Everyone keeps doling out ideas by the dozen but perhaps it is time to give you the ingredients and allow YOU to think — see what makes for a great business model.

1. A no over head business : I don’t see myself having fun when I still need to pay for the rent, employee salaries and huge over heads while the profit I stand to make on any given sale is miniscule. Without overheads, my profits are pure gold.

2. A Service Business : Because it gives me an opportunity to correct myself or my business processes if I do any mistake. Immense flexibility. Products will be expensive to produce and it will be difficult to back track .

3. Automated Businesses : Any business that can be automated and set to run all by itself is an amazing business to have. I know a few friends who have such businesses and I can see what it has done to them.

4. Location Independent Business : Like content development, web design, promotion and development businesses that can be operated from anywhere. Think about it, you don’t need to be ain any office and stuck to any one place.

5. A system based business : The above pointers might not be possible all the time. However, there is no excuse for not having a system in place for each function in your business — all the way from lead generation to accounts or product handling. Systems are crucial for business success.

Can you think of more of these ideas?

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There are numerous people who dream of being rich and to be able to do all those things the rich do - like travel and be anywhere at any time — but somehow, these very people never get to be where they aspire to be. They get stuck with the steady, mundane corporate grind and the more time they spend doing this, the more it becomes impossible for them to get out of it — or so it seems.

Here’s the fodder for your brain — one thing you don’t have that the rich do — freedom. The dream of being anywhere at any time is an all-consuming one and it is surprising as to the fact that not many DO it, even if they knew it.

You can design your life starting now, with that key element embedded in your line of work by following certain radical, contemporary and really whacky ways of living and making money as given below:

• Writing: One of the best things you could do is to travel around, all over the world, on a visitor or tourist visa (simply because they are easy to obtain and inexpensive too) and continue to write — it is up to you as to what you choose to write on and how often or how much, but it is an option that sets most travel bug bitten souls thinking really hard.What do you need? - A habit of reading; a desire to excel; commitment and the willingness to learn.

• Web designing: A dying art and is also a highly competitive art like writing (writing isn’t going to die, anyway!). However, that should be the last thing on your mind because a true entrepreneur must innovate and think of different ways to make his or her product offering unique. Web designing is another option simply because you can do it from anywhere.What do you need? A Computer and an Internet connection; the skill of web designing; perseverance; an eye for detail and the ability to bring in business

• Financial planning: Have you ever wondered what occupies most people, across the world? Financial problems - the need to have sufficient, if not lots of money and what can be a better vocation that to be a self-employed financial planner? Yes of course, there is a steep learning curve here and you might even need credentials but then, it can be done. Investing in relevant courses, on the job training (if possible), online courses and certification tests can take you far in this field.What do you need? An undying thirst for knowledge; a sound logical and reasoning mind; ability to crunch numbers and the desire to help others make money.

• Coaching and mentoring: Here’s another thing that most people fight with everyday — a range of problems plaguing them day in and day out. Why not become a personal coach? Do you connect with people? Can you come up with practical solutions to everyday problems? Are you approachable, affable and social? Perhaps you could earn lots of money by being their mentor or coach.What do you need? Approachability; the skill of listening; rapport - building and excellent verbal, written and non-verbal communication skills.

• Running a virtual empire: This one is a beauty — set up websites and fill it up with focused, well-written content; start a web-services business; run a media empire with a slew of websites focused on different profitable niches ; set up a content development firm; start your own Search Engine Marketing firm ; How a Virtual Assistant company?What do you need? Ideas, lots of them ; domain names and hosting packages; automation strategies to set your business in motion

Although it is definitely not an exhaustive list, there are certain takeaways from this list alone that you would do well to pick — firstly, if you feel that you need special skills and competence for these vocations, you are right — and you can train yourself to attain them. This training is any day beneficial, focused and fetches more return on your investment than any management degree in the world. Secondly, if you were looking for something easier, try to get yourself a job and don’t aspire to be rich or dream to work out of a beach shack because it isn’t going to happen.

You got ways to get to your dream of being able to work anywhere, at anytime. Now, you just have to work at it.

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Young and dashing, ambitious but foolish — if you are about to be boxed into this category, take stock and think. You have been earning money but not saving? Have you even thought of long term implications of such nonchalance? Would you like to let your feet touch the blue waters of the beaches in Maldives or Bora-Bora? You need to get away from the grind and plan your finances well for all those dreams to come true and don’t let anyone tell you anything else that sounds like get-rich-quick.

Getting rich and making wines take time.

