Home-Biz-Help BizOpp Review: Letters From Santa (and others)

This is a very legitimate home business done successfully by many moms. You market it to schools, churches, hospitals, day care centers, anywhere there are kids and parents.

You really need 2 skills for this one and you need to be - or become - quite good at both of them.

First, you need to be able to market what you have to offer. Start with people you know such as your church, school, doctor's office, dentist's office, even co-workers, etc. Ask if you can leave fliers on a table or in a rack. Branch out to areas where you are not known. Hopefully that will include your local Childrens Hospital (if you are known there it means your lid is sick and that is not a good thing.)

If you get queasy at the thought of marketing, maybe this isn't the home business for you. In order to be successful at this you will have to sell folks on the idea that it will be fun for their kids to get such a letter, and you are just the one to put it together for them!

The other skill you will need is the ability to write. If the parents see a poorly composed letter riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, not only will you not get any repeat business, but they will tell their friends and neighbors what a crummy job you did! Word of mouth is powerful - good or bad!

This is a home business that can be done all year long with different characters. Think Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, any non-copyrighted character.

If you would like to explore the possibility of starting a home business like this, let me recommend a kit from Bizymoms. Right now they are running a Holiday Special - for a limited time you can get the kit for only $49, which is a whopping savings of $100 off!

If you are even a little bit interested, jump at this now so you don't kick yourself in the tush later!

Home-Biz-Help BizOpp Review: Take the FREE Home Business Survey . . .

Take the FREE Home Business Survey and get matched up with 5 Home Businesses!

There are several variations on this theme. Most of them have you fill out a short form with your name, address, phone number, and maybe interests or whatever.

You have just become a "prospect" or a "lead." The person whose site you signed up through is paid a small amount for doing the work of providing the lead - your name and contact info. Your contact info is sold to home business owners looking to expand and grow their home businesses.

==> There is no point in not providing good info. You won't get any information about the work at home opportunities you are interested in, and the company will take back the money they paid the person whose site you signed up from. That person is most likely a wahm as you would like to be. If it makes you feel better, provide a throw-away e-mail address.

Anyway, you are then contacted by up to five people to see if you would be interested in working the business they are working. They will do their best to state their case - it is up to you to know your self, you strengths, weaknesses, and abilities.

If you are not interested, just say so. Most of them will not waste any more of their time or yours. If you get a "bad apple" report him or her to the lead generation company (on the bottom of the form you filled out in the first place, and to the company they represent. You will be writing all this down for future reference, right?

Overall, this is a good way for you to find out some of the ways to make money from home that are "out there." There no cost to you, so you have nothing to lose.

Keep in mind that these are not the only work from home opportunities available, so if you don't find what you are looking for, you are welcome to visit my 2 sites, listed to the right. On both of them you will find a wide variety of choices!

Holiday Season Special

As you may or may not know, Bizymoms is one of the most respected Home Business sites on the internet. Everything they offer is totally legitimate and geared towards helping you be a successful Home Business Mom.

This year they are offering the most incredible gift I have seen from a Home Business. For a limited time only you can get one their Premium Career Kits for only $49! That is an incredible $100 off!

If you have even considered becoming a Virtual Assistant, or starting a Candy Wrapping Business, a business writing personal Letters to Kids from their favorite characters, starting a Welcome Business or a Tutoring Business, you really need to check this out!

Hint: A Bizymoms Premium Career Kit might make the perfect gift for that mom who has been aching to Work From Home.

Home-Biz-Help BizOpp Review: Home Assembly of Craft Items

This one sounds so good! A wholesale distributor sends you "kits." You put them together, send the finished product back, and get paid for your time, effort and skill. All in the comfort of your own home.

You envision quality craft items similar to what you've seen at local craft fairs. Unfortunately what you get more closely resembles the mass-produced-in-China stuff you get as a consolation prize in the fun zone at the County Fair.

Worse than that, somehow your work never quite measures up to standards, so you don't get paid for what you did. You are out the money you paid for the "kits" and your chances of selling any remaining items to recover your costs are not good at all.

Let me give you a first-hand example of why that cheap mass-produced stuff will never be profitable to you.

I recently bought a pair of rubber flip-flops at Wal-Mart. They were not on sale - I paid the regular price. We have to assume that everyone who handled these items did so at a profit - no matter how small. The raw material was either produced in or sent to China - at a profit to someone. The raw material was processed and then formed into the finished product - at a profit to someone. The finished product was transported to a port city - at a profit to someone. The finished product was shipped across the Pacific Ocean, unloaded probably at Long Beach, transported to some central Wal-Mart distribution point, transported to my local Wal-Mart, unpacked, shelved, and sold. All at a profit to someone.

I paid $1.00. One whole dollar.

It does not matter what the product is - the process is the same. And this article is not the place to discuss the moral or political issues of so much work for so little compensation.

The point here is you cannot compete with this process. You will never win.

If you want to make money from home doing crafts, you need to have God-given artistic talent and create your own items. If God gave you other abilities, you need to find some other way to make money.

If you need to work out of your home, you need to associate yourself with someone reliable. I recommend Ignotius. Ignotius has hundreds of clients, growing by the day, that need data entry, telephone answering services, general writing, virtual assistants and clerical work done. This is the same type of work done in any business office. When they outsource their work to you, their clients get great service, and you get to make money while working where you are most comfortable - from your home.

Best of all you can do this right now for FREE! Click here for more information.

Home-Biz-Help BizOpp Review: Blogsvertise

As I have posted here, and here, a lot of people are searching the internet looking for ways to make money from home without having to sink a lot of money - or even any money - into the endeavor. Usually it's because they are struggling "to keep body and soul together" as it is and just cannot afford to spend any more money.

