Distance Education Provides Flexibility for Today’s World

People seek educational courses for a variety of reasons. Perhaps you need to learn a new skill for your current employer, or are beginning a new degree program. Maybe you are starting a new hobby, or you want to try something new. You have many choices available to you — read a book, take a college or university class, enroll in a correspondence course — and the decision may seem overwhelming.

Traditional educational environments rarely meet the demands of today’s modern society, and distance education has become a viable option for numerous students. Why go to class once a week when you can learn in the comfort of your own home? Or the local coffee shop?

A variety of non-traditional learning opportunities are available, each designed to give you the flexibility and convenience you need for your lifestyle. Correspondence courses, online classes, and eLearning modules all have more flexibility than traditional learning environments.

Distance Education: Correspondence Courses

Correspondence courses are one of the oldest forms of distance education. The entire course is mailed to you and your assignments are mailed (or emailed) back to the instructor. You have a certain amount of time to complete the course, but extensions are usually available if you need more time. Typically, you may begin any time and work at your own pace. One added benefit of distance education through a correspondence course is that you won’t need a computer to access your class.

Distance Education: Online Classes

Distance education through online classes is now offered through many community centers, colleges, and universities. These courses may be taught through an online classroom, use recorded lectures, or include full interactive coursework accessed through the Internet. Assignments and tests are usually completed online, and there may be an interactive forum with teachers and students. Some courses may need to be completed according to the class schedule, while others are able to be completed at your own pace.

Currently, many degrees and certifications are offered entirely online. Many online programs allow you to work at your own pace and complete your degree in less time than usual. If you are pursuing a degree or industry certification, be sure the online program carries appropriate accreditation.

Online courses are also an excellent option when you need to upgrade your current skills. The flexibility allows you to take only the course you need without having to complete an entire degree program. Many occupational and technical schools provide courses working professionals can use to advance their career or skills.

Distance Education: eLearning Modules

One of the newer options in distance education is called eLearning. Frequently, these classes contain both online and offline components. You may be shipped CDs instead of books, the entire course may be contained on CDs, or the course may be online but not dependent on any specific classroom time or schedule. In other words, eLearning is similar to a correspondence course, but contains interactive CDs or online content.

Flexibility is an option many students need to begin or continue their education. Choosing the best distance education format for your specific needs will help you reach your educational goals without sacrificing your current obligations and lifestyle.

Want To Start A Home-Based Business? – These Three Steps Are Key

Have you been thinking about making a change from a regular day-to-day job into starting your very own home-based business? Do you crave freedom, do you desire to be your own boss and work hard for nobody else but yourself, and do you want to earn a six-figure income within the next year and potentially scale it from there? If any or all of this sounds good to you, then you are probably the right person to start a home-based business.

There is no greater feeling that earning money for yourself, built from nothing but hard work, desire, and the will to succeed. Even though all of these are very real rewards that come with owning your own business, they will not come easily and they will not come overnight. There is no readily or easily available information out there that teaches people how to start a business online from home, so when you come across some high-quality information that gives you real steps to making it happen, be sure to take it to heart and run with it.

So with all of this said, the following three steps are extremely important to understanding how a quality home-based business is ran, and make up three of the four pillars that are what I have built my online business upon, they are:

#1 – Quality products that are your own

#2 – Building quality customer relationships

#3 – Driving massive numbers of leads to your online business

Let’s take a closer look at each of these three pillars for success:

#1 – Quality products that are your own

The fastest way to build a solid income is to create your own products and sell them through an online medium. Now there are smarter types of products to build in order to make your business much simpler and there are products that will significantly hurt your bottom line and take up much more of your precious time. The most lucrative product types that give you the best return for your investment are digital products.

#2 – Building quality customer relationships

Owning a business means you have to find customers, and people just wont buy from you unless they like you and your products. So you have to find smart ways that build quality relationships with people who are interested in your business. There are ways to achieve this on an automated basis, one of the best tools for the job is an autoresponder.

#3 – Driving massive numbers of leads to your online business

Business is all about numbers, and the more people you drive to your website/business the more you will ultimately turn into buyers. The goal will be to figure out what gets the most people to your business and then do it well and do it on a larger scale.

