Site Review Blog

Girls, looking for a little bit of something nice to dress up your new outfit? Guys, want to get your girl a nice gift?  The Fashion jewellery and accessories at eSparkles are worth a look.  Their main catalogue items cover Costume and fashion Jewellery, Scarves Gloves and hats, Hair accessories and Jackets and Skirts. 

I know I have been reviewing a lot of shopping sites lately, and like all of them, this one provides full contact information.  An online form, A physical address, email address and telephone numbers are all provided.  Now, I rate any company high that has all this info within 1 click from their homepage.  If I am even a little unsure of dealing with someone online for the first time, I simply pick up the phone and contact them.  Whenever any e-store fails to make it easy for me to contact them I steer well clear.

The website is of course based around the fashion Jewellery shopping cart as you would expect.  They have a reasonable amount of additional info on the site as well, including info on caring for your jewellery.  Now what I like to find is info on the shipping costs when I buy online and the info is easy to find without having to log into the shopping cart.  As you would expect the shipping is slightly cheaper within the UK than to other countries.

A little tidbit we found on their caring for jewellery page is that they offer discount vouchers if you can provide a good tip that they use and add to the site!  You additionally get a 10% discount off your first order.

Visit www.costumejewelleryaccessories.co.uk

Ever get the feeling that you could be doing a bit more with your time? Yeah, me to!  Being more productive can give you a lot more time to do the things you want to do, rather than what you have to do.  The Productive Strageties blog deals with all sorts of issues around, yes you guessed it - personal productivity.  The Site has had regular articles posted for about a year.  The posts are all fairly short - You can read them quite quickly.  The downside with this site is the only way to read back over the older posts is to go to the monthly archives - I would have liked to see a category link to all old posts as well.

Whenever looking at a blog type site, I always like to read a couple of the most current posts, oldest posts and a few in the middle.  This gives me a sense of what the writer is all about.  I can usually tell how well the subject is known, and if the rest of the site might be worthwhile reading - I guess you could say that I am making productive use of my time reviewing the site!

There is a mix of posts that explore a subject in a “sterile” type way and others that use personal experiences to address a point.  A recent post titled borders is a great example of the personal style of writing.  A lot of the posts have had comments left on them which also indicates a bit of a community.  Blogs don’t get comments unless they either provide good or controversial content - I vote that the content tends towards the good.

One of my favourite posts is the Optimal Time for Productivity post.  It is all about the time of day that you are at your peak productivity.  Of course this varies from person to person and also from task to task.  For me, I am best able to focus and write my reviews after dinner each night - when I am a little relaxed and not so pressured to get it all done. Take a look, and find your own best time of the day.

Visit: www.productivity501.com

We all want a little bit of luxury in our lives, and one of those luxuries are Perfumes and Colognes.  With Valentines day just around the corner, now is the time to buy that special gift for that special someone in your life. DRH Fine Gifts is an online shopping website that sells perfumes and Colognes.  By using an online retailer, you can get some great bargains - because the shop does not have some of the expenses that normal stores do.  Of course, there are some disadvantages when buying a product such as this - you really have to know what it is you are buying!

The website is what I would call a “Fairly Typical” online store - you can browse their cataloge or specials, add items to a shopping cart and when you are done go to the checkout.  With something like a fragrance, you cannot actually see it, but the site has pictures of the bottle and packaging and details about the quantity.  It goes without saying that you can see the price.

An online store should not only have what you want at great prices but should also have several contact methods available to you, the shopper.  I was pleased to see a toll-free number  and email address very prominently presented on every page of the site.  Additionally, an online store should provide several secure methods of paying for your goods - another thumbs up.

I was amazed at the range of discount designer perfumes that are on offer.  There are several categories including both Men and Women’s Fragrances and gift sets.  The prices are quite good, and with the price-match guarantee, I know where I’ll be buying perfume from in the future!

Visit www.drhfinegifts.com

Money501 is a blog all about  money matters and Personal Finance and is another blog from the 501 Network.  If you have been following our recent reviews you probably have a reasonable idea as to the sort and quality of the info on this site.  This particular site is the latest and at the time of writing only has 4 articles posted.

As there is only 4, I’ll make a quick comment on each of them in turn. Tax Free Retirement - well this is something that we all aspire to! The article covers how your current savings, if done correctly can have huge tax advantages. Info is good, but a little brief. The next one, keeping track of your finances was not what I expected.  I was expecting something about creating a budget and sticking to it.  Everyone knows how hard this and that it really is a waste of time. How many people actually stick to a budget? Now, what the article was about was keeping track of your spending, so you can identify where you might be able to change your habits a little and have more money for other things. This particular strategey sounds like it is much better than creating a budget and not sticking to it.

With a title of Benefits of using Credit Cards I didn’t hold much hope for the next one.  From personal experience, credit cards have kept me in debt for way too long!  I read it with an open mind, and by the end, I must admit that the info was worthwhile. As long as you control the card and don’t let it control you I can see how useful it may be for some people.