There are myriad ways of investing and it is highly likely that you might not have been aware of it and if you were, you didn’t hustle. Listed below are a few things you ought to keep in mind for a sound and unshakable foundation for your finances.

1. Get rid of debt: This should be your primary step towards well-crafted financial planning. There is really no point in amassing wealth on one side while the interest rate on your outstanding debt accrues at a much faster rate and at this rate your net worth (i.e. Your Assets – Liabilities) is negative at any point in time. By debt, I mean debt in all its ugly forms – all the way from credit cards to home, auto and personal loans. I don’t intend to advocate the policy of procrastinating your savings and investments until all your debt is cleared, but I do emphasize on the point that clearing your debt has to be your primary focus before you get deep into investing and saving.

2. Start saving young - However you wish: You can do a lot of things to embark on an exciting journey of investments. While most people put off saving until their thirties, it is quite the contrary. You ought to start saving young. As early as you can, so as to tap the time that is truly a blessing at this juncture. Here is a quick snap shot of typical must-dos for a young investor

a. Consolidate all your bank accounts into one or two main ones. Too many accounts are meaningless and it can only nibble away on your money.
b. Divide your money inflow into three parts - Precious money, Short term money and spending money. The Precious part is for your OWN retirement purposes ( No, Not even your spouse and children, because you never know how things and relationships might turn out to be — You can start separate funds for children, though), short term money is for all your cravings, desires and expected future expenses like marriage, child’s education, building a home or a car. Needless to say, Spending money is for just that — spending. This should take care of recurring monthly expenses like rent, miscellaneous items, food, laundry and such like.
c. Draw out elaborate plans to cater to each one of the above mentioned three parts.

3.Sacred money - The foundation for your wealth:It indeed is. If you thought that an insurance plan or a Fixed Deposit would do the trick, it might not be as simple as that. Start with very little amount of money stashed away into safe investment vehicles like Deposits, Recurring deposits - if you wanted to try systematic investments into safe investments and Unit-Linked Insurance plans with their debt or equity fund( depending on your ability to take risk, provided at least one such fund is into a debt fund) opted for. This money is sacred and is not to be touched until at least 20 to 30 years. If you started this when you were say 25 even 20 years would only mean a huge pile of cash waiting to be splurged when you are barely 45 - A time when most people would have started saving. See where you are going? I reiterate for effect - This money is not for home loan down payments. It is to be stashed away and forgotten.

4. Short term Planning: Your Life style will depend on it. Wont it? Your home, your car, marriage and children’s education and everything else depends on what you are going to do with this money. This needs active participation and sometimes professional advice. No one can define your short term for you. It’s your call. However, depending on your risk profile, you ought to be making realistic and prudent judgments about where you need to park your money. I recommend well-performing mutual funds for short time frames like anywhere from a year to three or even 5 and Unit- Linked Insurance policies if the time range gets to 10 years and over.

5. Spending money — The everyday cash you will smell:Whatever you hold in your bank account is going to be the money you would need to pay off utility bills, rent, food and some other immediate and inevitable expenses. It calls for high liquidity and if you can be enterprising enough, there are some other investment vehicles like short-term mutual funds, money-market funds and cash funds, Certificates of deposit and such to park your money into to get a marginally better interest rate than your savings account or current account. However, if all the money in the account is bound to be paid, it is not worth taking the trouble. Budgeting might help you keep this spending under control and see to it that it won’t infiltrate into the other areas of your investments.

A few quick reminders:

• You can save tax only to an extent, hence make the best use of it and save while you can.
• Think short term and long term both. Your children can kick you out of your house and your spouse can initiate a divorce - what then? Whom are you going to fall back on? On top of it, you would be too old to work by then.
• If you thought all this was a waste of time, think again. Ask your dad and mom how much they ended up spending on the family so far, increase it slightly taking inflation into account and check it out for the same for yourself and your own family. I would bet you will faint.

It’s time to take reality with a pinch of salt on your empty wallets. Keep investing.

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I had this in mind for a long time now and finally, I see some authoritative entry on the WSJ about how “lousy” buy a car, really is.

Here is an excerpt from the article on the Wall Street Journal :

The fact is that for most of us after our houses and maybe college educations for the kids (at a really, really good college) cars will take more of our money than anything else. And Detroit (and Nagoya and Stuttgart) want as much of that money as they can possibly get.

Hence all the expensive advertising trying to convince you that you’ll feel better about yourself — and others will feel better about you, too — if only you drive a particular car.

