photo credit: Dawn Endico

Can you help drivers turn a frustrating situations into a profitable one by renting garage or driveway parking? Parking in San Francisco can be frustrating at times, whether you are a tourist looking to park for the day near Ghirardelli Square or a business person looking for a 2 hour spot near SOMA. Larger parking lots can be full during rush hours and you can get frustrated circling the same block for 30 minutes looking for street parking. Maybe you have a two hour business meeting in downtown San Francisco but hate paying the daily rate of $18 or $24. What can you do?

Do you live in San Francisco and have an extra cement parking spot next to your house? Maybe you have a driveway or parking spot you don’t utilize during the day. Would you like to earn some passive alternative income while you’re at work? Maybe your planning a vacation for several weeks and won’t need driveway access. Renting out your driveway could give you some extra cash and the security that a visible car is in the driveway.

Currently if you wanted to rent your driveway, garage, or extra space you would place an ad in the paper or on craigslist advertising the parking spot. Craigslist is a good option but requires you to be active looking through dozens or hundreds of ads looking for a match. Then you need to negotiate a parking fee and collect the fee. A new alternative that takes much of the work out of renting your parking space is GottaPark.

GottaPark is a parking broker and provides a web based tool to automate the parking process. Setting up an account is free and homeowners and business owners enter the available parking spot and determine the price. You can charge as little or as much as you want. When a customer selects to purchase your spot for one day or 1 week, you are notified and you are paid through paypal. No negotiating or collecting rents as you would with Craigslist.

Some ideas for utilizing GottaPark would be for raising funds for churches or schools. If your school or church is located downtown you could set aside a few spots for rental income. Earning extra income could help boost your school or church fundraising efforts.

What can you expect to make from renting your driveway or parking spot?

Here are some sample rates I found through GottaPark.
My sample search for parking on near Clay and Van Ness found a $3.00 rate and $7.50. The $3.00 seems to be a much better deal as it’s also closer to my destination. Rates closer to downtown can range from $7.50-$20. If you have a sporting event, parade, or special event near your neighborhood you could list your driveway or parking spot for extra income. Fleet Week is coming to San Francisco and will be drawing thousands of visitors and cars to the city. If you live in the Marina district, Embarcadero, or near Van Ness you could make some extra income from your available parking spot.

Currently GottaPark only services the San Francisco area, but another company called ParkWhiz offers more cities. A review of the ParkWhiz website shows parking availability for airports and even sporting events. You might find a cheaper parking alternative at a local home or business for Wrigley Field.

Do you live in San Francisco or another city and have utilized a parking service like GottaPark or ParkWhiz? Are you making passive alternative income from your parking spot? I’d like to know. If you’re looking for additional passive income ideas you can start here.

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photo credit: edans

Do you have a burning desire to write an ebook or novel, but not sure where to begin? Well, look no further as I’ve compiled a list of books that will help motivate you and get you up off the couch and writing the next best selling ebook. Can the ebook be a source of residual passive income? This will not be a “How to write an ebook” post, but an opportunity to look at some successful business ebooks for motivation. An ebook can be an opportunity for residual passive income, because it can be distributed for little or no cost. Besides your time the only other cost would be marketing the ebook. If you have a popular blog or website, this cost could be minimal. I must be honest and say that I am a bit jealous of writers who have managed so successfully market and sell thousands of ebooks. Maybe you have an idea for an ebook or have already written one, how has it done? Are you marketing your ebook yourself, or utilizing a site like ebooks.com or lulu.com?

Before I get to the top 10 business ebooks, I wanted to give you some ideas for ebook topics.

1. Write a mystery ebook. This is a great niche market and if you have an interest in mystery novels, this could be a great opportunity to start writing.

2. Economics ebook. Yes, I macro and micro in college and it was filled with examples of widgets, guns, and butter. Writing an economics ebook could allow you to be creative with your econ analysis of Keynesian theory and supply-side economics. Maybe you could substitute ipods for widgets.

3. History ebook. Do you have a passion for history? Maybe you’ve wanted to write a book on the history of surfing or history of blogs?

4. How about ebook novels? Do you have a deep desire to write a romance novel? The type of novel willed with passion and desire? Fabio won’t be on the cover, but it can still be full of steamy romance.

5. Psychology ebook. This idea came to mind as I was thinking about writing an economics ebook. You could create a personality test for bloggers and ask them a series of questions. Report your findings in your psychology ebook and market it to bloggers. You might have some interesting findings like 70% of bloggers have 100 online friends, but only 3 offline friends.