Businesses are always looking for new and creative ways to market their products and services. One of the latest and most innovative is to take advantage of the blog phenomenon by actually having bloggers write about these products and services in their blogs!

Enter Blogsvertise. This is the perfect opportunity for people who need to start up on a shoe string. There are several places to start a blog for absolutely free, including right here on bogger.com.

So how does Blogsvertise work?

If you are a blogger, first you register your blog with Blogsvertise. Once approved, you are assigned opportunities to write about in your blog. The rules must be followed (of course) but they are very straight-forward. Honesty is valued - you will not have to compromise your integrity for pay. If you have less than a glowing opinion of a website, product, or service, you are free to say so.

Business who would like to be featured in blogs across the internet can sign up with Blogsvertise and begin to greatly increase your internet exposure as your business travels virally through the blogging world.

Interested? Sign up with Blogsvertise today!

Home-Biz-Help BizOpp Review: Cash This Check and Keep The Change

There is a scam going around the internet - and spilling over into snail mail as well. It has been going on for years, but only recently has it been getting much attention, probably because it seems to be becoming more common.



It comes in almost infinite varieties, but when you strip away all of the details, you are left with the basics, which never change.



Someone offers to send you a check, usually for way more than fair compensation for what ever goods or services you have contracted to provide. They have some cock-and-bull story as to why but always always always you are to deposit the check and send them the difference.



The check is never good, and you are on the hook for the entire bogus amount. Because this does not get discovered until you have already sent off the check to these perpetrators, you are responsible for reimbursing your bank for the entire amount. You may also be subject to criminal charges for money laundering.



Yup. You are the victim and you are charged as a criminal.



These "offers" turn up on Craigslist, as mystery shopping jobs, as used vehicle purchasers, as almost anything.



Please do not fall for this scam. If you have received such an offer, show it to your bank manager. Perhaps they can work with the FBI and set up a sting operation to catch the perpetrator. I have heard of it happening.

Other that that,

Under no circumstances, for any reason, cash one of these
checks.

If you do, as I said above, you are responsible and liable to pay back to money to the bank.

Home-Biz-Help BizOpp Review: Project Payday

For some time now I have been concerned about the ethics of "Project Payday."

From information posted in various forums, it seems that what participants in Project Payday do is sign up for offers from credit card companies and others who pay the signer a certain dollar amount just for signing up. The company that is paying is doing so in hopes of gaining a new customer.

The Project Payday member has no intention of becoming a new customer: They just take the money and run - by immediately opting out as soon as they get the money.

In other words, instead of being scammed, Project Payday members are doing the scamming!

While some have posted that this sort of thing is just a cost of doing business, from a "Golden Rule" perspective, it certainly isn't ethical and I can't even believe it is legal!

It appears the lack of ethics flows both ways. Here is a link to a post by someone who thought she was doing everything according to the instructions she received, and instead would up with hundreds of dollars on her credit card without being paid anything.

Project Payday sounds like very bad news. My recommendation is to avoid Project Payday as if it were the bubonic plague!

****************************************************************************

For a much better opportunity to Work From Home without running up the tab, check out Ignotius. The entire amount of your small sign-up fee is immediately credited to your new account, making your net cost $0. You get immediate access to a wide variety of legitimate ways to make money from home, including some companies who actually hire you as an employee. You even will receive a brand new cd in the mail containing additional training materials.

Get Started For Free

Back on October 7, I posted that it would be rather difficult to find work from home that did not have any up-front cost. That is still true.

HOWEVER, there are people who make hundreds or even thousands of dollars every month by working ads into their blogs. If they are skillful enough, the advertisers will pay them for what they wrote. Some only pay $5. Some pay w-a-y more than that. Remember when your English teacher made you learn punctuation and grammar? Remember when you protested because you would "never use that stuff?" Use your blog to apologize to your teacher once you start cashing those checks!

It does not cost anything to start up a blog. Once your blog has been active (posted several times per week) for at least 90 days, you can apply to PayPerPost. It does not matter what you blog about- there are categories galore! Once you have enough accepted (paid) posts, you can add another blog. You can add them one at a time as long as you keep the quality up and the quantity of posts up.

Word to the wise from the voice of the observant: you will want to host your blog on your own host rather than blogspot.com or wordpress.com because the advertisers that pay serious money don't accept blogs hosted on free sites. For information on very inexpensive web hosting, click here. For information on getting paid to post to your blog, click here.

Another no-cost way to make money from home that is taking the internet by storm (as "they" say) is My Power Mall. My Power Mall is a 9-Tier Shopping Rebate System. People are invited to have their own FREE online Power Mall. All they do is shop and then invite others to have their own FREE Mall. As people shop for things they are going to buy anyway, everyone receives a % of the shopping rebates. Buy stuff you would buy anyway and get a percentage back - 9 tiers down. The way I figure it, if you were going to buy the stuff anyway, why not try it? Have people sign up under you and they do their internet shopping from their own malls, etc. By the time you get down a few tiers with people just doing normal shopping, you could rake in a few hundred bucks.

So there you have two ways you generate income from home on your computer with no initial out-of-pocket expense at all. With PayPerPost you will eventually need to get your own web hosting, but I pay $6.95 per month (billed monthly - I do not have to pay for a year in advance) with AllWebCo. With My Power Mall you (theoretically anyway) don't spend anymore than you are spending now - you just spend it differently.

Home-Biz-Help BizOpp Review: SFI - Part 1 - Veriuni All-Purpose Cleaner

SFI (which used to stand for "Six Figure Income" and now - I think - stands for "Strong Future International") has been around for abiout 20 years. They are members in good standing of the BBB.

