Making Money - Online Business Opportunity

My godfather, friend, and mentor - Mr. Rene Lamzon - who works as consultant for various organizations called me one time asking me to remind him of certain sections of the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley (a story about the success of Microsoft and Apple Computers). I asked him why and he told me that it’s for one of the projects that he’s working on that’s related to planning.

A few days after, I paid him a visit to ask him to critique on of the business plans that I have in mind. We had some healthy discussion and eventually we talked about his project. This is where I learned about the Four Methods of Planning and I have to admit that it changed the way I think on how I should write my business plans.

I can’t really tell it any better than he did so I’ll just summarize these four of methods of planning below:

1. Inactive Planning - there is actually no planning involved and you just go along with the flow. This is actually the worst thing that a ‘planner’ can do.
2. Reactive Planning - a plan is made only in reaction to some event or circumstance which triggered the need to actually create a plan. In other words, the damage has already been done well before the plan was made. This helps only in preventing the same problem from occuring in the future.
3. Pre-active Planning - the planner anticipates for the future and creates a plan according to how he predicts the future will happen. Most planners use this method and it works quite well. The problem with this method though is that one doesn’t really know what will actually happen in the future and thus only anticipations are made.
4. Pro-active Planning - in this case, the planner designs his future. He decides what he wants to happen in the future and makes it happen. This way, the planner doesn’t have to worry much on whether the future that he has in mind will happen because is quite certain that it will. This method is the best but is also the most difficult. The best people I can think of who does this are the chess players. Good chess players actually force their opponents to move according to their plan.

After hearing Mr. Lamzon’s explanation, I immediately learned that I’m not actually doing any ‘real’ planning at all. That I am - in reality - just a reactive planner. Discovering this, I immediately set my mind to be a pro-active planner or if that’s too tough for me to tackle at the moment, to at least be a pre-active planner.
I couldn’t thank Ninong Rene more than I could ever imagine. This changed my way of thinking.
As of now, Mr. Rene Lamzon is still in the process of finalizing his project and knowing him, I expect him to come up with more great ideas in the future. Meantime, if you’re running a business or planning to start one, I would recommend that you read some books on business planning

Find more Online Money Making Opportunities

If you’re a regular reader of my blog then you might have already known that I was a former adsense publisher until they kicked me out for no apparent reason. I tried asking them for reconsideration but I was denied. In other words, I am banned from adsense - BUT I DON’T REGRET IT.

I’ve heard people say they’ve earned thousands and thousands of dollars from adsense and I have nothing against that. I’m not saying that their claims are not real. However, I tried out adsense and I’ve learned that making thousands and thousands of dollars from it is not really an easy task. Before I got banned from adsense, I already had a 2-digit amount in my earnings - I think it was $70 or $80 - can’t really remember but hear this - I earned it in a span of more than 2 months!!!

Good thing I found PPP, now I can make money far far better than what adsense can provide. Now, I have $300 in earnings and I’m getting more as I type this message. In other words, I’ve earned more with PPP than what I’ve earned with Adsense in the same span of time.

In this battle of PPP vs Adsense - PPP wins and Adsense is dead.

Ever good parent would want to teach their children good habits and one of those is saving. I’m a father of two lovely daughters and as a business, teaching them how to save money is one of the items in my priority list. But how exactly does one teach a child how to save?

Reminiscing…

I still remember that small piggy bank that I used to have when I was a child. Ok, I can’t really remember if it was a piggy bank but one thing’s for sure - it’s a container with a slot big enough for me to insert the coins that I saved for the day. Guess what? Like many others, I never had the chance of filling my ‘piggy bank’ to its fullest. Only recently did I discover why.

The mistake…

Most parents will teach their children to just put their extra money into their piggy banks without actually teaching them to learn how to control their spending habits. Fact is that most children would be easily tempted to spend their money on something they like. After all, mom and dad will give more money tomorrow so I’ll just save tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and still no money was saved because little Johnny found something else to buy and so the cycle continues.

But it doesn’t end there… eventually, Johnny finds this something to buy that costs more than what mom and dad gives. So he checks out his piggy bank and finds for a way to get the money from inside without breaking it. In essence, Johnny learns to steal from his own savings.

