Unroll Me App Review – The Best 5 Minutes for Your Email’s Inbox
This Unroll Me App Review is going to show you why you should spend 5 minutes every month using this tool to clean up your email inbox. At the end of each month, your inbox will be writing you a thank you letter.
I wonder if it will send the thank you via email or snail mail?
Well, today we will talk about Unroll Me and really just how easy it is to use!
What is the Unroll Me App
To start off this Unroll Me app review, let’s answer a couple of questions as to what the tool does and who the company behind the tool is.
Unroll Me is a free service that allows you to easily (an understatement) unsubscribe from all of those pesky email subscriptions.
After signing in, the algorithm scans your inbox looking for e-commerce emails. Once found, the application lists them out allowing you to decide what to do with the subscription.
Who Is Unroll Me
Slice Technologies is the parent company that owns Unroll Me. They are able to make Unroll Me a free service because they collect data on the e-commerce emails you get. They use this data to, “build an anonymized market research products that analyze and track consumer trends.”
Slice says they strip all of the personal information (name, email, address, or anything else that could identify you) from the data collected. The technology behind Unroll Me is designed to determine if the email is personal or e-commerce. The algorithm completely ignores the personal emails as it searches your inbox.
You can read their blog for more information to see what the data is used for. Some of the research they post is actually pretty fascinating but I am a nerd when it comes to data.
How to Use the Unroll Me App
It literally took me five steps and less than five minutes of my life to unsubscribe from 74 subscriptions. I really could not believe that I was done already!
Choose your email provider and click through the prompts.
The algorithm will run. It searches through your inbox for subscriptions and then spits out a list of them.
Click either ‘Keep in Inbox’, ‘Unsubscribe’, or ‘Add to Rollup’ (I’ll explain that later) for each subscription on the list.
Success!
Was that not super easy? I know! Right?!?!
Oh! I mentioned I would talk about what ‘Add to Rollup’ is. The Rollup is a single email that Unroll Me will send to you at the end of the day. This email will consist of all the content from every email that is a part of the Rollup from that day. I have not personally tried this yet but they say the Rollup email is very digestible and easy to read.
One final tip. If you would like, you can have Unroll Me notify you on a particular schedule to check for more subscriptions that were not in your inbox at the time. I decided to do the monthly reminder.
Why Unsubscribe?
We now live in a world where we are completely submerged by advertisements. The design of these advertisements is to tempt us to spend our hard-earned money on materialistic items.
These ads do not stop with commercials, billboards, or temporarily tattooed to the back of that guy’s head on the bus. Subscription emails also drown us every day with more temptation.
Using the ease of Unroll Me to unsubscribe from these emails trying to derail us from our financial goals allows us to stay focused. This is why you should unsubscribe to these emails.
Also, they are just annoying. Unsubscribing will also help keep your blood pressure down.
Final Take
To wrap up this Unroll Me app review I must say that I really enjoyed my experience with this tool to free me from those spammy email subscriptions.
Look, I understand if you are skeptical because of the data collection. You are entitled to have those feelings!
The algorithm design to strip out my personal information is what sold me to try out the Unroll Me app. I understand if you are still skeptical after hearing that. But hey! As a data guy myself, I do know this technology exists and it is pretty amazing.
Overall, this is a great free service. If you can get over the data collection thing, then I think you will enjoy it just like I did.
There is no bad time to become a blogger. Simply the sooner you start, the larger a blog can grow. In this article, we’re going to show you how to start a money-making blog in under 5 minutes.
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
I’ve always been fascinated with stock photography as a way to make money. So I decided to try it and share my success as I sold my first stock photo in 10 days as a Shutterstock Contributor.
Honestly, I’ve been wanting to try this for a while since discovering Adam of Team Wallet Squirrel made $1,000 off a single photo (sold multiple times)! A photo he took randomly of the St. Louis Arch while supporting me as I ran the St. Louis Marathon in 2012.
This is my 10-day review as a new Shutterstock Contributor!
What is Stock Photography?
These are digital photos that are sold online, usually for commercial purposes. Sites like Getty Images and Shutterstock are great examples of websites that sell stock photography.
It’s an interesting passive income because all you have to do is upload a photo once, as a digital product, and earn money each someone downloads it! This can occur thousands of times without any additional effort on your part.
Great Stock Photography Example
How I Started and Sold my First Stock Photo in 10 Days
I’m not a professional photographer or a good photographer by any means, but I applied to both Shutterstock and iStockPhoto, two top stock photography websites, on the off chance they’d accept an amateur like me.
Unexpectedly, I was accepted to both.
There are other Stock Photography websites out there, you can apply to. Here is a list of the top 10 I discovered in my research, but I’ll only focus on one (Shutterstock) for this article. I assume they all have some similarities.
In order to start submitting photos, I had to understand what stock photography sites were looking for, and sell best. People aren’t going photos of clouds taken from an airplane window.
In fact, they specifically ask you don’t submit photos of clouds. They have MILLIONS of them.
You need to submit photos that could be used for commercial purposes. Some types of photos that sell best are Portrait Photography, Food Photography, Landscapes (usually with people) and fine art photography (artsy). Above all, nice photos with people sell the best!
This helped to understand what stock photography sites were looking for!
Day 2 – Find the Best Photos I’ve taken
Now to inventory what photos I already have. Having taken thousands of photos for fun, I had to assume some were decent.
So I plugged in my external hard drive carrying every photo I’ve ever taken through college, life, and traveling. That night, I went over 4,000 digital photos.
