It used to be, if you wanted to survey your customers or readers, you would have to pony up some hard-earned dollars for a paid online survey tool. In fact, many of these tools carry a monthly fee, and some don’t easily let you export your data–holding you (and your survey results!) hostage. That is no longer the case.

Video: Create Surveys for Free with Google Docs

With Google Docs, a free tool, anyone can create a good-looking survey. Your can accept results online, and have the results in a spreadsheet that you can then export to Excel or OpenOffice, or send to others as a spreadsheet.

Google Docs will generate the same great graphs that other survey tools will, and even supports advanced features like directing survey takers to certain “pages” of the survey based on their answers to previous questions.

I show you exactly how to set up your own free online survey in about 10 minutes with Google Docs in this step-by-step video:

[0:28] To get started, go to http://docs.google.com.
[1:15] Once you’re in to Google Docs, go to “Create New” and then click “Form”.
[1:28] Name your survey.
[1:51] A walkthrough of the various question types: Text; paragraph text; multiple choice; checkboxes; choose from a list; scale; grid.
[3:00] How to edit, duplicate, and delete a question.

[3:32] How to set up multiple pages and set up a “flow” for your survey so survey takers are directed to a different page based on their answer to a question.
[5:00] How to quickly move a question from one page of your survey to another.
[5:20] Editing the text that people see once they complete the survey.
[5:50] Save your survey.
[5:58] How to email your survey to others.

[6:10] How to embed the survey onto your blog or website–it’s so simple! This is one of my favorite features of the Google Docs survey tool.
[6:28] Select a theme (design) for your survey with a couple clicks.
[7:00] What it looks like once people respond to your survey.
[7:45] Showing the pretty graphs that the tool creates of all your responses.
[8:41] How to stop people from completing your survey once it’s over.
[8:55] How to export your survey to Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice, and other formats.

Next time you need to create a survey, try Google Docs. It’s free, allows (theoretically) unlimited responses, and is quite easy to use.

Tip for Business Owners and Bloggers:

If you’re running a business or a blog, I recommend surveying your customers/readers at least once a year, and preferably even more often than that. If you haven’t ever surveyed your customers, there’s no better time than the present–even if you only have a few of them. One or two more sales because you are able to offer additional services they need will more than pay back the small amount of time required to create a survey.

If you’re currently paying for an online survey tool, Google Docs has the potential to save you hundreds of dollars a year, so definitely check it out.

Enjoy!

Recommended Reading:

• My YouTube channel. Please subscribe there if you would like notifications of new videos I post.
• How to Make a Mind Map. My last how-to video, where I walk you step-by-step through another free online tool to create mind maps!

Don’t enjoy cleaning your house, cooking,
or mowing your lawn? How to outsource
boring jobs in five easy steps.

My Story

I’m a lazy cook. Anything that takes longer than 15 minutes is longer than my attention span. So I end up cooking a lot of hot dogs and macaroni and cheese.

Since I was recently diagnosed with Celiac disease, I can no longer eat out at many restaurants.

I needed a solution.

Step 1: Decide What You Want to Outsource

My first thought was to research recipes online. After reading a few of them, I quickly realized cooking could become my second full-time job. Gluten-free cooking requires understanding a myriad of various flours–and which flour works best for which purpose.

Around that time, I was reading the new expanded version of The Four-Hour Work Week. Tim Ferriss added tons of case studies to it, and one of them was about a guy who was looking for an Indian vegetarian cook and posted about it on craigslist.

That hit me like a lightning bolt. I realized my dilemma–either eat a bunch of hot dogs and Chipotle or take on a new “job” of cooking–had a third option: Hire someone.

Step 2: Push Through Your Fears

Immediately, I was beset by fears. Would this be ridiculously expensive? Would I be able to find someone who knew how to cook gluten-free food? Would I find someone who cooked terrible food that I hated or that made me sick? Would they need to use my kitchen for hours on end?

The questions didn’t stop, but I realized that, like my business fears, I would simply have to push through them and try it out.

Whenever I get paralyzed by fear, I like to play this game called “What’s the worst that could happen?” I imagine the most outrageous scenario possible. I often do this before public speaking. Feel free to make it totally insane. Here’s one from public speaking: “I go up on stage, and aliens abduct the audience. Then an earthquake hits. Then I’m suddenly transported back in time to the Ice Age…”

Once you start laughing, your fears are usually gone. Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as your crazy imagination makes it out to be.

