How we earn?

Culture & Fashion: Latest Fashion News of the day

2010-10-31T00:37:00.000-07:00

Culture & Fashion: Latest Fashion News of the day: "From `Camp’ to fall fashion: stars choose top trend Few belongings get Meaghan Martin and Chloe bridge going like a little back-to-school ..."

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How to Make Money From Your Blog

2009-11-08T03:07:00.000-08:00

StevePavlina.com was launched on Oct 1st, 2004. By April 2005 it was averaging $4.12/day in income. Now it brings in over ~~$200/day~~ $1000/day (updated as of 10/29/06). I didn’t spend a dime on marketing or promotion. In fact, I started this site with just $9 to register the domain name, and everything was bootstrapped from there. Would you like to know how I did it?

This article is seriously long (over 7300 words), but you’re sure to get your money’s worth (hehehe). I’ll even share some specifics. If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to bookmark it or print it out for later.

Do you actually want to monetize your blog?

Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to making money from their blogs. If you think commercializing your blog is evil, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy, obnoxious, or anything along those lines, then don’t commercialize it.

If you have mixed feelings about monetizing your blog, then sort out those feelings first. If you think monetizing your site is wonderful, fine. If you think it’s evil, fine. But make up your mind before you seriously consider starting down this path. If you want to succeed, you must be congruent. Generating income from your blog is challenging enough — you don’t want to be dealing with self-sabotage at the same time. It should feel genuinely good to earn income from your blog — you should be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed. If your blog provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it. If, however, you find yourself full of doubts over whether this is the right path for you, you might find this article helpful: How tSelfish Are You? It’s about balancing your needs with the needs of others.

If you do decide to generate income from your blog, then don’t be shy about it. If you’re going to put up ads, then really put up ads. Don’t just stick a puny little ad square in a remote corner somewhere. If you’re going to request donations, then really request donations. Don’t put up a barely visible “Donate” link and pray for the best. If you’re going to sell products, then really sell them. Create or acquire the best quality products you can, and give your visitors compelling reasons to buy. If you’re going to do this, then fully commit to it. Don’t take a half-assed approach. Either be full-assed or no-assed.

You can reasonably expect that when you begin commercializing a free site, some people will complain, depending on how you do it. I launched this site in October 2004, and I began putting Google Adsense ads on the site in February 2005. There were some complaints, but I expected that — it was really no big deal. Less than 1 in 5,000 visitors actually sent me negative feedback. Most people who sent feedback were surprisingly supportive. Most of the complaints died off within a few weeks, and the site began generating income almost immediately, although it was pretty low — a whopping $53 the first month. If you’d like to see some month-by-month specifics, I posted my 2005 earlier this year. Adsense is still my single best source of revenue for this site, although it’s certainly not my only source. More on that later…

Can you make a decent income online?

Yes, absolutely. At the very least, a high five-figure annual income is certainly an attainable goal for an individual working full-time from home. I’m making a healthy income from StevePavlina.com, and the site is only 19 months old… barely a toddler. If you have a day job, it will take longer to generate a livable income, but it can still be done part-time if you’re willing to devote a lot of your spare time to it. I’ve always done it full-time.

Can most people do it?

No, they can’t. I hope it doesn’t shock you to see a personal development web site use the dreaded C-word. But I happen to agree with those who say that 99% of people who try to generate serious income from their blogs will fail. The tagline for this site is “Personal Development for Smart People.” And unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your outlook), smart people are a minority on this planet. So while most people can’t make a living this way, I would say that most smart people can. How do you know whether or not you qualify as smart? Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you have to ask the question, you aren’t.

If that last paragraph doesn’t flood my inbox with flames, I don’t know what will. OK, actually.

This kind of 99-1 ratio isn’t unique to blogging though. You’ll see it in any field with relatively low barriers to entry. What percentage of wannabe actors, musicians, or athletes ever make enough money from their passions to support themselves? It doesn’t take much effort to start a blog these days — almost anyone can do it. Talent counts for something, and the talent that matters in blogging is intelligence. But that just gets you in the door. You need to specifically apply your intelligence to one particular talent. And the best words I can think of to describe that particular talent are: web savvy.

