make money online. If you’ve ever wanted to be your own boss, but you could never convince yourself to invest a huge amount of capital, an online business might be the way to go.

Some people try arbitrage and others may attempt to cash in on affiliate marketing, but have you ever considered running your own domain registration and web hosting company? The Domain59 reseller program can get you started with a fairly minimal investment.

Wanna Be a Dot Com Mogul?

Ah, the life of a dot com mogul. You can work when you to, where you want to. That’s the kind of lifestyle that could be waiting for you when it comes to running an online business. As blogging and website ownership become more popular (and affordable), more people are going to want a website of their own. The two necessary components for this are domain registration and web hosting.

The reseller program offered by Domain59 essentially puts you in charge of a website that sells these two crucial elements. The basic reseller plan, which I will further differentiate from the pro reseller plan in a second, costs sixty bucks a year. Depending on where you go, this can actually be less than how much you are already paying for basic hosting for your personal blog. In this way, reselling domains and web hosting is very approachable. The best part is that it can be mostly passive income.

Getting Down with GoDaddy

If you think that the Domain59 system looks familiar, you’re absolutely right. That’s because it is really just the GoDaddy reseller program. I think that they should have done something to further differentiate themselves, perhaps with some better branding. As it stands, Domain59 seems pretty generic.

Domain59 resellers are offering customers the exact same products as GoDaddy. The keys to your potential success with Domain59, then, are getting the traffic and setting your prices appropriately. Set them too low and you’ll make minimum profit. Set them too high and you won’t get any customers. Just like Goldilocks and her porridge, prices have just be juuuuust right.

These affordable domain registration prices hit the sweet spot quite well. A .com domain sells for just $7.49, whereas the same domain would cost $9.99 through GoDaddy. The reseller nets a profit of just under a dollar with that single purchase.

Basic vs. Pro

There are two reseller plans available. In terms of features and what you are able to sell, there does not appear to be any difference between the two other than the extra $100 you have to fork out each year.

Both come with a pre-built, fully customizable web site that is hosted on their own data center. Both let you set your own prices and don’t require any deposits, advances, or revenue sharing. Both completely handle the billing and customer support on your behalf. Why, then, would someone be at all interested in a Pro Reseller plan?

The difference is that the buy rates for those with the basic reseller plan and those with the pro reseller plan are not the same. For example, the rate for hosting is $3.15 with the pro plan, whereas it is $3.35 with the basic plan. SSL certificates are $1.50 more with the basic plan than they are with the pro plan. This directly affects your profit margin. Whether you choose to go with the basic or the pro plan will depend on your level of volume. Shown here are the buy rates for the pro reseller plan compared with some competing reseller programs.

Make Money Online with Domain59

There are just as many ways to make money online as there are to make money offline. Working as a reseller of domain registrations, web hosting, SSL certificates, and other related products through Domain59 is one avenue that may be worth exploring, especially since your initial investment can be as low as just $59.99 for a year, including everything that you’ll need to get started. Heck, they even throw in some credit for use with Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter (more credit with the pro plan).

Remember that impossible is nothing. If you set your mind to it, you can totally make a decent income online. Selling domain registrations and web hosting plans through the Domain59 reseller program might be worth a try if the professional blogging thing isn’t going so well.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE DOMAIN59 RESELLER PROGRAM

There are a few things that I wanted to talk about today, but I didn’t feel like writing up individual blog posts for each of them. Instead, I’m going to offer you guys a combo pack with three very different topics. Nothing like a quick mash-up to cap off a reasonably relaxing weekend.

First up, I read in the newspaper that Wally’s Burgers is closing for good. For those of you who are not from the Vancouver area, Wally’s Burgers is was a popular burger joint for the last fifty years. It harkens back to an age with drive-ins and bright neon signs. I’ve been to Wally’s a couple of times, enjoying their Chuck Wagon and other beefy burgers, so it’s a little sad to see it go. The current owner is not renewing his lease — rent and taxes are $6,500 a month — because it’s no longer financially viable to do so. Maybe it would be a good idea to relocate dot com pho one week to Wally’s before the place shuts down at the end of this month.

You may have heard about the Next Internet Millionaire. Well, a similar concept is being conjured up for the Top Affiliate Challenge. It’s going to be an online game show with a similar format to The Apprentice, except it’s catering specifically to affiliate marketing. The 12 contestants will be broken up into three teams, each of which is headed by a top affiliate coach. I hear that Shoemoney and a certain panda killer could be involved. Maybe I should enter; the worst case scenario is an all-expense paid trip to Nebraska.

Ending on a very light note, you may have been following the Street Fighter: The Later Years saga on College Humor. While I’d normally blog about this on my fighting games blog, I thought it’d be nice to re-introduce the series to Beyond the Rhetoric readers. That’s because part 9, the final episode, has now been posted. The conclusion isn’t as epic as I would have hoped, but I still think The Later Years will be better than the upcoming Kristen Kreuk project. Anyways, here’s part 9 of Street Fighter: The Later Years. Enjoy!

It goes without saying that Google Adsense is one of the most popular monetization methods for all kinds of websites and Google knows it. As such, they have imposed an update to their terms of service agreement on us. When you log into your Adsense account, you will be presented with the screen above, getting you to agree to the new terms.

Normally, something like this would fly under the radar and most people wouldn’t notice. However, this new TOS agreement includes a stipulation that will affect all web publishers: we all now need an explicitly stated privacy policy on all of our sites that use Google Adsense. More specifically, we need to tell all of our visitors that third parties, like Adsense, may be placing cookies on their computers without their knowledge and then we have to inform them of their different cookie management options.

In the new Google Adsense Terms and Conditions agreement it reads:

You must have and abide by an appropriate privacy policy that complies with applicable privacy and data protection laws and that clearly discloses that third parties may be placing and reading cookies on your users’ browser, or using web beacons to collect information, in the course of ads being served on your website. Your privacy policy should also include information about user options for cookie management.

You don’t need to have a privacy policy published on your blog right now, but you will soon. Scrolling to the bottom of the TOS, you’ll see this:

In case you can’t read that, you have until May 25, 2008 to accept the new TOS. I don’t have a problem with this, per se, but wouldn’t it have been nice if Google provided their publishers with a sample privacy policy? Most of us aren’t legal types, so we may or may not know exactly what needs to be included in a proper privacy policy.

The other major announcement in the Adsense TOS involves what they call Gadget Ads. These are “rich media” ads that incorporate “data feeds, maps, images, audio, video, Flash, HTML or JavaScript in a single creative.” Yup, that’s what we need… more flashing banners selling us on Zwinky, smilies, and MySpace templates.

In case you didn’t know, the advertising auction on Beyond the Rhetoric ends in 7 hours. If you’ve been thinking about buying some advertising on a well-established and respected blog, now is the time to take action.

The auction for the Beyond the Rhetoric ad package is being hosted at PlaceMyProduct.com. It includes two valuable components:

 - A review of your product or website ($70 value)
 - Two month text link in the sidebar ($50 value)

You’ve surely seen some of my killer reviews in the past, posted both here and on John Chow dot Com, so you know that you’ll get plenty of quality feedback and exposure. The ad package carries a value of $120, but the current bid is only at $30. Talk about a deal! Get in while you can.