A Secret Guide To A Huge Income
Who wouldn't love a six figure income coming their way? However, it is highly debatable whether your daily job can offer you that much a salary or not, unless you are one of the top players in your company. For the rest of us, we may need to consider some other means to get to that six figure income. I am going to point out some of the best options with respect to this through this article for you to consider.
Your Own Business
The very first option, and I would add to it as the safest and easiest option, is starting with your own business, at least in my opinion. If you can sort out some time every day to devote to this business, you can very easily see a good amount of money coming in to bank account, and you don't even have to consider quitting your normal job. Find out what your strongest skills are and try to build on them.
For example, if you are good with web designing, you can always start an online web designing business, and design websites for people in your leisure time to earn good money. The investments seen with such an online venture is almost zero, and yet you can add a good deal to your monthly salary with a couple of hours devoted to your own business every day.
Online Marketing
Online marketing is another very successful and profitable business opportunity that you may check out. Your responsibilities are less, investments are very low, risks are also very low, and yet if you are able to go for it in the right way, the results can be very positive. There are a huge number of people today who work as online marketers and earn loads of money on top of their normal salary.
Consider the various options like affiliate marketing, pay per click campaigns, search engine marketing, and so on. Internet marketing may take some time before it shows you the right results, depending on how fast you can establish a market presence. However with time, the results are seen to be very effective.
Investments
The other option is going for investments. You can either go for a long term investment plan which can offer you a highly secured future, or you can think about the investment options in relation to stocks and forex trading. Another good investment option is trading in gold.
However, make sure you are completely aware of these options before you actually put your money into it. Consult a finance company or an investment agency for more information on this before you decide on opting for investment options to get yourself a six figure income.
How to Manage Money ( Tips )
How to Manage Money ( Tips )
Money management tip: The first step before any actual math comes into the picture is to step back and think about the goals you want your money to accomplish. If your dream is to own a house, you may want to start saving early before it's time to actually go house hunting. If retirement is more a goal for you, you will want to check into what retirement options are available to you. Many employers have retirement programs where they match a certain percentage of what you contribute - that's free money right there. Saving has long been considered "paying yourself first", but many people find it's difficult to do in light of all the other expenses they have to pay. Building your future should be the first goal before everything else - you only get one future ahead of you, why not make it as pleasant as possible?
Having a sure goal is the best way to actually build a budget that works. There will be challenges to face, and knowing what the end goal is makes it easier to make the right decisions, instead of what's convenient right here and now. After all, do you really want those designer shoes or would you rather be one step closer to your dream home? Little amounts add up to very big amounts over time -- so pay yourself first!
Track Where Your Money Goes
The quick way is to build a simple spreadsheet, with all income sources in one column, and all expenses in another column. If there's a short term expense in one month, such as renewing license plates or car repairs, you can add it in for just that one month.
Automation also comes into play here - there is plenty of software on the market to help you keep track of where your money is going, along with how much money you have coming in. Price ranges based on how complex the software is. There are plenty of software programs out there that let you keep a simple log of what's coming in and out that cost less than a trip to the movie theater.
The time and effort you spend on building a proper budget from the get go will be paid back to you many times over. With a good budget, achieving financial goals becomes very easy - who doesn't want a nice car, a nice home, a nice vacation (or two!) a year, and the freedom to get more accomplished with their money than ever before? It doesn't have to be a dream on paper anyone - if you take this money management tip into consideration, you'll be well on your way to making your ideal life a reality!
Here Are The Reviews Of The Top Overall Forex Expert
Here Are The Reviews Of The Top Overall Forex Expert
FAP Turbo stirs up a lot of controversy amongst traders and critics alike. Some label it a reliable money maker whereas other, well, don't. After learning that this program was the next in line from the makers of the already successful Forex Autopilot and hearing about the money back guarantee attached to it, I decided to test it for myself so here is the FAP Turbo edition of my forex expert advisors reviews.
I'll start this edition of my forex expert advisors reviews by saying a bit about how FAP Turbo works.
This is an automated forex trade program meaning it automatically enacts and ends trades on your behalf in the market so that you don't have to have the time or experience to do it yourself. This technology was originally reserved for high profile traders to cover small gaps, but since being expanded upon it's become a major hit with rookie and more casual traders.
How it works is largely by scouring the market for profitable trading ops and reacting to changes. Once the program finds what it deems as being a reliable trading opportunity, it enacts that trade accordingly then follows his performance along to ensure that it is constantly earning you money.
Once that trend fluctuate out of your favor, program recognizes this and trades away the now costly investment at the earliest indication to save you from loss. It then repeats the entire process over again so it is constantly analyzing market data and moving trades around with the ultimate goal being of keeping you on the winning end of your trades as often as possible.
I just mentioned how FAP Turbo works, so I should mention now that if you decide to get the program then early on you need to decide whether you want to run the program at home or have them run it on their servers.
The reason for this as I mentioned is because it needs constant access to real-time market data, so as such it requires you to run it on your computer 24 hours a day with Internet access during that time. If you cannot do this for any reason, the publishers offer to run it on their own servers and host it for you for an additional up charge.
Perhaps the best thing about FAP Turbo is it really trades much more conservatively than any other program on the market today. Out of all of the forex expert advisors reviews which I've conducted and written, no program trades more conservatively than this program.
My major complaint I've had with most other programs in the past as that they trade much too aggressively and oftentimes lost more than it would take in because they would go after any and all trades regardless of the risk.
It is clear that the publishers of FAP Turbo kept this in mind when designing their program because it keeps easily the highest standards which a trend must meet before it will invest accordingly. If no trend meets those standards, it continues the search and consequently it's daily trading activity will fluctuate greatly as this all depends on the market in the market conditions for that day.
All of this together gives it easily the greatly winning rate of any other program from any other forex expert advisors reviews in the past.
For all of this, I would recommend FAP Turbo to anyone who either doesn't have the time nor experience to trade effectively themselves in the forex market. Many traders are beginning to embrace this technology because analytical work takes a lot of time to do properly and hiring a broker who will do it for you is expensive and they take commissions on top of what they charge you from your gains, as well.
A Useful Guide And Unique On Making Money From Your Blog
A Useful And Unique Guide On Making Money From Your Blog
This article is seriously long (over 7300 words), but you’re sure to get your money’s worth (hehehe). I’ll even share some specifics. If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to bookmark it or print it out for later.
Do you actually want to monetize your blog?
