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Tub Inserts

The whole tub insert scene seems to be more popular now days. I have seen more TV ads for the tub inserts. There is a company thats giving franchise rights all across the country. So they must be doing a advertising push. The push the whole tub remodel in one day as a big selling feature. Is this the best thing for your house or not? The popularity really seems to be there for the tub inserts, one could be the money and two is the time. Let’s take a look at the money aspect first. They make it seem like replacing the tub and surround is remodeling the bathroom as a whole. Your not remodeling your whole bathroom by putting in a tub insert, your just doing a fraction of a bathroom remodel. Now, the complete bathroom remodel can start at $5,000 and go up with the norm being $10K. So, with that in mind this cheap tub insert looks very appealing to people.

When you look at the bathroom broke down into parts, it still is going to cost some money to do it right. Let’s look at the parts. Vanity sink, vanity, faucet, plumbing feeds and waste. Low end cost $500-$1,000 for these items. Vanity mirror and lighting $100-$500 as average. New floor ceramic tile $500 on low side. Paint room $250. New toilet $100-$500. New towel bar and add ons $100-$500. New tub standard $500-$1,000. Tub surround $200-$1000 depending on design and material. Let’s just round it off and call it $5000 so this is where you are at.

Now, I know this is a great price, but we did about 3 baths this year for our customers around $5,000 so I know it’s possible. No, these are not marble tub surrounds and floors but is a typical bath remodel at mid level. Again I know this is a great price as people cannot believe how reasonable are prices are. So, with that in mind what is a national tub insert charging to put in a plastic or fiberglass tub insert?.

Now, my part of the country costs a little more to remodel. My company is just alot less expensive than most contractors in my area. The whole tub insert really is not that much cheaper when you look at doing the remodel the way you should do it. When you redo a classic car you don’t just paint the hood and trunk and then call it done. Same thing you don’t just redo your tub and say your bathroom is remodeled. This is just a selling tactic for tub insert sales.

When it comes down to it are you really going to save money when you end up remodeling the whole room. There are good contractors out there who will remodel your whole bath room, just be careful. Read my articles “save money on your house”. These deal with finding good people to do your remodeling.

I am still just not sold on tub inserts. They can look nice, but what are you covering up? Just make sure if you go with a tub insert that your walls in the tub area are sound and mold or moisture free or you will just be covering up a very bad problem which could endanger your health and the health of your family.

Remember safety first

SEO Hype And Money Making Blogs

SEO Hype And Money Making Blogs

October 23, 2007 on 9:25 pm | In Your House Selling Tips | No Comments The SEO and blogs world has become a haven for get rich scams. The old scam was buy my product and get rich. The scam is just shifted into buy my SEO blog secrets and get more traffic to your blogs and then makes millions. Let me tell you this is just a bunch of s–t is what it is. The first people into this game have got their millions already and your not getting it. These so called gurus and their secrets are just a lot of hot air. The person who runs this site said it best in one of his articles right here on bigblogmonkey. He said, if these SEO gurus had the secret to millions of dollars in blog traffic, why would they be selling it so cheap. You have seen the TV info/ads scams, buy now and instead of $300.00 you can have the whole package for $19.99. You see what I mean?This is no difference. The thing is the money makers are not stopping there. There are many article writing sites who publish your article and pay you for. On the surface people think wow! I heard people who write for magazines and their articles get $1,000s for just one article. Not the case with these online publishing sites. You spend hours writing a quality content article and they give you pennies for it, yes, I said pennies. I have written for two of these types of places. They turn around and either sell your articles for 1000 x more then what you got paid for it or get their advertisers to pay good money to have their online ad placed next to your article.

There is a common theme going here. The rich guys that are running these SEO cons and writing sites are laughing all the way to the bank. See they pay one writer 15 cents for one article and then sell it for 5-10 dollars. This does not seem right. The thing that gets me is they think this just fine. The true kicker is when they call it a common good for all if everyone would just write more for the site. If I had the servers and the space, I would love to have a true publishing site, where writers would actually get paid for their articles, not ripped off.