You make money through SFI two ways: you market the busines opportunity as you build a downline, and you sell products. Ideally your downline does the same thing! Because SFI is quite complex, there will be a series of posts on various methods of making the system work, and on some of the products.

You can be profitable with SFI by never selling even one product while you build an active downline. You can be profitable with SFI by totally ignoring the downline concept and marketing the outstanding products they feature.

Today I am going to talk about Veriuni All Purpose Cleaner, or VAPC for short. IMHO, it is the best all-purpose cleaner you can buy. It smells great, it works great, it is totally non-toxic. Click HERE to see some of what it can do.

I live in the San Diego, California, area and we have been through our own local version of "Hell Week," an unfortunate repeat of what we went through 4 years ago. Around half a million people were evacuated from their homes because of huge wild fires. Smoke and ash are everywhere.

To get the ash residue off the car, I hosed the car off, sprayed it all over with a diluted solution of VAPC, hand-watered the lawn while the VAPC worked its magic, went over the entire surface of the car with a soft micro-fiber cloth, hosed the car down again and dried it off.

Cost: pennies
Time: a few minutes
Appearance: like a $20 car wash (or better)

The product is outstanding. If you are good at marketing, you can make money with this product. If you like swap meets and flea markets, buy this at wholesale, (buy a lot!) and sell it for a profit. Do demonstrations - you'll see! Be sure to check about your local resale laws, etc.

This is just one of many ways to make money through SFI. I will be discussing others over time.

Home-Biz-Help BizOpp Review: Ignotius Associates Program

EXCLUSIVE INSTANT REBATE!

From the keywords people use to find my website, it seems that a lot of people are looking for real "work from home jobs" rather than "home businesses."

If this is you, seriously consider signing up for the Ignotius Associates Program. Once you sign up you have access to a wide variety of employers who are looking to hire people to do assorted office work from home. There are also other ways that you can make money from home without actually starting a home-based business.

More and more employers are realizing that "offshoring" their customer service is not good for their own business image, is not good for the local economy, and is not good for the customers, who often wind up frustrated. Ignotius puts you in touch with companies who have elected to provide excellent customer service through "homeshoring" options.

Sign up today and see all the ways you can make money from home without starting a business!

As a bonus, if you sign up for the Ignotius Associates Program through THIS link, you are eligible for an EXCLUSIVE INSTANT REBATE!

Home-Biz-Help BizOpp Review: Make Money Taking Surveys

The ads would have you believe that you can actually make a good living. or at least make your car or house payment or send your kids to college or . . . . by taking surveys on line.

Don't believe it.

Ironically, those who need the money the most stand the least chance of making it taking surveys. Why? Because those conducting the surveys are interested in the spending habits of people who spend money on their type of product. The people who most need to make money don't have any money to spend, so if they are honest in their responses, they don't qualify for many if any of the surveys.

In other words, the people who conduct the surveys ask questions like "Do you plan on buying a new car in the next 2 years or did you buy a new car in the past 2 years?" Or they ask about electronics purchases, furniture purchases, home remodeling, your investment accounts (!), how many credit cards do you have, all the prepackaged groceries and snacks you buy, how often do you eat out, etc.

People who are struggling to get to the end of the month before they get to the end of the money do not spend what little money they have on those things, so they don't qualify for the survey. Instead, they get a sweepstakes entry or some such. Nobody can pay any bills on that.

People who qualify for most surveys already have money to spend, and the survey takers are most eager to find out how they spend it so they can manipulate the market and get more of it! But unless they get into a focus group (this is rare) the pay-off is still $1-$5.

So just what happens when you buy a list of survey companies and start to sign up for them? I can't speak for everyone, I can only tell you what happened to me and it wasn't pretty.

First of all I used an email address designated only for surveys. That was good, but not good enough. I should have had a different unique address for each one. I immediately began getting spam e-mails from "affiliates" and "associates" and "partners" (oh, my!) of the people I signed up with. My inbasket overfloweth.

Some of the companies were only interested in trial offers and samples of products I had no interest in or use for. I opted out of them right away, but somehow even though I got into the company immediately it took weeks to opt out! There is no legitimate excuse for that. I was especially annoyed at having to opt out of lists I had not opted into but who had gotten my address from someone else who "shared."

It gets worse. After I began opting out and was actually off a few lists, I began to receive the most vile of pornographic spam. I suspect at least one if not more of the people I opted out of sold my e-mail address to a pornographic spammer so they could at least make some money off of me, but I can't prove it.

Remember I said to use a different unique address for each company? This is why. If each survey company uses a different address to send communications to you and passes that address on to a spammer, pornographer, or both, you can nail them dead to rights because NOBODY else had that address!

I contacted the people I bought the list from, but they were useless. They claimed they had anonymously signed up for each offer before they put it on their list. Maybe they did, I don't know. It sounds good, anyway. I suggested they opt out of some as I had done to see what would happen. I never heard from them again.

My recommendation? Go ahead and sign up to take online surveys if you want. Once you have your list, be sure to use a different address for each company. It can be fun to influence market choices such as newly designed labels for familiar products, but don't expect to get rich.

For more and better ways to make money working from home visit
123 I Work From Home 4 Me or
123 Home Based Business Works 4 Me

Wise Ways To Multiply Your Home-Based-Business Sales

By: Sandi Moses

When you are in marketing, no matter what your product or service might be, and no matter whether you work from your home, from an office, or from a brick-and-mortar store front, you need to make sales. Studies show that once you have made a sale to a new customer it is wise to maintain a good and trusting relationship with that customer in order to keep that customer for the long term and have that customer make repeat purchases from you. It is also much cheaper to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one. With that in mind, here are a few ways to maintain the relationship and bring that customer back for more of what you have to offer.


