Investment Ideas: 3 Lucrative Ideas For Your Finances

There are two types of people in this world: those who wait for things to happen and those who put themselves in the position to make great things inevitable. Many people are simply okay with going to work, collecting their paychecks, and letting their money sit around without any real plan for it. 

This is a lost opportunity to make your money work for you and put yourself on the path toward obtaining real wealth. There are countless ways to put your money to use, but below are our top 3 favorite ways for growing your finances.

Stock Market

The simplest suggestion on our list is also the most proven one. Investing in the US stock market has made millionaires out of everyday people. 

The S&P 500 has consistently produced profits over long-term time frames and for those willing to be patient, it has provided a nest egg well above those letting their cash sit in their bank accounts. 

If you don’t believe us, take a look at any 20 year period of the S&P 500 and you are guaranteed to find that you would have made a hefty profit by simply depositing your money and never looking at it again. 



Opening an account is easy; all you need to do is create a Vanguard account, deposit enough money for an S&P 500 ETF, and watch your money grow.

Real Estate

Investing in real estate has been the source behind the wealth of some of the world’s most elite business minds. Some people prefer a more tangible investment vehicle where your project is felt and seen, as opposed to just some numbers popping up across a trading platform. 

Anybody can get into real estate as long as they are willing to put in the time, make the relationships, and come up with the funding to invest in a business that requires large upfront costs for potentially huge profit. 

Funding can come from many sources, family, friends, commercial loans like those offered by LCNB National Bank, etc. One you gather your funding and perform your research on what type of real estate is right for you, the only thing left is getting to work and making money.

Start-Up Investing

Start-up investing is the most risky of the three ideas, but it has the potential to make you the most money in the fasted amount of time if you find that one diamond in the rough. 

The basics of start-up investing come down to finding a company in need of capital, investing a sum of money in exchange for a percentage of the company, and one day, the company will be worth much more than you paid for it and you will earn the percentage of the company’s new value once sold. 

With that said, most companies don’t make it very far and as they go down, so does your investment. 8 out of 10 businesses fail within 18 months, so it is important to invest with caution and only part with money you can afford to lose. 

But, if you find that one that defies the statistics, you set yourself up for a lucrative windfall.

The options on how to grow your money are virtually endless. Everyone’s risk profile and access to capital is different, so what you decide to do with your money is always up to you. 

The above options give you an idea of what options exist across the risk spectrum and what potential gains await. In any case, always be looking for ways to help your capital increase because the only thing better than steady finances is growing finances.

Mitigating Mistakes: How to Handle a DWI as a Responsible Adult

Driving while intoxicated (DWI) is a serious crime that can result in expensive fines, a suspended driver’s license, mandatory DWI classes and significantly higher insurance rates. 

There’s also the possibility of jail-time, although that is rare for a first offense. Although you likely wish you hadn’t gotten behind the wheel in the first place, there’s no way to change the past. 

All you can do is move forward and improve your situation. Here’s the best way for you to handle a DWI charge responsibly.

Hire a Lawyer

You have a few options when it comes to how you handle the legal consequences of your DWI charge. 

You can simply plead guilty right away and put yourself at the mercy of the court, which is a bad move. You can go with a public defender who is probably overworked. Or you can hire a skilled DWI attorney, which is by far the best option.




Your DWI attorney will give you the best chance at success in your case. If you’re lucky, they may find something in your favor, such as the police officer not having probable cause to suspect you of DWI in the first place. 

Even if your lawyer can’t get the charges dismissed, they can negotiate the best deal for you.

Attend DWI Classes

If you got a DWI, it means that your drinking caused you to behave recklessly and irresponsibly. While the DWI itself may seem like a wakeup call, you should still enroll in DWI classes for two important reasons.

The first reason is that the court will probably require you to take DWI classes as part of your punishment. Failure to do so could result in jail-time or other penalties. The second reason is that DWI classes can help you make better decisions in the future. 

Don’t just go to your classes to get credit for doing so. They’re a good learning opportunity, and it’s smart to pay attention.

Work on Getting Your Driver’s License Back

Your license will most likely end up suspended after you’re found guilty of DWI or possibly before, depending on your state, and it could be suspended for six months, one year or longer. 

You can get it back in as little time as possible by complying with any terms the court sets for you. This will typically include taking those DWI classes and paying off your fines.

You may be able to start driving again sooner if you agree to have an ignition interlock device installed on your vehicle. 

