Nothing for Nothing

Jim Edwards, successful internet marketer and entrepreneur, released a very interesting video this week explaining why individuals who rely on free information for their e-business will most likely never get the results they desire.

He explains people dependant on free information are getting cheated out of the top level information, the type of information that can skyrocket their online success.

You can read more at his, blog

Dream Catching: Part 1

We'll start our new series with taking a trip back in time to your past.

When you were a little kid how many times did you hear the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

You may have asked yourself the same questions even when you were only six. But on the other hand how many times did you hear “just who do you think you are?” from your parents. This probably wasn’t asked in an inquisitive tone. It was most likely asked by one of your parent’s when you were doing something you shouldn’t have done. It could have come when you were playing or experimenting with a newfound interest.

Though, as people get older they start to ask themselves the same question.
How many times have you asked yourself that question, it could come out of nowhere, when you least expect it.

“What am I doing with my life.” or “where is my life going?” It could even be followed by “is this all there is to my life? There’s more to life than... well, this.” Most people want to gauge exactly where they are in life and especially want to know where their ife is headed, no matter what their age. We all just want a map with a big X on it that states “you are here.” But instead of the map stating "you are here" besides the X it should state, “who are you?”

Some people may think, “Well that’s a strange question. I know who I am. I’m me.” Think about the things that give you your self-identity. Your job, your educational background, etc…

Author of the best selling book Wishcraft, Barbara Sher, has a very interesting thing to say about your identity. "None of those things are your identity." From Wishcraft,

“This may surprise you, but if I were sitting down with you to help you choose a goal and design a life individually tailored for you, I would not ask you for any of this information. I would not want to know what you do for a living, unless you were really excited by your job. I would not want to know any of the things you put in a resume--your background, your experience, your skills. All too often we are skilled in things we never really chose, things we have had to do--like typing or scrubbing floors (those were my skills)--not things we love.”

The things in life we’re skilled in are things we have to do to get a job in the current marketplace, not things we love to do. What if you could do what you love or live the life that you love? What do you want? What do you love?

That is your identity.

We’ll have more next on how to put what you love into action to live your best life.

Getting More from Life

We'll begin a new series called Dream Catching.

This series is designed to help you get what you really want out of life. We'll post a section of the seires every other day so you can take in the information and more importantly act on it.

You can be successful regardless of what people tell you. You can do anything with your life and live your best life at any age. Don’t think so? Head over to 43things.com and see what the world’s to-do list is. People all over the world, right at this very second are pursuing their dreams and are on a quest for their success.

Being successful in life means getting what you want out of life. Not what your parent’s want or what you think you realistically can want. It is centered around what your heart wants. What do you really want?

If what you want is ethical, moral and legal you can go succeed at getting it. You know you have succeeded when you love your life and find yourself strangely happier. You love your current state of life even though it has it’s ups and down’s. When you realize that, you are living your best life.

If you already love your life and have reached success, you may still find this information valuable. It doesn’t hurt to build upon what you already know. No matter how old you are, you are always learning and shaping your life.

However, if this isn’t you and you don’t think of yourself as successful than this will is exactly the type information you need and can use to put into action immediately. But how do you get there? How can you steer your life in the direction you want it to go in? It all starts with one question, how can I…?

We’ll have more on that next .

Unclaimed Money Grows to 14 Billion Dollars

There's a good chance you have some unclaimed money coming your way. That's because the total amount of unclaimed funds in the United States has topped 14 billion dollars and is growing.

Mellody Hobson, financial expert for Good Morning America, motivated viewers to get back their money with her May 1st appearance on the show's running special, 100 a Day in May. Shortly after the show. Many Americans sent phone calls and emails to relatives spreading the word. My family checked and found many relatives have unclaimed funds coming to them. Your probably do to.

You can go to abcnews to find out.

Getting More From Life

We'll begin a new series focusing on how to achieve your dreams.

Though, before we begin our new series I am going to give another link for some essential reading, this time from www.stevepavlina.com

Steve has a great blog devoted to personal development and getting more from your life.

Just glancing over some of his articles can make you happy, healthy and wise. We'll start to sort through all of this information next.

Work at Home Wisdom

We'll kick off the finale of Make Money Work for You with some word of wisdom from Paul Graham's article on. wealth and money

There is a difference between being rich and having money. Money is something you trade and exchange. Being rich is something you create all by yourself, it only can come from within you. That may sound cheesy but it's true. You don't have to have lot's of money to be rich. Money only creates financial freedom and more time to do what you love and be with those you love.