The SEO guru game is still by far the best. People want to think that big search engines running pay per click ads is going to buy them the next million dollar home. You are not going to have a couple ads on your blog and then rush out and buy your import sports car from the profits. Now, if you had the 50-100 SEO programmers on your staff and ran over a 1000 blogs with high rates for advertising you might then be able to get that sports car. One blog with the best ratings may buy you a pack of gum off the profits of a month.

The Guru ad profits must be slowing now days as they need to sell their so called SEO secrets in ebooks for 50 bucks. Yes, I am going to tell the whole world how I made millions and now sell it to you for $50 bucks! Does this sound right? Are these guys gurus or just your high tech con men. They are just praying upon people and their desires to succeed. People want to believe so hard, that they will buy anything from anyone, who sounds like they know what they are talking about.

The days of the honest business person are gone. People believe the sales person who is the best looking and has the biggest and spends a ton on ads. This is who people are buying from these days. I can give people the best service and product at the best price and still not get the job because of the big scammer places. This is the same thing the SEO gurus use to scam millions. They never lose money. They tell people there are no ways to say they will make millions as they did. They can only give you the info. and the rest is up to you! Want to buy a bridge? It’s the same concept, you can pay for that bridge, but it’s still not yours! You have just been scammed.

The public TV ads about online scams are long over due. Do people really think the 3rd king of Arabobob wants to give them 10 million if they give him a 10k donation to his kingdom first? Now, I just made that up totally and this is the type of scams online that people are falling for everyday. I could offer to remodel a persons entire kitchen for $5,000 and they would tell me they have to think about it! But a unknown person wants a check for $10,000 online and they send the check. What is going on?

I offer articles on a variety of topics. I find myself in the public service area as of late. I just could not pass up the chance to write this. It is not my home improvement or how-to, I know. I also have been branching off into the “scammer” public safety type articles as I cannot sit by anymore and just keep letting people get scammed.

I try not use names of scams or scammers as they are also the first to sue you, to scam more money out of people. Remember, scammers don’t have to be small time little scammers. The best ones make themselves look honest and caring. These are the best ones. They drive fancy cars and even belong to the same health clubs as you.

I will look into maybe a new site dedicated to exposing scammers.

Cell Phones And Your House

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Save Money On Your House 3rd Edition

Save Money On Your House 3rd Edition

Well, we left off in the 2nd edition with looking at large contractors and their big fancy ads and trucks. Now again, I don’t see why people don’t see through this. Many of them do low quality work on your house and charge high prices. The same thing can happen on the opposite side also. The small contractor provides poor quality work on your house, because their too cheap on the quote, but still need to pay their bills. This leads you into the, who do I hire to work on my house? The answer is the right one. Just kidding. I am not a 3-10 quote person for getting work done. I am a contractors favorite to deal with as I do my research on my own to see what things should cost for the work on my house and if I think they are fair I will hire them on the spot. You can do the same for the work on your house. Now, your saying to yourself thats what a quote does. No, a quote tells you what the contractors wants to charge you for their services on your house. You need to jump on the Internet in your free time and look around. Their are forums for just about everything and anything. There is a forum which only deals with hydro-seeding, for those who don’t know this is a process for installing a lawn on your house. which, by the way is one of the best ways to get a new lawn installed.

You find a forum and see who is having work done on their house and what they paid. be careful as different parts of the country can have very different rates. Remodeling in the great-lakes area or Wisconsin costs 10-30% more due to the age of the houses and the extra work which must be done to remodel houses there. Talk with people on the forums or even self help sites. Find out what it would cost to do the project yourself. There use to be a rule of thumb, materials cost and then double it for labor, then take the two and add them. The total is what you expect to pay. Now, windows is a hard area as the bigger the company the more they normally charge when looking at windows.

Let’s take your house and say you want a new bay window. The window is 5 ft. x 4.5ft. high. This window depending on how big the window company is will cost them depending on all materials $950-$3,000 for their cost for the windows. The numbers are only for example as there are to many ways to determine the actual cost of a window, because of all its possible features. So, your house needs one bay window we will say. They come out and measure you up and give you the big sales pitch on why their window is the best. You tell them thanks I am getting some other quotes. They tell you $4,500 which by the way would be a good price for a fully installed bay window.

