Debt, Credit Card & Consolidation Current News Digest

February was National Parent Leadership Month, which highlighted the role parents play in shaping the lives of their children. As a sort of tie-in, the most recent poll in the Get Rich Slowly sidebar asked: “Did your parents prepare you well for financial independence?”

Over 1000 GRS readers responded; the results surprised me:

• 17% of you said, “Yes, they did a great job in preparing me.”
• 17% said, “They did well — I learned the basics.”
• 18% said, “It was okay, but they missed some key areas.”
• 48% said, “What preparation for Financial Independence?”

I, too, fall in that last group, but I guess I didn’t expect it to be so large. It’s great that a third of you folks felt well-prepared to tackle your finances, but it’s incredible that half of us feel like we had little or no preparation at all.

What did your parents teach you about money?
I wanted to know a little more detail, so last week I polled my Twitter followers (both at the site’s @grsblog and my personal @jdroth account). I asked: “What did your parents teach you about money? Anything? Did it work?”

A lot of folks responded to say that their parents were poor examples:

• @MoneyMateKate wrote: My parents didn’t teach me — I taught them! I was paying my own dental bills (no insurance) from age 12 onwards with babysitting dollars.
• @RevancheGS wrote: My parents just taught me that you have to work hard to earn money, and how to write checks. I was on my own for the rest of it.
• @liberryteacher wrote: My parents never had any money, and life was hard. So they taught me by example that that was not a good way to live.
• @mike_strock wrote: My parents gave me money whenever I asked. Needless to say, that wasn’t helpful later in life. I’m learning!
• tcita wrote: My parents taught me absolutely nothing: no chores, allowance, budgeting, spending money, savings — nothing. Though I guess that taught me value of work.
• Via Facebook, Tamara wrote: What did I learn about money from my parents? “Don’t do any of things we did.”

But not all parents fail at training their children about money. Plenty of folks picked up good habits from the Bank of Mom and Dad. Here are some of my favorite anecdotes and tips:

• Pam from The Turtle Path (a running blog) told me: In junior high, my parents gave me $400 at the beginning of the year (instead of a weekly allowance). They told me I could do whatever I wanted with it, but they weren’t giving me any more money the rest of the year, so don’t ask.
• @betsyatoreilly (who is on the PR team for my book!) wrote: My sister and I got $50/month to buy clothes, etc. I had a lockbox for cash and receipts, and a book to enter items. It worked great. I’m a great saver.
• @Elle_CM wrote: My mom (and grandma) emphasized always saving a chunk of any income you receive. We used to make Saturday deposits at the bank.
• Via Facebook, Cynthia wrote: As kids, if we were at the store and saw something we wanted, my dad would say, “Did you bring your money?” I think this is awesome! (And, in fact, I heard my friend Steve ask one of his kids this very thing last night.)
• On a related note, Courtney told me that she and her husband have an interesting approach when their kids beg for things at the store. They simply say, “It’s not in the budget.”
• @mattwakefield wrote: My dad taught me about the stock market by using a 1/100 scale model of the market (MSFT would be $.28 right now). Got hooked early!
• @OregonCPAs_PR wrote: My Dad has always been adamant about avoiding monthly payments. They seem small, but add up quickly.
• @EverydayFinance wrote: My father insisted on no credit-card debt and said, “Everything in moderation.” It worked like a charm.
• @kingkool68 wrote: My parents printed family checks for my allowance. I could write checks to my parents in first grade! They also gave me monthly statements. I love this idea!
• @studentfinances wrote: My parents taught me that hard work is required to be successful. Laziness is not an option. Time will tell if it worked…

That last comment is perceptive: “Time will tell if it worked.” Even if your parents did try to teach you about money, how can they be sure the lessons were right for you, or that they’ll stick?

Training for tomorrow
I’m curious: How did your parents prepare you for financial independence? What specific things did they do that helped you develop money skills you could use as an adult? Do you plan to do these same things with your own children?

And for those of you whose parents didn’t give you enough training: What do you wish they’d done differently? (For my own part, I wish my mother and father had included me in the household finances once I was old enough to understand. I know they struggled to make ends meet, but they never showed me exactly what the challenges were. They never showed me their income compared to their expenses. Also, I wish they’d given me a consistent allowance and required me to budget my fun with that.)

What was your story growing up? How did it affect how you handle money today?

—
Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Financial Education: Are Schools Doing Enough?
• Ads I Hate: Good Parents Buy
• The Money Savvy Pig: A Piggy Bank for the 21st Century
• The Problem with the Bank of Mom and Dad
• How One College Student Handles Credit Cards

Technology was supposed to make our lives simpler and save us time. In many ways, it's done just the opposite. Last month, we took a look at how often our gadgets let us down, and how screen-based devices are literally rewiring our brains and robbing people of focus and social skills.  But we left one of the more obvious techo-fear topics — information overload — for another day. 

A new study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project suggests consumers are coping with the avalanche of information they receive in unexpected and often successful ways.  So today we’ll discuss of both that silver lining and the grey cloud inside of it.

Having all the world's information, and very nearly all the world's people, just a click away seems like a fantastic development for humankind. But how much is too much?

The Economist magazine recently reported that the total amount of information in the world is growing 60 percent annually, and that U.S. households digest 34 gigabytes of data per person per day.

That's not information overload; it's practically electrocution.  But the Pew study sheds some light on how U.S. consumers are dealing with the surge — they're getting a little help from their friends.

In a new report called "Understanding the Participatory News Consumer," Pew says that one third of consumers have commented on news stories or shared them through social networking sites, half "rely on people around them to tell them when there is news they need to know," and 8 out of 10 get or share links in e-mail.

"Consumers are using social networks to filter, assess and react to the news," the report concluded. 

In other words, one sure-fire way to build Web traffic is to get a social network user to yell at all their friends, "Hey. Look at that!"

"Yes, there is a lot of that going on," said Lee Rainie, who runs Pew's Internet research. "People are getting their news through recommendations in social spaces."

New participation, new loyalty

Those are just a few of the findings in the Pew study, which suggested that consumers are driving news creation and even story selection like never before.  In a moment, we're going to ask you about the ways you consume news and deal with information overload.  But first, here are more tidbits from the study.

Click to join the fight against Red Tape 

 

While the changing online news user seems loyal to their friends and their recommendations, loyalty to specific online news brands is evolving differently. Only 35 percent say they have a favorite place to visit for news — contrast that with consumers' relatively fierce loyalty toward Coke or Pepsi, Burger King or McDonald’s. 