I sat at my tiny desk with Netflix on in the background as I clicked on my computer’s right arrow button nearly 4,000 times to go over every photo I’ve ever taken in the last 10 years. Most of these were taken with a point and click camera, so the quality wasn’t great, but a few gems were discovered. =)
I pulled all the good photos into a folder. I ended up with 100 great photos.
That’s still too many! I had to limit those 100 great photos down to 60 awesome photos, then down to the 30 all-time best photos I’ve ever taken. Later ranking them 1 to 30.
That was hard, very, very hard.
I had to keep in mind, I can’t control how these photos will be used. A family portrait may be used in a prescription depression magazine ad, so I was cautious and respectful to other people in the photos. Plus I would need photo releases signed (and submitted) with any people in them. I could download these online, but I simply avoided people to make things easier.
I was ready to apply to Shutterstock!
Day 3 – Apply to Shutterstock
Yes, you have to apply, they don’t just take anyone with a phone camera.
So I submitted to Shutterstock & iStockPhoto, but we’re still focusing on Shutterstock. Shutterstock was A LOT faster with the review process, taking around 5 business days. iStockPhoto took around 30 days.
I created a profile (basically username, password and verify email address). Then they requested I upload around 14 of my best photos. They would review these for the application process. Yes, it was a process, they have an official review team that reviews each photo uploaded to make sure it matches their quality.
Luckily I already went through and had my top 30 ranked. I added my top 14.
Finally, on Day 9 I get the “You’re Approved” email. I was honestly a little shocked. I knew the photos I submitted were MY best, but there are MUCH more talented people out there with better photography. I wanted to reply back and say “Really? Are you sure I’m approved?”. However, I kept my mouth shut and moved on.
So I hop into their platform and start familiarizing myself with their dashboard. It looks a little something like this and hasn’t changed in the last couple years.
I spent time filling out the rest of the information and verifying who I am for tax purposes. They are very keen on this, in fact, they ask you to submit a photo of your driver’s license to confirm who you are. That part was a little weird uploading a photo of my driver’s license but figured I’ve gone this far.
Remember every photo you upload, even as a contributor, has to be reviewed by their team first, even after you applied with those same photos. I guess it’s a different review team.
I started by selecting my top 8 photos for consideration to sell on their site. Now more work.
Having a nice photo isn’t enough, you’ll need to add categories to describe each photo, such as “travel, nature, urban, etc.”. Then add around 50 description keywords. These are how people search for your photos when they’re looking for a stock photo to purchase.
This part is crucial!
Once I selected all the keywords and categories for each of my 8 photos, I clicked “Submit” to have their team review my photos with those specific keywords. The idea is you’re not using unrelated keywords, have the necessary photo release forms if you’re including people (yup, upload those too), categorizing the photos correctly, and the photos are high enough quality.
Two of my photos got rejected rather quickly. They at least tell me why.
However, the other 6 photos were approved! These are the best photos I’ve ever taken right here. If you agree, feel free to purchase them, but I have no idea what you’d use them for. I just like them.
Day 10 – Sell Stock Photo, Check!
Someone liked my photo and bought it! I’m not sure who it was, but I made my first sale on Shutterstock for my “dock” photo taken in New Zealand. Maybe it was my mother, she still has my crayon drawings from 1st grade.
Not sure how they found it, just searching for “dock” won’t really find it. The term “dock” is pretty saturated. They must have searched for some of the additional keywords as well.
I can see how other people may use this as a stock image though. It’s very calming. The only thing missing is some kids running off the end, into the water.
So finding the right keywords for your photos makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE. You should be spending 30 min on keyword research for each photo and don’t be afraid to look at your competitor keywords on similar images.
How much did I make?
Lesson Learned – I was most disappointed that I can’t control the pricing. This is entirely controlled by the website. The cheapest they sell photos for are $29 for 2 photos, so we can assume they sell the basic quality photos for $14.50 each.
From my one download, I made $1.88. It’s not great considering Shutterstock is taking 88% and I’m getting 12% of each sale, but it’s what I have to deal with since it’s their marketplace.
We’ll overlook the fact that I only made $1.88 on one photo, or 12% of the price online.
Some people can make a living off it for sure, but as I mentioned our own Adam in his recent article “5 Simple Ways – How to Sell Photos Online” said he made around $1,000 off one photo of the St. Louis Arch. He uploaded it once and has continued to receive checks from it over the last year.
What I Would Do Differently
Now the photos I uploaded weren’t the highest quality (it was just a 2MP point and click camera). In the future, I would invest in a nicer camera. I’ve been thinking about a camera that would be great both for photography, and video recording.
This would allow me to sell stock photography, stock video and start vlogging for additional money. Personally, I’ve been looking at the Canon EOS M50 Mirrorless Video Creator Kit. It has everything I need for all three, all packaged together!
The only addition to my dream setup would be to add some nice, but cheap lighting stands or ring light to make everything pop and look more professional.
Conclusion
I’m continued to be excited about stock photography even though I only received 12% of the total sale.
I suspect the 6 photos I uploaded won’t do great, but they’ll continue to bring in a few bucks without any additional effort on my part. Plus I can add more as a Shutterstock Contributor now.
Now that I know what type of photography sells best, I can shoot some new photos to sell online as another way to make money! Maybe grab a suit and take photos in conference rooms for the highly popular business attire photos. Every photo I take is just another stream of passive income with stock photography!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
This is probably nothing new to you. Food is expensive! Outside of our mortgage payment and childcare, it is our biggest monthly expense. That is why I wanted to explore how we can save money on groceries.