I applied this technique to hiring a cook. “She charges $500 an hour, and claims she knows how to cook gluten-free, but then uses flour in everything…she makes the worst food imaginable…” (And then I started imagining food that looked terrible and tasted even worse.)

Step 3: Post the Ad

I needn’t have worried. My craigslist posting (below) generated 14 responses within the first day; the vast majority of the responders mentioned that they were gluten-free themselves!

My craigslist post. Within a week, I had hired my chef!

The prices were all over the place. I mentioned I wanted to pay hourly, but some of the more professional chefs wanted to charge per meal. That could get expensive quickly! I pretty much instantly ruled the pros out–I’ve learned that those at the top of their game probably aren’t the best to hire for this type of task, anyway.

Step 4: Follow Up With Questions and Do a Test Run

I responded to several emails with followup questions. The woman I ended up hiring has a day job and is also gluten-free in her daily life. She was looking for a way to earn extra cash on the side.

I decided to give her a test. If it worked out, I’d hire her. She agreed to the challenge, and I had her make some time-consuming gluten-free cinnamon rolls. I reimbursed her for the ingredients. The cinnamon rolls turned out great–and Richard and I spent a day gorging ourselves on them!

After I ate the cinnamon rolls, I hired her. Yum!

Step 5: Hire, and Make the Details Clear

Here’s how our arrangement works: I pay her $10/hour, plus reimbursements for food with provided receipt. That hourly rate includes time shopping and driving the food to my house.

Since her kitchen is gluten-free, she cooks at her own house every Sunday and Wednesday and brings food over. She lives close by–about 10-15 minutes from me. We coordinate menus via email. Richard and I read gluten-free blogs and cookbooks and send her recipes.

My total spent is about $300 a month (plus food costs), and for all that I get fantastic meals that would have cost us a lot more were we to eat them in a restaurant.

Am I paying a little more than I would have to make food myself? Yes.
Am I eating better, higher-quality food? Heck, yes!

Here I am enjoying some of the fruits of my chef’s labor–gluten-free shrimp scampi!

My Rule of Thumb

There’s no rule that says you have to do everything around your house–especially if you don’t particularly enjoy a certain task. If you don’t like cleaning, mowing your yard, doing taxes, or cooking, hire someone else to do it.

Here’s my rule of thumb: If it stays on my to-do list for longer than two weeks, it’s time to hire someone else to do it.

“But I Can’t Afford It!”

If you think you can’t afford it, do a budget. See exactly what you’re spending money on every month. Then take $200 of those expenses and get rid of them, and use that money to hire someone. Cell phone plans, car insurance, your cable bill, and miscellaneous junk (like, oh, stopping at the convenience store after work) are all easy targets.

You can also do a few hours of side work. Typically, you will be able to bill your skills out at a higher rate than you’ll pay someone to work on your house. I really enjoy giving advice over the phone, for instance. So one alternative would be for me to do an hour of consulting a month and bill it at $500. If I can confidently deliver at least $500 of value to the person on the other end during our hour, it will be well worth it for both of us. Even if your hourly rate is lower, it’s probably still higher than $10-$12.

I live in one of the most expensive areas of the United States (N. County San Diego), so you may be able to find a chef for even less than I did!

Life is too short to do boring chores you hate because you’re afraid to hire someone else. Do your homework (and trust your gut instinct if it says to not hire a certain person) and find the right people. Spend your time doing things you love instead. You won’t regret your decision!

Recommended Reading:

• The Expanded Version of The Four-Hour Work Week. I already had the former version of this book, but the new version includes 100+ additional pages of case studies. The information on hiring a chef alone made this book well worth the purchase price.

Six easy steps to negotiate your phone bill
and save thousands of dollars.

It was clear that Vonage was encouraging its customers to upgrade to its $24.95 rate plan for “only eight dollars a month!” I had a better idea.

I have had fantastic success negotiating with both cable and cell phone companies. Comcast is currently paying me to watch cable TV — I downgraded to basic cable, saving my HDTV and dual-tuner TiVo features, but my cost for basic cable is less than the 2-package discount I get by having our Internet service with them as well.