"There is some level of loyalty but it's striking that people didn't say, 'Oh yeah, all the time, I am always checking out this Web site," said Rainie "We didn’t expect that. We thought people would have a favorite, even if they were just 'grazing' on news. We were betting the percentages would be reversed."

On the other hand, Web users are loyal to a small family of Web sites they trust.  The majority of online news consumers (57 percent) visit only two to five Web sites to stay updated.  Only one in 10 users said they regularly visit more than five news sites.

Rainie cautions people on comparing the loyalty numbers to other media or other consumer products. Many people prefer one news anchor to another, or prefer Coke to Pepsi. But clicking on a Web site or blog represents a different kind of choice.  Picking Coke necessarily means picking against Pepsi, and watching one network means not watching another. But on the Web, people are free to split time among multiple sources. 

"You are not being disloyal if you click on a link from someone to another Web site," he said. There’s no rejection involved. Online, people simply follow a click trail. "On the Web, it's more like an impulse buy."

With consumers trusting a circle of friends to keep them updated, professional journalists are becoming just another member of this intimate circle that serves as filter, Rainie said.

“A notable number of Internet users are beginning to treat news organizations, particular journalists, and other news mavens as nodes in their social networks,” the report found. Fully 57 percent of U.S. adults use a social networking site, and 97 percent call themselves online news consumers.

New platforms

Pew's research makes obvious that consumers are faced an ever-growing list of choices. Fully 26 percent of U.S. adults, 33 percent of cell phone owners and 88 percent of mobile users are what Pew calls “on the go” users, meaning they use the Web to access news on their phones, the study found.

Meanwhile, "participation" in news is nearly as popular.  Commenting on news stories — as readers do on the Red Tape Chronicles or Newsvine — has become almost a mainstream activity, with one in four respondents saying they'd done so. “On-the-go” news users are even more dedicated, with half saying they had engaged in personal commentary.

On the other hand, despite all the talk about Twitter (which just passed its the 10 billion Tweet milestone), only 3 percent of users said they'd Tweeted about news.  Twitter updates – either from professional journalists or friends – were the least commonly used news source among the general population, the study found.  But Twitter users are an intense and devoted bunch. Nearly 100 percent are engaged in sharing news online and in other forms of participation.

Tools vs. overload

This level of active participation is not what you'd expect from a group of consumers cowering under the mountain of data headed their way every morning. This group is not disengaging because they can’t keep up. In fact, the Pew study shows that people who participate in news stories are much more likely to follow that story over time, and to care about the outcome.  It's a mixed bag, Rainie said.

"Information overload is part of the story, but not the whole part," Rainie said.  "Some people are participating because they have so much choice in news and in life. Some people are probably disengaging.  But some people are more engaged. …  Some people do it because they can.  The tools (for participating) are very good now."

Meanwhile, almost half of Web users (44 percent) say they have signed up for nifty technology that lets “the news find them,” Pew said.  They use an alert service, automated Web site updates, e-mail, or social networks to get headlines and stories delivered right to their screens. Slightly more than one quarter of Web users say they receive such passive news delivery at least once a day.

News snackers vs. deep divers

Clearly, some news consumers have changed their habits. Instead of spending 60 minutes reading a newspaper or 30 minutes watching a newscast, they might spend 5 minutes on a Web site or even just 60 seconds scanning headlines posted by friends on Facebook . This group is sometimes referred to as "news snackers." Rainie calls it "drive-by" headline scanning.  There's concern that this group is learning less about their world and will be less able to participate in the political process. But ever here, Rainie cautions against generalizations.

"We didn't ask equivalent questions in 1976, like ‘How many of you are done with the newspaper in 3 minutes,’” he said. “Obviously, some people just scanned newspaper headlines, too. Meanwhile, people who care about a subject now have a lot more opportunity to get documents, video clips, and commentary. They have the ability to dive deeply into stories, sometimes for hours."

It's far too optimistic to suggest news consumers are winning the war on information overload, but Rainie thinks the new tools have at least given them a fighting chance.

"People are learning how to arrange the information universe around them, and learning how to be on alert in an environment that has this capacity," he said.  "They are learning to open themselves up to more input from friends, and they can customize their sources to focus on subjects that matter to them.  The technology is quite robust for doing these things."

But not everyone is being taken along for the ride.  Lurking behind this debate about the new news consumers is a potential widening of the digital divide. Will consumers who don't Tweet, use Facebook, leave comments or post cell phone video fall ever further behind? While about one-third of the Internet audience is now fiercely engaged in posting news stories, arguing online or linking to video clips within sophisticated social media sites like Facebook, a host of other Americans don't have high-bandwidth access or the know-how to get involved.

"This is a long-standing concern of political scientists in general," Rainie said. "Even before the Internet there was a lot of evidence and research that people who were not deeply engaged with communication didn't take advantage of media sources, and, how would their voices be heard? … Online news participants are still upper class and well educated.”

This might leave consumers with a stark choice: participate or perish.

"People have to either be engaged, or be left out," he said.  "Many people lack the technology and the tools to take full advantage of this new environment that gives them the capacity to be more involved.  We have to make sure that there is fundamental access to the new tools for participation.” 

What about you? Do you feel more engaged or more overwhelmed? Are you using new tools like Twitter and Facebook as much as Pew thinks you are?  Do you like participating in debates on blogs like the Red Tape Chronicles? Have you personalized news sources? Are there other news and information tools you are craving, or that you imagine would be helpful?  What subjects would you like to hear more about?  Leave your comment here, or if you prefer, discuss on my Facebook fan page, follow me on Twitter, or Tweet about this story to your friends.

At long last, I’m officially finished with Your Money: The Missing Manual. No more writing. No more editing. No more nothing. The book is in my publisher’s hands, and they’re sending it to press on the 26th. It’ll be in stores sometime in March, but you can pre-order it now.

Now that I’ve completed this Herculean task, it’s time for a break. Though perhaps I should have saved my advance against royalties for something smart, Kris and I are going to use it to take a short vacation instead. We’re going to spend a week in Belize: exploring jungle ruins, canoeing through caves, and photographing exotic birds. (Exotic to us, anyhow.) We have a house-sitter to guard our home, and I have a blog-sitter to guard Get Rich Slowly.

