​I read an article recently about how popular the 'gig economy' is becoming in Colorado, but realized it didn't mention 3 big problems with the notion 'gig economy.'  Many gig workers are not focused on created long-term wealth, and the 'gig economy may take great advantage of those workers.

It's been over a year now that Handshakin turned from an online marketing services company to a web property investment company.  ... What the heck does that mean?

It means we build our own websites on our own domain names.  Instead of building websites for clients.  Here's a concrete lead generation website.  We built a referral website "Fort Collins Concrete Contractors" and after waiting and blogging for 6 months, it started to rank on the first page of google!  We have signed agreements to get paid a 15-25% commission of the concrete jobs we refer to concrete contractors that are closed.

I have a sales manager in Philippines who answers the calls it receives and we help pair the customers with concrete contractors who have signed commission agreements with us.  Before we had been charging on concrete contractor a set rate each month, but this month we've already made more than that amount by charging AFTER the concrete contractor closes a job.  It's easier to sell a $0 up front commission agreement and makes more money.  Our last payment was $799.50 after refering a job over $5,000 to a local concrete contractor.  That came from one phone call, our best month this year did 222 phone calls.  

We actually build all of our websites on Weebly, so your tech skills don't need to be advanced at all.  The due diligence of a smaller US city, paired with a profitable niche (we picked Fort Collins since it's not as big as Denver, and concrete jobs are more expensive than çarpet cleaning jobs, for example). 

One of our newest websites is Concrete New Mexico, and you can see it is a fully built website with original content, and most importantly a blog and social media accounts!

If you'd like to learn more or try building your own web property, get started with the tools I use here. 

Hello from Dubai - I just arrived here after 3 months in Philippines (spent 5 months in Philippines in 2018 total), and here are my top choices for you to check out if you are looking for good food, a good time, and good networking.  I wrote this on the flight with Cebu Pacific, which is a great budget Philippines airlines, too, if you haven't booked your flight yet ;)
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What city is the entrepreneurship capital of the United States? Where does one find the densest enclave of concentrated, up-and-coming startup culture? Silicon Valley? Palo Alto?
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Nope. It's Boulder, which boasts twice as many startups per capita versus any other American city; this pole position has been a long time in the making: "Since 1960, it has quietly nurtured nascent industries, including natural foods, computer storage, biotech, and now Internet companies." While Boulder is famed for its emphasis on work/life balance, make no mistake; its citizens take the 'work' part of that equation seriously.