Some people have strong personal feelings with respect to making money from their blogs. If you think commercializing your blog is evil, immoral, unethical, uncool, lame, greedy, obnoxious, or anything along those lines, then don’t commercialize it.
If you have mixed feelings about monetizing your blog, then sort out those feelings first. If you think monetizing your site is wonderful, fine. If you think it’s evil, fine. But make up your mind before you seriously consider starting down this path. If you want to succeed, you must be congruent. Generating income from your blog is challenging enough — you don’t want to be dealing with self-sabotage at the same time. It should feel genuinely good to earn income from your blog — you should be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed. If your blog provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it. If, however, you find yourself full of doubts over whether this is the right path for you, you might find this article helpful: How Selfish Are You? It’s about balancing your needs with the needs of others.
If you do decide to generate income from your blog, then don’t be shy about it. If you’re going to put up ads, then really put up ads. Don’t just stick a puny little ad square in a remote corner somewhere. If you’re going to request donations, then really request donations. Don’t put up a barely visible “Donate” link and pray for the best. If you’re going to sell products, then really sell them. Create or acquire the best quality products you can, and give your visitors compelling reasons to buy. If you’re going to do this, then fully commit to it. Don’t take a half-assed approach. Either be full-assed or no-assed.
You can reasonably expect that when you begin commercializing a free site, some people will complain, depending on how you do it. I launched this site in October 2004, and I began putting Google Adsense ads on the site in February 2005. There were some complaints, but I expected that — it was really no big deal. Less than 1 in 5,000 visitors actually sent me negative feedback. Most people who sent feedback were surprisingly supportive. Most of the complaints died off within a few weeks, and the site began generating income almost immediately, although it was pretty low — a whopping $53 the first month. If you’d like to see some month-by-month specifics, I posted my 2005 Adsense revenue figures earlier this year. Adsense is still my single best source of revenue for this site, although it’s certainly not my only source. More on that later…
Can you make a decent income online?
Yes, absolutely. At the very least, a high five-figure annual income is certainly an attainable goal for an individual working full-time from home. I’m making a healthy income from StevePavlina.com, and the site is only 19 months old… barely a toddler. If you have a day job, it will take longer to generate a livable income, but it can still be done part-time if you’re willing to devote a lot of your spare time to it. I’ve always done it full-time.
Can most people do it?
No, they can’t. I hope it doesn’t shock you to see a personal development web site use the dreaded C-word. But I happen to agree with those who say that 99% of people who try to generate serious income from their blogs will fail. The tagline for this site is “Personal Development for Smart People.” And unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your outlook), smart people are a minority on this planet. So while most people can’t make a living this way, I would say that most smart people can. How do you know whether or not you qualify as smart? Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you have to ask the question, you aren’t.
If that last paragraph doesn’t flood my inbox with flames, I don’t know what will. OK, actually I do.
This kind of 99-1 ratio isn’t unique to blogging though. You’ll see it in any field with relatively low barriers to entry. What percentage of wannabe actors, musicians, or athletes ever make enough money from their passions to support themselves? It doesn’t take much effort to start a blog these days — almost anyone can do it. Talent counts for something, and the talent that matters in blogging is intelligence. But that just gets you in the door. You need to specifically apply your intelligence to one particular talent. And the best words I can think of to describe that particular talent are: web savvy.
If you are very web savvy, or if you can learn to become very web savvy, then you have an excellent shot of making enough money from your blog to cover all your living expenses… and then some. But if becoming truly web savvy is more than your gray matter can handle, then I’ll offer this advice: Don’t quit your day job.
Web savvy
What do I mean by web savvy? You don’t need to be a programmer, but you need a decent functional understanding of a variety of web technologies. What technologies are “key” will depend on the nature of your blog and your means of monetization. But generally speaking I’d list these elements as significant:
• blog publishing software
• HTML/CSS
• blog comments (and comment spam)
• RSS/syndication
• feed aggregators
• pings
• trackbacks
• full vs. partial feeds
• blog carnivals (for kick-starting your blog’s traffic)
• search engines
• search engine optimization (SEO)
• page rank
• social bookmarking
• tagging
• contextual advertising
• affiliate programs
• traffic statistics
Optional: podcasting, instant messaging, PHP or other web scripting languages.
I’m sure I missed a few due to familiarity blindness. If scanning such a list makes your head spin, I wouldn’t recommend trying to make a full-time living from blogging just yet. Certainly you can still blog, but you’ll be at a serious disadvantage compared to someone who’s more web savvy, so don’t expect to achieve stellar results until you expand your knowledge base.
If you want to sell downloadable products such as ebooks, then you can add e-commerce, SSL, digital delivery, fraud prevention, and online databases to the list. Again, you don’t need to be a programmer; you just need a basic understanding of these technologies. Even if you hire someone else to handle the low-level implementation, it’s important to know what you’re getting into. You need to be able to trust your strategic decisions, and you won’t be able to do that if you’re a General who doesn’t know what a gun is.
A lack of understanding is a major cause of failure in the realm of online income generation. For example, if you’re clueless about search engine optimization (SEO), you’ll probably cripple your search engine rankings compared to someone who understands SEO well. But you can’t consider each technology in isolation. You need to understand the connections and trade-offs between them. Monetizing a blog is a balancing act. You may need to balance the needs of yourself, your visitors, search engines, those who link to you, social bookmarking sites, advertisers, affiliate programs, and others. Seemingly minor decisions like what to title a web page are significant. In coming up with the title of this article, I have to take all of these potential viewers into consideration. I want a title that is attractive to human visitors, drives reasonable search engine traffic, yields relevant contextual ads, fits the theme of the site, and encourages linking and social bookmarking. And most importantly I want each article to provide genuine value to my visitors. I do my best to create titles for my articles that balance these various needs. Often that means abandoning cutesy or clever titles in favor of direct and comprehensible ones. It’s little skills like these that help drive sustainable traffic growth month after month. Missing out on just this one skill is enough to cripple your traffic. And there are dozens of these types of skills that require web savvy to understand, respect, and apply.
This sort of knowledge is what separates the 1% from the 99%. Both groups may work just as hard, but the 1% is getting much better results for their efforts. It normally doesn’t take me more than 60 seconds to title an article, but a lot of experience goes into those 60 seconds. You really just have to learn these ideas once; after that you can apply them routinely.
