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Cerebral Palsy Family Support TM |
Cerebral Palsy
Family Support Network TM
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Cerebral Palsy Family Support TM |
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Most disabled have the ability to
work. The job they get is usually dependant on their abilities or lack thereof.
With a home based business many more could join the workforce and/or supplement
their income. As most disabled are paid low wages because they are incapable of
doing a lot of the requirements of higher paid jobs, I felt this page belonged
here. Even if it is just to supplement an income it is still something suitable
for most disabled. Working at home, online, could make a great difference in
their lives.
Alphabetical listing of
most pages on this site: Exceptions
will be state and county pages. Some are not linked from
this sidebar but from within a page
The CP Links Page is where you will find most Federal, State and local County pages. My attempt to clarify CP you may find the information provided by NINDS is more specific and detailed There are many different treatments and I only name those I am familiar withHow it is essential to maintain range of motion How it is essential to maintain quality of life What I know through my experience By far not even close to what you should know and Orthotics Again what I know through experience Much more can be had searching the net or talking with doctors and therapists CP LINKS Cerebral Palsy Glossary More Information of CP provided by NINDS Specific Neurological
Disorders My take on the IEP,
IDEA 2004 (Public Law 94-142 & Public Law 101-476), and the 504 plan. IEP overview 504 plan & IDEA Q&A
Parent & Educator Guide of 504 Plan concepts and real life accommodations. Drafted by the OSPI and 5 Puget Sound area School Districts but would be a valuable asset to any fighting for their child's 504 accommodations anywhere U.S.A. IDEA 2004 summary& Washington State Chapter 392-172 WAC
SPED special education and the IEP FORUMS (BBS)
MEMBER PAGES
Pierce County Events
AMBER'S STORY In the share your story section people like you will post their unique experiences and through what is said you may find you are not alone. You may also find a friend and someone you can relate to. And possibly a way to realize your own goals. Websites created by people who have CP or someone in their family has CP. Net-etiquette applies. All sites are subject to approval. Banners and text allowed on these links. NON CP RELATED All sites are subject to approval. All Non-CP links are text only with a line or two of information of the link posted. Please notify me of any broken links so I can remove or fix them. Join with me in trying to educate the public of CP and other disabilities What motivated me to build this site Direct your comments to Robert. Robert wrote a Science Fiction trilogy while being laid up. It took 4 years to complete and he has for sale Book 1 of the trilogy HERE He is awaiting editing and copyrights on books 2 & 3 before sending them to the publisher. Book 1 can stand alone and is a complete novel of 237 pages and 135,000+ words in PDF format. Making Money Online (or not) Other sites I have or to be more precise the wife has and I take care of.
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Making Money Online (or not)
I need to preface this by saying at first I thought this belonged on one of my commercial sites. But upon thinking further of it I decided it would be best served here. Most disabled have the ability to work. The job they get is usually dependant on their abilities or lack thereof. With a home based business many more could join the workforce and/or supplement their income. As most disabled are paid low wages because they are incapable of doing a lot of the requirements of higher paid jobs, I felt this page belonged here. Even if it is just to supplement an income it is still something suitable for most disabled. Working at home, online, could make a great difference in their lives. As it could for working moms or fathers who want more time at home with their family or to care for their disabled child.. Perhaps the easiest way to make some extra income is to put up a free blog at like blogger.com or one of hundreds of other free blog sites and place some pay per click advertising on it. Google is perhaps the best and most known but there are literarily hundreds of others and a search will find them. I have dealt with Bidvertizer and Adbright but have not done nearly as well with them as with Google. This will pay for any hosting fees on a web site and put a few dollars in your pocket over time but unless you have a site drawing hundreds of thousands of hits a day I wouldn't count on much income from PPC. To find what is drawing those high hit numbers just surf the web and you will find forums on investing, automobiles, specific crafts, political sites, dating sites, and many others that draw huge numbers of hits. However those markets are saturated and in order for you to break in you really have to have a special hook. Or spend the time and effort to make your site as good if not better than any other out there. I wish I could tell you that making money online is as easy as making toast but that would be untrue, as most of you know. Making money online is just as hard if not more so, than working a full time job, if you have a moral code and a conscience. If you are willing to place false hope in your ads or sell inferior goods at inflated prices, not caring what half-truths you say then you may do quite well for yourself. I on the other hand live by the Golden Rule and would not make such claims nor sell such products