How to Stop Procrastination From Stealing Your Seventh Step to Success in Your Home-Based Business

Your telephone feels like a hundred pounds when you pick it up to call your leads. You made the decision to be a success in your home based business yet you procrastinate in making those phone calls. Napoleon Hill in his famous book “Think and Grow Rich” states that decision is the seventh step to riches. The Latin root for the word decision means to cut off from alternatives. You looked at all the different scenarios, and then you severed the unacceptable ones. The scenario that is left is the one that you pursue. Your decision making process must be very efficient and effective. The opposite of decision is procrastination, ironically procrastination is normally the decision that most people make. When you don’t make those phone calls, then you are allowing procrastination to run your home based business. Your success or failure in your home based business is dependent on your actions or in actions.The people who overcome procrastination will allow the results to make the necessary statement. A 26.2 mile marathon is not completed until the runner makes the decision to take the first step. The majority of failures may be attributed to a lack of decision. Inaction is a major cause of failure in the decision making process. Major corporations that previously use to sweep failures under the rug are now looking at them more closely. These corporations are trying to learn from these failures to avoid the same thing happening in the future. Most successful people make decisions quickly and are very slow to change them. The unsuccessful person makes decision slowly and changes them rapidly.The ultimate goal is to make the proper decisions in ensuring success in your home based business. If people with opinions change your mind frequently, you will never attract money to your home based business. Your carefully selected mastermind group is the only people that you should receive an “opinion” on your proposal. There are a number of different ways to evaluate a situation, choose one and use it to come to a final decision. When you reach decisions in a timely manner you, then you become a master over procrastination. The toughest decisions to make are those that not only impact your life, but also your family.The value of your decisions is depended on your courage to make them. The great decisions made by leaders, such as Abraham Lincoln was reached at great risks. Abraham Lincoln made decisions that ultimately led to his death. The decisions you make not only impact you but affect everyone in your life. The conclusion that you reached after consideration must not be taken lightly. Procrastination is a twin to indecision. You must make the decision to be successful in your home based business and commit to it. If you don’t make decisions, then procrastination will steal your success in your home based business.

Starting a Home Based Business – Checklist – Part 1

The Internet is full of home-based business offers and packages and some of them may be good, but in many cases the earnings promised are inflated and the cost of the all the materials, books, tapes, seminars, etc on the high side as well.Home Based Business should be built on a genuine interest, passion or skill
The best way to start your own business is out of your own passion, something you are really good and know a lot about, something that perhaps has been in your family for a while like a special skill or knowledge. Building a business is a long-term commitment and staying in business an even longer one, so be sure you have the staying power a true interest in what you do gives. Enough said about that. Let’s turn to the practical side of starting a home based business. There are tasks you need to accomplish and a checklist is always handy to have.Business Expenses
Keep meticulous records of everything you spend on your business, from the planning stages all the way through the actual start of business operations. And even then don’t quit, but then you will probably have some of it automated by a bookkeeping/accounting program.A Good accountant is a Must
Find a good accountant as soon as you start thinking about your business. And make sure you cover both the accounting and tax side. In many cases those two functions are combined by practitioners who offer a “one stop shop” for small businesses. I personally don’t think it’s ideal. Your best bet would be to get really good tax advice from someone who does only taxes and then really good accounting advice from someone who specializes in small business accounting and financial statements. This way you will know what is deductible and what isn’t, what the best legal structure for your business will be and you will end up with the best set up for your bookkeeping system from the get go. There is nothing more painful and costly than trying to unravel an accounting mess made at the beginning. But if you do not unravel it, you will never really have a clean starting point for your business Balance Sheet.Set up a Deductible Home Office
This part of your living space must be used exclusively and regularly for business. If it isn’t, it won’t qualify as a tax deduction. Make sure it’s not a den where your child also plays video games.Once you decide where that home office will be, measure its square footage and calculate it as a percentage of your entire home or apartment. That will be the ratio you can use to calculate the business portion of all your utility bills.Check Your Zoning
Look into what your neighborhood or apartment complex requires for a home based business set up. Some of them can be very strict.More about starting your home based business in Part 2.