Typically my wife and I will spend around $100 to $125 a week on groceries. This is for a family of four and a healthy fitness diet. I would like to lower our bill by about $25 a week which is a pretty significant cut! Especially when we are trying to eat healthily.
Let’s take a deeper look into saving opportunities to save money on groceries. This means looking past the typical tips you hear such as never going to the grocery store on an empty stomach or always go with a list. The seven tips below are sure to help anyone reduce their overall grocery bill.
1. Loyalty Cards
My wife and I tend to do all of our shopping at King Soopers on a weekly basis. In the Denver area, they tend to have fairly good prices with a great loyalty program.
One perk of King Soopers loyalty program is the gas savings. For every $100 you spend they will give you 10 cents off a gallon of gas. Since we currently spend about $100 a week on groceries, those savings start to really add up over the course of the year.
Also, just like every other company does nowadays, with loyalty cards they track what you purchase. With this knowledge, King Soopers will give you customized coupons every month. Unlike other coupons, these are actually useful for your style of shopping. I hate it when stores provide coupons that are never relevant to what I normally purchase.
I recommend doing research in your region to find who has the best prices along with a good loyalty card program. Then head over to those stores to get signed up.
2. Plan your Meals for the Week
My wife and I have found that we save money on groceries a lot better when we go to the store with a meal plan. During the week we can choose what we eat depending on how we are feeling that day from those seven meals. We try to pick two to three meals that are super easy to make (30min or less) and the rest are a little more complex that takes more time to cook(an hour or more).
I like the application called Mealime to help me out with planning our meals for the week. They allow you to select several dietary restrictions, foods you like/do not like, and then it gives you several meals for the week. The application even gives you a nice grocery list based on those recipes.
3. Meatless Mondays
This is a tough one for me as I like to have meat protein with every meal. I have always thought that you need a traditional protein every meal. Then I met Tristan, one of my best friends, who is a vegetarian. Over the years he has shown me great ways to get that protein from other sources rather than only meat. The nice thing about this is that these alternatives are usually much cheaper than most meat.
Making one or two vegetarian meals a week can help save money on groceries by cutting some major costs that come with purchasing meats.
4. Coupon Apps
Typically most major companies will have a mobile application that makes it easy to find their coupons. I would not hesitate to download the applications for the stores that you shop the most at. They make it easy to find the coupons you need so they can get you into their store. What they do not know though, is you are coming into the store with a plan (See Meal Planning above) so you will not buy any extra items.
Outside of using major retailer’s applications, there are many awesome third-party applications. Some of these include Ibotta (see item #5), SavingStar, SnipSnap, Grocery IQ, and Grocery Smarts. I personally do not have any experience with these applications (Except Ibotta) but they are now on my list to help my wife and I cut 25% off of our grocery bill.
I know Andrew uses Dealspotr to find great deals on all sorts of things including when he buys groceries online. Yes, that’s becoming more of a thing.
What couponing application do you use to save money on groceries?
5. Ibotta
Ibotta is pretty awesome and simple at help you save money. This couponing/rebates company, based out of Denver, allows you to save money on everyday items that you actually use. I must say, I really love this app.
The whole process is fairly easy. You sign up. You unlock cash rewards on the items you plan to purchase before heading to the store. You buy those products. You scan the product barcodes and submit a photo of the receipt. Then you get paid!
Have you used Ibotta? I try to use this app every week when I grocery shop.
Bonus Points: There are several other apps that are similar to Ibotta. These include Checkout 51 and Ebates (See Andrew’s Review).
6. Buy Generic
As mentioned earlier, my wife and I usually shop at King Soopers unless there are good deals at another store. King Soopers has great generic brands such as Kroger, Simple Truth, and Private Selection. These brands help us save a lot of money each week.
Most of the time these generic brands have similar, if not better, quality as the name brand. Why spend an extra dollar or two for that name? Going generic for most or all of the items on your list can cut down that final bill to save money on groceries.
Do you have any favorite generic brands to save money on groceries? Mine is Simple Truth at King Soopers or Kirkland at Costco!
7. Make Your Own
Buying items that are pre-made is super convenient and easy on a busy night after work. Sadly, these pre-made items are costing you a lot of money each week. This is because you are paying for the labor that goes into prepping that item.
Instead of buying these items, you should opt to make your own.
I recently had an experience where I bought a pre-chopped bag of cauliflower rice at Costco. This bag was about $5.50 and came with WAY too much chopped-up cauliflower. I decided to buy this bag because I was nervous about how much time was needed to go into making cauliflower rice. Just this past week I had another recipe calls for cauliflower rice. I did not have the time to go to Costco to get another bag or need that much.
So instead, I bought one head of cauliflower, put it into our food processor, and within a few minutes had my own cauliflower rice. The whole head of cauliflower was only 98 cents, saving us $4.52 for an extra three minutes of work.
Each week I can easily create a few savings by prepping my own food instead of buying pre-prepped food. The savings would really start to add up quickly then!
Now Go Save!
Adding these tips on top of the general rules, listed above, of grocery shopping will help you save tons of money every week. Now let’s go out and save money on groceries!
What are you doing to save money on groceries each week?
While I have recently updated this Robinhood App Review, it still holds true that the Robinhood App has saved me $420 in trading fees in my first 6 months of buying and selling stocks on the stock market.
However, our article is now updated to reflect 5-years later those savings have grown to over $1,631 in trading fees saved!
Since my initial review in 2015, the Robinhood App has grown into a wildly popular stock trading platform and their $0 trading fees have become industry standard. Companies such as Charles Schwab, Fidelity and more have all moved to $0 trading fees simply to compete with the Robinhood App now valued at $8.3 Billion (source). With all these companies reducing their fees, the average customer is the real winner, thank you Robinhood.