so how do I join the ranks of the wealthy? I think a bit of background is in order so you know why I feel as I do and say what I do. I’m the product of a lower middle class family. My father was in the military and had to work a second job just so we could pay the bills. The military never has paid well and it was even worse in the fifties and sixties. When he retired from the military he went to work as a truck driver and eventually bought his own truck and at last we had enough money coming in, my parents could afford to buy a house. I was about 16 by this time. (I'm currently 49 while writing this) I was raised to respect others and though my parents were not all that religious I was expected to attend church and in my 4th and 5th grade years went to a parochial school, taught by Nuns and we had services every Wednesday and Friday. I was allowed to rejoin public school in my 6th grade year and was no longer required to attend church. My parents felt they had instilled proper values in me and that it was my choice whether or not to attend church. As they didn’t go, I decided I wouldn’t either. The point you may ask? Well to let you know I do have a moral code or compass that I follow and it will become clear as I tell you of ways I’ve tried to create wealth. I started 1st grade at the age of 5 and graduated High School at 17. I went straight to work out of High school and after 2 years of busting my hump decided that there had to be a better way. So off to college. 2 years, major in law enforcement and the typical AA degree. I tried to find work as a cop but it was not easy so I starting trying to sell real estate. This was about 1980 and the housing market was pretty much non-existent around here. A person I met at the office told me of Amway and how it could be my ticket to riches. I joined and bought my $50.00 sample package and never was able to sell one single product nor get any others to join. I learned that the people who were making the money were the people on top of MLM and that sample package made them money, but cost me. Still young and not to be dissuaded I saw an ad for a book on how to make money. I bought it for $10.00 and read of all kinds of ways to make money, none of which I was capable of doing without lying or pushing my moral boundaries to the edge. My moral compass just would not let me go there. I learned the only person to make money was the guy that sold the book full of mostly useless information and those who would cheat and lie. It cost me. Eventually I got hired on as a cop in a small town and after 4 months realized I’d made a mistake and quit. I went on to truck driving school and my dad helped get me a job. I made a decent living and eventually bought my own truck and from that point forward I had more money than I could spend as I lived in my truck. My mother invested it for me in real estate and took care of the properties till I got off the road. While I was trucking I found a girl and we got married and when we were expecting our first child she got off the truck and shortly thereafter I did as well. Selling the truck and trailer to buy excavation equipment. I went to work for a septic installation company for free, just to learn the ropes and after a couple months took the health departments test and began installing septic systems. This eventually led to other excavation jobs and just as my business was growing, I got ill and lost everything. I consolidated what I had in real estate to pay off mortgages I couldn’t afford and am now left with just enough to pay the bills. My rentals consist of 3 doublewide mobile homes (very little depreciation here) and one, 2 bedroom house. (My adjusted gross for 2006 was $21,300.00 for a family of 4.) Depreciation on the mobiles is less than $300.00 a year and the house is under a thousand so paper write off of about $2000.00 So I really get about $23,300.00 before the paper loss. But though I make very little I get no help from SSI or DSHS as they say I have assets and sell the assets and become indigent and then they will help. I can't seem to get them to understand that selling even one rental will put me in the poor house for the rest of my life as I will have to sell everything just to survive with no hope of recovery. At least if I keep what I have now eventually the kids will grow up and find work then the wife and I can survive. We might have to care for Amber the rest of our lives if things go bad but at least we won't be totally on welfare forever. I'm looking forward to when I'm 66 and can draw my $460.00 or so a month social security. The wife won't get any as she never earned enough credits. She is 8 shy of what she needs to draw SSI. Sorry got a bit off topic. Now I was back to where I was in my twenties and that was looking for a way to make money only now I couldn’t do what I once was able bodied enough to do. So I turned to the Internet and furiously looked for a way to make a buck. I bought into the schemes that told of making money online and I spent a lot of money buying information that never panned out, from sales to surveys and a lot of other stuff. Many offered a way that would work if I was able to defraud the public, as they had done to me, and sell a scheme that was never going to make YOU any money but I would make what you paid me. Again I could not do so as morally it was wrong. It cost me. Ebay came along and we sold a few items and made a bit but it wasn’t enough, maybe $170.00 the first year and $600.00 the next. We tried to find wholesalers to buy from and sell online but we found that just about everything we could get at wholesale prices were being sold on ebay for even less. I couldn’t fathom how they could do this unless they had an