Most of the time, this pattern continues until Johnny becomes a teenager and carries it onto college and on and on and on until he gets old. In the end, Johnny still tries to save each time he remembers what mom and dad told him but sad to say, he doesn’t know how.

The proper way…

I was like Johnny and honestly, until now, I find it hard to save merely because I’m just starting to control my own spending habits. This got me into thinking that if I have to teach my children the virtue of saving, then I have to find out how to do it correctly. Obviously, what I was told when I was young is not working and it’s not working for the majority of the population either.

As I thought and pondered, I realized that the problem was rooted to how I can control my self when it comes to spending. I deviced a plan and tried it on my kids. Here’s what I did…

I told my daughters that I will be giving them a certain amount each school day which they can choose to either spend in school or put in their individual coin banks. I never put any pressure on them with regards to what decision they should make. In other words, I made them decide. In fact, there are days that I encourage them to spend their money just to see how they would react. One day, I asked my younger daughter (Vhi Lopez) if she wants to buy ice cream and I was surprised with her reply. She said, “I don’t have any money with me. I already placed it in my coin bank before we left for school. When my coin bank is full, then I can buy myself all the ice cream I want.”

Vhi’s reply alone proved that my technique was working. She already understood the idea of saving and she found out a way for her to control her spending habits. There are days when Vhi would take her money with her in school and spend it. She happily tells me about it and I never got mad about it but most of the time, she would put her money in her coin bank.

The same is true for Kei (my eldest). She almost always put her money in her coin bank before she left for school. There are a few times when she took her money with her and just chose to spend it.

Adding more spice to the recipe…

To add more excitement into it, I also told them that I will give a gift to the one who fills her coin bank first. This gives them more reason to save and it works pretty much like a real bank in the sense that we earn interests from our bank savings.

Two birds in one stone…

The best part of this is that by teaching my daughers the proper way of saving by controlling their spending habits, I am also preparing them for the next lesson in my list which I plan to teach them by next year. The next lesson that they will be learning is how to invest their money into something so they can make more money from what they already have.

I do believe that children should be taught lessons like these early in their childhood because when it comes to making money - time is a very great factor.

Lastly, if you’re a concerned parent like me, then I would suggest that you teach your kid(s) the proper way of saving now. I also find the book Rich Kid, Smart Kid to be very very helpful. I think you should read it.

Is Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising really worth the try? Are the clicks made on your paid ads really worth the cost? I think so but it’s also a matter of art and strategy. PPC is also a proven way of sending traffic to your website in a very short span of time so if you can’t wait for the result of your SEO campaign then considering starting a PPC campaign would be a good idea. Better yet, you can let others, such as this Austin PPC company manage your PPC campaign for you. These people are experienced in marketing methods such as these and they often guarantee you a good return for you money.

I’ve done it again. I bought another book by Robert Kiyosaki from the Rich Dad series. This time, I bought the Retire Young, Retire Rich book and I have to say that I’m already hooked into reading it moments after I read its introduction. I’m so hooked that I want to finish this blog post as soon as possible and get back into reading Retire Young, Retire Rich. After all, I don’t want to be working for the rest of my lives!

So now, I have three Rich Dad books. They are:

• Rich Dad, Poor Dad
• Cashflow Quadrant
• Rich Dad’s Retire Young, Retire Rich

I strongly recommend all three books as they have all helped me a lot in building my own business. It’s just that Robert Kiyosaki’s way of guiding his readers is so simple that I often find myself asking why I didn’t know about it before.

Do yourself a favor, get them while they’re still hot!

Benjamin Franklin once said that “a Penny Saved is a Penny Earned” and I have to totally agree with him on that. But how can one person make lots of money if he thinks of just a penny? I’ll tell you how.

Here are the simple steps:

1. Think of any idea that can make you earn a penny in per piece net income.
2. Consider the amount of time that you will need to consume in order to make that penny. We will call this selling time.
3. Consider the amount of time that you plan to work on a daily basis. 8 hours / day is a good start. We will call this work time.
4. Divide your work time by the production time and multiply the quotient by $0.01 (one cent). We will call the result daily net income.

Ok, I’ve made overly simple but that’s because I just want to show you my point. Most agree that giving examples is a good so I’ll give you one.

