One year ago today, I started MyLifeROI.com. I just wanted to write about personal finance. I didn’t have a lot of debt. I didn’t have aspirations to be a full-time blogger. I had no expectations of income from this blog. But I had opinions!

How times have changed (obviously not referring to the opinions part ;) heh)

I appreciate everyone who has followed my site for the past year. You make it more enjoyable for me to share my opinions and findings a few times per week.

MyLifeROI.com in Numbers

Here are some of the statistics from the past year:

I am going to give you tasks that require your attention, memory, concentration and creativity. For example, I am going to give you a puzzle to assemble while throwing tennis balls at a target.

Now, I am going to run three different rounds in a vacuum. In other words, pretend each round is given as if you have no previous knowledge of the exercise. In round 1, I will give you $200 if you perform well. In round 2, I will give you $2,000 if you perform well. In round 3, I will give you $20,000 if you perform well.

In which round will you perform the best?

Most people would say round 3. After all, higher rewards usually drive better results, right? That is the typical line of thinking

“Oh, wow. Looks like it’s completely dead! At this point, it’s not even worth saving. You might as well just buy a new computer.”

“Really, we can’t just fix it? It’s only 2 years old!”

Have you ever had that conversation before? It’s pretty common at retail establishments like Best Buy. Sure, they sell services. And services are pretty high margin. But if they can convince you to get a new computer with a monster surge protector, anti-virus installation, customization, and a service plan – that’s a much better sale for them!

How can you avoid that situation altogether? I will go over how to diagnose both software and hardware issues.

I’ve already given advice on how to make a resume competitive by giving some real life examples of how I changed my friend’s resume. There are so many factors that go into a job offer: A killer resume and cover letter, a great interview, a satisfactory online reputation checkup, etc.

Last week, I went over how to manage your online reputation (including using a service to do it for you). I wanted to go over a few more ways to really tweak your resume. My last post on resume tweaking went over things like putting quantifiable results instead of qualitative results and using more precise language. This post will be a little more general, figuring you are about to apply for a job.

Multilevel marketing scams and Pyramid schemes are nothing new. However, the speed at which these scams can spread is getting quicker and quicker because of the proliferation of the Internet.

When you combine this fact with the state of the economy, it should be no surprise that scam artists are alive and well. Whether they are advertising to you on the Internet to buy a Google advertising cash kit or conning your grandparents into paying $2500 to get rid of their mortgage debt, a bad economy means good business.