in with the manufacturer. Which had to be the case, as even the wholesalers couldn’t give me an answer. Ebays hosting fees for pics led me to think if I had my own website it would cost no more and might even save us money over ebay and we could host our own pics. Eventually we did just that and www.vintageslips4u.com was born. We hosted our own pics for ebay and sold off the site as well. Still we only made about $600.00 a year though we got to keep a bit more as expenses were less. My wife was into her crafts and when her mother moved here from California after retiring, they went together to start Tamicraft a craft business. They had no real plan just make whatever they felt like and try to hawk it in craft fairs. They never even made expenses. They decided to concentrate on just one thing and that became machine embroidery. They eventually found someone going out of business for personal reasons and got some used equipment so they could do more and some advice on how to get the business up and running. They are currently in this phase now and hope it will work out. They plan to start in 2008 and really put some effort in in 2009. Why the delay. Well, honestly, Issues with the health of just about everyone in the family. Amber's Dystonia, and problems in school, my mother- in-laws heart disease, My wife having just been diagnosed with a heart problem as well as her sleep apnea and my array of health issues that go back to when I lost my business to the more recent sleep apnea diagnosis, a broken leg and my 10 kidney stones to be operated on in May 2008. I don't know that we will ever be able to give a 100% but we will give it our best shot. (Update Oct 14, 08: We have not made a dime from the business and so have decided to let the license lapse next year. Another bust. We did have some interested parties but not enough to make a go of it.) OK. I got the job of doing the web sites and listings on ebay. Knowing nothing of webs and html it was a steep learning curve but somehow I made it happen. A lot of reading and a lot of trial and error and a lot of help from other people online. Once I got the www.vintageslip4u.com site up I started working on the www.tamicraft.com site. It is still incomplete as I write this as we had some family problems to do with my daughters Cerebral Palsy and Dystonia and to some extent with the schools. I had a lot on my plate but I never gave up I just had other priorities. While dealing with family issues I realized that it was difficult finding all the information I required and so decided to make a site devoted to helping people with disabilities find information. I didn’t quite know what I would do I just knew I had to do something. In time www.cpfsn.org was born. I put considerable effort into getting the site up in as short a time as possible figuring I would build on it later, and am still working on it, but the reason it exists at all is the trouble I had finding advocacy to help my daughter and because I’d learned that others were having as great a difficulty as I. I never lost track of the idea that we needed to make more money. One of the things that had come of the personal issues we were having is that I needed to hire a tutor for my daughter. The thing is we really couldn't afford it. And so I signed up as an affiliate from my web hosting service and placed a few ads on all the sites. I was familiar with the services and support and thought it a good deal and figured others might as well. If people signed up I might make enough to cover some expenses. So far none have and though I’m disappointed I didn’t have to spend anything out of pocket so this time it didn’t cost me. I eventually I joined an affiliate network (commission Junction .com (www.cj.com) and placed more ads on the web pages of my sites but to date (June 2008) I have had no sales and it would appear all my effort was in vain. Update Oct 14 , 08: I have a total of $38.00 in commissions due me from 2 sales in over 6 months of having the ads on my commercial sites. Not a real big dollar maker for sure. But other than the time to enter the code no money out of my pocket. My ethics are intact and I can sleep at night. I’ve found making money online to be a lot of effort with little to show for it. If I weren’t so tied to my moral compass I can see a lot of ways to make money and good money at that. But it would require that I swindle others out of their hard earned cash and I can’t do that. I also think it is possible to make money if you have connections and can get products below wholesale and sell them online, unfortunately I have no such connections. I also think you can make a few dollars doing real online surveys but they are few and far between and take much more time than most say and even if you get the work the pay is very low. Not enough to make a living. Maybe enough to buy your spouse dinner once in a while. The best way is to have a VERY popular site with lots of traffic and targeted ads. Some who do, make a comfortable living off just the ads. But these sites are few and far between and the effort and knowledge to get them up and running is beyond my abilities. My experience has shown that if it costs you to get into it then it is most likely some sort of swindle and my advice is to stay clear of it. Any real and honest way to make money online will be free. I have a relative who is a secret shopper. The outfit she is with is 100% free to join and if they send you out to a store and require you buy something, they reimburse you for what you spent and pay you $50.00 for your service. She asked I not spread the name around as if they have more secret shoppers then she will have less work. Even so this is part time at best and she