With an ignition interlock device, you must blow into it before you can start your car, and sometimes while you are driving, as well. Check with an Austin DWI lawyer to see if this is an option.

Understand That a DWI Can Be an Emotional Rollercoaster

A DWI is a major life event that can affect people in a variety of different ways. It could leave you feeling depressed and ashamed of yourself. 

Or, you could feel angry at the fact that you have a suspended license, especially if you need to drive for your everyday commute.

What’s most important if you experience any intense emotions after your DWI is that you understand that things will turn around. 

Even though a DWI can be a major hassle to deal with, if you do your part, you’ll be able to get your life back in order.

It’s a bit of a shock when you’re charged with DWI, and it can leave you wondering what to do. Stick to the steps above and you can resolve your DWI as painlessly as possible.

5 Ways To Make Money Using Your Mobile Phone

When you take a look at the world today, you can see how much it has been shaped by technology. Next to changing the way people live, work, and play, it has also affected the way some people make money. 

Next to serious ventures such as taking up an online business, working as a freelancer, or being a blogger with a huge following, there is also a wide variety of micro-jobs that you can do by using certain online apps, that aren’t necessarily a way to earn for a living, but if you know how to use them, they can help you get some extra cash.

Gather info from stores as a Field Agent

First, you have to download the Field Agent app, make your own agent profile. Your jobs will appear in the apps “job list” or you can track them from the “map view”. And what are you going to do? 

You are going to help businesses improve their customer service by gathering information, photos, and videos from stores and other places via your smartphone. 

For example, you may have a hob to go to a store, take a photo of a product, and then answer some questions about it. The money you’ll earn per job is between $3 and $12.

Take surveys

Companies like to learn what you think about various things that matter to them, in order to create statistics and improve various business aspects. 

Most often, they will gather information from the customer base that they have, but there are other ways that they do this too. 

In fact, there is a lot of websites that will pay for you to take surveys. Every business cares about your opinion during their development phase, and they will pay because it will help them know what to focus on.

Become a Tasker in your area

If you’re a good handyman, cleaner, mover, and the like, you can use the Task Rabbit app to find local jobs, with the ability to choose the rates and schedules that you are comfortable with. 

The first thing that you need to do is register, and then you will get an invitation to attend a local Tasker orientation or onboarding session. 

You can then begin doing the tasks by downloading the app and receiving notifications about potential jobs near you. Discuss details with your client, do the job, submit the invoice, and get your money.

Shopping rebates

There is a variety of apps and sites out there that can help you get your money back after you shop. While it’s not really a way of earning money, it can help you save more. Ebates is the most popular shopping rebate app/site. 

When you purchase something from their site, they get a commission from who made the product. But, instead of keeping it, they send you a piece of the commission, and a PayPal payment every quarter. Some rebate apps require you to keep receipts that you have to scan.

Drive people around

We asked the professionals at Personal Digital what their favorite way of making money via your smartphone is, and they suggested using an app like Uber or Lyft to drive people around. 

First you need to register and get accepted, and you have to meet requirements such as being 21+ old, owning a car, and having a car insurance that is valid. You also have to pass a background check. 

After that, you can earn money as a driver – up to $35 an hour with Lyft, and about $19 per hour with Uber.

In summation

In today’s world of technology, there is a wide variety of ways that you can make money, be it a real business or a way to get some extra cash. 

There is a wide variety of apps and ways out there that can help you earn money. Try some of the 5 listed in this article and see how they pan out.

5 Tips for Creating a Financial Risk Management Plan

Business, like life, is full of unanticipated risks. This doesn’t mean your business can’t prepare for them. Coming up with a financial risk management plan requires you to look at the different risks that your business has and then come up with concrete plans and policies to reduce that risk. 

There are myriad of things you need to think about when coming up with a financial risk management plan, from making sure to monitor financial risk to keeping your employees protected, but here are five tips to help you get started down the path.

General Business Risks

One of the first steps in coming with a financial risk management plan is to take a look at your overall business risks. Ask yourself some questions like, what will happen to my business in a recession? 

How will my business handle new competitors? How will my company manage the normal ebb and flow of business? Depending on the nature of your business, you might find that you have times when sales are high and things are going well, but then run into days, weeks or even months when sales are slower. 

You need to make sure that your plans take into account these slower times.

Employee Risks

Good employees can help your business expand and generate more revenue, but they also can introduce financial risk to your business. Before hiring anyone to work at your business, you need to check their references no matter how good their resume is or how qualified they seem. 