As for my cell phone, I currently pay Sprint PCS for two cell phone lines, 1000 minutes shared, 500 text messages per month per line, two data access plans with tethering, and insurance in case one phone breaks or is lost/stolen. Total cost? $67/month. (My boyfriend and I split this cost, meaning we pay less individually than anyone I know for post-paid cell phone service.)

In this article, I’m going to show you six easy steps to negotiate like a pro with your cable or phone company. All consumer cable and phone companies operate on the same basic principle — that saving a customer is better than trying to find a new one. The best thing about these tricks is if for some reason, they don’t work, you can just hang up. These companies won’t disconnect your service without you jumping through a lot of hoops, so don’t be concerned about “accidentally” canceling.

Step 1: Call and tell the prompt that you want to cancel your service.

Never call and ask for customer service. Customer service doesn’t have the power to lower your rate. Always call and ask to cancel your service. The automatic voice prompters almost universally recognize the word “cancel.” If you get to an operator, make sure you specifically state that you want to cancel your service.

Step 2: Stomach your fear and be kind.

When the rep comes on the line and asks what he/she can do for you, state “I would like to cancel my service, please.” It’s worth noting here that you should be as nice as possible. Put a smile in your voice. You want the rep to like you. They have a script, but they get personal bonuses for you to stay on as a customer. You both have the same end goal: for you to remain happy with their service and stay a customer for many years to come.

The script varies a bit here, but after confirming your account information, most customer service reps will note how long you have been a customer. The longer you have been a customer, the better. If you have been a customer less than 12 months, or are still in a service contract, odds are slim that you will get a sweet deal. If you have been a customer longer than 24 months, are no longer in a contract, and pay every month on time, you have much more negotiating power.

Pro negotiating tip #1: Always set your bill to auto-pay and pay it every month consistently to become a preferred customer.

Pro negotiating tip #2: Stick with the same service provider, using retentions when you want a better deal, instead of hopping carriers. I’ve been with Sprint PCS since 1999. The longer-term relationship you can develop, the better.

In this case, the rep said “I see you’re a long-term customer of Vonage. You signed up almost 5 years ago, in February 2004. What can I do for you today?”

Step 3: The four key words you MUST use.

At this point, you say the following words: “I can’t afford it.” These are the four words that tip off any rep that you want a lower price, not more features. What I typically say is, “Well, I’ve been with [your company] quite a while, and it’s getting tough for me to afford the monthly fee. I just can’t afford it any longer.” They don’t need a whole sob story — simply saying a form of “I can’t afford it” will trigger the correct script. Don’t threaten to take your business elsewhere, especially since you don’t plan to. Resist the temptation to justify. Just leave that “I can’t afford it” hanging out there.

They will almost always respond with “Let me see what I can do for you.”

Step 4: Never take the first offer.

Their first offer is a test, designed to get you off the phone as quickly as possible and score them the bonus. (Don’t fault them — remember, this is a script!) It’s guaranteed to be weak. In this case, I had explained I was calling because I couldn’t afford the rate increase to $17/month. The rep offered me six months of continuing the $14.95 rate.

Be polite! I said, “Hmm, I appreciate that, but that’s not really going to do it for me. I need something more permanent.” Again, no sob story, just a simple statement. That’s their signal to bring out the real discounts.

After putting me on hold for a minute (sometimes, at this point, they will pull in a supervisor, but Vonage didn’t), the rep came back with a much better offer. He said, “I see you’re only using around 100 minutes a month. We do have a special rate plan that I am authorized to give you today. [Erica's note: Those words are another cue that you're about to get a good deal.] It’s $9.99/month for 100 minutes a month. Additional minutes are 3.9 cents per minute. Incoming and forwarded calls are free; these minutes are for outgoing calls.”

I asked, “Is this a permanent rate?”

He replied, “Yes.”

Step 5: Once you get an offer you like, ask them to tweak it.

This was a great rate, and one not advertised on Vonage’s website, so I knew this was what is termed a “retention plan” — a plan designed to keep you as a customer. Once you get into the territory of unadvertised plans, you know you’ve hit gold. Now you simply ask for another tweak. For cell phone carriers, now is your time to ask for extra minutes, more text messages, or some other perk they can throw in cheaply. But with Vonage, I didn’t need any perks, so I said: “That sounds great. I’m interested. But could you get me a few months free on that? Say, 3 months?”