I’ll be back on March 1st, rested and ready to tackle personal finance anew! In the meantime, here are a few loose ends:

I always wanted to be in comics!
The folks at Credit Card Daily have turned my whining about the book project into a comic that my friends and I think is hilarious. Seriously: I laugh every time I read this. It’s not 100% accurate (my editor is nice, and I’m lucky to have her), but it does a good job of capturing my frenzied state over the past five months. I think the artist did a darn fine job on this considering we never even discussed anything. (I think he used reference photos from the site to draw the comic.)

All the same, there are a handful of tiny “mistakes” that only stand out if you really know me. My brother found all but one — how many can you find?

The art of manliness
I don’t think I mentioned this yet, but I was a guest on The Art of Manliness podcast earlier this month. I spoke with Brett about conquering debt, inspiring personal finance books, and financial problems faced by men.

(Brett was once an active commenter around here before his blog grew into the monster it is today. It’s good stuff: Male-oriented content that’s pointedly not sexist. He and his wife run the site together, and it’s one of my favorites.)

Personal branding
Also earlier this month, I spoke with Dan Schawbel from the Personal Branding Blog. We talked about how I wrote Your Money: The Missing Manual, and the ways in which it’s different from other personal finance books. And, of course, we covered a little bit of personal branding. You can read the interview here.

Guest posts and reader stories
If you’ve sent me a guest post or a reader story, please be patient. I’m processing them as fast as I can, starting with the oldest articles in the inbox. There’s a fine line to walk here: You folks are anxious to share your stories, but you also get cranky when I share too many guest articles. I’m trying to find a nice balance.

Plus, editing these things takes time! I have 43 e-mails in my “guest post” mailbox, the oldest of which is from December. And I know there are others that I haven’t sorted to this mailbox yet. So please: Give me time. I’ll get to you eventually!

Two twitters
Finally, just a reminder that I’ve split my Twitter life in two. Some folks didn’t want to read my tweets about cats and comic books, so I set up a GRSblog account that features auto updates when a new GRS post goes live. It’s also the place I tweet about anything money-related. Plus, anyone who helps me with the site (staff writers, forum mods, and so on) can tweet from this account.

Of course, some of you do want updates on my daily life. If you’re one of those, you should follow me here.

—
Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Daily Links: Housekeeping Edition
• Daily Links: Housekeeping Edition
• Site Housekeeping: Story Suggestions, Reader Requests, and Moving the Feed
• Master Your Money with a Financial Health Day
• How to Save $5000 a Year — As a Homeowner or a Renter

If Google wanted to create a quick buzz around its new social networking service, it's certainly accomplished that. Last week, when the Web giant automatically signed up millions of Gmail users for its new Buzz social network, much of the Internet was sent into a privacy tizzy.

Google announced serious modifications to the service, later in the week, but that wasn’t enough for the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).  On Tuesday, it filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, asking the regulator order more changes. EPIC also accused Google of violating federal consumer protection law and suggested the firm may have broken wiretap laws, too.

While the details of the Buzz privacy dispute can seem esoteric, the main thrust of EPIC's complaint is simple: Google should never had pushed all 37 million U.S. Gmail users into a social networking service without asking, said EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg.

"E-mail is one area on the Internet where we have a well-understood expectation of privacy," Rotenberg said.  "E-mail is for private messages. You sign up for social networking to communicate publicly with people, Google tried to turn e-mail into social networking, and that's where they ran into trouble."

The complaint lays out a series of alleged Google missteps that EPIC says constitute unfair or deceptive trade practices that violate the Federal Trade Commission Act. For starters, it says, all users who checked their Gmail account last week were suddenly signed up for Buzz.  While Google offered users a chance to "check out" the service, it didn't give them the option to avoid it.

"Regardless of whether a user clicked the button labeled 'Sweet! Check out Buzz' or “Nah, go to my inbox,’ Google Buzz was activated," the complaint says.

Gmail account holders who then began using Buzz found their first public posting was essentially a list of their most frequent e-mail contacts.  Buzz decided for itself who users e-mailed most often, then put those users on a list as "followers" and made that list public. Quickly, nightmare hypothetical scenarios were published — workers who had recently e-mailed about job interviews had their job hunt exposed, for example.   Cheating lovers or spouses were outed.

"Gmail contact lists routinely include deeply personal information, including the names and email addresses of estranged spouses, current lovers, attorneys and doctors," the EPIC complaint said. "Users were not explicitly warned that their lists would be automatically visible to the public. … Anyone looking at a newly activated Buzz user’s following list would know that the list indicated which people that user communicated with most often."

In addition to causing potential embarrassment — or worse – Google may have broken the law by disclosing e-mail contacts, EPIC said.

"Improper disclosure of even a limited amount of subscriber information by an e-mail service provider can be a violation of both state and federal law," it said. "An attempt by an e-mail service provider to attempt to convert the personal information of all of its customers into a separate service raises far-reaching concerns."

Google has already gone through two rounds of revisions with its service, and Buzz now tells new users that frequent e-mail partners will be “followers” unless the user prevents that.  New users now see a list of potential followers — checked by default — when they sign up for the service.

 

Google's revised start-up doesn't go far enough, EPIC says

But on Tuesday, Rotenberg said that Google still hadn't gone far enough to address privacy concerns.  Buzz still ropes in Gmail users and their e-mail contacts by default, which can lead to unintended disclosure of personal information, he says.

Rotenberg said Buzz users should have to actively opt in before Buzz is activated, rather than opt out.

"It's always about the defaults," he said.

EPIC has called on the FTC to force Google to:

*make Buzz a fully opt-in service.
* force Google to cease using Gmail users’ private address book contacts to compile social networking lists.
*give Buzz users more control over their information.

For a company that has already dealt with plenty of privacy related issues, Google's misreading of public reaction to Buzz is a surprise, said Larry Ponemon, a privacy researcher who runs The Ponemon Institute.

"It is astonishing to me that a decision was made to release a product that the average person would see as a potential privacy snafu," he said. "Things like this seem to happen because people making decisions just aren't thinking about privacy. … Sometimes companies don't when they are about to release something they think is really cool."

Ponemon did say that he was impressed with Google's quick response to the controversy, taking only a few days to made changes to the service.

"They did take it seriously, you could tell they had all hands on deck," he said.

Rotenberg said Google was more worried about stiff competition in the social media world than privacy.

