In my experience, the top concern is always the start-up cost. No matter what the entry fee, people will act like they don’t have the money. But if you’re good at resolving concerns, you’ll find out whether or not it’s true. If it is, here are 12 ways to raise start-up money you can offer your prospects.

1. Find something to sell. In order to fully maximize my business, I sold my Jeep. It gave me the exact amount I needed.
2. Gather old scrap metal around your property/neighborhood to recycle. Then, find the recycling business that will pay top dollar. Rural areas may not pay as much but will still pay.
3. Ask a family member for a loan and pay them back with your first profits.
4. Use a credit card. If your choice of business doesn’t accept credit cards, you can get a cash advance.
5. Have a yard sale. If you’ve been in your home for more than five years, you probably have plenty of stuff you don’t need that you can sell.
6. Take a loan out from your 401k or retirement funds.
7. Use your home equity. If the start-up costs are a large some of money, borrow against the equity in your home.
8. Become a collection agent. At some point in time, you’ve lent money to someone that hasn’t paid you back. Well, now would be a great time for them to return the favor!
9. If you’re handy, crafty or creative, you can make something and sell it. One year, my wife and I gathered up some old crates, took them apart, and made some rustic kitchen hutches. We sold every one of them at a local craft fair.
10. Bake something and sell it. This is an add on to number nine above.
11. If you’re employed, work overtime. The only secret to this is not spending the money on something else when you get paid!
12. Ask a private investor. Create an actual business plan showing your profit margin and present it to a private lender.

HINT: Another idea would be to take a little from every paycheck for a few months and set it aside. I DON”T recommend this method. Nine times out of ten, if your prospect waits, their excitement to get started in your opportunity will fade, and they’ll end up losing their motivation. Urgency in any home business is key.

If you have any other ideas to suggest, please leave them in the comments, I’d love to hear them.

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1. 3 Ways To Make Money Online Outside of Your Home Based Business
2. 20 Creative Ways to Advertise Your Home Based Business
3. 50 Home Based Business or Work at Home Ideas (Non-Network Marketing)

As imperfect beings, we judge….a lot. Our first impressions aren’t exactly spot on sometimes. If a dirty, filthy guy wearing clothes that are all torn up and greasy walks by me in the grocery store, it would be easy to judge. But chances are, they guy isn’t a bum, he probably just finished working on his Grandmothers car. We can be quick to cast judgement before we have enough knowledge about a person.

The same thing happens in business. You can also teach people how much you are worth, or how much you deserve to be paid for your product or service. It’s the basic law of business: get the lowest possible price for high quality products. If you don’t tell your potential clients how much you want to be paid, then who will? If you don’t know, then you’ll get paid whatever your customers want to pay you. You’ll accept any offer and by doing so, you’ll give your product or service away for less than what it’s really worth. Every time!

First, You Deserve to be Paid

Entrepreneurs tend to fall into a pit of low self worth when things aren’t going so well in their enterprise. So what do they do? They lower they’re prices thinking more customers will be attracted to the new “lower” price tag. When in all actuality, doing that just sends out a signal saying, “I’m desperate!”

Know one thing, you deserve to be paid. If you’re product can help people and is of value, you deserve to be paid for it. Don’t ever sell yourself short. Show the value and your clients will buy.

Get Good at Crunching Numbers

Here’s a great way to gauge whether or not you’re getting paid enough:

If the amount of the offer doesn’t excite you or open your eyes a bit, then it’s probably not worth your time.

During a conversation with a former business associate, he mentioned that at one point, he considered purchasing a Mexican restaurant here in town. But once they crunched the numbers, he would have been buying himself and $35k/year job. Currently, he makes well above that. The numbers didn’t excite him. Too much work for too little.

How Much Should You Be Charging?

Only you and you alone can set your price tag. It’s a combination of a few things.

1. Your Knowledge or Expertise
2. Your Confidence Level
3. The Value You place on your Product or Service
4. The Actual Value of your Product or Service

Whatever the price tag, just make sure the numbers excite you, and once they do, make sure you deliver the value. To me, it’s worth it to pay more for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese because I know that it tastes better and my kids will eat it. People pay more for value, even when offered a lower price. The price tag isn’t everything.

In conclusion, I’d like to give one more word of advice. When you hit the price tag that excites you and motivates you, there’s one great way to tell whether or not you delivered on value…..Referrals! If your customers recommend you, then you know you’re delivering.

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There are so many people who struggle with making money online, and I think their issue is just the lack of simplicity. Making things too complex will demotivate and kill almost anything.

For example, take a look at this stay at home mom. One day, she decided that she would sell books online. So, with $500, a few emails to wholesale book distributors and a website, bam, she was in business. In her own words, “When I mention I am a stay at home mom who sells books online, people’s ears perk up. I bet they would perk up even more if I told them I am going to do over $70,000 this year working 3-4 hours a day. ” E-commerce is a wonderful thing! Here’s her site: http://www.booksmn.com/

Here’s a link to the article I found for some link love: How a Stay at Home Mom Lives Her Dream Selling Books Online.

As for me, I’ve made a ton of money online doing random things. I’ll have to include a list in a future post. From selling tee shirts to affiliate marketing. If my site, product or blog brings value, people will click and buy.

So here are three non-secrets to making money online in whatever niche you decide to pursue:

1 – Provide Real Value

The secret to success in making money online or offline is simply providing true value to the open market. If you’re not offering value, why would anyone visit your site or buy your product. If you choose affiliate marketing as your way to make some cash, provide value on your site to draw in the visitors who will buy. If you have created your own digital product and are selling it for $300 bucks but all you have are two videos from YouTube and some affiliate links, don’t expect great reviews.

My motto when it comes to value is to go above and beyond. Give your customers more than what you would pay for. If it has real value, it will spread on its own.