When you have money and time to finally find the meaning of these aspect’s your on your way to living your best life and what you want out of life.

If you want financial security you can achieve it through one or more of the methods above. It's best to diversify your methods so you ensure the greatest amount of security. Though, having all the financial security in the world won't necessarily make you rich. Being rich is something separate from money. You could be rich in family and friends or rich in knowledge or health or talent.

You can read more in Marshall Brian's post on this here.

The Millionaire Mind

Here's an interesting read for those following our series Make Money Work for You

As our series on making money online draws to a close I think it would be worthwhile to briefly discuss the mind of a millionaire.

I found a post about the book the Millionaire Next Door on webkew.blogspot.com very interesting.

It seems millionaires tend to be more frugal with their money than commonly thought. This makes sense when you consider how they save and invest money in long term assets (stock‘s bond‘s CD‘s) instead of spending a lot of money on liabilities which loose money over time (frivolous expenses which you know you don‘t really need but purchase anyway).

Just because they are wealthy does not mean the spend freely. In fact, according to the book, most don’t spend money they don’t have. Here’s an example of their spending habits the author outlines,

“The typical member (millionaire) of our group has never spent more than $41,000 for an automobile or $4,500 for an engagement ring. Neither our spouses nor we have ever spent more than $38 (including tip) for a haircut."

There’s an old saying, which sums this up nicely, “I’m rich but I’m not stupid”.

Make Your Blog Grow with SEO

Continuing along with the online portion of our series Make Money Work for You. I thought I'd pass along a very resourceful website for bloggers who are blogging for dollars (or pennies)
Problogger.net is a wealth of information for bloggers who are looking to improve their blog from monitization to readership and is the leading blog in its topic area.

Darren Rowse has an extremely helpful guide to SEO optimization for search engines.
Though when people mention SEO to bloggers many would rather eat glass than go through the hassle of optimzation.

Though, it is not that hard to optimize for search engine sucess. Here are a few tips Darren gives. You can optimize your blog both onsite and offsite techniques including inserting keywords into your posts, trading links, buying links and submitting your blog to various blogging directories. You can read more about Darren's SEO tips at problogger.net

Start an E-Business Without a Website

Continuing along with the online portion of our series Make Money Work for You

The only way to make money online in the old days was with your own website, which entailed finding a reasonable hosting company and hunting for a domain name that wasn't taken. Then, there were other issues to be faced once you got over those hurtles such as web design and web promotion.

Thing's have changed thankfully. Today people are making money online without having to chase a domain down and are doing it for no money or very little money.

If you are just getting started with your e-business here are a couple of options worth looking into:

Start an ebay business

Start Your own Blog

Create Your Own Website with Google Page Creator

You can find more information about staring your e-business at entrepreneur.com


It should be noted if you are serious about earning income from online business you need to have your own website. Even though some people are earning a full time living through free websites, it is advised to grow your business into it's own website.

How To Make Money with Your Blog(s)

For those who missed it our last post featured an interview with Weblogs Jason Calacanis. There are a few options you can do to make your blog generate some kind of money. One option you have you can run an advertisement program.

The only problem with these types of programs is you have make sure you understand the terms of agreement inside and out, otherwise inadvertently breaking even one of them can result in the program being cut off from your site(s) or blog(s); no second chances in many cases. If you’re not sure about a part of the terms of agreement, email the program provider or even look it up using the search terms “your advertisement program terms of agreement.” Pleading ignorance isn’t acceptable. To learn more about advertising programs you can go here, seoconsultants.com

Another option is to set up a donation button if you have a blog on a hosted Website. You may be able to pay for some of the hosting cost. Some people don’t make much from them, but if people really enjoy your writing style or appreciate the content they may donate; any amount they wish to give. It could be 1$ or 500$.

Some bloggers have been able to supplement their income with these methods and or have decided to go from being a part-time blogger to a full time blogger. In other words, they are able to make a job out of blogging, which is their main source of income. It can be done but it is not easy.

Interview with Weblogs Founder Jason Calacanis

about.com has an interesting interview with the founder of Weblogs Jason Calacanis.

For those who do not know who Jason Calacanis is the founder of his Weblogs, Inc, a network empire of blogs written for professional readership.
You can read more about hims at Wikipedia, wikipedia.org

We'll have more on our series Make Money Work for You here

Make Money Online

For those just joining us you can find a review of the last section here.

We've all come across the online get rich scams which liter the search engines and pollute our email. Unfortunately, this spam has given a black eye to making money on through the internet. Though, don't get dismayed by all that email spam because legitimate ways to make money online still exist.