Home Based Business – Set Yourself Up For Success With These 5 Steps

Many among us have contemplated having a home based business. If you have one now or in the midst of setting one up, let me share with you my personal experience and those of successful home based business owners. While at home you have the freedom to work when you want, here are 5 steps to help you ensure your success.1.      Be professional and treat your home based business like any other jobAs a professional you will not want to mix your personal life with you business, right? Most successful home business owners recommend that you equip your home business with a certain structure by setting up the following items.

An email account preferably with your own domain name or a Gmail email account which I personally find useful as a start
A separate bank account
A separate room or a dedicated space as a home office
2. Set specific work hours for your home based businessYou need to set a strict schedule that works for you and stick to it. In the course of a day, you should not take unplanned breaks just go to the store or hang out with your friends. It is critical that you set a good schedule, work during the designated work time and then you take your breaks.3. Self-discipline is key when maintaining a successful home based businessYou must commit to your goals, approach it seriously and work hard. You need to have the self-discipline to work even harder than when you are working for a company especially at the early stages. One very successful Internet marketing business owner I interviewed started by working on his business everyday from 11pm to 3am while holding a day job. Once your home business starts to yield positive results, you may take it easy a little bit and start to really enjoy the freedom of having a home based business.4. Develop good habitsOnce you decide on a schedule that works for you, take consistent action and stick to it for at least 30 continuous days. That is how long our mind and body take to adjust to a new habit or routine. I have tested this and I’m happy to report that after crossing the 30-day mark, the activity flows easily as part of my daily routine. But the key is sticking to your activity for 30 continuous days. Should you break the routine before the 30-day period is up, you have to start all over again.5. Educate yourself in marketingOnce you have created a home business, you must learn how to market your business. Fortunately today we have the Internet, one of the most effective means to reach potential customers for your home business. Learn all about advertising on the Internet, such as pay-per-click advertising on search engines like Google and Yahoo, advertising on ezines, newsletters, forums and many more. Invest in your education and soon you will reap the results.Starting and maintaining a successful home based business is challenging. But once you have created a successful one, it is well worth it. These five steps should help you along the way to achieving your dream of having a successful home business.

A Home Based Business – Five Things You Should Know About

Over the years of working as an Internet Marketer I have come to learn that it takes a lot more than just knowing the methods and strategies of Internet Marketing to run a successful Home Based Business.Most people don’t seem to talk about these things or they simply forget. So here are a few of my observations.1. You are now the boss.When you start a Home Based Business, you are the boss, so you don’t have to answer to anyone, except yourself, of course. You need to be disciplined and force yourself to do the work that needs to be done. Sure, you’re not going to get fired if you don’t do your work, but you also won’t get things done which could be the downfall of your business.Quite often people think anything goes when you work from home, but you should treat it no different than any other business, online or offline.One good idea is to figure out the time of day that is your most productive and set a work schedule for yourself. Set aside those hours and make sure you schedule in breaks. Try and stay as productive as possible during those hours and limit the work you do outside of that schedule.Stay focused and on track. Create a “to-do” list for each day. Outline tasks you’d like to have finished by the end of your work day. The feeling of accomplishment you get when you cross of an item will keep you motivated all day long.If you need inspiration for an idea or just need to take a break, get away from the computer. Quite often good money making ideas come when you’re not sitting staring at the screen. I’ve never had success by trying to force an idea and believe me, I’ve tried that.2. Your home is now your office.Create a dedicated workspace for yourself. Slouching on your couch in front of the TV, with your feet up on the coffee table working on your laptop, does not count as a workspace. Get yourself a real desk and keep it organized. Not doing this could lead to distractions which ultimately affects your work schedule. Oh, and keep it clean.Eliminate distractions before you start working. Finish up whatever small chores you need to do for the day so you don’t have to take care of them when you’re on a roll. Only do work related tasks while on your work schedule.3. Make sure you take care of yourself.If you’re not feeling well, take sick days. You’re human, and just like everybody else, you need time off to rest. Grab a blanket and take a nap on the couch. You may be capable of sitting up, but that does not mean you need to be working. Take time to rest your mind and body. Trying to work when you’re sick is only frustrating and unproductive.Speaking of staying healthy, you need to exercise. It’s easy to let yourself go when your only commute is from your bed to your computer chair. Take care of yourself and get a gym membership or at the very least spend some time walking outside. Keeping fit allows you to stay focused and energized all day.One of the hardest adjustments to make when starting a Home Based Business is dealing with being alone for extended periods of time. You need to find ways to stay social. Working alone can get depressing and having a social outlet is a vital part of success.Try and find someone local who is also working from home to meet with every now and then for lunch or to discuss ideas. At the very least, invest in a web cam and keep in touch with your friends and family through Skype. If all else fails, get a pet. Pets make the day less boring, and yes, you will start to talk to your pets.4. Don’t work 24 hours a day.Although you work at the same place that you live, you need to find a way to still keep these lives separate.Often people think they can work 12 to 14 hours per day, 7 days a week simply because they have nothing else to do. There’s no easier way to burn out than trying to work such long hours. You simply can’t stay focused and productive for so long every day.Respect the weekends and take time off on holidays. It’s okay to let an email wait until the morning. It’s okay to have a personal life. You do not have to be readily available every minute of the day.5. You get to live an awesome life.If you reach a point in your Home Based Business where you can work full time, that is amazing. It’s a very big accomplishment that very few people can achieve.People often tell me how they envy that lifestyle. No more working 10-hour days in an office building and often coming home stressed about your job, boss, deadlines, salary, or any number of things that accompany an office job. Limited to the amount of sick days you’re allowed to take! I’m forever grateful that I don’t have to deal with any of that.If you have an opportunity to start a Home Based Business, definitely give it a try. It will be challenging at first, but there’s nothing that can match the feeling of running a successful Home Based Business.So, these were just a few things I’ve learned over the years. I’m sure you have things to add to this list.

