If you have been saving and investing even before this time, you will have a tremendous head start in life.
How can young savvies and their parents help to prepare the ground for financial success ?
Here are four tips:
1. Appreciate and build a relationship with your money: To manage your personal finances is never easy. Your money should be treated as your close friend or associate who can sustain and support you during difficult times and help you celebrate during happy times. Always value yourself, and you will value your money.
2. Work out a shopping strategy before you go shopping: No, it isn’t easy, but you must control your desire to spend unnecessarily when you go shopping. Don’t give in to the temptation to buy everything you like. Choose only the items you really like, or need, and compare prices before you buy anything. It always helps to decide what you will spend money on and what you will only ogle over BEFORE you go shopping. And when you are out there, make sure you stick to your resolve! You could also exchange shopping or bargaining tips with your friends to learn about better discounts or lower prices. You’d be amazed at what you could learn! Young shoppers who grew up seeing their parents using coupons, rebate offers, vouchers and shopping lists will be more inclined to employ those same money-saving strategies, so if you are a parent, plan to pass down such money management skills to your children.
3. Financial planning: If you are a parent, let your teenagers participate in saving for their studies. Ask for their feedback and ideas. Establish a savings fund for their education. Let them see and study household bills and help you prepare payments as this will provide them with an invaluable idea of what real-world finances are all about.
4. Good debt and bad debt: Learning the difference between good debt and bad debt. Avoid unnecessary debt. Instead, build your wealth. Building a line of supportive credit is vital for today’s modern living. However, accumulating credit card debt, paying bills late or avoiding paying bills altogether can negatively affect your credibility. If you have children, show them your credit card statements and reports so they can see what information these reports contain, and the terms and conditions attached to owning a credit card.
A word of caution
Having had the above groundwork done for me, I have long believed that I could maximize my knowledge to gain access to various healthy money-making techniques. I have laid all these techniques down in this eBook for your benefit. Change those hours spent on idle Internet browsing to money-making time! Gaining knowledge is highly encouraged, but it can be an expensive venture. So do not make it an obsession, so that you pursue every avenue to gaining knowledge and spend loads of money on research, courses, seminars etc. but never actually apply all that knowledge to get somewhere. At some point, you need to start. You can’t wait until you have gained all the knowledge there is to gain. You might be too old by then to do anything much. Besides, you could never know everything out there that there is to know. No one could.
What encouraged me to go into Internet marketing
Many subjects relevant to life and living are not taught in school. One of them is ‘How to Get Rich’.
I have always been interested in how to make money. When the recent economic crisis hit, just as I was venturing out to look for a job, I decided to explore possibilities presented by the Internet to make money. However, I did not find success although I knew a thing or two about computers and the Internet until I met Uncle Toby, my mentor. He explained how to set up good websites and blogs based on sound business principles that were bound to succeed. He used to say, “You are highly skilled in setting up websites, and you act and think like a skilled worker, but you lack a sense of entrepreneurship. You think like someone who works for others. When you work for someone else, your salary is determined by that person; a portion of that salary will have to be used to pay annual taxes, another for rent, and another still for transportation and yet another for daily expenses. Eventually, you will he left with just enough for your food for the month.
“Entrepreneurs, on the other hand think for themselves. They learn to maximize their manpower or facilities while they supervise to gain income from the work done by others, and enjoy the profits that this brings in. They work to build wealth and not just to earn an income.”
He added, “Change your mindset. Approach your work with a business model. Consider the Internet as a facility AVAILABLE to you, and learn up the marketing tools needed to acquire and utilize all the different marketing techniques related to making money from the Internet. Get your profits to generate WEALTH.”
What he said was a revelation to me! Suddenly, I had a direction and a purpose. I took his advise and attended a seminar conducted by one of his friends who was a trainer. At the seminar I learned how to create Digital Informational Based Products such as eBooks, audio files, MP3s, digital videos, photo stocks, e-learning courses, travel maps, interactive animation etc. These were all products that customers could purchase and download from the Internet. I also learnt that I could market packages by experts on my websites.
The course was fruitful indeed. You can find similar programs and various affiliate products on my website at www.blogbymillion.com There, you will also learn about various techniques like adwords, adsense, affiliate marketing concept etc.
Updated Blogging tips to get hubbing on the Internet
This eBook is meant to provide you with a clear overview of Internet marketing through blogging and social networking and also the steps to help you succeed in cyberspace. In addition, you will learn how to use the World Wide Web to your advantage and get an insight into the exciting world of the Internet. Practice what you learn here, and you will be able to sell your products online as well as get into affiliate marketing through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Once you have perfected your business set-up, it will pretty much run itself with little maintenance and supervision as you will be using an autoresponder. Once customers like your product the word will spread, and traffic to your website will increase.
2 Maximizing the Internet as a marketing medium
All business and marketing principles that apply in the business world globally are also applicable to business online. The only differences between the two are in the speed, cost and ease of execution. Online business is without doubt faster, cheaper and easier to conduct. The Internet is an information highway, and internet marketing is driven by information. It offers a faster, easier and more cost effective way to market and sell your product to a wider clientele using latest technological innovations and services not available offline. Worldwide, there are a potential 980 million users of the Internet, and they are accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Even better, their number grows by the thousand every day.
The Internet has surely changed the way we do business. It does not require a large capital or high operating expenses. Anyone can use it to start a business. All one needs is a laptop, fast broadband connection and a saleable idea. With the right technique and method, anyone can generate a fortune online. The four tips I shared in the first chapter of this book lay the foundation for your entrance into Internet marketing. The only other thing you will need is your commitment to acquire the necessary knowledge, attitude and Mindset. Once you have these, you WILL make it!
Setting up a business
You will be borrowing concepts and principles from offline business and marketing strategies, but you will be adapting them to suit the innovations of cyberspace wheeling and dealing. As with any offline business, you will need to deal with parties such as banks and, accountants, and you may need to appoint a company secretary. You will also need to decide on a business structure, which could be based on any one of the following models:
i) Operate as an individual i.e. as a sole trader. This is the simplest way to start, own and run a