Glblguy here.  I’m breaking into my normal daily posting schedule to bring you this breaking news announcement:

I received an email from the folks at Dillyeo informing me that beginning right now and ending tonight at midnight, they are running a promotion in which they will be giving away free $10 Dillyeo.com Gift Cards. These gift cards are limited to one per household and when you get the card, you’ll have until February 8th at midnight to use it.

After getting your $10 gift card, make sure you visit Dillyeo each day to see if you find an item you can use.  If you don’t, well no harm no foul right?

What is Dillyeo?

Dillyeo is a new deal of the day site that is a aggressively marketing and positioning themselves to quickly become a top player in the deal of the day arena.  You can read more about Dillyeo in my Dillyeo review.  Recently they’ve been featuring deals on more practical items that appeal to everyone such as a knife set, sweeper, duster, etc.

I’ve personally spoken with Frank the CEO for Dillyeo.  He’s extremely passionate about Dillyeo and about providing great deals for consumers on practical and useful items.  Not to mention, he seems like a great guy.  They have some great plans for Dillyeo, so keep an eye out.

Concerned about buying something you don’t need or spending money you don’t have on deal of the day sites, then read my article on avoiding impulse buying with deal of the day sites.

If you think about it, head back and share what you used your $10 gift card on.  I’m curious as to what items you guys are buying and which items you feel would be best featured on Dillyeo.  I’ll pass your feedback onto Dillyeo to help them make it even better.

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MyPoints is a great program, but let’s face it going through their emails can get a bit tedious and time consuming. I tend to work through my MyPoints emails every couple of days. I used to do them daily, but it just wasn’t worth the hassle for a few emails. I then went to the opposite extreme and tried doing them each week and even tried every two weeks but found that some of bonus emails and surveys expire if not processed quickly. Expired emails = lost points = not good.

Over the past 6-months of using MyPoints, I’ve really worked hard to simplify the process of working through my MyPoints emails. So let me share with you how you can spend literally less than just a few minutes a day working your MyPoints emails. Yeah, yeah, I know…this all sounds like one of those late night infomercial commercials…but bear with me, I promise it’s not. Keep reading and I’ll even throw in a handy dandy email slicer absolutely free! (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Overview

Rather than jump in to the details, I’ll summarize the process first, then dive in and give you all the necessary detail. It’s actually very simple, just requires a little bit of explaining.

When I have a few minutes to work my MyPoints emails, I log into my Gmail account and navigate to the list of all the MyPoints emails I haven’t processed yet. I open up the first email, scroll down to the orange button that says Get Points and click. I then press the J key in GMail to go to the next unread email, scroll down again to the orange button that says Get Points and click, press J, and continue this process until all of the MyPoints emails have been processed.

If it’s a survey, I go ahead and open it, but don’t complete it yet. I finish processing all of the emails first, then go back later and do any surveys if I have time. If I skip surveys, I can do all of the 10 or so MyPoints emails in about a minute. That’s it. Told you it was simple. Yes, I hear you, “Wait, Wait, Wait. What is all of this about going directly to the MyPoints emails, pressing the what key?? Every time I click on the orange Get Points button it navigates me straight to the site.“.

With the overview out of the way, let’s jump into the details, get your questions answered, and show you how to set-up this whole process.

Use Gmail’s filtering capabilities

I’m an avid Gmail user and have been since shortly after it was released. Gmail is interesting, as on the surface it seems very simple, but Gmail literally full of powerful little features and capabilities. One of the features I really like is filtering. Filtering allows you to place one or more filters on incoming mail and have Gmail automatically do something with it. The something can be deleting it, archive it (skips your inbox), starring it, labeling it or whatever else.

I didn’t like the MyPoints emails cluttering up my inbox, so I set-up a filter to look for all emails coming from MyPoints. The filter both labels the email with a MyPoints label and archives it so I don’t see it in my main inbox.

