In the spirit of trying different things to generate income, I decided to sign up for a focus group as just like mystery shopping there seems to be a lot of advertisements about it. I had a general idea of what to expect as I have seen and read about such events and it turned out to be exactly just that. In a nutshell, you are basically placed with a certain group of people of a similar category such as your race or age as the company conducting the event attempts to analyze your thoughts and feedbacks about certain topics through a group discussion.

I got to witness and experience some interesting things such as failure during the recruitment process to properly inform participants on what was expected from them. For example, there were no indications that participants had to read or write a specific foreign language which created some interesting obstacles when the survey forms were not in English. However, for the most part everything went fairly smoothly as the conversations felt casual and they tried their best to not make it look like some sort of interrogation room as there were microphones everywhere and at times you could clearly tell that there were people behind the mirrors as you could clearly see a door of light as they enter and left the room.

Of course everyone wants to know, how the pay was right? Honestly, the compensation seemed pretty high considering I was only there for two hours. The compensation almost makes it look like an hourly rate of a professional such as a consultant. Compared to mystery shopping, so far from my experience focus group assignments seem to be more financially rewarding as you are not directly required to spend your own money to complete the task. As of now, I would recommend participating in focus groups for people looking to do something fun and at the same time making some spending money. Like everything else though, different organizations run differently so always keep that in mind as opinions will vary.

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Recently there seems to be a large influx of lawsuits being thrown around for what looks like to me as an attempt from certain individuals looking to make some easy money by taking advantage of the system that is normally in place to protect people. Most recently is that case I have been reading where a lady named Anna Ayala claims that there was a finger in her bowl of chilli that she ordered from a Wendy’s restaurant. She then tried to sue the company for this but it turns out that she has a history of filing lawsuits against companies for various reasons and she has recently been arrested as the police investigates her claims in this case and her past. This case is not yet closed, so I can’t say whether or not she is guilty or not.

Although, it just amazes on how there are so many scam artists out there and they are just getting more creative every day. I remember one event in the past about an old lady that apparently got trampled at the entrance of a Wal-Mart store as there was a big DVD player sale on that day and as the door opened she got knocked down by the crowd as they disregarded her and she was injured as a result of that. She decided to sue Wal-Mart for the incident to receive financial compensation, but in the end it was discovered that she did indeed staged the event and was guilty of similar events in the past. Obviously she was banking on some quick money and her gamble didn’t pay off. I bet there must be some other interesting stories out there that I have yet to hear where people were actually successful in getting money from large corporations.

With all that time and creativity one probably has to put into accomplishing such a goal, I’m surprised that they just don’t do it the ethical way and use that creativity to make something that will also benefit others and as a result they would be compensated for it. In my opinion, financial wealth is pointless if you have no one to share your success with. It’s like saying, what good is being the leader of a world if you are the only one in it?

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Apparently in the US a new bill has passed that prevents people from being able to wipe out their debts by simply filing for bankruptcy. Instead, people with a certain level of income will be forced to pay back a portion of the debt over the next couple of years. The bill is suppose to be in response to events in the past such as the Enron fiasco or how a lot of people who file for bankruptcy are wealthy individuals who use bankruptcy protection as a way to avoid paying off debts which they could easily afford. In the process of this I’m sure there are people who have a legitimate use for bankruptcy protection and will be severely affected by this.

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I personally think this type of law will help people become more responsible with their money and will force them to think ahead more thoroughly before making decisions that could heavily impact them financially. For example, most of the interviews that I have seen so far in regards to the type of people that this law would affect were people with families who were swarming in debt accumulated from interest rates from some sort of loan. When asked how they ended up with such a huge debt they mentioned that they were enticed by those no interest payment plan offers and after it expired they did not pay the bills on time and so they were forced to pay incredibly high interest rates. In terms of finance, everything from household essentials to having kids revolved around the belief that the loan they received would help provide them the money they needed to do all the things they wanted at that moment with minimal sacrifices. While I still personally go by the spend only what you have mentality, anticipating potential hurdles is often overlooked by many.

Like running a business, I personally think one should constantly be thinking of ways to improve and maintain their financial challenges. For example, let’s pretend that I am running a business selling lemonade and virtually every day the same ten people buy a glass of lemonade from me with 50 percent of the revenue being enough to cover daily expenses. What would happen with most people is that they would get comfortable with the situation and so it essentially becomes a routine with finances relying on this happening every day. Now what would happen if my customers grew tired of the lemonade, I became injured in an accident or some other unexpected event? Without thinking ahead I would be setting myself up for disaster. If I had to file for bankruptcy afterwards, I’m sure most people would be sympathetic about the situation but at the same time a lot of people would probably believe that I got what was coming to me as the lack of planning and vision for the business was the ultimate reason for the closure. In that sense, I believe the responsibilities and accountability should be the same when it comes to ones personal finances.

If you don’t have enough money, find other streams of income. Can’t find other streams of income? Start cutting back on non essentials like the TV. Either way, there is always a solution.

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I just saw a news segment that described about a man named Jeremy Jaynes who was convicted of sending unsolicited e-mails to AOL members and while it is perfectly believable, it was mentioned that he made around $400,000 to $750,000 a month as a small percentage of people actually would respond to the spam and that number is just staggering. Like every other site owner, I deal with thousands of spam each day and it becomes irritating as you try to distinguish them from legitimate messages. Even while running this blog I constantly receive comment spam from what appears to be automatically generated responses about casinos and gambling. In the end, Jeremy Jaynes was sentenced to 9 years in prison and hopefully this will help to discourage some spammers on the Internet to discontinue.

Realistically though, with that kind of money that can be made by spamming, it will probably be a continuing cycle as people will just finds ways to remain anonymous while conducting these types of actions. There’s over a million ways that someone could make a million dollars and I guess it’s one of those different strokes for different folks types of scenarios. In one end you have a side that probably laughs at the other as it’s all about money to them and they mock those who let moral values get in the way of making money and in the other end you have those who condemn others for compromising their integrity and reputation just for money. I personally can’t really say which side is correct as at the end of the day the goal for most businesses is to make money. Would I personally do something like this? No because I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing that I had scammed people to make a dollar. But to those who would say otherwise, I must admit that they sure have developed a strong attitude of being able to separate business from personal decisions which is necessary in running a successful business from the bottom up.

For now, I guess we will have to continue to learn to live with the constant spam that we receive unless something truly substantial happens to restrain the majority from sending unsolicited messages.

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