If you are very web savvy, or if you can learn to become very web savvy, then you have an excellent shot of making enough money from your blog to cover all your living expenses… and then some. But if becoming truly web savvy is more than your gray matter can handle, then I’ll offer this advice: Don’t quit your day job.

Web savvy

What do I mean by web savvy? You don’t need to be a programmer, but you need a decent functional understanding of a variety of web technologies. What technologies are “key” will depend on the nature of your blog and your means of monetization. But generally speaking I’d list these elements as significant:

blog publishing software
HTML/CSS
blog comments (and comment spam)
RSS/syndication
feed aggregators
pings
trackbacks
full vs. partial feeds
blog carnivals (for kick-starting your blog’s traffic)
search engines
search engine optimization (SEO)
page rank
social bookmarking
tagging
contextual advertising
affiliate programs
traffic statistics
email

Optional: podcasting, instant messaging, PHP or other web scripting languages.

I’m sure I missed a few due to familiarity blindness. If scanning such a list makes your head spin, I wouldn’t recommend trying to make a full-time living from blogging just yet. Certainly you can still blog, but you’ll be at a serious disadvantage compared to someone who’s more web savvy, so don’t expect to achieve stellar results until you expand your knowledge base.

If you want to sell downloadable products such as ebooks, then you can add e-commerce, SSL, digital delivery, fraud prevention, and online databases to the list. Again, you don’t need to be a programmer; you just need a basic understanding of these technologies. Even if you hire someone else to handle the low-level implementation, it’s important to know what you’re getting into. You need to be able to trust your strategic decisions, and you won’t be able to do that if you’re a General who doesn’t know what a gun is.

A lack of understanding is a major cause of failure in the realm of online income generation. For example, if you’re clueless about search engine optimization (SEO), you’ll probably cripple your search engine rankings compared to someone who understands SEO well. But you can’t consider each technology in isolation. You need to understand the connections and trade-offs between them. Monetizing a blog is a balancing act. You may need to balance the needs of yourself, your visitors, search engines, those who link to you, social bookmarking sites, advertisers, affiliate programs, and others. Seemingly minor decisions like what to title a web page are significant. In coming up with the title of this article, I have to take all of these potential viewers into consideration. I want a title that is attractive to human visitors, drives reasonable search engine traffic, yields relevant contextual ads, fits the theme of the site, and encourages linking and social bookmarking. And most importantly I want each article to provide genuine value to my visitors. I do my best to create titles for my articles that balance these various needs. Often that means abandoning cutesy or clever titles in favor of direct and comprehensible ones. It’s little skills like these that help drive sustainable traffic growth month after month. Missing out on just this one skill is enough to cripple your traffic. And there are dozens of these types of skills that require web savvy to understand, respect, and apply.

This sort of knowledge is what separates the 1% from the 99%. Both groups may work just as hard, but the 1% is getting much better results for their efforts. It normally doesn’t take me more than 60 seconds to title an article, but a lot of experience goes into those 60 seconds. You really just have to learn these ideas once; after that you can apply them routinely.

Whenever you come across a significant web technology you don’t understand, look it up on Google and dive into it long enough to acquire a basic understanding of it. To make money from blogging it’s important to be something of a jack of all trades. Maybe you’ve heard the expression, “A jack of all trades is a master of none.” That may be true, but you don’t need to master any of these technologies — you just have to be good enough to use them. It’s the difference between being able to drive a car vs. becoming an auto mechanic. Strive to achieve functional knowledge, and then move on to something else. Even though I’m an experienced programmer, I don’t know how many web technologies actually work. I don’t really care. I can still use them to generate results. In the time it would take me to fully understand one new technology, I can achieve sufficient functional knowledge to apply several of them.