These ways are endless and there are more ways emerging. Someone could write an entire book on just how to make money online, but I’ll try to keep it as simple as possible. Who knew you could generate money from something you do all the time?

There are ways to make money with or without a website. For those thinking of having their own website, it's not as hard as some think to set up your own web site. But what if you want to take your site to go beyond one that just sits around on the Internet? You can. If you dealing in e-commerce you could go with the option of having an affiliate program.

What is an affiliate program? Affiliate programs provide links to your site to receive payments from advertising in exchange for promoting your Web site. Simply, merchants who deal in e-commerce pay an affiliate program to send them traffic and the merchant is paid part of the commission. The amount your paid is dependant on the amount of traffic your able to send over the affiliate site.

How does someone get paid? The following from howstuffworks.com explains methods of payment through affiliate programs:
howstuffworks.com
about.com,
affiliateprograms.blogspot.com


Next up, ways to make money just by sitting in-front of your computer.

The Six Month Millionaire

For those just joining us you can find a review of the last section here

As we delve deeper into our series on Making Money Work for us, I think It would be useful to relay a story of someone who was very, very successful with making money on the internet. That person is Alex Tew.

In August of last year, Alex Tew lay on his bed in his home in Wiltshire England.

He was faced with a financial problem; how was he going to pay his year of college that lay ahead of him? Then, he wondered, "How can I become a millionaire?" The logic behind that enormous jump between “paying for college” and “becoming a millionaire” is if he set his aim high he may be able to get back a quarter of his goal. He had no idea how much his efforts were about to return.

In only twenty minutes he thought of using the internet as his money raising medium. Being familiar with the internet, he constructed the “Million Dollar Homepage.” The premise behind the Million Dollar Homepage was selling pixels (those little dots which make up your computer screen) as space for advertisers for only a dollar each. The minimum purchase was $100 for a 10x10 pixel square to be used as an online advertisement.

Alex goes into detail of his process saying: "I wrote the title to spark the creativity and then wrote down the attributes the idea needed. It had to be simple to set up and understand. It had to have a name to capture the imagination and be something that could be set up quickly with no physical delivery required. I wrote down some keywords and then the idea came out 20 minutes later - selling pixels. So I snapped up the domain name that very night."

Alex paid a small fee for the domain name (milliondollarhomepage.com) and a basic web-hosting service. He sold some pixels to his friends and family earning $1,000 dollars, which he spent on a press release. When the websites offer went public the demand for space on the site was astronomical. The pixels were quickly snatched up by anyone and everyone, including worldwide corporations. He was able to earn 1 million dollars in only 4 months and the rest is Internet history. Unfortunately, the million-dollar idea is also history because it is no longer original. People saw how incredibly successful he was and wanted their million too. Many of the imitators haven’t had much success with their Million Dollar Homepage spin offs. But others wanting to cash in on an idea like that should have faith in their own creative minds, take analyzed and affordable risks, and look at "failure" as a valuable teaching tool.

We’ll begin to get into the specifics about making money on the Web here. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Make Money Work for You.

Part Two

For those just joining us you can find a review of the last section here here .

Before we continue with Part Two, I think it’s important to address some common misconceptions about what money can do for you.

The first misconception is important and some of you will be disappointed when I say money will not make you happy. There’s an old saying “money can’t buy happiness.” You can’t gain happiness through a bunch of little green pieces of paper. You are the only one who can make yourself happy. You can have all the money in the world and still feel miserable.

Secondly, having more money will not solve any problems besides financial problems. It’s be best to try to solve these problems before you seek ways to get extra income. Besides what good is it to be wealthy if you are always unhappy? So, extra money will only give you financial security, which gives you time to focus on personal growth, enjoying doing the things you love and enjoying time with loved ones. With that said, lets continue on.

As stated in yesterday’s post the key to making money work for you is to turn your earned income into flexible income. There are a number of ways to earn extra income doing this.

The first and most simple way is to start saving money. If you save 5 dollars a day you will have 12,600 dollars in ten years or 25,200 dollars in twenty years. The thing about saving money is it’s sometime difficult to stay committed to saving money. People are tempted to buy impulsively when they see something they want. If you get into the habit of putting a bit of your paycheck into a savings account, you will thank yourself later. But it takes a long time to save a lot of money. What if you want to have more money in a few years instead of waiting twenty?