The final post is all about income and quality of life.  It is quite good at explaining that you may not need $80K to live very well on - you might be able to get away with earning $30Kand actually be better off! While I would prefer to be earning the former, and not the latter, you do get a good explanation - read it and decide for yourself.

I look forward to seeing more info on this site as it is off to a good start.  As always, when dealing with finances it is always best to read everything and seek professioanl advice.

Visit www.money501.com

Most of us who live in a developed country at some time during our live takes out a loan and goes into debt.  Some people seem to manage it without problems, but the majority have a lot of trouble managing. The Debt Consolidation blog has been going for over a year and has a heap of posts on this subject.  The best place to get financial advice is from an Accountant or Financial planner.  Yes, I have used both of these sort of services! The blog has a lot of general information in it that is reasonably well aligned to the sort of advice you would get from a professional.

Some advice I recently had was to use the equity in my home to borrow enough money to pay off the high-interest credit card debt that I have. The principals are sort of explained in the debt consolidation in a nutshell post.  While it was not exactly what my circumstances are, the overall approach was what my financial advisor reccommended.  So, on the face of it, I found some advice that was closly aligned to what I had been advised.

In this day and age where it seems just so easy to be able to borrow money, getting into debt and getting into trouble financially has never been easier!  Now, we all know the basic way to stay debt-free is to not spend beyond our means, but at times it can get away from you.  Even if you currently don’t have any debt or loans this blog is a reasonable read.  Education is a powerful thing, and knowing about how easy it is to get into debt and spend the rest of your life struggling just might help you make a wise purchasing decision and stay relatively debt-free. 

One of the recent posts about staying out of debt really does highlight the lifestyle choices you have by making smart choices.  By not going into debt that you cannot manage to repay at a young age may mean huge differences for the rest of your life!  If you consider that you don’t need a brand new car while at college and an older one will do - it may not be cool or trendy, but is it worth being cool if you are paying soo much for your car that you have to take out a student loan?  See how easy it is to get into trouble!

Visit  debt-consolidation.strategy-blogs.com

Moving from one country to another is not something that everyone does and those that do can have some great experiences along with the not so great. Mexico501 is a blog about a family that did just that, they decided to move from the US to Mexico and live there for a few years.  Rather than just do it, like most people would, they went ahead and wrote about some of their experiences about living in Mexico in a blog.

Now, this might seem like a pretty radical move, and almost everyone around the world hears about people tring to go North across the border, you don’t often hear about people going in the other direction.  I guess it also take a bit of courage to pick up and move from one country to another and live and after reading a bit on this site I found it pretty fascinating.

The blog looks like it was getting very regular updates for a few months and now - nothing.  I really hope that this is due to the owners taking a vacation!  I can say that I couldn’t find a single post that was not interesting in some way - the cultural differences and how someone is handling it is what is so interersting about it all.  Some of the posts about visiting the hospital are a little on the personal side and for a site that is all about living in another country I think concentrate a bit too much on this - The general information about communicating when the Doctors only speak a little English and the Patient only speaks a few words of Spanish are the interesting parts of these posts.

What is really great about the blog is that there is also a gallery of some photos that add to the overall story.  The pictures show different parts of Living in Mexico.  The pictures by themselves, unfortunately, only tell part of the story.  Only a few of them are captioned and the un-captioned ones would really benefit from a few words.  If all the pictures were captioned then me, the reader would have probably spent a bit more time browsing the gallery and reading about the pictures.

The site, even though it would currently benefit from a few minor updates provides a fascinating glimpse of someone moving from the US to Mexico.

Visit www.mexico501.com

Everyone who has been married certainly knows what a stressful time it can be leading up to the big day and organising everything.  There are literally hundreds of little tasks that need to be taken care of, from the guest list to the flowers and everything else in between.  One of those just happens to be the Wedding Invitations.  You could get a simple card and write out all of them yourself of you could get your cards professionally printed.

Choosing your wedding invitation cards has also never been easier as by shopping online and being able to see your choices. Wedding Invitations 123 makes it easy with their catalogue of over 300 different cards to choose from! Getting your cards printed by a company that specialises in printing cards means that there is one less thing to worry about.  You could contact any printing company, but they would charge a considerable amount to do a small-run print job which is usually the case with invitations.

Right on the front page they let you know that an order can usually be completed within 48 hours!  As they are located in San Diego, you will have your order posted and in your hands pretty quickly.  If you cannot choose between a few, you can additionally request a sample be posted!

The website is set up with a shopping cart that you can easily browse.  Once you have chosen your card then you can easily complete the rest of the details for your order.  If you have ever shopped online before you will have no trobule browsing the catalogue and finding what you are looking for.

Visit www.weddinginvitations123.com