Since this is a personal finance blog, I thought I would highlight the top selling business ebooks currently being sold at ebooks.com

1. Getting Things Done by David Allen Published by Penguin Group Inc

2. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell Published by Brown Little

3. Multiple Streams of Income by Robert G. Allen Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

4. The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss Published by Crown Publishing Group

5. 2600 Phrases for Effective Performance Reviews by Paul Falcone Published by AMACOM

6. Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by Harv Eker Published by HarperCollins

7. Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lecter Published by Warner Books

8. The Coming Economic Collapse by Glen Strathy and Stephen Leeb Published by Warner

9. The Ten-Day MBA by Steven A. Silbiger Published by HarperCollins US

10. The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber Published by HarperCollins

ebook books and other resources:

Squawkfox wrote a free ebook: Frugal Food & Fitness: How to get fit and fab without spending a fortune
Seth Godin’s You should write an ebook
Lulu.com
Clickbank
Simple Mom’s Spring Cleaning for normal people
30 free ebooks from Mint.com

What has been your favorite ebook? Do you have one that you read that has been a source of motivation and inspiration for writing, investing, or being a better parent?

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The bankruptcy filing from Lehman Brothers over the weekend will not only impact thousands of employees, families, students, foundations, and stock holders, but it will be felt by small and large companies that will have millions lost in residual passive income. Lehman will be different from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that will continue to operate and provide loans to thousands of households across the country. Lehman may have assets sold off to other investment firms, including the asset management firm Neuberger Berman who will be sold to the highest bidder. I don’t want to gloss over the significant loss of income for thousands of families who will be looking for work after the bankruptcy or the investors who had assets in Lehman stock and bonds. Since this is a personal finance blog with an emphasis on passive income, I do want to look at the impact the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy has for other companies. Thousands and millions of dollars will be lost with this bankruptcy to companies that earn residual passive income through software licenses, research, suppliers, and even vending sales. Microsoft, Cisco, Bloomberg and even small mom and pop vending machine companies will all feel the financial impact of the Lehman bankruptcy.

So how will the Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy impact these companies residual passive income?
1. Microsoft will lose millions through lost license revenue from windows vista, xp and server sales. Each computer, laptop, and server running Windows software must have a valid license. Lehman is probably just one of Microsoft’s many licensees, so the impact would not be as significant as the others down this list.

2. Cisco, Nortel, or Juniper are also going to lose out on lost server revenue from Lehman Brothers. Lehman must have spent thousands, if not millions on network servers and security for client data.

3. Bloomberg, the company founded by Michael Bloomberg will also lose thousands if not millions from Lehman Brothers. Traders and brokers utilize the Bloomberg terminal on a daily basis for bond prices, news, and even researching mortgage backed securities and municipal bonds. These terminals are a tremendous source of residual passive income for Bloomberg and Lehman probably had hundreds of them worldwide.

4. Staples or Officemax, two of the countries biggest office supply distributors may be impacted by the Lehman bankruptcy as well. Staples may have lost thousands of dollars in passive income from sales of pens, paper, toner cartridges, and office supplies.

5. Xerox, Fuji, or Konica Minolta. These large printing companies could also lose thousands for lost revenue from printing supplies like toner cartridges and ink for large color copy machines. Lehman Brothers probably had a copy room on every floor and would print thousands of color copies each day.

6. Office Lease. Lehman Brothers had numerous offices around the world and landlords will feel the impact of the loss in passive income. Real estate can offer a tremendous passive income opportunity for investors once the initial investment is purchased.

7. Stock research. Lehman Brothers probably spend thousands of dollars each year on stock research updated daily from Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, or even Bear Stearns. Research material would have been utilized for clients and website information. Stock research or analysis can be an incredible source of residual passive income for other brokerage firms. In fact some smaller websites have profited from stock research newsletters, showing this to be passive income to the writer.

8. Coke, Pepsi, and vending machine companies. Even the big two Coke and Pepsi, will feel the impact of the Lehman bankruptcy. A vending machine can offer passive income as the cost of running the business is very little and cans of Coke and Pepsi sell themselves.

9. Newspaper and magazine subscriptions. The Wall Street Journal, Barrons, New York Times, and others will all be impacted by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. Thousands of subscriptions were probably delivered daily to brokers, traders, and analysts and will not be suspended. If these Lehman employees move to another firm, the residual passive income for the newspapers would be reinstated again.

10. Service industry. With thousands of Lehman Brothers employees being impacted by a bankruptcy numerous service industries will feel the impact from lost income. Many service companies offer subscription based models that will certainly feel an impact on residual passive income streams. Cable companies like Time Warner, At&t, Comcast may have a reduction in subscriptions. At&t wireless, Sprint, and Verizon may not sell as many phones and might even have Lehman customers cut back on cell phone plans.

