How To Start Penny Stock Trading: A 2021 Beginners guide

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Quick Start Guide For How To Start Trading Penny Stocks

If you would like to learn how to start penny stock trading, you aren’t alone. Many new investors are tempted by the allure of penny stocks. Penny stocks offer the potential of overnight success with low initial cost. I can assure for every single success story, there are nine failure stories. The price point is the biggest allure for investors. If you see a stock that is 50 cents with massive hype projecting it moving to five dollars in the next 18 months, that sounds too good to be true.

Understand the risks if you want to learn how to start trading penny stocks effectively. Penny stocks can fluctuate wildly.

Have you ever watched the scene in “The Wolf of Wall Street” where the character, Jordan Belfort, walks into the penny stock trading firm called Investor Center? This is the scene that I think of whenever I think of penny stock trading. I’m not suggesting that all the stocks traded over-the-counter (OTC) are actually worthless, there could be several that actually have untapped value. I’m only suggesting that we need to make sure we do as much research as we can and learn the best way how to start penny stock trading.

In this article, I discuss what penny stocks are and the tiers associated, where you can trade penny stocks and the potential risks, then finally a quick strategy on how to start penny stock trading. 

What Are Penny Stocks?

Generally speaking, a penny stock can be any stock that is under five dollars in cost per share. However, these penny stocks between one dollar and five dollars are more often than not traded on the national exchange. This means they are regulated by government agencies. There are other tiers of penny stock that range from one dollar to one cent and even in fractional cents. Yes, penny stocks trade as low as .0001 per share. This can be very appealing considering an investment of 10,000 dollars will buy you 100 Million shares and if that stock goes to .0010, then the value of your position becomes 100,000 dollars. With just that one decimal place move.

If you want to learn how to start trading penny stocks, make sure to first save up your pennies.

Now, this may sound very exciting, but keep in mind that penny stocks are actually more risky than regular stocks. For the purpose of this article, I am referring to penny stocks as anything under one dollar per share. These are usually start up companies that are trying to acquire capital and do not meet the listing requirements to trade on the larger exchange. In that manner, penny stocks will usually trade via the Pink Sheets or Over-the-counter bulletin board (OTCBB).

These are both electronic trading platforms that connect buyers and sellers. Companies listed on the Pink Sheets are not required to disclose any financial statements. This means that they could be completely bankrupt or have very small operations.  They will usually have low liquidity, and if a trade is placed, it could take hours for the order to fill or may not fill at all.

Where Can You Trade Penny Stocks?

Now that you have better understanding of what penny stocks are, I’m sure you are asking, “where can I trade them?” Well, the stocks between five dollars and one dollar can be traded in any brokerage account as long as they are listed on the actual New York Stock Exchange. You can trade stocks that are less than one dollar at many brokerage firms as well. Examples that I would suggest are Charles Schwab, Fidelity, E-Trade and TD Ameritrade.

Some stocks considered "penny stocks" can actually be traded on the major exchanges.

But if you want to venture into the world of sub-penny stocks traded on the Pink Sheets, then that can be a little more difficult. These may be traded at the brokerage houses, you would need to talk to their customer service. Some charge additional fees for smaller trades. A website to learn more is OTC Markets Group. I have also recently learned about Webull for trading as well. 

Market Strategy: How To Start Penny Stock Trading

If you would like to start trading penny stocks, I would suggest strongly following the next five steps. These are going to be similar to my article on ‘Stock Market Investing’ with some nuances.

Step 1 in Strategy: Select the trading platform

This can be as easy as choosing a brokerage firm that you like the best. Another quick way is to just do an internet search on “Best Online Brokers to start penny stock trading”. The top 5 that I see, in no particular order, are Interactive Brokers, TradeStation, Lightspeed, Fidelity and Charles Schwab. The major piece to this section is fees. We need to focus on how much these firms charge for penny stock trading. Many firms don’t charge commissions, so we need to select one that doesn’t charge commission.

Step 2 in Strategy: Research, Research, Research

This is really the main category. You hear me talk about financial education in many of my posts. When deciding on what to trade, research is so important here. There is a lot of hype around penny stocks. More so than traditional stock day trading. Exchange listed penny stocks are much safer to trade. There are multiple companies that are less than one dollar that may prove to be financially sound. Conversely there are many out there that are not. There are many ways to screen for stocks that are under a dollar. Typically, this can be found in the research section of the online platform.

Research the company as much as you can.

Personally, I would discourage trading in the Pink Sheets or OTCBB. Most brokerage houses can trade these but this would require some additional conversation with customer service and may take some time to fully execute. The big question mark with trading on the Pink Sheets or OTCBB is that there is no regulation. They are very possibly scamming people and there is no way to know. At least with listed securities that are under one dollar, you can do more research on the company. There are requirements to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Step 3 in Strategy: Monitor the Volume

I would strongly discourage buying shares of companies with little to no volume, regardless of the price. Many penny stocks trade less than five thousand shares per day, but if there is a special news release on the company, it could trade in the millions. These could be better days to trade penny stocks as the liquidity of the stock is much higher.

Step 4 in Strategy: Stay away from the random Emails!

Stay far away from "hot stock tip" emails. There are usually "pump and dump" scams for penny stocks.

When you start your investing journey, inevitably there will be some eye catching guru talking about what stock to buy or the latest stock to purchase. I personally find the ones that mention, “the next Google” or “Better than Apple” to be quite humorous. Promotional offers can be extremely risky. Now, if someone is offering a program to teach you a trading strategy, that may be worthwhile. There is great value in learning from someone who has been successful in that field. Most wealthy people have a mentor. Everyone builds upon something that someone else has first created.

Step 5 in Strategy: Manage your risk

This should go without saying really. But since we are talking about penny stocks, there are only a few ways to really manage risk. Penny stock trading is highly speculative. It’s very similar to actual gambling. There is typically limited news, liquidity, and general insight into the company. We shouldn’t use penny stock trading as our only source of investment income.

That being said, one of the biggest ways to manage risk in trading is to set a profit or loss threshold. It’s best to get small gains consistently with penny stocks to avoid the potential downturn. We learned about stop orders and limit orders in my post on ‘Trading Stocks‘. Penny stocks are not necessarily good for a buy and hold strategy. Also, make sure to have safer, less volatile investments in another account. Lastly, if you really want to learn how to start penny stock trading, join a trading chat room or look for a course on trading penny stocks.

Disclaimer: I receive affiliate compensation for some of the links in this post at NO cost to you. However, these are the best tools I have used and tested that I believe are most effective for launching and running an online business. You can read our full affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy. Also, I am not a licensed advisor, any information within this article is purely my opinion and not an endorsement of an investing strategy.

My Final Take

I’m sure many of you can tell by now that investing is a passion of mine. Trading and investing was my first exposure to making real money online and outside of a day job. With that said, penny stock trading is very risky. I am no stranger to risk and have done a fair amount of penny stock trading in my past, but I would really caution a new investor in doing this. You really will need a great deal of patience and risk tolerance. Plus, you will need to be able to make quick decisions that affect your investments. For some more information on trading penny stocks, check out this book, “The Guide for Penny Stock Investing” by Donny Lowy. This book goes over some of the risks and also ways to spot trends for huge growth penny stock companies. Another book option is, “Invest in Penny Stocks: A Guide to Profitable Trading” by Peter Leeds.

All investing comes with risk, but penny stocks add a little extra. I would suggest talking to your brokerage firm about getting a trading simulator and experimenting first in a risk-free environment before diving in to the deep end. Also, keep in mind that many brokerage firms have the ability to invest in fractional shares of stocks, so you could benefit from that appreciation even if you don’t have enough cash to purchase a full share. I hope this gave you some more information to enhance your trading knowledge or spark an additional interest. As usual, Happy Trading!

Before you go…

Do you want to learn how you can take ANY business and scale it to achieve your dreams and goals? You can start a business not only trading penny stocks, but teaching others how to do it. Starting a business requires help and education to make good money. The program below offers a coach mentor day one and walks you through the process how to get started.

Partner up with me by clicking on this link and watching the video.

We will show you EXACTLY how to build a business online and customize a plan just for you. We will help you choose a niche, setup your online business and help with selecting offers that you can promote.

On top of that you will get ONE on ONE mentoring to make sure you are doing things right.

A great way to be able to save more money is when we make more money.

Cheers to your success and See you at the Top!

-Cameron

Mind Money Masters

ETF with FAANG Stocks: A Good Strategy?

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Is there an ETF with only the five FAANG stocks? What are FAANG stocks? Should these stocks be part of my investment strategy? It’s important to understand what are FAANG stocks and if they are a good investment strategy. In this review, we discover what makes up this acronym, why the are important and how we can invest in an ETF with FAANG stocks.

What Are FAANG stocks?

An ETF with FAANG stocks includes five different companies. They are a large part of the Nasdaq from a market cap perspective.

FAANG is an acronym for five companies that are very important in the performance of the overall stock market. If you are thinking of investing, FAANG is somewhat of a buzz word that refers to; Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google. The term FAANG is first credited to Jim Cramer on MSNBC, but he first did not include Apple stock, so it was just FANG. He credits the acronym to a senior analyst and former colleague.

In order to decide on investing in an ETF with FAANG stocks, we should understand more about the underlying securities that make up FAANG. If you are unsure about investing in an ETF or how that works, please read ‘Investing in ETFs’. It would be beneficial before we go into more detail. Otherwise, below is a short summary of the stocks within FAANG.

Facebook

Facebook, ticker symbol FB, is the “F” of the FAANG stocks as you may have guessed. Many ETFs carry Facebook as part of their larger strategy. It is quite possibly a household name if you discuss social media at home. As it should, with over 2.7 billion active users in Q3 of 2020 and an annual revenue of close to 71 billion, it would be well known. Plus, when if acquired Instagram, it may have been the perfect combo for future social media dominance.

Facebook, digital media mogul, makes up the F in an ETF with FAANG stocks.

This company makes money by advertising to users while they scroll through news feeds, pictures and videos. 92 percent of the advertising revenue came from a mobile platform. Since more people every day are becoming mobile, I am sure that revenue expectations will rise. However, to some, the initial public offering was a disappointment. In addition, there have been some recent privacy issues that have come up with the company as a whole. That being said, something must be going right over there as the stock price has steadily climbed and more than double over the past five years.

