It’s no secret that the higher fuel prices get, the more opportunities there are to get free gas cards, if you know where to go.  Most of us don’t know what we don’t know, so it’s not surprising that the idea of getting free gas cards may even sound radical or absurd.  There is a catch or caveat with anything dubbed as free and getting free gas gift cards are no exception.  This particular exception I’m certain that many of those reading this article will find tolerable, if not doable.  Here’s what you’ll need to get free gas gift cards.

You will need to exhibit some interest in shopping or at the very least, learning about new products.  You will need the ability to do a little walking and pay attention to detail to the extent that you will be visiting some of your favorite stores and some stores that may be new to you.  You will need to pace yourself so that you can complete the product scans that you will be given.  Don’t worry, more than a few of the product scans change often enough to make it interesting, especially if you like discovery new products.

In order to do and complete your product scans, you will need a smartphone that operates on the Apple iOS (operating system) or Google’s Android OS.  It helps to have a car charging cable or an extra battery, if you intend to complete all of your scans each day.  You don’t necessarily need an automobile to do this, so long as you arrive at your local store or mall in time before they close.  I take the local city bus often, as I enjoy the down time from traffic, to read and just people watch along the way to various stores and manage to complete a fair number of product scans each day.

You will note that there are varying number of scans per store, but always enough to make your stop at a store worthwhile.  When you do a scan of the product indicated, you’ll be rewarded with points and a coin.  The points you can cash in for gas gift cards to your favorite gas station, or you can use the points for gift cards for Amazon, Home Depot, CVS, Bath & Body Works, Subway, iTunes, Fandango, GameStop, Sephora, Victoria Secret, SpaFinder, Facebook Credits, Farmville Game Card, Louis Vuitton and Neiman Marcus.  You can cash your points out for American Airlines Aadvantage Miles or Delta Skymiles or you can redeem your accumulate points for a Hermes Birkin Handbag, Apple TV, Nintendo Wii, iPod Touch 8GB, Quiet Comfort Acoustic Noise Cancelling headphones, 16GB iPad with wi-fi, Toshiba Netbook or an iPhone 4 8GB.

If, you’re really not into material things and don’t need the gadgets or gift cards, you can even take your points from scanning products and donate your points to a charitable organization that interests you, such as Cleanup the Gulf Coast Oil Spill, NRDC Fight Global Warming, The Humane Society, Aid Haiti Earthquake Victims, Breast Cancer Research, Kiva’s loans that change lives to help entrepreneurs in developing countries, The American Red Cross Tornado Relief Efforts, Prostate Cancer Foundation, Push Education Innovation or Democracy Matters.

There is something of interest to just about everybody and there is really no reason why you wouldn’t want to participate in getting free gas gift cards for the points that you accumulate.  From scanning products, you will also get one coin in which you can use to play a slot-like game or scratch-like game to win even more points, so the number of points that you can get in order to get your first free gas card could easily be within a few weeks when you first get started and then after you’re comfortable doing the product scans, you should be redeeming for gift cards within a shorter period of time.

Just about every week there are additional scanning opportunities to get even more points and you’ll be on your way to redeeming your points in short order for the items that interest you in no time at all.  Here’s how to get started.  You will need to copy down the referral link in order to get off to a great start with bonus points.  Don’t worry, as soon as you join, you too will be given a bonus code in which to sign up your family and friends too, so that they too can start earning points for gas cards and gift cards.  Here is the bonus referral code:  Livinglife.  When you sign up for Checkpoints, you will put the bonus referral code:  Livinglife to get extra points before you scan your first product, so don’t forget okay?  Click on the link, Get Free Gas Cards and download to your smartphone the Checkpoints application for Apple or Android and the bonus referral code:  Livinglife, for instant points.  Get started as soon as your comfortably able to do so and enjoy the myriad of gas gift cards and store gift cards or donating to your favorite cause and as always, profit from your understanding and don’t forget to play it forward, by sharing this opportunity with others.

There is a new web browser that work at home business owners will find exciting different and an excellent online resource.  Backed by some of the biggest names in Internet History, such as the co-founder of Netscape, Marc Andreessen.  Based on Chromium, the open source project behind Google’s Chrome.  You can use the social browser without having to log in, but you don’t really get any of the social features until you log in using your Facebook credentials.