Whenever you come across a significant web technology you don’t understand, look it up on Google or Wikipedia, and dive into it long enough to acquire a basic understanding of it. To make money from blogging it’s important to be something of a jack of all trades. Maybe you’ve heard the expression, “A jack of all trades is a master of none.” That may be true, but you don’t need to master any of these technologies — you just have to be good enough to use them. It’s the difference between being able to drive a car vs. becoming an auto mechanic. Strive to achieve functional knowledge, and then move on to something else. Even though I’m an experienced programmer, I don’t know how many web technologies actually work. I don’t really care. I can still use them to generate results. In the time it would take me to fully understand one new technology, I can achieve sufficient functional knowledge to apply several of them.
Thriving on change
Your greatest risk isn’t that you’ll make mistakes that will cost you. Your greatest risk is that you’ll miss opportunities. You need an entrepreneurial mindset, not an employee mindset. Don’t be too concerned with the risk of loss — be more concerned with the risk of missed gains. It’s what you don’t know and what you don’t do that will hurt you the worst. Blogging is cheap. Your expenses and financial risk should be minimal. Your real concern should be missing opportunities that would have made you money very easily. You need to develop antennae that can listen out for new opportunities. I highly recommend subscribing to Darren Rowse’s Problogger blog — Darren is great at uncovering new income-generating opportunities for bloggers.
The blogosphere changes rapidly, and change creates opportunity. It takes some brains to decipher these opportunities and to take advantage of them before they disappear. If you hesitate to capitalize on something new and exciting, you may simply miss out. Many opportunities are temporary. And every day you don’t implement them, you’re losing money you could have earned. And you’re also missing opportunities to build traffic, grow your audience, and benefit more people.
I used to get annoyed by the rapid rate of change of web technologies. It’s even more rapid than what I saw when I worked in the computer gaming industry. And the rate of change is accelerating. Almost every week now I learn about some fascinating new web service or idea that could potentially lead to big changes down the road. Making sense of them is a full-time job in itself. But I learned to love this insane pace. If I’m confused then everyone else is probably confused too. And people who only do this part-time will be very confused. If they aren’t confused, then they aren’t keeping up. So if I can be just a little bit faster and understand these technologies just a little bit sooner, then I can capitalize on some serious opportunities before the barriers to entry become too high. Even though confusion is uncomfortable, it’s really a good thing for a web entrepreneur. This is what creates the space for a college student to earn $1,000,000 online in just a few months with a clever idea. Remember this isn’t a zero-sum game. Don’t let someone else’s success make you feel diminished or jealous. Let it inspire you instead.
What’s your overall income-generation strategy?
I don’t want to insult anyone, but most people are utterly clueless when it comes to generating income from their blogs. They slap things together haphazardly with no rhyme or reason and hope to generate lots of money. While I’m a strong advocate of the ready-fire-aim approach, that strategy does require that you eventually aim. Ready-fire-fire-fire-fire will just create a mess.
Take a moment to articulate a basic income-generating strategy for your site. If you aren’t good at strategy, then just come up with a general philosophy for how you’re going to generate income. You don’t need a full business plan, just a description of how you plan to get from $0 per month to whatever your income goal is. An initial target goal I used when I first started this site was $3000 per month. It’s a somewhat arbitrary figure, but I knew if I could reach $3000 per month, I could certainly push it higher, and $3000 is enough income that it’s going to make a meaningful difference in my finances. I reached that level 15 months after launching the site (in December 2005). And since then it’s continued to increase nicely. Blogging income is actually quite easy to maintain. It’s a lot more secure than a regular job. No one can fire me, and if one source of income dries up, I can always add new ones. We’ll address multiple streams of income soon…
Are you going to generate income from advertising, affiliate commissions, product sales, donations, or something else? Maybe you want a combination of these things. However you decide to generate income, put your basic strategy down in writing. I took 15 minutes to create a half-page summary of my monetization strategy. I only update it about once a year and review it once a month. This isn’t difficult, but it helps me stay focused on where I’m headed. It also allows me to say no to opportunities that are inconsistent with my plan.
Refer to your monetization strategy (or philosophy) when you need to make design decisions for your web site. Although you may have multiple streams of income, decide which type of income will be your primary source, and design your site around that. Do you need to funnel people towards an order form, or will you place ads all over the site? Different monetization strategies suggest different design approaches. Think about what specific action you want your visitors to eventually take that will generate income for you, and design your site accordingly.
When devising your income strategy, feel free to cheat. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Copy someone else’s strategy that you’re convinced would work for you too. Do NOT copy anyone’s content or site layout (that’s copyright infringement), but take note of how they’re making money. I decided to monetize this site with advertising and affiliate income after researching how various successful bloggers generated income. Later I added donations as well. This is an effective combo.
Traffic, traffic, traffic
Assuming you feel qualified to take on the challenge of generating income from blogging (and I haven’t scared you away yet), the three most important things you need to monetize your blog are traffic, traffic, and traffic.
Just to throw out some figures, last month (April 2006), this site received over 1.1 million visitors and over 2.4 million page views. That’s almost triple what it was just six months ago.
Why is traffic so important? Because for most methods of online income generation, your income is a function of traffic. If you double your traffic, you’ll probably double your income (assuming your visitor demographics remain fairly consistent). You can screw almost everything else up, but if you can generate serious traffic, it’s really hard to fail. With sufficient traffic the realistic worst case is that you’ll eventually be able to monetize your web site via trial and error (as long as you keep those visitors coming).
When I first launched this blog, I knew that traffic building was going to be my biggest challenge. All of my plans hinged on my ability to build traffic. If I couldn’t build traffic, it was going to be very difficult to succeed. So I didn’t even try to monetize my site for the first several months. I just focused on traffic building. Even after 19 months, traffic building is still the most important part of my monetization plan. For my current traffic levels, I know I’m undermonetizing my site, but that’s OK. Right now it’s more important to me to keep growing the site, and I’m optimizing the income generation as I go along.
Traffic is the primary fuel of online income generation. More visitors means more ad clicks, more product sales, more affiliate sales, more donations, more consulting leads, and more of whatever else that generates income for you. And it also means you’re helping more and more people.
With respect to traffic, you should know that in many respects, the rich do get richer. High traffic leads to even more traffic-building opportunities that just aren’t accessible for low-traffic sites. On average at least 20 bloggers add new links to my site every day, my articles can easily surge to the top of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, and I’m getting more frequent requests for radio interviews. Earlier this year I was featured in USA Today and in Self Magazine, which collectively have millions of readers. Journalists are finding me by doing Google searches on topics I’ve written about. These opportunities were not available to me when I was first starting out. Popular sites have a serious advantage. The more traffic you have, the more you can attract.