How to Maximize Benefits From Google Adwords Keywords Tools

2009-11-04T02:18:00.000-08:00

Custom Search

Google Adwords is the major platform to operate Pay Per Click advertising campaigns. Pay Per Click also commonly known as Double Click Digital Advertising. Pay Per Click advertising is a very successful method to reach to the potential clients or in other words it is the way of advertising where you can customize your advertising campaigns as per your budget, client demographic requirements or target customers based on geographical location. You have full control on advertising budget to explore the market. Pay Per Click Advertising has a great impact on building the brand globally or locally depends on your product market reach.

Google Adwords has made it simple for the advertisers to target the desired audience by providing the various built in tools. An advertising campaign normally comprised of budget, cost of click (CPC) or bid on keyword, keywords, text ads and the landing page and the most important part of the campaign is the history of Google Adwords Account (The Google Adwords Account that is maintaining the campaign, history of keywords and bidding options and CTR, we will discuss this part later)

Google Adwords while designing the campaign keeps track of three things in common, The Keyword you choose, the text ads you write and the content of the landing page or contents of the website as a whole. Google Adwords algorithm calculates the relevancy of these three variables. Let me say it in other words how relevant are the keywords to the text ads and combined these two how relevant to the content of the landing page.

The secret behind doing all this in Google Adwords is to serve the internet user the most suited information what he is looking in the search engine while surfing and querying the search engine. Most of the advertiser bluntly hammers the keywords in the campaign to get the cheap visitors, this attitude of advertising gives them LOW CTR and un interested visitors. Google has launched this advertising mode to reach the potential clients on the fly and not to get the blind visitors. This method of stuffing keywords only increases the cost of the campaign in terms of invalid clicks or no sales.
Well, going back to the topic of maximizing potential through Google Adwords Keyword tool, the factor is relevancy. The keyword, the text ad and the landing page content.

How we earn and How It Works

2009-11-03T11:37:00.000-08:00

It's pretty simple ...

First, we tailor one our proven email promotions to your list of prospects and customers.

We run the promotion, you make some nice sales and together we evaluate its success.

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A couple of weeks later, another proven email sales promotion is sent, driving even more new sales.

For maximum profitability, this process can be repeated on an ongoing basis.

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2009-11-02T23:40:00.000-08:00

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America vs Muslim World

Maerica Online

Fashion
Culture

China and Pakistan

Musharaff: Pakistan-China friendship "deeper than ocean"

2009-11-02T23:07:00.000-08:00

Visiting Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff on Tuesday spoke highly of the friendship betweenPakistan and China, saying it was "deeper than the ocean and higher than the mountain."

The relationship was very "broad-based" and would keep rising as time passes, he said.

Musharaff made the remarks in his speech titled "Reflections onContemporary Issues on Peace, Security & Development," delivered at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), China's think tank, in Beijing.

In his speech and during his interaction with Chinese officialsand scholars present, Musharaff elaborated on three broad headings,namely, personal assessment of global environment, regional issuesand Pakistan's policy priorities.

Musharaff also expressed his optimism about and determination to boost the Pakistan-China relations.

"I have a desire to strengthen relations in all fields and takethem to a new height," he said.

"Leaders may come and go, governments may come and go, but whenthe people have relationships, our friendship will keep prospering."

Speaking of the international situation, Musharaff said that the world has tremendous challenges, but at the same time there are an equal number of opportunities available.

"It now depends on the leadership of the world to meet the challenges and take the world on the side of the opportunities," he said.

According to the president, the world is faced with four dangers, namely, unresolved political disputes and conflicts, terrorism and extremism, the resurfacing of political and culturalprejudices, and inequality between countries and within countries.

To safeguard world peace, all countries should uphold the principles of the UN Charter, resolve all long-standing political disputes with justice, and combat terrorism and extremism collectively, he added.

The root cause of terrorism and extremism was unresolved political disputes, poverty and lack of education, he said.

