Protected: The easiest way to make money online

Selling products of services online

In my site philosophy I explain in commandments 4 and 5 that I think every person today should be to some degree “self employed” and have some business of their own. Today the easiest way to make that happen is to make your money with internet marketing and one of the best things you can sell are either software that is down-loadable or informational products that can also be downloaded. With that all you need to do is create the product and market it, there is no inventory, no shipping, no real expenses.

To do it right though one thing you will definitely need though is ecommerce software or what is commonly referred to as an online shopping cart.  I was recently asked to check out a site called AmeriCommerce which provides the tools to do this.  I found there software is very easy to integrate and quite robust at the starting price of only 39 Dollars a month and if you need help with integration or even some help with web design they can provide that as well.

I like this platform for a few reasons

• Easy integrations with Google Check Out and PayPal
• Very stable platform that is simple but also robust for power applications as well
• It is search engine friendly
• Offers a ton of features
• Tracks your ROI (return of investment)
• Allows you to set up affiliates programs
• And a ton more

So check out AmeriCommerce if you need a good shopping cart program and the best news is they offer a 14 day free trial with every program so you can be sure of their quality of service before spending any money, for that they make my list of recommended sites.

A college education does not have to equal a lifetime of debt

Item number one of the philosophy that drives everything we do on this site is “Debt sucks! Stay out of it as much as you can” and I most certainly do include “student loans” in that viewpoint. Now I realize that for some students taking some student loans will be the only way to pay for 4 years of college I just believe you should borrow the absolute minimum amount you can. Student loans are not for supporting a lifestyle they should be used to fund tuition, books and direct educational expenses.

My biggest issue is that many young people are lured into massive student loan debt while billions of dollars in college grants and scholarships go unclaimed every single year. Let me repeat that fact billions of dollars in educational grants and scholarships that never have to be paid back go unclaimed every single year while students go into deep debt to fund their educations.

That is why I am a big fan of websites like Scholarships.com that help put students in touch with those funds. So if you or someone you care about is getting ready to go off to college or is even currently in college please make sure to take advantage of every way to fund that education that is possible. Even just a few partial scholarships and grants can have a massive effect on long term debt.

I have talked to new grads that come out of school over 75,000 dollars in debt. In many places that will buy a person a starter home! Debt is cancer always remember that it must be used as a tool and only as it is needed. Right now this very second there is more then 19 Billion dollars waiting at Scholarships.com to help fund educational needs so please make sure to check out their website, set up a free account and find ways other then more debt to fund educational expenses.

For helping young people reduce debt and achieve educational goals Scholarships.com certainly makes my list of recommended sites.

Cut your cost of heating with style

One of our chief goals here at CutThatBill is to help you find creative and cool ways to cut costs so when I was asked to look at a new website about heating and saving money on your costs I was happy to do it. The site is called DESA Online Outlet and they offer great prices on a variety of room heaters. A small room heater is often viewed as something that raises rather then lowers bills but that is not the case when used properly. Match the right heater with the right sized room and you can take the chill out of the room you are in most often and keep your overall thermostat setting lower.

Another cool option is using either ventless gas logs or vented gas logs into your fireplace. I prefer ventless because they provide far more efficient heating and still give you a lot of the feeling of a traditional wood fire. If you really want the look and feel of wood though vented logs will give you more of that. Either of them are more efficient and less costly then wood, (unless you cut your own). One more thing I really liked about DESA Online Outlet is they show you exactly how to cut your winter expenses by 15% rather then just claiming it to be the case.

So if you have a fire place that you don’t like dragging wood in for, would like to cut the cost of your heating or if you just have one room that is always to cold give these guys a visit and see if they have a deal on what you are looking for they certainly make my recommended sites list.

Cut your health insurance costs

I was asked to take a look at a new health insurance website called, Peoples Health Insurance and I have to say I was impressed with their offering. These guys are not a broker but an actual agency that can help you find the best rates and the best plan for your needs. I took a look specificly at health insurance Florida programs because I know by and large Florida is a high market for all insurance needs.

Health insurance costs are something I suggest you take a look at every year whether you are a self insured individual or a business owner, either way health insurance costs tend to be one of your biggest single expenses.  So now is the time early in 2008 take a moment and evaluate your current insurance program and its’ costs.  Take a look at the service they provide and what they cover and don’t cover.  You know my view if you can get the same or better for less money then do it.

Do you need to fund a lawsuit

I am not big on “suing people for profit” and in fact I think that business is a big part of what is wrong with America today. Yet lawsuits have a place and they are a way for individuals and companies to attempt to right a wrong.  Business owners in particular may on occasion have no recourse other to file suit in certain circumstances.

In fact put yourself in this place for a second.  You own a small company that makes software and you come up with a great new product.  Along comes a much bigger company and steals your code, “improves” the product and basically says there is nothing you can do about it.  Such things can and do happen.  Now again you are a small company, facing a much bigger fish and you know they can drag it out and bankrupt you before you ever get a decision.

What recourse do you have?

You might want to consider Commercial Lawsuit Financing to fund your case from LawMax Legal Finance.   There are many times when you can’t get a good attorney on a “contingency basis” which is where the attorney will handle the case and all expenses and only get paid after they win the case for you.   In fact getting an attorney to work that way may be pretty easy in a personal injury case but in a business to business suit it can be very difficult indeed.

