How to Make Money Investing If Clueless

Would you rather make money by working the rest of your life or make money investing the dollars you have accumulated? As they say, you can either work for it, or you can make your money work for you. There is only one problem with the obvious answer here: most folks are somewhat clueless, and to make money without going to work you first need to learn to invest. Let’s get started.

In order to make money investing over the long term your goal should be to make your money grow at a rate that at least outpaces inflation and taxes. Otherwise, you’re not getting ahead; you’re treading water at best. You must first understand that growth is the objective, and then you need to learn to invest money so you can put it to work. There is no secret formula to make money investing, but there is a shortcut if you really want to learn to invest, especially if you sometimes feel clueless.

Here’s why people feel clueless: they don’t know what their choices are or what to look for when investing money. These are the basics, and until you understand them your odds are poor if you want to make money investing over the long term. Plus, you will likely never feel comfortable, especially if you’ve lost money in the past. It is very difficult to learn to invest piecemeal… picking up one nugget of information at a time. The pieces of the puzzle just won’t ever seem to fit together.

So, here we start at the beginning, the ground floor. This is your shortcut if you want to learn to invest money with a firm foundation so that the pieces of the puzzle start to fit together and make sense. There are only four basic choices that any of us have, and if you want to make money investing over the long term you should get a handle on all four of them. Here they are in order of least risk (with lower profit potential) to higher risk (with greater profit potential): cash & savings, bonds, stocks, and alternative investments. That’s it.

The first choice simply pays interest and features safety. Think of checking accounts, savings accounts, CDs, T-bills and money market funds. The second choice offers higher interest income with moderate risk. Here we have Treasury bonds, municipal, corporate, investment grade, junk and a multitude of other bonds as well as bond funds. If you want to make money investing without too much risk you should include both of these safer choices in your portfolio.

Your third choice is stocks, your primary growth engine, and it obviously involves risk. You make money in stocks through price appreciation (rising stock prices) and from dividends. Here you find terms like blue-chips, high quality, low-priced, growth, growth and income, industrials, financial, high-tech and so on to describe them. You don’t really need to learn to invest in individual stocks; you can go with stock funds and let them do the stock picking for you. But if you are going to achieve growth, stocks can not be avoided.

The fourth category of choices is growth oriented and risk can be significant as well. Some professionals in the financial services business ignore it or consider these alternative investments unnecessary. The list is long, but think: real estate, natural resources, gold, silver, oil, and other commodities like aluminum and copper. I feel that if you ignore these choices, you’re missing out on the opportunity to make money investing when the likes of stocks and bonds are out of favor. The good news: you don’t need to learn to invest in real estate, gold, oil and so on. Mutual funds are available that do the heavy work for you in all of these areas.

Now you know your basic choices. The next step is to ask a few basic questions, and here are some questions you need to ask anytime you consider making a specific investment in any of the four basic areas. Ask about: liquidity, safety, income, growth potential, income taxes, and the costs involved. Ask yourself and then find the answers, or ask the person (like a financial planner) who is making a recommendation to you. Never ignore the costs involved. You are trying to make money investing. High costs only work against you.

You can’t learn to invest money by reading one article, but you can get pointed in the right direction. That’s what I have tried to do here by starting at the beginning. Once you have a handle on the basics, it’s a whole lot easier to learn the rest. Don’t give up, and stay focused on your objective: to make money investing so you don’t need to work for the rest of your life.

Information Product Creation: Never Compete on Price Because There Is Only One You

Information product creation requires extensive preparation, no matter which niche you work within and you want to make sure that your information product has a successful launch. That probably sounds scary and intimidating but here’s the thing: this is a one time effort and it will pay off in a foundation that is strong enough to get your ideal clients to invest in your high-end programs and services without the perils of a traditional funnel. This article will teach you a few of the things that you need to remember if you’d like to invest in yourself and start on the information product creation path using your unique talents and abilities. Remember that you never have to worry about anyone ripping off your ideas because if you understand how to properly position yourself around your story.

