smallbizcredit

Answer these questions truthfully:

1.) Does your spouse or partner complain that you spend too much money?

2.) Are you surprised each month when your credit card bill arrives at how much more you charged than you thought you had?

3.) Do you have more shoes and clothes in your closet than you could ever possibly wear?

4.) Do you own every new gadget before it has time to collect dust on a retailer’s shelf?

5.) Do you buy things you didn’t know you wanted until you saw them on display in a store?

If you answered “yes” to any two of the above questions, you are an impulse spender and indulge yourself in retail therapy.

This is not a good thing. It will prevent you from saving for the important things like a house, a new car, a vacation or retirement. You must set some financial goals and resist spending money on items that really don’t matter in the long run.

Impulse spending will not only put a strain on your finances but your relationships, as well. To overcome the problem, the first thing to do is learn to separate your needs from your wants.

Advertisers blitz us hawking their products at us 24/7. The trick is to give yourself a cooling-off period before you buy anything that you have not planned for.

When you go shopping, make a list and take only enough cash to pay for what you have planned to buy. Leave your credit cards at home.

If you see something you think you really need, give yourself two weeks to decide if it is really something you need or something you can easily do without. By following this simple solution, you will mend your financial fences and your relationships.
Connor Mathews

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 big ticket product or package? Then read this important statistic: at the average, around 80% of your sales will be made within the first 24 hours of your package's launch. Hence, it is essential to devise that perfect product launch to guarantee that your first 24 hours will be a big success.

Here are some essential steps that will help ensure a highly profitable product launch:

1. There is no such thing as a big ticket product. We should always aim to create a big ticket PACKAGE. Increase the perceived value of the main product you want to sell by surrounding such with high value extras that your customers will love. Give them an item and it'll be hard to sell it to them. Provide for them a package and they'll be eagerly anticipating the chance to know what are inside of the same.

2. Form a joint venture, or JV, with veteran internet entrepreneurs. They will be your JV partners. They will help you sell your package. To repay their help, you have to give 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. Indeed, JV partners are similar to affiliates, however, with the stricter screening process you will implement, you will gain JV partners who will give you access to a bigger audience courtesy of their huge subscriber base, better value for your package courtesy of the bonuses they will provide which will be taken from their own pool of products, and more potent promotional mileage because of the many JV partners who share your sales goals.

3. Generate pre-launch hype. Every single personality behind the biggest web marketing product launches in the past few years garnered a high amount of pre-launch hype. 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 publishing several high impact, excellently produced videos in the days towards the release of his package. These releases earned more than a million dollars on the first 24 hours of the distribution of their products. Generating pre-launch hype will ensure enough visitors come the actual product launch, visitors who will already be excited to check out what your product is all about.

Just a few thoughts ~ Connor
Build Corporate Credit

"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?

"Any ideas of where this 'tug of war' could lead? Connor"

Federal Reserve on Monday is expected to tighten regulations to protect homebuyers. Consumer groups and lenders each hope arguments win out.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Federal Reserve is caught in a tug-of-war as it prepares on Monday to unveil final rules overhauling mortgage lending.

Consumer groups are arguing that the regulations, as proposed in December, contain too many loopholes, allowing reckless lending to continue. Industry executives say the proposals place too great a burden on lenders and will prompt them to further restrict credit.

It appears the Fed was swayed by the more than 2,500 comments submitted on the proposals since it has signaled it has revised them, industry insiders say. But it remains to be seen which side the Fed favored.

"The question is which way will the Fed head?" said Kurt Eggert, law professor at the Chapman University School of Law and former Fed Consumer Advisory Council member. "That's what we're all waiting to see."

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

Six Apart - Blog - Submitting 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.

Small businesses die for several reasons, but the most common is the lack of funding. Here's a question: is the realization that your Biz account has been sucked into the red going to floor you without warning?