I've always been a supporter of people quitting their jobs and working on their own. This recent article in the New York Times is a great example of a mother who needed to earn money while staying at home with her kids and reached that goal by reviewing products on her blog.
ClassyMommy.com blog makes the New York TimesThink about it - movie production houses make money with product placement in their movies. Why can't you make money by reviewing products that you feel others may be interested in and giving your honest opinion. If you come across as a trust worthy person, it might pay off nicely!
Hey All,
It's been a while since I've put up a new post and it's partially because I've been working on several new ideas and products to offer.
With graduation season almost over and the 2009 college graduates flooding the job market, I've also noticed more articles about unemployment being up, the state of California being in trouble due to shrinking budgets, and "useful" information to help all of the unemployed with getting a job.
This morning, I received an e-mail from Yahoo! Jobs and it was pretty pathetic and just overall - terrible advice.
Here's the article:
Top 10 Cities for New Gradshttp://www.theworkbuzz.com/top-10-cities-for-new-grads/job-surveys/2179?siteid=crm_engcontentHere's how they collected their information:
The list is based on the ranking of the top U.S. cities with the highest concentration of young adults (age 20 - 24) from the U.S. Census Bureau (2006), inventory of jobs requiring less than one year of experience from CBcampus.com (2009) and the average cost of rent for a one bedroom apartment from Apartments.com (2009).Does that really make sense?? Why would I want to go to the top U.S. cities where a higher number than average of young adults are all competing for the crap jobs that require less than 1-year of experience?? How much do you think a job pays if they require less than one year of experience? And do you think someone with less than one year of experience (like a college graduate) will be able to compete with last year's graduate or the year before? Is it pretty likely that those graduates are also unemployed and are looking for jobs?
It doesn't take a college graduate to figure out pretty quickly that this article is bunk but unfortunately I'm sure many graduates out there will see the tag-line on Yahoo!'s front page and then read it and consider it a "good source of information".
Oh, but wait - it gets better. The article publishes the average costs of rent... hahaaha. In this economy, I don't think many fresh college graduates working in "sales, customer service, management" can afford A GRAND A MONTH in rent.
1. Indianapolis
Average rent:* $625
Popular entry-level categories:** sales, customer service, health care
2. Philadelphia
Average rent:
$1,034Popular entry-level categories: sales, customer service, management
3. Baltimore
Average rent:
$1,130Popular entry-level categories: sales, customer service, health care
4. Cincinnati
Average rent: $691
Popular entry-level categories: sales, customer service, health care
5. Cleveland
Average rent: $686
Popular entry-level categories: sales, marketing, customer service
6. New York
Average rent:
$1,548Popular entry-level categories: sales, customer service, admin-clerical
7. Phoenix
Average rent: $747
Popular entry-level categories: sales, customer service, marketing
8. Denver
Average rent: $877
Popular entry-level categories: sales, customer service, health care
9. Chicago
Average rent:
$1,133Popular entry-level categories: sales, marketing, customer service
10. San Antonio
Average rent: $696
Popular entry-level categories: sales, customer service, management
Screw this list - find the cheapest city you can find and launch an online business. You'll be much happier - believe me.
It's been a while since I've posted so I'm posting up about a meeting I had with an old friend. He's a car salesman who has been looking for a product to sell like myself and my friends and he's been racking his brain. Well, it doesn't take anything super complicated because sometimes the best products are the simplest.
Case in point - my friend who sells toilet paper online and makes a respectable income from just that product. Well, here's another new product that I thought might take off pretty easily.
Big eye contact lenses. You probably don't know what these are but ask any Asian girl and she'll know. It's a special lens that makes your pupil look bigger and essentially cuter.
These can be imported for roughly $1.50-$5.00 per pair. The prices vary depending on the quality and since it's something you put on your EYEBALL, I think getting a quality product that costs a little more is certainly worth it.
This product fulfills many of the requirements I look for when reviewing what to offer:
1) They're not electric.
2) They're easy to use.
3) They're easy to ship.
4) They're easy to inventory.
5) They're not really returnable.
6) They can be sold with a decent margin.
These sell for anywhere between $15-$45 a pair and even at the minimum margin of $10, if you have the right amount of traffic like a buddy of mine who gets 15k-18k uniques per day, you're looking at $750 a day with less than 1% of your uniques actually buying anything. Not bad... :)
Throwing away routines.
We all have routines at work. Wake up early to beat traffic, end up in traffic with everyone else wanting to beat traffic. Swing by the local coffee shop on the way into work. Greet everyone while you check out the workload for the day and get started until lunch time when undoubtedly you will have some coworkers who are interested in going as a group. Lunch. Lunch coma. Try to start working again. Get a few things done. Clock out to suffer through traffic again, work out or go straight home and fabricate something that is described as dinner, watch TV, and then go to sleep.
What if you were to throw away this entire routine? If you were to become independent and create your own way of making money. Suddenly, there is no need to have a routine because you simply do what you want to do, when you want to do it and at your own pace. You could work until 2am, sleep for a few hours and continue at 6am to finish up or laze away the day until 5pm to get some work done.
The mentality of being an employee where you measure your value by multiplying your hourly by your hours worked or dividing your salary by 2080 hours goes right out the window because you have come to the conclusion that there is a larger goal and doing whatever you can do to get towards that goal sooner is all that matters. You cannot measure your progress by time, you MUST measure your progress by achievements and by doing so, you will find that you accomplish more. It sounds so simple, because it is, but so many well educated individuals go through life measuring their lives by time spent at work vs the accomplishments achieved overall. Do not fall into this rut. When running, you do not stare at your feet, you keep your head up and look at the horizon to see what is coming up - do the same in life.