1. When you make your first sale, follow-up with the customer. Send a "thank you" email or post card and make sure they are happy with your product. Include an advertisement in your email signature or as the picture on the post card for other products you sell. Follow-up every few months to see if they need more of what they bought. Keep the lines of communication open; make sure you are always on their mind - in a good way, or course!


2. Gently upsell to your customers without being pushy or obnoxious. Make sure you tell them about a few extra related products you have for sale, such as matching or coordinating accessories, nail polish, etc. If they like what they see, they can add it to their original order. If there is some ancillary product they will need to make what they just purchased produce at it’s best, make sure to offer it. (Have you ever purchased a new computer printer only to discover at home that the clerk did not bother to make sure you had the right cable and ink or toner? Ever bought something that needed batteries but nobody thought to make sure you remembered to buy some? Gr-r-r-r-r!) Upselling is more than just asking if “you want fries with that.”


3. Give incentives for referrals. Companies that sell products through home parties discovered this gold mine years ago. If enough product is sold at the party, the hostess gets a freebie from the product line. The more product sold, the better the freebie. Sometimes if a guest decides to book a party, both that guest and the hostess receive an incentive, and so it goes. Some internet web hosting services give free hosting or actually pay for referrals. With a bit of creativity, you should be able to make this concept work for just about anything.


4. When you sell a product, consider giving your customers the option of joining an affiliate program so they can make commissions selling your product, thus multiplying the sale you just made. Clickbank and PayDotCom are internet examples of this concept. Some of the home party companies do this, too.


5. Sell the reprint/reproduction rights to your products. Include an ad on or with each product for other products you sell. You could make sales for the reproduction rights and sales on the back end product. This of course is an option only of what you sell is your own original work. Two types of products to consider would be internet information or some type of art work or original craft idea.


6. Cross promote your product with other businesses' products in a package deal. You can include an ad or flyer for other products you sell and have other businesses selling for you. This type of arrangement has become known as a “joint venture” or “jv” for short and is enormously effective. Do you walk or groom dogs? Consider a “jv” with someone who makes doggie sweaters or home-baked doggie treats. Or, promote your friend’s scented candles at your cake decorating parties, and she will promote your cake decorating service at her scented candle parties. This is another area where you are limited only by your creativity.


7. When you ship out or deliver your product, include a coupon for other related products - or even more of the same product. This has worked for decades for almost everything. Many items you buy in your local supermarket have coupons either on the packaging or tucked inside to entice you to buy more of the same when you run out of what you just bought.


8. Whoever said you had to limit yourself to just one type of home-based business? It is perfectly OK to combine more than one type and make customers from one business customers from both. For instance, if you run a family day care center and sell environmentally friendly cleaning and personal care products, your daycare moms would be more than interested in these products for their own homes. Do you clean offices or work organizing homes or offices or do freelance bookkeeping? Those customers would buy such products from you, too.


9. Sell gift certificates for your products. You'll make sales from the purchase of the gift certificate when the recipient cashes it in. They could also buy other items from your web site. You may have to be well-established before you begin this one, but what a great idea for the holiday season as well as birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, graduations, etc. You will have made two happy customers from the purchase of each gift certificate and widened your customer data base!


10. Send your customers free products with their product package. The freebies should have your ad printed on them. It could be bumper stickers, ball caps, t-shirts etc. This will allow other people to see your ad and order. Get a logo professionally designed or better yet barter your product or service in exchange for the logo design. Cross-market each other’s business afterwards!


Sandi Moses has been involved in internet marketing since November, 2003.
For more information on Work-At-Home Business Ideas and Opportunities, visit
123 I Work From Home 4 Me
and
123 Home-Based-Business-Works-4-Me

There Is No Free Lunch - But You CAN Get A VERY Inexpensive Sample!

Thousands of times every month people go to search engines and look for ways to work from home at no cost to themselves. They type in a wide variety of search terms and then browse what comes up.


You might be tempted to lump them all into the "what can I get for nothing" or "the world owes me a living" crowd.


You might be wrong.


Maybe they really don't have the money to get started. Many online programs do have a $30-$50 cost. Even if it is one time only, that still may be too much.


Definitely they are wary of getting scammed, and they should be.


I doubt they will be able to find any home-based online work for no cost. The couple of sites I have encountered have waiting lists from months to years long! YIKES! W-A-Y too long!


Let me make an affordable suggestion. There is a site called Go-Freelance that has a very nice, very inexpensive trial offer. You can explore their entire site of freelance home-based work for only $2.95.


If you don't see anything you are qualified to do, and you don't think an offer will come in that you will be qualified to do, cancel before your trial period is up, and there will be no more expenses to you. You can even keep the free newsletter subscription!


Considering that $2.95 will buy you one bag of potato chips or one cup of premium ice cream, you can put that $2.95 to a much better use!

So You Want To Start A Home Based Business

By: Sandi Moses

People decide to - or need to - work from home for lots of different reasons. Losing a job, a disability incompatible with the “9-5 grind,” or caring for family members are just a few of the reasons. But what to do?

Some people are best suited for being a “home-based employee.” In recent years some U.S. business have given up on “off-shoring” their customer service call centers to the opposite side of the planet, and begun “home-shoring” or hiring people right here in the USA to handle customer service calls from their own homes and computers with very simple and inexpensive software and phone hook-ups. It is a win-win-win situation for the business, the employee and the customer. You can find access to some of that type of home based work through a program called Ignotius.


Other people would rather start their own business and run it from their home. Before that happens, some very serious self-evaluation is mandatory. If this is you, first you need to make a list of your likes and strengths, and a list of your dislikes and weaknesses.