RockMelt, founded by Eric Vishria and Tim Howes, are on a mission to articulate their social browser to cover the three major themes that people want out of a web browser.  People want a way to keep up with their friends and family.  People want a way to keep abreast of what’s going on around them and in other places and People want a way in which to search effectively and efficiently.  RockMelt is different in that it integrates your social networks in one place where you can interact with all your friends, associates and  family.

Whenever there is mention of a web browser integrating your social networks, the question of privacy comes to mind.  Privacy concerns have been put to rest with RockMelt in that its browser does not store your search history and browser information.  RockMelt states that it does not share your information with other parties. RockMelt’s browser allows you the ability to see and delete cookies  and users even have the option to interact with the Internet in the “Incognito” or private-browsing mode.

When you log on to RockMelt, in the upper left, you will see your profile picture and your friends, family, your favorite sites, your bookmarks and your preferences and everything.
Down the left-side bar of your browser, you will see your favorite friends and family, and with each friend or families picture, there hovers their profile and when you click on them, you will see your friends and a chat box at the bottom.

On the right-side bar of your browsers are your favorite sites and preferences. RockMelt’s servers will push updates of your favorite sites and if you visit a web site several times, RockMelt will ask if you want to add that site to your preferences.  RockMelt determines your favorite sites by your frequency of visits and updates the content for those sites and offers them to you for your preferences.

One of three essentials of RockMelt is to share your experiences and content with your friends and family.  There is a search box and big “Share” button at the top,after you log in.  You can share whatever you find online with anyone you wish.   You can chat in real time even with images and videos.  When you search, it returns the first ten search results as a column and if you see something you want to read, just click on its title and you get the full page all without leaving RockMelt.

You can flip through your favorite sites and searches with RockMelt’s prefetched and pre-rendered search results.  You can share your links and feeds from your favorite sites.   You can use Google Chrome Extensions with RockMelt.  RockMelt can be used with Windows XP or higher and MacIntosh 10.5 or higher.  RockMelt is not running an ad network, so is offering a product that work at home enthusiasts should enjoy.  RockMelt has not yet officially launched, but they invite you to sign up for an invite by e-mail.

Internet Business owners will love RockMelt once they fully launch because it will bring their social networking into one web browser without the need to download one browser extension after another, just to get the same functionality.  Not having to sign into to each social network would be great for the work at home business owner and will be great for business, allowing each to share what they’re doing and exhibit their products and services to interested parties online.

For those looking for a way to keep your friends, feeds, news and search results all within one page, akin to a dashboard with dynamic streaming capabilities than Rock Melt may just be what you’re looking for.

You work from home or contemplating working from home and you’re sitting there wondering what to do today or tomorrow, why not take a moment of your time and see if there is any missing money or unclaimed property that you have or someone has left to you.  A great way to spend some of your idle downtime with something constructive and it just might lead to a rewarding find.  Here’s a little insight on what to expect.

No one knows with utter certainty exactly how much missing money or unclaimed property is owed to citizens of the United States or Canada, but estimates have it around $30 Billion Plus or so, that is just sitting out there among the numerous government agencies, just waiting to be claimed.  If, you’re itching to find out if you or someone that you know has a claim out there, waiting to be received, here’s how to find out whether or not you have missing money or unclaimed property just waiting to be discovered. 

Sure, there are unclaimed property and missing money companies online that will assist you in your search for a fee, but if you don’t mind the thrill of the hunt, you can do it on your own.  All you are going to need is everything you have now and that is a little time and patience and a bit of persistence could go a long ways.

Note that even though you may not believe that you have anything coming to you, there may be a relative or friend who may, so your search just may pay off, for some one you care about.  This $30 Billion Plus of missing money and unclaimed properties can be found in the government databases listing everything from an insurance settlement to a refund you weren’t aware of.  The list of possibilities is almost endless.

Every State and every Canadian Province has a department where missing money and unclaimed property is sent and held until it is claimed.  This could be anything of value, that is stated or not stated or valued by the agency holding the property.  Your job will be to search as many of these government databases as possible to see if you find anything that has gone unclaimed by you, a family member or close friend.

