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50. Insulation

Hundreds of dollars are wasted every year from the average home due to improper insulation. Make sure there are no drafts coming from your window, door, or fireplace. Ensure your home has the appropriate level of insulation, which will make a HUGE difference in your utility bill.

51. Cancel Subscriptions

It is always fun getting your favorite magazine or book in the mail but you should cancel them or at least most of them. If you have several subscriptions, choose one or two to keep and cancel the rest.

52. Consolidate your Errands

To save gas, organize your day of errands so you get as much done in an organized manner as possible. Stay in the same geographical area and hit as many of your errands in that area as possible to avoid excessive driving.

53. Sell your Stuff

Go through your house and pull together all the items you no longer use. These can include small or large appliances, gardening tools, clothing, makeup, and sporting equipment, whatever you have, and then list them on eBay.com or Halfoff.com. Take the money earned from these sales and put it in your savings account not to be touched.

54. Turn your Hobby into Money

Everyone has a skill – find yours and turn it into money. For example, if you have a skill for woodworking, start creating children’s toys, or curio cabinets to sell. Perhaps you are computer savvy and could teach a class at your local community college. Find something you enjoy and sell it.

55. Recycle

Try a different type of recycling that will save you money. Have you ever received a nice gift that you like from someone but will never use? Rather than take it back to the store for an exchange, consider keeping it to give as a gift to someone else. Another way to recycle is to look around your home. There are always things right in your home that can be used to make nice gift baskets – things you never use. For example, the next time you purchase shower gel where you buy one and get one free, keep one for yourself and set the other one aside for future gift giving. You will find hundreds of ideas so be creative and consider things you purchased but have never used.

56. Heating and Cooling

Make sure vents in rooms not being used or the garage are closed. Many people tend to try to heat and cool the entire home. Instead, take the time to close off areas that you are not using. You will save substantial money on your utilities.

57. Shop Online

Many online businesses offer great bargains and in some cases, free shipping. Since the Internet is such a competitive market, you can usually find fantastic deals. In addition, many of your favorite businesses where you shop in person have websites that offer even greater savings. Bookstores such as Amazon.com will sell books up to 70% off the original price. Overstock.com is another online business that sells closeout items for fantastic bargains.

58. Consignment Shops

Rather than throw out or sell slightly worn clothing or other household items in a garage sale, consider selling them through a consignment shop. You will get a better price for your items and consignment shops are always looking for quality merchandise. Check out Half.com, which is an online consignment shop offering books, movies, computer software, and much more in either new or used condition.

59. Stay out of the Malls

If possible, stay away from shopping malls. High-dollar shopping malls have expensive overhead and are designed to sell, sell, sell. Prices are generally higher and in most cases, people walk out with more than they anticipated buying. It is better to shop at stand-alone shops or on the Internet.

Popularity: 6% [?]

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40. Go Generic

When buying food, try some of the generic items. Unless you or your guests are connoisseurs of fine dining, they will not know if the green beans were generic or a top name brand. Once you add some butter, salt, and pepper, no one will know the difference except you – $79 per can versus $33 per can! People do not realize that many generic brands are actually manufactured by name brand companies, just branded with a different name. In fact, companies such as those that make snack foods will have conveyor belts that run side-by-side – one for the name brand and one for the generic brand. This is quite common and the only difference is the label and price.

41. Refinance

With interest rates being so low, consider refinancing your home and/or securing a debt consolidation loan. You might have to come up with a new closing cost but once paid, you will have lower payments, better terms, and save thousands of dollars over the years.

42. Stock Up

As you shop, if you notice that a brand you and your family use on a consistent basis is on sale for a great bargain, stock up. As an example, if you use a particular type of shampoo costing $4.50 per bottle and you find it on sale for $2.50, go ahead and buy two bottles. You should only do this on items you know will be used.