Amazon

Amazon, ticker symbol AMZN, is also a well known organization. It is the first “A” in the FAANG acronym. If you wanted to build an ETF with FAANG stocks, Amazon would be a potential way to diversify, since Amazon really isn’t a technology stock. Founder Jeff Bezos started the company in 1995 with a goal to make it the largest online bookstore. Now he is one of the richest men in the world.

Amazon has created the largest online retailer in the world. If you want to create an ETF with FAANG stocks, Amazon would be a way to slightly diversify your investments.

Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer, specializing in business to consumer e-commerce. However, it also has a strong cloud computing presence in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform, has its own movies and electronic devices. Also, if you are a member of Prime, then you are one of over 150 million subscribers. Its stock price has more than quadrupled over the past 5 years.

Apple

Ticker symbol AAPL is the oldest and most established organization on this list with roots back in the early computer industry of the 1970s and 80s. Apple still makes computers but as with the Facebook trend, half of the revenue from apple comes from the release of smartphones. I has also found a niche in cloud computing storage, electronic devices and streaming music and movies. Apple stock has been on a recent strong upward trend, as the stock has almost tripled since March of 2020.

It is important to note that Apple was not originally included in the FAANG group. It was FANG when this concept was introduced. Apple was added later and is generally considered part of the group now. Keep in mind that you could create your own ETF with FAANG stocks by purchasing all five companies. It would be some over-exposure to software, but if you are looking to participate in their gains, that is an option.

Netflix

Netflix, ticker symbol NFLX is a different organization than the other on this list as it doesn’t really have the same business model and doesn’t have a heavy software presence. With over 150 million subscribers, this streaming television and movie service has made a name for itself. The company went public in 2002. I’m sure many of you can remember that it was originally a direct mail movie provider.

Netflix and streaming have revolutionized the video industry.
Netflix streaming service may have revolutionized the video industry.

It was designed somewhat to compete with the brick-and-mortar video rental industry. Netflix offered customers the ability to rent a movie online and it would arrive next-day. However, following the trend, they moved to a streaming service and has since launched Netflix Original movies. Netflix stock had modest growth in 2019, but has been on a strong upward trend in since March of 2020 as well.

Google (Alphabet)

Google, ticker symbols GOOG and GOOGL, better known as Alphabet in the investing world, may be the most recognized search engine in the market. It is also leading the charge in some cutting-edge technology. Self-driving cars, smart cities and bio-technology are commonly discussed in Google round tables. They also own YouTube which is one of the largest video streaming social media platforms in the world. Both share classes of Google have seen nearly double returns since March of 2020.

Why Do FAANGs Matter?

The market capitalization of the FAANG stocks make up roughly 1/10th of the total stock market capitalization.

The total capitalization of the US stock market is over $34 Trillion and the market capitalization of the FAANG stocks is more than three trillion. So, these five companies alone make up roughly one-tenth of the market cap of the US stock market. They matter because what happens to them typically affects the entire market in some way. These five corporations should all be on your stock watch list, if nothing else to get an idea of how volatile they are. Any mutual fund or broad market ETF that seeks to mirror an index will likely have one or more of these stocks in its portfolio.

If you are seeking to track the market and to understand how the market behaves with certain economic changes it would be a good idea to track these stocks. If you are able to purchase all five of these companies, you could create your own ETF.

Is There An ETF With FAANG Stocks?

Unfortunately, no. There is no ETF with these five companies alone. That wouldn’t be a very diversified portfolio. However, the Bank of Montreal did issue an exchange traded note (ETN) that tracks an index with these five stocks. That index also contains five other companies in the same industry. The ticker symbol for that is FNGS. As I mentioned above, there are many mutual funds and ETFs that track the overall market. They would hold these stocks in their portfolio and that might make a better investment decision. The ETN with the symbol FNGS may not be the best option for an investor given that the index it tracks is very small and the holdings are not very diversified. In addition, there is an expense ratio of .58% with this ETN.

There are so many brokerage firms offering the ability to purchase fractional shares, that you might be able to create your own ETF with FAANG stocks. Charles Schwab offers this as Stock Slices. You add a dollar amount and select a number of companies to purchase, then Schwab will allocate the value equally across the stocks selected. This is similar to the way a mutual fund is purchased.

ETFs With FAANG Holdings

Purchasing slices of stocks could be a cheap way to create an ETF with FAANG stocks.
Stock slices could be a good strategy.

If you are looking for an ETF that might be exposed to these five companies, you could look into these four ETFs; Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ), iShares Core S&P US Growth (IUSG), iShares S&P 500 Growth (IVW) or iShares U.S. Tech Breakthrough (TECB). These four all contain the five stocks in the top ten holdings. Please keep in mind that I am not recommending these ETFs as I am not a registered investment advisor. These simply are examples of four ETFs that hold the five companies referred to in the FAANG category.

Disclaimer: I receive affiliate compensation for some of the links in this post at NO cost to you. However, these are the best tools I have used and tested that I believe are most effective for launching and running an online business. You can read our full affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy. Also, I am not a licensed advisor, any information within this article is purely my opinion and not an endorsement of an investing strategy.

My Final Take An ETF With FAANG Stocks

If you have been able to read any of my other posts, you may realize that I focus quite a bit on investing and personal finance. “My final take” section offers my personal opinion on the subject and not professional advice. That being said, FAANG stocks are fairly volatile and should not be taken lightly. I have traded these five securities at one time or another.

When making any type of investing decisions, I would always suggest that research and education are your best friends. They should guide you every step of the way. The application of knowledge is where the real power comes from, in any endeavor.

More On Stock Slices

Personally, I do like the concept of stock slices. In that scenario, you can purchase an equal amount of the five stocks and create your own ETF. I know I mentioned this earlier, but using stock slices is a great way to get exposure to multiple companies without having to buy full shares. Take for example, Google. It is trading at $1,800 currently. Netflix is over $500 and Amazon is over $3,000 per share.

Trading in general can be a way in increase your retirement holdings. Building an ETF with FAANG stocks could cause overexposure and therefore risk to your retirement.

If you are in a place financially to afford these, then excellent. However, considering the average retirement account balance for age group 45 – 54 is $80,000, you would be able to purchase about 25 shares Amazon. Therefore, wouldn’t be very diversified. I hope this helps you understand a little more surround FAANG stocks and can be beneficial to your portfolio. Happy investing!

Before you go…

Do you want to learn how you can take ANY business and scale it to achieve your dreams and goals? Similarly to getting investment advice, starting a business requires help and education to make good money. The program below offers a coach mentor day one and walks you through the process how to get started.

Partner up with me by clicking on this link and watching the video.

We will show you EXACTLY how to build a business online and customize a plan just for you. We will help you choose a niche, setup your online business and help with selecting offers that you can promote.

On top of that you will get ONE on ONE mentoring to make sure you are doing things right.

A great way to be able to save more money is when we make more money.

Cheers to your success and See you at the Top!

-Cameron

Mind Money Masters

Stocks or Mutual Funds: How do You Decide?

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Stocks or Mutual funds for $1,000, please. There has been an age-old debate on which is better as an investment. Some say stocks because you are actually owning the company, some say mutual funds because there is the belief that there is diversification, therefore less risk. There are people that I know who swear by mutual funds and others who wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole. This article discusses some factors to consider before investing in either. Personally, I think it comes down to three factors: Control, Education and Time.

The Control Factor of Stocks Or Mutual Funds

One of the proponents of a good investment portfolio, whether that be in stocks or mutual funds or bonds or ETFs, is a degree of risk management. We have discussed risk management in my earlier post on ETFs, so I will be brief in this article. Risk management is defined by its name really. In finance, Risk management is the ability to identify, analyze and potentially control uncertainty.

Like with video games, deciding on stocks versus mutual funds depends on how you want to play your investments.

Therefore, one of the key distinctions between investing in Stocks or mutual funds is control. How much actual control do you want over your investments? If the focus is letting the market just affect your portfolio versus you taking control of your investments managing them, then maybe Mutual Funds are the best option.

Research and Risk Management

Stocks require quite a bit of research and potentially more focus on risk management than mutual funds. Based on the general understanding of diversification, mutual funds have less risk. That is to say, mutual funds are large bucket investments and they have an investment manager. If you put money into a mutual fund you do not have any ownership of the company’s they invest in. Simply, you are giving your money to someone else to manage and hope they do a good job.

When you buy a share of stock, this is a piece of ownership of the company. Ownership is an asset. When you invest in mutual funds, you don’t own anything. You buy a share of a mutual fund and participate in the appreciation, but you aren’t buying shares in the mutual fund company or in the shares of the company’s that they purchase. Some would consider buying shares of a company is a better investment since you own a piece of the company versus part of a mutual fund investment. I would suggest that it depends on your long term goals. If you want to own parts of companies and earn dividends on that ownership, then buy stocks. If you are just hoping for capital appreciation without much work, then buy mutual funds.

Trading Daily

Being able to make quick decisions and trading daily may be important for you when deciding on Stocks or Mutual funds.

Mutual funds trade daily, but there is no way to get out of a mutual fund quickly if the market is going down. They only trade once per day. This is after the stock market closes. Conversely with stocks, if you see the market in a downturn, you would be able to get out of that investment immediately, even if you took a loss. Being able to trade intra-day is a way to monitor your risk. However if you are planning on consistently investing in a mutual fund via an automatic investing plan (AIP), then maybe being able to trade daily isn’t important.

Education Is Key When Deciding Between Stocks Or Mutual Funds

The financial gurus will tell you that the perfect investment allocation is based on your risk acceptance level. They will take this model and try to explain why you should be in 60 percent large cap equities and 20 percent small or mid cap equities with 10 percent in international and 10 percent in bonds. And you might be thinking, “what is a cap?” Cap is short for Market Capitalization. This means, effectively, the size of the organization in the stock market. The total number of shares of stock outstanding multiplied by the current per share stock price.

Recommendation From Advisors

One thing to take into account before blindly following their advice is that they are basing this recommendation on past performance and expected risk level of the investments. They have no idea if that is the best model for you. They are solely basing their recommendation on past performance and expectation. However, do they not clearly state that past performance does not indicate future results? So, they are covering themselves just in case the portfolio goes down “unexpectedly” but also saying that the portfolio allocation is the best for you. Does that make sense?