The $4,500 can be divided in half, the window cost them $2,250 their cost for the window. Remember, the bigger the company the bigger their discount for your windows for your house. It may just cost them $1,550 and then they don’t pass their wholesale discount on to you. That is their discount for the volume of windows they do. So, now they mark the window cost up to $2,250. They then take that number and take a percentage as labor. As a contractor you would take 50% markup and that was your labor costs. The booming remodeling, window replacement market blew the pricing off the charts. You can pay $5,500 on a bay window easily now days.

The break down would be their cost $1,550 window, labor/crew $300 if they are paying their people well. So, their cost $1,850 plus tax. Your house and your cost $4,500 plus tax. Remember, the $2,250 is after they mark up the window. Then multiply by 2 and you get your final number without tax. This was the easy way for contractors to come up with the final quote for your house. The 50% was the most popular for many years the 100% is now becoming the norm. So, one more look. You have a $12,000 window quote for your house, this in turn would be $8,000 materials and then $4,000 for the labor. Which is a very reasonable quote for your house windows. I have heard of people replacing 10-15 windows and costing $20,0000 plus! You can see why so many wanted to get into the window replacement market. Now, if you have a scammer company as I call them, they send out cheap illegal labor at $5.00 per hour to put your windows in. You see what I am talking about, guess who is laughing all the way to the bank. The problem is this is becoming more and more the norm. Large companies using cheap or cheap and illegal labor. Really all they are doing is exploiting these poor people for their personal gain.

The landscaping and yard work has just burst with companies using cheap and illegal help. Don’t bother to ask who is going to be working on your house. They are not going to tell you some cheap and Illegal labor so I can make more profit help. You can ask before you sign your house contract who does the work and how much experience do they have. This will only help you later after it’s to late when your already in court because the cheap help could not read the installation instructions. It is very hard to watch out for this tactic, you can protect yourself by not always going with the cheapest quote. This is one way. The ones who use the cheap and illegal help to do work on your house will normally be the cheapest because they are paying nothing for labor. This year has been a big year for this type of thing to happen. The housing market down these companies were doing anything and everything to get the chance to work on your house.

Many people did hire these companies as they are the cheapest. What they don’t realize this is why they get poor quality work. The pay structure does not reflect a quality rate for educated and quality workers. This is also why you see it in landscaping so much. You can’t screw up mulch or rocks to much. They can put it were you don’t want it. It’s not like building the foundation of your house, you don’t see the volume of cheap and illegal help in the strong trade areas. They might me a helper or a clean up person. Just be careful as this type of labor can cost you big when things turn out bad or missing! I really don’t see why people think its alright to break the laws to have work done on their house by illegal help. It is breaking the law to rob a bank also, they wouldn’t do that. These contractors obviously find it no problem breaking the law. If they use cheap illegal help, hence the illegal part, that means it is against the law. What is going to happen next? Which laws are people going to follow? Only the ones they like! I am a law bidding citizen who believes in our country and its laws.

When the laws are finally enforced you will see the quality level of work on your house go up. The rates will actually go down also. More people won’t be getting scammed, placing more money into our great economy allowing people more expendable cash flow to do the work. You can ask people what level of quality they got and were they happy with the contractor they used. The whole reference game is not always the best as they are not going to give you the name and number for a customer who filed a complaint against them. Asking around and doing some research on your own can save your house and you thousands of dollars every year.

I am sure someone will have the nerve to say they did like this edition as I stated I don’t believe in breaking the countries laws and using cheap and illegal help. Many people have fought and died to be part and a legal citizen of this country. This is a large problem and is why you pay so much to have your house worked on. If you think not look at how much in tax you pay every day. If illegal labor collects funds from Social security fund but never pay in, where is the money coming from? Thats right you the law bidding tax paying citizen of this country.

Well, your house is saving already by you reading this, because you will not get scammed if you are educated about the scammers. Education for all will save us all money in the end.

Remember always safety first.