“Google tried to take advantage of its market position" by dragging all Gmail users into Buzz overnight, he said, thereby giving the service a running start in the uphill battle to catch Facebook and Twitter in the social networking space.

That's why he wants the FTC to be more proactively involved in privacy policy.

"The FTC has had a hands-off policy, leading to some bad business practices," he said.

Google said in an e-mail statement to msnbc.com that it was working hard to make adjustments to its service based on user feedback, and will keep "user transparency and control top of mind.

“We also welcome dialogue with EPIC and appreciate hearing directly from them about their concerns," the statement continued. "Our door is always open to organizations with suggestions about our products and services.”

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Now that I’m done with the bulk of the work on Your Money: The Missing Manual, I can start doing many of the things I used to do. Like provide monthly summaries for Get Rich Slowly.

In some ways, January was a strange month around here. For one thing, I think this was the month with the fewest posts since I started the site; there were only three days with more than one post. Yet I don’t feel like this was a bad thing. In fact, I felt like there were some fantastic conversations in January. (What do you think? Are you okay with the one-post-a-day thing? Or would you prefer to see more?)

Here are some of the best articles from this month:

• January 4th: 10 steps to financial success in 2010
• January 6th: Invest in your most important income-produing asset (by Robert B.)
• January 7th: The best time to buy almost everything (by April)
• January 13th: What the new credit card law means to you (by Adam J.)
• January 18th: Break out of your comfort zone to achieve success (a guest post from Flexo)
• January 25th: Great lessons from great men
• January 27th: Does renting make sense?

The blog isn’t the only part of this site. If you have burning questions about personal finance, one of the best places to get answers is the Get Rich Slowly discussion forum, which just got a fresh coat of paint.

The forum is a great place to chat with your fellow readers. Have questions about emergency funds? Ask! Want to chat about cheap vacations? This is the place to do it. The forums have over 3400 registered users and over 44,500 posts.

Subscribe!
You may subscribe to Get Rich Slowly via any of the following methods:

Join over 14,000 people who receive Get Rich Slowly via e-mail by supplying your address:

 

Finally, you can follow me on Twitter or join the Get Rich Slowly blog network and/or the Get Rich Slowly page on Facebook.

This weblog is a success because of you and your support. As always, I welcome reader contributions, either as ideas for stories, or as guest entries. If you have any comments or requests to improve this site, please feel free to pass them on.

—
Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• “Jumpstart Your Retirement Plan Days” Provides Free Financial Advice
• The Best of Get Rich Slowly: January 2008
• The Best of Get Rich Slowly: January 2009
• The GRS Garden Project: January 2010 Update
• Daily Links: Extreme Editing Edition

Are you as sick as I am of blogs, ebooks and gurus all promising to teach you how to “make money online”? In many cases, they’re people flogging a product that they swear any idiot could use to make a fortune … overnight … on the beach … in just two hours a day…

Let’s get real about this. Making money online, just like making money offline, takes real work. However much you might wish you could just press a button and get a steady income stream going, that’s not how it works. Scams, pyramid schemes, dodgy traders and fly-by-night sites abound: none of these are going to get you closer to paying off your debts or quitting your day job.

However, it is perfectly possible for you to make money online. I’m going to outline five straightforward, no-nonsense, spam-and-scam-free ways to do so. I’ve had experience – i.e. dollars coming in – with each of these areas, and I’ll share some of my best tips.

(Hint: I’m also linking to some useful sources, so you may want to bookmark this post for handy referral.)

In almost all cases, you’ll want to get set up with PayPal so that you can get paid.

1. Freelancing
   First up, freelancing. This is how I got started with my business, Aliventures. Freelancing means selling a particular service, getting paid by clients either by the hour or by the project.

   You can do all sorts of things as a freelancer, but some of the most common freelancing areas online are:

   • Writing: including copywriting, blogging, newsletters, ebooks, articles
   • Designing: including illustration, graphic design, logo design
   • Programming: including web coding, custom software
   • Administration: including accounts, personal assistants

   To get started with freelancing, pick a particular skill that you have, and put together an online portfolio showcasing your work. Tell your family, friends, and Twitter followers that you’re looking for clients.

   Freelancing is becoming much more common as people look for flexible patterns of working (and multiple clients to provide job security) – so there’s a lot of advice, support and help around, often including grants and loans when you’re getting started. Your local Chamber of Commerce – or a similar organization – may be a good source of advice.

   Insider Tips:

   • Specialize. It might seem counter-intuitive, but it’s better to concentrate on one area than try to cover all the bases. For example, writers might choose to specialize in copywriting (and ignore blogging, editing and so on).
   • Approach potential clients directly. Most of the freelance blogging jobs that I have weren’t from applying for advertised jobs – they came through making contact with editors. You wouldn’t be reading this blog post if I hadn’t sent Jay (DLM’s editor) a guest post ( and several hopeful emails) back in 2008!

   
   

   Resources:
   Freelance Switch and Freelance Folder are both blogs aimed at freelancers, and well worth subscribing to by RSS.

   Skellie’s post 30 Days to Become a Freelancer is a great step-by-step plan for new freelancers.

   On Dumb Little Man, there’s some freelance-related advice in:

   • An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Setting Service Rates
   • 8 Important Money Saving Tips for Web Workers
   • 10 Great Ways to Jump-Start Your Creativity




2. Selling electronic products
   Freelancers sell a service. Even when that service results in a product, like a logo, a website or an ebook, it’s custom-made at the request of a particular client. That works well for some people, but what if you want to make money without having to work by the hour or by the project?

   A tried-and-tested way of making money online is to sell electronic, usually downloadable, products. I’m sure you’ve come across a few sites selling ebooks – if you have a particular area of expertise, you can write an ebook (which doesn’t need to be anything like as long as a paper book), and you’ll find buyers. Time-sensitive information does particularly well in ebook format.

   There are also plenty of options if you’re not a writer. You can pay someone to write an ebook for you: then you can market and sell it. Alternatively, you can sell audio or video files, graphical content, software.

   Insider tips:

   • Start with something small, like a $5 or $10 product; the learning curve is usually steep.
   • Either build up an online audience of your own (via a blog or e-newsletter), or partner up with people who have a big audience – offer them commission as an affiliate for your product.

