Building Wealth - Cutting Costs

OK, I want to be clear on this one, I mean you really need to read this book whether you are a salesman or not. I just finished reviewing it and I think it can help anyone that wants more out of life in the way of wealth and simply in the way of happiness. This book was authored by award winning salesmen and entrepreneurs Neil Franklin and Jack Spirko.

They call the book, the definitive book on how to sell and I think they are spot on. It is just that they don’t just teach you how to sell in regard to product as a professional sales person, they also teach you the philosopy of effectively selling yourselves in all walks of life. Here is one of my favorite quotes from the book,

“Deep inside you exists another person. That person has the knowledge, expertise, experience, and wisdom to guide you throughout your life. It’s the real you. We use the term real because most of us live our lives as actors, fulfilling various life roles as we have been conditioned to do so since leaving the innocence of childhood“

This book is indeed deep and even a tiny bit spiritual but it is actually very easy to read and understand. I am going to read it again because like most books that are really deep you get more each time you read through it. Here is another quote that might make that a bit more clear,

“As the child matures, the programming by parents and society continues. Now this young adult has to get admitted into a competitive university, get his first job, or possibly ask for a raise if underpaid. The sad part is that at age five, he would have known exactly what to do and would have asked fearlessly.”

Again I highly recommend you have a look at picking up a copy of this book, it is one I can honestly say is worth far more then the cost. Spend just a bit of time learning to adapt some of these principals to your life and indeed the return of investment will be huge. You can even preview and read the first 12 pages of the book at this link.

~ Cost Cutter

One of my people who knows me as the true author of this blog absoultely hates the “Mandigo Theme” I have on this blog as of right now.

[If you don’t see a blue swirl like mark in the header that means I changed it since this post.]

I honestly have been using it for one main reason and that is a feature it has that I have yet to find another theme that had it built in. That feature is the ability to not display some of the pages in the navigation of the blog.

What I mean is like this, say I want a nice page that says “Thank You for Subscribing to my Blog” after an email opt in. Right now if I use the “Pages Feature” in Word Press and publish it then it shows up in my page navigation. Now I really don’t want a link that says “Thank You for Subscribing to my Blog” across the top of my blog do I? It wouldn’t make sense to a visitor if they clicked on it.

Also perhaps in a given post I want to promote a product and have a sales page for it. May be I just want to create that page in Word Press rather then with software and then upload it. May be it is a “landing page” to be used with PPC or for any one of many reasons I just want a page that is not displayed in the navigation of my site for every visitor. With Word Press I just can’t do it.

So when I found Mandigo despite not really liking the look of it (compared to some other themes) I compromised and used it because it has a tab called “Theme Options” where you can hide or show pages.

Now I have found a much better solution! It is called Page Links Manager, and it is a simple to install plug in that ads a tab to the “Manage” Tab in word press. This plugin takes blogging with word press to a new level creating what ammounts to a real website content management system. With it all you do is deselect the pages you don’t want to display and they don’t show up in the navigation. I put a simple sample page on this blog to show you what I mean, you can see that page here, Page Link Manager Example.

Here is a screen shot of the control panel as you can see it is very easy to use. There are also some folders in the download zip that are for MACOS, just ignore those and upload only the simple .php file and activate and after that it could not be any easier. Great plug in and very big Kudos to the author.

I picked this up from a blog I read about making money online called, MindValley Labs.  The technique is pretty strait forward and should be really effective.  All you do is create a “thank you” message so that anyone that comments on your blog is then immediately asked to join your email list.  That is a nice passive add on form of email marketing isn’t it?
Now to me this is sort of the type of thing we should have all been doing a long time now.  I mean when you get a comment that person is engaged with you there is no better time to ask them to take action then while they are in action.

When I figure out how to do this in Word Press I will post instructions but it may be next week.  If you can figure this out and you blog about it I will post about your blog rather then just telling my readers how to do it.  If you come up with a way to modify Word Press just comment about it below and link to your post on it.  I will then do a full post linking to your post and telling my readers where they can learn how.

Otherwise it will be next week before I have time to get to it.

I talk a lot on this blog about things like saving, investing and making money. I encourage people of every walk of life to spurn consumer debt and build wealth so they can live good even when times are bad. I want to shift gears a bit today though and talk a bit about how to protect your hard earned wealth.