Save Money On Your House 2nd Edition

Alright we talked about how firefighters and police officers who run homeimprovement companies are a great source for doing work to your house yesterday.  We were saying that these types of people can be a great value to you.  They are rooted to your communtiy as where these traveling con-people have no ties to your community and and are gone by the next day after they have taken your down payment for work and materials to do the work on your house.

They have done TV shows on the scams that these traveling home improvement companies have run across the country.  They are know alot for the roofing and siding scams as these don’t require really large money down, but enough for a traveling group of con-people.  Don’t be followed if females are doing the contracts or sweet talking you into signing, as these cons are run by a man or a woman.   Con-people don’t descriminate by any race or gender, they will con you all the same.

These traveling home improvement companies are good at giving the appearance that they are a legitimate company and will have everything to make them look real to you.  They have slowed through the years now after being exposed on TV and papers as traveling home improvement con people.  They don’t drive around in trucks that say, “We Con You And How” plastered all over the side of their vehicles.  Please, also remember con-people can be local also and just very good at covering their tracks or walking a fine line between a con job or poor,  over priced jobs on your house.

There are many out there and they all look different.  There are again no race or gender fine lines when it comes to con-people.  They come in all shapes,sizes and every other catagory.  The do have one thing in common,  the better they are, the more honest they will appear when selling you on the services for your house.  They have fine tuned their sales tactics and have it down.    

Look for people that can show you that they have been in your community in business for awhile.  Then check to see if they have done work in the area recently and if you can see it or talk to the people they did the work for.  Get more than one to make sure it is not just, a really good con.  They can hire people to tell you anything they want.  This is why if the business has not been, what about the person you are dealing with.

The person you are dealing with could have ties and lived there, their entire life.  This can be found out just by talking to the person who is giving you an estimate.  Ask, them where they are from?  How long they have been in the area?  Now, I know these questions are not as good if you have not lived in the area that long.  The saying,  its a small world,  can apply even in large cities.  Most people know someone or have had someone who has done work on their house.

The large phone book ad which I covered in the first edition is not the answer either.  Really sometimes, I think they are worse for 2 reasons.  First,  I cannot say it enough, who do you think is paying for that big fancy,expensive ad?  Second,  large outfits run large crews.  They need crews to do the work right?  Well, how well do these large outfits know who is working for them.  Could be a con-person who just came into town and just so happens to know how-to work with wood.  Don’t think the large company when you ask them is going to say,  yeah, we hire and fire our crews everyday, because we catch them stealing from our customer and their house.  You can try to see indirectly how long someone has been working for them when they show up to do the work.  This  again can be figured out by more conversions about the area and people they have worked for.  Most people in the trades will be more than willing to say what they have worked on and where.  It is not different than an artist talking about where their paintings are at and how many they have done.

Many true craftsman take great pride in the work they do on someones house.  They will be more than happy to share with you.  Now, I am not saying sit and talk for hours on end, because this person is there to work on your house and you want them to get the work done.  You can learn many things just by talking to people.  You just need to be given the advice, like here, on how to go about it.  Please remember as I said before, these con-people and poor business people don’t run around with red flashing signs on their foreheads!  These people are very good at what they do,  that is scamming you and your house out of money.  Not, every con person is fly by night either.  Some are even known in areas as large contractors who do alot of work in the area.

You see the really big contractors with those large crews of unknown people working for them,  stay in business by those big fancy  ads which get them lots of leads for work.  The larger your area,  the more likely you will find a large contractor company like this.  I have one in my area, I can ask many people if they have heard of this company and they will say yes.  The funny thing is, when asked what do they think or have they heard, it is either bad or just Ok.  The next is they did the work but they were really high priced.

Well, theres the 2nd edition with more to come.

Remember safety first when working on your house.                  

Save Money On Your House

I have also saved money on my house.  I knew what to look at and what to do to fix it or save money. Saving money on your house can be as easy as knowing who to call when you need your house fixed.  Thats right,  something as simple as knowing who to call to fix your house problems can save you thousands of dollars each and every year.