All countries should respect each other's values, cultures and beliefs so that all religions could live together harmoniously, headded.

About 200 officials and scholars including Chen Kuiyuan, president of the CASS, were present for the presidential lecture.

Musharaff arrived in Beijing on Feb. 19, unveiling a series of events marking the 55th anniversary of the establishment of China-Pakistan diplomatic relations.

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fashion
China vs pakistan

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2009-10-29T23:56:00.000-07:00

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Can Money Buy Happiness?

2009-10-29T02:11:00.000-07:00

Of course not! Or can it? Surprising new research sheds light on how you can (and can't) spend your way to a sunnier outlook on life.

– "Whoever said money can't buy happiness isn't spending it right." You may remember those Lexus ads from a few years ago, which hijacked this bumper-sticker-ready twist on the conventional wisdom to sell a car so fancy that no one would ever dream of affixing a bumper sticker to it.

What made the ads so intriguing, but also so infuriating, was that they seemed to offer a simple--if rather expensive--solution to a common question: How can you transform the money you work so hard to earn into something approaching the good life? You know that there must be some connection between money and happiness. If there weren't, you'd be less likely to stay late at work (or even come in at all) or struggle to save money and invest it profitably. But then why aren't your lucrative promotion, five-bedroom house and fat 401(k) cheering you up? The relationship between money and happiness, it would appear, is more complicated than the romantic entanglements of any Desperate Housewife.

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Fortunately, you don't have to do the untangling yourself. Over the past quarter-century, economists and psychologists have banded together to sort out the hows, whys and why nots of money and mood. Especially the why nots. Why is it that the more money you have, the more you want? Why doesn't buying the car, condo or cell phone of your dreams bring you more than momentary joy?

In attempting to answer these seemingly depressing questions, the new scholars of happiness have arrived at some insights that are, well, downright cheery. Money can help you find more happiness, so long as you know just what you can and can't expect from it. And no, you don't have to buy a Lexus to be happy. Much of the research suggests that seeking the good life at a store is an expensive exercise in futility. Before you can pursue happiness the right way, you need to recognize what you've been doing wrong.

Money Misery The new science of happiness starts with a simple insight: We're never satisfied. "We always think if we just had a little bit more money, we'd be happier," says Catherine Sanderson, a psychology professor at Amherst College, "but when we get there, we're not." Indeed, the more you make, the more you want. The more you have, the less effective it is at bringing you joy, and that seeming paradox has long bedeviled economists. "Once you get basic human needs met, a lot more money doesn't make a lot more happiness," notes Dan Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard University and the author of the new book Stumbling on Happiness. As the graphic at left shows, going from earning less than $20,000 a year to making more than $50,000 makes you twice as likely to be happy, yet the payoff for then surpassing $90,000 is slight. And while the rich are happier than the poor, the enormous rise in living standards over the past 50 years hasn't made Americans happier. Why? Three reasons:

You overestimate how much pleasure you'll get from having more. Humans are adaptable creatures, which has been a plus during assorted ice ages, plagues and wars. But that's also why you're never all that satisfied for long when good fortune comes your way. While earning more makes you happy in the short term, you quickly adjust to your new wealth--and everything it buys you. Yes, you get a thrill at first from shiny new cars and TV screens the size of Picasso's Guernica. But you soon get used to them, a state of running in place that economists call the "hedonic treadmill."

Even though stuff seldom brings you the satisfaction you expect, you keep returning to the mall and the car dealership in search of more. "When you imagine how much you're going to enjoy a Porsche, what you're imagining is the day you get it," says Gilbert. When your new car loses its ability to make your heart go pitter-patter, he says, you tend to draw the wrong conclusions. Instead of questioning the notion that you can buy happiness on the car lot, you begin to question your choice of car. So you pin your hopes on a new BMW, only to be disappointed again.