Understand Both Strengths and Weaknesses: It is good to have an impartial view of your own strengths and weaknesses when lay the foundation of selling yourself within the information product creation process. It helps you figure out where you are, what you lack and how to move forward so that you get as much growth as possible. It is more than important, it is urgent if you want to create fast success for yourself to have personal positive reinforcement and deep belief to provide yourself the support you need so that you can get over your own limitations to ensure that your information product is as valuable as it can be.

You also need to know exactly who your competition is so you can study them and use their methods to help you improve your own standings. Down recreate the wheel, but understand the wheel and position yourself going uphill from the competition. Check out which kinds of opportunities you’ve already got and try to figure out how best to use them while taking care to remember your strengths and weaknesses. This is a great way to figure out where you stand against your competition which helps you figure out how best to grow.

Launch on Time: No matter what, even if you haven’t officially announced your “launch date” you should launch the site when you’ve said you would. This will force you to stick to your goal and actually work on it. Thinking that “I’ll launch it when I think it’s ready to launch” will only hinder your efforts. You’ve got a responsibility that you need to live up to with your launch, and you can’t move back on that one. If you get close to your launch date and you are getting hung up on your self limiting beliefs in your information product creation, don’t worry this about getting it out there and not perfection. As long as it is usable you should launch it. Launching on time is the professional thing to do and it is more important than creating a “wow” effect in your site visitors. You can always update/upgrade your website when you have to, so there shouldn’t be any issue with that.

Analyze Your Own Concept: If you want to make your information product creation successful you need to understand how good your concept is: is it really going to work for your chosen audience or would something else be better? You already know about your competition; how does your concept measure up? If you haven’t come up with your own idea and are trying to work with someone else’s concept, do some more work on your own before your launch. People want original ideas because they’ve seen too many other me-too websites already.

Test Your Concept Before You Commit To The Information Product Creation Process: One of the biggest failures people have with information product creation is not testing an idea before putting a lot of effort into producing an information product. PPC to a small 5 page site with a landing page is a great way to test an offer before you even produce it. If people will sign up to get it, you can be sure that you can create an information product that will target eliminating the pain of your target market. The small amount of money will be invaluable in using crowd sourcing to direct the final outline of the information product creation process.

You’ll have lots of hurdles to clear after the launch of your information product and the only way to truly take care of them is to follow the advice in this article to work smarter. Plenty of people work hard, but it is the ones who work smarter who make real money online with the information product creation business model.

Uncovering Direct Selling As A Legit Home Based Business

Due to current conditions of the economy many are searching for alternatives to typical day jobs. They have tried a side business, working from home or even taking on another job. There are many scams out there to be aware of. There are many people out there who make their living off of scamming others. You need to know where to go to find the legit home based business opportunities.

One place to get started at is finding forums that focus on working at home. These are fountains of knowledge for the new work at home entrepreneur. Watching out for scams is one way to protect yourself when getting started. There are many opportunities out there that can cost you money and time that you do not need to waste. Discover what the red flags are to help keep yourself away from those who would just take your money with empty promises.

When you connect with others already working from home you will discover many opportunities that you can do from home. One of the most popular is direct selling. This is great for those who love to meet new people and connect with others. This is also a way you can offer products that can help others as well. You will be selling items and that is how you make your money. You will be a commissioned person not a salary so this is not for the people who need a steady income.

There are many different companies to choose from when choosing a direct selling business. From cosmetics, to jewelry, to candles the choices are endless. Finding one that you are passionate about and a company that you can get behind is a big part of your success in the company. For examples, there are ones who have won large trips or new cars because of their success in direct selling.

Having an outgoing personality is key to being successful with these companies. Talking to strangers and connecting with them is one of the biggest parts of this business. One way you can build your customer base is by advertising your services. Share with your church groups, family and friends and even on online communities. Many of the popular web forums have places to advertise your business. You can also share what you do with schools or businesses to let them know what you can offer to them.

The companies you choose generally have training to get you started once you sign up. There may also be sign up fees that will differ depending on the company you sign up with. Doing the training will help you to get on the right path to success. Networking with others who are in your company or who are in direct selling in general will help you to learn fresh ideas.

There are several legit home based business opportunities to be had out there. Deciding which one is right for you may be the most difficult thing you have to do. Follow your training in your direct selling company and you will be a success with it. There is no ceiling in the potential for income with these companies.