Investing Basics for Beginners

Investing money is a way for individuals to save toward their goals, whether it be retirement, a child’s college education, or some other financial goal. Beginning investors need to take time to determine their goals and learn some basic concepts of investing before jumping right into making an investment. Successful investing takes much research, time, and patience. As beginning investors start to have some success in making money through investments, they will develop a degree of skill. However, there is still a degree of risk involved even the most seasoned and skilled investors. Finding the answers to some basic investing questions will help make the efforts of beginning investors more successful.

How much money do I need to make an investment?

One common misconception by beginning investors is that they must have a large sum of money to make an investment. The truth is, many investments can be made for as little as hundreds or perhaps a few thousand dollars. One way to begin investing small is through dividend reinvestment plans or direct stock purchase options. Investors may be able to invest in a company’s stock options by paying a minimal start-up fee, often as little as $25 or $50 and making an initial investment. Once the money begins adding up, it can then be transferred to a brokerage account, where the investor will be able to begin investing larger sums of money.

What are the different types of investing?

Once investors determine that they have enough money to make an investment, the difficult part is often deciding where to invest their money. There are many different options for investors; some of the most common investment options are mutual funds, bonds, futures, and real estate.

Mutual funds – A way for individuals to invest without having to manage their investment “hands-on” is through investing in mutual funds. Mutual funds are investments that are handled by a fund manager. This fund manager invests the pool of money, contributed to by several individual investors, in the financial marketplace. The funds may be invested through closed or open-ended funds. Closed funds have a set number of shares that are distributed to the public and are traded on the open market; whereas open-ended funds to do not a set number of shares. The trader will re-invest into new shares for the investor. The shares are overseen by a professional money manager who is trained to select investments that will provide the largest returns to the investor.

Exchange traded funds – These funds, known as ETFs, are pools of investor money that is invested in similar ways to mutual funds. However, since ETFs are designed only to track certain indexes and much of their management is computerized, their maintenance costs and fees are generally much lower.

Bonds – When investors purchase bonds, they are buying an interest in a company or corporation. The companies issues bonds, which is a loan from an investor. In turn, the company agrees to pay this investor back at determined intervals with interest. Investing in bonds can be a fairly secure investment. Unless the company goes bankrupt, the investor is almost certain to receive back at least the minimum amount of his investment. These interest payments at set intervals can be a source of steady income for retired couples or others wishing to create a type of investment where they can generate consistent returns. The interest earned on bonds can be tax exempt with some types of bonds.

Real Estate – Real estate can a good investment when the timing is right but often requires a lot of work. One easy way for investors to enter the real estate market is through a real estate investment trust, or REIT. Investors become part owners in the investments of the REIT such as malls, park garages, hotels, or other real estate ventures. REITs often pay out high cash dividends to investors because the REIT pays no federal income tax in return for paying out 90 percent or more of their profits to shareholders in the form of dividends. Another way of making money through investing in real estate is through purchasing properties, improving the properties through repairing them or adding amenities, then selling them at a profit; or renting the houses to tenants and receiving a monthly income from the payments.

Futures – Futures trading is the marketplace where buyers from around the world buy and sell futures contracts. A futures contract is an agreement to receive a product at a future date with a set price. Once the price is agreed upon, the price is secure for the next year regardless of the changes in the market. Some common futures markets include commodities, currencies, stock indexes, interest rates, and other alternative investments such as economic indicators. The rewards of this kind of investing can be great but so are the risks. Therefore, futures should be left to the most experienced investors.
Should I diversify or stick with one investment?

Most professional investment advisors will confirm that diversification is the key to a successful investment portfolio. Investors who spread their investments out through several avenues reduce their risk of losing all of their assets should the investment fail. While it may be tempting to dive right in and start investing large sums or money, beginning investors should balance the potential profit against the risks they are exposing themselves to in the investment marketplace.

Using the services of a professional investment advisor

A professional investment advisor can provide beginning investors with the basic information needed to start an investment portfolio. An investment advisor sometimes is also a financial planner and can help with all financial matters. Some investment advisors are paid a percentage of the value of the assets managed, while others charge an hourly fee or are paid on a commission basis.

For investors who would like to avoid these fees, the best strategy is to do some study and start with mutual funds or ETFs offered by reputable companies.

Effective Marketing Strategies in Product Creation

Marketing includes matters such as pricing and packaging of the product and creation of demand by advertising and sales campaigns. There are other options, of course, like product creation, resale rights marketing, joint ventures and the likes, but they are merely secondary to the above.

If you take the freelance route, it is important to ensure that all rights to profit from the final product, or any materials produced in its making, remain yours. Bookkeeping, physical product creation or delivery of goods can be done better with specialized help. Determining the purpose of the product is vital in niche product creation.

Implementation of Methodology – The choice of implementation of Six Sigma methodology depends on whether development is required on existing processes (DMAIC) or on new process/product design creation (DMADV). Determining what you really want to sell, something that you can be relaxed selling is the first step at the creation of a niche product. With the technological advancements in the hosting industry, from automated control panels and scripts that simplify creation of accounts; to complete turnkey solutions, there is no excessive need to worry about spending time on the actual product sold to the customer.