only makes a couple hundred a month on a good month. Usually less. Some months no work at all. You're certainly not going to make a living off of it and though it is usually not time sensitive if you had another job it may be difficult to do both. My nephew worked as a bartender, he was at one time a server in the restaurant and is fully aware of places that hire people to come in and eat or drink and rate the restaurant and server or bartender. They usually get their meals and drinks comped and get paid a bit as well. But this is not enough to live on just a free meal from time to time and maybe $25.00. ( He has since moved on to construction for better pay and benefits) Don't get me wrong I am not scoffing at these jobs and I plan on looking into it for myself but it is not a living wage is what I'm getting at, and unless I can make a living it is just something to help out. I will do it, but my number 1 priority is to find something that is going to earn me a living wage. Many will swear that their program will make you rich but none will give you the information for free. In fact even if you tell them you are willing to sign a contract giving them all profits for three years they still will not give you the program free. Why? Well because it is a scam to get your money. They get rich and you just lose that much more. If your moral compass has rusted and you have no conscience then there are plenty of places to make money. You could just plagiarize someone else’s work and sell it as your own or you could come up with an original thought that has no real value and hype it up to the point people buy into it and buy it from you. You could make a list of all the affiliate programs become an affiliate yourself to each one and either sell the list or make it on the people that get there through you. I have no problem with advertising on your site or having a site that is just advertising but I have a problem when you know what you are advertising is bogus but you do it anyway. By the way, the affiliate program I joined has strict rules in place to weed out those who would swindle you. But there will always be the rotten apple in the barrel so just be wary of any deal too good to be true. The idea of pay per click is not offensive. You are offering ad space just like any other advertiser. The difference is they are not paying you to place the ad like on TV or Radio they are charging the advertiser and then placing ads on your site in hopes someone sees the ad and uses the link to go to the site. They satisfy their customer and you make a penny or two. But this will not make you any substantial money. Think about it most clicks pay between 5 and 10 cents each with the average closer to 5 cents, you need thousands of people actually clicking on ads to make a few dollars. Unless your site is getting a million hits a day and a lot of them are using the advertisements you are not gonna be even close to making a living. Just a little extra so you can pay a bill now and then. Look at my site www.vintageslips4u.com there are 15 pages with relevant content and 7 devoted to links and order form and refunds and shipping and forums and chat, which have no relevance unless someone buys or wants to chat. So I get little hits on these pages Now this site has been up for 2 years now (as I write this Dec. 2007) and I have a TOTAL of about 30,000 unique hits and some of these look at many different pages but some do not, so even if I had 10% use the ads I would have made what/ maybe a $1000.00 in 2 years. I don’t think 1% would use the ads so maybe $100.00. It may pay if you have a high volume site but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. Oh I’ve recently applied for pay per ads and if accepted I will place it on my sites but I’m not expecting anything to come of it. In fact if a real advertiser pays for space these other ads will drop to the bottom of the page so fast your head will spin. You see a lot of pay per click ads on webs now a days and I suppose on a high traffic site it might pay for the hosting but I do not think any are making a living off the pay per clicks. (Again just a bit extra to pay a bill. Maybe. (update: Currently, June 08, off "all" my sites I average about a dollar a day in PPC. It pays for hosting and some money in my pocket but it is not a living.) The fact is you can make real good money with advertising but you need a high volume site to get real ads that pay. I saw a news story recently that a woman created a bitch site where people would go to talk of the bad behavior of their kids. Apparently this site gets 50,000 hits a day. She makes $4,000.00 a month off real advertising on her site. A high volume site will attract advertisers and a site such as hers has plenty of mothers on it which means the person doing the shopping is hitting the site not some geek interested in learning programming. I also read of another site that is sort of a dating site though not regulated like E-Harmony and the like but you just post a pic and your ad . They do delete nudity but as for the rest, anything goes. They get over a million hits a week and make thousands off Google ads. but you have to know how to get this type of site going and you have to be willing to lower your morale standards to make the big bucks. If you decide to sign up for the surveys thing use a yahoo email account. They have the best spam filters and believe me you are gonna get spam. I had to change my personal email it got so bad. I then started doing it under the yahoo account. I currently have 2867 emails in my spam folder on yahoo and I haven’t done the survey thing in 2 years, AND I dumped all the spam just 2 months ago. They just keep selling the address. I keep