Biting Back At Gas Prices – Part 2

This is part 2 of my original post on how to beat the gas prices.  If you missed that post, just go to Fight Gas Prices.

Now, I mentioned that most Americans are seeing an immediate hit on their budget of about $400 extra bucks a month.  So, if you bring home $3200 per month, you just lost 12.5% of your income due to the compound effect of the rising gas prices.  I also said there were two things you could do to beat this thing:

1) Decrease your monthly expenses.  (Again, if you missed this, go back to my previous post on May 13th)  Many people can find $300+ in savings per month.  Many cannot.  I remember when we couldn’t hardly give up $25 because we were so budgetly challenged.  But, dig deep.  Make some cuts.  It may only be temporary.

Here’s the reality though – No one likes to cut or decrease their standard of living.  I understand.  It’s okay to do so a little bit, but sweeping cuts are mentally and emotionally tough.  So, that leads to the second part:

2) Increase your monthly income.  Easier said than done… at least that is what you’re probably thinking.  Now, I am not talking anything about MLM or Network Marketing.  Many of my readers participate in MLM, and that is great, but I don’t want to go down that road here.

Here is what I am talking about… listen to me carefully here… I am talking about implementing one or two of the ideas below and busting your butt so hard that within a few months (tops) you have generated a secondary stream of income that is equivelant to what the gas prices are now taking away.  And, if you do so, you can reverse those cuts you made in step 1, and return your life back to normal.

What I am basically saying here is to take control of the situation.  Don’t blame OPEC, Bush, Congress, Big Oil, or anyone.  Learn something new and bust your butt like never before.  I am going to give you a short list that you can choose from, or could spark your creative juices to do something completely different.  Here’s the main thing… don’t be intimidate to go out and go after something new.  Consider this as an opportunity, not a problem.

So, here we go:

1) Website development and Search Engine Marketing.  I am a self taught programmer.  I bought a book at Barnes and Noble called, “Learn HTML in 24 Hours”  I taught myself.  But even today, you don’t even need to know all the fancy code.  You can use a program (which is what many of us use) called Dreamweaver.  It does it all for you.  What you really need to learn is the “marketing” part.  That is where the money is made.  If you are going to do that, then I highly, highly recommend the blue book you see on your right.  You can download it right away – Brad Callen’s The SEO Mindset.  It is as good as it gets in learning how to market your site and begin earning income.

There are many subcategories to this – affiliate marketing, Clickbank, Adsense, blogging, etc.  Brad can help clarify all that.

2) Google Adsense – Along the same lines as number 1 above, this is a practical way to put that marketing into practice.  I have been doing Adsense for a few years now, and I can easily say Google covers my gas price crunch by itself.  Let Google pay for your Gas crunch.  The number one person you can learn from is Joel Comm.  His new ebook, Adsense Secrets 4, is the top source on learning Adsense, and it will cost you only $10.  I highly recommend this too.

3) Ebay – This is always a good standby.  In fact, about 5-6 years ago, ebay kept us from losing it all.  I began to bring in an extra $500/week, first selling some of my stuff, and then hitting garage sales, selling other people’s stuff for them, and finding products hower I could get them.  You don’t need some fancy course or late night TV course on solving ebay.  Just browse through ebay and see what others are doing. Find what you like and emulate it.  It’s pretty easy to do, and $100 per week is really pretty reasonable.

4) Mow lawns – not everything has to be high tech.  I have a friend who comes home from work, and 3 days a week he goes out and cuts lawns.  He has about 12 customers, doing 6 per week.  He receives about $25 – $50 per lawn.  Even after gas for the mower, he still makes a nice profit.  The tough part is marketing for your customers.  A sign on your truck and word of mouth are your two best bets.

5) Go to Barnes and Noble – Go look in the business section and look for one of those Business Opportunity magazines.  They usually list 100 ideas for starting a business on a shoestring budget.

6) Services – there are ton of things you can do, such as organize closets and garages, design cakes, baskets, walk dogs, scoop poop, etc.  All you’re looking for is another $100 per week.

7) Medical Transcription – my wife does this.  She started doing this when we barely had two dimes to rub together.  She built it up to about $1800 per month, and then cut back and began working with me and developing content for my websites.  But, it is still something she does because she likes her doctors.  It is also enough to cover our gas crunch.

One more…

8 ) Be an Author – That’s right.  Go to some place like elance.com or some other free lance type site.  There are ALWAYS people looking to hire authors with a good command of Engish and can crank out 500-1000 word articles.  Sometimes much more than that.  You won’t make a fortune as a “ghost writer” and you are also competing with international authors (most with sub-par English).  So, don’t overcharge, but I know a few people who write 2 – 3 articles per day, a few days a week, and make about $10 per article.  Much more on bigger projects.  It’s really quite easy.  Go do a Google search for freelance writers, go to elance, search for info on Ghost Writers, etc.  There simply won’t be a shortage of work if you can turn out a good product in a reasonable time, and do it for a good price.

So, yes, you may need to make a few cuts.  Quit whining and just do it.  But, cutting too much is the last thing anyone really wants to do.  So, I really believe beating the high has prices is a one-two punch – Decrease and Increase.