Services such as LawMax actually evaluate your case, determine if you have a good case and then if approved they actually loan you the money on that same contingency basis where you only repay the advance if you win your case or reach an out-of-court settlement!.  Again while I don’t think people should be suing for profit it is good to see that a service like this exists to help smaller companies take on their adversaries when necessary.

Why you should be making money online

In the future I will discuss many specific ways that you can make money online. Remember key to our philosophy here at cut that bill is not just reducing expenses but keeping more of your money, investing it wisely and most importantly increasing your cash flow in to your household or business. There is quite simply no easier or more passive way to earn some additional money today then to do it online.

Let me be clear though, “how to do it”, is irrelevant until you get your head around the why and until you grasp how a very “small success” can drastically change your future. Let’s take three very doable numbers and consider how they could impact your life to really grasp how powerful an additional income stream from the internet can be. These figures are

• $100
• $250
• $500

Now trust me making these types of additional monthly income figures is very doable for just about anyone with a willingness to do some investing, learning and work. You will have to work harder in the beginning but such is life. Again though for now let’s stick to why you should and what it can mean. What do each of these figures mean to you,

An extra $100 dollars a month can smash 1200 dollars of out standing additional debt a year which is a good start. Paying off 1200 dollars in additional credit card or other high interest debt actually saves about 5000 dollars of long term interest if it is applied on top of your existing payments. Add 100 dollars to a typical house payment on say a 120,000 dollar mortgage and it can shave GET THIS almost 5 years off a 30 year loan. Invested at 10% and just put away it will add a quarter million to your retirement in 30 years, do it for 40 years and it is now worth about 600K added to your golden years. Remember that is only 100 dollars a month more!

An extra $250 is a lot more powerful as you might imagine, with investing you don’t just get 2.5 times the effect as compounding creates an exponential increase. Invested over 40 years of your working life that 250 dollars a month turns into over 1.5 million at simple 10% interest. Of course you can do much better then that with some creativity and participation in your financial planning. Turn to debt and you can pay down an addition 3000 dollars in debt annually which can save many in credit card debt over 20,000 dollars over the live of debt!

Step up to an additional $500 in income into your monthly cash flow and you can begin to really make a massive impact. Try 6000 dollars in additional debt destroyed per year. This alone would destroy the average of 20K in consumer debt most middle income Americans are living under in just over three years. Get out of that type of debt in three years or less and you can save massive amounts of interest. Investing gets interesting, 30 years of 500 a month at 12% interest equals GET THIS over 5 million dollars. There is even more power though!

500 a month would allow you to buy a modest second home if you wanted for vacations in some beautiful part of rural America. Don’t believe me? Fine I own a beautiful modest second home in an somewhat tourist area of the South up in the beautiful Ozarks. The place sits on 5 acres, is 15 minutes to town, 20 minutes to a beautiful lake and only about 10 people live all the dead end road the place is located on. Everyone owns at least 5 acres so the houses are very spaced apart. My total payment? With taxes and insurance 523 dollars a month. How I just looked hard enough.

Now the real beauty here is what I call my “Plan B”. Let’s say that my companies all go bust, I can’t find a job and my wifes income all of the sudden can’t cover our bills at our primary residence. Now this is not to say that everyone should invest extra income in a second/vacation home, it just begins to open your mind to the types of things you can do to build and preserve wealth with just a few hundred extra dollars of income a month.

Pay yourself first and last

We have all heard the saying, “pay yourself first” if you haven’t you really need a financial tune up.  Pay yourself first simply means just that, set up your savings, retirement, etc., allocate a certain amount from each check then pay into your accounts just like they are a bill.  This is the way all wise investors manage their investments that are funded by their direct incomes.

The other side of the coin though is paying yourself last.  Please note this does not mean you stop paying yourself first!  Here is how it works, this month let’s say you pay into your investments, you pay all your bills and now at the end of the monthly cycle you have a surplus of funds.  Say you generally carry 200 dollars extra between the last pay check of the month and the first check of the new month.   This month ends and you have 425 dollars in your account.

How did it get there?  Who cares!  It is there, perhaps your expenses went down, you made more money, you got a win fall, I don’t care how it showed up there is one and only one things you should do with it.  GET IT OUT OF YOUR CHECKING ACCOUNT NOW!  Move it to savings, dumb it into your IRA, move it to another account, do anything (other then spending it) to get it our of your check book.

Checkbooks are meant to manage money that you intend to spend, you will never save efficiently because your psyche says that this money is spendable.  Move the money to “savings” and even though you can move it back with a mouse click via your online bank account you mind set about this money changes.  You will ask yourself, “do I really need to move this money out of savings?”, “why am I doing this?”, “do I really need to do this now?”, etc.  In the end you will save more and spend less, you will make better decisions.

You don’t need to lock away this money until you are 59 and 1/2 years old in your IRA for this to be effective.  Just the simple act of putting it into a bank savings account will change the way you see this money and that will change how you manage, allocate and spend it.  Do it every single time you end with a surplus, be it a dollar, a dime or a thousand dollars, move it to savings and in a little as a years time you may shock yourself.