It's okay to get advice when deciding on stocks or mutual funds. You do not need to know everything.

Please do not misunderstand, I have a great deal of respect for financial advisors. I am simply saying that there is an element of personal ownership. You should educate yourself when it comes to your investments. There are a lot of incredible financial advisors out there who really know their trade, but there are also some out there who don’t. Your financial education will be able to spot those who know and those who don’t. For more on financial advisors, check out my post on ‘Financial Advisor Services’.

Investing In Your Own Education

When you invest in your education, it’s an investment that has unlimited return. The application of knowledge is power. Stocks or mutual funds do not have to be a mutually exclusive question. Recently, I learned about stock slices where you can buy fractional shares of companies and work towards creating your own mutual fund. Simply with 100 dollars you can buy fractional shares of multiple companies.

Your Time Is Valuable

Time research is important when deciding on stocks or mutual funds. Dedicate the necessary time to make the right decisions.

Another important aspect of investing is time. This is not only the time horizon before retirement but also the time you can dedicate on your investments. Time plays a very important factor on deciding between stocks or mutual funds because many people assume that mutual funds require less time commitment. I think that is actually an industry misdirection.

Mutual fund companies want to sell their services. The mutual fund advisory industry is a multi-trillion-dollar business. They want the consumer to believe that when you invest in mutual funds you don’t have to spend time deciding on which stock or doing lots of research. They want you to feel secure that they are acting in your best interest.

If you are looking for a safe investment and deciding between stocks or mutual funds, time and risk management play an important role.

Have to be honest, sounds like a sales tactic. Of the three topics discussed in this article I specifically left time for last, as it ties the other two together. If you don’t have time to learn about investing or to educate yourself, then you won’t understand how to control your risk. So, by default, investing in stocks sounds scary. It makes you think there is too much risk. Well, enter the mutual fund. They can supposedly give you all the upside without the time commitment and since they are diversified, there is much less risk. Learn more about financial education in my post on ‘Financial Literacy‘.

Disclaimer: I receive affiliate compensation for some of the links in this post at NO cost to you. However, these are the best tools I have used and tested that I believe are most effective for launching and running an online business. You can read our full affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy. Also, I am not a licensed advisor, any information within this article is purely my opinion and not an endorsement of an investing strategy.

Associated Fees

The idea of just continuously storing money away into a mutual fund every month will give you the time freedom to think about all the other things in your life that are more important. However, here’s the thing, your time is valuable, but you should really dedicate the same amount of time to stocks and mutual funds. They both have nuances that need to be addressed.

Mutual funds have fees, stocks typically have only one fee, a commission, and many brokerage firms aren’t charging that anymore. Mutual funds are less liquid than stocks. Meaning you cannot sell the mutual fund quickly. However, access to the cash from a sale is quicker with mutual funds. Stocks give you more control over your investments and can delay taxes.

My Final Take Between Stocks or Mutual Funds

 When it comes to stocks or mutual funds, deciding in which to invest can be dauting. When I first started investing, it felt like that midway game at the state fair. The one where you have a dart throw it at a balloon on the wall. If it pops the balloon, you get the prize that corresponds with whatever was in the balloon. Sometimes investing feels this way.

I will strongly urge anyone considering investing in stocks or mutual funds to do as much research as you can stomach. Read books on both, if you don’t have time to read, listen to audio books in the car. How badly do you have to listen to that radio station? Half the time it doesn’t present anything worthwhile except traffic reporting.

Investment Books On Stocks Or Mutual Funds

If you need recommendations for investment books, I have six below:

Honestly, the more you know about this topic, the better. This is your future. Do I think that investing in stocks or mutual funds is the most important thing in life? Obviously not, but if you would like to add paper assets to one of your asset classes and possible grown some passive income from investments, do not only listen to “financial gurus” and blindly follow what they say. Many years ago I learned a saying, “if you don’t know what to do with your money, I’m sure someone will.” Perhaps it is an offshoot of “a fool and his money are soon parted.”

Paper Assets

Full disclosure, I invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds and options. These are just one of the assets classes known as “paper assets”. So, I’m not trying to say that mutual funds are not a worthwhile investment. I would suggest that research, risk management and time are the most important aspect of any investment. However, if you want more control over your investments, stocks would be better than mutual funds. Remember to have a risk management strategy mapped out. In essence a way to control the possibility of the stock value decreasing.

The nature of this article is not intended to make you decide one or the other, stocks or mutual funds. The intention here is to understand the benefits and risks of both. It is a completely acceptable investment strategy to have both. My intention is to help educate anyone that is willing to learn. I hope you enjoyed this quick review of two good investing vehicles. Happy Trading!

Before you go…

Do you want to learn how you can take ANY business and scale it to achieve your dreams and goals? Similarly to getting financial advice, starting a business requires help and education to make good money. The program below offers a coach mentor day one and walks you through the process how to get started.

Partner up with me by clicking on this link and watching the video.

We will show you EXACTLY how to build a business online and customize a plan just for you. We will help you choose a niche, setup your online business and help with selecting offers that you can promote.

On top of that you will get ONE on ONE mentoring to make sure you are doing things right.

A great way to be able to save more money is when we make more money.

Cheers to your success and See you at the Top!

-Cameron

Mind Money Masters

Financial Advisor Services: Are they Worth it?

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A financial advisor can be a very important person in the life of an investor. It’s important to know as much as you can before enlisting the advice of any financial professional. I’m sure you have seen commercials or read somewhere about how a Financial Advisor can help you. But can they? What are they really? Do they really help people with their finances? In this article on financial advisors, I discuss what they are, what they do, why they may be important for you and why you might need one.

Financial Advisor Defined

Financial Advisor and Financial Planner are oftentimes used interchangeably, but it’s not really the case. A financial planner is typically just someone that offers a financial plan or investment plan. In a general sense, an advisor can be defined as any person who is directly involved in the financial decision-making process of another person or entity.

Is a Financial Advisor able to help or can you do better on your own?

A financial advisor typically can do more than a financial planner or specializes in something other than just investment planning. An advisor could also be a certified public accountant (CPA) or a registered investment advisor (RIA). Regardless whether you decide on a financial advisor or a financial planner, they both are able to assist in the investment managing process. Recently, we see “Robo-Advisors” as a common alternative to traditional financial advisors. I go into more detail on them in a later section.

What Could a Financial Advisor Do for You?

Now that we just learned, from a high level perspective what a financial advisor is, as for what they do, they can do almost anything related to finance. If you are someone just starting out and have no idea where to begin on investing, it is important to either; a) do all the research yourself or b) talk to someone who has already done the research for you. Typically, I try not to reinvent the wheel, so I would like to learn from someone who has been there. A financial advisor is someone that has been there and hopefully learned more about this topic than you.

The financial advisor can offer options and strategies that you may not have thought of before. If your main business is working 9 to 5 in software sales, how much time are you devoting to learning about the investment market? After work do you take some courses for fun? Or do you spend that time with your family and friends? An advisor is someone to have on your team that can free up your time to do other things instead of researching stocks, bonds, mutual funds or alternative investments. This is their 9 to 5. Now, the next question could be, how do I select the correct financial advisor? First we must learn the types of financial advisors and which one may be the most effective.

Financial Advisor Types

There are really only three types of advisors in the market now: Traditional Financial Advisors, Online Financial advisors and Robo Advisors. There are advantages and disadvantages to each.

Traditional Financial Advisors

A traditional financial advisor should be able to help you manage your money.

This is the most common advice offered. You may have seen this type of advisor on television talking about building the best retirement plan or offering a free consultation to help you build the best financial plan. This type of advice is usually a fee based advice and can be the most expensive of the options. Notice there, I said “fee”, not free. This is important when deciding on your advisor. That being said, you would receive face to face personalized advice. With this type of advisor, you can get all your questions answered by a live person and typically the same person. These individuals should have additional licenses such as brokerage licenses, asset management licenses and certified designations.

Traditional financial advisors should really only be used if you have a large amount of assets under management. Most firms require $250,000 dollars, some are less. Notwithstanding, these types of advisors should be consulted if you receive a large inheritance, planning for your estate, or looking to make complex investing decisions.

Online Advisors

Popularity for online advisors has increased substantially in many of the prior years. This is typically a hybrid between robo-advisors and traditional financial advisors. Given that, if this is a route to consider, you may be meeting with multiple individuals who are just starting to build their practice and you may be using more online tools. Personal research and decision-making will definitely play more of a role in this category.

An article that gives some options for online advisors as well as robo-advisors is ‘The Best Online Financial Advisors’. This would be an option for someone who would like to have some control over their own decisions, want access to a live person if they need questions answered. There could be a fee to this type of investing. It is however, usually a lesser fee than the traditional advisor.

Robo-Advisors

If you are looking for a complete hands off option for investing where you don’t mind allowing computers to rebalance and don’t really have any interest in discussing options, perhaps a robo-advisor is the best option for you. Moreover, this is going to be the least expensive option of the three. Now, if you have a passion for making your own decisions, this might be an option for one part of your portfolio. You can always have another account where you actively invest with no guidance. I don’t want you to think this is a bad option by any means. This is just an option that doesn’t present any face to face commentary. Typically this option is guided by a risk assessment online and then offers options to invest on your own based on the assessment or allow a computer to automatically pick your investments.

Can a Robo-Advisor really be a good Financial Advisor?
Robo-Advisors are becoming more and popular.

In general, this is best for those who are just starting out, have little to invest, or don’t want to take the time to think about the investments. If you are in this category, I would still encourage you to pay close attention to the fees charged to allocate the investments and the fees charged within the investments. I have an article on ‘Mutual Funds‘ that I would encourage you to check out, as most of the investments with robo-advisors will be in mutual funds.

Bottom line on Financial Advisors

When selecting a financial advisor, understand that this person is going to see the ins and outs of your financial situation. There cannot be any question that this person is going to act in your best interest. Do not fall for the salesperson financial advisors. You should feel comfortable enough with this person to invite them to dinner on a Sunday evening. Also, you must make sure they understand your personal goals. They must be aligned to your personal goals and structure a plan that will help you achieve it. A financial advisor should offer options and education. Furthermore, I would be very leery of any advisor that starts suggesting investments. One of the major key points is that they should fully understand your interests and offer an array of investments that you can research and chose from.

