How to Transform Your Hobby Into a Full Time Income

Transforming Your Hobby into Money Generating Business

Turning your hobby into an online business can be exciting, at the same time rewarding. But before you give up your day job, be sure you are realistic about your dream to become your own boss.

A lot of people dream of becoming their own boss. The question now is what kind of boss are you to yourself? When you’re self-employed and running an online business, you no longer have the luxury of leaving work when the clock hits 5pm. You no longer count the working hours and working days. When you are your own boss, there is a great chance that you’ll work more than eight hours a day, seven days a week, for the whole year. That’s because your online business is open even if you are sleeping, taking a vacation, or enjoying the holiday. You are your own employee as well as your own boss. You might be enjoying the luxury of not having someone breathing down your neck, but if you don’t work hard, your business will shut down. What kind of boss you want to be? The fate of your business will depend on your answer.

Hobby into Business – A Reality Check

A hobby is something you enjoy doing, but when you want people to start paying for it, you are subjected to a set of new and higher standards. Your previous experience may be different from what you are about to do and may not necessarily give you a head start. Your age may also become a disadvantage. However, given your work ethic, determination, desire to learn something new, and love for what you do, you will be able to pull it off.

Starting an online business can be difficult. But what’s good about doing something you love or doing something you enjoy is that you might not even notice you are going through difficult times. Your passion for what you do will help you get through the toughest times in doing business.

Do you really want to make your hobby a living?

If people praise you about the cakes you bake or the blog you write and say that you should make it as a living, it feels great. But there is more in business than getting praises. If you need to write 5 blogs or bake 10 cakes a day to break even, can you really do that? When you realize that you need to hire people, you divide your time in blogging or baking and managing people and keeping quality and standards. Then there is marketing where you have to sell or look for customers. There is competition where you have to stay on top of everyone who does similar on business as you.

Are you ready for the emotional rollercoaster?

Any business has its highs and lows. The more passionate you are about what you do, the more personal these highs and lows get. If you work your blood, sweat and tears and get praises, you feel you are on the top of the world; but just one criticism can throw you at your lowest point. If you want to stay at the safe place, working for someone is good, but if you are a thrill-seeker and love to take risks, then this is for you.…

How to Rebuild Your Credit After Bankruptcy

After bankruptcy, you will notice that there are literally hundreds of offers from various companies wanting to help you fix your credit. You may feel somewhat ashamed or humiliated. The road to re-establishing credit is not easy but with hard work and determination, you will be on your way to good credit.

When a person files for bankruptcy, the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy notifies the credit bureau. This information stays on your credit report for 6 years after the discharge date and for a second time bankrupt, the information stays for 14 years after the discharge date. Once you’re discharged you can start to take these following steps to start rebuilding your credit:

Open a bank account – Open a new savings account with a bank that was not included in the bankruptcy. Regardless of your credit, you cannot be refused an account based on your credit history. Make an appointment with the banker and advise them that you’re trying to rebuild your credit and they will give you some solid advice.

Be a great saver – Take any extra money you may receive through a raise for instance and put it aside. Try and save at least 5% of your paycheque.

Obtain a secured credit card – A secured credit card is the same as a credit card except it’s backed up by money you already have in a savings account. The bank will hold this money as security and your credit limit will be the amount of the money you have in your savings account. Each payment you make each month will be reported to the credit bureau and will help improve your credit, however, only use what you can afford to repay in full each month. Never have a balance on any credit card that exceeds 50% of your credit limit.

Take out a small loan – Obtain a personal loan so that you have new credit reporting. Ensure that all your payments are made on time every month as any late payment will further damage your credit score. There are companies like Prudent Financial Services that specialize in repairing credit with open, affordable, same day loans to discharged and undischarged bankrupts with low interest fees.

Repairing your credit is Prudent Financials most serious commitment to save your money, your credit rating and your financial health. For more information, please visit …

Mortgage Loans Have to Be Selected Thoroughly

Mortgages can be gotten in various shapes and forms and it is imperative that you completely understand the concepts of exactly how they operate before you get into one. What we wish to accomplish here is to present you with the best basis of knowledge in layman’s terms.