putting them in the spam. Ever get stuck in one of those surveys where you will get this, if you do that, and in the end it is not free as you have to buy something and I never went passed that point cause I just know you buy it and you still won't get what they said you would. Yes I paid $35.00 for a list of all kinds of places where you could "make money online". I guess in my depressed state I thought that at least one would pan out. Over 100 opportunities and not one was legit. Sure I made $2.00 here and $5.00 there but at the end of the month I had spent hundreds of hours doing surveys placing affiliates and allsorts of other things and after 6 months I just got rid of it all, as none was worth the effort. It cost me the $35.00 for the list and in 6 months I probably just made that $35.00 back maybe a bit more but surely not nearly what it cost in time and effort. The only person who was making money was the guy selling the list. I have tried MPM (MY POWER MALL) which when I first started looked promising and was totally free. Now they require you make a purchase a month but they say this ensures everyone spends in their mall and so everyone makes money. I did some digging and found people who had as many as 700 in their downline were barely making $100.00 a month. and to get 10,000 in your downline and really make money was not even possible. I worked this real hard even going so far as making a website devoted to it and advertising not only on free sites but paying for adwords. Still it was very difficult to get any to sign who were not friends and relatives who did so out of kindness. In the end I saw it would never make me any money and would only cost those who signed. The same stores offering the rebate had affiliate programs where you could join directly under the store and receive more than MPM was paying. I found that a site called crumbs.com was doing much the same as MPM and paying out more. Not that you will make any real money with them either. I found Commission Junction had all the same stores and affiliate links and you would get a bigger piece of the pie but still you were not going to make a living just a bit extra spending money. Clickbank has a ton of affiliate programs but again you are making someone else rich, you will be lucky to make a sale a month, so again not a way to earn a living.
People will tell you ‘nothing in this life is free’ and for the most part they are right. But it does not have to cost you in money, only in effort. Stay clear of those who would charge you for the right to information of how to make money. If it were for real they would want you to have the info so they could make money off the prospects you bring to the table. If your going to pay for something make sure there is enough information to make an informed decision and do not be swayed by testimonials, most are fake. I could write a dozen an hour just as they do, none any truer than the next. Do not buy into the hype. If it is too good to be true it probably is. Seldom will any sell you something without trying to hype the product; that goes for online and off. You need to do your due-diligence and find the truth. Use the forums where they talk of biz-ops and get your questions answered there. Be careful of scammers in there who will say anything to get you to sign. Take what is said with a grain of salt and look for the person who is most honest but never asks nor gives you a place to sign up. This person is the one most likely to be trusted as they are not trying to gain from you, but even here beware. Do they have a signature file with their site on it? Are they being coy so you click their link? Are they just a little too knowledgeable and therefore may be a plant? Yes you can make a good living online but you need either a high traffic site luring the right demographic for advertisers to be interested or you need to be able to buy items at below wholesale or at least below what they sell for on ebay and you need to get your site noticed so you have the traffic to make the sales. In the process you might be able to get legitimate advertisers interested. You need to work at it as much as you are able. You need a .com, not a personal page on your ISP. You need to get the search engines to take notice and just Google a search for meta tags to see how to accomplish this for free or pay for advertising or site submission. “It takes money to make money.” Is as true online as off. In most cases. There are exceptions. Like the lady with the bitch site. Don't pay for anything till you have done all you can for free and it is not working. Most of these "I'll get your site noticed" or "I can get you 250 visitors a day" are bogus. Don't waste your money. The reality is there are certain rules you must follow to be accepted by search engines and each has a different criteria. So you may want to stick with the big 3 Google, Ask, and MSN. If you do your meta tags and title and content right for these the others will notice. It is hit and miss depending on the competition. The description is 250 characters and spaces total. This needs to be a synopsis of the page not the site. Google is no longer interested in keywords but others are, so place keywords that are relevant to the page not the site. Try to keep it to 20 or 25 tops. Make the title relevant to the content of the page. It does not matter that you have called the page one thing in the header of the body and use the title to describe the contents. The page may be called my homepage but this should not be the title the search engines see. Look at the content of the page pick out some keywords used in meta keywords and in the meta description and make a title that uses these as well as describe the