If you’re intelligent and web savvy, you should also be able to eventually build a high-traffic web site. And you’ll be able to leverage that traffic to build even more traffic.
How to build traffic
Now if traffic is so crucial, how do you build it up to significant levels if you’re starting from rock bottom?
I’ve already written a lengthy article on this topic, so I’ll refer you there: How to Build a High Traffic Web Site (or Blog). If you don’t have time to read it now, feel free to bookmark it or print it out for later. That article covers my general philosophy of traffic-building, which centers on creating content that provides genuine value to your visitors. No games or gimmicks.
There is one other important traffic-building tip I’ll provide here though.
Blog Carnivals. Take full advantage of blog carnivals when you’re just starting out (click the previous link and read the FAQ there to learn what carnivals are if you don’t already know). Periodically submit your best blog posts to the appropriate carnivals for your niche. Carnivals are easy ways to get links and traffic, and best of all, they’re free. Submitting only takes minutes if you use a multi-carnvival submission form. Do NOT spam the carnivals with irrelevant material — only submit to the carnivals that are a match for your content.
In my early traffic-building days, I’d do carnivals submissions once a week, and it helped a great deal in going from nothing to about 50,000 visitors per month. You still have to produce great content, but carnivals give you a free shot at marketing your unknown blog. Free marketing is precisely the kind of opportunity you don’t want to miss. Carnivals are like an open-mic night at a comedy club — they give amateurs a chance to show off their stuff. I still submit to certain carnivals every once in a while, but now my traffic is so high that relatively speaking, they don’t make much difference anymore. Just to increase my traffic by 1% in a month, I need 11,000 new visitors, and even the best carnivals don’t push that much traffic. But you can pick up dozens or even hundreds of new subscribers from each round of carnival submissions, so it’s a great place to start. Plus it’s very easy.
If your traffic isn’t growing month after month, does it mean you’re doing something wrong? Most likely you aren’t doing enough things right. Again, making mistakes is not the issue. Missing opportunities is.
Will putting ads on your site hurt your traffic?
Here’s a common fear I hear from people who are considering monetizing their web sites:
Putting ads on my site will cripple my traffic. The ads will drive people away, and they’ll never come back.
Well, in my experience this is absolutely, positively, and otherwise completely and totally… FALSE. It’s just not true. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put ads on my site. Nothing. Guess what happened to my traffic when I put up more ads and donation links. Nothing. I could detect no net effect on my traffic whatsoever. Traffic continued increasing at the same rate it did before there were ads on my site. In fact, it might have even helped me a little, since some bloggers actually linked to my site just to point out that they didn’t like my ad layout. I’ll leave it up to you to form your own theories about this. It’s probably because there’s so much advertising online already that even though some people will complain when a free site puts up ads, if they value the content, they’ll still come back, regardless of what they say publicly.
Most mature people understand it’s reasonable for a blogger to earn income from his/her work. I think I’m lucky in that my audience tends to be very mature — immature people generally aren’t interested in personal development. To create an article like this takes serious effort, not to mention the hard-earned experience that’s required to write it. This article alone took me over 15 hours of writing and editing. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to earn an income from such work. If you get no value from it, you don’t pay anything. What could be more fair than that? The more income this blog generates, the more I can put into it. For example, I used some of the income to buy podcasting equipment and added a podcast to the site. I’ve recorded 13 episodes so far. The podcasts are all ad-free. I’m also planning to add some additional services to this site in the years ahead. More income = better service.
At the time of this writing, my site is very ad-heavy. Some people point this out to me as if I’m not aware of it: “You know, Steve. Your web site seems to contain an awful lot of ads.” Of course I’m aware of it. I’m the one who put the ads there. There’s a reason I have this configuration of ads. They’re effective! People keep clicking on them. If they weren’t effective, I’d remove them right away and try something else.
I do avoid putting up ads that I personally find annoying when I see them on other sites, including pop-ups and interstitials (stuff that flies across your screen). Even though they’d make me more money, in my opinion they degrade the visitor experience too much.
I also provide two ad-free outlets, so if you really don’t like ads, you can actually read my content without ads. First, I provide a full-text RSS feed, and at least for now it’s ad-free. I do, however, include a donation request in the bottom of my feeds.
If you want to see some actual traffic data, take a look at the 2005 traffic growth chart. I first put ads on the site in February 2005, and although the chart doesn’t cover pre-February traffic growth, the growth rate was very similar before then. For an independent source, you can also look at my traffic chart on Alexa. You can select different Range options to go further back in time.
Multiple streams of income
You don’t need to put all your eggs in one basket. Think multiple streams of income. On this site I actually have six different streams of income. Can you count them all? Here’s a list:
1. Google Adsense ads (pay per click and pay per impression advertising)
2. Donations (via PayPal or snail mail — yes, some people do mail a check)
3. Text Link Ads (sold for a fixed amount per month)
4. Chitika eMiniMalls ads (pay per click)
5. Affiliate programs like Amazon and LinkShare (commission on products sold, mostly books)
6. Advertising sold to individual advertisers (three-month campaigns or longer)
Note: If you’re reading this article a while after its original publication date, then this list is likely to change. I frequently experiment with different streams.
Adsense is my biggest single source of income, but some of the others do pretty well too. Every stream generates more than $100/month.
My second biggest income stream is actually donations. My average donation is about $10, and I’ve received a number of $100 donations too. It only took me about an hour to set this up via PayPal. So even if your content is free like mine, give your visitors a means to voluntarily contribute if they wish. It’s win-win. I’m very grateful for the visitor support. It’s a nice form of feedback too, since I notice that certain articles produced a surge in donations — this tells me I’m hitting the mark and giving people genuine value.
These aren’t my only streams of income though. I’ve been earning income online since 1995. With my computer games business, I have direct sales, royalty income, some advertising income, affiliate income, and donations (from the free articles). And if you throw in my wife’s streams of income, it gets really ridiculous: advertising, direct book sales, book sales through distributors, web consulting, affiliate income, more Adsense income, and probably a few sources I forgot. Suffice it to say we receive a lot of paychecks. Some of them are small, but they add up. It’s also extremely low risk — if one source of income dries up, we just expand existing sources or create new ones. I encourage you to think of your blog as a potential outlet for multiple streams of income too.