Not only is it imperative to check references, but it’s very important to properly train your employees on company policies. This includes safety policy. If your employees are working with machines then it’s important to ensure that they have industry-specific safety training. 

Fortunately there is industry-specific safety training available online from OSHA.

Liability Risks

Liability risks can sink many small businesses. Reducing or eliminating these liability risks are an important part of developing a financial risk management plan. 

Not only is their property and product liability concerns, but your employee risks can give you liability exposure. It should go without saying that you need to get liability insurance for your business. 

Talk with a business liability insurance agent. He will give you an idea about the industry-specific liability risks that you might have and ways to mitigate those financial risks.

B2B Risks

Every business has B2B business, even if they are solely a consumer-facing business. They have vendor arrangements that can include both buying and selling. Not everyone runs their business well and some businesses have problems managing credit. 

It’s very important that your business has a robust credit and risk analysis policy when dealing with any other business. 

Just like there are tools to check personal credit ratings, you can also check the credit reports of other businesses with tools like CreditRiskMonitor. This is should be a standard practice before initiating any transactions that could lead to financial risk for your business.

Fraud Risks

Fraud costs businesses billions of dollars every year. Fraud comes in many different shapes and forms from cyber fraud to retail fraud to B2B fraud and everything in between. 

Your company needs to put into place policies to limit your fraud exposure. Training employees on how to recognize phishing emails and how their internet safety can reduce the risk of cyber-related fraud. 

Likewise, training retail employees how to recognize credit card or check fraud can reduce those instances as well. Make sure employees know the policies and know their frontline importance in the battle against fraud.

With the right financial risk management plan, you can protect the financial interests of your business. Instead of worrying about financial risk, you can focus on doing what you do best.

How To Do Quality Competitor Analysis for SEO

It is a fact that SEO is one of the pillars of success for your business. A crucial step for starting to develop an SEO strategy is competitor analysis. 

Competitor analysis provides you with the data that you need in order to know what industry trends are currently booming and how you can improve your keyword rankings. 

What you learn from it can help you realize the tasks that you need to focus on, and is the main factor for the development of your campaigns. 

You will get to learn your competitor’s weaknesses and strengths and be able to find a way to outperform them.

Who are your competitors?

For starters, you are going to have to find out who are the top four competitors that you are going to use for your analysis. 

It might be a good idea to use a mix of direct business and online search competitors. The reason for this is that you’ve got competition that is local, as well as the one that is investing in online search ads. 

So, while you may be worrying about a business nearby, your actual competition may be in another town or state.

A good tool for searching competitors is SEMrush. Input your own domain name, go to “organic competitors” and look at the full report. 

Then focus on metrics such as common keywords and total traffic in order to determine who your biggest competitors are.

How technically optimized are they?

When it comes to technical optimization, you will be checking for a number of things. For example, you will check whether their title tags are technically optimized (one title tag per page, correct placement within head tags, few to no extraneous tags in the title). 

You will also check whether their internal linking allows indexation of content, and if there is an error-free schema markup present. The quality of the schema is also important (whether there is customized markup such as BlogPosting, for example). 

You should also check whether there is a “home” for new content (is there a content hub, and is it easily noticeable). 

While you can’t run a complete technical audit for your every competitor, you need to keep in mind your own website’s technical SEO performance and the issues that you need to focus on.

How good is their content?

When it comes to content, you will be checking title tags again, but from an editorial point of view. 

Check whether they accurately represent the content on the page, if there are any duplicates, and are the titles shorter than 80 characters. There also has to be a unique H1 for every page, and represent its content. 

Next thing that you should check out is whether internal linking supports organic content. This is based on the quality of the links. 

Basically, it means that they should lead to informative pages, such as tutorials or research, be a natural continuation of the user’s journey through the website, and vary the resources that they link to.

The quality of content, while subjective, is important for comparing brands. You need to check in how many words are informative pages dealing with complex topics. 

You should also evaluate whether you really want to read the content, does it look well-written, and whether it contains valuable information. Originality is also important, so, from the experience of a web design agency, competitor analysis is the best way to find the best trends to follow. 

The quality of images and video is also important. They have to be unique, be in proper resolution, and not be repeated on multiple pages.

In summation

By analyzing these factors, you will be able to locate opportunities where you can excel with your own website. Through competitor analysis, you will be able to find the trends that exist among the competition. This way you will be able to make the best out of them in order to stand out amongst the competition.

Cut Work Time in Half: Get These Tools for WordPress!

