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Tuesday, 23 April 2013
Saturday, 2 March 2013
Money Making Ideas from Home
Money Making Opportunities
Have you ever thought that you could actually make a living by helping people?
Maybe you are unemployed or have been made redundant from your job; perhaps you are semi-retired, or even fully retired, and finding it difficult to make ends meet with just your savings and super to live on.
And even worse - you are still physically and mentally able but feel like you have been tossed onto the scrap heap; no longer needed by anyone, or useful for anything.
For a once busy, occupied person, these feelings can quickly create a downwards spiral of depression and low self worth. In other words, not only do they make you feel useless and unworthy but, coupled with the fact that you are no longer in a financial position to enjoy many of the activities you once took for granted, it can be a real downer.
In this situation, without a job to go to, many say they feel like a useless accessory, and that is enough to knock a person’s confidence and cause great unhappiness.
In a nutshell - Not only are you jobless (lost and superfluous) but you are also short on cash (pulling the belt in until it hurts).
So what can be done to reverse this unhappy situation?
In many cases of low feelings of self-worth (unless the problem is clinical and needs medical attention) the simple solution is to become involved in some kind of productive activity. This should quickly begin to restore your previous equilibrium and provide a renewed interest in life; and with regards to the reduction in cash flow, a new life could be waiting just around the corner once the life-balance is back in place. It's a lot easier to look forward with enthusiasm and positivity when we feel useful - it's probably the best drug there is - and it's free.
Therefore:
STEP ONE: Get interested in something; join a club, find a hobby, go for long walks in the fresh air, do some charity volunteering, help a neighbor Whatever it takes to get you off the couch and lift your head from between your knees, do it.
Once you do, reason will quickly reassert itself and you can start thinking more clearly about the solutions to your problems. In fact, there is no better way to help yourself than by helping others.
STEP TWO: Finding ways to earn some extra cash. Natural talent is always a good place to start and if you don't think you have a talent, think again. EVERYONE has something that they do well (better than most) and whatever it is; it is never minor or insignificant or `not as good as that person's.'
`That person’ may be an excellent seamstress or a clever wood-worker, but even they probably feel hopeless when faced with doing things that you do well. Nobody is good at everything so embrace the fact of your own natural talent and start making it work for you.
Take a pen and paper and jot down all the things you are able to do, no matter how insignificant, uninteresting or lacking in importance that you might consider them.
Now let's get to it:
Are you a great home-maker? Do people admire the presentation of your home? Word quickly gets around - a friend is putting their home on the market and wants it presented in the best possible way. You offer to do it for them - the house sells quickly with lots of comments about the beautiful presentation – the grapevine goes to work and before you know it you are providing this service for others, strangers even, and charging a fee.
Do you have an eye for hanging wallpaper with matching patterns (a headache for most of us, even some experts)? I have heard it said how stressful it can be. But you might find it relaxing and, surprise, surprise, there are people out there who would love you to hang their wallpaper. Just stick it on the grapevine and wait for the calls.
Do you have green fingers? Everyone loves a beautiful healthy garden but we are not all landscape magicians. Tidying and planting people’s gardens and making them look gorgeous could be just the thing you are here to do.
What about your prowess in the kitchen? Do you enjoy making your own jams, sauces and chutneys; pickling and bottling fruit and veges? Weekend Farmers Markets are a great place to sell your wares and, for the usually small cost of having a stall, the sales (priced correctly) can be a very good money earner.
Today is the age of the home-made and home-baked. People love that their purchases have been made in someone’s little cottage industry in a labor of love with real ingredients and no preservatives or colorants and whatever else is pumped into the store-bought products. Today we like fresh and `au naturale' and are prepared to pay for it.
In the area where you live, certain services are constantly required by businesses and the general public. These services can include deliveries; shopping for the house-bound; cleaning up back yards; disposing of rubbish; cleaning windows; mowing lawns and trimming edges; gardening; planting and landscaping; painting fences; home handyman jobs for the elderly and not so mobile; car boot sales; garage sales; writing articles and letters for people; walking people’s dogs while they are at work and so on and on and on.
All of these and many more have the potential to earn you money. So how do you get started putting a small business together?
Let’s put it in some sort of order.
1) You first need a clear idea of where you want to go, how you are going to get there, and what results you want to achieve.