content of the page. Now the hard part: You have to do it in 80 characters or less including spaces. This is most important and that is content. If you do not have content relevant to everything above you have no placement. You need to make sure that each page has a topic and that within limits you stay true to your topic. Search likes to see lots of content but be careful as readers don't. Simple fact is most do not want to read your page they want visuals they can just skim through. Learn how to use the ALT tag in pics so you can please your illiterate audience and still make the search happy. Google "alt tag" if you do not know what it is or how to use them. OK I am off topic again If your moral compass is on tilt you can do very well for yourself but you don’t need me to tell you how. I wouldn’t anyway. Most of the legitimate businesses and people making money online are doing so honestly. They are offering a product or service or content that people want. They are either making money off the product sales or off the services they provide or from advertising on their content driven site, or any combination of the above. I have to tell you that unless you fall into a sweet situation you are going to have to work your hind end off to make even the cost of web hosting. But lightning does strike once in a while and some do fall into a septic system and come up smelling roses. Ebay loves to tell you of their success stories of how an average person has made it big. What they don’t tell you is of the millions who haven’t, or of whether the person they spotlight had connections or had to shell out a fortune to make it. I’ve done my homework and could today go to China or Southeast Asia and buy for pennies on the dollar things that could be sold for a decent profit. But two obstacles: 1. I don’t have the money for the investment in the first place and 2. Most everything is already being sold on ebay that is currently on the market. I know of some things I could "have made" in these countries that would most likely sell like hotcakes here and are not being sold on ebay or elsewhere but again I don’t have the money for the initial investment. And if I did and started selling and people saw the profit potential they would do the same before I had a chance to deposit my first check. Cause what I have in mind is not something that would be exclusive that I could patent. Just a bit of tweaking and they would have their own profit mill and soon there would be no profits as we just continually tried to get market share by dropping prices. Yes lightning does strike so I encourage you not to give up as someday you may find just the thing that is going to make you wealthy. A person I know built model airplanes as a hobby. He eventually started a small website as he wanted to share his hobby and he sold a few items off the site. This eventually grew to be so big he quit his full time job as an aeronautics engineer at Boeing and now makes his living selling all sorts of things having to do with model airplanes. From plans to parts to completed planes. I know this person. He was married to a friend of my wife's. I know it is possible if you find the right niche product and have the time to devote to making it all happen. But finding that product is the hard part cause many already are in the business. In the case of this person with the model airplanes he never set out to make a living off the site. He was a hobbyist and wanted to share his hobby. It just happened he had some "connections" to get parts cheap and could sell them at a profit and it just grew from there. But while you are waiting for lightning to strike, just keep plugging away with what you find that is free and hopefully in time you will see some substance of it. Notice I mentioned several times " Make enough to pay a bill" or "take your wife to dinner" Well you add up a lot of small items that make a few bucks and pretty soon you have a pretty good chunk of change. I'm still building mine but I know it is going to happen sooner or later. Few things in life are handed to you on a silver platter. You have to actually get in there and earn it. If that means you work a bit harder then that is what you will have to do. If your moral compass is as steady as mine, it will mean it will be all that much harder for you. Most every legitimate business or person who has made it to wealth online has done so by hard work. The few that were struck by lightning are the rarity. Some dumb idea that just happened to pan out, like the lady with the bitch site, or the ebayer with that exclusive widget or my wife's, friends, husband with his hobby site. Most either took hard work or lots of money. Well most of us do not have lots of money or we wouldn’t be looking to make money, so what’s left? WORK. We either lose our moral compass and take advantage of others or we work that much harder. It is easier to do the former if you have it in you but for me that is not an option, so I just work that much harder. Not a day goes by that I don’t think on it and not a day goes by that I don’t work on it in some way or another. Whether it is building a new web page or revamping an old one or running a free classified to try to get people to my sites. I’m always thinking and I’m always trying. I encourage you to do the same. Don’t get sucked into the schemes that will cost you money and time and get you nowhere. If it costs you to get started it is most likely the person selling you the bill of goods that’s laughing all the way to the bank. Do your homework. I’ve seen too many lose a lot of money, buying products they couldn’t sell and having to fold and claim bankruptcy. Both online and off. Friends who have hundreds of dollars