ShareBuilder bonus of $50 for opening a new account and making a trade by the end of next month.  You can setup your ShareBuilder account to make periodic automatic investments for only $4 per trade so the $50 should cover you for a while. (Updated February 2012)

ShareBuilder is offering this bonus for new customers, this promotion is double the previous $25 ShareBuilder offer from last month so it’s a pretty good deal.  Your $50 bonus will be deposited after you make your first trade. 

Investing with ShareBuilder

ShareBuilder is setup to allow you to make regular, small investments into the market without spending a fortune on trading fees.  Since there are no account minimums it’s easy to get started investing right away, even if it’s only a little bit of money.

One nice thing about the service is that although it’s setup to invest a fixed amount regularly, if you find yourself needing the money that month you can cancel that one investment.  Obviously, if you cancel it every month then you’re defeating the purpose of automatic investing but if you have a tight month here and there it’s easy to hold that money back to help pay bills.

The cool thing about ShareBuilder is that on the months when you do invest money, you’re not required to have enough to buy a whole share of stock.  For example, let’s say you put $50 into your ShareBuilder account each month.  If you’re setup to invest in some of the best dividend stocks, like IBM or Chevron, the stock price may be over $100.  Even though you only put in $50, ShareBuilder will allow you to buy partial shares of the stock. 

The nice thing about this approach is that you’re not waiting around to buy shares until you have enough money.  If you’re a fan of dollar cost averaging, you know the principle is that you invest regularly into a stock, mutual fund, or ETF rather than trying to time the market and buy on stock swings.  Since you can regularly put the same amount of money into your account, you’re taking advantage of that concept

ShareBuilder Fees

As I mentioned above, automatic investing is really the sweet spot of ShareBuilder and it helps to keep your fees low, just $4 a trade.  If you want to use the service to occassionally buy and sell stocks outside of your regular investments you can but you’ll pay more for the trade.

If you find yourself regularly buying stocks in addition to your automatic investments if wouldn’t hurt to check out their Advantage plan.  The monthly fee is higher but each additional trade you add over your 12 scheduled investments is only $1 a trade.  It also gives you a cheaper rate for any real-time buying or selling of stocks.

Another nice thing about the Advantage plan is that they offer a two month ShareBuilder free trial when you signup.  So you can use the service and see how you like it before committing to a monthly fee.  Based on other deals from online brokers and services, a two month trial is pretty good.  Most times you’ll get a week, maybe two to try it out for free.  Having two months free gives you enough time to get a feel for ShareBuilder Advantage and see how you like it.

ShareBuilder Bonus

If don’t know if you can get a bonus when you signup for the free trial, you’ll have to check during the signup process.  When you signup for ShareBuilder, if you can, include your promo code so that you’ll be eligbile for the new customer bonus.  If you see the coupon code option as shown below, make sure you enter your promotion code:

Click here and enter promotion code 25WO10 to qualify for your ShareBuilder bonus.