Control your mind to achieve goals and get more done.
The quickest and easiest way to accelerate the process of saving up money is to increase your income. One great way is to sell your unwanted stuff.
Here are some ways to raise extra cash quickly. Continue reading “Sell Your Unwanted Stuff or things to sell to”
In step 7 we learnt about creating income from trading in your passion, next you will develop your own on-line presence and build a web based business.
Once your sales on eBay reach a certain level you can build an eBay store. This will be your fledgling web based business. Do check that your sales will cover the monthly fees, which will be about £19.99 per month for the basic store (at the time of writing).
The benefit of having an eBay store, is that people who buy an item off you or view your listing, will be prompted to go to the store. This will increase your sales. Your store and individual items will also appear in Google searches. You can also share your store on Social Media such as Facebook, again increasing your exposure to potential buyers.
Again, similar to eBay, once your sales reach a certain level think about an Amazon online store. Again your can share it on Social Media.
Once you are happy that your sales are good, the next step in building your web based business is to actually own your own website. This could be to promote your eBay or Amazon stores, or to sell directly on it. Your website also might have further information about your goods or services.
If people buy your product or service on eBay, what additional information might they also want from your website? Could you sell the information as an E-book? Or could you give the information free to build up an email address database, which you can then market other products to?
Do write some website content first. People visit websites for specific information – for content. So create your content first; write about what people want to know about.
The URL or name of your website should come from the keywords, within your website. What is the site going to do, what is it about? The keywords will come from the content you have written.
If your site is going to be a simple site with a couple of pages then consider using Free Web design software. I’m not going to plug any on here, but you can find them if you search online.
The problem with free sites is that the templates are generic and your URL will have some unwanted suffix plugging someone else’s site. That’s why I recommend learning how to do it yourself. If you are serious about having a web based business it will pay dividends to learn how to develop a basic site yourself.
If you are really serious and want an all-singing-all-dancing site and simply don’t have the time or inclination to DIY, then get a professional to do it for you. Do check out what other sites they have built first and compare their fees with other designers.
It’s important to think about who will host the site for your web based business. When researching for Web hosting, consider these factors:
Capacity – will the host allow you unlimited capacity, so your site can grow over time.
Uptime – does the host have an unbroken record of uptime. The last thing you want is for their server to crash.
Customer service – check their online forum to see what other people are saying.
Easy to use – is there a really easy and intuitive dashboard or does it look cluttered and confusing.
Unlimited urls – can you have many urls under one hosting? You might want more than one site.
Email – do you get an email account to really personalise your website?
Web building – some hosting providers also have web building facilities.
I can recommend Bluehost as a hosting provider, they are reasonably priced and simple to use.
Once you have an online presence there several ways in which people might get to your site. One is through the search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. These search engines want to be able to provide the searcher with the most relevant website page and so they have developed programs that will analyse the content on the web to see what is relevant or not. There are no esoteric dark arts involved in this, it is just a case of simply being relevant.
So your first task in SEO is to provide relevant content. Next make sure you have relevant page titles. If you are designing your own site, make sure you place meta tags and descriptions in the code to help the search engine to find out if your site is relevant. Make the design of your site easy for the search engine to navigate. This means having a good logic sequence. Another way to make your site relevant is by getting incoming links from other related relevant sites, the more of these the better.
Remember the three secrets to great SEO: Relevance, relevance, relevance.
If your site hits the spot and you start getting lots of traffic, you have an opportunity to further develop your web based business. A good way is through using affiliates programs. This is where you provide a link to another website, whose owner will pay you if people click through to their site and buy something. Be careful, though, as you don’t want to drive people away from your site.
Always remember to put a method for visitors to contact you as this could lead to further sales and also an opportunity to provide a service. Which leads us nicely on to the next step: Providing a Service. This will be the subject of the next chapter.
The next step in getting control of your money is to use an income and expenses tracker. This is where you will record every single deposit or withdrawal from each account, including cash spending, bank accounts, savings and credit cards. Continue reading “Create an Income and Expenses Tracker”
We have now arrived at the final step of the process for achieving financial independence: Invest for Income.
All of your income, savings and investments, so far, will be funneled into a system that will invest in property. You will earn rental profits, after you have paid your expenses (see Step Eleven: Invest in Property). It will be tempting to go out and spend this income, as if it were a pay-rise, however, you’re not going to do that. You will invest for income. Continue reading “Invest for Income”
Congratulations if you have now bought your first investment property. Now you have to consider the next phase, property letting. Continue reading “Property Letting”
Where do you find funding to invest in property? Well there’s the buy to let mortgage, but there are also other ways. Continue reading “Find funding”
Why should you pay yourself first and what does this mean? The road to financial independence requires capital – cool hard cash. Money to give you options and to buy investments. You will only do this when you pay yourself first. Continue reading “Pay Yourself First”
Wealth protection is boring. No, I admit it is, but before you start on your road to financial independence and to accumulate your wealth it is important to spend some time and thought on wealth protection before the money starts to come. After all, when is the best time to fix a leaking bucket? Continue reading “Wealth Protection”
On the first Saturday of each month (or whatever day you do your Weekly Review, I do a monthly financial review. It normally takes me another 30 minutes or so. This is where I record my Cash-flow Statement into an A4 notebook. I strongly recommend you start to do the same; I now have monthly Cash-flow Statements going back to 2006.
The purpose of this is extremely important; this is where you will see if you are getting wealthier or poorer. Put the previous month & year at the top of the first page, then divide the page into four equal segments. In the top left write – Income.
Top left is – Income.
Top right is – Expenses
Bottom left – Assets
Bottom Right – Liabilities.
In this segment, record all income for the month, by total for each category for example Salary and Wages, Bank Interest, Dividends, Refunds, Gifts. If you are using a software or on-line tool, this will total everything up for you and take the donkey-work out of it.
In this segment record all expenses you have incurred, again by total for each category for example Mortgage, Groceries, Child Care, Leisure, Transportation etc.
Record every asset you have as of the last day of the month for example Bank and Cash, Investments, Shares, Pension amount, Property Investment etc. You will have done this already, to establish what state your finances are in. Now you will repeat it every month. There is no need to list all of your possessions again, unless you have bought or sold a major item; Just use the figure from the original exercise.
In this segment record each liability for example Credit Card, Loans, Mortgage From this you will be able to work out the following indicators of your wealth.
In the space below the table record the following indicators:
This is simply a sum of your Assets minus any Liabilities. Your aim is to get this number into the positive and increase it.
This is Your Net worth not including your house and mortgage (as you have to live somewhere).
This is Current Assets minus current liabilities. As I said before, current Assets are things like bank and cash or any investments that you could turn into cash quickly. Current Liabilities would be things that are due soon like credit cards, but not long-term debt like mortgages and loans.
If you perform the exercises above religiously every week and month you will begin to get a real handle on your money. As your income increases you will be able to ensure that your expenses don’t spiral as well. You will also be able to budget better and spend only what you intend.
Okay I admit it may take you years to achieve financial freedom, but as my Mum says,
“Those years are going to pass anyway, so you might as well make a start.”
Why do I say that property is the best asset class? Here I will explain. Continue reading “Finding Property”