My CFO on the Go!

Starting a new business is always fun and exciting! I should know. I have successfully launched 3 businesses and I am working on my fourth! But before you get carried away with the rush of starting a new venture, ask yourself a few questions.

#1. Is There a Market For My Product or Service?

Is there a market for your product? You may love it, but does anyone else? Can you convince people to part with their hard earned money? Check your competition. Is there lots of competition? Then how are you going to make your product stand out. No competition? That may be because you are the first, or it may be that there is no market for your product.

#2. Do I Have Enough Money to Get Me Through the First Year?

Do not expect to become an overnight success! It does happen, although it is rare. Starting a business can be very expensive. Just getting the word out about your product can burn through a lot of cash. Make a financial plan, assume almost no income for the first year, and make sure you have enough to cash to carry you through. Many businesses that fail, would have eventually succeeded if they had enough cash for their launch period.

#3. Do I Have a Plan?

Or maybe even two or three. You could have a marketing plan and a financial plan, but at the very least every business should have a business plan. It does not need to be complicated or long, it can be just a page or two, but it should be in writing. What are your goals for your business, and how do you expect to achieve those goals? How do you see your business one year from now, how about ten years from now?

#4. Who are my Advisers and Mentors?

Do not be a lone ranger and try to do everything yourself. Find a mentor who can give you good advice, and give a different perspective on your business. Find a tax adviser, someone who does more than just fill out tax forms. An excellent tax adviser will help you maximize the tax savings of your business, and will most likely save you more than their fees. Good legal advice will also save you money over the long term.

Answer these questions and you will be ahead of the game when it comes to starting a successful business.

One of the things I hope to do more of is to review various “make money” opportunities on the web. There are so many scams out there that sometimes the legitimate offers get lost in the noise.

One of the real ways to blog for money is to write sponsored posts. (Such as this one.) Advertisers will pay to have bloggers write a short review of their product or service You could do this directly, by soliciting advertisers, writing the posts, and then collecting payment. Or you can use a 3rd party service such as Smorty.

Smorty is a service that connects advertisers and bloggers. Bloggers will earn a minimum of $6, and can earn up to $100 depending on the Page Rank of their blog and their Smorty rating. One of the nice things about Smorty is they pay very quickly. While other sponsored posting services can take up to 30 days to pay, Smorty will approve your blog post within 5 days and then pay within one week of approval.

There are a few requirements to have your blog approved by Smorty.

1. You must have an active blog (at least 2 posts per week) that is at least 3 months old.
2. Your blog must be indexed by Google and Yahoo
3. You cannot have any hate, violent, or adult content.

See the Smorty website for more requirments.

Like most legitimate make money opportunities Smorty is free to join. You never have to pay them for you to earn money! Blog approval is pretty quick, with most blogs being approved within 72 hours.

You won’t get rich quick writing for Smorty, but it is a valid way to get paid for blogging.

Please bear with me while I work on changing my theme. I think it is time for an upgrade, and I have a few things I would like to try out. Sorry for the inconvinience, I’ll try and finish up quick. Hopefully things will look lots better when I am done!

Edit: Despite crashing the forum and having it down for a day, I am happy with the changes being made! I now have a theme that I like for the blog, and one that works well for me for the forum.  What would really be nice now is to have them customized so they match.  If anyone out there is talented enough to modify the themes I have so that they at least share the same colors, (more blue than the blog, less blue than the forum!) PM me in the forum. Maybe we could work something out.