7 Steps to Making More Money Today

It's important to remember making more money comes in two forms:

Spending less
Making more

Each of these in turn can be broken down much further:

Spending less


Buy less
Eat cheaper
Walk instead of car/bus
cheaper accommodation
and so on....

Making more


Pay rise
Second job or working more hours
Selling items you do not need anymore
any other activity which brings in more cash then you have now

Although the two seem closely linked, it is important to remember they are DIFFERENT, proving there is more then one way to improve your situation. SO NEVER get stuck doing just one thing to improve your financial situation, there is always something else you can work on doing...

So here are my 7 Steps to making more money TODAY:

Background work

Step #1:

Know completely why you have to make more money and set yourself a target. If I find 1 Euro on the street, I am technically richer, but does that actually count as success?? Not unless I've defined what success is.

Write down the reason why you need money, make sure you are convinced of the reasons then set both a long term target (where you want to be in one year) and a short term target which should be the next 2 week or even the next month.

A target stating I want to be debt free in one year does not mean much. BE MORE SPECIFIC. State exactly how much money is needed to be debt free, what should your bank balance read in one years time and put an end date so you have a clear target.

For me:

Reasons for needing money:

1) I have no money (due to the challenge but I'm not giving up)

2) I want somewhere to live and something to eat next month.

3) I must prove it is really possible for me to make 7 figures in one year... I successfully teach students to reach 6 figures all the time, and the added challenge of starting from zero and without existing businesses can only make me grow.

What does Success mean to me:

Long term success - By January 2011 - I must turn 7 figures profit starting from nothing.

Short term success - By March 1st, I must have earned $1000

Step #2

Educate yourself.

I would not buy a car, rent a house, choose a school for a child or make any other important decision without educating myself about it.

This venture is no different. Its different territory for me. Yes, I have made money before, but doing it from nothing is a pretty big change. I can not afford to take my time, as I need to pay next months rent from my profits.

So I find cheap and easy ways to educate myself.

Today I simply searched for some blogs for people who give good advice on making money fast. Remember my target for next month is not to conduct my master plan (I need some money to get that started), its simply to make enough money to survive through March 2010.

This will help me stay focused on saving money and making money, exactly what I need right now.

Step #3

Make a list of all the skills you have that are valuable. Anything you can sell (legally) is acceptable on this list.

My quick list include (in no particular order):

Indian cooking skills
Personal training qualification
Swim teacher certificate
Business startup consulting experience
Business Process change experience
Mentoring experience
Business startup planning
Ability to turn unprofitable companies around
Social media and creative marketing solutions
My English language (living in Germany this could be useful for tutoring)
Public speaking (this used to be my best selling point but now a little out of practice)

There are some completely random things on that list that I can use to make money. The idea is to be completely open to any way to create money as that is my aim right now (I obviously excluding cleaning and ironing abilities as they are not as exclusive, however I am 100% open to those job offer too)

The Planning stage

Step #4

Start the plan.

A man without a plan, unless he gets very lucky is doomed for failure.

YOU MUST HAVE A PLAN, or you will not be able to work effectively towards your goal. Its not how much work you do that counts, its how effective the work is that actually counts.

I could work on my resume for 24 hours and spend 3 weeks applying to companies. But, none of that will help me achieve my goal of earning enough money to cover my rent and living costs for March. So my plan must focus on making money quickly as well as more secure longer term income.

Once you have your plan, write it down, just like I am doing on this blog. There is a massive difference in thinking about something and writing it down. If I'm going to make this a success I must write down my plan.

Snippets of my plan:

Select the three abilities I feel can make me money fastest


English language (low income but quick cash and easy to marker in Munich)
Business process consulting (high income but not instant cash - vast experience in this field)
Mentoring/Business coaching (Decent money, medium difficulty in finding clients but possible)

So I have a quick cash method, a more difficult but better cash method and a difficult but secure cash option.

I will not rely solely on these three, but this is where 90% of my effort will focus.

It's strange, but when ever I work hard at something, luck often falls into my lap, so the last 10% of my energy will be saved to ensure I sit back and analyse often to ensure I dont miss these gifts of luck should they pass my way (who knows somebody reading this blog may need my services!)

Step #5

Define what steps you can take today to get you closer to finding your first customer. I do not need 100 customers today. If I got 100 then great but I need to start with ONE, yep just one.

So lets break it down:

English language - where to find customers


Put a hand written sign up in my block of flats.
Ask my friends to do the same
Walk to local schools and ask if they need help or if they can display my sign
Search the internet for Language forums/websites and see if I can list my services for free
Find people who are already doing the job (from listings on the net) and ask their advice

Business Process Consulting


Update my CV (no more then 60 minutes work)
Find a list of consulting companies from the internet and contact them
Use Xing, LinkedIn and Facebook to find other consulting contacts that I can approach

Mentoring/ Business Coaching


Using Xing, LinkedIn etc find local groups where Freelancers meet and I can introduce myself
Go through my old contacts to see who might be a potential customer (or at least obtain references)
Present myself to mentoring agencies

Step #6

Reconnect with old colleagues and find a mentor.