If you have a WordPress website, then you are well aware that it's constantly evolving and improving to accommodate for its users' needs and preferences. Started in 2003 as a simple improvement for everyday writing, now it's the biggest blogging open source tool used by millions. 

WordPress has over 47,000 plugins, and this number grows by the day. One function or feature has multiple plugins, and you have to choose the one that suits you best. Here are some that may be helpful to your everyday needs.

Broken Link Checker

One of the most annoying things for visitors is loading a broken page. You can lose customers and audience, as well as a good reputation that you obtained so far.

Broken Link Checker is a perfect plugin for you to monitor all the bad links, and the best news is that it will do it automatically. Another great feature is that it will stop search engines from displaying broken link pages in the listings.

WP-Optimise

To avoid unnecessary data and clean up the mess created while website maintenance, WP-Optimise is your tool. It will help you automatically remove all the piled up data and optimise your database. 

This will eliminate manual queries, as well as unwanted comments and posts. Using WP-Optimise will give you a fast, clean and well -optimised website.

SearchWP

If you want to help your visitors find everything they need and help them out do it in a more advanced ways than with Word Press built-in tool, use the SearchWP plugin. Its advanced search options even allow you to search for documents like Office and PDF. 

Another good feature is that you can create multiple search engines, and you can give them an option to search via keyword stems and not exact term matches.

BackUpWordPress

When it comes to websites, they also need protection from intruders and breaches, even if you run a low profile one. These events can be detrimental to your data so using a backup plugin may be the best option. 

BackUpWordPress allows you to save a copy of your whole website with database and files. Every backup can be sent to one or more accounts you have, such as DropBox, Google Drive, Microsoft Azure, etc.

Yoast SEO

Search engines are the internet users’ best friends, which makes SEO company a go-to source to get the best optimisation there is. Yoast SEO is a right plugin for WordPress if you want to try and do it by yourself. 

It will help you with the content and improve your ranking as well as help you sustain them and be helpful to users.

WP Rocket

When it comes to websites, users often get annoyed with how slow they can get and lose interest in continuing. WP Rocket will help you take care of that by speeding up your site. Although this is a paid plugin, it’s on this list because there isn’t any better among the free ones and what it sells it delivers. 

It won’t even take you long to set it up and configure it. Caching starts immediately after activation which means the website will be speeded up instantly.

Gravity Forms

More than a million websites use Gravity Forms plugin for building contact forms easily and without any technical knowledge. This user-friendly plugin will help you create the form with offering you which fields to include and to configure the options. 


It also has a progress bar that will let know the users how far they have until they complete the form. You can use this plugin even if you need a pricing form on your website.

Wordfence Security

Hacking has become a real hazard of the 21st century, and even if you don’t think you’ll be an attractive target, the best course of action is to protect your website and your business. 

There are always malicious bots looking to destroy someone’s hard work and dedication. As we all know, it can also cause considerable financial damage. Wordfence Security will be a reliable protection for your website and guard against the spam. 

It includes malware scan, live monitoring of your traffic, firewall and other useful features which will keep your WordPress site secure.

Redirection

Ask any user to tell you what are the most annoying things about websites, and one of them will surely be getting not available pages. Redirection plugin will help you take care of redirecting the permalinks. 

This helpful plugin will automatically add 301 redirections and keep the record of 404 errors. You can manually add 302 or 307, and the full log will be available for review for all URL redirections.

WooCommerce

If you run an e-commerce site, WooCommerce is the right plugin for you. Currently the most popular among the tools of its type, WooCommerce was launched in 2011, and the free version can cover the necessary things like calculations of shipping costs, taxes, offer you major credit card and Pay Pal payments, bank transfers and cash on delivery. 

Paid, premium version gives you more advanced tools, and there are WooCommerce add-ons and themes which will help you to use it to the maximum of its ability and help you with managing customers and goods properly.

Social Icons

Social media has the constantly increasing number of users by the day. The studies show that people mostly information themselves through the social media than by watching TV or reading the newspaper. 



So, you have to work on your social media marketing if you want to have access to more people, that is for them to find you and your products. Social Icons is the plugin doing just what the name says – gives you a solution to display visual shortcuts to your social media accounts. 

The plugin is free and supports over 100 platforms, not to mention it’s straightforward to use.

Conclusion

Don’t be afraid to try new features of WordPress and improve what your offer to your visitors. When you’re creating your website there are too many variables to take into consideration, and that’s why thousands of plugins are created – to help you manage all in time and to satisfaction of both your business and your visitors.