More money can lead to more stress. The big salary you pull in from your high-paying job may not buy you much in the way of happiness. But it can buy you a spacious house in the suburbs. Trouble is, that also means a long trip to and from work, and study after study confirms what you sense daily: Even if you love your job, the little slice of everyday hell you call the commute can wear you down. You can adjust to most anything, but a stop-and-go drive or an overstuffed bus will make you unhappy whether it's your first day on the job or your last.

You endlessly compare yourself with the family next door. H.L. Mencken once quipped that the happy man was one who earned $100 more than his wife's sister's husband. He was right. Happiness scholars have found that how you stand relative to others makes a much bigger difference to your sense of well-being than how much you make in an absolute sense.

You may feel a touch of envy when you read about the glamorous lives of the absurdly wealthy, but the group you likely compare yourself with are folks Harvard economist Erzo Luttmer calls "similar others"--the people you work with, people you grew up with, old friends and old classmates. "You have to think, 'I could have been that person,' " Luttmer says.

Matching census data on earnings with data on self-reported happiness from a national survey, Luttmer found that, sure enough, your happiness can depend a great deal on your neighbors' paychecks. "If you compare two people with the same income, with one living in a richer area than the other," Luttmer says, "the person in the richer area reports being less happy."

Your penchant for comparing yourself with the guy next door, like your tendency to grow bored with the things that you acquire, seems to be a deeply rooted human trait. An inability to stay satisfied is arguably one of the key reasons ancient man moved out of his drafty cave and began building the civilization you now inhabit. But you're not living in a cave, and you likely don't have to worry about mere survival. You can afford to step off the hedonic treadmill. The question is, how do you do it?

Money Bliss If you want to know how to use the money you have to become happier, you need to understand just what it is that brings you happiness in the first place. And that's where the newest happiness research comes in.

Friends and family are a mighty elixir. One secret of happiness? People. Innumerable studies suggest that having friends matters a great deal. Large-scale surveys by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, for example, find that those with five or more close friends are 50% more likely to describe themselves as "very happy" than those with smaller social circles. Compared with the happiness-increasing powers of human connection, the power of money looks feeble indeed. So throw a party, set up regular lunch dates--whatever it takes to invest in your friendships.

Even more important to your happiness is your relationship with your aptly named "significant other." People in happy, stable, committed relationships tend to be far happier than those who aren't. Among those surveyed by NORC from the 1970s through the 1990s, some 40% of married couples said they were "very happy"; among the never-married, only about a quarter were quite so exuberant. Just choose wisely. Divorce brings misery to everyone involved, though those who stick it out in a terrible marriage are the unhappiest of all.

While a healthy marriage is a clear happiness-booster, the kids that tend to follow are more of a mixed blessing. Studies of kids and happiness have come up with little more than a mess of conflicting data. "When you take moment-by-moment readouts of how people feel when they're taking care of the kids, they actually aren't very happy," notes Cornell psychologist Tom Gilovich. "But if you ask them they say that having kids is one of the most enjoyable things they do with their lives."

Doing things can bring us more joy than having things. Our preoccupation with stuff obscures an important truth: The things that don't last create the most lasting happiness. That's what Gilovich and Leaf Van Boven of the University of Colorado found when they asked students to compare the pleasure they got from the most recent things they bought vs. the experiences (a night out, a vacation) they spent money on.

One reason may be that experiences tend to blossom as you recall them, not diminish. "In your memory, you're free to embellish and elaborate," says Gilovich. Your trip to Mexico may have been an endless parade of hassles punctuated by a few exquisite moments. But looking back on it, your brain can edit out the surly cabdrivers, remembering only the glorious sunsets. So next time you think that arranging a vacation is more trouble than it's worth--or a cost you'd rather not shoulder--factor in the delayed impact.

Of course, a lot of what you spend money on could be considered a thing, an experience or a bit of both. A book that sits unread on a bookshelf is a thing; a book you plunge into with gusto, savoring every plot twist, is an experience. Gilovich admits that people define what is and isn't an experience differently. Maybe that's the key. Gilovich suspects that the people who are happiest are those who are best at wringing experiences out of everything they spend money on, whether it's dancing lessons or hiking boots.