When I’m ready to work my MyPoints emails, I open up Gmail and select the MyPoints label. Labels can be found in the left hand sidebar under the Labels section. This will cause Gmail to show all emails with the MyPoints label only.

Turn on Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts

Another “hidden” feature that Gmail provides is keyboard shortcuts. These are key presses you can enable that do various Gmail functions. To enable keyboard shortcuts, click on Settings up in the top right corner, choose “Keyboard Shortcuts On”, then scroll to the bottom and press Save Changes. Now navigate back to your inbox by clicking on Inbox in the left hand sidebar. You should now see a dark black greater than sign (>) next to the first item in your inbox. That little greater than sign is the key indicator that keyboard shortcuts are now turned on.

To see all of the various keyboard shortcuts, press the ? key. A transparent gray window will pop-up showing you a list of all the various keyboard short cuts available. Note, delete is missing. I’m not sure why, but it’s Shift-3 (or #).

Click on your first email using your mouse, or just press enter. The email that had the > symbol next to it is now shown. Neat huh? You can now press the J key to move to the next unread email or press the K key to go back one email. Using the J and K keys, you can quickly navigate through your email without ever removing your hands from the keyboard. If you use Google reader, the J and K keys should be all too familiar.

The use of the J key is the main technique in moving from one MyPoints email to the next quickly. I use the page down key to scroll down until I can see the orange Get Points button and then use the mouse to click. To process a MyPoints email, hit J to move to the next email, press page down once or twice, then click Get Points. Easy huh?

Now I’ll show you how to keep the MyPoints offer from displaying right away and hiding your email

Use Firefox

Another internet tool I couldn’t live without is the Firefox browser. Firefox is a free open source browser that is far more powerful and faster than Internet Explorer. Firefox is completely extensible, and literally thousands of various plugins are available for it that will make it do pretty much anything you could ever want.

Firefox is also highly customizable, which leads me to how I keep the MyPoints advertiser page from displaying on top of your Gmail when you click on the orange Get Points button. What we’re going to do is force firefox to open links in a new tab, but in the background instead of the default foreground. Here’s how:

1. Go up to the URL bar (also called the address bar) and type: about:config then press enter
2. In the filter field displayed type: browser.tabs.loadD. Firefox should now only show you one setting called browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground
3. Double click on browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground so that it’s value changes to true instead of false.

That’s it, you can now close that tab and continue browsing. Now whenever you click on a link, a new tab will be opened in the background containing the contents of that link. In other words, now when you press the orange Get Points button, it will open in another tab in the background and you’ll still see the email in the foreground you just clicked on.

In Review

At this point, I’ll assume your using Gmail and you’ve loaded Firefox. You’ve also set-up Gmail filtering, so the last few days worth of MyPoints emails are all organized up under a MyPoints label and in one location.

Again, click on the first email and begin the process of scrolling down to the orange Get Points button and click, press J, scroll, click Get Points, J, press scroll, click button, press J…etc.

Continue this process until all of the MyPoints emails have been worked. Again, if it’s a survey, go ahead and click to open the survey, but don’t do the survey yet.

Now, looking at your Firefox browser, you should have your Gmail in the foreground and few (or many) tabs which contain all of the MyPoints promotional websites and surveys. You have two options 1) Don’t look at them at all and just close them all or 2) Navigate to each tab, take a look at what they have to offer and then close the tab or do whatever else.

If I’m in a big hurry, I do option 1. Generally though, in order to promote what MyPoints is really for, I navigate to each tab and take a look at the offering. For option 1, just select the tab that you want to keep open (most likely your Gmail tab), right click on the tab with the mouse, and choose “Close Other Tabs”. This will close all of the tabs except the one you selected.

If you go with option 2, than as you review the site, just click the X on the tab to close it. You can also press Ctrl-W on the keyboard.