How To Start A Home Based Business – The Main Things You Need To Start Your Work From Home Business

Many individuals who want to make money online from home immediately jump into opportunities without learning how to start a home based business the right way. The result is certainly not favorable to them and they wonder why.Save yourself from unnecessary disappointment. Find out what the requirements are and all the things essential to successfully launch your home based business.Find the Best Business Opportunities to Work from HomeTake the time and the effort to find and choose your home based business opportunity carefully and wisely. It is always best and to your greatest advantage to choose an opportunity where you can pursue your passion and interest and where you can find the greatest number of your prospects.The best opportunities will also provide you with the best program or product to start your business with. It will be easy for you to market these products or earn your income from the program if they are legitimate and relevant to your prospects.Build Your Own Website and Increase Your TrafficWhile you can start your home business without a website, you can earn more money easier when you build your own website. But the website in itself will not bring the results you want or need to generate your income from your business. You also need to drive traffic or specifically the right traffic to your website.These are two of the most basic requirements on how to start an online business as it should be. To start earning money from your home business, here is what can help.Find the Right Tools to Boost Your IncomeThe internet is extremely generous in providing you the resources you need to successfully make money from your home based business. The difficulty lies, however, in discerning which of these resources are legitimate and reliable for your business. There are countless tools readily available to help you earn an income from your online business, but not all these tools may be appropriate for your business.It is also best to limit your search to internet marketing tools that are exclusively and especially designed for starters or newbies like you. If you find these reliable tools, the process of starting a home based business as well as how to make money from it will be much easier and simpler.Stay Away from the Common MistakesIt pays to become aware of the mistakes that other newbies to home based businesses before you have committed. This way, you can avoid committing the same mistakes and increase your chances of success for your own business.Some of these mistakes are the following: choosing your program and tools without careful evaluation or due diligence; lack or want of time management including procrastinating, unrealistic goals and expectations.Learn as much as you can on how to start a home based business prior to actually starting it and choose your resources wisely. When you spend your time and effort to start your home based business on course, there is no way you will not be able to achieve success.

Why to Hire Professionals for Property Management

It is wise to hire an expert to protect one’s property. Nevertheless, it is a very personal decision and one should willingly make financial expenses for property management South Florida and other such areas. The lines below contain some other factors the one should consider before deciding to hire experts for the service.

Property Distance Issues:

The greater the distance between one’s invested property and his original place of stay, the more difficult it will be for the owner to keep up the investment. For example, a person staying in Kansas City will have serious problems dealing with searching for a tenant and deal with complaints, collect rent, go through the maintenance issues, emergency issues, etc if his property is in Florida. Moreover, one will have to spend a good amount of time in travelling to and fro. Therefore, hiring the right manager will help one save time as well as the worry of looking after his property.

