Why not turn that interest into an income source?

I know, lots of people say “no” to turning their hobby into their work because they think it will somehow ruin the hobby. But I’m not talking about becoming a professional photographer or turning out so many hand-knit baby sweaters that you can make a living from them.

I’m talking about starting a blog. Just talking about your hobby and sharing your knowledge. Then, adding either adsense ads or affiliate products – or both.

You probably won’t make a fortune – at least not for quite a while – but you’ll have fun. And you’ll be meeting other people who share your interests.

Sites like Share a Sale let you sign up at no charge. Then you can pick and choose from thousands of products. It’s easy to find things that are unique to your hobby or that compliment it.

I do that on my Doggie Blog, with products like ArthroIonx, which I believe saved my dog’s life. He was too crippled to even get into his favorite chair before I found that product. Now he runs and plays like a youngster. I’m glad to offer it for sale, because I believe in it and tell everyone I know about it if they happen to mention an arthritic dog.

What if you only make a few cents a month at first? If you’re having fun and writing interesting content, your readership will grow, and later on you’ll make more.

And… if you’re sharing your favorite products and selling them to others who will benefit from buying – all the better.

There are basically five ways that you can become wealthy starting with nothing in America based on over 25 years of research into American millionaires.

The Five Roads to Financial Success in America and How to Choose Your Own
There are basically five ways that you can become wealthy starting with nothing in America based on over 25 years of research into American millionaires. Number one, you can inherit it. Less than 10 percent of wealthy Americans inherited any of their money, and it’s less and less every single year.

The Second Way
The second way that you can become wealthy is you can achieve it professionally. You can become a doctor or a lawyer or an architect or an accountant. You can become extremely good at what you do, be paid very well, and hold on to the money.

The Third Way
The third way you can achieve it is you can become a senior executive of a large corporation. You can be highly paid; you can have stock options and bonuses. And if you stay with the company long enough, for enough years, you can be paid enough to become wealthy.

The Fourth Way
You can win it. But only a tiny fraction of one percent of wealthy Americans got that way by winning their money some way or another. As a matter of fact, the odds against you winning the lottery are the equivalent of lightning striking twice in the same place. They’re millions and millions to one.

The Best Way
The fifth way that you can become wealthy is you can start your own business and earn it all by yourself. Starting your own business has been and will always be the high road to becoming wealthy for most self-made millionaires. Entrepreneurship in America offers more opportunities and opens more doors than all other possibilities put together. This is why it has been said that if you have the ability to start your own business and you don’t do it, you are a fool. I’ll repeat that. If you have the ability to start your own business and you don’t do it, you’re a fool.

Where do you start?
You start by getting your finances under control. The very first thing you do is you make a decision to get your finances under control. Some years ago, a man named George Classon wrote a book called The Richest Man in Babylon. It’s a classic on financial success and what Classon said in that book was that the key to becoming wealthy is to pay yourself first. Take ten percent off your earnings, off your gross income every month and put it aside. Learn to live on ninety percent or less of your gross income. So the very first thing that you do is you begin to save your money.

Action Exercises
Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put yourself onto the high road to personal wealth:

First, resolve today to begin saving your money a little bit at a time. Set a goal to save 10% of your earnings, to put it away and to never touch it. This will change your life.

Second, immediately register your own business or sole proprietorship. Open a bank account, get business cards and letterhead and create the corporate entity under which you can do business. Your business opportunities will appear far sooner than you think. If you build it, they will come.

…………………………..

Brian Tracy is offering his book, “Getting Rich Your Own Way” along with 2 bonuses–worth over $150, for only $33! This offer is special though–once you purchase, you are put into a drawing to win 1 of 5 cash prizes for BrianTracy.com.

Brian, himself, will be announcing the winners–and it could be YOU.

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BUT, that’s not all! Once you purchase, your name goes into a drawing for the chance to win the grand prize of $500 toward BrianTracy.com and a personalized video from Brian!

Enter to Win a $500 Gift Certificate for BrianTracy.com!

So, even though the pay they offered was way low, my curiosity got the better of me and I followed the link from an email asking “Can we pay you to write something for us?”

When I saw the long landing page explaining how even a non-writer can make a bundle writing articles, posting blogs, and writing short stories, I knew there was a great big catch somewhere. I scanned the page, but didn’t find it so clicked the “register” button to learn more.

A-ha! There it was. For only $2.95 I could sign up for 30 days and have dozens of wonderful jobs coming my way. And then… I could pay a mere $75 per month to continue. I’m not going to sign up to find out, but my bet is that when these writers haven’t earned anything by the end of the first 30 days there will be some kind of letter telling them their account had to be seasoned first, or so far no jobs matched their interests and they should hold on. There’ll be some kind of hook to keep them, I’m sure.

Or, worse, their credit cards will be charged and they’ll play hell getting the charges reversed.

