Connor's Business Credit Blog

The Budget – Best Money Management Tool

A carpenter uses a set of house plans to build a house. If he didn’t the bathroom might get overlooked altogether.

Rocket Scientists would never begin construction on a new booster rocket without a detailed set of design specifications. Yet most of us go blindly out into the world without an inkling of an idea about finances and without any plan at all.

Not very smart of us, is it?

A money plan is called a budget and it is crucial to get us to our desired financial goals.

Without a plan we will drift without direction and end up marooned on a distant financial reef.

If you have a spouse or a significant other, you should make this budget together. Sit down and figure out what your joint financial goals are…long term and short term.

Then plan your route to get to those goals. Every journey begins with one step and the first step to attaining your goals is to make a realistic budget that both of you can live with.

A budget should never be a financial starvation diet. That won’t work for the long haul. Make reasonable allocations for food, clothing, shelter, utilities and insurance and set aside a reasonable amount for entertainment and the occasional luxury item. Savings should always come first before any spending.

Even a small amount saved will help you reach your long term and short term financial goals. You can find many budget forms on the internet. Just use any search engine you choose and type in “free budget forms”.

You’ll get lots of hits. Print one out and work on it with your spouse or significant other. Both of you will need to be happy with the final result and feel like it’s something you can stick to.

Connor Mathews

Thursday Thoughts on Self Publishing:

The beauty of self-promotion is that it is uniquely suited to the Internet where self-made experts can reap very big profits, even though they've never gone through conventional business channels.

For instance, if you are trying to get published with a major publishing house, you will probably face the Catch-22 where they will only publish well-known authors or those people who have already made a name for themselves in their business.

Using the WWW you can make yourself the expert and start to build a marketing platform AND print your ebook to an audience of interested parties, without having to get the approval of a major publishing house. Then, after you've convinced everyone that you really are an expert on something, if you want to go through the official channels, it will be much easier to convince them to publish your books. ~ Connor

A Few Links on Self Publishing I Ran Across Today:

• http://www.lulu.com/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-publishing
• www.Xlibris.com/SelfPublish

Planning to release a high priced product or package?

Then study this important fact: at the average, around 80% of your sales will be made on the first day. Therefore, it is essential to have that perfect product launch to guarantee that your first day of sales will be a tremendous triumph.

1. Forget the concept of a big ticket product. It's always a big ticket PACKAGE. Boost up the perceived value of the primary product you are planning to offer by packaging it with high powered extras that your customers will love. Provide for them an item and it'll be difficult to convince them to make a purchase. Provide for them a package and they'll get excited to know what are inside of the same.

2. Create a joint venture, or JV, with well-known online businessmen. If they accept your invitation, they will be your JV partners. They will provide aid in selling your package. To repay their help, you have to provide for them a commission for every successful sale they will be able to lead to your sales page. JV partners often expect a commission rate of 50% of the selling price, per sale. Truly, JV partners are comparable to affiliates, only, with the comprehensive selection method you will require, you will be able to associate yourself with JV partners who will give you access to a bigger audience courtesy of their big mailing lists, more value for your package thanks to the extras they will provide which will be taken from their own inventory of products, and better promotional mileage because of the many JV partners who share your sales goals.

3. Generate pre-launch hype. All the biggest online marketing product launches in recent memory generated a high level of pre-launch buzz. Mike Filsaime's Butterfly Marketing intrigued a lot of people with the alleged leaked chapter of the main eBook product of the package. Frank Kern's Mass Control tried to win a phenomenal amount of attention by releasing several high impact, high value videos in the days towards the release of his baby project. These campaigns earned more than a million dollars on the first day of the release of their packages. Building pre-launch buzz will guarantee enough traffic come the day of launch, visitors who will already be excited to check out what your product is all about.

Hope you enjoy ~ Connor http://www.small-business-credit.org

Sylvia Porter: Families exists only on paper

"The average family exists only on paper and its average budget is a fiction,invented by statisticians for the convenience of statisticians."
Sylvia Porter

Found this quote online today, and something about it really struck home for me.

Once you start probing family budgets, expending time and energy researching the
subject in-depth, it becomes quite clear, that most families are caught in a vicious,
almost never-ending cycle of “What comes in must go out.”

Most families might feel that budgeting is a futile effort, unnecessarily burdening
them with thoughts and ways, to go broke methodically and slowly, without the
creature comforts and indulgences of our human modern-day society.

Others might voice that they feel as if they are merely throwing money away, in a
never-ending and dizzying spiral of spend, spend, spend. People are getting deeper
and deeper into debt, no matter how hard they try to get out of it. Questions are
then raised : How do we stop these courses of action? How do we change the
thinking around family fiscal discipline?

Learning How to Boost My Credit Score

Note: Here is some good info I ran across when I tried to get a second mortgage several years back, and had a rude awakening. Hope someone finds it useful. Connor

There are many misconceptions about credit scores out there. There are customers
who believe that they don’t have a credit score and many customers who think that
their credit scores just don’t really matter. These sorts of misconceptions can hurt
your chances at some jobs, at good interest rates, and even your chances of getting some apartments.