Automated income
With the exception of #6, all of these income sources are fully automated. I don’t have to do anything to maintain them except deposit checks, and in most cases I don’t even have to do that because the money is automatically deposited to my bank account.
I love automated income. With this blog I currently have no sales, no employees, no products, no inventory, no credit card processing, no fraud, and no customers. And yet I’m still able to generate a reasonable (and growing) income.
Why get a regular job and trade your time for money when you can let technology do all that work for you? Imagine how it would feel to wake up each morning, go to your computer, and check how much money you made while you were sleeping. It’s a really nice situation to be in.
Blogging software and hardware
I use WordPress for this blog, and I highly recommend it. Wordpress has lots of features and a solid interface. And you can’t beat its price — free.
The rest of this site is custom-coded HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL. I’m a programmer, so I coded it all myself. I could have just as easily used an existing template, but I wanted a simple straightforward design for this site, and I wanted the look of the blog to match the rest of the site. Plus I use PHP and MySQL to do some creative things outside the blog, like the Million Dollar Experiment.
I don’t recommend using a hosted service like Blogger if you want to seriously monetize your blog. You don’t get enough control. If you don’t have your own URL, you’re tying yourself to a service you don’t own and building up someone else’s asset. You want to build page rank and links for your own URL, not someone else’s. Plus you want sufficient control over the layout and design of your site, so you can jump on any opportunities that require low-level changes. If you use a hosted blog, you’re at the mercy of the hosting service, and that puts the future of any income streams you create with them at risk. It’s a bit more work up front to self-host, but it’s less risky in the long run.
Web hosting is cheap, and there are plenty of good hosts to choose from. I recommend Pair.com for a starter hosting account. They aren’t the cheapest, but they’re very reliable and have decent support. I know many online businesses that host with them, and my wife refers most of her clients there.
As your traffic grows you may need to upgrade to a dedicated server or a virtual private server (VPS). This web site is hosted by ServInt. I’ve hosted this site with them since day one, and they’ve been a truly awesome host. What I like most about them is that they have a smooth upgrade path as my traffic keeps growing. I’ve gone through several upgrades with them already, and all have been seamless. The nice thing about having your own server is that you can put as many sites on it as the server can handle. I have several sites running on my server, and it doesn’t cost me any additional hosting fees to add another site.
Comments or no comments
When I began this blog, I started out with comments enabled. As traffic grew, so did the level of commenting. Some days there were more than 100 comments. I noticed I was spending more and more time managing comments, and I began to question whether it was worth the effort. It became clear that with continued traffic growth, I was going to have to change my approach or die in comment hell. The personal development topics I write about can easily generate lots of questions and discussion. Just imagine how many follow-up questions an article like this could generate. With tens of thousands of readers, it would be insane. Also, nuking comment spam was chewing up more and more of my time as well.
But after looking through my stats, I soon realized that only a tiny fraction of visitors ever look at comments at all, and an even smaller fraction ever post a comment (well below 1% of total visitors). That made my decision a lot easier, and in October 2005, I turned blog comments off. In retrospect that was one of my best decisions. I wish I had done it sooner.
If you’d like to read the full details of how I came to this decision, I’ve written about it previously: Blog Comments and More on Blog Comments.
Do you need comments to build traffic? Obviously not. Just like when I put up ads, I saw no decline in traffic when I turned off comments. In fact, I think it actually helped me. Although I turned off comments, I kept trackbacks enabled, so I started getting more trackbacks. If people wanted to publicly comment on something I’d written, they had to do so on their own blogs and post a link. So turning off comments didn’t kill the discussion — it just took it off site. The volume of trackbacks is far more reasonable, and I can easily keep up with it. I even pop onto other people’s sites and post comments now and then, but I don’t feel obligated to participate because the discussion isn’t on my own site.
I realize people have very strong feelings about blog comments and community building. Many people hold the opinion that a blog without comments just isn’t a blog. Personally I think that’s utter nonsense — the data just doesn’t support it. The vast majority of blog readers neither read nor post comments. Only a very tiny and very vocal group even care about comments. Some bloggers say that having comments helps build traffic, but I saw no evidence of that. In fact, I think it’s just the opposite. Managing comments detracts from writing new posts, and it’s far better to get a trackback and a link from someone else’s blog vs. a comment on your own blog. As long-term readers of my blog know, when faced with ambiguity, my preference is to try both alternatives and compare real results with real results. After doing that my conclusion is this: No comment.
Now if you want to support comments for non-traffic-building reasons like socializing or making new contacts, I say go for it. Just don’t assume that comments are necessary or even helpful in building traffic unless you directly test this assumption yourself.
Build a complete web site, not just a blog
Don’t limit your web site to just a blog. Feel free to build it out. Although most of my traffic goes straight to this blog, there’s a whole site built around it. For example, the home page of this site presents an overview of all the sections of the site, including the blog, article section, audio content, etc. A lot of people still don’t know what a blog is, so if your whole site is your blog, those people may be a little confused.
Testing and optimization
In the beginning you won’t know which potential streams of income will work best for you. So try everything that’s reasonable for you. If you learn about a new potential income stream, test it for a month or two, and measure the results for yourself. Feel free to cut streams that just aren’t working for you, and put more effort into optimizing those streams that show real promise.
A few months ago, I signed up for an account with Text Link Ads. It took about 20 minutes. They sell small text ads on my site, split the revenue with me 50-50, and deposit my earnings directly into my PayPal account. This month I’ll make around $600 from them, possibly more if they sell some new ads during the month. And it’s totally passive. If I never tried this, I’d miss out on this easy extra income.
For many months I’ve been tweaking the Adsense ads on this site. I tried different colors, sizes, layouts, etc. I continue to experiment now and then, but I have a hard time beating the current layout. It works very well for me. Adsense doesn’t allow publishers to reveal specific CPM and CTR data, but mine are definitely above par. They started out in the gutter though. You can easily double or triple your Adsense revenue by converting a poor layout into a better one. This is the main reason why during my first year of income, my traffic grew at 20% per month, but my income grew at 50% per month. Frequent testing and optimization had a major positive impact. Many of my tests failed, and some even made my income go down, but I’m glad I did all that testing. If I didn’t then my Adsense income would only be a fraction of what it is now.
It’s cheap to experiment. Every new advertising or affiliate service I’ve tried so far has been free to sign up. Often I can add a new income stream in less than an hour and then wait a month to see how it does. If it flops then at least I learned something. If it does well, wonderful. As a blogger who wants to generate income, you should always be experimenting with new income streams. If you haven’t tried anything new in six months, you’re almost certainly missing some golden opportunities. Every blog is different, so you need to test things for yourself to see what works for you. Failure is impossible here — you either succeed, or you learn something.
