Cartridge Finder

Anyone in business these days, whether it's a home business or a business down town, needs a computer and printer. The problem with a printer is that it will run out of ink eventually. So, to keep your overhead down as low as possible, you need to find ink cartridges to fit your printer at the lowest possible price.

One place to do a search for ink cartridges is Cartridge Finder. They list over 10,000 different ink cartridges so you're very likely to find yours listed there as well. To help you in your search for the best price, the site also checks PriceGrabber.com. Couldn't get much better than that, could it?

Business Idea of the Day

I've just finished donating a business idea for consideration at Business Idea of the Day. These ideas are then passed along to persons in underdeveloped countries to help them make a better life for themselves and their families.

Donating an idea is the primary thing they ask for. They aren't soliciting money, although if you want to go that route, you can. The form for the idea is very easy to use. In just a few minutes I had filled it in, given my idea for a business, and submitted it.

When the idea is published (remember, it's an idea a day), Myvesta will donate the money needed to fund the business through Kiva.

Have an idea for a business? Donate it and help someone!

Christian Homekeeper

Too often, I focus on generating income and forget those things in life that make it worth living. I do read a daily devotional, so my days get started in the right direction. But, I am not diligent enough in reading devotions and Scripture throughout the rest of the day. Those days when I engage in these activities, I find more peace and direction in my decisions. Otherwise, I'm operating on spiritual fumes if I don't "refuel" during the day.

I've run across a site worthy of reading. Christian Homekeeper has devotionals for women along with encouragement, tips, and even some humor. A merry heart is good for you, like medicine, you know!

Where do your dreams reside?

My dreams used to reside sitting on a shelf, gathering dust. Now, I've dusted them off and I'm keeping a close eye on them. I'm actively pursuing them, too. I believe God gives us our heart's desires, as He promised, though it may not be at the time we want them. Sometimes there's a delay. Sometimes it seems like our prayers for our dreams to come true wind up hitting the Stratosphere and lingering there for a very long time.

But lately, I've felt the pull of my dreams grow stronger and I believe some are about to come true.

It's up to us to keep our dreams and hopes alive, even when they are deferred for a time. It's also up to us to move forward toward finalizing those dreams - to act, and believe that we'll reach them.

Millionaire Secrets new domain

I've posted about The Millionaire Secrets a few times before, but now I wanted to let you know that Shawn has his own domain! I know I was excited when I set up my own domains for other blogs. I'm keeping this one because I've got a lot invested in it from my heart and because I have live links here that I have generated income from. I encourage you to check out Shawn's new domain blog, though.

He does a great job of writing such encouraging posts and giving us tips about not only generating income but thinking in such a way that we reduce our stress over it all.

Increase your productivity

I've just finished reading a very worthwhile post about how to Increase productivity while working from home. The tips and ideas this post has should really be implemented by all of us who are currently working from home in some capacity, even if it's only part time right now.

This author also points you to other blog articles that are very helpful in this endeavor. I suggest you go read this and other articles on this blog. I know they'll help me, and I think they'll help you, too.

Memories

When I was a teen, I owned horses. In fact, I owned them for awhile after I got married. As with all things from my youth, though, I gave them up in favor of raising children. Still, we wound up with horses again for awhile when the children were young.

Horses can be fun and can open up your child to opportunities for competitions where they can earn trophies, plaques, and even a few dollars. Naturally, your expense will come from purchasing the horse, tack, and horse riding apparel to begin with, but the rewards of horse ownership cannot be questioned if you have the right animal.

The responsibilities of horse ownership for your child can develop in him or her a responsible outlook later in life. A horse is entirely dependent upon the owner for food, water, shelter, and even protection. As large as they are, they need these things from the owner or they don't do well. In return, they give you friendship and entertainment. The investment in time is paid off well when your horse perks up upon seeing you coming.

Blogging for money

Most of you already know that I do some blogging for money. This gives me a little extra to add to my PayPal account each month, and it helps me pay my car payments and a few other things.

Blogging for money isn't difficult, and there are a lot of places that will pay you. Some will send you assignments while others will let you select which assignments to write about. Blogging for money isn't always about writing ads for products, though. Often, it's simply a well-placed link in content you would write anyway.

Those of you who have your own domains will fare better in this field because most blog for money entities prefer them. However, that doesn't mean you should give up trying because you are on a free host. Use the free host to be your bridge to a domain name all your own. In time, you can make money from both blogging bases - free and your hosted domain.

How much you earn from blogging is merely dependent on how much work you are willing to put into it.

A product you can stand by

If you are planning to operate a home business that sells a product, you have to find a product you can stand by. This means a product that you are convinced is worth the money, is manufactured well, and one which you would use yourself. The actual product you're selling isn't nearly as important as your firm belief that it's the best that can be found for the price. Which product? It doesn't matter if it's cosmetics, apparel, jewelry, home products, or home theater popcorn machines, as long as it's something that excites you.

Once you're excited about the product, those you encounter will share that excitement and be more interested in it.

Business cards

I am very seriously considering getting some business cards printed up. Since I do some professional blogging and I'm planning to hit eBay again with either a store or just use the auctions, I really need to get the word out to people I encounter. Whether any of them will actually keep my business card, I don't know. Surely some will.

I tend to keep every business card that's handed to me, and I've found later that they really do come in handy. Even if I didn't need that person's service at the moment, sometimes later I did.

Reclaiming my space

For far too long I've sort of let things go into disarray around here. I need to reclaim my space so that I can feel better about it when I look around. I've got the shelving for some of the things that need to be put on shelves. What I don't have are specifically designed audio racks to handle my surround sound system.