Wrapping Up

So there you have it. The exact way I work through my MyPoints emails quickly and easily. Don’t want to switch email accounts, but interested in using Gmail? No problem. Another really slick feature that Gmail has is the ability to act as an email client for other email accounts. You can find instructions on how to consolidate your emails to Gmail on Lifehacker.

Not sure about Firefox? Give it a try, you’ll love it. You can even make it look just like Internet Explorer 7 by installing the Vista-aero theme. Don’t like the way Firefox does something? Just do a quick Google serach, I can almost guarantee you that you will find a setting to make it do exactly what you want.

Don’t do MyPoints? Well, that’s easy too. Just sign-up! I’ve written about how much I like it before. We’ve received more than $100.00 in Target giftcards using MyPoints and eaten out at Olive Garden a few times. All for just reading a few emails.

Have any tips or tricks for reading through your MyPoints emails? Already use a similar process to mine, but maybe do something a bit different? Add a comment! If for any reason you are confused or can’t get it to work as I’ve described, please add a comment and I’ll help you out!

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Revolution Money Exchange is a new way to exchange money online. Like Paypal, Revolution money Exchange allows you to send and receive money online. But that’s where the similarities end. Which product is better? That depends on what you are trying to. Run an online business? Paypal may be your best choice for now. More of a online shopper and tired of paying Paypal fees? Than Revolution Money Exchange might be just what you’ve been waiting for.

Is Revolution Money Exchange a scam?

No. When I first ran across a few blogs talking about Revolution Money Exchange, I figured it was just another money making scam like so many others I run across daily. The I noticed that Pete from Biblemoneymatters.com was using it and that same day I received an email from Patrick of Cash, Money, Life about it as well. Since I respect both of them, I thought I’d check it out. Turns out, it’s not a scam at all, but a very legit money exchange service that I think it really going to give Paypal a run for their money.

About Revolution Exchange

Revolution Money Exchange was launched in 2007 and is part of a family of companies with Revolution, LLC. One of initial founders was Steve Case co-founder of AOL. Steve is currently Chairman of Revolution, LLC and serves on the board. The credentials of the other board members is equally impressive: Ted Leonsis – Washington Capitols owner, David Golden – former Vice Chairman JP Morgan, Russell E. Hogg – Former President & CEO for Mastercard, David Pottruck – Former CEO Charles Schwab, Frank Raines – former Chairman & CEO of Fannie Mae, and Larry Summers – former Secretary of Treasury.? A pretty impressive array of background and experience.

The founders, including Steve Case, received venture capital funding for their effort from Citi, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank and partnered with First Bank & Trust, Brookings, SD where accounts are actually held.

Differences between Revolution Money Exchange and Paypal

• Transfer fees – The biggest difference in Revolution Money Exchange and Paypal is that Revolution Money doesn’t charge fees for sending or receiving funds. This feature in and of itself was enough to make me sign-up. I’ve been using Paypal since they first started and can’t even imagine how much I have payed in fees over the years. The only fees charged by Revolution Money Exchange are check withdrawals ($2.50 per check), check stop payments ($20 per check), paper statements ($5 per statement), ACH returns ($35 per returned ACH), and overdrafts ($35 per overdraft)
• Required personal information – One issue that has been a bit of a touchy subject amount bloggers and blog readers is that Revolution Money Exchange requires you Social Security Number to create account. With all of the identify theft concerns, many people are understandably gun shy about handing over their social security number to anyone. Revolution Money Exchange says: “We ask for your Social Security Number as a security measure to protect your financial information. Your Social Security Number is used to confirm your identity by cross-referencing it against the other personal data you provide.”
• Limitations – To reduce their risk of fraud, Revolution Money Exchange places limits on transactions and accounts: Max value of an account is $2,500, only one account person, transactions are limited to $1000.00 per day and $2,500 per calendar month, money transfers up to 30 times per month.
• Business services – Paypal has been around a long time, and has not only established itself as the number one service for personal use, but also for online businesses. Revolution Money Exchange focuses purely on person to person money transfers. They currently provide no business services like Paypal such as subscriptions, gift certificates, payment management, invoicing, shipping, etc.
• No Credit Cards – Paypal allows members to accept credit cards if you have a premier or business account. Revolution Money Exchange does not allow this.
• Not accepted by everyone – Revolution Money Exchange is new and therefore isn’t accepted by places yet, but the list of merchants where you can use it is growing. I see it’s use expanding, but for now usage is limited.
• No international support – Currently, money cannot be sent or received internationally. Also, you must be a U.S. resident and your linked bank must be a U.S. bank.
• Simple – Does one thing, does it well, and does it with no fees. If you just want to transfer money to someone, or receive money from someone Revolution Money Exchange is a great service.