I know, there are probably legitimate job matching services somewhere, but the idea of paying to get a job bothers me.

Years ago I did pay a nominal fee to belong to Guru.com – but there was a difference. First, they had a strong reputation, so I wasn’t taking a chance on a fly-by-night.  Second, I could see ahead of time the variety of jobs that were posted there. It wasn’t a shot in the dark – a hope that something they had to offer might fit my expertise. And of course, Guru’s annual fee was less than this company’s monthly fee.

I don’t know why the idea of paying for a job bothers me so much – when we have all these political candidates paying many times more in campaign expenses than the annual salaries they hope to get.

But, the corruption in politics is not my subject. Helping my readers earn more and keep away from scams is.

If you’re a writer just starting out, do check out Guru.com. There’s a free option that will let you test the waters.  Then check Craig’s list for writing jobs and gigs – and even your local classifieds. Elance is another freelance site – I’ve never been there, but hear about it a lot.

One caution, however: Please don’t take any of those jobs that offer $5 (or less) to write a 500 word article. Set your standards high enough to earn (way) more than minimum wage. If you don’t, your own opinion of yourself, your writing abilities, and your worth will sink so low that you’ll never earn a decent living.

Keep learning all you can about self-marketing, by reading this blog, my marketing ezines, and others like them. Join writing forums and take advantage of other writer’s comments and advice.

You can sign up for my marketing ezine by visiting my copywriting site and entering your name in the little sign-up box. You can find more by doing a search for copywriting blogs and ezines.

Then, instead of spending your money trying to buy a job, spend it on some good books. One of my favorites is Start & Run a Copywriting Business by Steve Slaunwhite.

Yours for prosperity,

Marte

Not all mortgage companies take care of their REO properties, but many do, and some of those homes need repairs as well as regular maintenance. When I was the local broker for Fannie Mae one of the primary tasks I performed was to find the vendors, submit the bids, award the jobs, and make sure that work was done.

Almost all of my Fannie listings got a thorough scrubbing and new paint inside. Most had carpets shampooed, and some had to have new flooring. When winter approached, the pipes had to be drained and we had to arrange to keep enough heat in the house to keep things from becoming damp and mouldy. Some required new lighting fixtures, new plumbing fixtures, and a variety of other repairs.

People losing their homes can sometimes behave in uncharacteristic ways. I’ll never forget walking into one repo and finding the kitchen sink missing – along with the furnace, the water pressure tank, the bathroom vanity, and even all the light switch covers and ceiling fixtures. They’d also thrown rocks down the well. That one kept me busy with repairs for quite a while. (That’s the drawback to being the listing broker.)

Outside there was always more work – lawns had to be kept watered and mowed in summer and walks shoveled in winter. One of the items on their sheet that didn’t apply here, but might apply in your city, was pool maintenance.

So you see, if you provide any of those services, you should be marketing to the brokers in your town who handle repossessions. Call a few agencies and ask around – you should be able to find out who to contact.

Remember, you don’t have to be a professional to bid on some of these jobs. Cleaning and lawn mowing, for instance. You only need to behave in a professional manner.

Be prepared to give a written bid and to stand behind it. Also be prepared to wait 30 days for payment. And be sure that when you meet with the broker to ask to be put on the list, you look and act like a professional.

About the bids – Fannie Mae and some of the others have policies that call for 1, 2, or 3 bids depending upon the cost of the project. So for cleaning you might not have competition, but if you’re painting the interior there could be 2 others bidding against you.

Don’t feel bad about profiting from someone else’s troubles – someone is going to do those jobs, and if you want extra income it might as well be you.

So far, in spite of the big hype that’s been showing up in my in-box, my research tells me that these are scam techniques. I think the concept of “truth in advertising” has entirely escaped these folks.

But I’m willing to be open-minded about it if someone can tell me about sites that actually DO pay people to take surveys – without asking them to spend a bunch of money first.

I started out doing research to help a client who is writing a book on debt relief – and to offer information to subscribers to my “More Money” ezine. And now, a couple of weeks later, my in-box is flooded with dozens of ways that I could spend money. What I’m spending instead is way too much time hitting “delete” and “unsubscribe” links!

Ever see those promos – “Get a $500 gift card from (fill in the blank)” Then you only have to subscribe to a bunch of offers from various companies to get it. I have no idea how many in total, because I didn’t do it, but now I understand that cartoon/ad I saw about the princess kissing the frog.

I did see some offers asking you to pay $6.95 and then after you fill out the survey, they’ll give you back $26.95. Has anybody done those? Are they for real?

Everybody likes more money, and surveys can be fun to do. I do 2 or 3 that don’t offer to pay me, just because it’s fun. So, if you know of any sites that are really for real, please share the information with your fellow blog readers!

Thanks,
Marte

P.S. My $7 reports are now available. I’ll tell you more later, but for now, if you’d like to see what kind of good information you can get for $7, just go to www.mynewcareersite.com.