Mom Pays for College

College grants are still available for college bound students.  Make sure to apply as early as possible because funds are always limited.  Never say never.  Always apply if there is a chance for you to receive a college grant.

Make sure to fill out the FAFSA and the College Board info right away because colleges distribute 10% of the funds in January and February. If your taxes aren’t done use this years information as a place holder and update your online forms when you get it.

Check out these articles for leads on College Grants:

FAFSA Form | Financial Aid Finder

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid is the way the government and your college or university determine how much financial assistance you are entitled to, from federal grants and student loans to federal work study. …

Gates Foundation Awards $12.9M in Community College Grants – Gearlog

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Wednesday awarded an additional $12.9 million intended to improve education and graduation rates at community colleges.

College Grants and Interest-free Loans for Kentucky, New York …

News stories this week reported that contributions from wealthy donors will result in new college grants and loans for students in Kentucky, New York, Ohio, and.

Top News – Ed-tech grants target remedial college courses

Social networking soon could be used to help form a virtual community of campus educators charged with creating a national certification for teachers of remedial college courses, after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced …

Grants and Free Money for College Online | Financial Aid …

Free money is available for online college students through grants from the government, colleges, and private sources.

Get A Job to Pay for College

Seasonal Jobs for College Students | Financial Aid Finder

5 Seasonal Jobs for College Students. Written by mara No Comments Last Updated:: December 7, 2009. With Thanksgiving break a distant memory and finals right around the corner, it’s almost time for winter break. …

Just for Fun

CORPORATE SHILLING – SMIRNOFF VODKA IS GIVING AWAY “PARTY GRANTS …

The best part of getting a research grant in college is blowing all the money on a big party for your friends the day the check clears. The best part of getting a “party grant” is the same thing minus having to come up with 20000 words …

My mentor Rod Moore has redeployed his MLM training system and it is open for business.  Right now there is a special offer: Join within the next 48 hours and you can upgrade to Partner for Free! 

The service is similar to a membership site so you need to join it to get all the benefits.  You’ll learn all the ways to attract people to your business.  I’ve been looking around the site at what Rod has planned for future training, and you could use this training for literally any internet business, MLM, blogging, direct sales, whatever.

You can sign up for free right now and start learning about all the ways to attract people to your site or your service.  This is not an MLM plan. You can be involved in any MLM business or none and just want to leaarn more about building traffic.  Here’s the link to  Freedom Duplicator for free Attraction Marketing Training.

Don’t forget to upgrade for free to Partner before March 6, 2009.

One of the best sources of high quality referrals is from your current customer base. The people referred to you by your current satisfied customer base are more likely ready to buy and have the means.

How can you get your current customers to give you a high quality referral? Follow these seven steps:

1. First and foremost; you need to provide your current customers with excellent service so they have something good to say about you and your service. Find out if they are happy and right any wrongs. Lay the foundation of good service and more business is likely to come your way.

2. Your customer want to be your friend. Take some time to learn about who they are, what their needs are with respect to your service. Find out their spouses, kids and pet’s names.

3. If they have a business let them know that you have recommended their business to others.

4. Give them a good deal or throw in some extra free service when you are assisting them. Go beyond the call of duty.

5. Send them greeting cards just to focus on them alone, not necessarily to promote your business. Send these cards at regular intervals, not just once or twice a year. When you show you are thinking about them, you will be on their mind if someone asks them for a referral.

6. Ask them for referrals when you see them. “Sue, I would really appreciate it if you recommend my services to your friends, neighbors and colleagues.”

7. Offer them a bonus if they send a paying customer your way. $25 off your next furnace tune up if you send me a new customer.

To get a free audio CD mailed to your home or business, telling you how to get more referrals than you can possibly handle, go to HighQualityReferrals.com. Fill out the form. It will be mailed to you in a few days.

To send a High Quality Personalized Greeting Card, with a stamp, from your computer, for free (it’s a gift account for you): go to SendOutCards.com/lh and follow the instructions in the video. You can send anyone a greeting card for less time and money than going to a card store. Get in the habit. Open an account of your own and start to generate high quality referrals right now.

On occasion, I am featuring a work from home parent on the Mom Pays for College Blog. Frederick Pohl helped me on my extreme sports video blog.  He made all new graphics for the site and moved it to a new location.   I found Frederick on http://topsoul.elance.com. 