   Resources:

   • Create Ebooks That Sell – article on Copyblogger
   • The Comprehensive Paint-by-Numbers Guide to Writing and Publishing Your Ebook – article on ProBlogger that’s pretty much described by the title!

   Sites where you can sell (and indeed buy!) electronic products include:

   • e-junkie – mainly used for ebooks
   • iStockphoto and fotolia – for graphics and illustrations
   • Theme Forest – for website and blog themes
   • Envato Marketplaces – other sites from the makers of Theme Forest
3. Selling physical products
   If virtual products don’t interest you, how about selling physical ones? You may well have done this already if you’ve ever offloaded some second-hand books on Amazon.com, or if you’ve gotten rid of those wrong-size-wrong-color clothes on eBay.

   You don’t necessarily have to have a large amount of storage space to sell physical products, and you don’t need to spend hours standing in line at your local post office; you can use drop-shipping to outsource warehousing and shipping.

   Many small businesses are run entirely on ebay, often buying stock in job lots (at discount warehouses, for instance) and splitting it up for sale, thus turning a profit per item.

   Artists and crafters can sell handmade products on sites like etsy, where customers are often willing to pay a premium price for uniqueness and quality.

   If you have a site or concept which you could produce merchandise for (online comics often do well with this, and humor blogs), try CafePress.

   Insider tips:

   • Take the time to get a great photo of what you’re selling. Make the photo as large as possible too. (Many new ebay sellers make the mistake of not using good photos.)
   • Use testimonials, especially if you’re selling items which customers would normally want to examine and touch before buying – such as clothes or craft materials.
   • Stick with one site – at least to begin with – so that you can build up feedback from buyers: I found that selling on ebay and Amazon was much easier once I had a good rating.

   Resources:

   • Timothy Ferriss’s book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere.
   • News article “Doc makes more money selling clothes on eBay” – which gives an encouraging indication of what’s possible, just working part-time!
   • Starting an eBay business – article from startupnation
4. Owning websites
   If you own a website, you’ve got a potentially money-making asset. You can run adverts on the site. A good place to start is Google Adsense. Once your site starts getting a reasonable level of traffic and/or a reasonable Google rank, you can sell advertising directly. (Warning: Google sometimes penalizes sites which sell text links.)

   For an example of Adsense and private ad sales in action, see my site www.theofficediet.com. You’ll notice that:

   • There is a 125×125 banner, as well as a number of links under the headings “Adverts”. These are private ad sales.
   • I’m also running Google Adsense

   I don’t make a living from this site by any means, but I do make several hundred dollars each month from advertising.

   Another method is simply to sell the site, which is often known as “flipping” it. If you have a site that makes regular income (such as through advertising or affiliate sales), then there’ll be interested buyers. A good rule of thumb is that you can sell a site for around 12-18 times the monthly income. You may be able to sell a site which has strong potential – perhaps a good domain name and some high-quality content – even if it isn’t yet generating income.

   You can sell sites – and even great domain names (which should cost under $10 to register) – on the SitePoint marketplace.

   Insider tips:

   • Once you have a large site that’s easily found on Google, advertisers will often come to you. Be prepared for this: decide what you charge for different types of ads, and have a simple means of accepting payment.
   • You may have to decide between advertising income and maintaining the quality of your website. I run text ads and Adsense on www.theofficediet.com because I’m not too attached to that site – I’m much pickier about the ads on my “home” site, www.aliventures.com!

   Resources:

   • My Adsense Tips on the Official Adsense Blog – videos from Darren Rowse (aka Problogger)
   • ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income – by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett has good information about advertising and about flipping blogs.
   • Find an Undervalued Asset. Fix It Up. Flip It. (Now It’s Web Sites, Not Houses) – article from the New York Times which is a good introduction to the area – and financial possibilities – of flipping websites.
5. Selling other people’s products
   Lastly, perhaps you don’t have anything of your own to sell – and you don’t want to create anything. How about selling other people’s products? This is a great way to let others do the hard work while you reap the rewards!

   Like the other four methods, though, this isn’t without work on your part. Affiliate marketing (acting as an affiliate for someone else’s product, and earning commission on sales which you refer) requires you to have two things:

   1. An audience
   2. Trust

   If you have a blog, e-newsletter or Twitter following, that’s your audience. Establishing trust takes time, though. Some good ways to do it include:

   • Provide high quality content (blog posts, emails or Tweets)
   • Be honest, personable and real – we trust people who we can see as friends
   • Don’t give an overblown review just for sales: mention any bad points about the product too
   • Own every product and use every service that you review as an affiliate

   Note that the FTC has brought out new guidelines, which many bloggers have interpreted to mean that affiliates do need to declare their connection. This is often to your advantage anyway, as it can show that you’re trustworthy and honest. (See Affiliates – New FTC Rules and $11,000 Fines for Non-Disclosure for more information.)

   When looking for products to promote, start with things you already own. You can promote anything sold on Amazon as an affiliate (though the commission isn’t great) and you’d be surprised how many sites and companies have affiliate programs. You can also review a post from Dumb Little Man that lists over 40 ways to make money online.

   Insider tips:

   • Think about what you like in a review – and provide that! I put the price up front in all my reviews, for instance, as I hate not knowing the price of a product till I’ve read a ton of text about it.
   • Give a personal story about your experience with the product or service. If you say in the review that your webhost has great customer service, give a concrete example.
   • Many ebook authors (and sellers of other downloadable products) will let you have a review copy if you have a reasonable-sized blog or newsletter, so you can sometimes get free products this way!

   Resources:

   • What Is Affiliate Marketing? and 10 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs On Your Blog – great introductions to this topic, on ProBlogger
   • How to Suck at Affiliate Marketing – what not to do, from IttyBiz
   • Cloud Living review – where I discuss Glen Allsopp’s comprehensive and beginner-friendly ebook about affiliate mini-sites and blogging.

Any one of the above methods could make you a full-time living online – or could provide you with a great source of side income. Which appeal to you? What skills or resources do you already have that you could leverage? And do you have any other methods to add to the list? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

I did it!

I finally finished the manuscript for Your Money: The Missing Manual; I e-mailed the last chapter to my editor at 9:10 this morning.

This book was a lot of work. I started writing it on 23 September 2009 at 12:27 p.m. Over the next 115 days, I gained fifteen pounds. (I actually gained eighteen, but I’ve lost three since the start of the year.) The final manuscript contains 125,244 words and 269 pages in Microsoft Word, which would be about 400 printed pages. That’s too long, so we’ll spend the next month whittling it down to something more manageable.