For instance, you should be prepared to either perform yourself or to subcontract the completion of the following tasks:- Product idea research (are there any existing products or patents already existing for this idea)- Product specification document training (what it will do, how it will look, how will it be powered, and how the user will interface with it)- Marketing study (what it will be named, who would buy this, how much would they pay, how will we get customers to purchase the product)- Schematic or electronic circuit design process- Creation of a bill of material or BOM and an approved vendor’s list or AVL for each component in the design, preferably with multiple sources identified, with a BOM and AVL for each assembly level in the product- Printed circuit board layout design process (single sided board, double sided board, or multilayer board; size of the PCB; board material)- Mechanical packaging design with user interfaces (displays, buttons, switches, key. This removes all product creation costs from your budget as a marketer.

No other database of affiliate programs offers such a possibility for profit on either the affiliate side or the product creation site. Your chosen niche should allow for the creation of more than one product or service.

There are several marketing strategies that are necessary in the creation of a successful e-commerce web site – Email marketing (broadcasting) of prospects/customers – Effective use of auto responders (generate automatic email messages) – Online Newsletter – Online Form / Survey to capture your prospect’s email address – Electronic Product Delivery (if you sold a digital product) – Advertisement (Ad) Tracking – Back End Sales – Affiliate program etc.

Will This Real Estate Investment Course Work For Me? What the Gurus Don’t Want You to Know

When it comes to real estate investment courses, there are a lot of people who are selling a lot of TERRIBLE products out there.

As I into this arena of real estate investor trainings, as a real estate coach, I have found that there are a lot of “wolves” out there, and it’s hard to be a sheep among wolves.

What do the real estate guru “wolves” do?

Sell the product that will make them the most money, even if it’s not the most helpful to their students.

Sometimes it seems like it’s all about who has the best sales pitch, NOT who has the best product.

Fortunately, the Internet is making it easier for real estate investors to research these “guru’s” and find out if their products are the real deal, or just a bunch of hot air. Before you buy any product, search for that guru’s name and “scam” or “review” and see what you find!

Here’s what I do when I am tempted by the alluring, emotional marketing presentations…

Personally, I am very big on return policies… If I can’t return a product that’s low-quality, I’m mad… so I’m willing to buy things and evaluate them and use the return policy judiciously.

Note – I’m not advocating “Stealing” all the ideas and then returning a product, but I have returned products whose authors over-pitched them in attempt to sell the course, or who advocate unethical methods or techniques that I would not be comfortable implementing.

(That’s different than “techniques I am too lazy to implement.”)

The problem most of us experience in buying one real estate investing course is that once we subscribe to a real estate investor guru’s email list, it seems like we get new offers, deals and promotions every week, encouraging us to use and implement the next new and exciting program that will help us make money EVEN MORE easily.

We have to stay focused!

The key in actually achieving success is to unplug from all these sales messages, think about your lifestyle, your needs, your marketplace, and decide what type of investment strategy will work best for you. Then find a program, find a mentor, and stick with your plan! Don’t get distracted.

Distraction and lack of focus are our biggest enemies. They usually kick in right after we order the course and start to feel “buyer’s remorse” about whether it was really a good idea to spend more money on that program.

If it was a bad course, return it, if it was a good course – use it! The best way to overcome buyer’s remorse is to start implementing what you’ve learned in order to make some money!

There are a lot of scams out there, but most of them you can recognize by reading through the course. The ones that are harder to recognize, you should be able to flush out in 60-90 days of attempting to implement the program.

So, that means you should feel comfortable buying real estate education information that has a 60-90 day return policy.

If the program doesn’t have a return policy, don’t buy it.

If you don’t have time in the next 60-90 days to implement the program, don’t buy it.

And finally, if you’re down to your grocery money or rent money, you’ve run up your credit card bills, or you can’t pay for the postage or bandit signs the course recommends – don’t buy it either.

There are a lot of good courses out there, too.

The problem with being a sheep among wolves in the real estate education industry is that if you DON’T charge an arm-and-a-leg for your product, it’s harder to get JV partners to promote your product on their webinar or at their real estate investing seminar. It’s harder to pay for Google ads to promote your sales letter. Frankly, it’s just harder and less profitable to be in business.

You really have to have the heart of a teacher and want to help at that point…

The only “profit model” that I have seen as being “effective” for the less price-gouging real estate trainers out there is to use a “profit split” model, where they charge an upfront fee, and also offer take a portion of your profits on your deals as part of their compensation.

Think about it, otherwise, why would this investor who is otherwise “so good” at investing in real estate bother to go into the education business?

If he was making millions with passive investments like he claims, why does he need to teach you and get money from you? You’ve probably asked yourself the same question a few times.

Clearly, it has to be profitable for the trainer, but there’s no reason to charge exorbitant prices for products that don’t deliver.

Great products at reasonable prices is the direction I hope to see the industry go, but until then, caveat emptor… let the buyer beware!