If you ever need some kind of “e” work done, elance is a good resource.   I’m republishing a blog post from elance about Frederick here.  He’s got an inspiring story!  I do recommend Frederick for graphics or web work.  I’m sure he has other talents too, so check him out if you need some help.  Take a look at the http://extremesportsblog.com to see some of his work.  Here’s the post from elance:

Stay-At-Home Dad Dreams Big and Finds Success

Community Spotlight

If you are a work at home parent and would like to be featured on the Mom Pays for College blog, send me an email and we can see if it is a fit.    Lana

Next week my oldest daughter takes the PSAT/NMSQT which is a practice test, except they use the score to place kids on the list for the National Merit Scholarship Award.  This award is worth about $1,000 for one year. I found this and other things out about the getting into college process last night at her school.  The college guidance counselors had a meeting for parents to fill them in on the process and answer questions.

My kid goes to a college prep school, Greenhills School in Ann Arbor, MI, and they have a great “get into college” support team for the kids. I’ll share what I learn with you along the way in case your out of the loop on that process. Or in case you kid doesn’t tell you.

One peice of advice for the SAT and ACT test reporting is not to send them out automatically when the test results are processed.  Yes. You can save a few dollars and perhaps some time this way but if your kid wants to retake a test or perhaps doesn’t want to send a particular test score to a certain college then you are safe.  You can make the decision after you find out the scores.

Taking the practice tests will not improve your intelligence but it will help to figure out how much time to spend on each section; figure out how to skip a question and go back later without messing up the order of the answers, and see where you need to improve the test taking process in general.

I’ll share more as I find out. Hope this helps.

If you need a way to pay for college check out this free audio and report covering over six ways you can pay for college.

Listen to Robert Kiyosaki from Rich Dad Poor Dad talk about How Self Made Millionaires Got There. FREE Cd!

If your 11th grader is thinking about college, you need to know that the Princeton Review gives your kid the chance to take a free SAT or ACT college prep exam about 2 – 3 times per year. All you need to to is call their toll free number and set up the test date in a location near you.

There is also an option to get a test sent to your house to take at home. This might be OK if you have the discipline to time the test and provide a location with no distractions. However, it’s probably better practice to take the test at a location away from home to better mimic the actual testing environment.

Once you get your results back, you’ll be able to see where your study efforts are best spent. No sense studying for math if you got them all right.

I’ve also read that kids who over study or study too close to the test date do worse than kids who just take it in stride. So don’t overdo it or the results could backfire.

The Princeton Review also coaches kids in particular areas or they can take a course to prepare for either the SAT or the ACT. You can find local professionals and teachers at your school that can help coach your kids through the process.

It’s a good thing to try and do well on these tests since better scores may help your child get scholarships or get into their preferred college.

They also have an option to take online tests. Check them out at http://PrincetonReview.com

A work from home mom will gain the most rewards from a residual income opportunity over a traditional job if she gets in the right business and works it well.  A residual income opportunity is one where, by the design of your business, your business is leveraged.  That is; for the amount of resources you put into it you get a significant proportion more out of it.

One example of a leveraged business or a residual income opportunity is real estate for investment.  Let’s say you could:

• Buy a property valued at 100,000 for $10,000 down.
• Borrow the rest.  The cost to own and insure that property is $800 per month. 
• Rent it for $1,000 per month.
• Your residual income is $200 per month for an investment of $10,000. 
• This is earning you about 24% interest on your $10,000 investment.

Also included in property investment are depreciation tax advantages and property value appreciation over time (yes, I know right now property values are dropping) and you will gain there also.  So real estate investment is highly leveraged.

The risks involves include tenants that trash your property or don’t pay, decreasing property values and property loss due to unforeseen events which can be insured for.

What if you don’t have $10,000 and a great credit rating or don’t want to work for tenants? Then one of the best ways to make money is with an MLM or multi level marketing business. Everyone from Donald Trump, Robert Kiyosaki and Oprah Winfrey are claiming that these residual income opportunities are a great way for everyday people to leverage their time and limited financial resources and make good money. These people are rich. Do you think they’d be recommending you work for $20 per hour as a great opportunity when this kind of business if done properly could get you in the $10,000 per week range? This is one of the best ways to make money;  use a leveraged residual income opportunity. It is great for a work from home mom.

How is a successful MLM business leveraged? Simply stated you find several business partners and nearly everyone else you find does the same.  Everyone participating gets a piece of the pie.  The more people consuming products, the more you make.