The impact from the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy will be felt not only by the thousands of employees, but by businesses around the world. Fortunately for companies like Microsoft, Cisco, AT&T, Coke, Pepsi, Staples, Xerox, and The Wall Street Journal, they will be able to offset the loss in passive income with new customers. But what about the small business owner or catering company that held exclusive contracts with Lehman Brothers?

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I have several ING Orange Savings $25 referral codes available for new customers. ING is current paying 3.0% interest and is free to open a new account. You will need to make an initial deposit of at least $250 when opening your new Orange savings account to qualify for the $25 bonus. Just to be clear, using the codes below, I will receive a $10 referral bonus from ING. This money is not taken out of your account, but is a referral fee paid by ING for referring a new customer. If the link below is dead or doesn’t work, please try another link and let me know that the link no longer works. Please be sure to read all disclosure policies and ask any questions before signing up with your new ING account. The ING accounts can also be a great source of passive income or alternative income.

Highlights from the ING Website:

The Orange Savings Account

* Great rate - no minimum balance required. Everyone earns the same high yield.
* No fees - your money goes to work for you.
* No changing banks - the Orange Savings Account is linked to your checking account.
* 24-hour access to your account - you’re always ready for opportunities.
* FDIC-insured - your money is safe and secure.

$25 ING Referral Bonus
$25 ING Referral Bonus
$25 ING Referral Bonus
$25 ING Referral Bonus
$25 ING Referral Bonus
$25 ING Referral Bonus
$25 ING Referral Bonus
$25 ING Referral Bonus
$25 ING Referral Bonus

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Madison @ My Dollar Plan found an interesting way to get Free Money From the US Mint. What’s needed is $250-$2,500 in available funds and a rewards credit card. I would not advise you try this if you carry any balance on your cards, as it defeats the purpose. Start here if you need to get out of credit card debt. In fact, I would urge you not to consider this if you also don’t have an emergency account or short term savings account. This is an investment and will take a couple weeks to receive your coins. You might have the CC bill come due before you receive your coins, so be careful! If you want to read further, here’s an interesting way to earn some fun money.

1. Visit the U.S. Mint website and review the details.
2. As of 8/19/08 standard shipping is free.
3. Coins may be purchased as one box for $250 or two boxes for $500.
4. One President per household. It appears you can purchase other Presidents. 5 are currently available.
5. Use a cash back or reward credit card. The U.S. Mint accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express (Amex), and Discover Cards.
6. Once coins arrive, you can use them anywhere you shop. This is U.S. currency and is accepted everywhere. They would make a great gift from the tooth fairy too!
7. If you don’t plan on spending $250 or $2,500 in cash soon, visit your local bank branch and make a deposit. If they give you a hard time, just make several $50 deposits.

What kind of passive income or alternative income will I expect from this transaction? I’m going to use my Blue Cash Rewards from American Express as an example. I have two reward tiers with this Amex card. I earn .05% on purchases up to $6,500 and then 1.5% on everything over that. Two examples show earning potential at .05% and 1.5% below. Be sure to read your credit card reward information carefully and call your company if you have any questions.

1. Purchase $250 in coins @ .05% earns $1.25
2. Purchase $250 in coins @ 1.5% earns $3.75
3. Purchase $500 in coins @ .05% earns $2.50
4. Purchase $500 in coins @ 1.5% earns $3.75
5. Purchase the max $2,500 in coins @ .05% earns $12.50
6. Purchase the max $2,500 in coins @ 1.5% earns $37.50

My conclusion: It may not be worth your time or effort if you are only going to purchase $250 in coins with a 1% reward card. You’ll only be earning $2.50 and may not be worth your time and cover your gas expense to your local bank. It could still be fun and if you were looking to purchase $1 Presidential coins anyway, you still might want to consider it. I do think it would be worth your time and money if you have a higher reward credit card and you can invest $500 or more. It takes just a few minutes to purchase the coins and as long as your bank will take your deposit, you’ll be making $1.25-$37.50 for your efforts. Your credit card reward program may earn you more! Just to be sure you should probably ask your bank manager if you could deposit these coins. I don’t see it being an issue, but they might have a limit to how many $1 coins they like to have on hand. You could probably get around this by making several $50 deposits.

Do you have a reward card that would yield more than 5% in this U.S. Mint example? Please share it with us. Have you ever purchased coins through the U.S. Mint before?

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