What hogwash! Get past the marketing and advertising and when you buy a car you’re buying something very simple: a steel box with wheels that contains about 150,000 miles. You can buy an expensive box of miles, a mid-priced box of miles or a really cheap box of miles (read “used cars”) and you’ll generally get the same thing: 150,000 miles (less, of course, the number of miles a previous owner put on a used car). The only difference is how much you pay to go each one of those miles.

Hidden Cost

But here’s the real catch: any one of those cars winds up costing you a lot more than you think. Sure, there’s sales tax and operating costs and insurance, all of which take an additional toll on your wallet. But what I’m really talking about here is opportunity cost: every additional buck you spend on that box of miles is a buck that you no longer have to invest and watch grow in value for years to come.

If you save $10,000 by buying a Toyota Camry instead of a BMW and invest that $10,000 in stocks with an average annual return of 10%, at the end of 10 years (about when your Toyota is coming up on that 150,000-mile mark) you’ll have $25,937.

At that point, save another $10,000 by buying a less expensive car, invest it, and the combined savings on those two cars will, 10 years from that second purchase, be worth more than $93,000. (That’s $67,275 from your initial $10,000 investment 20 years ago and another $25,937 from your latest $10,000 savings.) Can driving a car that is $10,000 more expensive than another really be worth nearly $100,000 to you?

Isn’t that true? Who would want to spend hard earned money on lousy cars that no one is interested about? I mean, Of course, it is a matter of ” Status” and the fact that you own a beauty on wheels is a reflection of where you stand in the society — now does that mean our man Mr. Buffet is a no good and couldn’t manage to buy himself a decent car? No, it means that he has brains and most people don’t have.

If buying a car is a sign to SHOW the society where I stand, I have other ways to do that and I don’t really have to indulge in a CAR.

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I see numerous reports online that explain how one must get out of debt and an endless flood of advice on how to best deal with your financial situation. First, lets look at the numbers :

The U.S. Federal Reserve Board has numbers stating that the household debt has topped the $2-trillion mark in the U.S. - and that doesn’t include mortgage debt. Apart from this, Americans are exceedingly splurging away on credit cards and thereby face a staggering amount of debt from these cards alone.

When the time comes for you to wield the axe and take a huge step towards getting rid of your financial problem, the world advices you to go for debt consolidation. — which typically means that you take a one huge loan and pay off all the smaller loans such that you can just continue to pay one single Interest rate and strive to pay up one single loan.

Hey, we had to solve the problem — not merely tweak it. If you are in debt, you need to get out of it, not make it look good or reduce it. Of course debt consolidation is an effective first step, but it is still the first step, not the end of it.

You need to get rid of debt, then you will need to steel yourself up and work extra hard in doing two things simultaneously — lower your expenses ( and debt consolidation might help you do that) and increase your income. A huge amount of information exists online to help do both — discussed individually, of course. You will do well to pick this information up, slap it together and then use it for your advantage.

It is no fun living with straps of debt creating deep red wounds on your shoulders; living without a care in the world and without an iota if responsibility towards your family which will inevitably bear the expenses you created out of your foolhardiness.

It is time to achieve financial independence and for all losers out there who think that money would come the easy way, forget it and continue living miserable lives. If you want to do something about it — well, DO something about it. The world was never such a forgiving, resourceful and helpful place and you have the world at your fingertip, if only you extend a hand.

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One of the most common excuses for most people to start their own businesses, full-time or part-time is the fact that they don’t seem to be able to come to a conclusion about that all-too-important-biz-idea. I was just thinking maybe I should pitch in as an unsolicited small business consultant

These ideas just flashed by in my mind while I keep dreaming or conjuring up thousands of ideas.