Applying yourself to something hard makes you happy. We're addicted to challenges, and we're often far happier while working toward a goal than after we reach it. Challenges help you attain what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls a state of "flow," total absorption in something that stretches you to the limits of your abilities, mental or physical. Buy the $1,000 golf clubs; pay for the $50-an-hour music lessons.

Flow takes work. After all, you have to learn to play scales on a guitar before you can lose yourself in a Van Halen-esque solo--but the satisfaction you get in the end is greater than what you can get out of more passive pursuits. When people are asked what makes them happy on a moment-to-moment basis, watching TV ranks pretty high. But people who watch a lot of TV tend to be less happy than those who don't. Settling down on the couch with the remote can help you recharge, but to be truly happy, you need more in your life than passive pleasures.

Flow isn't limited to golf games and crossword puzzles. You can find flow at work if you have a job that interests and challenges you, and that gives you ample control over your daily assignments. Indeed, one recent study by two University of British Columbia researchers suggests that workers would be happy to forgo as much as a 20% raise if it meant a job with more variety or one that required more skill.

Think Happy Not long ago, most researchers thought you had a happiness "set point" that you were largely stuck with for life. One famous paper said that "trying to be happier" may be "as futile as trying to be taller." The author of those words has since recanted, and experts are increasingly coming to view happiness as a talent, not an inborn trait. Exceptionally happy people seem to have a set of skills--ones that you can learn too.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California-Riverside, is attempting to pin down just what it is that the especially happy do differently. She has found that they don't waste time dwelling on unpleasant things. They tend to interpret ambiguous events in positive ways. And perhaps most tellingly, they aren't bothered by the successes of others. Lyubomirsky says that when she asked less happy people whom they compared themselves with, "they went on and on." She adds, "The happy people didn't know what we were talking about." They dare not to compare, thus short-circuiting invidious social comparisons.

That's not the only way to get yourself to spend less and appreciate what you have more. Try counting your blessings. Literally. Sit down and make a short list of the things you're grateful for, from your garden to your kids. In a series of studies, psychologists Robert Emmons at the University of California-Davis, and Michael McCullough at the University of Miami found that those who did exercises to cultivate feelings of gratitude, like keeping weekly journals, ended up feeling happier, healthier, more energetic and more optimistic than those who didn't. Gratitude exercises help focus the mind on what really matters in life--which for most people means healthy relationships, not fancy new gadgets.

And if you can't change how you think about gizmos, at least learn to resist. The act of shopping unleashes primal hunter-gatherer urges. When you're in that "hot" state, eager to buy, you tend to be an extremely poor judge of what you'll think of a product when you cool down later. "With big-ticket items, you never want to buy on impulse," warns George Loewenstein, a behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon University. Before giving into your techno-lust for, say, a new digital camera, give yourself a time-out. Over the next month, keep track of how many times you tell yourself: I wish I had a camera! If in the course of your life you almost never find yourself wanting a camera, forget about it and move on, happily.

Happiness Shopping List

ROMANCE

A DOZEN ROSES

You may joke about in-laws and the old ball and chain, but an assortment of studies have found that married people are generally happier than singles. Do what you can to keep your marriage a happy one, including buying your sweetie the occasional $60 bouquet of roses.

FLOW

GUITAR LESSONS

The lives of happy people tend to have a lot of flow--the high-intensity, utterly absorbing state that can come from a hobby that takes skill and concentration--for example, mastering an instrument, playing 18 holes of golf or finishing a crossword puzzle.

PET

CAT OR DOG

Despite all the sofas and shoes they destroy, pets have been shown to make you happier. What's more, caring for furry friends can help ease stress and lower your blood pressure, and a daily trip around the block with Fido is a chance to meet non-furry friends.