The hard part, finding who that person is, thats out there that can save you that kind of money.  How to find a person to work on your house.  This is going to sound funny, but there are a lot of fire fighters and police officers who do side jobs in the trades as a way to relax and enjoy themselves.  I told you it would sound funny.  These people give you a certain sense of security also, no pun, there when dealing with police officers.  What I mean is you normally don’t have worry about them running off with your down payment for work and materials.

They have more to lose by scamming you.  You see, most of the time they are going to be local right?  They hold jobs within our communities right?  They are normally held to a much higher standard, we trust these types of people to protect and serve us.  Most people will go along with this idea, at least I find most law bidding citizens do.  There can be a few bad fire fighters or police just like theres bad types in all walks and backgrounds.

This type of person is not doing it to pay all of their bills either.  This normally turns into a cost savings to the customers.  The normal contractor is going to have high over heads which he or she must cover. That over head gets paid for by the customer, lets just be honest here.  So, right from the start there is a cost savings to be had.  What I hear about this from contractors is they try to say the work will take longer because they are not doing the work full time.  This is not correct.  In fact I have seen large contractors take twice as long because they over book and try to run multiple jobs at the same time.

Just because someone does not swing a hammer full time, does not mean they are not as good if not better then the other guy.  This is the other thing that full time contractors try to say,  that they are better because they do it as their main living.  I think sometimes the level of passion someone has for their work is what sets them apart from others,  just like at bigblogmonkey site,  there are others who make their real money in other fields and do this for fun or very little money at start up.  The person who runs this site and others that help are dedicated to running the site and want to help others.  This in turn helps them also, but we work together and accomplish so much more.  By helping me to line up my blogs, help them to get more traffic to their site also, but in return I get the help I need to create and run my own blogs.

Helping others first will come back and help you more, then if you just try to help yourself.  Don’t look for the money, look to help first.  The money will come next.  I know this is hard as my wife keeps saying, your helping people all the time so when does the money come.  I have a very loving wife that understands my business is my passion and is not about the money.  Like I said above, if you can find a person who works on houses because they like to and it is their passion, you will save thousands of dollars.  I spend days on end just working on business stuff.  Again,  I am lucky because my wife is understanding of this and every once in a while I do make a couple of pennies.  She is reward then for her understanding.

Your house is just like your job, depending on the complexity of your work.  You don’t go into work as a car designer and make a car in one day.  It is the same with your house, you need to find the right person for you and your house.  You won’t normally find this person in one day either.  You may even need a couple good people to get all the things done to your house.  What I am trying to say, just like the way I write, break everything down into smaller articles for me, individual house projects for you. 

I wish I had more time as I could write entire book on how to save money on your house.  As you see here in this article it is only a small piece that I have covered.  One that most don’t think about.  This was also not what you thought this article was going to be about either.  You probably thought I was going to tell you to put more insulation in your attic to save on heating and cooling bills.  This is a cost savings but from a different angle.

You and your house can save so much money in so many different ways.  You just needed to be guided in the right direction.  Again,  try to find people and their passion as they will help you greatly and not steal your purse from you at the same time.  You in turn some day may be able to help someone  with your passion and what you love to do. 

I just want to take this chance to say thanks to Al, for his help in blogging.  I bought a book from what is called a Internet marketer and thought this would help me.  It did in its own way.  It helped me to find Al.  You see Al was wondering why my affiliate ads were not getting any hits and was assigned to help me.  After he helped me he kept on helping even in areas that were not directly related to him.  Sure he is making money, but by each of us helping each other we both get are own rewards.  We indirectly support each others passions for what we do.

Ohh, by the way Al, I am still having problems, so e-mail me when you get the chance.

I will keep on writing to save you money on your house.  Maybe if I write enough, indirectly I will write the book I always thought I would never have time.  Follow your passions and save money.
If I was a highly publicized writer and consultant this article would be on every site and show across the nation, but for now I just write for you.  If I can help just one person its enough for me.

Remember always safety first.  

