Thriving Prosperity

Start up costs is one of the largest expenses that any business has to undertake and often those funds come from a small business loan. Even if you have the capital available, many business owners finance their start up costs in order to keep cash easily available throughout the next months. Determining how much you need to borrow in start up costs really is different for each type of business and even individualized businesses. You’ll need to determine how much money you’ll need for the first several months at least.

How Much Do You Need?

Some businesses do just fine with only a small amount of initial cost. You may not need to invest in pricy equipment or a large amount of property. On the other hand, other businesses need a rather large amount of money either to purchase equipment or space or even to purchase inventory. Before even starting your business, consider if you have access to enough money based on what your needs are.

Then, you have to determine your start up costs. To do this, you’ll need to do some hard number crunching. All of the expenses that you will have during those first months needs to be taken into consideration. There are two types of expenses to take note of. First you have expenses that will be your reoccurring expenses, which will need to be paid over and over. You also have one time expenses which are generally paid at the beginning of your business venture. In reoccurring expenses, these include things like your inventory, the utilities on your property and even the insurance that you pay. In one time expenses, think of things like the purchase of your equipment or even the investment of repairs on your property.


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Covering the IPO market from A to Z. Stay in the loop with the IPO Scoop with John E. Fitzgibbon, Jr. Free and Rated IPO Calendar.

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Have you ever imagined to get $5 from Adsense in 1 year? Ever?

People like Jason Calacanis of Weblogs and Jason Miles Jr. & Kato Leonard of FreeWebLayouts get an estimated value of $1,000,000 each year from their websites, but you don’t have to be like them. Imagine getting as few as nothing for a month. On top of that, you can achieve that without doing as much work as they do.

Well look no further. With these 10 secret techniques, you are well on your way to achieve not just $5 a year, but even less than that.

1. Pick a boring topic for your blog

This is easy. Don’t write about something interesting or unique. Everybody else is doing that. Why don’t you be different? Talk about your study or how you spend your time 10 hours in the library. Tell the audience what did you buy in the grocery store today and who did you meet on your way home. Think about something boring. Anything. People won’t come to your site, and less people to click your ads. That’s one step towards success already.

2. Don’t update regularly

Don’t bother eating your heart out trying to think of something to publish everyday. Leave your blog unattended for weeks. What’s with the hard work? Just lay back and relax. If your blog readers are loyal to you, they will surely wait for your next update. What’s more, they will keep coming back to check whether you’ve updated your blog or not. Isn’t that great?

3. Social network? Avoid.

A waste of time. You should be doing nothing. It’s too much work. Why do you need to socialize with other fellow bloggers? They are not the ones who will be clicking your ads anyway. So why bother? Keep your network as small as possible. It’s harder to maintain good relationship with other people if you happen to know too many people.

4. Don’t let anybody know about your blog

Just let Google crawlers do their work. They are designed to find your blog anyway. So just let them do their job. Concentrate on more important things such as, watching the NBA finals or strolling in the park with your wife and kids. Update once and leave. Get away from your computer.

5. Stick your ads anywhere you like

Testing and experimenting with your ads placement is time consuming. Why would you waste your time on that? Stick in anywhere you like. Somebody will surely click on it no matter where you put your ads. And pick any size you want. The bigger the better, right?

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As if I thought that a few overdue invoices were a problem yesterday, I received an email today from one of my entrepreneurial friends. Seems as though that when she sold her business, her attorney was about as sloppy as they come. And he didn’t make sure that she wouldn’t be held liable for the new owner’s mistakes.

So what “mistakes” did the new owner make?! They haven’t paid rent for over a year. The shop is closed down and my friend is likely facing a $60K bill for back rent, which will force her out of her own home or into bankruptcy (or both).

So Where is the Inspirational Entrepreneurial Lesson in All of This?
Indeed, it’s not inspiring to hear about the financial mishaps that business owners make. But I hope this is one of those things that can inspire via a little “warning”. Hindsight being 20-20, here’s what I can say about what has happened with both my friend and I:

For the client who didn’t pay, I didn’t listen to that little intuitive voice that said “Don’t do the work until he has some cash”. I thought that by giving him some free coaching, he would be able to get himself back on his feet and turn around and pay me in a reasonable amount of time. Logically, it was a good move. But intuitively, something said that the situation didn’t feel right.
Lesson Learned :: LISTEN to your intuition, even when it is only a whisper and barely heard. It doesn’t mean that you have to do everything your intuition says, but it is criteria that is just as important as logic.

For my friend who is about to lose her home, I have to say that EVERY professional advisor she had when she first started her business told her NOT to do it. Her first lawyer said no, her accountant screamed no, and even her friends (myself included) expressed reservations about the deal. By the time it came for her to sell the business, she had lost a ton of money already. But at least we thought she was done with it.
I know my friend would say that it was a wonderful spiritual journey that led her to her current career, and I would have to agree with her. But I do wonder if she could have found a different path to her current career without the financial devastation she has experienced along the way.

Lesson Learned :: DON’T make business decisions solely on what feels good at the time. And if you are going to hire advisers to guide your business, for God’s sake listen to the people you are paying to help you.