worth of product in their garage that they cannot sell but are too stubborn to throw away. People who get sucked into buying one item then told they need this other as well and of course it has to be hosted on their servers and you need this auto responder and that wysiwyg editor and.... it just goes on till your broke or give up. Statistics show that 90% of small brick and mortar businesses fail. There are no statistics of how many online businesses are failing cause most often like me, they make enough to pay for the hosting so the site stays up. If we were a brick and mortar business we’d have packed it in a long time ago. I’m sure the failure rate of online business is even higher than those brick and mortar places, we just don’t know. OK. Lets sum it up. Personal experience has shown that most that would charge you to work for them are like as not scams. There are a few that charge that are for real but please do your homework before throwing your money away. Search for forums where you can get the real skinny on biz-ops. If you must pay, what are you getting for that money? Samples, lists, software, some sort of literature or what? And is it something worthwhile? I've see friends and family fall into the trap and have done so myself. Most often it is money lost as we wind up not being able to unload the stuff or the information is bogus. A thorough search of the internet can often find the same information for free. Get a fake email through Yahoo to sign up for this stuff so that the things you sign up for do not flood you primary email with spam, and yahoo has good spam filters and if your done with the whole thing just delete the email account. Some will require a lot of information. Some even have you fill out a W- 9 form for taxes but be wary and don't send any information if you have any doubts as to the veracity of the company. Just because they have a fancy website does not mean the are legit. Check them out with the BBB or through other means. If you're going to buy from a wholesaler try to get them to let you buy a minimum amount of product first to see if it will sell as many require a huge investment that you may wind up eating if you are unable to sell. The more expensive something is does not mean it will be any more worthwhile than a cheaper product or even a free one. Do a search to see if the product is already on ebay and what it is selling for and if you can actually turn a profit what with packaging and shipping charges. Is the time involved worth the effort? If your moral compass is working try before you sell. Don't just sign up to resell ads or affiliates or bogus lists to swindle others. Check it out for yourself. If it's legit then you can feel that you are indeed providing a useful product. The old saying " Let the buyer beware" is what most who would scam you live by. They have no care that you are spending your hard earned cash for bogus product or information. They just say sucker and laugh all the way to the bank. Do your due-diligence and check out any offer as best you can. I realize I haven't told you of where to go or how to make money online. If I knew I'd be doing it myself. I hope I've explained the pitfalls and what you need to do in order to succeed though. Or at least what to watch out for. There are many who would scam you. So you have to be wary. Those people you see at intersections or on and off ramps with a sign saying "Homeless have family need money" or "Will work for food" are just lazy scammers. I go to the food banks myself. There is so much they have to throw a lot away. We go twice a month and fill our refrigerator and then some. The work for food is a scam. They could eat like kings if they hit the food banks. Most of what we get is stuff we would never buy as it is too expensive. Just for giggles I stopped once and told this guy I had a cord of wood needed splitting. (Which I did) I'd pay him a few bucks and give him food too. He walked away. He didn't want to work he wanted the cash. He never even asked how much I was willing to pay. What he was hoping was I'd feel sorry for him and hand him a $5.00 bill or something so he could feed his habit. At a McDonalds my son was hit up for money by some guy who gave him a mini candy bar ( This was just after Halloween so you figure where he got the candy) and on it a note saying he was deaf and could he please pay him something for the candy so he could support his family. My son brought it to me and I read it and handed it to my wife who knows sign language. She started in on him for accosting our son then told him to get a job and gave him back his candy bar. He never once signed back. I don't think he was deaf, he was just scamming. She taught our kids and me how to sign "Get a job" in case it happens again. ( When she was in High School and some time afterwards she volunteered at some organization to translate to sign at various events. I think she learned it at school in the first place as some class or community service project) When my wife headed a boy scout troop we had a kid there whose parents were both deaf. They signed they were appalled by these people that do such things. They basically thumbed their noses at any who would stoop to such lows. The mother works as a cashier at Wal-Mart. She has a sign at her station that reads " I am deaf but I read lips. Make sure you have my attention if talking to me." She has told us, or rather the wife, that neither her nor her husband have ever had much difficulty finding work. As for homeless well there are all kinds of places that will put you up from missions to churches and the states have housing programs for the indigent. It's called Section 8 here, I don't know about where you live. If the