People often refer to these businesses as scams or pyramids.  Believe me.  There may be a few mlm scams out there but most of the well known ones are very legitimate businesses with excellent products, training and resources and are designed to make you, the work from home mom, a lot of money, legally.

These are great residual income opportunities for a work from home mom since you are your own boss. You set your own hours and work as hard or easy as you want.  Rewards come from your own efforts.

Someone I heard the other day mentioned his definition of a financial pyramid and I had to laugh.  So company BCA (Big Corporate America) has a president or two, a bunch of vice presidents, executive directors and 26 levels of people higher than the workers that actually do the work, not just plan and organize it.  The people at the top make way more money than the people at the bottom.  There are less people at the top and more at the bottom.  Tell me, if you’re not the guy at the tippy-top, do you want to spend your life in this corporate pyramid?

In a legal MLM business, each and every person has the same chance to make money.  You are rewarded by your ability to add motivated team members. It’s much more “fair” that rewards be given to those who earn it. Any WAHM know about fair right?  Your kids remind you very day.

One piece of information that I have observed is that you don’t need to personally sponsor a lot of people in order to be successful in an MLM business.  I’ve heard it from three different people who are extremely successful in MLM. One has personally sponsored only 20 people and has a team of over 2,000. One person works solely using the internet and has personally sponsored 36 people and has a team approaching 4,000 and this occurred in about three years. One guy said he and his wife sponsored again about 20 people in 18 months and has built a large team and gained a significant residual income.

With most network marketing opportunities you’ll be breaking even on your investment after getting about eight people in your team.  In the beginning it might seem challenging to find people interested in joining your business.  If you make a commitment to make it work, it will. You must keep at it. You need to sort through people as fast as possible in order to succeed quickly.  Your job is to find the right people, not convince the wrong ones.

I’ll be writing more on these topics soon.  Get a copy of at least six ways a work from home mom can make money for college or anything else. http://mompays.com.  There are several residual income opportunities identified in the free audio and report. 

If you are currently involved in any kind of MLM recruiting check out this system I use to increase my sponsor rate.  Would you like to increase your business?  htp://NetworkMarketSuccess.net.

What are SMART goals?  And why are smart goals or any other goals necessary?  S M A R T is an acronym for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Timely or Tangible

If you are a work from home mom and interested in making money in an online business opportunity you need goals. If you don’t have a target that you are shooting for then anything you hit will be right, which could be nothing. So why would you waste your time in a homebased business without goals?

A Specific goal to earn money in an online business opportunity would be to sponsor three new reps this month using the internet as a primary means of finding and converting prospects. In order to do this you would need some kind of internet network marketing system.

Measureable is straight forward. Did I sponsor three new people using my internet network marketing system, yes or no?

Is your goal to sponsor three new business reps in one month Attainable?  Achieving this goal is going to require action.  If your goal is huge then it will require massive action.  Understand that making goals is great but you have to put action in to get results out.  Are you personally capable right now to reach your goals?  Maybe you need to develop some new personal skills, get very creative in your approach or find a system to help you reach your potential.  Whatever your goals are this is the time to figure out how to get there. Never say no and you’ll find a way.

How do you know if your goal is Realistic? Do you have the skills, time and desire to attain them? How motivated are you to achieve your goals?  If you were just starting out in a new MLM business with no previous experience and said your goal was to sponsor twenty new people this month that just actually might be doable, given your enthusiasm is extremely high right now.  However, if you thought you’d get there by only talking to twenty people then that would be unrealistic.  A lot of people are not as excited as you are right now for a residual income business opportunity so you’ll have to sift through many people to find the ones that are ready.

Is your goal Timely or Tangible? Yes.  Sponsoring three people in one month is exact in terms of time and it is something that is tangible. It’s real and you can count on it.

To summarize, if you want to be making money in an online business opportunity you need to set SMART goals, goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and tangible.  With a plan and a online network marketing system and a great deal of motivation and determination,  a goal of sponsoring  three new business representatives in one month is very realistic.

If you’d like to learn at least six ways you can earn money for college or anything else get the free report and audio here:  http://www.howsinglemomscanpayforcollege.com/ 

If you’d like to see if you qualify to work directly with Lana Hawkins you can request an interview here: http://howsinglemomscanpayforcollege.com/20minuteconsult.htm