Pull the Lever!

I'm going to keep this short for once.

Leverage. This is the one thing that separates the successful people making pretty good money from the successful people making lots of money. It's the strategy that's hardest to learn for most people. After all, most people are used to working a job for a living. A few are comfortable using their own skills to hack out a living. Even less are comfortable hiring other people for a living.

Yet this whole money making thing is a numbers game. If you have a way to make $2 for every hour you put in, you could do one of two things: you could sit there and do it yourself and make $14 for 7 hours of work *or* you could hire somebody else to do the bulk of the work for $1 an hour. Most people will just do it themselves or not at all. However, if you decide to hire somebody, then not only are you earning $1 an hour ($2 minus the worker's wages), you also have 7 hours with which to do other things that might earn you even more money. And if it turns out that you can hire somebody to do that job... well, find enough of those things and you're looking at some serious cash.

Another more common way of using leverage is in conjunction with the launch of a product or business. If you are confident that your idea will result in nice, fat profit margins once word about it gets out, it is possible to find investors willing to fund your venture at its onset. You can use this cash to spread the word quickly and jump right into those profit margins. This is, of course, much riskier than the first way, but if your idea is good it could result some very fast wealth.

At all times, remember this: business is a numbers game. The trick is to find as many ways as you can to bring in more money than you pay and to do so in a way that it does not require more time from you than you can spare.

Remember, you can make money anywhere there's a demand for something, online or offline. As long as you can keep your cost lower than your profit, you'll do well. Just remember to make sure your profit margins will eventually be big enough to hire someone else to do the work at some point in the future. (One reason I like online ventures: doesn't cost a whole lot to hire someone to take over for you IF you've set things up right.)

Like I said, it's a number's game. On a side note, I've had some numbers rolling around in my head for the past couple of days. Not sure if they're going to lead anywhere yet though. I'll let you know if they do. :-)

Good luck with your ventures.