Last year, McDonald’s had all-day breakfast to thank for a boost in sales, beating earning expectations. Now, the company has its three sizes of Big Macs and cheaper drinks to hang its fatter wallet on. [More]
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Tumblr Users Will Soon Be Able To Make Money From Ads
By 7.28.16
Just in case you didn’t think Tumblr pages were cluttered enough with cribbed photos and seemingly endless lists of comments and notes, the micro-blogging platform is rolling out ads in an effort to let users earn something from the stuff they post. [More]
United Airlines CEO: Checked Bag Fees Are Here To Stay, Just Part Of Doing Business
By 7.31.15
Despite Southwest Airlines’ recent admission that charging for bags would be a financially irresponsible policy change, it doesn’t appear that other airlines feel the same way. [More]
Google Play Search Results Will Now Feature Sponsored Ads
By 2.26.15
The next time you visit the Google Play store to download an app, you’ll likely be greeted with an ad or two. [More]
Fifth Third Bank Has 100 Million Reasons To Want To Keep Offering Payday-Like Loans
By 1.27.15
When the four banks still offering customers payday loan-like services announced they would discontinue their often under-fire products, they likely knew their bottom-line would take a hit. One of those institutions, First Third Bank announced this week that changes to its program resulted in the loss of millions of dollars in revenue, providing an example of why it can be difficult to persuade lenders to ditch the profit-making, but financially devastating programs. [More]
Airline Baggage Fees Bring In Nearly $1B In Three Months, Ticket Sales Still Top Revenue-Maker
By 12.16.14
All those baggage fees added so far this year appear to be bringing in the big bucks for U.S. airlines. A new report found that airlines brought in nearly $1 billion last quarter by charging customers for hauling their belongings. And while that seems like a lot of dough, it’s just a drop in the bucket for the industry. [More]
How Airlines Make Money: Charge Travelers $25 To Check A Bag, Only Spend $2 To Transport It
By 2.5.14
Airline fees aren’t new to travelers; in fact, it’s almost second nature to shell out $25 to check a bag. Over the years airlines have tried justified their decision to charge consumers fees for things like checked baggage or reservation changes. But two new reports are shedding light on just how much airlines are making by employing those fees. [More]
Oracle, Apple, Capital One CEOs Rank Among Decade's Top Earners
By 7.27.10
Being POTUS makes you age prematurely, and Lady Gaga is stuck in a 360 deal that takes a cut of everything she does. Screw that, I wanna be CEO. The Wall Street Journal has listed the top paid CEOs of the last decade, which is topped by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison at $1.84 billion. Steve Jobs comes in fourth with $749 million, and Capital One’s Richard Fairbank is fifth at $569 million. The WSJ also notes that “four of the top 25 CEOs worked at financial companies, two on Wall Street.” [More]
U.S. Postal Service Tests Post Office Greeting Card Sales
By 10.29.09
One of the few things that people still use the U.S. Postal Service to do is send greeting cards. Americans receive an average of 20 greeting cards per year, and they have to come from somewhere. So why not save a trip and buy those cards right at your local post office?
By 5.15.09
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If we owned a Blockbuster franchise, we’d seriously think about just renting out the space to a bunch of Redbox kiosks. Blockbuster reported a 42% drop in revenue for the first quarter of 2009, which CEO Jim Keyes blamed on people going out to watch movies at theaters instead. Regarding the Redbox threat, Keyes said they hope to have 3,000 kiosks functioning by the end of the year. Redbox, on the other hand, has about 12,000. [Reuters]
How Can We Save Our Debt-Swamped Government?
By 10.11.08
The United States is $10.2 trillion in debt. Like countless Americans, our government has spent beyond its means and needs help getting back on its feet. We recently received a panicked email from White House Budget Director Jim Nussle…
Southwest's "Credit Cards Only" Policy Increases Sales By 8%
By 10.1.08
Here’s the real reason for an airline to switch to credit-card-only sales on board its flights: people spend more. Southwest Airlines’ customer service veep, Daryl Krause, told the Dallas Morning News that “since Southwest began accept credit cards (and no longer taking cash) on Sept. 9, its drink sales are up about 8 percent.” Since in general “the goal was one more drink sale per flight,” we wonder whether that wasn’t the real reason for going cashless all along.
Spirit: Now With Mind-Numbing In-Cabin Advertising
By 9.20.08
Kick open the exit doors and release the inflatable slides, Spirit is outfitting their entire fleet with cabin-saturating ads. Billed as Spirit’s “latest innovation,” the ads will litter “seat backs, window shades, overhead bins, tray tables, drink carts, napkins, cups, menus (what menus?) boarding passes, trash bags, soap dispensers,” and probably even barf bags.
What Can You Do If PayPal Holds Your Funds For 21 Days? Gamble With It In Their Money Market Fund
By 2.28.08
EBay’s highly criticized fee changes—lower listing prices but a 67% increase in seller fees—kicked in last week, and next month eBay’s payment service PayPal will start holding certain deposits for up to 21 days if PayPal considers the transaction “high risk.” PayPal earns interest on any money it holds—and it’s perfectly legal because PayPal is a deposit broker and not a bank. If you do find your money stuck in “high risk” detention, there’s only one way you can attempt to earn money from the delay, and that’s by sticking it in PayPal’s Money Market Fund.
New Downloadable Movie Book Tests Yahoo/Adobe Ad System
By 1.7.08
Remember the announcement in November that Yahoo and Adobe were testing out a new ad system inside pdf documents? (No? It only got 1,200 hits.) Well, they are, and the big question then was how Yahoo and Adobe would determine what sorts of ads were placed in the documents, and how they’d appear. Now there’s a free (or rather, ad-supported) downloadable book—“200 documentaries you must see before you die”—that lets you test the new ad system out for yourself.
Sales Of Women's Clothing Drops, May Mean Steep Discounts Over The Next Week
By 12.18.07
Mastercard reported on Sunday that, after a slight bump around Black Friday, sales of women’s clothing has dropped again, down 6% even while sales of men’s clothing has gone up 4.5%. They think it has to do with an overall weak year for women’s fashion, and the fact that mothers tend to cut back on new clothes for themselves first when faced with a tighter budget. The silver lining: there may be considerable discounts at women’s clothing retailers in the immediate future as they try to bump up sales at the last minute.