Pick your niche, but make sure it isn’t too small
Pick a niche for your blog where you have some significant expertise, but make sure it’s a big enough niche that you can build significant traffic. My wife runs a popular vegan web site. She does pretty well within her niche, but it’s just not a very big niche. On the other hand, my topic of personal development has much broader appeal. Potentially anyone can be interested in improving themselves, and I have the flexibility to write about topics like productivity, self-discipline, relationships, spirituality, health, and more. It’s all relevant to personal development.
Pick a niche that you’re passionate about. I’ve written 400+ articles so far, and I still feel like I’m just getting started. I’m not feeling burnt out at all. I chose to build a personal development site because I’m very knowledgeable, experienced, and passionate about this subject. I couldn’t imagine a better topic for me to write about.
Don’t pick a niche just because you think it will make you money. I see many bloggers try to do that, and it’s almost invariably a recipe for failure. Think about what you love most, and then find a way to make your topic appealing to a massive global audience. Consider what will provide genuine value to your visitors. It’s all about what you can give.
A broad enough topic creates more potential advertising partners. If I keep writing on the same subtopic over and over, I may exhaust the supply of advertisers and hit an income ceiling. But by writing on many different topics under the same umbrella, I widen the field of potential advertisers. And I expand the appeal of my site at the same time.
Make it clear to your visitors what your blog/site is about. Often I visit a blog with a clever title and tagline that reveals nothing about the site’s contents. In that case I generally assume it’s just a personal journal and move on. I love to be clever too, but I’ve found that clarity yields better results than cleverness.
Posting frequency and length
Bloggers have different opinions about the right posting length and frequency. Some bloggers say it’s best to write short (250-750 word) entries and post 20x per week or more. I’ve seen that strategy work for some, but I decided to do pretty much the opposite. I usually aim for about 3-5 posts per week, but my posts are much longer (typically 1000-2000 words, sometimes longer than 5000 words, including the monster you’re reading right now). That’s because rather than throwing out lots of short tips, I prefer to write more exhaustive, in-depth articles. I find that deeper articles are better at generating links and referrals and building traffic. It’s true that fewer people will take the time to read them, but those that do will enjoy some serious take-away value. I don’t believe in creating disposable content just to increase page views and ad impressions. If I’m not truly helping my visitors, I’m wasting their time.
Expenses
Blogging is dirt cheap.
I don’t spend money on advertising or promotion, so my marketing expenses are nil. Essentially my content is my marketing. If you like this article, you’ll probably find many more gems in the archives.
My only real expenses for this site are the hosting (I currently pay $149/month for the web server and bandwidth) and the domain name renewal ($9/year). Nearly all of the income this site generates is profit. This trickles down to my personal income, so of course it’s subject to income tax. But the actual business expenses are minimal.
The reason I pay so much for hosting is simply due to my traffic. If my traffic were much lower, I could run this site on a cheap shared hosting account. A database-driven blog can be a real resource hog at high traffic levels. The same goes for online forums. As traffic continues to increase, my hosting bill will go up too, but it will still be a tiny fraction of total income.
Perks
Depending on the nature of your blog, you may be able to enjoy some nice perks as your traffic grows. Almost every week I get free personal development books in the mail (for potential review on this site). Sometimes the author will send it directly; other times the publisher will ship me a batch of books. I also receive CDs, DVDs, and other personal development products. It’s hard to keep up sometimes (I have a queue of about two dozen books right now), but I am a voracious consumer of such products, so I do plow through them as fast as I can. When something strikes me as worthy of mention, I do indeed write up a review to share it with my visitors. I have very high standards though, so I review less than 10% of what I receive. I’ve read over 700 books in this field and listened to dozens of audio programs, so I’m pretty good at filtering out the fluff. As I’m sure you can imagine, there’s a great deal of self-help fluff out there.
My criteria for reviewing a product on this site is that it has to be original, compelling, and profound. If it doesn’t meet these criteria, I don’t review it, even if there’s a generous affiliate program. I’m not going to risk abusing my relationship with my visitors just to make a quick buck. Making money is not my main motivation for running this site. My main motivation is to grow and to help others grow, so that always comes first.
Your blog can also gain you access to certain events. A high-traffic blog becomes a potential media outlet, so you can actually think of yourself as a member of the press, which indeed you are. In a few days, my wife and I will be attending a three-day seminar via a free press pass. The regular price for these tickets is $500 per person. I’ll be posting a full review of the seminar next week. I’ve been to this particular seminar in 2004, so I already have high expectations for it. Dr. Wayne Dyer will be the keynote speaker.
I’m also using the popularity of this blog to set up interviews with people I’ve always wanted to learn more about. This is beautifully win-win because it creates value for me, my audience, and the person being interviewed. Recently I posted an exclusive interview with multi-millionaire Marc Allen as well as a review of his latest book, and I’m lining up other interviews as well. It isn’t hard to convince someone to do an interview in exchange for so much free exposure.
Motivation
I don’t think you’ll get very far if money is your #1 motivation for blogging. You have to be driven by something much deeper. Money is just frosting. It’s the cake underneath that matters. My cake is that I absolutely love personal development – not the phony “fast and easy” junk you see on infomercials, but real growth that makes us better human beings. That’s my passion. Pouring money on top of it just adds more fuel to the fire, but the fire is still there with or without the money.
What’s your passion? What would you blog about if you were already set for life?
Blogging lifestyle
Perhaps the best part of generating income from blogging is the freedom it brings. I work from home and set my own hours. I write whenever I’m inspired to write (which for me is quite often). Plus I get to spend my time doing what I love most — working on personal growth and helping others do the same. There’s nothing I’d rather do than this.
Perhaps it’s true that 99 out of 100 people can’t make a decent living from blogging yet. But maybe you’re among the 1 in 100 who can.
On the other hand, I can offer you a good alternative to recommend if you don’t have the technical skills to build a high-traffic, income-generating blog. Check out Build Your Own Successful Online Business for details.
100 Per Cent Remortgage
When an individual refinances the full value of your home, they are essentially taking out all of the value of the property. It will cost. One will typically be required to pay up to three percent of the home’s total value to cover closing costs. Also because one is using up all of the equity in your home, they will, in most cases, have to purchase private mortgage insurance. However, if one works with a sub-prime lender, they may be able to get the insurance waived. Refinancing will provide some tax benefits. Individuals will be able to deduct interest and closing costs.