GRATITUDE

JOURNAL

A recent study found that writing down what you're grateful for leaves you happier and more optimistic. Buy a fancy $30 leather journal--or a $1.50 composition notebook--and take a few moments every day or week to reflect on your good life and to record it.

MEMORIES

SNOW GLOBE

Memories of great experiences are powerful mood boosters. Go ahead and splurge on something that reminds you of your past, be it a T-shirt with a band's logo, a book you loved as a kid or a kitschy souvenir from your last great vacation.

SMALL PLEASURES

LATTE

Don't discount the satisfaction you can get from something as trivial as a good cup of coffee. Furthermore, casual encounters with familiar people like the barista at your local Starbucks or the guy at the newsstand have a bigger effect on your happiness than you might realize.

SOCIABILITY

BACKYARD GRILL Who doesn't love a Saturday afternoon barbecue with good friends and great food? You'll feed your hunger for nicely charred chicken--and your hunger for society. People with lots of close friends are more likely to be happy than those with smaller social networks.

When it comes to happiness, it's better to be rich than to be poor.

56% of people who make more than $75,000 a year say they are "very satisfied" with life.

Only 24% of people who make $25,000 or less a year say they are "very satisfied" with life.

SOURCE: 2004 Associated Press poll.

But once you earn enough to cover your basic needs, being much richer doesn't make you much happier.

% WHO ARE "VERY HAPPY"

FAMILY INCOME <$20K 22%

$20K-49.9 30%

$50K-89.9K 42%

$90K+ 43%

SOURCE: "Would You Be Happier If You Were Richer? A Focusing Illusion," by D. Kahneman, A. Krueger, D. Schkade, N. Schwarz and A. Stone, Science, June 2006.

What Not to Buy

LUXURY CAR

Splurge on this emblem of mid-life crisis and you'll impress your neighbors, but only with your narcissism. New stuff provides a thrill, but it doesn't last long.

YACHT

Boat buyers tend to overestimate how often they'll set sail and minimize how much the boat will cost. (How many nautical miles to the gallon does she get?)

A $200 WINE

Can you really appreciate this vintage? You're likely buying to impress, and once you start doing that, you notice how much the über-rich spend--and ratchet up your spending even more.

ANYTHING ON CREDIT

Living high on credit gets you used to a standard of living you can't afford. Then the loss from cutting back on your lifestyle is more intense than the thrill you felt when you were shopping.

Americans have become richer, but happiness levels haven't changed.

1957

35% VERY HAPPY

$10,171 INCOME[1]

1980

34% VERY HAPPY

$17,931 INCOME[1]

2004

34% VERY HAPPY

$27,237 INCOME[1]

NOTE: [1] Average after-tax income (in 2000 dollars). sources: U.S. Census Bureau; National Opinion Research Center; University of Chicago; David G. Myers, Hope College.

People who value money highly are less happy than those who care more about love and friends.

[This article contains a chart. Please see hard copy or pdf.]

MORE SATISFIED

MORE MATERIALLSTIC/MORE ROMANTIC

SOURCE: David G. Myers, Hope College.

Happy Countries

Percentage of residents claiming to be "very happy"

1. Australia 46%

2. U.S.A. 40%

3. Egypt 36%

4. India 34%

5. U.K. 32%

Unhappy Countries

Percentage of residents claiming to be "very unhappy" or "disappointed"

1. Hungary 35%

2. Russia 30%

3. Turkey 28%

4. South Africa 25%

5. Poland 24%

SOURCE: 2005 Happiness Study based on GfK NOP Roper Reports Worldwide survey, which includes in-depth personal interviews with more than 30,000 people age 13 and older in 30 countries between December 2004 and February 2005.

What Makes Up the Good Life

When asked what gives them the most pleasure, people favor health and home over stuff.

1 84% Good health

2 60% A home you own

3 48% Children

4 46% An interesting job

5 36% Free and leisure time

6 22% A yard or garden

7 19% A luxury or second car

8 19% The latest electronic gadgets