Managerial Experience is Minimal:

Several estate owners show interest in buying new properties but do not know how to manage them. They spend their fortune in buying new properties and lose out on their investments as they are unable to manage these properties. This has caused these investors to seek professional assistance in this matter. An experienced property manager with relevant skills and knowledge of the market will be able to manage the affairs. It is more expensive for a homeowner to sit and learn the process than to give it to a person having expertise in the field. Nevertheless, one must take all the necessary precautions before hiring a manager to take care of his investment. This will help him protect his investment and get good returns from it.

Affordable Managers Available in the Market:

One needs to have his financial resources secured prior to hiring a manager to look after his property. Although, the services are not available for free, the average charges range from 4-10% of the property’s gross income. The regular charge for a family (single) rental property is nearly 10% while for family units up to 10 ranges between 4 and 7%. There are certain agencies that charge a placement fee for finding the right tenant for the home. This acts as a bonus for such agencies. The fees charged as such can cost in the least some hundred dollars or at the most a month’s rent.

Giving Away Responsibility:

One can keep himself free from all the troubles related to taking care of the home including rent collection, maintenance of the home and filling out property taxes. Most of the homeowners keep busy most part of the day. Giving all these responsibilities to someone who is worth the post will spare the homeowners the worry related to the home maintenance. However, one has to make sure that the person assigned the job should have the required passion and experience for fulfilling the responsibility.

These reasons are enough for making a homeowner reconsider handling the business singlehandedly. One must, however, take help from a reputed company for this service.

A Brief History of Real Estate: The Fee Simple Ownership

Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852), Duke of Wellington, is reputed to have been the one to exclaim ‘All good things come from England, but cavalry is not one of them’ while facing Napoleon’s French Army at Waterloo on June 18, 1815. Wellesley had learnt his military trade in India applying his study of the art of war and had became a master of the reverse-slope tactic – keeping his forces screened from artillery fire behind the brow of a hill. At Waterloo, however, Wellesley’s Armies were outwitted by Napoleon. The French Emperor had imitated Wellesley’s tactics by positioning 200 heavy artillery guns behind a ridge at La Haye Sainte. When the Hussars and Dragoons cavalrymen led by Lord Uxbridge attacked in the famous Charge of the Scots Greys, Napoleon commanded the guns on the topline of the ridge and one of the epic artillery bombardments in history began. It was at this very moment, at the height of the Charge and while his 3,000 cavalrymen were being slaughtered by the rapid artillery fire of Napoleon’s heavy guns, that the phlegmatic English General is reputed to have exclaimed his now famous remark, directed at Lord Uxbridge who had apparently ordered the Charge without Wellesley knowing it. The day was saved by Gebhard von Blucher (1742-1819), Field Marshal of Prussia, who led the assault of the Kaiser’s Prussian Cavalry against the French right wing, thus causing the entire French line to collapse.

Wellesley’s famous remark has been retouched several times throughout the years, depending on one’s point of view. The British dropped the second part – the reference to the ill-fated cavalry charge – thus creating the popular short version ‘All good things come from England’ – period. When about a century later Britain had the unwise idea of attacking the Ottoman Empire and the British and French Armies were fighting the Turks side-by-side in WWI, General Mustapha Kemal – the English-speaking Commander of the Turkish Garrison and victorious defender of Gallipoli – paraphrased the English dictum after 289 days of siege by turning it, somewhat deprecatingly, into: “No good things ever come from England”. And Mahatma Gandhi throughout his teachings of non-violent conflicts resolutions makes reference to the fact that “All good things come from India”.

Alas, no matter what your point of view is, I shall submit to readers of my Blog that “at least two good things comes from England” : Fee Simple Ownership and Organized Real Estate.