Disclaimer: I receive affiliate compensation for some of the links in this post at NO cost to you. However, these are the best tools I have used and tested that I believe are most effective for launching and running an online business. You can read our full affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy.

Personal Research

Even with a financial advisor, you should do your own research.

There must be an element of personal research and decision making on your part. If you don’t want to do any research or make any decisions, you leave your financial future in the hands of fate. You could always take some time to do research on investing. I just finished an interesting book on investing that I would recommend highly. ‘The 3 Percent Signal‘ by Jason Kelly. In my opinion, this is great investing strategy.

This is your money, your future, make sure you take an active role in it. You aren’t going to know everything, but it is important to ask questions and get all the answers you can before making any decisions. Think of a Financial advisor as an Investment Doctor. When you go to the doctor, they check your physical health. A financial advisor should be able to check your financial health. Make sure to ask as many questions about your investments as possible if you go with an advisor.

My Take On Financial Advisors

I must admit, early on in my career, I had a strong interest in becoming a financial advisor. I have a passion for investing and passed several tests towards that goal. However, it takes more than just a passion for investments to be a successful advisor. Good financial advisors are out there and if you decide on one, make sure to do your due diligence. Confirm they are licensed and which licenses they have. It would be better if they had some of the designations mentioned in this article.

Check Their Credentials

If you decide on getting financial advice, whether a financial advisor or financial planner, make sure to check the credentials they hold. I mentioned this earlier, but it’s important. A financial planner may hold a certified financial planning (CFP) designation and a financial advisor may hold a chartered financial analyst (CFA) or a chartered financial consultant (ChFC) designation. Each of these designations suggest that the advisor obtained some additional knowledge in the field and may be a better decision than those who do not have additional designations.

So, is a financial advisor right for you? I cannot answer that. But I hope I gave you enough information to make your own decision. Financial advisors are there to help. If you select one, make sure they are aligned to your goals. Last thing to remember is that investing is a very fluid concept. The market can change very quickly. The advisor should act in your best interest and always have a risk management strategy that makes sense. Do not let someone sell something to you that is inappropriate. I hope this article gave you a little more information on financial advisors and how they can help.

Before you go…

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We will show you EXACTLY how to build a business online and customize a plan just for you. We will help you choose a niche, setup your online business and help with selecting offers that you can promote.

On top of that you will get ONE on ONE mentoring to make sure you are doing things right.

A great way to be able to save more money is when we make more money.

Cheers to your success and See you at the Top!

-Cameron

Mind Money Masters

Stock Market Investing: Beginners Overview

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Stock market investing can be scary if you are just starting out or have no previous knowledge of trading or finance. In this review, I will help get you started trading in the stock market with more confidence. The stock market is not scary and can be an amazing way to build wealth and income. As with everything, it takes time and education to be truly effective.

You may have recently heard in the news that Twitter (TWTR) shares are down or Facebook (FB) shares have fallen. Why does this happen? And will they go back up? Can I buy shares of Twitter or Facebook? Short answer is yes, you can. In the next few paragraphs, I go through some of the basics. This includes; Defining stocks, explaing what accounts you need to trade, how to trade, some common investing strategies and how to do some basic research on companies. Also at the end, I will give you my final take on stock market investing and why it may be a good path for you.

What On Earth Are Stocks?

If you have read any of my post on ‘ETFs’ or ‘Mutual Funds‘, there could be some slight repetition in this post, but understand that stock investing is different than either ETFs or Mutual Funds. A stock, also known as equity in a company is a portion of ownership in that company. This ownership entitles you to a share or portion of the company’s profit. The more stock you own of a company, the more equity you own in the company. Thereby, resulting in more stake in the profit or loss of that company.

Corporations require stock marketing investing as part of their business strategy for equity financing.

Corporations offer stock to investors as a way to get money. A corporation will sell shares of ownership to fund projects, to expand, or to get cash. The two forms of stock are common stock and preferred stock. There are multiple nuances to both, but from a general perspective, the shares of common stock are traded on the stock exchange and usually offer more growth, but less consistent income than a preferred stock. Preferred stocks typically do not have as much growth potential, but get a dividend payment. A dividend is a distribution of some of the earnings to the shareholders. When we discuss stock market investing, common stock is the most widely known.

Stocks will trade on the exchange as letters, called ticker symbols. The example above, Twitter trades under the symbol TWTR, Facebook under the symbol FB. These symbols are the way you can look up the stock information and buy or sell them.

Stock Market Investing: Buying and Selling

The act of buying or selling stocks is actually very easy. We should explore some goals of investing before we jump right in to buying or selling. Typically, the goal is for wealth appreciation or a long-term investing strategy. This is where someone buys stock in a corporation and holds onto it. The concept here is to buy something and watch it grow. If you were to sell the stock at a certain point and the value rose over time, you would receive a capital gain.

One strategy of stock market investing is to buy and sell stocks actively

Another strategy for stock market investing is an income strategy. This is typically where you buy stocks that have a high dividend and you receive monthly income or quarterly income from the shares of ownership. This is typically not an appreciation strategy. The hope here is that the dividend you receive will offer some consistent income. There are other income strategies that involve trading options, but that is for another post. In any of these strategies, however, the value of the stock could go up or go down. There is no control over your risk of loss or potential for gain. One of the easiest risk management strategies is diversification, which we talked about in ‘Investing in ETFs‘.

Trading Stock

A key aspect of stock market investing is, of course, trading. In order to be able to trade stock, you must first have an account. The two most common accounts are brokerage and retirement. There are nuances to each, but in a general sense the main difference is how they are taxed. Typically any gain in a retirement account is not taxed until you withdraw funds. Conversely, any gain in a brokerage account is taxed immediately upon any gain realized. A gain meaning a sale or dividend payment.

Once the account is set up and money is deposited, you are all set to go. When you purchase stock online and go to the trading tab, you should see two prices. One is called the Bid and the other is called the Ask. Whenever you buy a stock, you will pay the Ask price. Likewise, whenever you sell a stock you will receive the Bid price. You will also see order type. This can typically be a Market order or a Limit order. There are others, but these are the main two.

A market order when you are buying stock means that you are willing to take whatever price the current market ask is for that stock. This can be a risky strategy. I would always encourage if you are going to trade stocks, use a limit order type. This basically says, “at that price or better.” So, in our example, if we wanted to buy CocaCola (KO) which last traded at $48.70 and we put a buy limit order in a $48.50, then we would only purchase CocaCola at $48.50 or lower.

Stock Market Investing: Researching Companies

If you are considering stock market investing, one item I would like to bring up is price. Price alone does not determine the value of a company. Many would consider a stock that is trading at a higher price to be a good investment, but that may not be the case. One key factor to consider is the P/E ratio. This is the price to earning ratio and it takes into account the current price of the stock divided into the earnings per share.

Price Research

Let’s take an easy example. Company A has a price of 10 dollars per share and earnings of $10,000. They have 20,000 shares outstanding in the market. Their earnings per share is .50, so the P/E ratio is 20. (10 dollars per share / Earnings per share) Company B has a price of 50 dollars per share and earnings of $40,000, they also have 20,000 shares outstanding in the market. Their earnings per share is .50 as well, however the P/E ratio is 100. 50 dollars per share / Earnings per share)

A lower stock price could mean the stock is on sale.

In this scenario, Company A is only charging 10 dollars per share and the P/E is 20, so that means that for every 20 dollars you spend you get 1 dollar of earnings versus company B with a P/E of 100, you have to spend 100 dollars to benefit in 1 dollars of earnings. This is of course a very simplistic example, but it makes you think that just because a company trades at a higher price, doesn’t mean it’s always a better investment.

Volume

I want to bring up volume because it is important to consider when trading stocks. When I refer to volume, I mean stock trading volume. Volume equals the number of shares traded of a particular company in a given period of time. I think volume is important since it helps you see how liquid the stock is and if people notice changes in the stock and act accordingly. For example, if a stock goes up one day but has really low volume, then goes down the next day on really high volume, maybe the price going up was a fluke. Or maybe they came out with news the day it went down. Volume helps you see if there are particular changes to a company and gives you a reason to research further.

Technical Research

Technical research or technical analysis is a very broad topic when it comes to stock investing. Active traders use this strategy frequently. If you are curious about learning more, I would suggest reading ‘Getting Started in Technical Analysis’. It will give you an excellent starting point and covers many topics on technical analysis. Learn as much as you can with this strategy as there are many options for technical analysis.

Using Ratings for Stocks

In stock market investing, a rating can be used to decide whether a company is good or bad.

In stock market investing, look out for analyst ratings. There are quite a few financial analysts that rate stocks for a living. Similar to my post on mutual funds, we mentioned Morningstar as a mutual fund rating agency, well there are many companies that rate stocks. Typically, any brokerage firm that you open an account with will have the ratings of stocks under the research tab for each company you look for. The ratings for stocks will give you a recommendation, such as buy, hold or sell. Each analyst gives their reasoning behind each recommendation so you are able to see why they give their rating. I would encourage looking at several analysts’ ratings and learn more about each before making a decision purely on their recommendation.

Disclaimer: I receive affiliate compensation for some of the links in this post at NO cost to you. However, these are the best tools I have used and tested that I believe are most effective for launching and running an online business. You can read our full affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy. Also, I am not a licensed advisor, any information within this article is purely my opinion and not an endorsement of an investing strategy.

My Take on Stock Market Investing

As you may know by know, I love to suggest books on most of my posts because I think books are key in building your businesses. Plus, financial education is a passion of mine. If you are interested in learning more around investing in general, ‘The Intelligent Investor‘ by Benjamin Graham is, in my opinion the investing bible. There is so much in that book that can help in your investing journey.

I started trading stocks about 15 years ago and enjoy it. There are times when I am more active in my trading and times when I just let things grow. I would strongly encourage that you make investing part of your financial freedom plan. One of the main reasons I would suggest the stock market is because of the liquidity. If you need cash quickly, you are able to sell the investment quickly assuming there is good volume to the stock.