43. Shopping for Clothes

There are many secrets relating to saving money on clothing. As a perfect example, rather than buy a matched suit for $450, buy the pieces separate. This will save you about $100 to $150. Additionally, buy several pieces that can be mixed and matched, giving you six outfits out of four pieces.

44. Carpool

In some larger cities, carpooling is required in order to reduce smog. However, regardless of where you live, carpooling can also be a big money saver. Check with co-workers and determine who lives close enough to share a ride. By the end of the year, you will have saved several hundreds of dollars.

45. Trendy Fashion

Most people love to dress in the most up-to-date fashion but for those fashions, you pay big bucks. Consider dressing with basics and then emphasis them with trendy accessories. This will save you money on the clothing that is less expensive while allowing you to dress it up.

46. Free Entertainment

If you are tired of being bored, you will be pleased to learn that there are hundreds of things to do that do not cost a dime. For example, if you want a little Friday or Saturday night excitement, sign up at your local police department for a “ride-a-long” where you can go on duty with an officer as they respond to real calls. Community colleges are always offering free exercise classes, or coffee shops have poetry readings. Entertainment and having fun does not have to cost anything. Some cities have special areas that are popular on the weekends where you can find free concerts. Check your local paper and college to get a list for your area.

47. Telephone / Mobile Phone

First, shop around for the best deals. Second, stay away from all the fun bells and whistles and just stick with the basic plan. Some people have turned to shutting down their home telephone and are now using their mobile phones in place. Since most wireless carriers offer free long-distance, call waiting, call forwarding, caller ID, voicemail, and more, it can do the same as a regular phone but for less. Why have two phones when you can have just one?

48. Home Remedies

Before rushing off to see the doctor for a sore throat, try some home remedies or over the counter drugs instead. For a sore throat, butter mixed with ginger and sugar makes a soothing healing pate. A hot toddy before bed is great for a cold. Simply ask your family for their home remedies and try it. Sometimes a simple over the counter medication or herb will do the trick without costing you an expensive doctor’s office visit.

49. Pay on Time

For every payment you pay late, you are charged a late fee, which can range from $25 to $50 or more depending on the company. Therefore, if you just made a $50 payment but it was paid late, nothing was paid toward the debt. Instead, the entire $50 went toward an unnecessary fee. To avoid spending unnecessary money, be sure you mail your check in time to avoid these fees.

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20. Matinee

Do you love the movies but hate the prices? Switch your nighttime show to the late afternoon or early evening matinee. The price is about 50% less and when taking an entire family, that is a nice savings. Pop your own popcorn, put in a plastic bag, and place in a large purse and make or buy your own candy, leaving only drinks to buy. Food at the theater is outrageously priced. The next time that you head to the movies, hit the matinee, stuff those jellybeans and licorice sticks in your purse, and enjoy the savings. Also, check for movie tickets online, which can be discounted.

21. Make your Own Gifts

If you ask people if they prefer a store bought or handmade gift, the majority would choose the latter. Handmade gifts are individualized and come from the heart. When you have a birthday, anniversary, baby shower, wedding, or Christmas gift to give, make the gift. For Christmas, you could make a beautiful ornament or door wreath, for a baby shower you could purchase an inexpensive bib pattern and make special bibs, or for a wedding, you could create a wonderful album of photos showing the couples dating life. Other great options include making homemade hot chocolate, soaps, candles, or lotions and placing them in inexpensive glass containers or baskets purchased at a thrift shop. If you use a mason jar, add foam and fabric under the lid for added color, use a label to write the contents and a message of endearment, and wrap a nice piece of ribbon around the ridge. The options are endless, so get creative.

22. Barter System

Gather friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers and set up a bartering system. Offer babysitting to one family in exchange for them mowing your lawn or offer to clean someone’s house in exchange for a week of car-pooling your child to school. You would be amazed at the opportunities and the money that can be saved using a bartering system.

