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