Owning a business or a piece of real estate is great, but getting money out of either can be difficult. Although, business ownership and real estate investing have better tax advantages. So, one is not necessarily better than the other. I would add that owning multiple asset types is the key to success, but stocks can offer easier to access cash. You can learn about the asset classes by checking out this great book, ‘Why The Rich Are Getting Richer’ by Robert Kiyosaki.

Before you go…

Do you want to learn how you can take ANY business and scale it to achieve your dreams and goals?

Partner up with me by clicking on this link and watching the video.

We will show you EXACTLY how to build a business online and customize a plan just for you. We will help you choose a niche, setup your online business and help with selecting offers that you can promote.

On top of that you will get ONE on ONE mentoring to make sure you are doing things right.

A great way to be able to save more money is when we make more money.

Cheers to your success and See you at the Top!

-Cameron

Mind Money Masters

Get Started with Affiliate Marketing: A How To Guide

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So, you want to get started with affiliate marketing? But how much do you know about affiliate marketing? Does it just sound like a fun way to make money while sitting at a coffee shop? Or while relaxing on a beach? Or maybe it still sounds like a scam to you. In this article, I go over how to get started with affiliate marketing, some tips and tricks, general challenges with affiliate marketing and some paths to success.

As with any business, research and education are paramount to success. There are so many tools out there to help people get started that it seems somewhat scary. I can tell you, it’s not. The business model for affiliate marketing is rather simplistic and easy to start. I promise you that there are multiple nuances that can make things challenging. When you are done reading this article, you should have a better sense of how to get started with affiliate marketing. Plus, have a little more confidence in your ability. Let’s dig in.

How To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing: The Basics

We discussed what affiliate marketing is in my ‘Affiliate Marketing Business’ post, so I won’t go into much detail here. Quickly, affiliate marketing is a business where a company pays someone (an affiliate) a commission or fee if they bring customers to purchase products from the business. Sounds a lot like a sales position, right? And it is, for all intents and purposes. Probably the best sales position there is because you don’t necessarily have to talk to anyone. It can help, but once they have agreed to your terms and signed up for your list, you can sell them anything. They can, of course, unsubscribe though. So, it makes sense to give them more of what they want.

How to get started with affiliate marketing the easy way is to focus on easy wins at first.
Once you start, there is no way but up and no opportunity but better.

When you start Affiliate Marketing, I would strongly encourage purchasing a program or having a mentor where you can learn some basic terminology. It’s best to have both. I know when I started, it felt like I was back in college and having to study until the early hours of the morning.

There are multiple terms that are important to understand, too many to just mention on this post, so I found a glossary here. Feel free to check it out when you have time. The three main points in order to get started with affiliate marketing are: 1. Pick a niche, 2. Select offers to market in that niche, and 3. Build your social media platforms.

Picking a Niche

This is the first step after understanding the terms. If you don’t have a niche, then you have no starting point. A niche is, for our understanding, a particular segment of the market that you want to focus on. Think about what you are passionate about. This is the fun part about affiliate marketing. You have a blank canvas. What are you passionate about? What do you think about? A niche, literally could be anything. Some common niches are; Entrepreneurialism, Health and Fitness, Travel and Vacation or Relationships. However, there are so many possibilities. Please don’t just decide based on these.

Selecting your niche is one of the first steps to get started with affiliate marketing.
Pick your niche and corner your market.

In my opinion, when selecting a niche, you must be passionate about the subject matter. However, you can also narrow down a topic by considering how competitive your niche could be and how extensive the topic can be. Basically, how hard will it be to write or think about new discussion topics. Also, if you can make any money with that area. Which leads me to the next section in this how to article, selecting offers and ways to market.

Select Offers to Market

It is amazing how many affiliate programs are out there. Don’t believe me? Seriously, I want you to open another browser and type in the search bar “affiliate program for…”, then list the first company that comes to your mind. I thought of Apple and sure enough there is an affiliate marketing program for Apple. They call it Performance Partners Program, but it’s an affiliate marketing program.

Depending on your niche, there are so many products that you could offer. The health and fitness sections are one that you could connect with a large fitness corporation or sell exercise equipment from Amazon. Yes, Amazon has an affiliate marketing program as well. Likewise, you could sell workout membership programs and online fitness instruction videos. Once you select what you want to market, we must figure out how to we are going to find people to sell our products or our programs.

Build Your Social Media Presence

Everyone is going more online and connected via social media. Affiliate marketing needs to target this area. One particular way to grow your affiliate marketing business and be able to reach customers with paying for advertising is creating a blog. This is where you effectively write about your niche. Health and fitness may have better luck with a vlog, but blogging or vlogging is a great way to reach new customers. In many cases, you can start a blog site for very little upfront cost.

In addition, you can post this to multiple social media sites. I would encourage having at least five social media sites that are solely dedicated to your blog or marketing your business. Fiverr is a website that can help you grow your blog and social media presence. They offer various services in the digital marketing realm.

The concept here is to create content on either a blog or a vlog and post to followers or post to a website. When they read the content, you can show them how you learned to blog, or how you learned to create a vlog. Better still, you can market the products that you use. If they click on your affiliate link and buy the product, you get paid. All for just writing a blog or creating a quick video.

A strong social media followers help to get you started with affiliate marketing as initial customers.
Social media is a powerful tool for Affiliate Marketing

Disclaimer: I receive affiliate compensation for some of the links in this post at NO cost to you. However, these are the best tools I have used and tested that I believe are most effective for launching and running an online business. You can read our full affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy.

Challenges You May Face with Affiliate Marketing

Whenever you start anything new, inevitably there will be growing pains. When you get started with affiliate marketing there may be some challenges. Affiliate marketing is not a get rich quick scheme. There is hard work required. Oftentimes, you need to work long hours. Especially at the beginning. It will be worth it, though.

Besides long hours, one of the biggest challenges at the beginning is developing a list of customers. Affiliate marketing is most effective once you build a list of followers. There are multiple ways to do this, but the fastest way is to pay for advertising. You can start affiliate marketing and make money without paying for advertising. However, it is much faster if you set aside a little bit of money for a marketing budget. The strategy is work on your blogs or vlogs while marketing your products with paid ads. Doing these in tandem will make the path to success much easier.

come in we re awesome sign

Finally, one of the last challenges I would like to bring up is the time factor. When you become an affiliate marketer for a company, sometimes there is a time limit that you have to make sales before they no longer allow you to be an affiliate. If you are just starting out, I would avoid these types of affiliate marketing programs. Once you are established and have a decent following, then look more into these types of programs. There are many programs that don’t require a sales quota at all, and oftentimes they are better companies to have a relationship with anyway.

Should You Get Started With Affiliate Marketing?

Yes, you should. If you are employed or under-employed, affiliate marketing is a great side business that you can do in your spare time or a great full-time opportunity. It’s a great way to start a second source of income. We learned from my post ‘Mindset of an Entrepreneur’ that we need at least five sources of income because the wealthy have at least five sources.

12-Minute Affiliate

It’s unfortunate, but we hear at an early age to, go to school, get a jog, and retire when you hit 65. The government will take care of you after that. This is just a complete flat out lie. The government cannot and will not take care of the people. The Social Security system is bankrupt. Our currency is not backed by anything other than the name of the United States. Plus, our our national debt continues to rise.

The good news is if we invest in ourselves and learn how to build wealth without relying on any government policy, we can be successful. Building an affiliate marketing business is an easy way to get started on that.

Before you go…

Do you want to learn how you can take ANY business and scale it to achieve your dreams and goals?

Partner up with me by clicking on this link and watching the video.

We will show you EXACTLY how to build a business online and customize a plan just for you. We will help you choose a niche, setup your online business and help with selecting offers that you can promote.

On top of that you will get ONE on ONE mentoring to make sure you are doing things right.

A great way to be able to save more money is when we make more money.

Cheers to your success and See you at the Top!

-Cameron

Mind Money Masters

Plan to Retire Early in 3 Easy Steps

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If you plan to retire early there are a few things that you need to know. Standard retirement age is 65. In this article, I review some of the steps needed for early retirement. I am really discussing retiring earlier than 65. Retirement seems to be on many people’s mind. Especially if you are in a job that you hate.

It is the dream you have whenever you feel the Monday blues coming on. You know the Monday blues. They happen around Sunday evening or so. For some, maybe earlier than Sunday evening. If you are in a job you hate and daydream about the weekend during your work week, maybe you need to consider finding another opportunity.

3 Step Plan to Retire Early

That being said, in this article I share a 3-step plan to retire early. We must first understand what retirement actually means to you. Retirement is not a one size fits all. Next, we will discuss investment techniques that can help. Finally, I give you my thoughts on early retirement. The three steps are below: take financial inventory, make lifestyle changes, and create cash flow.

Plan to retire early and have more time on the beach

Step One: Take Inventory of your Finances

The first step is to understand your current financial situation. Make sure you know your monthly and annual expenses. If you plan to retire early, you will need to know how much money you need in order to quit working. An incredibly large part of this step is defining your terms. When you say, “I want to plan to retire early,” what does that mean? Is that retiring from your day job? Is that where you literally just fish or sit on a beach all day drinking margaritas? Or is your plan to still have some income, while doing the things you enjoy? As I mentioned earlier, retirement can mean something different to all people.

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Have 25 to 30 times your annual expenses

If you plan to retire early, one of the first general rules from most financial advisors is to have 25 to 30 times your annual expenses available to you in liquid assets. We discussed liquidity in my post on Mutual Funds but just to recap, liquidity is the availability to access cash quickly. You should have roughly 30 years of annual expenses in Stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, or cash value insurance policies.

This is also where you need to take into consideration what early retirement means, because if you literally plan to do nothing, maybe you need more of a buffer than 30 times your expenses. What happens if the stock market goes down? If you lose value in your liquid assets, then your time value shrinks as well.

Plan to Retire early, but what about Health Insurance?

If you plan to retire early, make sure to plan your health costs. They can add up quickly.

If you are like most people working in for corporate America, odds are your company offers a health plan. This can be very expensive if you are self-insured. Since Medicare doesn’t start until age 65, you may have to look into other options if you are retiring before age 65.

You might be eligible for Medicaid depending on your income, but that is a whole process that you would want to apply for. You could also consider the Affordable Care Marketplace where you can select coverage. My point is that most people do not consider Health care if they plan to retire early.