You can invest in the stock market. “The stock market? But that’s too risky.” Only if you don’t know what your doing. Don’t do anything until you're ready. If you want to learn more, do so. Take as much time as you want gaining knowledge. You want to make sure you know the current conditions of the stock market before you invest. A few good books to learn about stocks and investing are One Up on Wall Street By Peter Lynch and The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham. Or you can go over to various financial websites. A good article people just starting out can be found at the Motley Fool's Guide to Investing

In the coming sections we’ll talk about starting your own e-business and making money online from multiple income streams. You read information on getting your Website started, and how your site(s) can generate money. Whether your starting your ready to start you first online business or are just learning how to navigate the Internet, the Web is a great inexpensive place to make extra money.

More on that next

Make Money Work for You: Part One

Turning the Tables on Money

As stated in the last post I recently read a book that made me aware of the financial opportunities around me.

Most people work hard for money all their life, but barley have any money left for retirement. The cost of living is increasing and American's live in a rapidly changing economy. Right now we are in a 12 trillion dollar economy- and it’s growing. Things are changing at rapid speed. Yet, there is still a great divide between the rich and poor. What is causing this division is the lack of education, not only academic education but, financial education.

Improving your financial education is the most crucial thing some people don’t realize, ignore or disregard when trying to increase their income. How do I make my money work for me? Is a question people want to ask themselves. There’s more to life than worrying about downsizing, outsourcing and complaining about your job. If you can get a tiny fraction of that 12 trillion dollars coming your way you probably won’t have to worry anymore.

Some people realize they can live their best life, but see no way of doing it. They have a good education, they have a job, which earns them five figures, but still are struggling. There’s an interesting shift that is occurring between salary and education in the 21st century America; a good education sometimes isn’t enough to be financially independent. What does it mean to be financially independent? It means making more than what you spend and only going to work by choice.

There are a lot of people who have college degrees and or even PhD’s but, aren’t making enough money to make ends meet. Some people of the younger generations are quickly catching on to that fact. They see movies stars, glamour queens, athletes and other highly paid figures who regardless of the fact of whether or not they gone to college, are earning more than enough to be financially secure. This creates a drive in some of people have that kind of financial security. There’s more to life instead of being worried about money all the time. People want to have time to enjoy their family and friends or devote some free time to developing personal growth.
There are many who are creating their very own companies on the internet. They are tech savvy and very ambitious.

This is not to say everyone should not go to college or quit their jobs immediately and become business owners. That would be about as smart as trying to fly a plane without knowledge of how a plane works. Getting a good education and gaining knowledge are one of the keys to becoming successful. Everyone needs a good education to build the foundation for the rest of their life. But the in addition to required classes, school’s should also teach finance and possibly business.

I’m also not saying being an employee of a company is a negative thing. Being an employee helps people learn how businesses work and this valuable knowledge will help people who want to start their own business. If your job is making you or your family financially secure and you have enough security for the next generation, that’s great! The main point I’m stressing is people need to build up their financial intelligence; the younger you are the better. If your job isn’t giving you security there are alternatives out there. For those people who are giving this serious thought think about it in this way: your life is your job, not your job is your life. It is your job to make sure you are happy healthy, wealthy and wise.

One thing getting stuck in the “rat race” does is it makes individuals focus on their jobs and how much money they are making or not making. But they need to start asking themselves "who am I making money for? Myself, the company or my boss?" It would seem like they are making money for themselves but, a chunk of their paycheck goes toward someone else's income.

Don't quit your day job just yet and don't think about dropping out of school unless your start-up is generating cashflow, just start building your financial intelligence. As Robert Kiyosaki writes financial intelligence is knowledge of “accounting, investing, understanding markets and the law."

The key to becoming financially secure is turning earned income into passive income. We'll have more on that tomorrow.

Make Money Work for You

As stated in out first post, we will explore how to harness the power of money and learn step by step how to make it work for you.

I recently came across something that changed the way I thought about money and income in a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. This book explains how a person can generate wealth by doing relatively simple things like saving, investing and creating multiple streams of income.

It’s a New York Times Bestseller and is a great read to get yourself in the mindset of increasing your income and working at home. Intrigued by the book and hungry for more information I searched the internet. I came across more even more valuable information all over the internet. It was so useful to me, I thought I'd share it and pass along the gift of financial knowledge to anyone seeking it. The websites I found the most useful will be added to the links section in the days to come.

Next up turning the tables on money.

Daily Insight Replaces The Stanton Report

For reader's who are familar with the blog The Stanton Report this blog is the successor to The Stanton Report,I unfortunately had to take it down due to spam and other problems. The information from that blog will gradually be transferred into this one.

First up Make Money Work for You.