Let’s start with dislikes and weaknesses, because it’s every bit as important to know what sort of home business to avoid as it is to know what to consider starting. If you are not good with numbers and did poorly in math in school, don’t start a bookkeeping business. If your spelling and grammar are atrocious even with spell check, you should not become a proof-reader, a greeting card writer, or send “letters from Santa.” Are you uncomfortable around kids? Don’t open a day-care center. You get the idea. Make your own list and be brutally honest.

Now for your strong points. Make a list of your skills and things you enjoy doing. Don’t overlook skills that you have always taken for granted but not everyone has. List also any interests you may have that you have acquired a lot of knowledge about over the years.

Are you organized? There are people would will pay you big bucks to help them get organized. Do you have office skills? Be a virtual assistant. Good at finding flea market bargains? Sell them on eBay. There are many types of items sold at home parties, such as candles, personal care products, home cleaning products, cosmetics, etc. Be sure to do your home work before investing money - some of these are not as easy as they would like you to believe. Spend some time on the internet or in the library doing research on any established company before joining forces with them. It will be time well spent. Do not just gloss over this; really dig deep. (Read the post before this one to see why you need to do this.)

You could also provide services to people that need them. Run errands, house-sit or dog-sit, shop, interior decorate, etc. The list is nearly endless because everyone is gifted with a unique set of skills, abilities, ambitions, and needs. The time may be now to put yours to use by starting your own unique home based business.

Home-Biz-Help BizOpp Review: Rebate Processor Jobs Offer

There is a new Work From Home opportunity seen recently on the internet called Rebate Processor Jobs and accessible through Cold Cash Partners.

==> EDIT: In addition to the ethical problems discussed below, some people are reporting having difficulties receiving payment from the person claiming to own Cold Cash Partners. I no longer recommend that you sign up for Cold Cash Partners even as a way to access Virtual Training Solutions as they are apparently owned b y the same person/people. <==

Here is their offer, straight from their web site:

Learn how to process simple customer rebates from home and earn $15 each GUARANTEED!

They are not being straight forward with the offer. It is more than "processing simple rebates. " It is more like "typing at home with a twist."

What they tell you, quoted directly from the landing page: "I will show you how I make money simply by filling out online forms. For each form I attach a special ID link that is assigned just for me and submit it online. I then check my account for orders processed, I verify the information, fill out another form and submit, I get $15! Believe me those small payments add up real quick!"

What they DON'T tell you: First of all you will be placing ads, both free and paid, for affiliate programs you select from Clickbank. There is nothing wrong with doing that. Many people who have bought any of the programs that teach how to do that such as this one, this one, this one, this one, or any of the others, have discovered they really can make a lot of money online as an affiliate marketer.

Second, what Cold Cash Partners also does not tell you is the rebates you process are the rebates you yourself offer when you place your ads!

Say What? I have read and re-read the ad copy and there is NO WAY you could have figured that out before buying the product.

And guess what. NO REFUNDS!

To be fair, the idea is that you will get so many more sales from offering a rebate than you would have had you not offered the rebate, that your bottom line will grow. After all which ad would you buy from, the one offering a rebate or the one that did not offer a rebate?

Furthermore, when I bought the program to check it out, I felt like I had been "duped" and I was angry. No one likes to be deceived, and this program definitely has deceptive ad copy. To tell someone they will be "processing" rebates does not even hint that they will be "giving" rebates, or "making" rebates.

Not only that, but offering rebates on Clickbank products is a clear and flagrant violation of Clickbank's Terms of Service #6e which states:

“You agree to make no such promotions promising customers rebates, coupons, tickets, or vouchers in connection with their ClickBank purchase”.

Clickbank may suspend your account and hold your funds once they find you in violation. YIKES!

HOWEVER

When you buy the program you are given total and unlimited access to a site called Virtual Training Solutions.

Check out what you have access to:

• Freelance America


• Rebate processing from home <== The one we've been discussing


• Secret Shoppers MSAA Certification


• Medical & Data Transcription Training/Resources


• eBay Wholesale and Surplus Sales Program


• Market Research and Focus Groups For Extra Cash


• Local 'Hand out FREE samples' jobs - work weekends / flex hours


• Get paid up to $2000 a month to Place Advertising on your late model car


• Prescreened Virtual Assistants program - over 100 companies need help now


• Paid to Read emails and view web based commercials over 200 companies listed


• Consumer Surveys and opinion polls that pay cash. Research/training/links to over 300 companies

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of very legitimate opportunities here. I have spent quite a bit of time the past few days checking these out. The variety and volume of legitimate (not deceptive but real honest-to-goodness) home job offers and ways to make money from home is almost overwhelming. Some are online. Some are offline.

All are available to you just because you signed up for Cold Cash Partners. Therefore, even though you won't get what you thought you were signing up for, you are definitely getting your money's worth and then some.

My advice is to sign up for Cold Cash Partners only as an access to Virtual Training Solutions. Do NOT make any attempt to work the Rebate Processor program.

Instead, help yourself to the bountiful offers awaiting you at Virtual Training Solutions. It will be well worth the investment.

Beware of Outlandish Promises

Have you seen flash web pages that promise you that you can make something like $12,000 your first week?

Or make $30,000 a month every month?

Or even . . . Unlimited Monthly Income!

Pick whatever dollar value and time frame you want here. It may be theoretically possible, it may be mathematically possible, (that’s how the ads avoid getting into trouble with truth-in-advertising laws) but not at all realistic.

It is also theoretically possible for every child born in the United States to grow up to be President, but the likely-hood of that happening for any given kid is minuscule.

The same line of logic applies to these wild promises of vast income. They attempt to sucker in those most vulnerable of desperate people who need to work from home for health or family reasons - or have just lost their job and have no idea where to turn next.