Understand Inflation and how it affects your investments

This should go without saying that a dollar now can buy less than a dollar 20 years ago. But we need to make sure to understand how that can affect our future. Inflation is the decline of purchasing power of a particular currency over time. The average rate of inflation from 1914 to 2020 was 3.23 percent. Now, what does that mean for you and me?

If we are in an investment that is making less than 3.23 percent, we are technically losing buying power in our dollar. A common index to track inflation is the Consumer Price Index (CPI). This is part of the reason why it’s important to understand how your investments perform net of inflation. If you are simply keeping money in a savings account earning .50 percent interest and doing nothing with those dollars, you are losing on average 2.73 percent of your buying power every year.

Plan to retire early, but don’t plan on your home helping

We call it mortgage payment, not mortgage income. Your home is not an asset. Let’s break this down. We learned from my post Saving and Investing that an asset is anything that you can use to make money, or anything that you own outright that can be sold for a profit. A house has a theoretical asset value. If you sell the home and you get the proceeds, the cash becomes an asset. But if you are considering your home equity as an asset, that would be a mistake. Many people thought the same thing before the 2008 mortgage crisis and ended up owning more on their home than it was worth.

If you home is completely paid for, then it can become an asset, but keep in mind it still doesn’t offer you any cashflow unless it’s sold. If you do plan to retire early, I would strongly suggest paying off your house. This is typically one of the largest expenses that a person has; to eliminate this would make early retirement less expensive.

Step Two: Make Lifestyle Changes and Invest More

Financial Education is the most important part in your plan to retire early. The more you know, the better you will be.

Before you even consider early retirement, the MOST important thing to do is invest in your own knowledge. The more you know about investing and controlling your expenses, the better chance of success in early retirement. When I say invest in your own knowledge, I am specifically talking about books and programs. Understand how to not only trim unnecessary expenses but also to live below your means. The Millionaire Next Door is a great book on the study of actual millionaires in America and how what we see on social media or in the movies is not the typical millionaire.

Have a Least 5 Sources of Income

On average, the wealthy have 7 sources of income. The 7 sources are: investment income (dividends stocks owned), paycheck income, rental income (real estate), royalty income (payments for royalties of something written or invented), capital gains from selling assets, profits from businesses they own, and interest income (money from lending activities).

I suggest only 5 in the post, because, if we aren’t working, paycheck income is not an option. Plus, if we haven’t invented or written anything, royalty income is not part of our plan. So, focusing on at least 5 sources of income is something that makes early retirement easier. In addition, these five can be setup as passive income where do not have to do much to earn money.

Click Here Now To Learn how to Build Another Source of Income

Step Three: Plan to Retire Early with Increased Cash Flow

Create Cash Flow from Investing

Running water is life, so cash flow is the lifeblood of financial freedom and early retirement.

Step three in this article discussed in order to live completely financially free, our inflow must always be greater than our outflow. However, it’s also important to understand the first two steps. Otherwise, this last step wouldn’t make any sense. It’s vital to have a buffer of 25 to 30 times your expenses in liquid assets, but those assets need to create cash flow. You don’t want to have to sell stock every month to pay for your expenses, that decreases the asset.

Learn how to create cash flow from investments. An excellent book that is out there regarding turning stock trading into cash flow is Stock Market Cash Flow: Four Pillars of Investing. This book discusses turning stock trading into a monthly cash flow strategy. It’s an excellent read and offers so much good information. Remember, investing in your education is the MOST important aspect of early retirement.

Personal Take on the Plan to Retire Early

If you plan to retire early, I think that is an excellent goal. But remember at the beginning of this post, I said we must understand what early retirement really means. Personally, I don’t believe in retirement. Because retirement has the associated stigma of someone in their 60’s who worked for the corporation for 40+ years and finally got the “gold watch” and now they can sit on their boat and catch fish.

I do understand if your current job causes frustration, I have been in many jobs that I didn’t like, but I would also encourage you to think less about retirement and more about doing something you love.

Do What You Love

Think about some of the very wealthy people out there that are well beyond the standard “retirement” age. Warren Buffet still loves making money. He still invests heavily, places trades in the stock market and buys businesses. Robert Kiyosaki still writes books and has a live podcast. T. Boone Pickens still invests heavily in natural gas and buys businesses. Donald Trump was president well in his 70’s. My point is, find something you love to do and do it every day. Learn to monetize it and you will never retire.

Before You Go…

Do you want to learn how you can take ANY business and scale it to your dreams and goals?

Partner up with me by clicking on this link and watching the video.

We will show you EXACTLY how to build a business online and customize a plan just for you. We will help you choose a niche, setup your online business and help with selecting offers that you can promote.

On top of that, you will get ONE on ONE mentoring to make sure you are doing things right.

A great way to be able to save more money is when we make more money.

Cheers to your success and See you at the Top!

-Cameron

Make Extra Money in 2021: 18 Ways to Get Cash

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Hey, it’s 2021 and we all want to make extra money, do we? In this post, I discuss 18 ways that I have personally seen and used that can add a little extra in your bank account. Now, these won’t make you rich, but if you are looking to buy a program to make you rich and it costs some money, these may help you make a little extra money for that purchase. After all, if you want to buy something new, it’s best to earn the money and not put it on credit.

Trust me, I have been there. I know that feeling. It’s not a great feeling. The truth is that this is the reason I went into this business. This is the reason I wanted to help people. I have been flat broke in my life and I had to pull myself up. But if you have a desire and you really want to make a change in your life. At the risk of sounding too cliché, “Necessity is the mother of invention”. So, if your mindset is positive and you really think about what you can do, you will find a way to achieve it. The key here is that you must take action.

There are many ways to make extra money, but I have listed some of my thoughts below. I’m sure you will have many other ideas after reading this.

How to get extra money right now

Having a side hustle to make extra money is so important in today's economy.

The list here not only discusses how to make extra money, but also how to get some extra money if you are trying to purchase something that you want, but just cannot afford at the moment. Using some of these techniques will give you some spare cash. Don’t use this to purchase more consumptive goods.

Use this extra money to invest in yourself and your future growth. If you we are going to build for financial freedom, we need to change our mindset to a builder and not a consumer. I would strongly suggest that many of these ideas should be used to purchase knowledge, specifically for learning on how to make more money.

Open a credit card

Okay, so I realize that most people would not put this first, as this is not a way to make extra money, but if you are looking to obtain some extra buying power, apply for a credit card. This can be prohibited based on credit or income, but this is something that could offer you cash back in the long term or offer a way to get funded for a project or start up costs for a business. Again, we are thinking of investing, not consumer. Don’t open a credit card and go buy the nicest suit or a fun toy. If you use credit wisely, you can use credit to your advantage. If you are lucky enough to own a home, you might be able to get cash out in a refinance.

Make Extra Money Recycling

This is of course, not available in all states. However I wanted to remind everyone that this still is an option in multiple states. Click this link to confirm if your state participates, but this is great way to make a little side money. It’s not going to make you rich, but what if you started a small business offering to pick up anyone’s recycling?

Donating Plasma

I must admit, I have done this before. Albeit, it was in college and for party supplies, but this can offer some nice weekly cash. When I was doing it, they offered about 40 dollars per session and you could go twice a week. This is something to consider if you truly have zero money to invest in yourself. Learn more about the process in this article.

Become an Amateur Photographer

Make extra money as a photographer. Freelance work can be very profitable and you can set your own hours.

Selling pictures from your smartphone online through Foap. There is some debate as to whether or not it would be easier just to start a photography blog and sell affiliate products. Do you have an eye for the unique and enjoy taking pictures? If so, this could be a very profitable option, with fairly low cost to start. Plus, if you really enjoy it, you can start your own photography blog and work that into an affiliate marketing business. That leads me to the next option.

Become a Digital Marketing Guru

The digital community is blowing up with so much opportunity, especially with the global pandemic where many people aren’t even leaving their house. Something I’m pursuing is affiliate marketing. There is a great opportunity to make extra money and become an affiliate marketer of products that you use everyday.

I use a program that teaches how to build a profitable affiliate marketing business. In addition, it will teach you how to start your own digital agency and create an online education business. All three tools in one.

Click Here Now to Get Access to all Three Training Plans and Get a Free Book!

You can become an affiliate marketer with so many companies. If you are looking for a quick dollar, Amazon has an affiliate program where you can literally sell anything that Amazon has to offer. Keep in mind if you consider this option, I would strongly suggest you learn a little bit on how to be affective in affiliate marketing by getting some education first. Read my article on ‘Affiliate Marketing‘ for some guidance. Amazon can be strict about who they let become an affiliate. Click on the link above and download the free book if you want to learn affiliate marketing the right way.

Create a (Non) Brick and Mortar Business

Okay, so this is still in the digital arena, but this is different as this is an opportunity to create your own product and sell as an e-commerce professional. There is so much out there on either youtube or instagram on this topic. They all say the same thing, ” Make extra money in 10 days” or “Make extra money if three clicks”.

If you really want to actually learn how to build an e-commerce empire, learn from Alison Prince. She started as a school teacher, struggling paycheck to paycheck and has build multiple six and seven figure businesses. She even taught her 10 and 13 year old daughters how to make $100k.

I want to Check out the Alison Prince E-Commerce System, Take me there now!

E-commerce gives you an opportunity to create and make some incredible money from it. As I said there are so many programs out there but I am learning from Alison and found to be incredibly helpful.

Make Extra Money as an Author (E-Book or Paper)

Become and author and you can make extra money with almost zero overhead.

I love this, I am personally creating several e-books right now. They range on topics. My sister has been a self-published author for over 10 years now and loves doing this. She has written over 15 books. You can see her author page here. She sells her book on Amazon. Her first book is here. She writes about mystery, suspense, romance and fantasy. I try to read or listen (audible) to at least 1 book a week on either personal finance or investing.

One of the first books that I ever read on the topic of personal finance was ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’. Please pick a copy here if you are interested. It is a very quick read with so much substance. The great thing about becoming an author is that it’s a building block to something bigger. Once you create something, you just have to learn how to monetize it. This is why true financial education is so important.