English real estate law (or ‘Estate Law’ as it was known back then) was imported, through colonization, into the earlier forms of law in the U.S.A., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Many of these states, or their territories, have since modified this historical law, to varying degrees. A study of the old feudal land system of England provides us with an invaluable glimpse of legal history regulating the most valuable asset of them all: land. In medieval times, land was the sole form of wealth and it depended primarily on possession. You had it, you owned it. You wanted it, you fought for it. You found it, you kept it. There were no courts or police force ready to recognize or enforce “legal rights” as we know them today. All this changed with the Norman conquest of England in 1066. William decreed that he owned all of the land in England by right of conquest. Not one acre of England was to be exempted from this massive expropriation. This sudden vacuum of privately-held land was promptly filled by a variety of huge land grants given by the new King to either his Norman officers or to those of the English who were ready to recognize him as king. The device used by the King to control and administer his land was that of tenure. Tenure was the key component of the feudal system. The King struck a bargain with a Lord for a large chunk of land. The Lords that held their tenure directly from the King were called Tenants-in-chief. It was this group of persons who formed the basis of English aristocracy and began, by the process of subletting the King’s land, the implementation of the feudal system.

Tenures were of a variety of duration known as “estates” and the Fee Simple Estate was the most extensive and allowed the Tenant to sell or to convey by will or be transferred to the Tenant’s heir if he died. In modern law, almost all land is held in fee simple and this is as close as one can get to absolute ownership in common law. It was in this context that the British began their dominion over the seas and their explorations which led to the modern nations of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States of America. The concept of developing an informal association of local real estate agents originated in the United States in the 1880s, and by the turn of the century about 15 Real Estate Boards had been established. The National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) was formed in the U.S. in 1908 with 19 boards and one state association. Organized real estate in Canada is almost as old as the country itself. The very first Real Estate Board was set up in 1888 in the growing community of Vancouver. Back then, a commercial lot on Hornby Street near the Hotel Vancouver sold for $600. The Vancouver Board – as it was known then – was active until the start of the First World War, when operations were suspended. It resumed in 1919, and has been operating ever since.

The distinction of the oldest, continuous running Board belongs to Winnipeg, Manitoba. It started in 1903, and the Winnipeg Real Estate Board was the first in Canada to celebrate its 100th anniversary. The Toronto Board was incorporated in 1920, followed by boards in Ottawa, Hamilton, Regina and Victoria in 1921. More than half of the existing Real Estate Boards in Canada were created after 1955, in part because of the evolution of the “Photo Co-Op System” that was introduced in 1951. That was the forerunner of today’s MLS®, introduced in 1962. The Co-op System not only created a need for an organization to establish rules and promote co-operation among agents, but also to provide funds to operate a real estate board. That’s when technology first changed the real estate industry.

How To Succeed At Online Product Creation The Easy Way

Product creation could be a frightening subject for a lot of Internet marketers to face. Some folks who get in the game with the intention of making a full time income are completely ignorant as to how an online business operates. One of the most profitable ways to create online cash is by creating a product that others are happy to pay for.

Product creation is legitimate method of generating money through internet marketing but many entrepreneurs get it wrong. They start by imitating their Internet marketing gurus by creating information products on Internet marketing in hopes of getting rich the way their heroes did. The problem is that they usually don’t know what they are doing and enter a highly competitive niche with very little marketing experience or connections.

Here are a few tips for effective product creation that may help you get on the right track:
Start by finding a profitable niche with low to moderate competition. If you conduct some rudimentary market research and keyword research, you’ll find many opportunities in areas that will surprise you. Amazon and eBay are two great places to brainstorm for product ideas.

Developing Your Product does not have to be a difficult project. You can find experts in the right field for your niche and pay them to write the material while an artist designs the packaging and website or blog. You can outsource the entire product creation part of the project after you conduct the research and testing to ensure profitability.

Sales and marketing strategies should be created while developing the product and learning about the market. Some experienced marketers use pay per click to drive traffic to their offer page; some folks outsource the entire marketing campaign to affiliates through ClickBank or other affiliate programs.

Product creation does not need to be hard, particularly when the merchandise is electronic. E-books, videos, audio and multi-media products sell very well. They are distributed immediately to customers electronically. Once you have a good feel for a niche market, try to service your customers with associated products and upgrades. If you want to earn money online through product creation, you must understand supply and demand. The majority of new online marketers fail miserably because they go after highly competitive markets or forget to research their chosen niche properly. You have to create your products according to the needs, wants and desires of the prospective customers.