Nowadays with every brokerage platform offering free trades, Robinhood still holds a competitive advantage (especially with millennials) due to how simple it is to buy and sell stocks.
That’s what we’re going to look at today!
What is Robinhood?
Robinhood is a mobile app (plus now website interface) that allows anyone to buy and sell stocks on the stock market. Plus recently, users also have the opportunity to buy and sell cryptocurrency.
Robinhood offers $0 trading fees
Initially for this Robinhood App Review, Robinhood’s biggest claim to fame was that it had $0 trading fees. This was a big deal because at the time most brokerage accounts charged $7 – $10 per trade. Meaning if you wanted to buy 1 share of Apple (APPL) or 50 shares of Apple, most traditional brokerage accounts would charge you $7 – $10 in addition to the stock price for the privilege of purchasing that stock. Plus another $7-$10 whenever you sold it.
This obviously sucked because those fees would add up and drastically cut into your profits, especially for younger investors who could only by 1 share of stock at a time.
The Robinhood App wasn’t the first start-up to offer $0 trading fees, but they are one of the most well-known to have done it successfully. So much so, that it became industry standard. If you’re wondering if they don’t offer fees like other brokerages, how do they make money? I’ll explain below in a moment.
Incredibly Easy To Buy/Sell Stocks For Beginners
The target audience for Robinhood is the millennial investor, around the average age of 24 who recognizes the benefit of buying a stock like Amazon (AMZN) but intimidated by the often mysterious process of purchasing a single share of stock.
Robinhood wanted to make the process simple, easy, and fast, so they designed an elegant and intuitive process for buying stock. Simply find the stock ticker you want and hit “buy” and confirm with a swipe.
I have personally used other brokerage accounts in the past and grown headaches for the unnecessarily complex design and clunky software. Those experiences have produced a deserved fondness for the ease of Robinhood. Since then, many of my friends have switched to the app.
It’s worth noting that Robinhood has received some negative press over some individuals who have lost a significant amount of money on Robinhood because they say Robinhood makes it “Too Easy” to buy and sell stocks. While I feel terrible for those individuals, I can not fault Robinhood making such a successfully simple solution for people wishing to invest in their own financial future. We should encourage these simple solutions to complex problems, like the iPhone, Internet, and Indoor Plumbing all making our lives easier.
If you ever want to understand a company, understand the way they make money. Nike and Gap use child labor to make a higher margin. I’m not here to judge, just a shining an example of why you should understand the fundamentals of how profits are made. For our Robinhood App Review, we have to look at the finances.
Robinhood makes money by:
Collecting Interest from the cash you have lying in your brokerage account that isn’t invested. For example, if you have $1,000 in your account and haven’t yet bought any stock. The Robinhood App gains interest off that $1,000 similar to how you would gain interest on a savings account. You won’t ever lose money sitting in your brokerage account, but it’ll simply be there gaining interest for Robinhood, so invest it! This is a pretty common practice for most brokerage accounts.
Robinhood Gold is an additional subscription ($5 monthly fee) that gives you additional research tools, larger instant deposits (typically any deposit up to $1,000 is instant, otherwise you need to wait 3 days) and margin investing. I typically don’t recommend this for beginners and use Yahoo Finance for all my investing research.
Rebates from Market Makers and Trading Venues this means when you buy certain stocks, ETFs (Electronic Traded Funds) and options. Robinhood sometimes recieves a rebate (money back) on the back end if they have a relationship with some of the companies they purchase stocks, ETFs or options from. It’s like getting a rebate on a cell phone, but instead of a discount, Robinhood gets to pocket that money. It doesn’t affect you, but it’s a nice little boost to Robinhood’s profit line.
Stock Loan Income meaning Robinhood Securities earns income from lending stocks purchased on margin to counterparties. This is more for advance users.
Cash Management is the debit/credit card that Robinhood started. It earns fees from your card like a typical bank would see.
All in all, these are a nice way to help Robinhood make a profit without charging you additional money. It’s pretty clever.
Robinhood App Review: My experience
I initially signed up for Robinhood because they have a great deal when you use this Robinhood App Referral Code, you will automatically receive one random share of stock. I am happy to say that our referral code won a free share of Apple (AAPL) now worth over $400. It’s worth signing up for the free money. One of our favorite ways to make money.
Signing up: Pretty simple. I downloaded the Robinhood App from the Google Play store on my android phone (also available for iPhones). You will fill out the same info you would open a bank account. You will have to give your social security number, so be warned, but this is the same info you’d give to any brokerage account. It just feels weird because you’re doing this all over the phone.
Once you register and sign in. You don’t have to use your email and password every time. You can set up a 4 digit pin for security or a fingerprint if you prefer for quick access.
Connect your bank account: Everything is electronic, so you need to connect your bank account. Both traditional brick & mortar banks, as well as virtual banks, will work. I connected both my Wells Fargo account and Ally bank account. Keep in mind, when you sign up, you won’t be able to trade right away. There is usually a 5 business day waiting period once you sign up. This is usually just for Robinhood to verify that your money (a few cents) can be sent to your bank and back.
Is it weird doing everything over an app? There is definitely an adjustment period where you need to get comfortable trading over the app. I’ve never traded over anything before this, but it turned out quite easy. There aren’t many buttons, so for our Robinhood App Review, it was pretty straight forward.
Search for your stock ticker
There is a large buy button, click it
There is a verify screen, where you must swipe up to verify. This removes people who accidentally double-tap from making mistakes.