Be Virtual Assistant

Are you good at organizing and communicating with people? Do you have a passion for organization? There is a market for this. You can work directly from your couch and help people with daily schedules, responding to emails, updating social media accounts and help them book travel arrangements. It’s a nice way to help make some money on the side and you could potentially set your own hours. There are several sites that offer work as a virtual assistant and all it takes is a Google search. To name a few; Upwork.com, taskrabbit.com, WAHM.com, Peopleperhour.com and Flexjobs.com

Become an Uber or Lyft Driver

Make extra money driving other people. It's much easier than becoming a taxi driver now.

Both of these have gained some major popularity recently. Mainly due to the opportunity to earn some extra cash and set your own hours. There are multiple steps to becoming an Uber or Lyft driver, but if you enjoy driving, it could be very profitable.

Make Extra Money as a Delivery Person

Deliver for Door Dash, Grub hub or Postmates. This has also gained quite a bit of popularity recently given that more and more people are working from home. This has a similar appeal as Uber and Lyft however the nice thing here is that you are really just delivering food, not people. Once again, if you have reliable transportation, this can be very lucrative. Postmates seems like a pretty easy way to sign up, click on this link for more.

Online Garage Sale

Sell your household items on Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, Ebay or Etsy – This may sound like the online garage sale and in some cases it can be, but seriously how much extra “stuff” do you have lying around in your basement, attic, garage, etc..? If you are just looking to access some quick cash, this may be a very good option.

Teach and Travel

Become an Au Pair – Have you the itch to travel and live abroad? This could be a perfect idea. An Au Pair is a person who moves to another country and stays with a host family where you would essentially take care of the children of the household. My friend did this in the south of France for multiple years and loved it. She was able to travel and work on her French language skills. Here is a site link where you could learn more about this process if you are interested.

Make Extra Money by Taking Surveys

Use InboxDollars or Swagbucks – Both of these allow anyone to earn gift cards for so many places. The interesting thing about these is that you can earn money for watching videos, participating in surveys and doing online searches. This is going to be a slow process, but this is definitely something you can do when just sitting on the couch watching your favorite show.

Sell your Accounting Knowledge

Become a Bookkeeper for hire – There is some amazing online courses that you can take to make this a reality. If you are interested in this side hustle, it could be a very profitable option. You do not need to have prior experience, the program will teach you everything you need to know. Plus if you wanted to take it to the next level, you could become a tax preparer and make extra money during the busy tax season.

Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

Offer your services as a house cleaner – If you are good at cleaning and enjoy it, there is some decent money in cleaning houses. In addition, if you do a good job, this is something where you can get repeat business and referrals.

Make Extra Money Coaching People

Become a life coach – If you are the type of person that loves to be positive and help other people achieve their goals, then maybe a certified life coach is for you! There are classes you can take to be more credible, but honestly anyone can be a life coach if they truly care about the people they are helping and want to see them become better versions of themselves.

Need Help Getting Organized

Become a professional organizer – This could fall under virtual assistant. However, it’s more specific, this is a program designed to teach you how be a professional organizer. They go through various steps on how to create an organizational business where you can help other people become organized. This can be very important for businesses just starting out and veteran businesses to streamline their productivity.

As a side note, if you are passionate about organization and think you can help people, start off doing it for free, get some good referrals and then transition to charging people for it. That way you can build credibility.

Moving Again?

Help people move – I don’t know about you, but I am not a raving fan of moving. Mostly, I have hired it out. That being said, if you are looking for some extra money, help people move. They will pay you. Also, you could start a small business with it if you have a couple people that want to work with you. This can be very lucrative. I have seen hourly wages in the upwards of $100 dollars per hour if you are good and efficient.

Disclaimer: I receive affiliate compensation for some of the links in this post at NO cost to you. However, these are the best tools I have used and tested that I believe are most effective for launching and running an online business. You can read our full affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy.

Final Thoughts

Above are 18 ways to either make some extra cash or acquire some extra funds in order to cover expenses. There are so many more than this as well. I have only mentioned these 18 because they are either things I have done personally or close friends have done. This list is not designed necessarily to be all encompassing, this is only to start the creative juices flowing. Perhaps you can find something else that is not on this list and make some incredible side cash, and that is awesome. I simply want you to realize that there are so many ways that you can acquire some quick cash for funding future endeavors.

Honestly, once you have some start up cash, I would encourage you to take a look at the program that helped me find financial independence. This program is currently only $39 dollars. Which I just showed you how you can easily come up with that by implementing one of the 18 methods above. This program teaches you how to build digital real estate. It will go through the steps on how to be an affiliate marketer, how to create your own digital agency and how to develop your own online courses. It has been the best $39 dollars that I have ever spent.

Click here now if you want to learn how build a Digital Empire plus get a free Book

Thank you for reading!

Cheers to your success and See you at the Top!

-Cameron

Alison Prince E-commerce Review: 0 to $100k

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If you are searching for any kind of online business training system, you may have come across Alison Prince e-commerce 0 to $100k system. Given the increasing surge of online purchases due to the recent pandemic, you may be considering starting an e-commerce store. There is a lot of conversation around dropshipping and e-commerce lately. I personally think it has a lot to do with this interest in being able to work from home. But is the Alison Price e-commerce system legit or is it a scam?

In this review of the Alison Prince e-commerce platform, I will set the record straight. I go through who Alison Prince is, how her system works, costs of entry, and the pros and cons. At the end I will also give my personal take on e-commerce in general. Whether it is a good business from home strategy. But at the end, of course, you will be able to answer that for yourself.

The Alison Prince E-commerce Program: 0 to $100k System

Alison J Prince has been in the e-commerce business for over 10 years and created several 6 and 7 figure e-commerce businesses. She started off as a middle school teacher and struggled financially. Living paycheck to paycheck, she thought there must be another way. Her story is not unlike many of ours. One day she decided to take action and create an online store.

The name of her system is called the 0 to $100k system. She came up with this concept when she was able to help her two daughters age 10 and 13 at the time create their own store and make $100k in sales. So, the adage is true in this situation, “if a child can do it, you can as well.” The incredible part is that many people she taught have made $100k and more, using her teachings.

What the Alison Prince E-commerce Program Teaches

If you want to know to secrets of building a successful e-commerce store, the Alison Prince E-Commerce program will help you on your way.

The 0 to 100k system takes you from start to finish on building an e-commerce store. Alison goes into great detail on some areas and goes into less detail on others. There are 11 modules for her program. Once you purchase the program you are able to go at your own pace. However, they are designed to be completed in 6 weeks.

I would encourage going through the modules as a weekly training course because there is a lot of information in there and if you take too long of a break, you made need to repeat a module. They all build upon each other. Below is a list of each module and the information included.

Module One – Business Setup

This section is a cornerstone for success. Alison gives you advice on how to successfully set up an LLC for your store. She is not a tax attorney, so I would suggest still working with a tax advisor, but the information offered here is great, not just for an e-commerce store, but if you are starting any business.

Module Two – Developing Your Brand

In my opinion, this is the brainstorming section. There are three videos in this section and they are dedicated to developing you as a brand. They encourage you to think about what you are already interested in and how you can monetize it in an online store. She also discusses creating logos and how color affects the eye of your viewer.

Module Three – Start Building Using the Alison Prince E-commerce Program

This section has a lot of information! There are 11 videos in this section and it really goes over the system on how to start making money. Alison talks about how to find product ideas, differences between manufactures and wholesalers, in addition, where to buy products and how to deal with importing. By far, this is the first module that delves into the specifics of the 0 to 100k system. At the end of this module you should have a good idea of what you want to sell.

Module Four – How to Sell Products

There are seven videos in this section and they go into various aspects of selling your product. You will learn how to price your product with her profit margin calculator. The calculator was a nice touch. I am a visual person and it was nice to see the calculator take the guess work out of pricing a product. She also discusses how photography and lighting make a difference in marketing your product. As an added bonus there is a section on how to deal with difficult customers.

Click here to Start Making Money Now with my own e-commerce store using Alison’s teaching!

Module Five – Where to Sell Products

Once you decide on what product to sell and how to sell it, wouldn’t it make sense to learn where you can sell it? Well, that is what this section accomplishes. There are five videos in this section and they go through many platforms on how to sell your product including Facebook, Shopify, and several deal sites.

Module Six – How to Launch your site and Products

Modules one through five seemed like building blocks when you get to this section. This is the “do or die” section. Alison talks about actually selling your products, taking the next steps, selling techniques and how to generate more traffic. This section is great for strategy and motivation.

Module Seven – Shipping your products

After module six, you have quite possibly made your first sale from your e-commerce store. Congratulations! This section is only two videos and helps you understand shipping your product to your customer.

Module Eight & Nine – Promoting Your Brand

Learn first from the Alison Prince E-Commerce the correct way to build an online business.

Promotion and marketing are the life blood of sales. I combined the review of Module eight and nine because they both talk about similar topics. These modules go into using influencers to market your product and brand. They also discuss how to grow your email list. Alison brings up an email list as an ATM machine. This list gives you readily accessible leads and helps you grow your business. There are eight videos in section eight and six in section nine.

Module Ten & Eleven – Increasing Sales and growing your E-commerce Business

These are the last two modules of the Alison Prince e-commerce system. They both discuss ways to better build your business. Module ten troubleshoots ways to get more sales and if you are struggling with sales at the beginning. The final module goes over using ClickFunnels. We discussed ClickFunnels in my review of Affiliate Marketing.

For more information on how to get started with ClickFunnels, Click here!

There are a few more supplemental videos that Alison offers after module eleven, but these are intended to be “bonus” sections versus “how to” sections. One of the bonuses is ‘The Little Black Book of Manufacturers’ which gives you some of her specific suppliers. This is a great tool and could be worth the cost of entry by itself.

By the Numbers: What’s the Cost of the Program?

Cost to join is $997 dollars. There’s no getting around it. However, there are options. Personally, I don’t think it is that expensive for all that you receive. Nevertheless, they do offer a payment plan. Plus, that is the final cost. As of this point there is no additional up charge. Consequently, she gives you a very extensive education into the world of building an e-commerce store nuts and bolts, from ground zero. There is a 14 day, no questions asked refund policy. Which, I think this is a little short, considering standard is 30 days, but I understand her reasoning.

I’m ready to get started building my financial freedom through E-commerce!