As you’re looking at this, you undoubtedly have similar aspirations as the majority of people and would like to buy your own property.

Almost all individuals, nevertheless, usually do not have enough money in their banking account to write a cheque for the house outright. Of course there are always a lucky few.

As a result there are quite a few banks, specialist mortgage lenders and also other finance institutions who are prepared to lend the funds for your needs. So a mortgage is actually just a loan supplied to a property purchaser and, if it were not available, most of us wouldn’t have our home.

However they are distinct from the normal loan you will have obtained for the car or holiday.

It will have various fees and costs that should be considered.

One should appreciate the way all of the points has an effect on you. On the really fundamental level a mortgage comprises 2 components, the capital and the interest.

The capital is the real amount you get to get your house while the interest is the cost the loan company makes to your account to borrow the money.

This is the method in which their organization makes their revenue. When you look in the financial media or even just right here by going online you’ll notice home loans offered with a lot of fancy names such as fixed interest and variable interest but, now, a vital thing to keep in mind is that there actually are only two forms of home finance loan.

These are a repayment mortgage and an interest only mortgage. The most basic form functions like a normal loan in that you’re reducing some capital every month as well as the interest.

Like this the lending company calculates the total amount that you need to pay them monthly to get all of your house loan cleared in a assigned length of time, maybe 25 years.

The interest only mortgage loan is just what it says, you are merely having to pay the interest each and every month to the mortgage company and need to find a method of settling the capital once you wish to do this. Well, that was the raw basics of home loans. You’ll be able to find lots extra details in the some other articles.…

Rich Dad’s Myths About Money

8 Financial Myths on Money According to Robert Kiyosaki.

I just finished watching Shooting The Sacred Cows of Money,” a pointed yet powerful, keep you on the edge of your seat,video series by Robert Kiyosaki, author of the Rich Dad series of Books. After watching these enlightening videos I HAD to be sure you can see it too! You can use the information that’s on these videos right NOW to double your recruiting efforts to your business. It is amazing, and it does not cost you anything at all. I can’t believe Mr. Kiyosaki put these videos up for 0 cost.

As an avid Rich Dad series reader I was quite impressed by the intense financial education shared in the 8 video series that is geared to anyone who is at a point of their life or just starting out and need some direction as to how to plan their financial future. Mr Kiyosaki along with special guests dispels some of our traditional myths about money that has left millions of people stuck or struggling financially.

Here are the 8 Sacred Cows that’s Discussed in the series about Money:

1. Go to School

2. Get A Job

3. Work Hard

4. Save Money

5. Your House Is An Asset

6. Get Out of Debt

7. Live Below Your Means

8. Invest For The long term

Here in the USA where we have access to so many resources, talent, a stable economy and opportunities I wonder why is this program not taught in our schools. We’ve already learnt that the old set of rules about going to school to get an education teaches us to be employees instead of entrepreneurs.

What’s self evident is that the rules of money we’ve been taught in schools has changed in the past few years. According to Robert Kiyosaki, “without financial education,you have to go out and get a job..whats tragic today is that people are losing jobs and are going back to school to get a job to compete against their kids”

This is a sad situation considering that back in June 2010 tens of thousands of Americans exhausted their unemployment insurance. Unemployment extension has been passed, but congress is unwilling to continue the benefits beyond the 99 weeks the government currently allows many U.S. citizens access to in a tough economic climate.

As we know, never before has the job market been flooded with a huge influx of older workers, Currently the unemployment rate for people 55 and over is at the highest since 1948. Today we are seeing that age discrimination is severely compounding the job crisis for older workers. According to the US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics in a report earlier this year, older persons who do become unemployed spend more time searching for work.

The report also states that In February this year, workers aged 55 years and older had an average duration of joblessness of 35.5 weeks, compared with 23.3 weeks for those aged 16 to 24 years and 30.3 weeks for those aged 25 to 54 years. For example, nearly half (49.1 percent) of older jobseekers had been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer in February 2010, compared with 28.5 percent of workers aged 16 to 24 years and 41.3 percent of workers aged 25 to 54 years.

Will these statistics ever improve if there is an upturn in the economy? I believe they will improve for the other groups but for the older workers, not very much. This I believe will always be a way of life, but not what we will want to look forward to, unless we take our future in our own hands..