1. Domestic Services : People are yearning to spend on domestic help. I don’t know if you had ever realized it but walk into any 2 income household and ask them if they would like some help to do those chores that have been accumulating over the time, they would jump out of their skin and pay you like you just kidnapped their kids. You might have already witnessed the pulse for the apparent demand for domestic help among all strata of the society. If only there could be a company , a brand, a number, a person I could talk to to get my domestic chores done, I would pay anything to have someone do things for me, cook for me, do the plumbing, the laundry and the works.
2. Financial Planning Services : Everyone earns money, but few know what to do with it. Yeah, they do spend it like crazy but that isn’t what I am talking about. People would love it if there could be someone to tell them how exactly to plan their finances. Of course, we do have banks and non-banking financial institutions that take up this role now-a-days with some so-called relationship managers doing the regular calling.But if you noticed, these guys are biased and would want to sell just their products. Perhaps these products are right for you. I am talking about customization. I am talking about some real unbiased financial planning keeping customer’s interest at the fore-front. Perhaps some kind of certification might help, but anything goes if you do it well enough.
3. Training and development : Ask me, I am into it. There is a tremendous amount of scope for people who can dabble with public speaking. Freelance training assignments, stints for teaching people anything from communication skills to something as exotic as forex trading, are in big demand. Just as is the case for almost anything that has to sell in India, You might have to go out there and get your clients after much coaxing and concept-selling. But it is possible and very much real. I stand in for it.
4. Freelance Web designers : well, not just web designing, but if you could also manage to do well on graphic designing, logo designing, fliers, brochures and all that comes with a traditional DTP business, you could always tap onto a global market waiting to spend on some reasonably priced adroit designers. The United States, European and South-east Asian Markets are of course crowded with these providers, but there is still room for a lot more. For every provider there would be a client and starting with one client and building one’s business one client after another has been the staple for many success stories.
5. Referral Business : For those of you who have had something to do with sales and have felt that selling is one of their primary skills amassed over the years, referral business is pure gold. Well, sign up with a few merchants and just start selling their products or services in return for a hefty commission. You get money when you sell their stuff. Win-win for everyone. If you thought you needed some real streamlining and a process to die for, perhaps the SFI Business Opportunity might help you. No matter where you are in the world, you can use the opportunity that is free to be enrolled into.

As it goes with every piece of information on my blog, I would want to reiterate the fact that starting and running a business is not a child’s play and would need extreme focus and determination. But then, if you did dream about starting your business and never did it, it might just be tough to justify one’s existence.

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Look around you and notice businesses — both big and small. What do you see? I don’t know about you, but I see a wide gaping hole that tells me something interesting. People do know how to render services and manufacture products, but they do not know how to sell. Some people might be natural marketers at heart, but they don’t want to the dirty work of going out there and doing the sales act.

Where so many of my fellow men are giving up on this idea, I am tempted to at least think about it. Have you ever given a thought about the fact that there is always a dearth of a consultant or a service that “sells” or ‘markets’ for other businesses and services? Here are some excellent reasons why sales/ marketing consulting can be an awesome business idea:

We need and we need more: Start-ups need a head start and the already established business simply need to expand. So when you get out there on the streets and propose to sell or market their products for them, why would they say no? No one is harmed if you made more money for them and in fact they would be glad that you came around and asked them to consider this.

It is an absolute win-win proposal: They don’t pay you if you don’t sell, they don’t have to pay you a salary that their in-house sales folks might ask for. You don’t have to invest in anything except for the time and effort that would obviously go in.  Isn’t it an awesome, win-win deal here?

Value Added, truly: There are really a few services or products that are really value added. I mean, you could afford to live without a lot of these fancy bells and whistles sold everywhere but there are some that you can’t do without. Sales and Marketing consulting is a truly value-added service that you can provide to your clients.  Cash flow is always a problem in businesses and your efforts here are going to solve their one BIG problem.

Fully track able and measurable: Unlike some vague business models that exist now-a-days, sales or marketing consulting is a fully metrics enabled business. You could keep tabs on your marketing efforts and even show numbers with respect to the Return on Investment. If you spend some time doing this successfully, you will have published results for others to see.

Has Potential to feed you for eternity: If you can strike a few deals for your clients with respect to a few types of deals where you could arrange for income to stream in after a one time effort it would have taken you to sell, you are in for a full-fledged recurring income stream, aren’t you?

Actually, this business model exists online, think about bring it to the real world. The clients here are still sitting here and wondering what could be done to increase sales this day and the next!

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Something beautiful happened to me recently. I came across this site called Dailyarticle.com which is an article directory basically. But very much unlike the free directories you find aplenty — webmasters can purchase originally written articles, written by a huge number of writers empaneled therein. All of these articles are scrutinized before being posted to check for re-hashed, duplicated content and are thoroughly proof-read.

However, the point isn’t that. My articles get sold there — and that’s what I wanted to rant about. My pay pal never looked so full ever. It was after I started writing regularly for Dailyarticle that I started seeming some cash flow apart from my regular assignments.

I am so thrilled now-a-days that I can’t bear not to look at the site at least once in a day. I wasn’t so euphoric when I first started out. I was so burnt in the past that I just posted one article to see if it gets sold — it did and I am now hooked for life.

Dailyarticle.com also had a lot to teach me in a way. I taught me that persistence pays; hard work pays; quality pays and all that slogging through the nights does have a pay-off. It has also become a lucky charm for me because suddenly I seem to have more work than I can handle.

I hope that dailyarticle can render the magic to all freelance writers out there.

Check the site out today Daily Article ( not an affiliate link)

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