Positives to the Alison Prince E-commerce System

The Alison Prince E-commerce System will show you everything you need to start and build an online business.

A great benefit of this program is that once you have access, it’s a lifetime access. This is pretty amazing when you consider that you may want to review the program several times. Also, she keeps adding additional videos to the program as she learns more and gets better with her own business.

There is a private Facebook group where you can discuss many of your achievements and struggles. This helps also if you need some additional guidance on specific areas of the training program. Within the Facebook group there are weekly training sessions. In addition, she has a YouTube podcast where she posts some valuable information. This program is designed to be collaborative and help you start and build an e-commerce store.

Negatives of the Alison Prince E-commerce System

This program is definitely not a “get rich quick” scheme. Building an e-commerce store is not easy and will take work. Similarly, it will take dedication, time and patience. However, some make $100k in 12 months. Others may take 5 years. It depends on how you go about the process. The first product may be a flop. The second might be as well. That being said, the key is to keep going. Keep learning.

Another potential downside is that there really isn’t an individual mentor. The Facebook group is good and could challenge you, but if you are the type of person who doesn’t really like to post on social media, then there isn’t really an individual person that you can go to with immediate questions.

Lastly, there is a strong chance that you will have inventory. Part of the program is to buy the product from the manufacturer and sell it via your website and ship it out to your customer. Now, there are ways around this, but if you absolutely do not want to carry any inventory, then maybe Affiliate Marketing is a better option. Learn about Affiliate Marketing in my Affiliate Marketing Post.

Disclaimer: I receive affiliate compensation for some of the links in this post at NO cost to you. However, these are the best tools I have used and tested that I believe are most effective for launching and running an online business. You can read our full affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy.

My Final Take on the 0 to $100k System

The Alison Prince e-commerce program is a detailed and organized system. I would recommend this to someone who is interested in starting an e-commerce store. Also if you really need someone who cares about your success. The e-commerce marketplace has so many immature “gurus” that really only want to sell a program, and not an education. Alison makes you feel like you are genuinely important to her and her team. She is family oriented and realistic about goals. This is a lady who operates several seven-figure businesses, but still keeps her very humble and down-to-earth roots.

The cost should not be something holding you back. It’s important to invest in yourself and after a year, the small investment won’t even be a thought in your mind. Once you make back your investment, however long it takes, you have learned a valuable skill and everything beyond becomes profit. Genuinely wealthy people have multiple streams of income, this could be one of yours.

I want to take the plunge and start my own e-commerce store, take me to the 0 – $100k System!

Cheers to your Success and See you at the Top!

-Cameron

Is an Affiliate Marketing Business a Good Strategy?

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Starting an Affiliate marketing business can be extremely profitable and very easy. However, for whatever reasons there is a stigma associated with the concept of affiliate marketing. The stigma is that affiliate marketing is a scam or not a viable long term business strategy. I am here to set the record straight.

So, is starting an affiliate marketing program a viable long term business strategy? In this review of affiliate marketing, I discuss what affiliate marketing is, some tools of the trade and whether there is future growth in the affiliate marketing business space for long term profitability.

What is an Affiliate Marketing Business?

An Affiliate Marketing business relies heavily on working from your computer, but you can work anywhere with a stable internet connection.

Affiliate marketing business is defined by is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. So does this sound like a scam? Oddly enough, there are many out there that would scoff at affiliate marketing saying that, “it’s a scam” or “no one actually makes any money from it”. The reason for this is that most people do not understand how it works. I recently heard affiliate marketing called “partnership marketing”. I like this new variation.

Imagine you wanted to open a clothing store and you did all of your initial research, so you know the market is good for a clothing store in the area. How would you advertise your business? Instead of buying ads on the radio or creating big billboards, you talk to ten of your friends and ask them if they bring people to your store.

This option initially doesn’t cost you anything. It is called “word of mouth” advertising. When they bring people to your store and those people buy clothes from you, you give your friends 50 percent off of anything in the store as an incentive. As an alternative, you give them 10 percent commission from the sale. Doesn’t that sound like a very common and viable business model? Because it is. This is affiliate marketing business, plain and simple.

Affiliate Marketing Business Tools

Aside from the physical tools required for an affiliate marketing business (laptop, mouse), you need some guidance on how to start the business.

In order to have a successful start with an affiliate marketing business, it is important to get access to some of the basic tools. Aside from the physical tools required for an affiliate marketing business (laptop, I use the Lenovo Flex 5, it’s nice), you need three tools; a funnel builder, Click funnels or another software, Fiverr to help get the physical logo or videos started and and offer. Some use Clickbank, a CPA network or others have specific affiliate programs that they use. I go into more detail on these below.

ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is a sales funnel building software. If you are not familiar with what a sales funnel does, imagine it this way; A sales funnel allows you reach a large number of potential customers with your product and then incentivize them to click on your offer. Once they click on your offer, they can choose to buy or not. The best correlation I can make to this is, if you were cold calling 100 people in one day, 10 of them answered and one person bought your product. A sales funnel is a digital representation of reaching a lot of people and offering them your product.

Generally, the purpose of a sales funnel is to obtain leads. In addition, the typical sales funnel will have a place to insert your name and email. This name and email section allows the funnel creator to offer future products. The great thing about a sales funnel is that once you get the name and email address, you can build a relationship with a subscriber.

Fiverr

Fiverr is an online marketplace that offers a wide variety of services, tasks, and mini-jobs. It was started in 2010. Fiverr provides an online platform, specifically where freelancers can advertise and list their digital services. On the site, you’ll find many services for various digital skills.

They are fantastic at helping create business logos, cards, building websites and can even write sales emails or blogs for you. I have personally used Fiverr for several business logos and website assistance.

ClickBank

ClickBank is an affiliate network known for being home to thousands of digital products like e-books, videos, and software. They are middlemen between product vendors and affiliates. Consequently, many affiliate marketers use ClickBank to find offers to promote. There are so many niches in the affiliate marketplace that someone just starting out can easily find a good offer to promote via ClickBank.

Affiliate Marketing Business Programs

Since there are so many affiliate marketing programs out there, it can be very difficult to decide what to promote. I use three main programs that cover my particular interests. Please explore these, these programs offer multiple products and services.

Entre Institute

Entre Institute is one that I use predominately because it offers financial education and training. It takes you through building three different business models. Affiliate marketing is only one business model that they teach. They also go though how to build a digital marketing agency and a digital education business.

A key benefit with Entre is that you have a mentor / coach the first day your start. This person helps you get started and challenges you during your learning. I have given an official review of the company in my article Entre Institute Review: Rising Star? The link below will take you to a short video that gives you more detail about the program, directly from the founder of the company.

Click here to learn about Entre Institute and Join the Entre Nation

Another main benefit with Entre is that you can become an affiliate marketer of the company without having to purchase the program. Once an affiliate with the company, you are an affiliate forever. Some programs will stop your ability to work with them if you don’t sell anything, Entre doesn’t do that. Click on the link below to learn about the Entre Institute amazing affiliate program.

Click here to learn about the Affiliate Program for Entre

Alison J Prince E-Commerce

If you have ever wanted to start an e-commerce business, I would suggest clicking on the link below. Alison has a video that shows you how to build an e-commerce business from scratch. She is a former junior high teacher and mom who has built multiple seven-figure businesses. She taught both of her daughters, who were under the age of 13 build their own business and made over $100,000 dollars in 12 months. Not only that, but she has been in business for over ten years and offers several live Q & A sessions.

The affiliate marketing program for her system is easy to join. She supplies you with sample emails to send to your subscribers, banner ads and testimonials. There is only one system that she promotes. It is called 0 to 100k system. This system was developed when she taught her two daughters, both under the age of 13 how to make $100,000 from a very small initial investment.

Click on this link to learn about her story and grow an E-Commerce Store

Amazon Affiliate Marketing Business

I use amazon mainly because it is easy to use and has so many products available to market. Typically if I want to offer a book or piece of equipment that I use for my business, I will find it on amazon. There it’s easy to copy a link to market to others. Amazon has its downside though. You have a quota to sell on Amazon or they kick you out of their affiliate program. The plus side is that you can sell almost anything being an Amazon affiliate.

Affiliate Marketing Business Growth

The question at the very beginning was whether or not an affiliate marketing business is a good long term business plan. In order to correctly answer this, we need to analyze the business model in general by looking at the cost, barriers to entry and competition.

Costs

Cost can vary widely. Typically there is no specific cost to start an affiliate marketing business. However, in order to really become successful, you may want to consider a training course, mentors, professionals to build out your website and paid advertising. Conversely, there is enough free information out there to build a successful affiliate marketing business, but it just may take longer without paying for help.

Barriers to Entry

The barriers to entry are seemingly very low. Anyone can really do this assuming you have a computer and access to the internet. You can also do this anywhere in the world. Consequently, making this very attractive if you want to travel and become an affiliate marketer for travel companies. However, one of the barriers to bring up is if you are tying to become an affiliate of a company that requires you already have a large following. Certain companies will not allow you to be an affiliate of their brand unless you have an existing following. This can be a challenge if you are just starting out.

Competition

This is probably the biggest issue with affiliate marketing. There is quite a bit of competition out there. Luckily enough, the e-commerce and digital marketing industry is a multi-trillion dollar industry. It is very important that you separate yourself above the rest of the competition by your content. Whether you are a blogger or a vlogger, it’s important to educate yourself on the very best ways to operate an affiliate marketing business.

Disclaimer: I receive affiliate compensation for some of the links in this article at no cost to you. However, these are the best tools I have used and tested that I believe are most effective for launching and running an online business. You can read our full affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy.

My Final Take

Affiliate marketing is absolutely a long term business strategy. It scares people because they do not understand it. Most people are scared of what they do not know. Therefore, they consider it a scam. The only difference between operating a traditional brick and mortar business and an affiliate marketing business is the location. You can do affiliate marketing anywhere. Conversely, a brick and mortar business is limited by location. Both sell products, market products and receive commission.

In addition, given the e-commerce nature of the economy, I firmly believe that there will be an increased surge of all digital related businesses. Will you be part of that growth curve? Even as a part time side hustle, this can make you financially free.

Check out the Entre Nation Digital Revolution and Learn directly from a multi-millionaire!

Cheers to your success and I hope to see you at the top!

-Cameron