The story…

Jake sells candies. He buys the candies at $0.01 / piece and sells them at $0.02 giving him a net income of $0.01. Jake decides to choose a spot with lots of children so he can sell the candies faster. Let’s say that Jake sells one candy every 5 minutes and Jake works 8 hours / day.

The math…

Our formula is

(Work Time / Selling Time) x Per Piece Net Income = Daily Net Income

which becomes

(8 hours / 5 minutes) x $0.01 = Daily Net Income

We convert 8 hours to minutes for easier computation. 8 hours is 480 minutes

(480 minutes / 5 minutes) x $0.01 = Daily Net Income

96 x $0.01 = $0.96

I had to be joking right? A Daily Net Income of $0.96!!! You can earn a lot more cleaning someone else’s lawn! True. But business starts this way. Every true businessman considers every penny he earns. Furthermore, it doesn’t end there.

The magic 5th step…

By adding a 5th step to the other 4 already outlined above, we will see how things can easily get bigger. Assuming that Jake is a true businessman, he then thinks of ways to multiply his $0.96 so that he can make $96 / day. In other words, he has to multiply his daily net income by 100!

In other words, step #5 is MULTIPLY.

The typical person will just resort to the ‘work harder’ mentality but I have to be honest with you. In a business, that just doesn’t work. Remember this, business is about working less and making more money. If I will just end up working harder in a business, then I’d rather be someone else’s employee.

Jake thinks and comes up with the idea of making use of a vending machine. That way, he can cover more area without having to worry much about manpower. And so, one at a time, Jake invests on vending machines and eventually reaches his 100th vending machine but he doesn’t stop there. He purchases more vending machines and eventually ends up covering all the nearby states with his vending machines.

Reality…

Now, reality isn’t that easy. In real life, Jake will also encounter headaches and problems such as the maintenance of his vending machines and other things such as theft but that’s business. It is also worth mentioning that there is a solution to every problem and so if Jake is wise, he will come up with good solutions to his problems ending up earning more and working less.

Recommendation…

When someone asks me for recommendation and ideas, all I say is “THINK OUTSIDE OF THE BOX.” New and bright ideas are born that way. Don’t stop with candies. Think of something else. Think of something better.

Also, I suggest that you read the books listed below. The books’ author’s ideas about business and their life stories are simply priceless in helping me out.

• Rich Dad, Poor Dad
• Cashflow Quadrant
• Millionaire Next Door

I maintain a web hosting business and I plan to integrate an affiliate program into it in the very near future. “But why create an affiliate program?”, you ask. My answer is pretty straightforward. Affiliate programs are the best way to create a huge marketing force at a fraction of the cost. The tough part about having an affiliate program is the management and monitoring part.

As of now, I’m looking into the affiliate management services of Apogee and I think they provide a good affiliate management tool. Being a programmer myself, I can of course just write my own tool but the businessman in me tells me to save my time and effort and just get on with Apogee.

While hopping from blog to blog, I found this pretty interesting post on the A to Z of making money with your blog. Though the recommendations may not apply to all and most people will choose one over the other, I still think that it’s a good list of money making opportunities that the typical blogger can put on his or her blog. Here’s a quote from the original source:

We’ve come a long way baby. It occurs to me that despite the fact we live in a Web 2.0 economy that may eat itself, there are an ever expanding array of ways to make money with your blog. So many in fact that the list stretches from A to Z. Yup, it’s time for another list… Continued at Micro Persuasion: Making Money with Your Blog from A to Z

Now, I just hope that Yahoo Publisher goes international.

Before anything else, I say Bidvertiser is a promising alternative to adsense.

I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve been kicked out of Google Adsense thrice already. I would consider the first time I was kicked out as legitimate since I did not know the rules and therefore clicked on my own ads. However, I think the second and third time that I was kicked out was either foul play or simply an automated decision made by some computer program that checks for flags. In other words, I didn’t consciously do anything wrong to get kicked out of Google Adsense on my second and third attempt.

A few friends advised me to try signing up with adsense again but I’ve already made my decision to get rid of adsense altogether. My PPC campaigns will now make use of the services of Bidvertiser. It is actually pretty easy to make money with Bidvertiser.

Bidvertiser works much the same as Google Adsense and I find it to be a better alternative to adsense than AdBrite because it has more ads to show. They also allow you to create custom layouts of the ads. I think, you just have to try them out.

Wish me luck!