Quite simple. Get the railroads and milk them, then the Orange properties – Bow, Marlbourough and Vine street in the UK edition. After that buy the light blue, and so on. alternatively buy something in the first two rows, put 3 houses on there, and then use the profit to buy something in the last …
Author Archives: Lance Wiggs
Trade Me 1, old time Auctioneers 0
Way to go – accuse Trade Me of not following good business practise, then be forced to cringingly back down in the face of overwhelming evidence. I’m not sure how this one played out, but is sure is amusing reading the resulting article. (Auctioneers).. Association chief executive John Ward had said Trade Me did not …
Would you like a Sheep or Goat for Christmas?
If you cannot afford a Wii for your loved ones, consider a sheep: Oxfam will let you “buy a sheep” as a gift, and they’ll send a postcard with a photo to your lucky gift recipient. They’ll in turn no doubt cherish the valueless photo, knowing that you’ve meanwhile donated the value of that sheep …
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Beat the Christmas rush – buy your Nintendo Wii now!
It seems Wii’s are running out of stores in the US as soon as they arrive, as it appears that the Wii is the Christmas item of choice. Actually that makes sense – at US$250 or so the Wii is not too expensive versus the Xbox and PS3. And let’s face it – everyone loves …
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Bestof eBay: Auctions and Social Networking
Not bad. eBay’s new site let’s you combine with the masses to vote on popular auctions – and thus drive more traffic to those auctions and eBay in general. It seems good on first appearance – there is the obligatory eye-candy – in this case the classic Web 2.0 rounded corners and Digg-like voting buttons …
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Sky UK and Google botch email migration
Looks like Telecom’s xtra debacle of a migration to Yahoo! mail is not alone. News Corp owns an ISP called Sky in the UK, and they are migrating customers to the Google Apps. Well trying to. To start with there’s a 10 page pdf on how to change your POP settings over. Slashdot has more …
Overall portfolio return: 72% this year
It’s been a great year for my US portfolio, which sadly is relatively small as most of my investments go into small private companies, with some to GMI. Here’s the return to date (green) versus the S&P500 (Blue). That green bar hits 72%, though I’m fairly sure there is an error in eTrade’s calculations, and …
Making money from the housing crisis
Call it Sub Prime Crisis, but when mortgage financiers Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae show signs of distress, the entire US housing market is in trouble. Freddie dropped $2 billion in losses in the last quarter, which is scary – as they hold over $700 billion in mortgage assets, at last some of which are …
Making money from eBay, Apple and Microsoft
Here’s an update on how my US share portfolio is going. Previously I was afraid that the tide was going to turn, and my 43% gain for the calendar year to September would be wiped out. First – Apple, Microsoft and eBay. I sold down 70% of my eBay holding the other week, as I …
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FreeRice: 350m pageviews and at least $320k profit
It appears, from the numerous excellent comments to the FreeRice article, that I made, well, a formula error in counting grains of rice, and it also appears that my estimate of cheapo CPM rates is perhaps, well, far too high. I really should have done a proper spreadsheet rather than use the calculator on OSX. …
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Why not charge $40 for a pack of cigarettes
Via Freakanomics, it seems that for men US$222, and for woman US$94, is the true cost of a packet of cigarettes, when you add in the net preent value of the damage to your health and lifespan. The public sector economist in me says that you should step in when there is a big disparity …
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Don’t give up on Vista
Very clever
BMW’s new F800 GS
Will this will be the overlanding bike of choice for the next few years? he question is whether the F800GS combines the best or the worst features of the dependable but heavy R1200GSA and the light but underpowered F650GS. Either way I want one. The photo above is a snippet from one of several over …
How to manage your company’s online reputation
Over the months I’ve occasionally said one or two negative things about a few companies. Did I say occasionally? Sorry – I meant constantly. Their range of responses has been interesting, and piqued the interest of Bullet PR‘s Nicholas O’Flaherty, who used the BNZ series of rants, along with Mauricio’s Slingshot posts as examples, in …
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The mysterious disappearance of Michael Carney
Michael Carney is a marketer that sends out an occasional newsletter to the community. It’s quite good (the last one even quoted my father :-). Michael is a influential guy on the NZ scene – he even wrote an excellent book on Trade Me. I do recommend that you subscribe t0 the newsletter if you …
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Lance Wiggs 