Living Large

Are you several months behind on your mortgage?

Is the phone ringing off of the hook?

Do you feel like just giving up?

This is the scenario that is sweeping across America!

The banks made it way too easy over the last few years to get more money out of our homes. Property values kept rising, the real estate market was booming and every homeowner was sitting on a gold mine. This was sure to lead to disaster and it has.

Now with the market declining and home values taking a dramatic plunge, most homeowners are sitting on over inflated mortgages and under valued homes.

The unfortunate part is that a lot of people can no longer afford their mortgage. They are facing the possibility of foreclosure and losing their homes is a very real threat.

The good news is that the banks are realizing this and are now giving homeowners options. Otherwise, the banks will be sitting on all of these homes after foreclosure and will be stuck paying the property taxes and insurances until they sell. Factor in the foreclosure costs, attorney costs, and marketing this is not in their best interest.

One option that is being offered is called a short sale.

This is where the bank allows you to sell your home at or below the current market value in order to get a quick sale, regardless of what you owe. Let’s say that your mortgage is $180,000, but similar homes in your area are selling for $150,000. You can ask for $150,000 and can even possibly take lower bids.

The bank in turn will take a loss on the home, since the sale will not cover the full mortgage, but they will not be stuck with the home. As far as the homeowner, they just walk away after the sale, free and clear.

It is suggested that you hire a real estate agent that is knowledgeable on short sales and preferably has had some experience and success with them. This is in your best interest, since they know the ins and outs and the paperwork involved. Not to mention, since you are already walking away with no money and this option will not cost you anything, it really is a no-brainer.

That’s right, not only does the bank take a loss on the home, but they also negotiate and pay the realtor fees.

Now there are disadvantages, and it is not as wonderful as it sounds. Your credit will suffer, just not as much as a foreclosure. It is estimated that your credit can drop 80-100 points with a short sale. However, it will drop over 200 points with a foreclosure.

You will not be able to buy a new home for up to 2 years with a short sale. It would be 3 years with a foreclosure.

Obviously, with this in mind the best solution would be to catch up your mortgage and then to make on time payments. Since this option is not viable for many people, I would seriously look into a short sale before it is to late.

Just remember that the mortgage company is not the enemy and not to be afraid of them. They are willing to help; you may just have to talk to several people until you find someone to work with. Ask if they have a loss litigation department. These are the people that are ready to and able to help you.

Stay Positive, Stay Strong, and Good Luck!

How do I make money with affiliate marketing?

I’ve tried and tried, but just can’t seem to make it happen.

Does this sound familiar?

If it does, then you may be falling into one of the biggest traps of not being successful in affiliate marketing. Avoiding this trap is also the key to making affiliate marketing work for you.

What is it, you ask? Well, quite simply, it is staying focused and only choosing one program at a time. This sounds obvious, but when you get down to it, it is not practiced.

When you begin with affiliate marketing, it is very exciting and a bit overwhelming.

Just think, You can make money selling someone else’s product without dealing with any customers or any expenses. You don’t need a new product or an initial outlay on your part. You just find a product that sounds good and run with it.

So you look into these products and there are thousands of them. Chances are that you just want to make money and don’t care what you promote, just as long as it adds to your bottom line. Therefore, you just go with one of the top ranked products and you think that you are guaranteed to make money. All of these programs have to be good or they wouldn’t be ranked so high in Clickbank or Commission Junction or whatever program you may be using. Right?

Everyone else is making money with this product, so why can’t I? Right?

Wrong!

This kind of thinking has to stop!

Everyone has different interests and different fields of expertise. What is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander. You must find an area that suits you!

Here is where you need to become focused. You need to first decide on a niche. Pick a subject matter that interests you. Something that you are passionate about, that you will be excited to work with, and that will drive you to keep pushing on. This should be something that you are familiar with and hopefully very knowledgeable about. It needs to be something that you enjoy and something that you are going to know how to market.

The hardest part of affiliate marketing is driving the traffic to your affiliate site.

This will be much easier if you are familiar with, and knowledgeable about the niche.

You can write articles, post on forums, reply to blogs, write newsletters and reviews, and an infinite number of other choices, as long as you know (or at least appear to know) what you are talking about.

This is the key and the most important factor to making money with affiliate products.

You need to promote the affiliate product as if you are an expert in that field, whether you are or not. The best advice would be to buy that product and learn it inside and out.