During the past few months, I’ve been a virtual hermit, cloistered in my office (”deep in the word mines”, as I like to say), working 8-10 hours every day — and sometimes many more. Now that the book is nearly finished (aside from editing and printing), I calculate that my hourly wage for this project is…drumroll please…less than minimum wage!

Still, I’m not doing this for the money. I’m doing it because I want to help people turn their financial lives around. I’m doing it because I wish I’d had a book like this twenty years ago. If Your Money: The Missing Manual sells enough copies to earn back its advance, that’s great. But if it helps even a handful of people get out of debt and start saving for the future, I’ve done my job.

Chock full of goodness
What’s in the book? Plenty of the stuff you see at Get Rich Slowly — but also lots of new topics, too. Here’s a chapter-by-chapter breakdown:

• Introduction — I give a brief summary of my background and share the fourteen tenets of Get Rich Slowly. (2304 words, 5 pages, completed 09 January 2010)
• Chapter 1: Happiness — I survey current happiness research. I explain how money is important but it isn’t everything. I also discuss the notion of lifestyle inflation (though we’re calling it “the hedonic treadmill” for the book). (6800 words, 15 pages, completed 05 October 2009)
• Chapter 2: Goals — I discuss the importance of setting goals. Without goals, you have no reason to save. (6090 words, 13 pages, completed 12 October 2009)
• Chapter 3: Budgeting — If goals are your destination, then a budget’s your map. But as most of you know, I’m not a fan of detailed budgets. Instead, I focus on looking at the Big Picture (including my favorite, the balanced money formula), suggesting readers can add detail as needed. (6975 words, 15 pages, completed 19 October 2009)
• Chapter 4: Debt — I lived with debt for fifteen years. This chapter shares a bit about how I overcame my own debt, and then shares some of my favorite resources. My goal is to give readers the tools they need to kick debt to the curb. (7163 words, 16 pages, completed 16 October 2009)
• Chapter 5: Frugality — This chapter got out of control! How can you compress this topic into just 25 pages? You can’t. I know some folks think frugality is pointless, but I’m not one of them. I sing its praises here. (11676 words, 26 pages, completed 04 November 2009)
• Chapter 6: Income — The most overlooked topic in personal finance: how to make more money. You guys know I’m a passionate believer in boosting your income in whatever way you can. This chapter suggests some ways to do it. (11081 words, 24 pages, 10 November 2009)
• Chapter 7: Banking — Banking’s not a very sexy topic, but there’s still some important stuff to cover, like how to find the best checking and savings accounts. (7836 words, 18 pages, completed 17 November 2009)
• Chapter 8: Credit — Credit can be dangerous…but it doesn’t have to be. Here I go over credit scores and credit reports and offer some tips for using credit cards responsibly. (6350 words, 14 pages, completed 25 November 2009)
• Chapter 9: Big Stuff — As great as it is to save money through frugality, it’s even more important to save on big things, such as cars, furniture, and vacations. This chapter tells you how. (13085 words, 26 pages, completed 03 December 2009)
• Chapter 10: Housing — Yikes, this chapter was tough to write. I’m not sure why, but it got away from me. I had so much I wanted to say! In the end, I had to cut the info on “cost of living”, and I may have even had to cut the stuff on selling a house. There’s still plenty of meat here, though. (9906 words, 20 pages, completed 22 December 2009)
• Chapter 11: Death and Taxes — When I started writing, I told my editor this chapter would suck. I didn’t feel confident about the subject. In the end, it was fun to write — and it turned out well. It’s tough to make taxes, insurance, and estate planning interesting, but I did my best. (10000 words, 21 pages, completed 16 December 2009)
• Chapter 12: Investing — I outline the basics of investing, including some of the psychological pitfalls investors face. I encourage readers to look at index funds, but point them to good resources for other strategies if they simply must try to beat the market. (10684 words, 24 pages, 05 January 2010)
• Chapter 13: Retirement — The chapter I completed this morning! I talk about the power of compounding and the importance of saving early. I also go on a rant about how much I hate retirement planning based around “replacement income”. (It’s so stupid!) (7872 words, 17 pages, completed 15 January 2010)
• Chapter 14: Relationships — I close the book with a look at how money affects our relationships with family and friends. (The book is dedicated to my friend Sparky, who died a year ago today.) I also spend a little time exploring the notion of social capital, which is something I haven’t written about much here, but that I think is very very important. (7422 words, 15 pages, completed 11 January 2010)

Whew! Just typing that outline makes me tired. There’s a lot of info here. I’ve tried to find a balance between being too general and being too specific. I want folks to be able to come to the book when they have a question, get the basics, and then point them to places they can get more details, if needed. (That’s my goal, anyhow.)

Behind the scenes
There’s a lot of GRS in Your Money: The Missing Manual. That doesn’t mean I just dumped blog posts to the book. I’ve read some other books that have done this, and I don’t care for them. While I did use some material from the archives, I tried to steer clear of wholesale reproduction. (That’s not in anyone’s best interest, right?) What I mean is that I used the GRS philosophy to guide my writing, and I used some of my favorite themes throughout the book. And from time-to-time, I used info I’ve shared before. (About Roth IRAs, for example.)

Plus, the book profiles about a dozen GRS readers, who tell how they handle their finances in various ways. Two long-time GRS readers (Dylan and Charlie) are acting as technical reviewers. As I’ve written the book, I’ve frequently polled those of you who follow me on Twitter for suggestions and recommendations about topics and tools.

Simply put, this book is the sum of everything I’ve learned about personal finance so far, and it draws a lot on the collective brains of Get Rich Slowly readers. In a very real way, all of us wrote this as a team. It may not be perfect, but I’m pleased with how it’s come together.

Ready to rest
Still, I’m not sure I’m built for writing books. I have no problem producing short pieces on a daily basis. That’s fun and (pardon the immodesty) think I do a good job at it. But writing a book is an entirely different beast. It’s like asking a good sprinter to run a marathon. The sprinter can probably do it, and he’ll use some of the same muscles and skills, but he won’t enjoy it, and he won’t do it as well as those who have trained distance running.

That’s not to say I’m not proud of Your Money: The Missing Manual. I’m very proud of it. I put my heart and soul into this book, and I think it has the potential to help a lot of people. (I sure hope it will, anyhow.) I’m just saying I prefer to write for the blog format.

