Thursday, August 30, 2007

HD Stock footage at AlwaysHD

Do you work with video? Have a home studio or maybe working on a film? Perhaps you are making a commercial for your business? If any of this applies to you, then you should check out the affordable prices on hd stock footage video at AlwaysHD.

AlwaysHD offers professional quality High Definition footage in clips that are sold “royalty free,” so you can do whatever you want to with the clips after you buy them.

Imagine getting clips that match your business needs and having professionally shot HD footage for a fraction of what it would cost you to hire someone to create the same kind of footage for you. This is HD quality on a budget the small business can afford. Check the AlwaysHD website out and I think you'll agree.



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This blog post was based on information provided by Blogitive. For more information, please visit Blogitive.com

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Marketing

Something that I want to be sure that I keep up on with here is marketing, particularly my guerrilla marketing information. So there will definitely be a marketing column in the new newsletter format. If you have any ideas or suggestions for marketing please feel free to share them. Under Marketing will also be SEO, since I consider that to be a very effective marketing strategy.

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Letters

I would like to have a letters section here, if anyone has a interest in such a thing let me know and I'll see about implementing it. Maybe as a weekly post, maybe as a sidebar link? It just seems like newsletters should include letters sections so we'll see how it works out and if it is something everyone likes, okay?

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Home Fitness Equipment from Allegro Medical

I think that most of those working at home have a good reason for why they have their work in their home, so it makes sense to me that if you work from home you would probably want to do as much of your other activities from home as possible as well. I know that as a full-time caregiver I work from home so that I can be here if I am needed, so getting a gym membership is not something that I find works for me. It is much better for my lifestyle to get some home fitness equipment that I can use to stock my home gym with and work out at home where I can be here to help my parents if they need me.

If you want to look into home fitness equipment for your home gym then I suggest checking out Allegro Medical at the link above, they have a great selection and you can sort by condition. Just pick the sort by condition tab and select weight loss (or weight gain or any of their other categories for various medical conditions).


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This blog post was based on information provided by Blogitive. For more information, please visit Blogitive.com

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Money

Money is to be a column that will discuss the financial aspects of running a business. How to set up a business account, keeping your personal and business expenses separate, taxes, keeping receipts, and all sorts of other things that might come up in the course of running a business from your home.

I will mostly be tackling the things in this column as they have significance to my own small business, but if you have something you need to find out about feel free to ask, I will see what I can do to help.

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Questions & Answers

I will be running a Questions & Answers column in the new newsletter format, so if there is a question that you have about working at home, please, feel free to ask me about it. I will try to find the answers for you and if I can't I'll admit it and point you in the direction of someone that might be able to help you instead.

This column won't go anywhere without your help, however, so start asking me questions and lets see what I can do to help you out. Okay?

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Cosmetology school

Looking toward cosmetology as a possible profession? Maybe with the plan to one day start up your own salon from your home? I have known people that ran beauty salons out of their home and it seemed to work really well when designed right. Of course, design is only half the equation, you also need to be a good cosmetologist.

The Regency Beauty Institute has nearly 30 campuses in nine states and is viewed as one of the nation’s leading beauty education providers. Their cosmetology school have graduates that are sought by salons throughout the United States, so it would only make sense to look to them for your training if you have dreams of starting your own cosmetology based business.

For more information on what the Regency Beauty Institute can offer you, visit www.regencybeauty.com.



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This blog post was based on information provided by Blogitive. For more information, please visit Blogitive.com

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From the Editor

This is the first issue of the Work at Home Newsletter Newsletter-Blog. This first issue is going to be a week and a half long, which means that it will be running from August 29, 2007 through to September 8, 2007. I have decided to do it this way since it is the introductory issue and its start date falls in the middle of a week.

I will publish new newsletters weekly, with a header posted each Sunday morning that will run at the head of the blog until the following Saturday evening when it will drop down and be replaced by the next header (posted Sunday morning) and the posts for the next issue (posted through that week).

I am excited about this new format and hoping that you will find it to be a good format for the blog. If you have any comments or criticisms please feel free to let me know, I can't improve if I don't know what I am doing wrong.