I just got done reading a new book called Asset Protection 101 from Donald Trump’s Trump university and I have to say I learned a lot of new ways to protect the wealth I and my family have worked so hard for. In fact basically I just learned how to be a millionaire in reality and at the same time appear penniless on paper.

Of course I got wealthy in the first place by being a bit of a tight wad and knowing how to spot a good deal. So check out this deal from Trump University, buy a copy of Asset Protection 101 today and you also will get the following bonuses

• 3 J.J. Childers E-Books-valued at $19.95 each, these 3 e-books provide you with even more information about protecting your wealth, saving on taxes, and enjoying a stress-free retirement.
• 5 Special Reports-over 100 pages of extra material to help you build your wealth structure (worth $150!).
• The Top 50 Most Overlooked Tax Deductions-this gift alone could save you thousands of dollars when April comes around again!
• J.J.’s Asset Protection Worksheet-the master’s tool to show you where you may be vulnerable to lawsuits and how you can minimize your tax burden.
• Asset Video - addressing specific asset protection issues, which you can view on your computer
• 20% off the registration fee for Trump University’s Wealth Preservation: Asset Protection Retreat featuring instructor J.J. Childers.

There is also an awesome 1 hour free teleseminar. Now for a 20 dollar book those are some great bonuses. I don’t normally tell my readers to go spend money but in this case it will be a Andrew Jackson that is well used. For more information visit the Trump University Site for the special offer on Asset Protection 101.

It seems like forever ago when I first built my first website. In fact it was more then 10 years ago and at times it is easy to loose touch with how overwhelming it is for a brand new potential internet entrepreneur who wants to get started today. So I though I would share four ways a new person can begin to get started. None are all that hard but none can be complete with out learning more, these are just starting points.

1. Get a blog and do some blogging for dollars. I suggest you try not to be to obvious about this because Google has begun to give the smack down to bloggers that do this. I recommend you never use the name of the companies that you go through to find business on your blog as you are just asking for problems. What I can simply say is go to google and search for “get paid to blog” and you will find many options.

Now you are going to have to blog for about 90 days and do so at least 4 times a month to qualify for these types of services. Once you do however, you can and will make money. I won’t go deeper right now but will make some specific how to details available in the future. Let me just say that anyone that wants to can put an extra 500-1500 a month into their income column can just by doing this.

2. Learn the very basics of website design and publishing, even a tiny bit of say PHP programming can go a long way. Today if you can slap together a website you can make some money. Spend the money for a good design software and take a course on it at a community college or a CEU class at a university. Total investment may be about 1,000 dollars and it may make you a lot more then any degree will. You don’t have to be a great designer but at least be able to build simple sites, you can out source the actual “graphics” work.

Most sites are nothing but a header, a footer and some pictures. Outsource your graphics and build a site. Make your first site about something you just love to talk about and don’t worry if you make a dime on it. All you need at first is the “ability” to build and design sites. Learn how to do it and do not rely on site builders they are to limiting. Today if you can publish content there are countless ways to make money. Oh and you can pay your tuition with one months worth of blogging with suggestion number one above.

3. Start with affiliate marketing and take your skills from item two to build unique websites that provide information, build email lists and sell a few products around a niche. Later you may and honestly should create your own products and keep all your profits but in the beginning you are learning how to market and sell online so dedicate all your efforts to doing so.

A great source of items that others have made that you can sell for about a 50% commission can be found at Click Bank. Odd are there is a product about any subject you can think of. Most sell in the 50 dollar range and pay about 25 dollars in commission. You don’t have to make anything, deal with customers, etc. This is not a long term way to get rich but it is a great way to learn and earn at the same time.

4. Become an adSense Affiliate and a Yahoo Publisher, neither pay the big money they used to but they are both very passive ways to earn some extra money. In time with enough sites anyone can pull in a hundred dollars a month at least. Remember invest 100 dollars a month from age 18-65 in quality funds in a tax deferred or sheltered account and you are a multi millionaire.

The key with adSense and Publisher is make your ads blend into your sites. The inexpensive wine site I reviewed a few days ago does a good job at this. Use back ground colors that match, make the links the same color as links on your site and above all no borders for the ads. Then be sure to put the ads in prominent spots on your site, don’t hide them remember you want people to click on them.