Most of them will chuckle at this point. They are aware by now they are dealing with a seasoned negotiator. This is a good thing; you’re developing a camaraderie with them. They should say “Let me see what I can do for you” again.

He came back on the phone and said he could do one month free on that plan. I said, “Great! That’s excellent. Thank you.”

Step 6: Thank them.

Everyone likes gratitude. Don’t forget to thank your customer service rep.

In Vonage’s case, they sent me an email confirming that my plan would be free for the next month and then drop to $9.99/month for 100 minutes/month. The total call took 12 minutes.

If I keep this plan for a year, I will save $106 ($8/month plus one free $10 month.) Based on the 12 minutes spent on the phone, that’s an hourly rate of $530 — making this strategy well worth your time to learn!

A few more tips…

• Drop the land line. There’s not a whole lot of reason to have a land line these days. Some people keep one around for E-911 service or to use during power outages, but they’re often not worth the price. Vonage requires you to input an E-911 address onto their website where 911 calls are automatically dispatched to if you call from that line. Since I only use my Vonage line at home, that works for me. If you have a landline, I’d encourage you to check out Vonage or RingCentral.
• Some carriers are tougher than others. Comcast won’t budge if you compare them to other providers, but “I can’t afford it” and then escalating to a supervisor works. To get the $67/month Sprint PCS rate, I made 5 calls and spent nearly 3 hours on the phone with 8 different representatives — 6 of whom said the rate I eventually got wasn’t possible. Was it worth the 3 hours? Yes! Over my 2-year contract, I will save over $1400 over Sprint’s posted rates for the same plan. That’s almost the same bang for the buck that my 12-minute call with Vonage provided.
• Don’t ever sign a contract without going through retentions. I’ve gotten a $200 credit, lower monthly rates, and even free or ridiculously cheap phones. Retentions is there to satisfy your needs. Use this to your benefit, and have fun with it!

Recommended Reading:

• RingCentral. Ready to drop your land line? Try RingCentral free for 30 days! You can set up a toll-free number, a local number, pr a fax line starting at $10/month. I use them for all my fax needs. My first choice for faxing and forwarding numbers.
• Why You Don’t Save Money (Even Though You Know It’s The Right Thing To Do.) Marketers are good at getting us to make emotional buying decisions. Savings and retirement accounts just aren’t as interesting.
• How To Start A Business With No Money. With all that money you just saved, how about starting a small business?

Get Rich Slowly readers: Welcome! I’d love to see you here more often! Please subscribe to erica.biz to get more free insights on starting and growing a small business and saving money.

Do you know that moment when you are programming something that really pushes the limits of the language you’re working in, and you just sit there and wonder, “Is this going to work?” And you draw out 50 possibilities and narrow it down to the one that uses the least amount of code, and suddenly everything just seems to click? You look up and it’s 30 minutes later and all of a sudden you dare to test it and it WORKS.

And it hits you that this minute, this instant, this moment when it all fits together, is why you are a programmer. Because you can make the language do things that no one else can. This is exactly why you are here right now — to show the entire world that you can throw all this random gibberish together and really make something that benefits everyone else. And this little piece of euphoria is your ultimate reward, because you’ve just done something that no one else quite has before, ever.

But what if eBay and craigslist don’t have the product you want, or you would really prefer to buy a new product? That’s when it is probably time to shop retail. How do you get ridiculous discounts at retail? I am going to show you a few tricks I have used to save on everything from Newegg.com computer purchases to any American Airlines flight (even the cheapest ones!)

Three Coupon “Golden Rules”

First, let’s go over a few ground rules:

• Thou shalt not waste your time on coupons that save you less than $1 (or your predefined “comfort” amount.) Spend time saving money where it really counts, instead of running around saving a few cents. Your sanity level will go up, and you will feel better about yourself.
• Thou shalt not feel guilty or “cheap” about using coupons. Manufacturers put coupons out there for a reason! They want you to try their products. I have friends who tell me, “I don’t use coupons because I don’t want to be seen as cheap.” Are you kidding me? If you feel this way, start evangelizing the stuff you buy with coupons and like (I do!) Your kind words and rave reviews will do way more for the business than the few dollars they “lost” due to you using a coupon.
• Thou shalt not spend hours looking for bargains online. Your time is valuable too. Don’t spend several hours to save a few dollars. I am going to give you a “short list” of sites you should go take a look at for coupons and deals. If you can’t find what you are looking for there, you may have to try some negotiation tactics.