Sandra
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A new look for the Work at Home Newsletter

For a few weeks I have been thinking about giving my blogs a whole new look, and today I am starting that makeover with several of them, including the Work at Home Newsletter. My plan is to start building them into newsletter format blogs that have articles and columns in separate posts, with a headline index post at the top of the blog for each week's newsletter.

The header post for the week will have a future date on it so it will remain at the top of the posts for the week of the newsletter that the post series covers. It will be posted early Sunday morning and run through late Saturday night when it will be replaced by the next Sunday morning post for the next newsletter.

Diet Tracker had been to begin this trend as a test, but I have decided I like the way it is fleshing out so I am going to dive straight into several blogs adapting to this format.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Learn hypnosis

Look into my eyes.... you *want* to buy my novel....

Okay, so that would be nice, right? To just be able to use the power of suggestion to get someone to buy your stuff. I'm not sure if hypnosis works or not, but Hypnosis Coach, http://www.hypnosiscoach.com/, says that you can learn how to hypnotize people quickly and easily.

Laid out in a standard "this is a sales pitch" format, the Hypnosis Coach website promises that you can secretly control others with the secrets that Hypnosis Coach has to offer. Visit their website to find out more about how you can learn hypnosis and what learning hypnosis can help you to accomplish.

One of the claims that the site makes is that you win any argument argument, which makes me wonder - what would happen if two people that had learned hypnosis got into a fight? Who would win the argument?



Planning a workshop

I picked up a book on building sheds in the hardware store. I am going to design myself a workshop out in the back based on some of the ideas in the book and next summer build me a nice place where I can go out to work on my novels in the yard. That way I can get away from the noise of the house and have my workshop out there to work in rather than have my office tied to the house.

I'll probably have to work inside in the winter, but current plans are to include a fireplace in the work shop so I can keep it heated when I am out there.

Maytag Washing Machines

Who has the time to run a business and clean clothes except for those in a laundry type of business? I can't believe how fast the dirty clothes for just three adults adds up. And if your washer is having problems or breaks down you don't want to waste your time shopping for a new one. Shopping for major appliances, like refrigerators or stoves, usually means you end up driving from store to store in your area to see what is available. Lots of people then head for home to research their finds online and decide which one to buy, then back to the store to make their purchase.

Don't waste time like that. Shop smart by going to the Krillion website. All you have to do is type the appliance type or brand name into the search bar at the top of the Krillion site something like Maytag Washing Machines, then type your city, state and zip code into the next section and hit search. It is that fast and easy to find what is available in your area, then all you have to do is go to one store to make your purchase.


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This blog post was based on information provided by Blogitive. For more information, please visit Blogitive.com

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Found my camera

I found my camera, or rather my mom found it. I had left it on the dash of a car out in the yard. We don't drive that car much and I had got into the thing to get something one day and sat my Canon camera on the dash board. My mom went out to get something out of the car and there sat my camera. Still works good thankfully, I was afraid sitting in sun on dash would have done bad things to it, but it seems to be working good.

Advantages and disadvantages to working at home - time to work

Working from home has advantages and disadvantages. Among the advantages are the ability to set your own working hours and to decide how much you will be working during those hours.

Disadvantages include the old adage about the best laid plans of mice and men.

Yes, you may decide that you will work from X to X time - but what does reality think of those plans?

I keep deciding that I will go to bed at 7 p.m. and wake at 3 a.m. and work through to 9 a.m. on novels and such and the rest of the day to 5 p.m. on websites and such. I do good to fit a couple hours into my day and I am usually half asleep and working at 3 a.m. without having slept before that.