If it is indeed a good product then you will actually become an expert and promote it as your own. If you feel that you cannot do that with this product, then drop it and try a new one.

Basically, you need to go with what you know, find a good product in that field, and fly with it. Most importantly, keep with it and never give up. As long as you give it your best effort you will succeed. Failure only comes with not trying or giving up!

What do you need to make money as an Affiliate Marketer? How do you make your experiences into an affiliate marketing success story? Is there an easy way to your affiliate fortunes? These are all questions floating around in the minds of Affiliate Marketers.

Affiliate Marketing is considered to be one of the easiest and perhaps most profitable ways to make money online today. There is also a lot of hype about affiliate marketing being easy money and can be run on autopilot. This latter part is not entirely true.

Like any business it does take some work and some monitoring. With a plan in force, and some necessary tools you can see affiliate success. Below are the 3 most important tools that every Affiliate Marketer must have.

Tool #1: Your Own Website

The most important and often overlooked tool in Affiliate Marketing is your own Website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking Website. Your Website is where you will monetize from all of your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly Website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first concentrate your efforts in building a Website that will cater to what your prospects need.

The most important thing you should consider is that almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your Website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, in the Internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation is a good step in building up a loyal consumer base.

Tool #2: Incentives

Competition is extremely fierce in the Internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your adversary to make sure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting. Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects. Offer a newsletter or an e-zine. Better yet, offer incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters. You can present free software, free e-books, access to exclusive services and other freebies that your prospects will find useful.

Tool #3: Link Popularity

The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your Website cannot be emphasized enough. Web traffic is the most important thing necessary to succeed online. You can have the best Website ever seen and offer awesome freebies, but it will do you no good if no one ever sees them.

Attracting people to your site should be the first step you should carry out. Do everything that you can to achieve a high search engine ranking.

Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings. Therefore, to enhance your link popularity, you must launch an aggressive reciprocal link campaign.

One of the best ways to do this – at no cost at all – is by submitting articles to e-zines and free article sites. Include your Website’s link in the resource box and you are in business. You will not only gain exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is. Make your articles original, relevant and useful so that more websites will pick it up and post it.

There are many other tools available to help you succeed online, but these 3 are essential.

Without them you will only be running in circles. Remember to keep moving forward and don’t get discouraged. Tomorrow you just might wake up with money in the bank!

Are you completely overwhelmed by all of the money making websites and emails that you are bombarded with every day?

I know that I am.

Did you know that this is why most people will never succeed with an online business?

This is what I call information overload!

Internet Marketers count on this attribute to make their fortunes. They know that you are looking. They know that you are impressionable and they know that if their sales letter is strong enough then you are hooked. Then what happens to you?

You just found the perfect product or idea, one that is guaranteed to give you the financial freedom and the wealth you are so desperately seeking. You read through the sales page, find your excitement building, order the product or just give your email address and deep down you know that this is “the one”.

You receive the product or e-book, and then what? This is where it ends for most people.

Before you even finish reviewing the product, provided that you even start, you move on to your next great idea. This last “great idea” just sits on your desktop, completely forgotten, collecting virtual dust.

Your days of moving on Must Stop Now!

There are many legitimate ways to make money online and a whole lot of hype revolving around them. Now is the time to make a decision. You can not succeed without a plan.

Find a product–Evaluate it–Research it–Do it–Stick with it!

Do most people fail because of lack of knowledge? Lack of ideas? Lack of resources?

No! Most people fail because of lack of commitment.

Everybody wants to make money online. Everybody wants to fire their boss. Everybody wants to work from home. Everybody does not have what it takes. Commitment.

You are told that you can make a fortune by signing up with such and such program. Pay the small fee, do a few simple steps and watch the money pour in. Bam you’re rich.

There is no such thing!

Whatever you do, whatever you join is going to take hard work, time, and commitment.

The reward, however, can be great. You can work from home, you can make more money online than in any conventional job and you can become financial free.

It is time to join among the ranks of the successful Internet marketers. The fact that you are reading this article shows me that you have what it takes. Chances are that you already have an idea about what you would like to do. Research this idea, build upon and most importantly, do it!

When you are presented with other ideas, think about how they can fit in with your current project. If they don’t, discard them. If they do, then pick out the useful parts and utilize them, ignore the rest

This article is not to sell you on any program. I am not trying to pitch the next big thing. I am trying to have you reach deep inside of yourself and to have you make a decision on what to do. Stop making everyone else rich on your uncertainty. Make a commitment and create your own path to financial freedom.