A 100 percent refinance will be more expensive then a typical refinance. This is because one is borrowing against the full value of their home. To find the very best rates, one will need to do some research. There are plenty of online mortgage websites that will pit lenders against each other to refinance your home. One will be able to compare the rates and terms of different mortgage companies. To speed this process up, an individual should be sure that they have some idea about the value of their home, their credit score, how much debt they have and their income and other assets. This will enable them to receive a realistic quote and give them some idea regarding their options.
When looking to refinance the full value of ones’ home, one may have to be creative with financing. Besides a straight 100 percent refinance, one might consider refinancing two different mortgage loans. This allows individuals to forgo private, mortgage insurance (PMI), which will cost hundreds of dollars a year. Two, separate refinance loans also allows one to structure terms differently for each loan. One loan can be borrowed at a fixed rate, while the other one at an adjustable rate. There are many different options. One is only limited by their imagination, credit score and the condition of the property.
For individuals who need a large sum of money fast, refinancing and cashing out the full value of one’s home, is one way to get it. There are many reasons that an individual may consider doing this. Paying for a child’s college tuition, investing, purchasing more property, paying off debt, or making home repairs are a few reasons. Because one can lose their home if they are unable to pay back the loan, a 100 percent refinance should be carefully considered beforehand. There are likely to be higher monthly payments and private mortgage insurance, so one must be fully confident that will be able to successfully absorb these costs before proceeding.
A 100 percent refinance will be more expensive then a typical refinance. This is because one is borrowing against the full value of their home. To find the very best rates, one will need to do some research. There are plenty of online mortgage websites that will pit lenders against each other to refinance your home. One will be able to compare the rates and terms of different mortgage companies. To speed this process up, an individual should be sure that they have some idea about the value of their home, their credit score, how much debt they have and their income and other assets. This will enable them to receive a realistic quote and give them some idea regarding their options.
When looking to refinance the full value of ones’ home, one may have to be creative with financing. Besides a straight 100 percent refinance, one might consider refinancing two different mortgage loans. This allows individuals to forgo private, mortgage insurance (PMI), which will cost hundreds of dollars a year. Two, separate refinance loans also allows one to structure terms differently for each loan. One loan can be borrowed at a fixed rate, while the other one at an adjustable rate. There are many different options. One is only limited by their imagination, credit score and the condition of the property.
For individuals who need a large sum of money fast, refinancing and cashing out the full value of one’s home, is one way to get it. There are many reasons that an individual may consider doing this. Paying for a child’s college tuition, investing, purchasing more property, paying off debt, or making home repairs are a few reasons. Because one can lose their home if they are unable to pay back the loan, a 100 percent refinance should be carefully considered beforehand. There are likely to be higher monthly payments and private mortgage insurance, so one must be fully confident that will be able to successfully absorb these costs before proceeding.
A way of winnig huge profits
A way of winnig huge profits.
Currency exchange is the trading of one currency against another. Professionals refer to this as foreign exchange, but may also use the acronyms Forex or FX.Currency exchange is necessary in numerous circumstances. Consumers typically come into contact with currency exchange when they travel. They go to a bank or currency exchange bureau to convert their "home currency into , the currency of the country they intend to travel to.
They may also purchase goods in a foreign country or via the Internet with their credit card, in which case they will find that the amount they paid in the foreign currency will have been converted to their home currency on their credit card statement.
Although each such currency exchange is a relatively small transaction, the aggregate of all such transactions is significant. Businesses typically have to convert currencies when they conduct business outside their home country. They exportin goods to another country and receive payment in the currency of that foreign country, then the payment must often be converted back to the home currency.
Similarly, if they have to import goods or services, then businesses will often have to pay in a foreign currency, requiring them to first convert their home currency into the foreign currency. Large companies convert huge amounts of currency each year. The timing of when they convert can have a large affect on their balance sheet and bottom line.Investors and speculators require currency exchange whenever they trade in any foreign investment, be that equities, bonds, bank deposits, or real estate.
Investors and speculators also trade currencies directly in order to benefit from movements in the currency exchange markets. Commercial and Investment Banks trade currencies as a service for their commercial banking, deposit and lending customers. These institutions also generally participate in the currency market for hedging and proprietary trading purposes.
Governments and central banks trade currencies to improve trading conditions or to intervene in an attempt to adjust economic or financial imbalances. Although they do not trade for speculative reasons --- they are a non-profit organization --- they often tend to be profitable, since they generally trade on a long-term basis.
Currency exchange rates are determined by the currency exchange market.A currency exchange rate is typically given as a pair consisting of a bid price and an ask price. The ask price applies when buying a currency pair and represents what has to be paid in the quote currency to obtain one unit of the base currency. The bid price applies when selling and represents what will be obtained in the quote currency when selling one unit of the base currency. The bid price is always lower than the ask price.
Buying the currency pair implies buying the first, base currency and selling (short) an equivalent amount of the second, quote currency (to pay for the base currency). (It is not necessary for the trader to own the quote currency prior to selling, as it is sold short.)
A speculator buys a currency pair, if she believes the base currency will go up relative to the quote currency, or equivalently that the corresponding exchange rate will go up. Selling the currency pair implies selling the first, base currency (short), and buying the second, quote currency.
A speculator sells a currency pair, if she believes the base currency will go down relative to the quote currency, or equivalently, that the quote currency will go up relative to the base currency. After buying a currency pair, the trader will have an open position in the currency pair.
Right after such a transaction, the value of the position will be close to zero, because the value of the base currency is more or less equal to the value of the equivalent amount of the quote currency. In fact, the value will be slightly negative, because of the spread involved.
For more information contact Currency Traders at www.mynetto.com
Finding the Golden Key to Unlimited Wealth
Finding the Golden Key to Unlimited Wealth
Rich people know that you do not get rich earning money from a single source. To earn big bucks and become financially free, you must begin developing multiple streams of passive income. To many people passive income seems like a myth. They have heard of it, they know people who earn it, but they do not understand how simple it can be for anyone to create it. But it is simple and possible for anyone to begin developing multiple streams of passive income.
There are many, many vehicles that people utilize to generate multiple income streams and huge passive incomes. But essentially they all come from two basics types: Business Passive Income and Investments Passive Income. Each one has its own benefits, and one form may interest you more and be better suited for your current situation.