The list of unclaimed properties and unclaimed funds may be jewelry, stocks, safe deposit contents, city, town, province, state or federal refunds or rebates owed to you and you may not even know you’re owed these items.    You see businesses in both the United States and Canada and elsewhere, have a legal obligation to hold refunds, rebates, settlements, mortgage refunds, etc, for a period of time and after which, each item is turned over to the State or Province that has jurisdiction for that unclaimed property or unclaimed fund.

Yes, it’s the responsibility of the State or Province to contact the rightful owner of the missing money or unclaimed property and more than often, the legal owner can not be located for numerous reasons (changed address, marriage and name change, divorce and name change, job relocation, illness, passed away and etc).

This missing money or unclaimed property could represent a host of possibilities, just waiting to be found, such as money left in a closed checking or savings account, a closed money market or CD that you had or someone left to you.  You may have left a job where you worked long enough to become vested in its retirement or profit sharing plan and left unclaimed funds or it could be in the form of a State, Province or Federal tax refund.  How about a yet to be returned, security deposit for a place you once rented, leased or maybe a storage unit you forgot to get the deposit back?

If, you’re like most of us, you’ve got family and even though you may not be too close to some of them, for whatever reason, some people have a change of heart sometime later in life and may have left you as a beneficiary.  A relative or close friend could have left you an inheritance in stocks or an insurance settlement.   Unclaimed money or unclaimed property represents a broad and vast category of reasons you may have money coming to you.

Did you get your last paycheck, where you use to work part time?  What about your favorite Aunt or Uncle passing away, when you were how old?  How about that rebate you sent in for an electronics purchase before you went on vacation?  Did you pay off your house early and didn’t know that you just might have a mortgage insurance refund owed to you or someone you know? As you can see, the possibilities of getting free money back increases dramatically when you or someone you know, consider the number of business and personal transactions that you or they are involved in during the course of several years.

Okay, so what if you have unclaimed property or missing money out there somewhere?  If, it were true, wouldn’t you know about it about now?  Well, possibly, but more often than not, you probably wouldn’t.  You see the government makes an initial attempt to find the legal owner of the missing money or unclaimed property, but if you know your government, they do some things exceptionally well and other things, well, not as well as you may like.

Your claim for missing money or unclaimed property will just sit there with the respective government agency until someone comes along to rightfully claim it.  A position that puts the government in a comfortable position to continue collecting interest until you inquire about it and receive your claim.  If, you don’t know to ask about a possible unclaimed property or unclaimed fund, it will just sit in the government coffers, until the legal owner withdraws it.

Now, if you’re even remotely curious, you’re probably wondering how do you go about checking on whether or not, you have any money or property held by the government, huh?  Here’s how to check for free, that’s right, for free.  No strings attached, other than proving your identity, should you have a legitimate claim.

Keep in mind that when you search for missing money or unclaimed property for you or someone you care about, if you don’t turn up anything, don’t forget to search for both maiden and married names.  You can even tell your friends and tell them too, if you like.   Also, when you do your search, you won’t see such identifiers such as a social security number or date of birth, instead you will see an address.

The address shown may or may not be your address, but the address of the business that sent your missing money or unclaimed property to the agency that handles unclaimed funds in your state or province.  So, don’t give up right away in your search, follow through and you just might be rewarded for your time and efforts.  I don’t mean to sound cruel or uncaring, but don’t forget to include your deceased family members and friends, if you really want to be thorough.

Are you curious about the amount you may be owed, don’t worry, you’ll see that information when you do your searches.  If, you don’t see an amount associated with a claim, it will generally mean that the unclaimed property, is of a non-value nature.  A non-value, unclaimed property, simply means that the business or agency, didn’t list its value when they transferred over to the State or Province administrator.  Examples of an unclaimed property that is listed with no value associated with it are stocks and bonds.

Here’s the databases that you will want to check, in no particular order of preferences, but all are free and all are government databases with the exception of two or three unclaimed property sources, but free nonetheless.  Of, course, you will want to search your particular state or province and/or search the national database that also includes Canada and then spend some time searching the various complimentary government agencies individually, if you feel it applies to your situation or the situation of someone you care about.