One thing I know for sure, both my friend and I are not the first nor last entrepreneurs who are facing big obstacles on the way to success. When I think of what Donald Trump has overcome in the last few decades, these problems are tiny specks.
The only way these experiences can actually hurt us is with our permission.

And it’s times like these that I find great strength in little sentences:

For every mountain there is a miracle. ~ Robert H. Schuller
There is no failure, only feedback. ~ Author Unknown
If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere. ~ Frank Clark
It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities. ~ Eric Hoffer
And my favorite of all, reminding us to live and be the person we were born to be, no matter what happens around us:

Obstacles will look large or small to you according to whether you are large or small. ~ Orison Swett Marden
Here’s to being bigger than we thought we could be, to living our dreams instead of living in fear, and to transforming our challenges into capital of the entrepreneurial spirit!

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December 22, 2006: Though International trade has fast picked up especially in last five years, dishonesty, crime, product counterfeiting are plaguing it. Such is the magnitude of the crime that many countries including US, China have set up special cells to deal with such complaints. Unlike in the old days when a scamster used to meet face-to-face with people it wanted to cheat. Now, with modern technology he has become more sophisticated using e-mail, message boards and chat rooms to effectively con individuals and businesses. Such scamster can be anywhere at any time and just a click away from his target. Anonymity, ease, and reach on global scale that technology offers are contributing to the rapid expansion of fraud. While you may have legal resources to sue such conmen, following legal procedures outside your home country to catch and punish these fraudsters are almost non-existent.

Imports from Nigeria are particularly Vulnerable: Experience of various importers from across the globe shows that Nigeria is a dangerous country to operate in. Movement of cargo is always at risk and IT networks are vulnerable to cyber attack. One of the most common scam from this place is Escrow Fraud. This involves a third-party escrow service company to help facilitate the exchange of money and goods. The scammer advises the victim to use an escrow service website that the scammer created. The website resembles a legitimate escrow service company website. The victim sends the payment through the bogus website or the victim sends goods and waits for payment.

Another major fraud from here is Letter of Credit Fraud. Letters of credit issued by the buyer’s bank is forwarded to the bank located in the seller’s country to notify the seller. Scammers then proceed to produce identical documents that a bank produces which are then sent directly to the seller. The seller ships the contracted goods and waits for payment in his bank which never happens.

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A big NO and a small YES.

Why a small YES ?

It is obvious that if you place ads at some hidden position then a very few people are going to click them.

Why a big NO ?

Guess what will happen when everyone is placing their ads at the most optimum position on their website.

User will click initially on the ads but after sometime effective Clicks per page impression will drop. Their eyes will be trained to ignore those locations where effective clicks can happen and infact they will not look at it. People generally go to some web-site to look at the content not at those ads. After viewing at the web-site structure for sometime they stop ignoring those parts where advertisement exists. This is true for returning visitors.

What should be done ?

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Every site needs more traffic, and there are plenty of ways to get traffic to your site. However, you can use submission software to help you double, triple, or even quadruple your traffic. More traffic means more sales, and these tools will help you get more traffic to your website fast.

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There were numerous partnerships and acquisitions in the month of May, which included a lot of dollars changing hands. Let’s look at some of the major deals that went down this past month.

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For many of us, the movements of the stock and bond markets on Wall Street are, at best, a matter of academic interest. My parents and grandparents were Italian immigrants. Their idea of finance and banking consisted of money hidden under the mattress or in the cookie jar we kept on the kitchen counter. Ultimately, my parents’ financial acumen evolved to a passbook savings account, but that was only after they realized that American banks truly didn’t steal your money.

Having learned from a neighbor about passbook savings, my parents struggled to balance their one statement savings account, an activity frequently accompanied by heated discussion. Going to the bank to cash and deposit paychecks was an involved procedure which required considerable planning and creative arithmetic. My parents’ financial evolution took a new turn late in their marriage when my father sold two acres of non-contiguous land which he’d bought for $300 dollars. That two acre parcel fetched the astounding sum of $40,000. When someone at the local S&L suggested a CD account, their education as fiduciaries was complete. They were suddenly money market investors. Receiving interest on CDs made them feel guilty, but proud, too.


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Do you like to create pictures and designs, or writing? Do you love to look at the greeting cards in your local stores? Then a greeting cards home business could be for you. This is a business with incredible growth, and income potential. It also gives the greeting card home based business owner several options in the business itself.

A greeting card home business opportunity can have you doing only one part, such as drawing or writing. This same business can be selling e-cards or cards sold in stores. It could also entail purchasing a territory from a larger card distributor.

The first step in how to start a greeting card company is to decide what part of the greeting card business you want to focus on. As a freelance greeting card artist, you would focus only on designing cards for other companies. There are costs associated with this option and could include the purchase of a computer and graphic art software if you don’t already have these items.

If you decide to be a freelance greeting card writer, your home based greeting card business would focus on only writing the phrases to be used on greeting cards. For this, you only need a computer and quick turn around time.

Of course, you can always freelance as both a writer and artist. To get jobs you must contact companies to see if they are in need of freelancers. They pay from $50 an assignment to several hundred dollars per assignment. However, until you build up a portfolio of samples, and sometimes even after, jobs can be hard to find.

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