Done.
Here is a look at what the Robinhood App looks like.
What I Like About the Robinhood App
In the past 5 years, I have done over 233 trades. Most of these are buying a single share of stock at a time because that’s all the money I have to invest.
For me personally, I buy stocks that offer dividends because this matches my dividend investing strategy. I like the idea that I can regularly earn money from a stock without ever selling it by collecting the dividends they produce for stock shareholders. This way I rarely worry about the stock market going up or down because I constantly am collecting dividend payments. Here are all the dividend stocks I own.
Since I did mention earlier it’s easy to buy stocks on Robinhood. Here’s an example.
I can receive a notification that Realty Income (Stock Ticker “O”) has decreased in value over 5% and immediately open the app, hit buy, select the number of shares I want and swipe to confirm. All within 10 seconds I can buy stocks whenever I feel with absolute ease. I’ve done this during work meetings, walking in the park, and eating out with friends.
All investing should be this easy and free to use.
What I Don’t Like About the Robinhood App
The biggest issue with Robinhood is the three business day wait period. If you transfer money to your Robinhood brokerage account on Monday, it won’t be available till Thursday. If you sell a stock, you won’t have that cash available to you till 3 business days. Yes it sucks, but I have more time than money. Easily worth $0, but worth sharing. Just wait till Robinhood Instant is revealed to everyone. UPDATED 9/22/2017 – There is no more wait period for Robinhood Instant. It’s open to everyone, so no more 3 day wait period for your investments. This is awesome!
There is no website to access your stocks whatsoever. That means I can’t connect it to Mint (my money manager). Mint as consistently stated that since Robinhood doesn’t have a website, it can’t connect to the brokerage account. So my true financial worth isn’t provided. This does kind of suck. UPDATED 11/1/2017 – Robinhood now has a website interface so you can check your stocks on your computer. Plus it now integrates with Mint, one of my favorite apps.
There is no in-depth analytics to analyze stock values. It gives the basic info, but I usually use Yahoo Finance to do my research and just use the Robinhood App for pulling the trigger. With so many great analyzing tools on the web, this isn’t the biggest loss. UPDATED 9/29/2016 – Robinhood launched Robinhood Gold with additional research tools however, it cost $5/mo. I still prefer using Yahoo Finance. It’s free and a great tool!
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the recent glitch Robinhood had. I once woke to find that Robinhood glitched out and didn’t display my portfolio value. In total shock, I absolutely froze from fear. My balance went from $6,604.54 to $8.14 (which was my available cash). I immediately noticed that I still had all my stock positions, but it simply wasn’t totaling correctly. I knew since it was displaying my available cash instead of the portfolio value, this was a glitch and pulled the wrong info. Customer service was promptly reached and they fixed the issue in a couple of hours. UPDATED 8/11/2020 – This hasn’t happened since.
Notice how all those negative comments have been fixed over time from the original Robinhood App Review?
Robinhood is constantly growing and improving. They still have a start-up mindset by listening to customer’s feedback while being large enough to have an $8.3 billion evaluation. I use this app daily and simply haven’t found a better investing solution.
Would I Recommend the Robinhood App, Yes.
In my experience for this Robinhood App Review, this is simply the best brokerage solution I’ve ever used.
It’s a well-established brokerage, backed by Google Ventures and a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), which protects securities customers of its members up to $500,000 (including $250,000 for claims for cash).
That last part is taken from their website.
Back in 2015, I predicted that Robinhood would powerfully impact the market and force other brokerage firms to lower their prices. That absolutely came true and Robinhood continues to take market share from traditional firms because they have an elegant solution to investing, much how Tesla took over the car industry because they had a better user experience (yes you can invest in Tesla).
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Teespring Review: Make Money Designing Custom T-Shirts
This is the second time I ever tried Teespring, but my first time writing a Teespring Review. As a designer, this is a fun way to earn extra money by designing fun tee shirts and other gear. You essentially design funny/clever t-shirts and then market them to be sold.
What is Teespring?
Teespring is a legit website where you can design custom tee shirts and other apparel such as hoodies, socks, mugs etc. using their proprietary online design software. Once you create a custom design, you can share a link with your friends who can buy your t-shirt design directly on Teespring. The money, printing and shipping are all handled by Teespring.
The difference between Teespring and other custom t-shirt design places is the shirts aren’t actually made until you have a minimum order.
This way you don’t have to buy a bunch of shirts you’re not sure will sell or not. Thus filling your garage full of crappy shirts. All you do is create the design and TeeSpring handles all the orders, payments and shipping once a minimum amount of shirts are sold. Then you as the designer get a small profit off the orders sold.
Is Teespring Legit?
Absolutely! We’ve personally used Teespring and found numerous positive reviews about the company. They’ve been around for years and built up a solid reputation. Even Forbes mentioned them as a great way to make money by selling well-made t-shirts and other gear.
Yes, Teespring Pays You!
The biggest bonus to Teespring (and why I wanted to write this Teespring Review) is that once you get the minimum amount of orders. You as the designer get a cut of the profits for creating the design!
Teespring handles all the heavy work (collecting money, printing, shipping), but since you are the one that created the shirt design and marketed it, you get a portion of the money made. Of course, Teespring takes their share, but you get yours too.
It’s a unique sidehuslte if you’re a creative type that can create some clever t-shirts and market them.
How Does Teespring work?
Head over to Teespring and hit “Start Designing”. It’ll ask you to create an account with them. It’s just the basic name, email, and password. They don’t ask for any payment information when your first setting up an account or first creating a shirt design.