Make a plan, stay focused, commit and most importantly–never ever give up.

How would you like to be able to afford your own personal secretary?

Someone to respond to all of your email requests, in seconds.

Someone to contact your entire list immediately when you have an exciting offer.

Well, You Can!

This is only a few of the many functions that your auto responder can do for you. Every time you have a new subscriber it is put to work. You would set up a message that they would get instantaneously, no matter what time of day they subscribe. They will then get a series of messages, offers, or newsletters that you have already written. You can even be on vacation!

This is what marketers call putting your business on autopilot. You do the initial work and your auto responder repeats it over and over again. You just sit back and reap in the rewards.

The way that it works is really quite simple. You start a new list, which will simply be a file of contacts. When you create this list a form is created for you to allow prospects to sign up. You can put this form on your Website, your Blogs, My Space, or any other form of communication that you use on the Internet.

Your next step is to create messages for your auto responder to send out at regular intervals set up by you. The first message is usually sent out as soon as they sign up, and I would suggest that it contains a link to a free report or a free offer. The following messages can be set to be sent out every few days, once a week or whatever your heart desires.

The control is all yours.

The great part is that once this is set up, you do not have to do a thing. Your messages will continue going out to 1 subscriber or 10,000 subscribers, just as if you typed it personally to them on that very day.

You can also create a random message at any time. Suppose you came across this great deal today and you want to inform your list immediately. Just go into your auto responder account, set up a broadcast message and send it out to your entire list. You just sent out a great, personalized offer to 10,000 subscribers in 5 minutes.

It just doesn’t get any better than that!

Although auto responders are used primarily for Internet businesses, there are other uses as well. It is just as effective for personal blogs and newsletters. Anything that you do that requires you to continuously contact many people simultaneously requires an auto responder.

Anything else would just be a waste of your valuable time.

There are many forms of auto responders out there. Most hosting companies offer a smaller generic version, which can be fine for smaller needs. I suggest using a separate auto responder account that has more control and better features.

I personally use Aweber along with many other professional Internet marketers. I have found their service to be very easy to use and very effective. You can also Google auto responders to find many more.

In summary, if you do any real work on the Internet or if you regularly need to contact a lot of people, then an auto responder account is the way to go. Anything else would just be way too much work.

The Money is in the List?

I am sure that you have heard this before. If you are involved with Internet marketing, you have probably heard it over and over again. But, Is it True?

Absolutely!!

I am involved with affiliate marketing and the great thing is that you do not need a product to begin making money. There are thousands of viable products available that you can make a great income on.

Whatever your interest or your niche is, there are plenty of products waiting for you to make money with. There is also plenty of room for you to create and promote your own product. Provided of course that it is a good one.

As for affiliate programs, they are very simple to get started with. You just need to sign up for their affiliate program, promote it, and watch the money start rolling in (hopefully). This is all great, but then what? Most likely you would find another product and start all over again.

What if, when you find or create this new product, you already have hundreds or thousands of people to instantly tell about it? You can shoot them a quick email and have immediate money in your pocket. Then you can start advertising this product and create even more people for your next great idea. As you can imagine, this process can take on a snowball effect. Before you know it, your primary income will be from your online business. Now you can work from home!

How do you go about starting a list?

One of the best ways is to create a squeeze page. This is a simple one page website that is designed to capture your visitors name and email address. You can do this by offering a free report, a free subscription to your newsletter, or both.

Once you have their information they are added to your auto responder and they are a part or your list. At this time you would redirect them to your affiliate product website or to your own website with a link.

You have now created a potential customer for your current and your future products.

When you start to email them regularly make sure that you are offering them something of value. Some ideas include: useful information, free reports, free software, and creative ideas that you come across.

You can than suggest your product and offer a link to your product or affiliate page. Build up your product with a strong sales message and watch the sales start pouring in.

One piece of advice, do not oversell to your list. This is a very valuable resource and should not be jeopardized.

You need to give good solid information and only promote worthwhile products. Treat your list as a group of friends that you want to help with the information that you are providing. Not as another dollar in your pocket. Just follow the golden rule and treat your list as you would want to be treated and you will be on your way to success.