Your Five-Minute “Deal Plan”

Here is the exact method I’ve used to save thousands of dollars on product purchases. Done consistently, this will take you less than five minutes per purchase. I use this system on every single product I buy online, period. It saves a minimum of a few dollars and can save you hundreds if you play your cards right. Go through each of these sites, starting with Entertainment and ending with the coupon search. Once you do, you’ll quickly know where the best price is for the product you want.

1. Entertainment.com. Frankly, I think this is the #1 most valuable (and least utilized) site/book out there. You buy a coupon book for $10, and it’s filled with “buy 1, get 1 free” deals at local restaurants. However, my favorite Entertainment coupons are not for local restaurants, but for deals on American Airlines flights, car rentals, and local grocery and drug stores. In the middle of the book, you’ll find a coupon for 5% off any flight booked through AA.com — and you can purchase up to 4 tickets at the same time. That’s anywhere in the continental U.S., and there are no blackout dates or minimum spends to get the 5% discount. You can only use it once per year. My boyfriend and I used it on a trip to Miami and it saved us about $20. There are also $5 off $50 purchases at Safeway (valid every 3 months) and $5 off $25 purchases at a local drug store (valid every 2 months.) I also used their Enterprise car rental discount to get a car rental for the ridiculous rate of $9.90/day for a compact car. The guy at the Enterprise counter said it was the lowest rate he’d ever seen. I just bought a second book so I could use all the discounts again. Your money will be well-spent on this book. Get your Entertainment book for just $10!
2. RetailMeNot.com. if you think coupons are a hassle, try RetailMeNot. In about 60 seconds, you can find all current coupons for any website. You can also vote on whether or not the coupons work for you. This is really a no-brainer. I use this site all the time since it’s so quick and easy. Check it out!
3. Jellyfish.com. This site has a great premise. They get paid by retailers every time you make a purchase through their site, and they return some of that back to you in the form of cash back. Definitely worth it for larger purchases — use their search feature, then click through on the search results page to activate the cash back. Jellyfish offers you 3% discount on purchases at NewEgg.com — and since NewEgg.com is already a very inexpensive place to go for computer hardware and peripherals, it makes a good deal even better. I’ve also used their cash back at CircuitCity.com and Overstock.com. The only catch is that you have to click through their search results to active your cash back. Take a look at Jellyfish!
4. Last resort: Google [your item] + coupon. This will grab coupons from manufacturer’s websites. For instance, recently I needed to purchase Claritin. Lo and behold, Claritin.com has a $3 manufacturer’s coupon that you can print out. Nifty! You may also find links to other sites that have coupons for the product you want.

Fighting A Common Excuse: “I Don’t Have Time”

“I don’t have time” is a common excuse for not saving money via coupons. I will typically run through the four methods I mentioned above in quick succession to combat this excuse. I check Entertainment.com (which also has printable discounts), then RetailMeNot, then Jellyfish, and finally do a quick search for item + “coupon” on Google. Once you get into a routine such as the one I outlined above, you will quickly find that five minutes spent can save you significant money. Try it a few times before you dismiss it out of hand.

Other “Deals” That Might Be Worth A Look

I typically follow the four sites outlined above to find deals. However, there are some other ways you can come across deals.

• Sign up for a mailing list. A lot of clothing stores will give you discounts for this. For instance, Kohl’s sends you a $5 coupon when you sign up for their mailing list. It may not always be worth your time, so use a throwaway email address. Also, only do this with reputable websites, or you may find yourself the recipient of unwanted spam. I’ve found Kohl’s, Chico’s, cache, Borders, and Aveda typically give pretty good discounts for signing up for their mailing lists.
• “Deal” sites. These sites are designed to induce spur-of-the-moment purchases by showing huge discounts that are only available for a few days or until a certain allotment of product is sold. I don’t recommend signing up for their mailing lists — you will save more money by not being tempted by their impulse buys! However, searching for your product on the sites, you can get an idea of what the lowest price has been recently, and can decide whether it’s worth it to buy at the current advertised price. Remember — typically, products go down in price over time, so it may be worth waiting so you can pick up a used or refurbished item on eBay or craigslist.

Frugal Tip: Avoid Buying Junk

The last thing you want to do is end up buying junk. Even if it’s cheap, junk is junk, and it won’t benefit you to have it around.