Lotteries use that t00 - "What if . . . . . . "

Gotcha.

Don't be a victim. Find something solid, that you are interested in and capable of doing. Find something that fits your personality type, temperament, abilities and desires.

If you are not in the habit of praying, now would be a good time to start. Ask the one living God to help you choose, and then listen for that still quiet voice as he answers your prayer.

Working from home is a great idea. Find a legitimate way to make it work for you.

God Gave You A Brain And He Expects You To Use It

Today we will look at the idea that "somewhere out there over the rainbow on the internet there is a pot of gold with your name on it and I know just how you can claim it!"

Most ads read something like:

No Sales! No calls! No inventory! No work!

Spend nothing, do nothing, sit back, and

watch the massive residual profits roll in!

Earn Money Just Sitting At Your Computer!!

GET REAL! If nobody does anything or spends anything or sells anything, where the heck is the money supposed to come from?

Remember, everybody joined for free, just like you did! And no matter what they tell you and want you to think, there are no crazed drooling people running around “out there” with fists full of cash begging you to let them spend that wad of money on your latest “business venture.”

It just ain’t gonna happen. Do you know anybody like that? Neither does anyone else.

Don't Try This At Home

In the world of home-based businesses and work from home opportunities, there are a few things to watch out for before you get involved as an owner, affiliate, or investor. These are important everywhere, but nowhere more important than for the so-called “internet newbie” who is looking for additional income and/or a better lifestyle. The internet is just infested with hype and unrealistic promises that sound oh, so good. The next few posts are going to pick a few of them apart. Learning to step back and think logically can be a financial lifesaver. It might even help to look at each offer and ask if you would want your kid or your grandparent or your best friend to get involved. If the answer is “NO!” then you shouldn’t, either!

Today we will look at the Envelope Stuffing Scheme. Most ads read something like, "Make $5 stuffing envelopes." The problem is, businesses have machinery that folds the paper and stuffs it into the envelope faster than your eyes can follow.

Why the heck would they pay people $5 to stuff each envelope when they are mailing out hundreds or thousands of them every day?

They are in business to make a profit, not keep you off of welfare, and all of this mindless, mechanical stuff is done by machinery.

This is an out-right scam and here is how it works. You pay somebody $5 (which you stuffed into an envelope and mailed to them.) They send you information and you find out that in order to get your money back you have to con some other sucker into paying you $5 (stuffed into an envelope and mailed to you) so you can tell them to con yet another sucker out of $5, and so it goes.

I see these on Google AdWords and AdSense often. Google should have enough integrity to refuse such ads.

For wiser and more legitimate options, visit

123 I work From Home 4 Me
123 Home Based Business Works 4 Me

Don’t Put All Of Your Eggs Into One Basket

I vaguely remember a particular story from my childhood. It had something to do with transporting eggs to market. The main character, a little girl who thought she knew more than she really did, put all of the day’s eggs into one basket, and when she tripped and fell on the way into town to sell the eggs, all of the eggs broke. It seems that her grandmother (the voice of experience and wisdom) tried to tell her not to do that, but she wouldn’t listen. If she had divided them up into several means of transportation some would have been lost, but not all of them. It was a difficult lesson to learn.

Everyone is familiar with this concept by the time we reach adulthood. It is most often brought up in the field of financial investing. You know, don’t invest all of your nest egg in Acme Widgets, because who knows how long there will be a market for widgets. And then where will you be? Or maybe you are told not to invest all of your nest egg in the stock market, but diversify into mutual funds or bonds or real estate or . . . Everybody from the little girl in to above story to your mother to your neighbor to who knows who else eventually comes to see the wisdom in that concept.

So how come it is that we see over and over that people put all of their internet eggs into one basket? They have one product or one program on one website that they optimize for one search engine (probably Google) and if any link in that chain breaks, they are dead in the water. What could possibly go wrong? Glad you asked!

Demand for the product could wane. Maybe somebody comes up with a better one. I used to see a whole aisle - both sides - of garbage cans in my local Target Store. EVERYBODY needs garbage cans, right? I mean you gotta put the stuff out to be collected in SOMETHING! And then suddenly the company that collects the garbage began providing, at no charge to you, specialized containers designed to be picked up with a special mechanical arm on the truck and dumped right into the collection truck. The driver never gets out. There are three colors of cans; one for trash, one for recyclables and one for yard waste. One driver in each of three trucks instead of one driver and one collector per truck. The company paid for the specialized containers and truck modifications with the money they saved on injury compensation claims no longer being filed by the second person who had been lifting all those heavy garbage cans. Suddenly there is no market for regular old garbage cans and in my local Target Store there are very few to be found. I suspect those few are bought to hold sodas and ice at beach parties! Now if you had invested in the company that made and sold all those old garbage cans, you are out in the cold, and you never even saw it coming. Who would have ever thought there would be no more market for something that everybody needs? Don’t put all of your eggs into one basket.

I live in a part of the USA where there is a large military presence. Near one base in particular were located numerous fast food restaurants. I mean, talk about a gold mine! Young soldiers, mostly guys with huge appetites, plus families with small kids and it just seemed like an ideal combination. But the soldiers got sent to war and many of the families went “home” where there was moral support during a stressful time and the customer base was gone just like that. Many of the formerly prosperous fast food places went out of business. Don’t put all of your eggs into one basket.

Remember the dot com era? People invested in dot com companies, got amazingly high paying jobs at dot com companies, and bought great big beautiful houses and cars with the money they made from those dot com companies. When everything collapsed, those people found themselves making and selling coffee at Starbucks, living back at home with mom and dad, and trying to finish making the payments on those cars that now are a chore to keep running. Don’t put all of your eggs into one basket.