Free $25 sign-up Bonus

Until May 15th, one very attractive feature is available with Revolution Money Exchange, a free $25 sign-up bonus. All you have to do is open a new Revolution Money Exchange account by clicking on the green button below and completing the required information. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll receive your $25.00 and then you will be able to refer other people. When you refer then and they sign up, they’ll receive $25 and you’ll receive $10.00 (up to $500.00).

I signed up initially just to receive the $25 sign-up bonus, but ended up using the service to purchased some calcium for my saltwater tank from a fellow hobbiest, and purchased a Entrecard graphic from Pete at Bible Money Matters. I’m still using Paypal, but looking for any opportunity I can to use Revolution Money Exchange just to save money on the fees!

Summary

Paypal is a far more mature and robust product than Revolution Money Exchange, but if sending and receiving money is all you want to do, Revolution Money Exchange is a great option. The company is backed by a credible board of directors, accounts are held in a reputable financial institution, and the site seems to be very secure. Give it a try, worse case you walk away with $25.00 in your pocket!

Have you used it? What’s your experience? Is it something you would use? Add a comment!

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The Hustler $$$ Blog posted about another one this week.  Seems to be the real deal, so for a $1 investment and a 30 day wait, you get $50.  Going to keep my $1 stock there, just to see what happens

Still waiting on the $100 from Citibank…should be soon though.

Let me know if you give it a try and how it turns out.

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Wachovia will give both you and I a $25 gift card when you open a new checking account. A minimum balance of $100 is required and the account must stay in good standing for 30 days.

INGDirect will give you $25 and myself $10 when you open a new INGDirect Orange Savings Account. It requires a minimum deposit of $250 which must stay in the account for 30 days. ING’s accounts offer a high interest rate and their online banking interface is simple and easy to use. Orange Savings accounts make a great place to store your Emergency Fund or to create Savings Accounts for your children.

Update: The Wachovia offer is no longer valid

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Free $50 from Sharebuilder with offer code: ym50

I signed up for a Sharebuilder account and just as recommended by Hustler $$$ Blog purchased 1 share of a less than $1 stock. Received the confirmation email this morning stating that I qualified and that I will receive my $50 Account Bonus within 4-6 weeks. I’ll keep you posted on what happens and when I receive it.

Free $100 from Citibank

I also signed up for the Citibank checking account. Again, received the confirmation this morning that my application was approved. Again, will let you know how it works out and when I receive my $100. I moved $10 into the account.

Here’s the terms and conditions from Citibank’s web site:

Terms and Conditions:

• To receive this offer you must apply for and open a new Ultimate Savings Account by 08/31/2007. $100 will be credited to your Ultimate Savings Account within 90 days following your first statement cycle. Account must be in good standing at the time of the $100 credit.

• All accounts are subject to approval. Customer must be a citizen or resident alien of the United States (U.S.) with a valid U.S. taxpayer identification number. The amount of any bonus payment will be reported to the IRS as interest earned in the year credited. Persons under 18 years of age are not eligible. Offer may be modified or withdrawn at any time without notice and is not transferable.

I plan to use the proceeds to pay off some debt!

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