I find I most often get screwed by buying refurbished electronics under $100. Recently I bought a refurbished home phone on Overstock.com (through Jellyfish) and saved about $12 over new retail. Unfortunately, the phone didn’t work. Overstock was good about sending me a return shipping label for free, but I still had to repackage it and drop it off at a local postal center. What a hassle!

I opted for buying the new version of the same phone at CircuitCity.com (also via Jellyfish), and the new phone works great. I stated this before in my eBay and craigslist blog post and I will state it again: I strongly advise that you stay away from refurbished electronics. Refurbished non-electronic equipment seems to be fine, and in my experience, used electronics often work fine as well. It’s just that “refurbished” label that seems to be so problematic.

Also, before you buy new stuff, check Consumer Reports and read the reviews of the brand and product. I found an excellent water purifier for our office with my subscription there, for instance. I also checked their reviews before my recent purchase of a new home phone to decide what brand to get. I subscribe to their online edition so I can just log on at any time and read their reviews. Their site is excellent.

I hope this article will help you quickly grab the best deals online and offline. Don’t forget to grab your 5% discount on any American Airlines flight by purchasing an Entertainment book. Of all the deals mentioned in this post, that’s my favorite — and it’s worth more than the price of the book!

Feel free to post your own tips for getting the best deals in the comments below.

Using the methods I’ve outlined below can save you a thousand or more dollars on as few as two or three purchases. In most cases, you won’t spend more than an hour or so doing the research — meaning these methods are absolutely worth the effort.

Using eBay Saved Searches To Save Thousands of Dollars

Saved Searches, combined with calendar alerts, make a powerful saving-money duo. Here’s how I recently put this 1-2 punch into action:

I was browsing at Nordstrom one day a few weeks ago and found a purse I really liked. Then I found the price: $390! It’s a simple backpack (I liked the black one), but it’s made of fine leather — thus the expensive price. A friend of mine urged me to buy it, but my bargain hunter instinct was going off, and I did not urgently need a new purse, so I took some pictures with my cell phone of the purse and the brand name, and went home.

I found out that by shopping online, I could save the sales tax. But I still couldn’t swallow $390 for a purse. So I went to eBay, searched “longchamp roseau” (the name and model of the purse)… and there were several purses, but none were the backpack model. I then set a saved search by clicking “Save this search” at the top of the results page. eBay emails you every night when new results appear.

For a few weeks, I looked at the email from eBay every morning, waiting for the backpack purse to show up. Eventually one did…with a starting bid of just $200! It was slightly used and purchased by a woman who had only used it a few times (a $390 purse that you only use a few times? Wow…) Anyway, I bid on it.

The second key point to this strategy is that you cannot just bid and walk away, since often there will be “snipers” who bid at the last minute. So I set an Outlook reminder to remind me about 10 minutes before the auction ended. I have Outlook set up to sync with my cell phone, so a reminder tone will go off there, too. That is, indeed, what happened, and I logged on to eBay with a few minutes remaining and refreshed the page every 10 seconds or so to make sure no one outbid me. Fortunately, on this auction, no one did, so I won the purse for $209 ($200 + $9 shipping.)

Strategy summary: Set an eBay “saved search” to find specific items you want as they are posted. Make sure to set for specific keywords (”longchamp roseau” vs. “backpack purse”) to ensure that you don’t get flooded with emails every day. Set a calendar reminder for a few minutes before the auction ends so you can make sure no one outbids you at the last minute.
Total money saved: Approximately $191
Total time spent: 1 hour (a few minutes each day to browse through the email, 15 minutes to browse online, and 10 minutes at the end of the auction)
Recommended for: Small, shippable purchases; “second” or discontinued merchandise. I saved over $800 off the retail price by getting brand-new “second” Ralph Lauren sheets using this method. “Seconds” have minor flaws that no one but me would ever notice (and I’d rather have the $800.) I’ve also bought Nike workout gear (new, discontinued.) I regularly buy AC adapters for my laptops on eBay.
Caveats: I do not recommend buying refurbished electronics or laptops on eBay. I’ve had problems with them and they are typically not worth the effort. Be careful with clothes — make sure you know they will fit by trying the same brand on in a store first. In most cases, you will want to stick with an eBay seller who has a high reputation number.