As I wander around the internet, I have run into more and more people who had been making decent money with one affiliate or marketing program or another, both online and offline. Then for whatever reason the program changed it’s compensation schedule and these people are left hanging out to dry. If this was all they had going for them, they were hurt big time. Only those who had other sources of income were able to make adjustments and keep going. Don’t put all of your eggs into one basket.

Many people spend an inordinate amount of time, effort, energy and money optimizing their website(s) for Google. They listen to this or that guru, buy this or that software, and do whatever it takes to get their site to number one on the first page for whatever search terms they are trying to target. As long as their methods are ethical, there is nothing wrong with doing this because they are earning an honest living with their marketing efforts. It only becomes a problem when Google changes the rules. And sooner or later, Google WILL change the rules. The internet is a very dynamic place and nothing stays the same for very long. See http://www.123iwork4me.com/article196.html and http://www.123iwork4me.com/article29.html. If the people to whom this happens have all of their eggs in that one Google-basket, they will have just had the rug pulled out from under their feet and will have gone from top dog to junk-yard dog in no time at all. If they have multiple sites using different marketing techniques promoting different programs and opportunities, they will be able to re-group and re-coup, recover and survive. You know what’s coming next. Don’t put all of your eggs into one basket.

Is That Type At Home Offer Just Another Home Business Scam?

By: Sandi Moses

Maybe. Maybe not.

You have seen offers to “make money by typing at home” or doing “data entry” literally all over the internet. They are on home business sites, on search engine results, and on hate sites. You’ve read testimonials about money that has been made, and you’ve read rants about being ripped off. So who is right? How do you know?

Virtually all of the “make money by typing at home” or “data entry” offers feature essentially the same type of work. If you carefully examine their sales landing page, you will see that the forms you will be filling out look very much like the forms you fill out when you place ads on the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. You will also notice the screenshots of earnings look like Clickbank. There is a good reason for this. If you sign up for these programs you will be submitting ads to the search engines for companies who use Clickbank as a payment processor, and you will be receiving your checks from Clickbank.

The companies who sell this information range from very ethical to rather questionable. Some give you a great deal of training, both written and video, to show you what to do, how to do it, and helpful tips to get you off to a good start. Some offer extras and bonuses so you can diversify. Some offer support.

Some just give you a page to read and that’s about it. You’re kind of on your own to make heads or tails out of it.

Your potential for income is sky high, but I do need to advise you that if you decide to try your hand at this, sign up for an e-mail address through Google’s gmail. The reason I say this is many e-mail providers block messages both to and from these companies, which means your won’t be able to get help or a refund or anything else. With gmail, if you put an address into your contacts, gmail will deliver the messages from that address. Many of the cries of “scam” and “fraud” have been because of blocked messages causing people to incorrectly believe their requests were being ignored.

Now some of you may be thinking that you don’t want to get creative and write ads using your own words, talents and abilities. That was not at all what you had in mind when you read the words “make money by typing at home” or “data entry.” You just want somebody to provide you with info that you input. In almost 4 years of working on the internet, I have encountered only two (2) such companies. Both of them pay piece work, which means you might make more than minimum wage but not much. They both have a waiting list ranging from several months to a year or more. One of them requires you to qualify by passing a test. Both of them offer work 24/7, but it can be seasonal, which means at times there will not be any work for you to do and during those times you will not make any money. Also, when the work is posted, it is first come, first served, which means others may log in and scoop up all the work. It is possible but not likely that you will be able to just work away all day as long as you want.

So is that “make money by typing at home” or “data entry” offer a scam? Probably not. Is it what you had in mind? Perhaps not, but that does not make it a scam. The sales pages I have seen explain quite clearly what you will be doing. People I have talked to, whether they actually use the program or not, felt they got a good value for the money they spent, just because they learned so much about affiliate marketing from the information they bought. In the end, the final decision is up to you. I hope I have helped you to make an informed decision.

Sometimes I just wonder . . . .

Everywhere you look on the internet you see people crying "scam" or "rip-off" in reference to the Type-At-Home bizopp.

There seem to be two major or most common reasons for this.

First, the people don't read the ad copy. I have never seen anything spelled out so clearly as this ad copy which tells you exactly what you will be doing. They even show you pictures. But people don't read and they don't think. Are they idiots? Are they victims of our culture and education system? Are they not taught to understand what they are reading? That used to be called "reading comprehension" but maybe that is not taught anymore. Do they want everything handed to them? Done for them? One person actually understood that she would be placing ads but posted that she thought they would tell her what to say - give her the words - and she would just type those words in. If companies are going to do all that, what do they need her for?

But I digress.

Many people who sign up and then cry foul because they don't read the ad copy don't even get as far as the person mentioned above. They think someone will supply them with something to type into something else. There are jobs like that but pay piece work and are part time at best.

It is not the fault of Type At Home if people can't understand what they read.

The other major cause of the scam and rip-off cries involves e-mail filters. Many providers prevent any communication either to or from these companies or their servers. So when people who sign up then ask for either assistance or a refund they get no response because the e-mail went nowhere. That never occurs to them so they blame Type At Home.

If you are interested in signing up for Type At Home or any other such bizopp, do yourself a great favor and get a Gmail account for your e-mail communications. Put Type At Home (or whoever) in your address book. Then at least you know messages will go through.

If you are interested also check out LegitOnlineJobs. It comes with some pretty incredible bonuses!

Managing Your Time In Your New Home Based Business

Managing Your Time In Your New Home Based Business

By: Sandi Moses

If you are just transitioning from working outside the home to working from home, your thoughts are probably spinning with all the things that you will get done now that you don’t have to waste all that time commuting, getting ready for work, etc. And then a few weeks into your new lifestyle, things just don’t seem to going along as smoothly as you had imagined! What the heck happened, anyway? Well, I certainly hope you didn’t toss that daily planner you used to fill out so religiously! You just might need to pull it out, dust it off, and put it back to work.

