Have you considered a service type of business or career?

Thinking about what type of business to start can be tricky especially in a down economy. Businesses that provide a service rather than a product have the advantages of not having to buy stock or need to ship or store it. Overhead start up costs are much lower too.

Here is an idea for a service business: one that caters to Infant Specialized Care . The link I have provided takes you to a website that has information on how you can become a Au Pair, which is a fancy way of saying a nanny. With today's economy on a down slide many wives are now finding themselves back at work to help support the family. Those families now need child and infant care. That opens up a wide door of opportunity for a large service industry.

Are you ready for $4.00 a gallon gasoline?

The news reports on the TV have been predicting $4.00 for a gallon of gasoline by early spring. Early spring is only a matter of few weeks away. I know I am trying to squeeze every trip I make in my car into a do my shopping on the way home from work and other errands on the same trip. I am lucky in that I have a small commuter car that I can fill up for $25.00 a week. When the price goes to $4+ it will be much harder to afford the 40 mile round trip commute but I still have to commute. How will you be handling the price of gasoline? I want to hear about it.

4% increase in the price of food

Have you wondered why you can't seem to make your dollar stretch? Because the stretch is almost gone! The price of food has gone up 4% in the last 12 months, that is the largest increase in 17 years. Milk alone went up 13%, eggs 12%. Isn't it a wonder how we manage to eat? Yet as a nation, the USA has the largest population of obese people in the world. Some how those 2 facts are not making sense. Are the poorer people of the nation getting thinner or are the fatter people spending all their extra money on food instead of paying off credit cards. I would love to see a study on the mentality of obese people that claim to have no money. I have a few relatives that would fall into that category, overweight and not enough money to pay bills, yet they shop at Costco every week to "stock up". I am just trying to make sense of some of the facts and figures that government studies are always throwing at us. I would love to hear what your thoughts are.

Saving money on your heating bill

Heating your home is one of the most expensive winter bills you will have. Many people have installed wood burning fireplaces as an alternate to the more expensive electric heating sources. Gas heating has always been a cheaper alternative to electric heaters and can be a more cost effective choice for those who are unable to install a wood stove or fireplace. I have found an informative site for those readers wanting more information about gas heating. The site is a little tricky to navigate so I suggest you use the links located at the bottom of their pages to work your way through the site. Along with finding a more cost effective way to heat your home in the winter I always suggest you check your insulation and weather stripping to save energy and money. Another way to save on your winter energy costs is to lower your thermostat to 64 degrees or lower. Don't lower it below 55 degrees as the higher temperature will be needed to keep your water pipes located in your walls, from freezing in your walls should you get a cold snap in the weather.

Blog posts and comments

It is no secret that I occasionally do paid blog posts. I am often asked if I let people make comments on those posts. My answer is a big YES! The advertisers want comments. That is the only way they know that their products or services are being talked about. Even bad press gets people talking and often clicking on a website to check it out for themselves. Gossip is what the bloggers want to generate for those smaller companies that have chosen to use bloggers to spead the word for them.

Saving money on your food bill to pay your credit card bills

It's that time of year again, the credit card bills from Christmas are coming due or in some cases over due. Here is an article on how to save on your food bill to help pay off those other bills.

eBay is raising it's fees - yet again

I use to sell items on eBay. I even had an eBay store last year. I closed it in early September 2007 after only having it for 5 months. The fees that eBay charged for listing each item and then charging another fee once the item sold was eating up all my profits. After doing the math I shut the eBay store down and sold off the rest of my items in my online (not on eBay) store.

Well I am glad I made that move. This morning I get an email from eBay letting me know they have "lowered" their fees. I checked it out and yes they did lower their listing fees but they hiked up their final sales fees from around 5% to 8.25%. Most of my items sell for $25 and under so a $25.00 item would now have fees of around $2.50 versus the $1.50 before the new fees took affect. But that is only a $1.00 more but the more expensive items would have a larger final sales fee. I really do believe that eBay fever is winding down now. There must be another company waiting in the wings to take over when people really stop shopping on eBay.

Saving money in California

California has got to be one of the most expensive places to live in the USA. Finding affordable housing is the first priority. Second is affordable health insurance if you don't have insurance through your place of employment. Third is car insurance. In order to be able to drive a car in California you are required by law to either have car insurance or have a large sum (I think it is about $5K) deposited with the DMV to cover car accidents to other motorists that you have caused. I find it much more affordable to shop around for car insurance.

Saving money and the middle class

I am frankly fed up with the accusations that the middle class is better off financially today than 20 years ago. Where are these so called experts finding out their info? I bet none of them actually are middle class, they are either upper class (read "rich") or upper middle class (read "well off"). The wages over the past 20 years have NOT kept up with inflation. I for one have a wage almost 1/2 of what I earned 10 years ago due to companies shutting down and moving their operations off shore.