23. Comparison Shop

Comparison-shopping can make a big difference in the price you pay. You might be looking at a barbecue grill at one place for $350.00 and by making two more stops, find the exact grill or one comparable for $300. In addition, consider the price of items assembled versus unassembled. For example, you might find the barbecue grill unassembled for $250. A couple of hours of “fun” assembling the grill is certainly worth a $100 saving.

24. Stop Competing with the Jones’

You do not have to compete with anyone. Be proud of what you have and who you are. If you can only afford an inexpensive sofa from a thrift store, find a nice throw, make a few pillows, and be proud and thankful. Competitiveness is a part of nature and to a degree, healthy. However, when competition creates a buying war to see who can have the “best” when they have no business buying at all, then it becomes damaging. Stick to what you can afford regardless of what anyone else has or pressure you might be feeling.

25. Sales Clerk Compliments

Sales clerks are often paid on commission. Therefore, when you walk into a store and try on an expensive suit, you can be guaranteed you will hear several times over how wonderful you look, how great that suit fits you, etc. Because this is how the clerks make their money, they will say whatever it takes to make the sale. You probably do look good but do not allow yourself to be pressured into buying something beyond your means. Know what you want, the price range you can work with, and stick with your own rules, not theirs.

26. Incentives – Reward Plan

To help you and your family spend more wisely, set up a system where rewards are given when the rules set forth are followed. For example, if a family decision was made to start making lunch and brown bagging it to work and school instead of paying each day, the incentive might be that if this is followed strictly for one month, the entire family can spend a Saturday at the Zoo or favorite theme park.

27. Dollar Stores

Many years ago, dollar stores offered only off brand products or poorly made merchandise. However, that has completely changed. Now you can walk into a dollar store and find the same name brand laundry soap, cleaning supplies, clothing, school supplies, everything for a fraction of the cost. Where a store name brand bottle of laundry detergent might cost $6.50 at a grocery store, you can find the identical product and size at the dollar store for $2.50. Check out your local dollar store and enjoy the mountains of savings.

28. Don’t Give up the Good Stuff

A misconception is that while trying to save money you have to deal with sub-par merchandise, which is untrue. If you love fresh breads and pastries, visit a bakery thrift store. For your fresh fruits and vegetables, visit your local farmer’s market. Try eBay or other auction sites to buy top quality merchandise for a huge discount. Watch for neighborhood garage sales or estate sales and auctions to find items you need. Just because you are looking for bargains as a way of saving money does not mean you have to skimp on quality.

29. Utilities

Set up some rules in your home such as turning lights off when leaving the room, having only a parent adjust the air or heat, leaving the doors or windows open when letting either cold or hot air into the house. Utilities are expensive and a great money saver is to monitor how they are used in your home. Another great idea is the investment of buying an energy-efficient hot water heater. If you cannot afford one, lower the setting so you are not heating water so hot. The hotter the setting, the more energy used.

Popularity: 5% [?]

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For the next few weeks, we will be taking excerpts from the book, Podcasting For Dummies, by Tee Morris.

This week, we talked about “fishing for listeners” and differnet techniques you can use to not only monetize your podcast, but to also bring in new listeners to your podcast.

If you don’t already have a copy of this book, you should really think about picking up a copy. It is a great read and has lots of brilliant information in it that will take you step by step into the world of podcasting.

Next week, we will talk about Podcasting for Passion and Publicity. Also taken from chapters from this book!

Popularity: 6% [?]

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You’ve written and compiled an ebook. Now you have to
decide how much to charge for it. Finding the right
price is essential to the success of your product. If
you charge too little, people will think it’s of
little value, and they won’t purchase it, or even it
they do buy your book, you will have to sell thousands
of copies to get to the point where you can begin to
see a profit. If you price it too high when compared
with your competition, you will find yourself steadily
lowering the price, which will cause you all kinds of
new problems in the future. For example, if you sell
your ebook at first for $39.99, and later reduce it to
$24.95, don’t you think the people who bought it for
$39.99 are going to be PISSED?