Why are we in debt? Why is a majority of all people living with debt beyond their means? We all have debt, this seems to be the nature of life, but why is it that our debt at least equals or exceeds what we can afford?

It is really quite simple. This is what the credit card companies allow, this is what they want and this is how they make it rich. The worst part is that they love for us to fall behind.

Everybody likes to get paid on time, but your creditors actually prefer the opposite. They want you to be late!

Now granted they don’t want you to be too late or to default, but a week or two is just great. Let’s just think what a late payment means to them. You are still paying, but you are a week or two late. Their late fee is $30. They just made $30 for doing nothing. You are already maxed out, so this fee puts you over your credit limit. This earns them another $30 for, again, doing nothing.

You can now make your minimum payment of $20. The math does not work in your favor. Let’s just say that you have $15 in interest for the month. Your total costs are; $15 in interest + $30 late fee + $30 over limit fee = $75 charged to your account. You pay $20, which leaves you $55 worse than when you started and you have nothing to show for it.

This is why credit cards are evil and we must learn to do without them!

The first step in this process is to gather up all of your credit cards and destroy them. You can save one or two, but get rid of the rest. Just pick the ones with the lowest interest rates and preferably no annual fee. Store your select few in a safe place that is not easily accessible.

This may seem extreme, but most people do not have the will power to simply not use the card. They look at their statement, see $50 or $100 dollars in available credit and look at it as free money. There is no such thing.

If you can’t bring yourself to cutting up your cards, at least gather them all up and store them somewhere that would take some effort to get to. A safe deposit box is always a good idea. You can also have someone that you trust hold on to them or hide them.

The key is to not have them accessible for those impulse purchases that we come across every day. Once we pass the moment, chances are that we will realize that we don’t need to make that purchase or probably forgot about it all together. We are now even closer to getting out of debt.

Don’t forget to cancel the cards that you are no longer going to use. Most credit cards have an annual fee, anywhere from $30 to $100. This is wasted money that you can use to apply towards the balance.

Some cards may charge you a closed account fee to persuade you to stay with them. At this time you need to analyze the impact. I recently cancelled a card that is charging me $3.50 a month in closed account fees. My annual fee is $59. 12 months at $3.50 is $42. I am still ahead of the game by $17, or more, if I pay it off within a year. The most important part is that there is no way that I can use that card again and worsen my situation.

Now that the temptation is out of the way you can start paying them off. Just remember to pay at least the minimum, pay all accounts on time, and stop using credit. Now step back and enjoy the road to financial freedom.

The World is in debt. Almost all people and organizations are carrying debt to survive, including the Governments of all of our Nations. This is just a fact of life and this is the way that we were raised. You must acquire debt to survive; there is no other way.

This is entirely not true. In fact if we chose to save for the things that we really want, we would be able to afford a lot more than we already have.

Just think about it for a minute. Without debt, we would only have to pay our “bills”. Rent or Mortgage (Debt, but necessary), Utilities and Insurance. Imagine all of the money that you would have at the end of the month. No credit card payments, no car payment, no personal loans. Now you can afford some of the luxuries that you used to pay for month after month on credit and it won’t cost you three times the cost of the purchase as with credit.

Okay, this sounds great in theory, but it is a little late. Boy, if only you had told me this when I was 18 (like I would really have listened). I am in debt up to eyeballs and there is no way out. This is the way that it is supposed to be. This is the only way that it can be.

Rubbish!

This is the exact reason that everyone stays in debt and why the credit card companies are making fortunes. You can get yourself out of debt and take back control of your life. Of course it will take desire, will power, and perseverance. Most importantly you have to take the first step.

The key to getting out of debt is really quite simple; organization.

You cannot help yourself get out of any situation without first realizing what exactly you are into. This indeed is the first step.

Most people go on day-to-day paying their bills as if it is just a part of life. They get the bill, pay the minimum or a little over and wait for the next one. This is a vicious cycle and it has no end. As long as you keep doing this, is as long as you will stay in debt and stay at the mercy of your creditors.

You first need to gather all of your most recent statements. Write down or input (I use Excel for this) all of your creditors. At this point I would even put in your mortgage holder to give you the whole picture. Find out your current balance for each and input that. Now input your minimum payment for each one. At this point I would not even worry about interest rates.

You now have the whole picture. Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. Now you know what you are up against and you can make a plan. Just remember, try not to take on additional debt.

You are now ready to take control of you financial life. Say goodbye to debt, say hello to life!