2) Develop a marketing plan. Nothing too complicated, just the basics will do for now. Your plan should include how you propose to get known, i.e. letter drops around your area; flyers to put on car windows; notice boards in the local shops and supermarkets; word of mouth - tell family and friends to tell others; drop flyers in mail boxes; have a portable sign made up and take it to place outside every job; advertise in the local newspaper; have a magnetic sign made up to go on your vehicle or, more expensively, have the vehicle sign-written. Once you sit down and start thinking about your business you will find the ideas flowing in no time i.e. one thought leads to another and so on. Get some business cards made up; if you have a publishing program on your computer you might even like to create them yourself, which will be a lot cheaper.
3) Your formula for success. This should always include providing exceptional service to your customers. Being on time for an appointment and starting a job when you say you will, are critically important to the success of any endeavor People respect and appreciate reliability and good time-keeping. Get a reputation for it and you will go a long way further than those who don’t.
4) Start out as you mean to go on. Look professional - if you are a painter, put on clean white overalls and use shoes or boots; never jandals or thongs. The image really does count and people appreciate the fact that you have come to their home to do a job looking like a professional. Tidy dress gives the customer confidence and usually reflects itself in the work produced. If you are a great cook and are setting yourself up to do private dinner parties, again you need to look the part; so wear a clean apron and cover your hair with a chef’s hat. Presentation and professionalism start with you and roll over into the work that you produce; make this your rule and your customer will probably recommend you and hire your services again.
5) Know your costs. Work out a suitable hourly rate and never make the mistake of under or over-charging. Be realistic about the rate you need to charge for your service. It’s a simple formula - too low and you will lose money, or at least devalue your time, effort, and productive output; too high and you won’t get the work.
Word quickly gets around either way; so do your sums and charge a fair and reasonable rate and everyone wins.
TIP 1: Never try to fiddle the Inland Revenue Services. If you are in business, start right and things will generally continue well so pay your taxes and have peace-of-mind that nothing is going to come back to bite you.
TIP 2: Save at least 10% for new tools or other materials required for your business and be careful where you buy. Start off with the basic tools; don’t overspend; get yourself into a safe place financially and then indulge in that expensive quality tool that you would love to have.
TIP 3: Open accounts with suppliers to get maximum discounts. If you don’t like end-of-the-month bills, open cash accounts and pay as you go – you should still get the discounts and the supplier will probably love you for it as it’s cash-flow for them.
We all need money to make our world go smoothly round and round. However, be careful not to rush into doing something because it looks easy. The whole idea is to find something you are personally suited to; something you have a knack or a talent for and that you enjoy. Don’t make the mistake so many make by trying to push your square peg into a round hole. It’s not going to work – or at least not for long. You will be miserable and will quickly grow to hate it.
Result analysis: Disinterested worker = poor quality work = unhappy customer = hard to get paid.
It is important that we enjoy what we do; life is too short – so find what you are good at and build on that. The result will always be a better one.
For more ideas, see my eBook on Amazon: How to Find a Hobby and Make Money
Monday, 18 February 2013
Living a Healthy lifestyle
It’s Not Too Late to Change
When we were young we did not worry too much what we ate or drank; we lived for the moment in many respects simply because we were young and saw life stretching endlessly before us. As far as we were concerned then, the future could look after itself.
But time ticks away more rapidly with each passing year and, before we know it, we have become older. Unfortunately, by then our body shape has changed to something resembling less of the fleet arrow of our youth and more like the medicine ball we exercised on in school fitness classes.
Statistics tell us that by middle age, say 45 onwards, thousands of our counterparts will be suffering from heart disease; tens of thousands will have some form of cancer; hundreds of thousands will have attracted diabetes; and millions will be overweight and heading towards any or all of the above.
The worst thing is that most of it was because of our own choosing.
When we continue to eat the wrong types of food and drink the wrong drinks, then eventually, with no care or attention to a proper diet, we will pay the price in some way with our health.
Shocking Fact...
Recent studies have revealed that by 2020 over half of the USA’s population will have some form of diabetes and many will have died long before they should have due to this and related problems.
But there is hope -
If we want to avoid a place in that statistic and others like it; if we really want to live long and healthy lives, we need to take action now...
First and foremost -
We must change the way we think about food and the liquids we imbibe. The manufacturers are not concerned about our wellbeing; they are in business to make a profit, not to look after our health. That’s our job.
Secondly -
We are not all athletes, or hard manual workers, or fitness freaks. Therefore the majority of us need to start understanding the facts. The sugar we put into our coffee, the cakes, the cokes, sweets, chocolates, breakfast cereals, tinned fruits, tinned anything (most tinned products contain heaps of sugar); these will all turn to fat without a lot of exercise.