Choosing the right price for your ebook is one of the
most critical parts of the marketing process. The
first rule of pricing ebooks is to never underprice.
Determine the highest price your audience can afford,
and then if you find your book isn?t selling, you can
always reduce the price. Before you take that step,
make sure you are promoting your book like crazy on
the Internet and on websites. The price should be
aimed at bringing in profits, but you should never
forget that price is one of the factors that people
use in judging the value of your ebook ? before they
buy it. So always start with the highest price, and
then launch a mega-marketing campaign.

Pricing an ebook is particularly difficult because
ebooks are a fairly new commodity. Since they are
digital, the value of an ebook is as confusing as the
understanding of what digital actually is to the
average layperson. This means that we must look at
ebooks in a different light in order to determine
their actual worth in this brave, new cyber world.

Let’s look at the difference between a book in print
and an ebook. A printed book is an object you can hold
in your hand, store on your bookshelf, even hand down
to the next generation. It is priced on factors such
as paper stock, design and production costs, and
marketing.

But the fact that unites ebooks and print books is
that they are composed of ideas. It is the ideas in
these books that have the ability to change, or
possibly transform, people’s lives.

What do you think an idea is worth when evaluated
against the cost of paper and ink?

It is the IDEAS that are valuable! That is how you
determine the cost of your ebook.

What should I charge for my ideas?

There are all different formulas and methods for
determining the correct price for your ebook. Let’s
begin with honing in on your ultimate goals.

Decide if your goal is to get wide distribution and
maximum exposure. This goal is aimed at drawing
customers to your business or service, or to
establishing the credibility of your reputation. If
this is your main goal, you should aim to keep your
price on the low side. Some authors have even priced
their ebooks at a profit loss to draw a high number of
new customers. The key is to find a price that
maximizes your profits and the number of books you
sell.

This is an excellent pricing strategy if you are
looking to acquire long-term customers. Long-term
customers are extremely likely to buy from you again
and again ? as long as the first ebook they buy is of
exceptional quality and beneficial to the customer.

However, if your book contains valuable ? and more
importantly NEW information, references, or techniques
? then you should aim to price it on the high end.

After you figure out your goal, you must figure out
what your audience’s need is for your ebook. For
example, does your book solve a particular problem? If
it does, and solves it in a way that hasn’t been
written about in one hundred other ebooks, you will be
able to achieve high sales at a high price. If your
book solves a problem or answers questions in a new
and unique way, you should price your book as high as
you can go. You will achieve larger profits this way,
but bring in fewer customers. Just make sure the
question or problem that your book solves is one that
is important and relevant to the majority of your
market audience. If your ideas are not common
knowledge, or you are presenting a brand new
technique, you will be able to sell books at a high
price. Just be prepared for your competition to
undercut you on price as soon as they hear about your
book.

Keep in mind that the above pricing strategy is
temporary. Eventually, you will cease to sell books at
this high price. So figure out in advance how long you
plan to offer your ebook at this high price, and when
that time is up, change your pricing strategy.

If you want to see large profits over customer draw,
aim for an audience that is looking for easy solutions
to their problems at a low price. If your book is
aimed at solving one particular problem rather than
general advice, then you can charge more. Start at the
highest price the market will bear to bring in the
largest profits, and plan to discount the book a
number of times throughout the year.

Marketing Strategies

The key that unlocks the sales potential of your ebook
is to find a single sentence that becomes your selling
handle. This sentence states what question or problem
your book answers and the benefits your ebook can
provide. Then be sure to use that sentence in every
piece of sales and promotional material, and every
time anyone asks you about your ebook.

Besides promoting your books assiduously online, there
are several other strategies that can help you sell
more books.

One is to give something away for free with your book,
such as a valuable bonus item. Or bundle several
ebooks under one price, which lowers the price for
each ebook if they were sold separately.