There is nothing like support. None of us can get through life alone, we always need people there to support us, pick us up and push us that little bit further. Colleagues who both you respect and who respect you can be great help at this particular time. I will go through my Xing and LinkedIn contacts as well as some other sources to reconnect with old colleagues. (Strangely after doing this, I found a number of them are in my target businesses so I have found both mentors and possible help to securing work)

I've decided not to tell all my Facebook friends at this time, as some of them will not understand why I am doing this and may try to distract me. My job is to surround myself with people who give me energy towards completing my goal and to stay away from those that suck the positive energy away from me.

There is nothing wrong with my friends, they are after all my friends, but in this situation some of them simply would not understand. So instead of putting my energy into making them understand I simply will not tell them, yet...

Lastly and most importantly is finding a mentor. Mentors cannot be underestimated. As a business coach I offer a sound board to people's ideas and help them think out the box. The knowledge you can gain from a experienced mentor can save you months of hard work trying to figure it out on your own.

I firmly believe in mentors and thus I had my first call with a friend last night. He is pretty successful infinding freelance work that pays well and he offered me great advice on where to start and a short action plan of people I should call (he provided personal contacts too).

Notes on how to work with a mentor (will expand on this in a later post)


You are there to learn, start your case at the start then simply listen - question but dont argue
Mentors can be short term and long term, but make sure none of you are misunderstanding the commitment (my friend knew clearly that 1 hour would be enough - he does not feel used and I truly value his input)
Use my favourite line to end a conversation "I think I should let you go now, I've already taken up so much of your time which you kindly offered me"

I will try to talk to 2 friends/ previous colleagues each week who can offer me great advice towards completing my challenge. (Note, I have full confidence I can achieve this goal, but it's with the great advice from people I respect that I will make sure I make the least mistakes and maybe even get there much faster)

and lastly

Step #7

Take action!

Yep, stop reading and do something today, as written in my plan to make sure success happens.

To many people plan and do all the right background steps but forget to take action. NOT ME...

My aim is to get my first customers, and I'm pretty confident I can do that within a week...

I'm off to put my plan into action... how about you????

By
Dee Kumar
Reknown Business coach and known within industry as 'The Productivity King'

Read more articles from Dee at:

http://www.venturetothetop.com

Let's Get Started and Make Some Money - 3 General Steps to Making More Money Online

There are many different ways to go about making an online income. One of the more popular of these Internet income streams is that of affiliate marketing. With an affiliate product in hand, there are 3 basic steps in marketing said affiliate item. A good starting point would be to create a web page. This might send some people running for the hills with thoughts like, "I can't create my own website, it's to hard and will take forever." False, It is not that hard and depending on the quality, it could take less than an hour to construct. In some cases the affiliate program you join will create the site for you. These types of programs are especially useful because they take a lot of thought and effort out of the process.

Once you have got a place where people can go to see what you're promoting, you want to start getting said people to your site to do what, that's right, promote! Before your start getting traffic to your site though, you'll first want to do some research on your market. When entering a market you need to know how competitive it is or else your site may never be seen, rendering it pointless to you. It is also very beneficial to marketing success that you know how much search volume you can receive toward your site and market in general. The solution to these problems is to implement a niche/keyword research tool. There are many of these types of tools all over the net that you can utilize that are both free and inexpensive. The ones that cost usually apply more data and would serve ones needs better than the free ones would but sometimes in this day and age one has to settle for what they can afford at the time.

After this is said and done, you use the research from the last step in order to lock in your target for the hunt, so to speak. In this step, you will be targeting traffic for your site. There are many ways in which to get traffic but for everyone, the goal is the same. You want to get TARGETED traffic that service your niche and website. There are many free methods of doing this and can be quite effective, if you have a fair amount of time to spare. The second option of getting targeted traffic is to employ programs that do the work for you in order to get the traffic you desire, and these usually cost a little bit extra though.

Though, these basic ideas for this system is not foolproof, it has a great track record. You will find that nothing in this line of work is infallible if you're not in it whole-heartedly. What I mean by this is if your stop short because it is too hard and don't push on then this way of making money isn't the one for. If you believe it is then once you have a product to promote, make a website to promote it on and then research niche/keywords for that market that you are targeting. Then all you have to do it generate some traffic in your niche market and your will earn commissions.

Niche/Keyword Research! Creating Websites! Quality Traffic Generation! All in ONE! If you found the information I just wrote about to be of any help then you should check out this site and save yourself some time and trouble. This site has all the steps, with all the little details, in one easy to comprehend and use program. www.Makeautowealth.net [http://www.Makeautowealth.net]