You’ll then be asked to “Pick Your Canvas”. They have a number of options since they originally started. You can create unique/clever designs on a wide variety of items including:
Canvas Prints
Beach Towels
Phone Cases
Wall Tapestry
Posters (12″x24″) & (24″x36″)
Flags
Indoor Pillows
Socks
Apparel
Stickers
Tote Bags
Mugs
I am going to focus on t-shirts for this Teespring Review since that’s what they’re famous for.
I select apparel. This takes you immediately to their online design software where you can create a completely unique t-shirt design from scratch.
It’s a bit intimidating, I just created a basic word print design (I find inspiration from Amazon’s funny shirts). I obviously didn’t get too crazy, but you have a lot of options for what you can do including uploading your own custom designs.
I was impressed with the variety in Teespring’s online software program, it really was impressive. It’ll work great for beginners if you don’t have your own design software like Adobe Illustrator. This is what their online software looks like.
Once you finish a design, Teespring will let you set the price for how much you want to sell the shirt for. You could set the price for $50 per shirt if you’d like. It may be more than people want to buy a shirt for, but it’s up to you.
You’ll start off with Teespring’s recommended sell price.
In addition to what you set the price at, Teespring will show you how much of a profit you’ll make based on the number of shirts and the selling price. So simple economics, the higher price you set and the more you sell, the more profit you’ll make. In the Teespring Review example below, if 7 shirts are purchased, I would make $70 or $7 per shirt if I sell for $23.99.
After you set the price, you will create a profile on your new shirt design. This is what people will see when they view your shirt on Teespring.
T-Shirt Title
Profile
Custom URL
Take some time with this. Giving your campaign/shirt description a clever description can really help sell shirts to people on the fence.
If you want to check out the t-shirt design I did for this Teespring Review, go to Teespring.com/i-am-a-blogger-teeshirt where you’ll have the option to buy. It’s very basic. I like to set the bar low for you to create your own amazing shirt design!
That’s it. Now anyone can see your shirt and buy it. The biggest thing from here is sending the link to your friends, post on your blog or share with your social network to buy the new shirt.
A popular strategy I’ve seen, create a clever t-shirt idea for a specific niche of people. For instance, the famous “Don’t worry I’m a ______” tagline. To give an example, I’ve seen “Don’t worry I’m a Nurse” and people created specific facebook ads for people who listed their occupation as “Nurse”. I believe it’s been really successful.
Teespring Review Pros
You only have to create the design, Teespring will handle the creating/paying/shipping info on their end. This is a huge space saver from the days you had to store tee shirt inventory in your garage.
You get paid per t-shirt. You can set your own price for your designs and that profit goes to you. So if you LOVE creating tee shirts, you can make quite a bit of money.
Their design software is pretty easy to use.
If you’re organizing shirts for a large group, you can create the shirts on Teespring and have everyone pay on their own via the link you send. Way less chaos.
Teespring Review Cons
Even if you create the best t-shirt design ever, you have to market it completely on your own. Meaning you have to email it to all your friends or create Facebook ads to drive traffic to Teespring’s website for people to buy your t-shirt. You’re basically selling Teespring’s t-shirts for them.
You’re limited on the amount of space you can design on the front/back of the shirt. This makes it easier for Teespring to print onto shirts, but prohibits super creative designs that take up the entire shirt. So no sleeve designs or anything like that.
Teespring Review Conclusions
I like the idea of Teespring. It allows you to quickly create a custom t-shirt design to share with all your friends for them to buy. However, it doesn’t seem to be set up for a permanent side hustle. There are a lot of better/easier ways to earn more money.
Once you create the t-shirt design, it takes A LOT of effort and marketing dollars to get those shirts to sell. So unless you have a particular network of people who are willing to buy a specific t-shirt, I wouldn’t recommend this as a permanent side hustle.
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
It’s not fair to bury the lead, so I’ll start off by saying that Charity Raffle Tickets Are Not Tax Deductible. Of course, always check your tax professional, but here’s a short story:
How I inaccurately thought I could get a tax deduction and win a raffle (I was wrong)
Bought a $170 Charity Raffle Ticket with big prizes and good causes
Learned Charity Raffle Tickets Are Not Tax-Deductible
My Idea: Buy Charity Raffle Tickets to donate to good causes and win big prizes
In all honestly, I thought it was a genius idea. I started to see commercials and ads for charity raffles around my hometown of Denver, Colorado as we approached tax season. Which is typically when most people start thinking about their charity donations.
I’ll admit I’ve never done a charity raffle so I wasn’t entirely sure what it entailed or how it worked but the basic concept was clear. I had an opportunity to buy a raffle ticket with my extra money to support a good cause and maybe, possibly, if I was lucky, win some cool prizes!
I Tried It: I Bought $170 Worth Of Raffle Tickets For A Charity
One particular commercial dug into my brain like a song you can’t forget. The commercial was for Mile High Raffle, a raffle to support the Boys and Girls Club of Metro Denver. It promised glorious prizes and impressive odds. It captured me with visuals of dream houses and exotic vacations. I was hooked.
I immediately pulled out my phone (as one has on them at all times) and dived into their website. It didn’t disappoint with their headlines of prizes:
Dream House or $2,000,000 cash
New Tesla Model S + $25,000 cash
South African Safari or $10,000 cash
Additional Trips to Greece, Bali, Italy, Maldives and more.