In the first place, you are “still working.” You are just working “here” and not “there.” You still need to keep a schedule, and maybe even a daily flow chart. It will just have different items on it. Instead of dealing with meetings, phone calls, reports, face-to-face chats with clients or customers or employees or “the boss,” deadlines, “managing by walking around,” countless interruptions, and all that, you will need to schedule time for focusing on the work you are doing from home, maintaining your home itself, your family, and maybe even YOU!

Take your planner out and come up with something that works for you. You might start with what worked before. In other words, if you had to be ready to leave the house by 7:00 AM, before, then be that way now. You don’t have to be “all dressed up with nowhere to go,” but you can be showered and dressed, etc. Assign times to focus on various activities, keeping in mind that none of this is etched in stone. Build your own individual situation into this, and remember that it is only a guideline. Your boss is not going to call you on the carpet if the schedule doesn’t work unless you stand in front of the mirror and have at it! Remember that you have flexibility that you didn’t have when you were working outside the home. You are the boss and you can arrange you day as you choose, to fit the needs of your family, health, interests, schooling, or whatever reason you chose to work at home. Keep adjusting until you find what works. It may need “re-tweaking” when school starts up or lets out, as days get longer or shorter, as the seasons change, etc. That’s OK!

If you are thinking, “but I quit work so I didn’t have to be scheduled!” remember that this is YOUR schedule, not someone else’s. You can take as many breaks as you need, and you can take them whenever you need them, not when you are told to go. You are working into the schedule YOUR needs and your family‘s needs, not the needs of the company for whom you used to work. Because you have control over what is happening instead of being at the mercy of someone else, you can handle it!

And one last thing: you will never, ever have to come home so exhausted that you stand at the kitchen sink in your coat and high heels doing dishes because you know that if you stop to take them off, you will never get up to get the dishes done. And yes, I actually heard of some poor soul who did that.

God Feeds The Birds Of The Air, But He Doesn’t Drop It Into Their Nests

By: Sandi Moses

It has been said that God feeds the birds of the air, but He doesn’t drop it into their nests. The food is out there in amazing and unfathomable abundance, but they have to go out and get it. They have to go look for it, recognize it as food when they see it, capture it, and eat it. They have to be able to know what is good to eat and what isn’t. Bugs and seeds are nutritious and good to eat. Dryer lint and broken glass are not. Some of that knowledge is pre-programmed instinct. Some of it is learned. The bird works long and hard for its food, often spending most of its day doing little or nothing else. If the bird is a parent, usually a mom, then it must also bring food back to the nest for the children. Even though it might appear that the children just sit and wait for the food to be dropped into their mouths, closer investigation reveals the intense competition for the food. The baby with the biggest mouth and the loudest chirp gets mom’s attention and therefore the food. In some species, the oldest and biggest literally shoves the youngest and smallest out of the nest, thereby removing that source of competition forever. Those who work the hardest survive; those who kick back don’t.

So it is in the world of internet marketing. The opportunities are out there in amazing and unfathomable abundance, but you have to go out and get them. No one is going to drop riches into your lap (or laptop!). No matter how much you might want to believe it, you cannot sign up for some “join free” program and then just sit back, do nothing, and watch the money pile up in your bank account! Think about it for a minute. If everyone joined for free and then did nothing, where is the money going to come from?

There are many legitimate programs and opportunities out there, and many of them invite you to join up for free. That’s good, because it would not be ethical to take your money in order for you to find out what they are about. So don’t be put off by the “join free” offer; just don’t expect miracles if that’s all you do! In the world of internet marketing, you need to be able to recognize hype and worthless fuzz from legitimate solid opportunities. Some of this will require common sense on your part. Some knowledge will have to be acquired by reading and reading and more reading. Birds need to avoid predators such as poisonous snakes, bigger birds, “foxes in the henhouse,” etc. You need to learn to avoid internet predators whose only goal is to move money from your bank account to theirs without giving you anything useful in exchange.

When anyone starts up a business, there are costs involved. These might include such things as rent, utilities, inventory, personnel, etc. With traditional “brick and mortar” business, the cost can be overwhelmingly prohibitive. Some of these can be reduced or eliminated if you are the only person involved and you work out of your garage, off your kitchen table, or whatever. However you still are investing time, effort, and if you are making and/or selling something, you invest in inventory. If your business involves a service rather than a product, there may still be inventory and personnel involved. Think maid service or day care, for example. No matter what, there is always your time and effort. It takes that four letter word, W-O-R-K.

When you start up an internet business, you usually work from your own home on your own computer. So far, so good; no additional costs here. However, you still must advertise and/or market whatever business you are in. Amazingly enough, even though nearly every “brick and mortar” business has a website, there are people who sign up to join an internet business opportunity who balk when it comes to having their own website to market their business. Perhaps they think the cost is prohibitive, or they think they have to understand html or something. But registering a domain name (you know, www.whatever.com or .net or .biz or…) can be done for $5-10 per year (not month) and there is plenty of software available that will allow you to design a web site without knowing anything about any of the computer languages. There are hosting plans that put your site on the internet for $30/month or less - much less. Some even pay you for recruiting others so that you wind up with your site being hosted for free!

So if you are serious about starting an internet business and claiming your share of the abundance that’s available, leave your nest a.k.a. comfort zone, invest your time, your effort, and your money wisely, and let’s get started!

You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included.

Sandi Moses has been involved in internet marketing since November, 2003.
Visit her sites at http://www.123iwork4me.com and http://www.123-home-based-business-works-4-me.com