Anyhow, I appreciate your support over the past few months. It means a lot to me. There’s still a lot of work to be done, though. Starting Saturday afternoon, I have a ten-day author review period during which I’ll make revisions to the manuscript. I get a short break after that before we start the final round of editing. Assuming there are no problems, Your Money: The Missing Manual should hit bookstores two months from today.

I’d also like to note that I made the next step in my Year of Fitness this morning. I’ve spent the past couple weeks counting calories and changing my eating habits, but today I finally hit the gym, spending 45 minutes on the elliptical trainer. From this point on, fitness is job one around here.

Have a great weekend, everyone! I’ll be be back on Monday.

p.s. If anyone has tips for book marketing, please let me know. So much of a book’s success depends on marketing, but I’m not a very salesman-y type of guy, so this is going to be tough for me. I’m looking for ways to spread the word in a productive non-slimy way.

p.p.s. Just for kicks, I uploaded the book’s outline to my personal site. (It’s a 1.4mb PDF.) I wish you could see the physical outline; it’s dirty and torn from four months of constant use.

—
Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• Free User Manuals For Electronic Equipment
• How to Extend the Life of Your Car
• Missing Money
• Reader Success Story: How I Gave Myself a Raise
• Raising a Family on One Income (Part One)

Every week or two, I get an email from a reader wanting to know who I think is the best stock broker. I usually tell them that when it comes to my retirement, I use Vanguard because I like their mutual funds and because I can invest in those mutual funds for free. For my taxable broker, I use E*Trade and TradeKing. E*Trade because they had a high yield savings account that I could use as my sweep account (not anymore though) and now TradeKing because trades cost $4.95 and they consistently win awards for customer service (though I’ve yet to call them, never had a reason to).

In my emails, I don’t go through the methodology I used to picking a broker because I had planned on making a post about it. I only talk about the brokers I use and why (like in the above paragraph). So, I decided to make it the subject of the latest Bargaineering VideoCast.

In the end, it comes down to figuring out what you need from a broker and selecting one that meets it. For me, the issue is of price and fees. I’m less interested with the scope of research, so full service shops with access to dozens of analyst reports don’t appeal to me, and more interested with ensuring the only fee I pay is for trading stocks.

Are there important criteria that I missed? Please let me know in the comments!

And a big thanks to Intuit and TurboTax for supporting Bargaineering and sponsoring this video. If you’re on Twitter, I invite you to follow @TurboTax for more information on tax and product news straight from the experts.

BVC #24 – How to Pick A Stock Broker from personal finance blog Bargaineering.com.

This is a guest post from Adam Jusko, founder of IndexCreditCards.com, an information and comparison site for credit cards that maintains a list of over 1200 cards. You can follow Adam on Twitter for quick credit tips and opinions. I’ve mentioned Index Credit Cards many times before, most notably in my post from 2006 called “The Only Credit Card Guide You’ll Ever Need”.

Last May President Obama signed into law a sweeping set of rules and regulations concerning the business practices of credit card issuers. Known as the Credit Card Act, the new laws promised a level playing field where consumers would be treated more fairly and credit card terms would be easier to understand.

But, much like your favorite credit card agreement, the law had something nasty buried in the fine print — no part of the law would take effect immediately. Instead, certain pieces of the law didn’t take effect until August, and many others have an effective date of February 2010. Credit card issuers used the window between the law’s signing and its actual enforcement to raise rates, slash credit limits, or even completely take your card away.

Card issuers claim the new rules restrict their ability to price cards based on risk, and will lead to higher prices for everyone. Politicians might call the card issuers’ reactions to the new law “unintended consequences,” and tell you that leveling the playing field unfortunately means that some people get leveled on the way toward a fairer marketplace. (Actually, no politician would ever say that.)

What’s the truth? What exactly do these new laws do? And, what can you expect in the coming years when you use your credit cards or attempt to get new ones?

Let’s start with what the law actually says. It’s long, so I’ll bullet point it as much as possible. (Go here if you want to read it in all its glory.)

Now playing
Here’s what went into effect in August of 2009:

• Credit card issuers must give you 45 days notice if they intend to raise your rates. Further, they must allow you to “opt out” of the rate increase and pay your existing balance under the old rate terms.
• Credit card issuers must send bills at least 21 days before the due date.

What it means: Credit card issuers can no longer jack up your rates with little warning, and you now have the option to decline the rate increase. However, declining an increase means you can no longer use the card and it gives the issuer the freedom to increase your minimum payment to either twice its previous level or to a level that guarantees the card will be paid off within five years. So, if you decline, be sure you have a better card option going forward.

Coming soon
Next up are the regulations due to kick in next month. I’ll take them in chunks, based on rules that naturally go together:

• Credit card rates can’t be increased on outstanding balances — except for the increase that happens when a 0% or other low interest introductory rate expires on newly-issued cards or when a customer is 60 days late on a payment.
• If a customer is 60 days late on a payment and an interest rate is increased, the issuer must dial the rate back to the original level if the customer pays the past-due payments and makes 6 straight months of on-time minimum payments.
• Card rates can not be increased in the first year of a card agreement (unless there is a limited-time low-interest introductory rate as part of the original card offer).
• Low-interest introductory rate offers must last at least 6 months.
• Customer payments must be applied to higher-interest balances first.
• If a card is marketed as “fixed rate,” the card issuer must reveal exactly how long the rate is guaranteed to remain the same.
• Credit card issuers can not use “double-cycle billing,” a practice that allowed issuers to charge interest based on the average balance from the past two months, even if last month’s balance was paid.

What it means: Out of all the new rules, the ones above are probably the greatest victory for consumers, and probably the most harmful to card issuers’ profits. In general, they say that any purchase you make must be charged interest only at the card’s interest rate when the purchase was made. Even if the issuer hikes your rate, the higher rate only would apply to new purchases going forward. Credit card issuers are really screaming about this — they believe it stops them from penalizing bad customers who turn into bigger credit risks, and they threaten that it will stop them from accepting many consumers altogether.

From my perspective, it’s simple fairness — even if a person becomes a bigger credit risk, I see no reason issuers should be able to “bait and switch” by increasing the rates on previous purchases made under different terms. This practice has forced many credit card customers to get into desperate financial straits. What card issuers may be missing in their anger is the possibility that fewer cardholders will default on their cards under these regulations, because they won’t suddenly be saddled with payments that are double those required previously.