In all, they host a large number of prizes and boast 1 in 20 odds. Which are likely inflated due to all the smaller prizes like vacuum cleaners and headphones, but I was already too deep. I was in the “What If” mindset of lottery gamblers after a Powerball purchase. I wanted my shot.
So I bought a ticket!
I bought a single ticket at $150 (minimum) and an additional $20 ticket for their “weekly” prize drawings because I wanted to play the entire field. I wanted to jump in with both feet to be washed over with the “What If” possibilities. I knew the only way I could win was if I played, and that’s how I justified this large purchase knowing the money went to a good cause.
Learned Charity Raffle Tickets Are Not Tax-Deductible
I’ll admit I wanted my cake and eat it too. I thought I could hedge my bets, by buying a dream-filled raffle ticket and even if I didn’t win, I could deduct the money in taxes since it all went to charity (I was wrong).
In my haste to buy a raffle ticket (this is my first charity raffle ticket ever), I missed the FAQ disclaimer at the bottom of the Charity Raffle’s website.
“Are raffle tickets tax-deductible? – No, The IRS does not allow raffle tickets to be a tax-deductible contribution”
They were not mischievous nor did not hide the fact that buying a charity raffle ticket was not tax-deductible, I simply missed it completely on my own.
I don’t believe this would have deterred me in any way from buying a raffle ticket, but I would not have so mistakenly thought I could use a tax deduction if I lost.
The tiniest speck of light in this story is that it encouraged me to dive down the rabbit hole to understand more about the tax implications of charity raffle tickets.
Update 1: It’s been 4 weeks since the raffle began and it continues till the grand prize (Dream House or $2,000,000) is drawn on May 8th, 2020. So far there have been 9 winners in the early bird drawings, but none were me. I’ll let you guys know if I win anything!
Update 2: The contest is now over and I won zero prizes. I feel like a kid at a carnival just beginning to understand how significant the odds are stacked against him. My hopes were risen so high with their 1 in 20 odds of winning, that I lost sight of 19 in 20 people lose. Today I lost and I don’t even have a tax deduction to show for it.
Charity Raffle Tickets Are More Considered Gambling
I discovered a number of resources on this topic, which was great, but they all essentially said the same thing. Raffle Tickets, even for a charity are not tax-deductible.
Websites like Zacks provided some of the most clarity on how the IRS treats charity raffle tickets. Basically, the IRS treats it like gambling or specifically “nondeductible gambling losses” because you’re not selflessly donating to charity, but rather playing the odds in hopes of receiving something of greater value in return.
It just happens that instead of the money going to a casino, it goes to a charity. Since the donation is not in the spirit of a selfless donation, it’s not considered a tax deduction.
Fun Fact: In a similar fashion, when you pay for a ticket at a charity dinner. You can deduct the price of your ticket for taxes, but you must first subtract the value of your dinner/drinks. The reasoning is that only the amount actually going to charity (not feeding you) should be tax-deductible.
Something additional to consider is that while you can’t take a tax deduction from buying a charity raffle ticket. If you actually win any of the prizes, you are required to report those additional earnings on your taxes. Much like how buying a charity raffle ticket is “nondeductible gambling losses” if you win it’s considered “taxable gambling winnings” and must be reported as other income. Ask your local tax professional if you have any questions.
The Wrap Up
Essentially if you want a tax deduction, don’t do a charity raffle! Only do a charity raffle if you want to potentially win cool prizes but feel OK receiving nothing in return (remember 19 in 20 people win nothing). It’s a fun, different, and potentially exciting way to donate to charity, but don’t expect it to help during tax season.
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
Back in December 2017 Andrew and I got together to talk about Wallet Squirrel and where it was going. During our little retreat, we decided that we needed to find new sources of traffic for the website. We looked at many options but one really stood out to us, Pinterest. To dramatically increase our Pinterest referral traffic was set as one of my projects for 2018.
At the beginning of January 2018 I really started running with this project. I started off with A LOT of research for the month trying to figure out the right path for our Pinterest campaign. After reading countless articles, taking a course, and reading a book I had a plan set.
Next step was the execution.
Starting Off
One idea I liked for our Pinterest strategy was to manually pin throughout the day. I thought it would not be too bad to pin 20 to 30 pins a day. So I started off by doing this and to be honest, it was not that bad. At least for the first week.
Then life hit.
I was not able to pin during the ideal times between my job, projects around the house, or hanging out with my wife and 18-month-old. The blur that life is started to get in the way. Really there is no way around this for most people. There wasn’t for me and that is okay.
After not so long I was going full days without doing a pin.
This was not the path I wanted this campaign to get started on. Something needed to change.
I really liked my Pinterest strategy but as I mentioned, it required manual pinning. So I started looking for a Pinterest scheduler that would allow me to still follow that strategy but do the posting automatically for me.
After looking around at what schedulers were available, Tailwind hit all the marks. They help me find the best pinning schedule. The application gives me the freedom to pin what I need to. It helps me know the performance of my pins and boards. Finally, it allows me to easily upload new Pinterest friendly images when I need to.
Oh man, this list could be 100 items long so I will do my best to pick out a few of my absolute favorite features of Tailwind.
Your Pin Schedule: Right after you get signed up, Tailwind will analyze the content topics of your website. This takes a little bit of time but the wait is worth it because the application is figuring out what are the best times during the day for your pins to go out.
To get started head over to the “Your Schedule” page under the “Publisher” tab on the left navigation bar. On the upper right side of the page, you can select “Generate New Smart Schedule”. Select how many times you want to pin each day then hit “Generate New Schedule” (we do 20 a day). Tailwind will automatically generate your schedule based on its analysis of your website.