I have successfully used this same eBay strategy to save hundreds of thousands of dollars vs. the retail price on almost all the Cisco switch, Foundry load balancers, and Baytech remote reboot equipment we used at my web hosting company, Simpli Hosting. With the money I saved I bought extra equipment in case we had failures. Used Cisco and Foundry gear is rock solid, though, and the failure rate was not higher than it would have been if we would have bought new equipment.

Put this strategy into action and start shopping at eBay!

Powerful Craigslist Secrets That Will Save You Thousands

Similar to eBay, craigslist has an ability to save a search so that new items will automatically pop up when they show up on craigslist. Unlike eBay, craigslist doesn’t automatically email you when a new item pops up. Instead, they use RSS. Type in the search you want and then click the orange “RSS” link at the bottom.

Yes, but how do you get from RSS to your cell phone so you will be the first one to know when an item shows up? Excellent question, and the answer is a little-known service from Yahoo! called Yahoo! Alerts. Go to that page, click on the “Feed/Blog” link, and paste the shortcut to the RSS feed in the box. Then check how you would like the alerts to be delivered. Now you can get a text message on your cell phone whenever an interesting item pops up on craigslist! I call that a “secret” because very few people utilize the power of this combination.

Again, with this, you will probably want to use a brand name… but in craigslist’s case, I don’t necessarily recommend adding the model number unless the brand is really generic (”Sony TV” is better than “Sony”, but “Sony KDL-40S3000″ may be too specific, since many craigslisters don’t type in the model number.)

I used this strategy to buy a TV in January 2007. I wanted to host a Super Bowl party since my Chicago Bears were playing (!), but I didn’t have a great setup at my house. Since I had a roommate at the time, I was able to squeeze a bit extra out of my budget. Lo and behold, someone on craigslist was selling a 50″ Panasonic plasma TV (top-rated by Consumer Reports) for $1400. The exact same TV was selling at Best Buy for $1999. I checked it out at Best Buy, liked it, and bought it on craigslist with cash just before the Super Bowl. It’s still going strong — I use this great TV nearly every day, and love watching HD movies on it!

I have also used craigslist to purchase used electronics such as cell phones, an excellent coffee table, a 3-way floor standing speaker set and receiver for my home office, and many other items.

I saved over $900 off the retail price buying a front-loading premium Maytag washer and dryer set, 2 years old, from people who were moving and needed to get rid of them quickly. I have used them for the past 3 1/2 years with no problems.

Strategy summary: Combine craigslist’s RSS feeds with Yahoo! Alerts to get a notification about any item you’re interested in.
Total money saved: $763.91 (on the plasma TV)
Total time spent: 4 hours (looking at TVs in stores, online, and 2 hours going to pick up the TV and bringing it home)
Recommended for: Large purchases such as furniture; electronics; home appliances.
Caveats: I have had very few problems on craigslist. Stay away from anyone who gives you a bad feeling. You will have to drive to pick the stuff up, so you may need to rent a car or truck in some cases. (I can testify that renting is completely worth it — and if you want to rent some people along with your truck, craigslist is an excellent resource for those as well!) Don’t get caught up in saving just a few dollars, since you have to factor in drive time and gas costs. Get big stuff or stuff you love and can’t find anywhere else.

But eBay and craigslist don’t have everything…

What about when you have to shop retail? I have an equally detailed blog entry coming up next week that will explain how to save money using coupons and discount codes you may never have known about online. Next week, I will show you where to get a 5% discount on any American Airlines flight — even the lowest-priced ones — as well as a 3% discount on every purchase you make through Newegg. I also have secrets on hotel discounts and free meals at restaurants. And you don’t even have to sign up for any credit cards or scummy “email offers” to do these! Subscribe to erica.biz to make sure you don’t miss it.

As always, please feel free to post your comments below and I will respond to them.

Scenario: A client has a site where the SSL certificate has been purchased for www.[hisdomain].com, so https://hisdomain.com/ shows a certificate error. Also, for SEO purposes, he wants requests for http://[hisdomain].com to redirect to http://www.[hisdomain].com — if you don’t implement this in Apache, Google indexes [hisdomain].com and www.[hisdomain].com separately, with different PageRanks, so you don’t get the full benefit of those linking to your site.