2 – KISS – Keep it Simple Stupid

No, I’m not calling you stupid….unless you really are. All jokes aside, the most simple business ideas seem to flourish. Example: “A brother in law of mine likes to go to the dunes with his quads and buggies. He also likes to cook barbeque. Hmmm….people probably get hungry at the dunes because there’s not much out there.” Simple!

A bit of warning though, most people make the simplest of things the most difficult to do. I don’t understand it, but it’s true. Sometimes the simple things aren’t the most exciting or result in the biggest accomplishments, but a bunch of them together equal a win.

Second warning, fear of failure may set in. Ignore it. If you fail, you can always go back to your job. But, if you’re passionate about it, and keep it simple, you’ll have nothing to worry about.

3 – Promote, Promote, Promote….and Do It Consistently

To make money doing anything, especially in the very beginning, you have got to get the word out. Being listing in the search results for the name of your website will not bring you much traffic, unless your domain name was something amazing like “Barbeque.com.” Use the tools available to you such as social sites to spread the word. Start of with those you know and trust to share your new business with and ask them to spread the word for you. And don’t be bashful about doing that, if you are bringing value, they will share it for you.

Facebook it up! Use StumbleUpon and twitter. Place classified adsall over the place. Here’s a list of free classified ad sites. Make yourself a shirt with your website on it. Put vinyl lettering on your car spelling out your web address. Set up a website and tell people what you have to offer. Instead of packing so much food to the dunes, they’ll eat at Joe Moes Barbeque shack, but only if they know it’s there.

In conclusion, and in all honesty, the only thing holding anyone back from success in business is their own self. The biggest failure in business is the failure to start.

I hope this information has helped. Comments are welcome!

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No big deal! That’s the way the system works right? You work a job for the year just making ends meet. You may have some extra to go on a vacation or two, buy your kids Christmas presents and maybe get a few nice things for yourself. But, none of it compares to tax return time! “Man, when my tax return gets here I’m gonna buy this or get that. “

I would have to say, and you should agree with me, that if tax return time is your biggest bonus of the year…something needs to change! You are getting paid to stay right where you’re at, dependent. Dependent on a job that isn’t paying you what you’re worth and dependent on a yearly bonus from your government, for struggling through the last twelve months of barely making ends meet. It’s like giving a lolly pop to a child who only gets one a year. The rest of the year, he’s sucking off the remains of everyone else’s lolly pops.

Look, I only bag on tax return time to make a point here. I encourage you, with all the fiber of my being, to change your thinking. Get out or your comfort zone, step into your creative side and start moving forward in a different direction…a direction that will have you paying taxes at the end of the year because you will have earned the income to do so. Instead of acting like everyone else, step out of the mold. Poor people make money to spend it, rich people make money to invest it, utilize it and to make more money with. It’s a tool, not a gift. When you get the wrench, fix the car. Don’t trade it for a tricycle.

If you think about it, it’s actually a privilege to get to pay taxes, because you know you’re helping the government support a family who needs the fifteen percent raise. Which they’ll need until they change their thinking from spending to investing…investing in themselves.

Now in closing, how many business ideas have you had in the past five to ten years? If you say none, I’ve got some great products you can SPEND your money on right now. But for those of you who have, USE your tax return on that. Start that business and move in the direction you are passionate about. If it succeeds, congratulations! You’ve broken the mold you were stuck in. And if it fails, congratulations! Now you know what to do better next time….and guess what? You’ve got another tax return to invest coming your way in exactly one year from time the last one came. You win!

Just remember, poor people spend it, rich people use it to create a better future for themselves and those around them. Which side of the scale are you on? Because on a completely lopsided scale, who’s always above the rest? The minority!

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I know….tough question right? So take a moment to think about it.

So what was your answer? Just for fun, let’s see how you measure up to the answers of others. The most common answer to this question would go something like this: Well, I stand under the tree. I reach out with my arm, open my hand, grasp the apple firmly and yank the apple downward. That my friend, is how I pick an apple!

So was that somewhere close to your answer or were you a bit more analytical in the exact same process? Maybe your answer wasn’t even anywhere close to the same. Maybe yours involved a longer process, the true process of picking an apple.

So here’s the correct way to pick an apple:

1. You pick a spot of land. Preferably on your own land.
2. You dig a hole.
3. You buy the tree.
4. You put the tree in the hole.
5. You water the tree.
6. You fertilize the tree.
7. You brace the tree up to protect it from the wind.
8. You put a fence around the tree to protect it from wildlife, such as Elk and Deer.
9. You spray it with chemicals to protect it from insects.
10. You trim the tree from time to time.
11. You then repeat steps 5 and 6, until one day, your tree finally produces apples.
12. You then, stand under your tree, reach out and pick the apple!

That, my friends, is the way to pick an apple! Would it have been easier if I had given you another question as an example, such as: How do you become wealthy? You don’t just reach out an grab the money. There is a process that comes before you “pick the apple”, or get the money.

So many people, in fact the majority of people, prefer to just simply “pick the apple.” They want someone else to take care of the “process” for them, which is exactly why most people will never get to pick the apple or become wealthy. You can’t just skip to the end. That’s a fairytale. Luckily, with modernization and grocery stores, we have people who take care of “process” so that we don’t technically have to pick the apple. That’s their way to create wealth and unfortunately, you can’t just pick up a box of wealth at the store like you can an apple. You must go through the process of creating wealth for yourself.

I teach others how to go through the process, but you must be willing to put in the time and effort before you can reap the reward. But, the process is proven….meaning, it works. I, along with thousands of others, have done it. It’s a lot like picking an apple, but with a few more steps along the way. If you can follow steps, bring a little creativity and a lot of ambition, you too can become wealthy!

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