Yes, you can make plans, but there comes a time when you have to revise them to fit the reality of when and how you can manage to work.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Computers and stuff at TechPalooza

How would you like to be able to keep up with the Joneses without having to spend as much as Mr. Jones spends on his toys? In business you need the latest goodies or your business will suffer. That is why I was so excited to see the prices on things at TechPalooza. I'd heard of them before, but never visited the site. I wish now I had visited it before I got my new digital camera second hand. I found a brand new Canon camera at TechPalooza for only a little more than I paid for a broken second hand camera! ::pounds head on desk::

The lovely in their computer products that has my eye right now is one of them tablet computers, you know the kind. The ones that all the nurses have now. TechPalooza has a very nice little Lenovo Tablet computer for under $1,500. Their top sellers list has got a Palm TX listed on it for $253.00, and they have 256MB memory cards as low as $7.

Check the site out before you shop other sites. They're very easy to navigate and have lots of great stuff. I think you'll like what you see. Shop before the end of August and get free shipping too!


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This blog post was based on information provided by Blogitive. For more information, please visit Blogitive.com

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Where does the money go?

What do you do when you get paid for something as a part of your business?

Do you rush out and buy a new toy? Do you pay bills? Do you dump the money into your personal checking or savings account? Do you have a business account it goes into? Do you buy something you've needed for your business?

All of the above are actually good answers, but the trick is in balancing those answers out.

I have done a lot of looking into things to do with what to do when I make some money, and for me the following formula seems to work out all right.

Lets assume for simplicity that I have been paid $100.00 - this is how I would treat that money.

$10.00 - put away for taxes. Yes, I know that is a lot, but if I have extra in that account at tax time then I can spend it on something I want - right?

$15.00 - goes into business. This is the general fund for stuff I need for keeping my business going - things like paper, printer ink, website fees, magazine subscriptions, etc... and includes emergency stash to buy a new computer if I have to.

$5.00 - my savings. No, it's not a lot, but it will slowly add up. If I make $1,000 in a month that means $50 into my savings. In two months it's $100, in a year I have $600 in savings. After 10 years I would have $6,000 just from $5.00 per $100. You can see how that would be much bigger if I was making $50,000 a year. Then we'd have a ten year savings account of ...
(rough calculations)
$50,000 per year = $4,167.00 per month
$4,167 divided by 100 = 41.5
41.5 x $5 = $207.50 saved every month
$207.50 x 12 = $2,490 into savings in one year.
$24,900.00 in savings for 10 years at just saving $5 out of every $100 I make.

$50.00 toward house rent etc. This is the biggest chunk from my money, but it covers rent/utilities/food/etc. So from $1,000 I would be putting $500 into rent and such.

$20.00 sent wherever it is most needed. The remaining $20 out of every $100 is sent to wherever I need it to be sent. This gives me a good percent of leeway for things I may have forgotten.

It is by no means an exact science, and I know sitting here I am forgetting a lot of stuff, but that is the basic breakdown to get you started on thinking about what you might look at in dividing your own money. Build a list of what you have as expenses, assume what you would make in an average month (you can get this by averaging out what you made in the past three to six months) and break it down based on how much you need to pay each expense. Break that down to your average per project earnings and that is where you want to look on allocating money.

For example: say that instead of $100 I got $10? My breakdown becomes....

$1.00 - taxes
$1.50 - business
$0.50 - savings
$5.00 - house etc.
$2.00 - misc

Big key and large text keyboards

Something to look into if you work from home and have trouble with seeing the print on a standard size keyboard or your fingers just can't hit the keys right. They make large text keyboards and big key keyboards. The large text ones have writing on them that covers the entire key rather than just a little letter in the corner. The big keys keyboards have larger keys on the keyboards to make it easier to hit the right key. Two very useful products for anyone that mas trouble with a standard keyboard. I am in the process of getting one of the large text keyboards for my dad, since he has problems with seeing the writing on a standard keyboard.

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Friday, August 24, 2007

Xpander VoIP phone systems

If you have not yet looked into the possibilities of using VoIP phone systems in your small business, then now is the time to start considering it.

Whether a VoIP phone system is something that you need now, or you are just looking toward the future and what your business will need in the months to come, you should look into the control that you can achieve with Xpander VoIP phone systems from Turn-Key call center phone systems to a total office setup that includes everything from voice mail that can merge with your e-mail to call routing, Xpander can help you get your business communicating from anywhere in the contiguous 48 states.