So there you go 4 places to get started with making money online. Each has its on benifits and challenges yet if you commited to learning how to at least do all four in the next 6 months you are well on your way to truly building a solid and passive online income. In time you out source more and more and you don’t do all the work yourself. Yet in the beginning it is important to be sure you understand things, learn what you want and what you don’t want.

More then that learn to make some money asap and again bloggin for dollars is a 100% guaranteed way to start the income flow. From there you can branch out, learn more and keep building.

One more important thing. Don’t buy over priced crap, info courses and other bullshit. There are countless gurus out there, well countless self appointed internet marketing gurus that claim to have the secret to making money. They are mostly full of crap and even the ones with good info unless you learn the fundamentals first it won’t do you any good.

Start with free advice and perhaps use some of the online video courses that don’t cost to much. Learn basics, learn “how to” and then you can develop “what to” on your own terms. I promise you one of the surest ways to kill of your future in making money online is buying one to many 297 or 997 dollar how to courses.

Don’t buy that crap, start with a blog, learn to make sites, practice with affiliate products and sell ad space along the way with Google and Yahoo. Look for solid how to advice and instruction and limit your spending on “education” to 50 dollars or less a month (other then stuff like the college course I mentioned) and you will in time work things out. Gurus exist not to make you rich, they exist to enrich themselves with your dollars.

As you know I am big on three big things; cutting costs, reducing debt and building wealth. The reality is you could simply call that entire formula building wealth as no wealth building formula excludes debt reduction or cutting expenditures. As a long time fan of Donald Trump I was therefore really excited when Donald Trump came out with a new book called, Wealth Building 101 so of course I picked up a copy right away.

Rather then a book by Trump this is a book by some of his personal advisers and a team of hand selected experts. The book was then edited by Trump to gain his final approval. What I really liked is that Wealth Building 101 is not the typical Trump book that is just focused on business owners or even just business people.  This book is full of advice that will help anyone build and preserve wealth even if they are just a routine employee that works hard and wants more for themselves and their families.  As books go I recommend this one highly.

I recently listened to the audio book version of Where Have all the Leaders Gone by Lee Iacocca. The book was pretty good and quite insightful and while Lee has quite a few views I think are bad ideas (raising the gas tax for one) he also has a lot of good ones. The biggest point was that we need more people to pay attention to the political process specifically the younger voters.

In the book he went through all the front runners and left Ron Paul out, not sure when he had written the book I let that go. Yet in the book he talks about setting up a website for the 2008 election where people can rank the canditates on his “9 C’s of Leadership”. In December with very little plubicity that site was launched. You can find it here, http://www.iacocca.com

While I was able to let go of the Ron Paul omission in the book the fact that he now basicly owns the internet for the 2008 race makes his exclusion from the listed candidates unacceptable. To be fair Ron is not really excluded you can and should rank him, he is just hidden from the initial view.

And just who is listed on the main score card!

Joe Biden - Dropped out

Bill Richardson - Dropped out

All the rest included I can’t argue with their inclusion, nor do it it is only Ron Paul’s exclusion while Biden and Richardson are included that tweaks me.

There is a solution though, if you want to make sure Ron is ranked to this,

1. Go to Iaccoca’s Rate the Candidates Site and set up a free account.

2. Click the confirmation email and log in.

3. Click on rate the canditates and while you are doing it in the left margin you will see a link that says, “score more candidates” click that and about a dozen more will show up. Then one from the very bottom you will find Ron. Rank him and any others you wish.

To me Ron is a much a candidate as anyone right now, 10% in Iowa, 8% in New Hampshire and massive support online. It is clear to me that Iacocca must have something against Ron Paul as there is no good reason to exclude him from what is a pretty cool Web 2.0 website while including Biden and Richardson both who are not even in the race!

Now the irony, while there click on “view aggregated score card” and guess who is number one anyway? Ron Paul and who is number two, Alan Keyes who I also think is an outstanding leader! Will such exclusion never end. Anyway I would ask you to consider getting an account at Lee’s site and ranking Paul and the other candidates because the idea is an excellent one.

One more suggestion. There is a link on the score card page to request inclusion of candidates. Please send a NICE but firm message to Iacocca asking that Ron be included based on his campaign and good finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire and pointing out that two candidates they currently display in the default have dropped out may not hurt either.