As a child growing up in school in beautiful Montego Bay Jamaica our education system taught us the same regarding go to school and then get a job. I noticed something from an early age that stayed with me when I migrated here to the USA. In a struggling economy with an uneven balance of trade and close to 30 percent unemployment most people had to figure out ways to support themselves and by default many started small businesses and became entrepreneurs.

I always felt a disconnect from what I learnt in school and what I was actually doing while working in the corporate world. Finally in 2004 after 14 years in the corporate world, working for three companies that went bankrupt and getting fired from two I felt burnt out working a job. I then realized that I had to put my future in good hands, my own. Never was I going to attain the freedom I so desired to be able to not miss my children growing up and have time for my family working a job. It was then I …

Real World Lessons On Inventory Financing From Purchase Order To Cash

It’s possible. It’s certainly not easy though, but inventory financing and purchase order finance are two little known and under utilized Canadian business financing strategies for business owners and financial managers.

In certain industries, probably yours if you are reading this!, inventory is one of your key assets. The turnover and financing of that inventory play a key role in your sales and profit growth. You ability to purchase and turn inventory are key to the earnings you generate. That’s why when clients ask for information on their ability to finance purchase orders and inventory it becomes critical that they understand their options and the cost of those options.

It’s worth stepping back a bit and focusing on the fact that your ability to manage your inventory will play a key role in the ability to finance it. Simply speaking your ability to demonstrate turnover of product, controls in purchasing, and as important, and your firm’s ability to demonstrate reporting around this key current assets on your balance sheet.

The purchase order/contract and sales generation is of course the ultimate balance act for any firm – no inventory, or improper levels wont allow you to fulfill sales, too much inventory can drain cash flow.

Financing inventory in Canada really boils down to two essential solutions, your bank, or independent finance firms who are willing to take greater risks and offer you additional leverage on financing your products. Why do they take more risk – simply because it’s their business to understand your industry and the nature of your products and the ultimate salability or liquidation value? Their expertise in this area translates into greater borrowing power for your firm – and that’s a good thing!

Investing and monetizing your inventory is a good thing, provided that the inventory produces a solid rate of return – therefore financing and management of your products is key to overall business success.

Inventory financing and purchase order finance is Canada is available, it’s also specialized. As your firm generates new contracts and purchase orders that you are having a challenge in fulfilling (because of finance and cash flow pressures) you should consider finding an alternative source of financing based on your overall current business financing with your senior lender, typically a bank.

Specialized inventory financing and purchase order finance firms are most likely your problems solution. Funding is provided to fund the cost of your products with your suppliers, and the actual day to day finance strategy is much focused – payments are made to your suppliers, often directly, allowing you to receive product, and ship, thereby generating a receivable. Receivables turn into cash and the cycle is complete.

Inventory finance works best when it involves a holistic approach of collateralizing the purchase order, the inventory and the receivable that you generate as sales by its necessity typically involves a non banking institution, i.e. the private independent finance firms we’ve discussed. One tool, an asset based line of credit which collateralizes inventory, A/R, and even equipment is often the total solution you are looking for.

Speak to a trusted, credible and experienced business financing advisor to ensure you understand solutions available to inventory and p o financing for long term sales and profit growth.…

Real Web Traffic Generating Options – Available at A Low Or Zero Cost

The internet is the greatest sales tool ever invented. Learning to wield that tool effectively, however, is a much different story.

People once sold their goods and services in a marketplace that they and their customers had to travel to before bartering, negotiating and completing a transaction. Later, print and other media like radio and television offered a medium to present products and hook potential customers, who might travel to the marketplace or place an order via a catalog and snail mail or over the phone.

But with the net, retailers and their affiliate marketers can access to customers instantly via a mouse click, with a real-time transaction a possibility from a customer’s home computer. The buyers are there… sitting in front of their screens, credit cards in hand… searching for the product they want and willing to pay immediately.