The National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators or NAUPA for short, is a must-stop for everyone, which represents the State Governments & Provinces of Canada in their efforts to return missing money and unclaimed properties to their rightful owners.  Unlike many of the databases listed below, it searches every state and province at the same time.  Go here to search their database for free.

If, for any reason you aren’t comfortable searching The Nat’l. Assoc. of Unclaimed Property Administrators site and feel more comfortable sticking with a government site that you have to sort to, to get to your appropriate state, bear in mind, this is a U.S. Government site and does not include Canada or its provinces.  To search for free the U.S. Government Unclaimed Property Site for your state, Go Here.

With the number of bank mergers, bailouts and failures, you might want to take the time and

search for missing money with The FDIC ( Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation).  The FDIC is the insurer of the bulk of deposits at banks throughout the U.S., so they may be worth a look, see.  Here is the link to check for FDIC Unclaimed Funds.

Just like banks have the FDIC to protect their interest, pensions have the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.  The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation has the responsibility of holding onto Defined Benefit Pensions that were transferred to them by former employers.  So, if you or someone you know put in the necessary time at a job or career and didn’t get your pension, you may want to give them a peek.  Here’s the link.

Missing Money and Unclaimed Property can also be found at these link and yes, they all are free:

Missing Money

The U.S. Department of Treasury is a good place to look for any government checks that you applied for and was approved for, but for whatever reason, never got.  You check it out here.

The Housing and Urban Development Unclaimed Refunds, Go Here.

Unclaimed Property and Mortgage Refunds, Here’s the link.

Unclaimed Savings Bonds & Treasury Bills Search, Go Here.

If, you’ve gotten this far and haven’t had any luck securing any claims, you’re bound to find something that interests you here at the Government Benefits website.  Take your time and pursue this site in your leisure, because it has numerous sources that will appeal to most people, so avail yourself of one or more of the available benefits.  Here’s the link.   Happy hunting and enjoy yourself in your pursuit!

Content is to a business online, as sales are to profits. Content is the reason most people go online and interesting content that is relevant to solving some problem, concern or challenge is the reason people visit your site. The search engines love content. If, that content is fresh, credible and helps to solve some dilemma that many people online or offline face, then you may benefit from repeat visitors. Here is how to get content for free!

Tip #0

Before you embark on your quest for free content keep this point in mind. People go online for information and that information could be directly related to what your site is about or indirectly or complimentary to what your site is about. For example, if you had a website or blog about living abroad, you may want to have articles or posts about how to support yourself while living overseas or how to make money in a foreign country or articles or posts about making money online. Each one of the aforementioned articles or posts would easily relate to your audience or compliment your site.

You want and need to attract the right visitors to your website or blog, because they are the most likely audience that will be interested in what your content addresses and the most likely to be interested in your products and services. It is nice getting visitors of any kind to your site, but research proves that if you want to turn your visitors into subscribers, buyers and repeat buyers, then your content, complimentary products and services all have to be what your visitors are looking for.

Tip #1

You can take advantage of the number of publishers who will let you use their articles to republish on your website or blog, so long as you leave the resource box intact. The resource box generally has the name of the publisher, their short biographical information and their website or blog address.

This form of republishing is referred to as Article Marketing and is a way to get content quickly for your site and for free.

Here is a list of the Top Ten Places To Get Content For Free

1)  Ezine Articles

2)  Article City

3)  Article Dashboard

4)  Go Articles

5)  Articles Base

6)  Article Cube

7)  Amazines

8)  Articles Factory

9)  Article Trader

10)  Easy Articles

Tip #2

There is no shortage of e-books on just about every subject imaginable online. Your task is to find e-books that are of interest to your visitors and are still current to your theme. If, you do decide to use one of the many free e-books that are available, ensure that it grants you master resell rights. Master resell rights generally grants you the right to sell the e-book, but may or may not grant you the rights to change any of the links within the e-book. If, there is any doubt in your mind as to the extent that you can use, reuse, sell or republish an e-book, send the author an e-mail with your questions.

Here are the Top 5 Places to find e-books for free.