It is those facts that are making blogs and websites like this one on "how to save money" and "how to start your own business" very successful. People don't have the income to pay for the nessessities of life much less the extras like eating out or having a cell phone. Ok, off of my soap box now. What are your thoughts?

Security in your network

Having more than one computer for your business means having a network. Some people know about home networking 2 or more of their home computers but what about remote access? Do you have that type of knowledge? If your business grows beyond just the home computer you will have to think more about networks and above all - a secure network. Find out how to manage the security of your information before you add more computers to your network. Not only will you be protecting your information but the information of your customers.

Which is better - a blog or a website?

If you are just starting out to sell online and need a web presence, which is better, a blog or a website. Most people will tell you to start a website. I am going to tell you to start a blog. Yes you can sell from a blog. Here are the advantages to having a blog rather than a website to start your online store.

• Blogs are easier to mantain
• Blogs are indexed faster than websites by the search engines
• Your blog will be found faster by your potential customer than your website will.

Now I am not saying you should NOT have a website. You should have BOTH. Just start your blog first. When you start getting lots of visitors to your blog you can direct them to your website. Your blog can be your site for updates on your products, sales you will be attending, instructions for care of your product and pre-release info on new items that will be coming out soon. Keep the blog personal enough to keep your customers coming back for frequent up-dates.

How to capture and get your customers to come back

Online selling is an art. Grabbing and keeping your customer's attention for more than 5 seconds is the key that will make your business a success. People that surf the internet in search of an item to buy are in 2 catagories. One is the bargain shopper, looking for a great deal on a well known item. The other one is the shopper looking for the hard to find item or a part to an out of stock or production product. Deciding on who you will cater to will determine how you set up your website.

A very good in depth article on this subject can be found at this shopping cart software website. It goes into great detail on how to offer incentives to your buyers. It also covers when and if you should offer free items and promotions to entice customers to return. Keep in mind that as a website many of your satisfied customers will tell other people about your website. Word of mouth or should I say email will make your business grow.

The economy and busineses

Interesting news about the vacation industry

Try a different kind of business

I you are looking for a more of an unusual type of business to start, I have found a few good articles on different types of start up business.

• Start your own balloon business
• Start your own ghostwriting business
• How to start a publishing company
  

I have been a busy lady

I have not had much time to write on this blog as of the past few days. Why? Because I am making money on my other blogs and lots of it. So far I have earned almost $300.00 with Smorty in less than 3 weeks. My secret is that I have 6 blogs listed with them and that 3 of them are PR5 blogs. For the PR5 blogs they pay very well for the paid blog posts. My highest paid blog posts are $24.00 for 150-300 words, not bad for only 15 minutes of typing. I also keep my posts to the theme of the blogs that they are appearing in.

I was so thrilled today when they put over $200 into my PayPal account. I really like the fact that they pay you by the week. Smorty and I will have a very profitable relationship for many years to come. If you want to get paid for blog advertising just check out the Smorty badge on this blog and join up, you'll be glad you did.

Google frowns on linking to friends sites

Did you know that according to the guidelines that Google has set for Page Ranking it frowns on link exchanges? Here is a direct quote from their webmaster guidelines: "However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking" "This is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site's ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include, link exhanges"."Do not particapate in "Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")"

Does that mean if I exchange links with my friend's blog and we both interlink with our other friends - we will be banned from Google's search engines? Come on guys (at Google) I thought we (as webmasters) were supposed to link with other sites in order to be indexed by your search engines in the first place.

How Page Rank affects your Google Adsense earnings

This is something that I didn't know. Your Google Page Rank has a direct affect on what Adsense ads are displayed on your site or blog. The higher the Page Rank the more money you get paid per click. This information was found on the Google Adsense help page so it is not a deep dark secret. Apparently Google puts the higher paying ads on the higher ranking pages. If you are writing about medical or a health issue and you have a page rank of 3 then when someone clicks on a Google ad in your that is about health then you might get paid .25 cents. Now if you site was a page rank of 5 then you might get paid .60 for someone clicking on that same ad. Page Rank does make a difference.

The housing and mortgage mess

As I have stated in my earlier posts this is a great time to be a home buyer if you have the cash or a great credit rating. This is also a catch-22 situation, why? That is a simple one to answer. Most people that are in a position to buy a home already have one and need to sell it to buy the one they want next. Problem with that is not only the price is dropping on the house they want to buy but the house they want to sell. We sold our last home 4 years ago just when the prices were about at their peak. We did not buy the home we are now in, in the same state we sold our other home. We moved to a cheaper area to live, thus out of state. If the home you wish to buy is located in an area where home prices in general are much cheaper and you happen to live in a higher priced area then you can luck out on the transaction. For example, California is still higher priced than Wyoming so if you were to sell your home in California and move out of state you can find many cheaper areas with nice homes that you can put a much larger down payment or in some cases buy the home outright with cash. With that in mind finding work in those areas mught be harder but if you have a very small or no mortgage then you could live on a minimum wage job for awhile until the economy picked up again.