We all know that money can be used to make more money
, but most people do not use this knowledge to their advantage. But savvy wealthy seekers look at every dollar as a "seed" that they can plant that will produce more dollars over time. Investment passive income is earned when you invest your money in reliable investments that earn you returns without you having to do anything.
The other option is to create an automated business, which can be done in thousands of ways, that works on its own to generate profits for you around the clock. This is a great idea for wealth seekers who are just getting started and do not yet have enough money to begin in the investment world. There are many ways to start income streams online with little or no money.
Many businesses are ran without the owner being present, yet the owner is always making money. Owning a business can be a terrific way to build streams of passive income. Just about any business can be automated, and there are plenty of business models that are simple yet powerful that anyone can utilize.
Do you know what a major hobby of the average self made millionaire is? Investing. Wealthy people realize that money can be used to earn more money, and they see every dollar they bring in as a seed that can be planted into a passive income investment that will produce ongoing returns. It can take time to develop enough capital to begin investing enough to earn substantial returns, but learning about various investment vehicles now an give you a greater advantage when you are ready to invest.
There is one huge difference in the mindset of a wealthy individual (or someone who will be wealthy) and those who never seem to get very far with their financial goals. The difference is that successful people realize that by learning from those who have done what they want to do, they will have a major advantage for success. People who think they already know everything usually do not achieve great things. Start now learning all about passive income, as it is the key to unlimited wealth.
How to Live in Heaven on Earth!
How to Live in Heaven on Earth!
The poverty in our World is a reality. Heaven is so far as we can’t terminate poverty. So how can we do and live in Heaven on Earth?
The answer is so simple: The Solidarity. The problem is we use solidarity at a wrong way, that’s why we fail in our goal to fight poverty. So let’s talk about the right way to use the Solidarity to live in Heaven on Earth.
In all countries we have social funds which help retired people to live with a minimum of money. Creating such funds comes from the solidarity idea, but the idea is not well understood or not well used. The social funds extract a limited amount of money from the future retired salary and give it to him when he retired as a limited salary. This is the wrong way using the solidarity.
The right way is extracting very limited amount of money from each employee income and invest it for the benefit of all the retired people of the country. Let me explain: imagine that we extract 0.1% from every income each day then we invest that money for the profit of retired people. Let’s talk with numbers: imagine all incomes in the USA are the same: $1000. The 0.1% of each income is $1. That means if we have only 70,000,000 employees in the USA with that income, we will collect $70,000,000 each day. This is $2,100,000,000 every month. If USA invests that money properly it will terminate poverty and let people live in Heaven on Earth.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/wealth-building-articles/how-to-live-in-heaven-on-earth-1651578.html
Fitness Expert Reveals Top Five Safe Shoveling Tips
Fitness Expert Reveals Top Five Safe Shoveling Tips
We're officially in the midst of another winter season here. We all know people who have tweaked their backs in their zealous attempts to keep a clear driveway; maybe you're one of them.
Today I am going to reveal my top safe shoveling secrets. For those of you who do not live in a cold and snowy part of the country, well, enjoy the warm weather. ☺ Seriously though, you can use these same tips if you do yard work or gardening.
So, without further adieu, here are my top five safe shoveling tips:
1.) Perform a Proper 5-Minute Warm-up Before Shoveling
Just as very few people properly warm-up before intense exercise, so do many people fail to get their bodies ready for the rigors of shoveling snow. Let's face it, snow, especially when it's wet, is a real beast to move around. And if your body is tight and cold then you will dramatically increase your chances of short or long-term injury.
Below is a great shoveling specific five-minute warm-up to get your body ready to rock. There is a special emphasis on opening up the hips and chest to save your back and shoulders, the two most commonly injured areas of broken down shovelers:
Perform each exercise in the following warm-up circuit at a slow, controlled tempo for 50 seconds with a 10 second rest and transition between exercises. Do this warm-up indoors to better increase core temperature and total body blood flow:
Exercise#1- Stationary High Knee Run
Exercise#2- Jumping Claps (modified jumping jacks with arms moving across chest level, palms facing)
Exercise#3- Alternating Forward Lunge, Overhead Reach, and Twist
Exercise#4- Alternating Lateral Lunge with Opposite Hand to Toe Touch
Exercise#5- Prisoner Squats (hands behind head with finger interlocked)
2.) Split Your Stance When Shoveling
Back pain is probably the biggest complaint for avid shovelers. In most cases, a sore or tight back stems from restriction at the hips (see the warm-up above to best remedy this). More specifically, using a parallel stance puts your lower back at a greater risk of injury due to the greater likelihood of excessive flexion of the lumbar spine that often leads to back spasms in the short run and herniated discs in the long run. However, the simple switch to shoveling with a split stance, where one leg is forward and the other leg is back, will not only help prevent this hyper flexion while bending over and moving snow, but will also actively stretch and open up those tight hips at the same time. Be sure to keep things in balance by doing an even number of shovel strokes with both legs forward by alternating every 10 reps or so.
3.) Point Your Toes In Same Direction of Shoveling
This is a continuation of the last tip. Even when you split your stance, you can be susceptible to injury whenever you perform a rotating back extension (e.g. a shovel toss to your rear). So, to further bolster your body, be sure to always shovel snow in the direction that your toes point to minimize excessive spinal rotation that can literally wrench your back.
4.) Shovel EQUALLY to BOTH Sides
This is a further continuation on the last two tips. Another big mistake people make is that they always shovel to their strong sides causing further strength and flexibility imbalances that can put your body at greater risk for injury. So, we now know you want to split your stance and shovel in the direction your toes are pointing, but you should also be sure do an equal amount of shoveling on your left AND right. Do 10 shovel tosses to your left with your left leg forward and then do 10 shovel tosses to your right with your right leg forward. Repeat until your driveway or sidewalk is crystal clear.
5.) Buy a Condo or Townhouse
This is my personal favorite, and no, I'm not joking. The great thing about a condo/town house community is that they do all of the outdoor maintenance for your home, including shoveling. Honestly, Janell and I keep saying a house would be nice, but...
The aforementioned tips will go a long way in keeping your body as bulletproof as possible during the next blizzard. Seriously, it's not really cool to get hurt shoveling. It's a sign of a much bigger problem: being overweight and/or highly de-conditioned. And, if you do get hurt shoveling, don't admit it when someone asks why you're in a wheelchair. Just tell them you got hit by a snowplow truck. It makes for a better story and your co-workers or friends won't rip on you for the rest of your days.