Oddly, there are lots of tutorials on how to turn HTTP requests into HTTPS, and lots of tutorials on how to translate stuff from non-www to www, but no tutorials that combine the two. Using my regex skills and with some research, I figured out how to do this using mod_redirect in a .htaccess file. (Note that if you want to run this in httpd.conf, you have to add an extra / in the rewriterule lines. I want to slap whatever programmer decided two different syntaxes depending on where you locate the code was a good idea. Use a .htaccess to make this work properly.)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On

rewritecond %{https} =off
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.simpli\.biz [nc]
rewritecond %{http_host} ^simpli\.biz [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.simpli.biz/$1 [r=301,nc]

rewritecond %{https} =on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.simpli\.biz [nc]
rewritecond %{http_host} ^simpli\.biz [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ https://www.simpli.biz/$1 [r=301,nc]

Update: I tried this on another server and it only half worked… https://[domain] redirected to http://www.[domain]. But it works properly on the first server…so give it a shot, and if it doesn’t work for you, feel free to post what does.

I searched and found this free PHP breadcrumb script, but it didn’t do some things that I wanted — namely, if the visitor is on the index page of a section, it shouldn’t link that section name (since the link would be to the same page the visitor is already on.) Also, I wanted the final breadcrumb to be the page name if the page wasn’t an index page (for instance: Simpli Hosting > About Us > Our Datacenter, instead of Simpli Hosting > About Us for the Our Datacenter page.) That script didn’t offer that.

Also, even though I had “convert underlines in page filenames to spaces” and “uppercase the first letter of every word” enabled, they didn’t actually work. So I fixed that too.

Since the original author released the PHP breadcrumb script free of charge, I will release my modifications free of charge, and document my modifications below.

Here is the script: breadcrumbs.phps

You use it simply by including it in the page, and it will output the breadcrumb based on the directory structure of your site. For instance, a directory structure of http://www.simpli.biz/FAQ/Colocation_FAQ.php will generate:

Simpli Hosting » FAQ » Colocation FAQ

Change the $topLevelName and $separator variables to change the text in the first part of the breadcrumb (in this case, “Simpli Hosting”) and the separator between each breadcrumb (in this case, ».)

The key here is that if you’re on the page http://www.simpli.biz/FAQ/index.php, it won’t print “index” and it won’t link “FAQ”. However, if you’re on http://www.simpli.biz/FAQ/Colocation_FAQ.php, it will link FAQ to http://www.simpli.biz/FAQ/index.php.

This script does assume index.php is your directory index in every directory, and it does convert underscores in pages to spaces and uppercase the first letter of every word in the breadcrumb. If you don’t want it to do this, you can comment out the lines in the code that do that. See if you can figure out which lines do that.

This script is free to download, free to use (public domain), but there is no support. If it works for you, great! If not, hack it till it does.

One catch: My modifications use $_SERVER. If you use $HTTP_SERVER_VARS, you will need to global $server and change $_SERVER to $server in the MPBCDirIndex function.

First, the Twitter API is marginally useful, but doesn’t let you actually do much besides passively read and post updates. I used the followers list XML and created a PHP script that snarfed the XML and put it in an associative array. My intent was to create a new followers page where you could check a box next to each follower (with a handy “Select All” button as well) and one-click to add those followers as friends.

Unfortunately, Twitter does not expose the login portion of the API, and just going to http://twitter.com/friendships/create/[follower ID number] without first going to the friend’s page redirects you back to your Twitter home page — even when you’re already logged in to Twitter! This is really broken — the Twitter API should let you work with their URLs.

Since Twitter’s API is completely useless for adding friends, and their interface doesn’t seem to allow for going directly to a URL to add a friend, I am stuck. However, I am happy to release the PHP code I wrote so that others can play around with Twitter’s API.

I grabbed the XML parser from a page on php.net — this is actually very useful to parse ANY XML document into a multi-dimensional associative array in PHP. My source code works. Right now it takes your username and password, sends that to Twitter, gets a list of your followers and displays them in a table, along with the correct link to add that friend (which, of course, doesn’t work because Twitter won’t accept it.)

It is my hope that Twitter will make their URLs and API much more useful in the future so that this sort of thing becomes easy. My script goes a long way toward making that possible on the client side, at least.

My source code
The XML parser I used

See the script in action! (Enter your Twitter username and password to get a list of your followers.)

This script is free to use, borrow, tweak, and hopefully will spur the Twitter developers into action and make them realize the importance of creating a better API.