But getting your website, your classified ad or affiliate product link in front of them can be tricky, especially for the new web marketer. Paid advertising via search engine advertising from services like Google AdWords or Yahoo can ensure your ads are viewed by internet traffic. But they are no guarantees a sale will be made, or that the person clicking on the paid ad (which costs you money) is even a qualified sales prospect. Traffic-generating systems address these specific issues with low or no-cost solutions, but the majority of marketers are unaware of these and continue to pay top dollar with pay-per-click advertising. And the leads (i.e. potential customers) generated from pay-per-click may just be surfing, and clicking through your ad was just one more stop on the way to an evening of internet browsing.

That’s what happens to many in the affiliate marketing game. They’ve resolved to earn a second income, a separate revenue stream, through a work-at-home business. The idea of making money online, from the comfort of home, is enticing and within reach. But for many, the costs of paid advertising and purchasing the latest home business system “guaranteed” to make them rich, has left them in the red. Their home business experiment has actually lost them money, not been the terrific financial addition to their family’s income. But people are making money on the Internet, and they are receiving the sales traffic they require without the burden of expensive paid advertisements.

But how? Free advertising is one option, but it is certainly more time consuming. Posting free ads to web marketplaces like Craigslist, Backpage and Oodle can have results, but free ads cycle off of main advertising pages and rarely get significant views for more than a day… and in some cases, for no more than a few hours. Then how can you anchor your affiliate or web link online where qualified prospects can view it again and again, and perhaps attract the attention of search engines like Google? Traffic-generating business models like the one at have the answer.

Online e-zines and other websites that feature topic-specific articles are proven resources for online marketers. By writing articles and submitting them to various net article directories, you can have your article cataloged, featured and even prominently displayed on front pages of the major search engines. That is more likely to happen if you’ve submitted the piece to multiple directories. But for the promise of high search engine page results and months, even years of traffic to your marketing target ad or website, article writing is more than worth the effort.…

Know Your Family Health History

If your great grandchild asked you if you could make him or her better, would you? Of course you would.

See this opportunity as a way of protecting those you love. Knowing your family’s genetic health history may save you suffering from, or preventing, undiagnosed yet predisposed diseases. Pay it forward a few generations by creating a Family Health History Tree.

By knowing your family’s health history you will be pro-active in discovering possible health problems earlier than later. Imagine if you found out there was a history of breast cancer in your family. Just think about how you would feel if your husband had developed prostate cancer at a relatively early age. But it could have been monitored early and possibly prevented had he known that his uncle had passed away from it.

A safe place to keep your Family Health History Tree would be with your will. Amendments to the Tree could be made as various medical facts are revealed about current and past family members.

The more everyone knows about a family’s genetic history, the better.Imagine being adopted and simply not knowing this lineage? Some of us are a little guarded or shy in sharing our own health history, even with family members. Here are a few ways to go about it.

At the next family function or reunion, have any older children present the concept of a Family Health History Tree as a “School Project”. It’s hard to turn down a possible life-saving health project such as this, especially when they want to do well in School.

Add a few pages into your child’s baby-book. But first send out the info page you need filled out to every adult person in your family.

Start the gift of giving for everyone’s future. Detail your own family history and give it inside a Christmas, anniversary or birthday card, as a sign of how much you love them and how easy it can be. There are even better occasions to start the trend, such as when a baby is born or at a wedding.

For example here are a few sample questions to ask to get the ball rolling:

Since we know many cancers can be passed on from generation to generation, do you know of any pre-existing conditions that could possibly be passed down such as cancer? Or schizophrenia? Or spinal muscular atrophy? Or Huntington’s Disease? Or Systic Fibrosis?

Can you remember if you have had all of your adult vaccines or childhood immunizations?

Can you remember every one’s history in your family as far back as records will show?

If you are the only one remaining in your family here are some places to start to generate some answers:

Funeral Home Records. These records can go back into the late 1900s, and often the Funeral Home keeps the records as they were originally kept “for public health purposes- to alert officials of diseases or trends of concern, especially in cities and populated areas”.

Obituaries. From the late 1800s, the obituaries section of newspapers are a very popular section. Earlier on they even detailed the cause of death; however, today’s era masks them or omits them completely.

At your next family gathering, make things fun and interesting by awarding prizes to the ‘team’ that comes up with the most inherited medical disease facts. Congratulations in then taking the preventative steps necessary and thinking ahead for your family’s future.…