As you probably already know, any kind of reorganization takes time and planning to get things just right. I need to consider where things will live so that they are in the most convenient and efficient places. And I need to consider the most effective use of what little space I have here.

All of that can help make me ever more productive because I don't have to be moving things around every time I want to use one thing, that just happens to be on the bottom of a stack of other things!

Blog Action Day: The Environment

It's very late in the day to be posting about this very worthy effort of bloggers to make the general public more aware of environmental issues. Still, it's never too late to make your own choices as to what YOU will do. Blog Action Day was established to educate everyone to ways they can reduce, reuse, and recycle in order to clean up the earth on which we live.

I've posted about this already, earlier today, on my Forward Thinking blog. There, I encouraged the use of solar power. But that's not the only thing we can do.

Consider how many plastics you use and discard. Some of them have the recycle symbol on them which means you should be able to take it to your local plastic recycling center. Recycling plastics will help the environment in a couple of ways. Firstly, manufacturers can use the recycled plastic for containers that would normally be made from new materials. Those new materials are petroleum based. I know you can understand how this would save fossil fuels. Secondly, recycling plastics keeps them out of our nation's growing landfills. Plastics take a very long time to break down in the soil. Our great-grandchildren will still be dealing with them many years from now. Let's recycle them instead and reduce the waste in our land.

Make every day Blog Action Day and help save our earth-ship.

Getting the word out about your business

I've been thinking about how to get the word out about any home based business. Advertising can be very expensive, so you'll need some creative ways to let the world know who you are, what you do, and how to contact you.

• Send out flyers. You can have flyers printed up at a local print shop or print them yourself. It would probably be more cost efficient to hire it done, though, since ink and paper could prove to be fairly expensive.
• Get business cards. This would be a very economical and effective way to let others know about your business. Business cards are fairly inexpensive and are usually well received.
• Have announcements printed up like notecards that you could give away or mail to people you believe would be especially interested in your business.
• Make cold calls. This is probably the most difficult way to promote your business because you must accept the fact that some people will flatly reject you. It takes a lot of cold calls to produce a good business contact.
• Word-of-mouth. Because people tend to trust what their friends tell them, word-of-mouth advertising can be an excellent resource. Of course, this means your customers must be completely delighted with your business. This alone will prompt them to recommend you to their friends.

How do you promote your business?

Upping my efforts for home business

Sometimes, I tend to drift a bit where my goal of staying home to operate a home business full time is concerned. See, working at McDonald's means a steady paycheck and sometime that's hard to think of giving up. I have some benefits working there, as well. This means that quitting could bring an extra financial burden on me if I get sick or need to be hospitalized. That alone is a very serious consideration.

Still, keeping my goals before me to work from home and be more self-sufficient tends to overshadow any benefits I may have from working a stressful job. That's what true entrepreneurism is all about. It's starting from what you know and moving out of your comfort zone into your dreams.

Traveling

I just spent about a week at my Mother's, visiting and enjoying various activities in the town where she lives. It's about a 100 mile trip to her house, but worth every mile of the drive to spend precious days with her. She's a treasure, to be sure.

In fact, when I'm able to go to visit her, I sometimes get in a rush to get there! So far, I haven't needed a radar detector to keep me from getting a speeding ticket on the trip. However, since my Mother is quite elderly, I sometimes think it might be a good idea to have one. I really can't afford a ticket! That would be the ultimate waste of money - paying a fine from driving too fast.

I despise spending money if I don't get something tangible in return.

PayPal Money Market drop

I check my PayPal account every few days to see how I'm doing there. Since I got the PayPal debit card, I've earn a bit just from the 1% cash back deal they have if you use it as a credit card. This isn't always possible since some places I use it, the POS will automatically put it through as a debit card. Other places, I have a choice.

I also check on my Money Market interest and watch the ups and downs of that aspect of my account. Right now, for instance, it's dropped from 5.21% to 5.05%. It's not the end of the world, of course, but since I never have a high enough balance to actually earn a lot of money from this each month, that does drop what little I get down further.

However, as with all things, there are fluctuations and I plan to weather this and ride the roller-coaster for awhile longer. Since I no longer have to download the money to my bank account to access it, I may even see a nice rise in my earnings from both Money Market and from the 1% cash back deal they have there.

Community needs

Last week, we had to travel to another city for a People Day meeting for McDonald's. This is an awareness seminar for managers concerning people who are customers or employees and our policies regarding fair treatment. The best part of the seminar, though, was making welcome boxes for the local Ronald McDonald House. These boxed contained a few items that families of children at Children's Hospital might find helpful while they stayed at Ronald McDonald House.

This kind of feel for community needs is also seen in Orlando real estate agents as they support the "Save Our Homes" movement, which seeks to improve legislation regarding their homestead laws.

What are you doing to improve your community or help your neighbors?

Portable business

Since I've just gotten a wireless connection, I thought I'd let you know a little about it just in case you've been thinking of it for yourself.

With a wireless connection, I can blog or do any online business from anywhere I can get a cell phone signal. Right now, I'm at my Mother's house, 100 miles away from where I live, and I'm posting to my blog in the comfort of her living room. She doesn't have a telephone so no dial-up, and she has cable but is a very low-tech person, so no cable internet.

I'm using a wireless USB air card I got from AT&T wireless. It works the same way as my cell phone and has it's own phone number.

As I go along, I'll let you know more about what I like or dislike about being connected wirelessly.