Pro Tip: Tailwind will also recommend some more timeslots that it thinks are awesome. These are the non-solid green timeslots. I filled these in for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday because the weekends are the most active days for Pinterest. I suggest you do the same.
Easy Scheduling: This is the feature that sold me on using Tailwind over any other Pinterest scheduler (besides being endorsed by Pinterest).
All you need to do is install the add-on for your browser. Then all of the images within websites, including Pinterest, will have the Tailwind schedule button. This allows you to easily schedule pins from any website. There is also multi-select tool within Pinterest so you can select several pins to schedule at the same time.
Board Lists: It took me a month before I discovered board lists. I love them! Why? Because they save SO much time!
What are board lists? They allow you to group together several of your boards together that fit all within the same topic category. For example, I have board lists for finance, side hustling, general, and blogging.
This feature allows me to quickly select the group lists to pin which automatically pins to all of the boards within that particular list. I know I already said this but this function saves me TONS of time.
Insights: Any Pinterest strategy will tell you how important it is to join group boards. The trick is you want to make sure that your group boards are actively helping your content. This is why Insights is so handy because it can help you with determining what boards are performing well or not. If they are not performing, get out of them. There is no point in wasting your time on those group boards.
Stats about our top performing boards
What I Don’t Like
There really is not much I do not like about Tailwind. It is really well built.
Out of everything the product provides there are few things that frustrate me.
Tribes: Tailwind Tribes are a great idea! Basically, they are Pinterest group boards within Tailwind. They give you another place to share your pins that will hopefully be shared by others.So what is the issue? The interface is horribly clunky. I find myself stumbling all over the place trying to find where to share my pins. I constantly feel like I am something that was built in Windows 95.
Like I said, I believe the idea of Tribes is fantastic and should be used no matter what in your Pinterest strategy. This does not mean I cannot wait until they decide to update the interface to be a bit more user-friendly.
Lack of Auto-Fresh: Tailwind’s scheduling interface is freaking awesome! I wish they could make the Tribes interface more similar to the scheduling screen.
What I do not like about this page is that it lacks auto-refresh. I will go through my Pinterest group boards to add several pins to our weekly schedule. During the pinning process, I am constantly heading back to our Tailwind schedule page (that was already loaded) to see how many pin spots I have filled up. This results in me having to refresh the page every time I want to see my pinning progress.
I would like to have the page refresh automatically when it senses there have been new pins added to the schedule. Seems simple enough.
Close Button: Heads up, I am really nit-picking here.
When pinning a Tailwind window will pop up allowing you to select what boards to pin to. After you select “Schedule”, either an advertisement for Tailwind or other recommended pins will display. This window will have a close button in it at this point. There are times that this close button does not work.
Should be an easy fix for them.
No Android Love: Even though they are in the process of creating it, I still hate the fact that there is not an Android application for Tailwind. iOS has one, why can’t the most widely used mobile operating system in the world have a Tailwind application? Alright, vent session over.
Quote from Tailwind’s website about the Android app.
By the Numbers
For the month of December 2017, we only had 26 referrals from Pinterest. That is it!
Then I started my manual pinning campaign in late January where we saw a small gain to 277 referrals.
Finally, in February is when we switched gears to automating our Pinterest scheduling. This is when we started to see the strategy get some traction. During the month we increased our Pinterest referral traffic by 283%.
Since switching to Tailwind, there has definitely been a speed up the growth of our Pinterest traffic. We are now four full months since executing our Pinterest strategy.
In those four months, we have increased our monthly referral traffic by 11,392%!
That is huge in such a short time span!
Do note, these are my personal results, but Tailwind also publishes the Typical Results of Tailwind for Pinterest Members every year, so you can see exactly what the average growth rate looks like for their members.
Getting Started
The easiest way to get started is by heading over to Tailwind’s website (yes, that is an affiliate link to help us out). To begin, sign up with your Pinterest account.
Side Note: As you can see they do offer scheduling assistance for Instagram as well! But since this article is about our Pinterest we are just focusing on that side of Tailwind’s service.
Alright, back to signing up. Once you click “Signup with Pinterest” follow the instructions on the screen such as authorizing Tailwind to link to your Pinterest account and set up your login information.
Once you are in, Tailwind will run you through some simple tutorials on how to get started with its feature. I highly recommend paying attention to these as they are really useful.
The next thing I recommend you to do next is setting up your schedule. I already shared some tips about this in the What I Love section but for more information check out this video.
From here I would get started with scheduling your pins. It really is that simple!
Where to sign up!
Pricing
Andrew and I signed up for the Plus subscription. This gives us everything we need for only $9.99 a month. If your blog or company needs more though, Tailwind does offer more advanced options that provide more feature that a bigger brand would need. These larger packages start off at $799.99 per month.
Most likely the Plus package will be plenty for you.
Check out their pricing list to get some more insight into what features each package will offer for your website.
Really there should be no hesitation on your part to give it a try because they offer a 7-day free trial. Typically, I do not like these trials because most companies still require you to enter your credit card hoping you will forget to cancel so they can earn some free money from you. Tailwind does not do this.
Pricing models as of 4/29/2018.
Conclusion
There are some really good Pinterest strategies out there including the ones that suggest you pin manually. What I love about Tailwind is that it allows you to follow those strategies while being able to pin during the ideal times for your niche.
Tailwind does the pinning for you allowing you to work on other tasks.
Wallet Squirrel is living proof that Tailwind really can help you increase Pinterest referral traffic.
Of course, I am probably missing some awesome features that Tailwind provides. Tell us what your favorite feature is!
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!