This post was sponsored by Xpander
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This blog post was based on information provided by Blogitive.
For more information, please visit Blogitive.com

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Elance

I was looking for sites that might have work stuff on them and came across Elance. Yes, I know, this is probably nothing new to 99.99% of you out there, but for that .01% that, like me, don't know about this site it looks like a good place to look for freelance work and such. Being a writer I only paid attention to the writing jobs they have, but there is other stuff such as design and consulting etc too, so check this site out.

Can't work in the bedroom, need my office back

Things are going so slow on the office move. It is frustrating the heck out of me. I want my office, but there are other things that need to be done before I get to work on it and I don't want to move into it until it is completely finished otherwise I know from past experience that it will get to the halfway point and stall.

I can wait though, it's only been a couple of days that I have not had my full office. Don't know how I used to share space with my bedroom when right now it is driving me insane to have the bed in the same room as the computer. LOL Just that there is a bed in here as I am working is making me feel half asleep and less productive. I want to fold the bed back down and go back to sleep.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

The Truth About Mortgage

Getting a mortgage is not only a difficult process, it is also a confusing mess. Add to that the lack of knowledge that there is surrounding the reverse mortgage and you have a real disaster waiting to happen. With so many lenders closing their doors or no longer providing loans it is important to know what is going on in the mortgage industry. That is why I think it is great that there are people out there willing to offer mortgage advice on websites such as The Truth About Mortgage.

The Truth About Mortgage is a blog that offers information on everything that has to do with mortgages and even has a bit of information on the reverse mortgage.

Right now it is not easy to find out what all of the aspects of a reverse mortgage is. When my parents went to talk to people about reverse mortgages earlier this year we found out that most of the questions we had to ask had never been considered by the mortgage companies. A few of these questions lead to days of the people we were talking to looking for an answer to what we would have assumed was a straightforward question about the process and what to expect.

To find out more about the business of mortgages check out The Truth About Mortgage website and for a starting point on information on reverse mortgages see their article on Reverse Mortgage to find out the answers to some of the basic questions about what a reverse mortgage is and if it might be right for you.



The preceding post is a paid advertisement for
The Truth About Mortgage


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Found a shelf layout I love

I was browsing through a copy of Reader's Digest Household Hints & Handy Tips and found a picture of a shelf I want to incorporate into my office. Check this picture out -



That angled shelf above the writing surface for putting a book would be perfect in my office as a place to lay out reference materials and notebooks on the worlds I create as I am writing out my novels. I like to work longhand when I am working on the outline for a story, so that would make an ideal layout for my outline area in my office. Add in a place for a oil lamp or candle - since I love writing my lamp or candle light rather than harsh overhead lighting, and I have an ideal place to let the muses play.

Of course - my desk space would not be on them ugly metal wall shelf supports, but I'll show you when I get that part built.

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Moving the office

I've been busy the past couple of weeks getting a polymer clay figure ready to show off at the Alaska State Fair (made the entry deadline with an hour to spare yay!), moving things around to relocate my office and to put a Murphy bed in the room that used to be my office so I can transform that room into my bedroom instead and move the office to connect with the library more directly.

So, now my office is going to be in a new room, but first I need to clear out a few more things in there and then I want to start putting together the shelves that I had been going to put together in this old office room.

I'll be making up a step by step guide to how I transform the room from what it is now to a real office with built in shelving and storage and customized writer's computer desk.

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Sunday, August 05, 2007

DiscountClick Internet Marketer

Looking for internet marketing services that can help you succeed no matter what type of online business you have? Need someone that can help you market your products and services? DiscountClick is an Internet marketing consultant that can help you Build Link Popularity for your website to bring in more traffic, which means more potential customers.

Their Online Marketing Sevices can help you to get better search engine results with search engine optimization that targets the needs of your business.

For more information visit the DiscountClick website and find out how they can help your business succeed.


This post is brought to you by your friends at DiscountClick.