An effective technique for figuring out a price is to
send out a survey to your current customers. If these
customers have already bought an ebook from you, ask
for their opinion in terms of price. Do this by
creating a sales page for the new book, but don’t
include a price on that page. Instead, add a number of
links to survey questions that ask pointed questions
to aid you in assigning a price to your ebook.

Another strategy is to test out prices by creating a
number of duplicate sales pages with different prices
on each page. Make sure your sales copy is exactly the
same on every page, and includes your selling-handle
sentence. Then figure out for each page the conversion
ratio between visitors to your site and sales of your
book. This will tell you what your optimum price is.

Ultimately, if you’ve written a book that solves a
problem or presents a new technique, your book will
bring in both traffic and profits. So be sure to write
that selling-handle sentence that sums up what problem
your book solves and what the benefits of your book
will be to the customers who purchase it. And then
watch your market come to you!

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Popularity: 9% [?]

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In today’s society, there are many individuals who are looking to make money anyway that they can. In many cases, these individuals are looking for opportunities that allow them to work at their own pace or be their own boss. If you are one of those individuals then it is possible that you may have thought about creating and selling e-books.

The popularity of e-books has rapidly increased over the past few years now. Many readers are not only finding it convenient to purchase them, but cheaper. In most cases, e-books are easily to read on the computer, but they can also be printed off. Since more and more consumers are interested in purchasing e-books, there are more individuals who are looking to make money off of them. If you are able to do this, you may find success; however, that success will not come without hard work.

If you have never created an e-book before, it is difficult to understand exactly how much hard work it entails. To be worth the buy, most e-books are at least one hundred pages long; however, some are longer. If you are interested in creating an e-book, it may take months for you to finish the book. In addition to hard work, you must also have writing experience and knowledge on the topic that you are writing about. This knowledge and experience isn’t necessarily necessary; however, it is important to the success of your e-book. It is a fact that customers do not and will not purchase poor quality work.

In addition to writing a quality e-book, you will also have to find ways to sell it. Together, the two could take a large amount of time. For many individuals, this is a major turn off; however, there are alternatives. If you are interested in selling e-books, to make a profit, you do not necessarily have to create your own. Instead you can obtain the private label resell rights to another e-book. Obtaining the resell rights to an e-book will allow you, in many cases, to assume to the work as your own, edit the content, and pocket the money from each sale of the book.

The biggest downside to obtaining the resell rights to an e-book is the amount of money that you will have to spend. Depending on who you do business with, the cost of acquiring private label resell rights may be fairly expensive. Since most freelance writers spend a large amount of time creating their e-books, as previously mentioned, they may want to appropriately be compensated. The cost of resell rights to an e-book may be considered a disadvantage to this unique business opportunity, but it can also be considered an advantage. E-book authors that charge more for their work typically have produced better content; better content is easier to sell.

Whether you make the decision to develop your own e-book or purchase the resell rights to someone else’s, you will still have to find a way to market the e-book to the general public. This, depending on what approach you take, can take time. That is why many individuals prefer purchasing the resell rights to an e-book that has already been created. This allows them to spend more time on marketing, which will in turn create sales.

If you are unsure as to whether or not you should create your own e-book or obtain the resell rights to another, you are not alone. There are a number of other individuals wondering the same thing. Private label resell rights are an amazing business opportunity for some, but not for all. All online business opportunities take time to find success. If you have the financial resources needed to obtain the resell rights to a well written e-book, you are encouraged to give this opportunity a shot. You are not guaranteed results, but you may be surprised with what you find.

If you try obtaining the resell rights to an e-book and the experience is not what you had in mind you can begin to create your own e-books or move onto another business opportunity. Unlike many other business ventures, private label resell rights allow you to get out when you want. After you have paid for the resell rights to an e-book, it is yours to do with. This means that you can stop at anytime and move on to something else, if you desire.

You can find Private Label Rights eBooks at The Personal Publisher and at the Two Beams Membership Site.

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Popularity: 5% [?]