You And Your House Second Edition

I left off with this window contractor turning up the high pressure window sales tactics in a effort to get me to by his windows. I could not believe it when this guy tells me $1000 dollars per window, remember these are just the average size slide by window you see on a ton of houses all around. In fact, I was going to leave this till the end but, I measured up my own windows and went to a window and door place. I ordered my own window for $250.00 for all the required parts and supplies to put in a new window. You must also remember I did get the huge volume discounts that these window contractors get, so you can only imagine how cheap they are getting them. Now back to the story at hand. Then this guy states “well I know others that work with you so I will take off $200.00 from the $1000.” “So, now that’s a great price.” I tell him again it is just to high. I won’t bore you with the rest, but this goes on for another 30 minutes until he reaches $650 per window.I tell him that we must think about. Then he moves in for the line I hate from these guys the most. “Well if you don’t sign today its going to cost you more.” That’s it, game was over for me. I cannot stand this tactic that scammers use all the time. They use this junk on the elderly customers and con them on this most of the time. They scare them and they think that they better sign right there or they won’t get a good price. The scammer contractors just love to use that one. It makes them a ton of money by scamming people on the spot and then laughing all the way to the bank, taking this elderly persons life savings with them. I don’t see how these guys sleep at night.

Now, I ask him to leave and walk him to the door. He does not stop here, we get to his brand new Cadillac Escalade EXT in my drive. What kinda of guy comes to sell windows in a $60,0000 plus vehicle? Can you say CON MAN! I tell him nice truck, just to see what he says. Yes it is, and begins to brag about it. So, as he is bragging about his new car he chimes in with, “ok $600 per window and thats it.” I said your right thats it, we are not buying windows today, I tell him again. Then the kiss of death for him was his final statement, “if I have to come back again you will have to pay $650 per window. I have had it by now. I say, you don,t have to worry about coming back.

I finally think I got to him on that statement as he jumped in his $60,000 plus vehicle and I never heard from him again. Do you know how many people this man has scammed through years? Enough to open up a second location to just show window displays and show room tactics. You see, I knew he was a scammer contractor shortly after he entered my house. The sad thing is many other people never see that and get scammed, so much so they even tell their friends and family what a great job. This is how good the scammers are. Take a good look around theres not a ton of window replacement companies out there because they are not making any money. Many of them were doing other scams and found out how much people will pay for replacement windows. It really is a shame.

So, this edition deals with just window contractors. You need to ask questions. What the costs are to them? How many windows have they put in. This is were their volume discounts come in. Remember, I only told how they scam you on prices. Some scam you all the way around with service and poor installation practices. You need to find a middle of the road type contractor. Don’t always go with the guy who has all the big ads and promotions as this will probably be your highest quote with the charming sales person who never wants to leave until you sign. This person is just that, a sales person. He or she is only making money or looking good to the company owner if they are selling windows!

I have seen very sharp dressed sales people and company owners do the contracts and house calls. Only to have shady looking crews show up to do the work and you don’t even want them to get out of their truck, because you fear for the safety of your family and property. You see this a lot when you deal with really large companies that have more sales then crews to install and will hire anything and everything that has a pulse, with no concern for their customers. Remember the contract and money is already been paid. This again is one of the biggest complaints I hear from people about other large contractors they have used. Watch out for small companies too! Sorry, it really is hard now days to find someone to work on your house.

So hard to find someone in fact, these prescreened companies as they call themselves are popping up all over. I really have to laugh at that. Most of these places charge the contractor for any leads or jobs that they get for them, see this is how the screening companies make their money. Take a look around you see these contractor screening companies all over on the internet running ads like wild fire. They are trying to make money off the fears of people who had a bad experience with a contractor, that is all this is. Remember, the contractor has to pay them to get your name,address and phone number. Still the best way is to ask around and see pictures and other dollar amounts they charged for similar jobs. Again, I know it is hard to find someone just don’t fall for all this high pro go TV and newspaper ads costing $1000s.

Now, again I will state it so the scammers don’t scream foul on my part, I never stated my company name or even what part of the country or what country I am in! So, I think this shows on my part that I am just trying to help people to walk through a land mine field of bad contractors and scammers. If people want to find out about who I am and what company it is, they will have to ask or look for it. I will keep my honor and integrity intact.

Remember Always Safety First When Working On Your House.