Fast food, starchy potatoes, pastries, white bread, white rice, full cream milk and cream, to name just a tiny number of foods that threaten our health, will not help us to return our bodies to the fit leanness of our youth.
Nasty fact - the manufacturers add excess sugar and salt into their processed foods to capture our taste buds and make us want to come back for more.
Thirdly -
There is a ton of healthy food out there and, combined with herbs and spices and other non-threatening taste additives, our meals can be just as, and even more, tasty than before. Once the other stuff is out of a person’s system, a natural realisation occurs when they discover how much better they feel and what they have been missing out on.
If you have drifted into the habit of eating the wrong foods; processed foods, fast foods, because you are busy, in a hurry, eating on the run; then the advertising companies are going to love you. Their advertising is not developed around how good the food is for you; it’s about the taste and the convenience; it’s generated towards the company’s bottom line – how much profit they expect to make from us, the consuming public.
Fortunately the choices of good foods far outnumber the bad ones. The trouble is that it’s a twofold change and one that many of us have trouble sticking to. When we make the decision to reprogram our thinking about the food we eat; change lifetime habits to ones that will create a healthy lifestyle (and hopefully give us more years on Mother Earth); we must also make a commitment to stay away from the bad foods that to date have done us no favours and have put us in the position of needing to make these changes in the first place.
In my book, ‘How to Eat Healthy Foods and Live Longer,’ shortly to be published on Amazon as an e-book; I include a week’s recipe list for breakfast/brunch, lunch and dinner that will provide the beginnings of a healthy diet to not only lose weight and feel better, but also will help to change your thinking and show you how to develop a lifestyle that you can live to without feeling disadvantaged or feel that you are missing out.
Here is a sample of one lunch-time meal:
Recipe No.5
Stuffed Pepper (Capsicum) with Salmon
Prep time: 7 minutes plus boil eggs
Ingredients (Serves 2)
1 large Pepper (Capsicum)
1 egg
1 small tin of red salmon
10 slices of cucumber
14 olives
1 tbsp. Low fat mayonnaise
salt and pepper to taste
Method:
Boil eggs for 6 minutes then remove from pot, peel, and mash with mayonnaise.
Add salt and pepper to taste, cut pepper (capsicum) in half and remove seeds.
Fill with mashed egg then sprinkle half a tin of drained salmon on each serve.
Place sliced cucumber and olives on the plate and serve.
A high value meal with lots of protein, vitamins, and minerals; quick and easy with lots of taste. Being on a diet has never been so easy.
For those who already have diabetes, it’s comforting to know that many experts now believe that this condition is reversible in many people..
Some herbs are known to offset diabetes in conjunction with a healthy eating and exercise regime. One effective helper is Cinnamon which helps break down the fats, making the management of blood sugar levels possible. Good news for dieters.
More on herbs in my next article.
Remember always, if you have any concerns about changing your current diet; check with your GP before changing anything.
check out my site for more
Tuesday, 21 August 2012
Creating Life Style
When you hear the words Creating Life Style, I'm not surprised if you think MONEY!. Well in this case it's not.
Sure we would all like to have more money, but their are other ways of creative life style that will challenge you far greater than money alone.
To find the life style you really want and I mean really want, you need to look at yourself. ask a few questions i.e What do I enjoy doing, what am I good at, can I make a living doing it working for some one or make a business from it.
For ten tips on creating life style click here
Check out this video
When you have decided what your good at and more importantly what you enjoy doing, next is to something about it, get out of your comfort zone and go for it.
Focus on your passion, build on it, let your imagination run wild, dream the dream, study what successful people do and go for it.
There are many videos like those above on Youtube these are well worth watching you will get tip from every one of them.
Follow my blog on http://creatinglifestyle.com for much more information.
To your success!
for
Sure we would all like to have more money, but their are other ways of creative life style that will challenge you far greater than money alone.
To find the life style you really want and I mean really want, you need to look at yourself. ask a few questions i.e What do I enjoy doing, what am I good at, can I make a living doing it working for some one or make a business from it.
For ten tips on creating life style click here
When you have decided what your good at and more importantly what you enjoy doing, next is to something about it, get out of your comfort zone and go for it.
There are many videos like those above on Youtube these are well worth watching you will get tip from every one of them.
Follow my blog on http://creatinglifestyle.com for much more information.
To your success!
for
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