The truth is, of you have a bank account and bills, then you have a credit score, and your credit score matters more than you might think. Your credit score may be
called many things, including a credit risk rating, a FICO score, a credit rating, a
FICO rating, or a credit risk score. All these terms refer to the same thing: the three digit number that lets lenders get an idea of how likely you are to repay your bills.

Every time you apply for credit, apply for a job that requires you to handle money, or even apply for some more exclusive types of apartment living, your credit score is checked.

In fact, your credit score can be checked by anyone with a legitimate business need
to do so. Your credit score is based on your past financial responsibilities and past
3 payments and credit, and it provides potential lenders with a quick snapshot of your current financial state and past repayment habits.

In other words, your credit score lets lenders know quickly how much of a credit risk
you are. Based on this credit score, lenders decide whether to trust you financially and give you better rates when you apply for a loan. Apartment managers can use
your credit score to decide whether you can be trusted to pay your rent on time.

Employers can use your credit score to decide whether you can be trusted in a high responsibility job that requires you to handle money.

The problem with credit scores is that there is quite a bit of misinformation
circulated about, especially through some less than scrupulous companies who claim they can help you with your credit report and credit score - for a cost, of course.

From advertisements and suspect claims, customers sometimes come away with the idea that in order to boost their credit score, they have to pay money to a company or leave credit repair in the hands of so-called “experts.” Nothing could be further from the truth. It is perfectly possible to pay down debts and boost your credit on your own, with no expensive help whatsoever. A good place to start your credit quest is to check your FICO score (www.myfico.com)Technorati Tags: credit, money, fico, finance

TrackBack as an Internet Standard

In 2002, Ben and Mena Trott had an idea for how blogging systems could communicate with one another more effectively about the plethora of content being created. They dubbed the idea "TrackBack" and they implemented it in Movable Type. What followed surprised everyone, the idea and technology they created spread like wildfire. Now, several years later, TrackBack is in use by over 50 million blogs and news sites across the Internet.

As many familiar with the protocol will attest, TrackBack, despite its wide market adoption, is far from perfect -- largely due to the fact that TrackBack was invented for a blogosphere that was much different in size and makeup. Today, blogging has exploded in popularity, presenting TrackBack with a whole new set of challenges to address. Specifically, those challenges include the need for:

• Standardization
• Protocol Extensibility
• Authentication
• Better documentation

Since TrackBack was invented, little has been done to secure TrackBack to prevent people from abusing it and generating unsolicited, unwanted, and ultimately irrelevant "TrackBack Spam." Managing unwanted TrackBacks takes time away from bloggers and blog hosting services that could be better spent elsewhere.

Also, over the years, a number of protocols have emerged to service roughly the same set of problems as TrackBacks -- to inform resources and services on the Internet of the availability of new content. TrackBack and "update pings" have a lot in common, and the industry could benefit a great deal by simplifying and potentially merging them into a single and cohesive standard.

Finally, Six Apart has engaged many companies wishing to extend the TrackBack protocol in some way, a proposition that Six Apart is excited about and encourages. However, no one company should ever be a constraint on anyone's desire to innovate and deliver new and interesting technologies to the blogging world. Extension of the protocol should be simple, logical, and enabled by the protocol itself.

Mompreneur Hits Pay Dirt After Losing It All

For Las Vegas entrepreneur Richelle Shaw, dating three men in three cities didn’t add up to a winning proposition at first. No, this isn’t a Sex and the City rerun; it really happened and, after a few major bumps in the road, there is a happy ending.

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What is unique or special about your business that gives it an edge over your competitors?

SHAW: I understand how to market. The customers drive my business. Actually, the results from marketing campaigns drive my business. Not what I think, not what my friends or staff think.

Recent breakthrough?
SHAW: I understand that what I did was unique, and it was actually a template for business building. People kept asking me how did I do it, and I started coaching and consulting entrepreneurs to do the same things. The best thing is that now I have consulted with entrepreneurs in more than 47 different businesses and determined that no business is different. My strategies and techniques work for any kind of business.

Tags: business

Signs for the Drowning Entrepreneur

There are signs. There are always signs. It's simply that all the signal flares were neglected by the one person with the most to lose: the Entrepreneur.

How can you avoid being in the undesirable majority of small businesses that fail? By being smart! Just because most companies can't go the distance doesn't condemn you to the same fate. You will vastly increase your chances of lasting success by being aware of the common pitfalls and playing Smart in avoiding them.

First of all, be realistic and honest about your financial needs. I can guarantee that there are more hidden costs than you have accounted for in your business plan. And let me just say that if you don't have a business plan, stop right here, go back and do one! Be smart and plan to succeed! I am equally certain that somewhere in your plan, you will have under-estimated expenses. It might seem like a minor issue but without correcting the error, your small oversight can turn into a dream killer! Oversight is the first step down the path to failure!

“A common fatal mistake for many failed businesses is having insufficient operating funds. Business owners underestimate how much money is needed and they are forced to close before they even have had a fair chance to succeed.”
Connor Mathews - www.small-business-credit.org

Once you've got a good, clear picture of your financial needs, truly explore 'all' of your funding opportunities. Please, for your sake, do not fund a business venture with personal credit cards. The fees will kill you! Before you borrow against all of your personal assets or pawn your grandmothers jewelry... be aware of the risk you're taking. Remember, we want to play Smart!

Tags: economy, finance, business, debt, credit