Here’s the next set of rules:

• Payment due dates must be the same each month. If a due date falls on a weekend or holiday, the due date must change to the following business day.
• Issuers can’t charge fees for payments by certain methods. For example, issuers can not charge customers more if they pay by phone than if they pay online.
• Issuers can’t allow customers to go over their credit limits and then charge “over the limit fees” unless the customer has first “opted in” — specifically asking for the service.
• Issuers must include a place on the bill that shows customers how long it would take to pay off their balances if only the minimum required payment was paid each month. (Other similar disclosure rules are still being developed.)

What it means: Most of these fall under the “sneaky tricks” portion of the rules, in order to stop issuers from charging you fees for things that seem quite reasonable. For example, you shouldn’t be charged a late fee if your payment can’t be delivered on a due date that happens to be a Sunday, and card issuers shouldn’t be giving you a credit limit and then allowing you to go over that limit as a “service” that charges you an extra fee.

The last two rules are targeted at specific cardholder groups:

• Issuers may not charge upfront fees that are greater than 25% of a card’s credit limit.
• Issuers may not issue cards to people under 21, unless the customer has proof of income or has a co-signer who accepts responsibility for the card.

What it means: The first point is targeted at “subprime” cards for those with poor credit. A common industry practice when targeting bad credit customers has been to offer a low credit limit and then charge upfront fees that eat up most of the limit. For example, you sign up for a card with a $500 limit, but there are $450 in fees in order to get the card, so you start off with a $450 balance and only $50 in actual spending power. Desperate customers have been willing to take this deal, but no more.

The second point may kill the college student credit card market. Card issuers have long targeted college students, trying to “get them early” in hopes of creating brand loyalty. Lawmakers felt too many students were getting cards they couldn’t pay for, leaving college with thousands of dollars in debt.

What the future holds
While the Credit Card Act has thankfully rid us of many unfair practices going forward, the card issuers’ frenzied attempt to either hike rates or kick out unprofitable customers has left many between a rock and a hard place. In the past, a customer who was treated poorly by one credit card company could simply turn to another, with the likelihood being they’d be welcomed with open arms. Today, and at least for the next year or so, I believe consumers will have difficulty obtaining new credit cards, especially consumers with average credit or worse. This is bad news for those stuck in a high-rate situation.

What comes later is likely to be a good-news/bad-news situation. Credit will become more accessible again, but in the future it will more likely come with an annual fee, or with fewer if any rewards on purchases, or with new fees that have yet to be devised. The credit card industry has proven to very adaptable, and while it’s a sure thing that they’ll play nice legally, that doesn’t mean future credit card agreements will be written with your best interests at heart.

J.D.’s note: Don’t forget that you can opt out of this madness by simply refusing to use credit cards in the first place. I have one personal card, but there are times I’m tempted to go back to my “no credit needed” ways.

—
Related Articles at Get Rich Slowly:

• I Do Not Use Credit Cards
• The Secret History of the Credit Card
• The 63-Page Credit Card Agreement
• The Secret History of the Credit Card (repeat)
• Eight Things Every Credit Card User Should Know

Do you have a long-term project which you’ve stalled on? Perhaps you’ve got a half-written novel tucked away, or you started a blog that you haven’t updated for weeks or months. Maybe you began a big craft project – a tapestry or rug. Or you planned to redecorate the spare bedroom, but never got further than moving furniture around.

Chances are, you’ve got at least one big project where you’ve not made any progress for a while. It could even be one where you’ve backslid (like losing weight).

Should It Be Binned?
First of all, you need to decide whether it’s actually worth bothering. Sometimes, you start a project or work towards a particular goal – and in the process, you realize it’s not really that enjoyable.

Maybe you began a novel or a blog or a memoir, but you’ve found you hate writing.

Perhaps you started teaching yourself to play the guitar, only to realize that competence was a lot further away than you thought.

If the thought of resuming your project fills you with dread, it might be time to say “goodbye” to it for good. Take those too-small clothes to a charity store. Give away the craft materials you’ll never use. Put a post on your blog to say there’ll be no further updates. Do whatever it takes to get some closure.

If you do decide to carry on with your project, though, here’s what you need to do:

• Devote a Chunk of Time
  It’s hard to get up the energy to restart something after a long break. I find that devoting a big chunk of time really helps, because you can make serious forward progress. Starting off with just half an hour or so means you’ll barely get anywhere, and it can seem like a futile effort.

  Devote a whole weekend to writing the next chapter or two of your novel. Spend a day updating a long-neglected website. Schedule a whole afternoon to work on your craft project. You might even go on a weekend or week-long course.




• Give Yourself a Deadline
  Why did your project stall in the first place? Because you weren’t working on it consistently. The best way to keep up your momentum on a long-term project is to have a firm deadline in mind. You might want to pick a particular occasion – your birthday; next Christmas; the start of the school year.

  Write your deadline on your calendar. This is an instant way to get your mind focused, as it gives you a visual reminder of how much time you’ve got to complete work on the project.

  I like to set deadlines which are ambitious without being unrealistic: it’s good to push yourself a bit, but it’s not good to run yourself into the ground!

• Set a Regular Schedule – and Stick to It
  Once you’ve got a deadline, you can work back from that to figure out your weekly schedule. On a writing project, you might want to complete a certain number of words, or perhaps a chapter or section, every week. With a work project, you might have specific milestones to hit along the way. For some tasks, it’s easiest simply to decide to work on them for a set number of hours every week – an hour a day is plenty to get almost any project moving fast.

  I find that the key to sticking to a project schedule is to make that project a priority in the day. If you work on your business plan first in the day, it can’t get crowded out by other demands. Alternatively, set aside a particular time slot in your diary – maybe every Sunday afternoon, or a couple of weeknight evenings.




• Make a Public Commitment
  Finally, a great way to ensure you make consistent progress is to have a public commitment to your project. The accountability helps you stay motivated. There are plenty of ways you could do this, including:
  • Taking a course which involves producing regular work (I’m doing this for my creative writing)
  • Telling your blog readers about your goal
  • Updating your Twitter followers each day with your progress
  • Asking a friend or relative to keep you accountable
  • Having a friendly competition with a colleague

  The important thing is to get someone other than you interested in your project.

Have you got any stalled projects? What are they – and how are you going to get started on them again?

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