1)  Free E-Books

2)  Get Free E-Books

3)  Many Books

4)  E-book Directory

5)  Web Source

Tip #3

Just as there is no shortage of e-books on just about every subject you could probably think of, there are no shortages of experts who have written an e-book or two. Why not e-mail one of the leading gurus in your industry or niche and ask for an interview?

You could pick one of the rising stars or an established star within your industry or niche and even if you are too shy to personally meet with them or it is physically impossible to meet with them for whatever reason, you can send an e-mail with perhaps 10 or 20 questions that you have about them or about the industry or niche. They may or may not respond to your e-mail request or they may prefer to have a telephone interview or no interview at all.

You will never know unless you ask. If, you sent out interview requests to five leading members of your industry or niche and none of them responded, then send five more. Most people like some degree of publicity, so you are bound to get more than a few interviews you can write about. Persistence pays as well as the insights that you and your readers will benefit from the interview.

Tip #4

With each article that you source, don’t forget to include something of value, so that your reader takes something away from the article that they can immediately apply to whatever the article addresses. You want your reader to find value not only in the quality of the content, but also in the ease in which the article or post helps them to resolve some problem, challenge or concern that is uncommon or common to the industry or niche in question.

You also want to make it clear to your reader, what it is that you want them to do, such as subscribe to your feed, leave their name and e-mail in order to get a free e-book or e-course. If, you want your reader to click on this link or that link, to get more information, tell them.

When you tell your reader what it is that you want them to do, this is your call-to-action or unique sales proposal. You may not be telling them directly to buy this or that, but you sure want to educate your reader as to why they will benefit if they do buy this or that! Tell your reader what it is you want them to do and then make it easy for them to do it.

Here are the Pros and Cons of Free Content:

Pros of Free Content

You get articles to use as content for free.

If, you have a new website or blog and need to supply immediate content, you can do so for free.

If, you don’t care about your long-term pagerank, which is how the search engines rank your site when someone searches for your keywords, then there are lots of e-books to be had for free.

Cons of Free Content

You may have to overcome the duplicate content penalty imposed by most search engines. If, your article or post that you are using has been published before, when you put something that has already been published online on your site, the search engines will eventually punish your site for the duplicate content and you may lose some or all of your pagerank when the search engines update their directories.

The majority of search engines refrain from indexing articles or posts that are duplicates of already published articles and posts.

You may have to create a great many original, never been published, articles or posts to overcome the search engine penalties for duplicate content.

There is the age-old adage, that there is nothing for free. It will take you a bit of your time to source free content and you may feel that it would be better to just create your own content and media for your site.

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Do You Have A Favorite Site? Here Is How To Find Similar Sites

You can create your very own sales page, website, or blog in minutes using this free online site builder.  That’s right; the easy website builder software is 100% Free!  You can create a professional website in a matter of minutes.  It’s as simple as pointing and clicking.  Once you sign up for your free account, you will be taken directly to the page builder to begin creating your website, blog, capture page or sales page.

Your page builder allows you to add and format your text, add video and customize your headline and titles.  Once you upload your video to page builder, all you have to do is drag it over to the location within page builder you want your video to go.  There are widgets boxes that let you further customize your site with “testimonial boxes,” “checklist boxes,” “buy button box,”  “generic boxes,” that you can personalize to make comment forms, polls, surveys, contests or whatever you can imagine.

You can drag and drop images anywhere on your website, blog or sales page.  You can put the colors you want and the text sizes you desire.  There is even a “pre-built testimonial design and tables,” that let you choose from an array of templates with content that you can adapt to for your marketing goals.  You choose what content that you need for your marketing and drag it into place on your website.

When you are ready to start selling your products or services online, you can use the “order button designs,” that have the buy button ready to drag and drop into place on your website.  You can even add Paypal, Clickbank or 2CheckOut, as your payment processor seamlessly when you put your “buy button” on your site.

When you are finished putting your website, blog, capture page, or sales page together, it’s just as easy to publish to the Internet with one click of a button.  The only skill required of you is to have some idea of what you want your website or blog to be about and point and click to assemble it online and add whatever you think your website or blog needs and publish it.  It doesn’t get any simpler than that.  Get started today and profit from your understanding!