guy is homeless it is because he chooses to be or spends everything on drugs or booze. Especially if he has a family cause no organization is going to let a child sleep out in the cold. These are people out in the open that you can see and run down. Just think of those who can hide behind a computer. They way out number those we see. Just be wary is all I'm saying. If you do find that golden nugget and see the potential and think it is right for you. Do your due-diligence and if it still shines get on board and give it a whirl. But don't go off half cocked. Don't get in over your head and realize you are going to have to put in the time and work required to make it work for you. The old adage ‘People don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan’ may hold some truth. But the real truth is even a good plan needs effort. As stated when I first started this diatribe. I believe the disabled could really benefit from a work at home job. Not that working mothers who want to be with their kids or fathers who would like to be with their families couldn't as well. I know of one disabled person who has a small business where he creates news letters. The organizations send him the copy and he uses his computer to correlate the articles and pics and turn it into a respectable newsletter that is then sent to be published. All he has to do is take the hand written or typed articles and pictures, correlate them, edit them and place them in a nice arrangement, in PDF format, using his computer so that the news letters can be published. Nice work if you can get it. Some will be looking for the big money and gear their efforts to finding what others may want and trying to fill that need or want. Sometimes this is legit and at others it is not. I think a better way to go about it is find something that really interests you like that guy I know who was into model airplanes. Build a site based on what turns you on. If you are successful great!!!! But if like most out there you barely make the hosting costs at least you are doing something that is of interest to you and so your time is not wasted. If your going to take the low road and take others money without really giving them anything in exchange... Well you won't be alone as most out there are doing just that. I'd like to think that people get what they deserve but in reality many who get rich do so off the generosity and inherent good of others. They are the scum of the Earth but they are also the ones most likely to succeed. However there are many who make it without having to stoop to these low levels and I would hope you try to be one of those who actually provides value for the money you receive. 'Treat others as you would want to be treated and harm no one in doing so'. If you know of a legitimate work from home businesses you can post them on my Tamicraft site either in the Articles category or on the small business forums. Remember though follow the TOS and guidelines for submitting articles. Good Luck Robert & Tami Taormina
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Donations/Gifts are graciously accepted, Just log on to www.Paypal.com , Click "Send Money" tab and follow the instructions to send money from an existing Paypal account or by any major Credit Card. Use the email address below to make a Donations/Gifts on Paypal.
If you do not see an email address it is because you need to enable javascripts. The email is in javascript to foil the spambots. You can also mail a Donation/Gift to Tami Taormina P.O. Box 4463 Spanaway, WA. 98387 I cannot
force any to use the forums but I would encourage you to do so if you have
questions you would like answers to or have a statement you would like to
make. I know that having to register and using the anti-spambot code makes
you have to do one more step than most, but it also insures that the
forums are not bombarded by spambots posting crap on the site. I try to
check the forums at least weekly (often daily) and I have to say that so
far I am disappointed that none have chosen to take advantage of this free
opportunity to get and give information. I built this site to help the
disabled get information and the use of the forums and sharing your
stories is a huge part of that endeavor. Please help one another and I
will try to answer what I can as well. We are a community of the disabled
or parents of disabled children and we should do whatever we can to help
each other gain the upper hand or help each other cope with difficult
situations. Just go to the forums page and write down the answer to the
anti-spambot question and enter it on the registration page. You only need
do this once to have full access to the forums. If you have
a site that deals with any disabilities then consider either joining
CPFSN.org (it is totally
free) and having a link to your site on the appropriate page (e.g. State,
County) as well as the ‘Members’ page or doing a simple link exchange
and having your site appear on the ‘CP Family’ links page, if you or
your child has CP or any disability. If you do
not have CP or a child with CP or have a site devoted to any disability
you can still have a reciprocating link placed on the Non-CP related links
page. A link exchange would not only show your support of this site but
would increase your ranking with search through having another outside
link (SEO). Use the ‘Contact Us’ page and email Robert if you are interested in any link exchange or joining CPFSN.org. Send the information of the site you want us to link to and the code you would like entered. I cannot guarantee that all requests will be honored but I will take a personal look and make a fair and unbiased decision.
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