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Business Plan: Product / service offered

The next part of the executive summary is the product or service that you will offer. This is what your business is in business for, the things or services that you provide to others. Explain what those are and define how they may differ from other similar ones. For example if you are offering thingamabobs then you want to explain what thingamabobs are in layman's terms. Don't say they are Just like doohickeys, instead explain it clearly so that someone that has never seen a thingamabob or a doohickey will know what it is you are in business to sell people.

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Friday, August 03, 2007

Investing in Gold

I doubt that there are very many things that you think of first off when someone mentions "Gold", but two things that should be on your thoughts are precious metals and Monex Deposit Company.

Investing in gold and other precious metals is a wonderful way to diversify your investment portfolio and you can find precious metals such as gold bars ready for investing with through the Monex Deposit Company. Their staff of dedicated hard asset professionals are ready to help you with your investment.

Monex has been in business for over 30 years, so you know that it is a name that you can trust and that they will have competitive precious metals prices.



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This blog post was based on information provided by Blogitive. For more information, please visit Blogitive.com.

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Business Plan: Objectives of the company

After the company history, you will want to cover the objectives of the company. What do you see as being the objectives of your business? Do you have anything set in your mind for what those are or do you need to stop for a few minutes and think it over. Maybe look at business plans for companies like yours and see what their objectives are, adopting a few of those as your own.

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Business Plan: Company history

You will want to start your executive summary with a company history to let the reader of the business plan know more about your company and what the past of it is. This is where you explain how the business started out and how it came to the point it is now.

You only want to write a couple of paragraphs on this, though, so be careful in what details you elect to provide.

Some good points might be the year the company started, or what year and which quarter of that year it will be expected to start. Also where the business is located might be a good thing to include here as part of the explanation on its past.

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Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Martin Worldwide mailing lists

I have talked before about Martin Worldwide, a leader in direct marketing mailing lists, and how they can be of benefit to anyone that has a small business that they need to run a direct marketing campaign for. Well, if you have not looked into Martin Worldwide as a source for a direct marketing list, there may never be a better time.

Martin Worldwide has just updated their mailing list database. A potent, proprietary blend of U.S. Response and U.S Consumer databases, ResponseCom™ is a multi-dimensional database with extreme versatility and over 100 demographic and psychographic selects to help you find Business Sales Leads with the most active, responsive, and impulsive buying history.

If you are looking to expand through a direct marketing campaign then you should find out more about Martin Worldwide and its direct marketing products and services. You can and talk to them directly at (888)- 267-3545, or visit their website at the link above.


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This blog post was based on information provided by Blogitive. For more information, please visit Blogitive.com

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Business Plan: The Executive Summary

The second thing you want to write for your business plan is the executive summary. This is a page, maybe two, that details the company. It's history and objectives and talks about the company in regards to the market.

In brief this should include the following, which I will go into more detail on:
  • Company history
  • Objectives of the company
  • Product/service offered
  • The market
  • Competitive advantage - what the business has that makes it stand out from others like it
  • Projected growth (for the company and the market)
  • Key management team members
  • Funding requirements - should include a timeline with details on how the funds are going to be used
We'll get into more information on each of these, but this gives you an idea what you are in for in this next phase of making your business plan.

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Business Plan: Coversheet

When you are ready to start your business plan you will want to begin my making a cover sheet. The cover sheet is something that makes it look, on first glance, as professional and tidy as possible.

If this is for others to see you will want to have just the name of the company and the words business plan centered on the page, perhaps right justified about halfway down.

Example:




The Work At Home Newsletter
Business Plan



Note that the title is in large print and the words 'business plan' are smaller, this is just an identifying page. Alternately you can have it centered halfway down like this:


The Work At Home Newsletter
Business Plan



Or if you desire you can make it reminiscent of a novel coversheet where the title and what it is is followed by some open space then some information on your company, although I think it looks best if the company name and address and such are on the next page or back of the cover page.

If this is just for you you can fancy it up with fancy fonts and pictures and colorful paper, but if this is for someone else stick with good crisp fonts on plain white paper. And get thicker paper, something like 24 lb, because you can see through thinner stuff such as 20 lb when the pages are stacked.

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