I just wanted to let all of you know that I just posted the new dates for the future classes. For any of you who are new, I am talking about my business class that I teach to people who are looking for a part time income. I teach you to work with non profits to help them raise money. You make homemade cinnamon rolls to sell to non profit groups and they sell them for double what you charge them, A typical sale can make it easy for you to earn $250 -$500 in a weekend. Don’t get me wrong, I am not promising you that you won’t have to work hard, but you will have good money in your pocket at the end of the weekend.

I have been doing this for over 25 years, and I know for a fact that it works well. I am locally known as the cinnamon roll lady. People stop and ask me when the next sale will be. What else can you do to earn money where the customers are eagerly awaiting the next opportunity to buy from you. If you want to know all about it, you can go to our class page and get all the details. You don’t have to know how to bake, you can leave that to me. During our time together here at my commercial kitchen, you will learn everything you “knead” to know to go out and start building your business.

I would love to talk to you about it. Simply click the Google voice icon for a free call. I look forward to talking to you. In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderfully blessed day. Grace

Baby Boomer Entrepreneurs

Bake & Serve

I had the pleasure of being interviewed today by Mary Eileen Williams . I had a blast We had a great time talking about women over fifty who want to earn part time income. Hitting fifty opens up a whole new chapter in our lives, and women all over the US are embracing their age and the exciting opportunities that go along with it.

Mary Eileen has a really entertaining blog that I would like to encourage everyone to go and check out. She has great information for anyone over fifty about careers and life after fifty. Here is a small sample of what you will find on her site:

“The Feisty Side of Fifty,™ the site that celebrates a truly remarkable generation of women. We first-wave baby boomers, now fifty plus but nowhere near matronly, are rockin’ on and still flaunting our famously bodacious style and spirit”

Mary Eileen will keep you laughing while she offers great information on careers, fashion, and so much more. She also hosts Feisty Side of Fifty Radio. I would encourage you all to check out her show.

In addition to her radio show, she has drawn on her vast experience in HR and written a book. “10 Surefire Strategies for Jobseekers over 50”. You can find it on her website or Amazon.

Baby boomers have a chance to use all their life experience to craft a business that gives them freedom, as well as the opportunity to follow their passions. To listen to the show, simply click on the link below.

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/feisty-side-of-fifty/2011/02/18/grace-becker-on-feisty-side-of-fifty-radio

In addition to her radio show, she has drawn on her vast experience in HR and written a book. “10 Surefire Strategies for Jobseekers over 50”. You can use my affiliate link, find it on her website or Amazon. It gives great advice if you are in the market for your next meaningful job.

Please be sure to check out her blog. If you enjoyed the show, please feel free to share the link.

Get Your Niche in Focus

“Find your Niche” is one of the first pieces of advice anyone who is interested in working online will hear. If you are like me, that was a foreign term. Depending on the expert you are listening to, it even has a different pronunciation! Now I could give you the official definition of the word, but I will just use simple terms instead. A really rudimentary definition would be getting focused.

Basically, it is narrowing down a broad share of the market into a much more specific segment. Lets face it, most of us are not ready to be the next Walmart. We won’t be offering every product & service to everyone on the planet. Look at it this way. If your lawn maintenance guy tells you he can advise you about investing, how much faith would you put in his recommendations.?  If instead he told you what weed and feed product to use, and when to apply it, you would buy with confidence. That is because in your mind, he has established himself as an expert on lawn care, not financial advice.

Finding your niche makes it easier to be the expert.

It is far easier to gain expertise in one topic than in many. In this arena, claiming to be a “jack of all trades” will not be the best choice. For many of us, the word expertise is a stumbling block. We are too modest to claim to be an expert. Well folks, please excuse my bluntness, but get over it.

None of us have lived this long to not learned a thing or two along the way. I totally identify with any of you that feel like you are not an authority on anything. When I first started the process, it was really depressing. I took a class to find out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had owned my catering company for ten years, yet it was hard for me to say out loud that I was a pretty good baker.

I had to work to overcome that lack of confidence. When I did cinnamon roll sales for non profits, I got rave reviews all the time. I even became known as “the cinnamon roll lady”. I had to give myself permission to believe what others said.I developed my class for people who would like to earn money making cinnamon rolls for non profits. I love teaching that class. I know how to teach people who have no experience because I know how it feels to not have a clue.

As you can see, getting the word out about the class is critical, and as a result I had to learn a lot about niches, websites, blogging, SEO, keyword research and so much more.In the beginning I felt so confused. The great news is that as I learned new skills, I found out I love  working with the computer and blogging.I want to share what I have learned in the last two years.

I do claim expertise as a baker. But in the process of building this website and digging into blogging and affiliate marketing,I have learned a lot. I sleep in until 4:00am these days, but then I get out of bed, make my coffee, and fire up my computer. I have a blast learning these things.

You know what, I was really excited when one of my mentors said her all time favorite way to make money online is to learn something really well, and then share your knowledge with others. When you do that, you know what it is like to be in the shoes of your target market, and you are really familiar of what others are needing & wanting out of that niche.If you identify with where I started and are stuck questioning your expert status that is great news. Go find a niche you would love to learn about and get busy.

To find out more information about how start identifying great niches, check out my blog about keyword research.

Keyword Research Made Fun!

I wrote about some tools that you can use to find keywords for you to use in your blog to help drive traffic to it. Today I want to show you another tool you can use to find even more keywords. This is so fun to use, and it gives me so many ideas I may not have thought of otherwise. It is sort of like a brainstorming session with a friend, in this case, the friends name is Google. Watch this short video to see how easy it is to get started.

Go and have fun, try it out.Please let me know what you think, and lets share our fun stories.

Start Building Your Business For Free

I don’t know about you, but if I can get a good deal on

a good product, I jump on it. As I have taken tons of

classes on business, I have been amazed at what is

available for free. It makes sense though, because if

your read my last post about the power of the bloggers,

good businesses are realizing that happy customers are the

lifeblood of their business. Everyone appreciates it when

someone helps them, and when you offer free help, even better. That

creates good relationships, you don’t hesitate to do business with

someone who has given you stuff, as a matter of fact, you will look

for opportunities to do business with them. I know I do. [Read more…]

“Show Me the Money”

I know, there are lots of things that are so much more important than money, but that discussion is for another day. Yesterday I promised to help you (and me) squeeze out a little extra time by planning meals. I will have the first weeks menus ready in a couple of days.

So now that we have a little extra time, how can we use it to bring in the cash. I personally have spent a lot of time reading, listening to podcasts, watching webinars and more. One of the things that I keep learning more about is affiliate marketing.

Oh I know, there are a lot of scammers out there that promise millions but just take your money and leave you with empty promises. That was my initial thought too. But then I looked more closely. Over a year ago, my daughter added a link for a book she recommended for her clients on her professional website. It was an affiliate link to Amazon.

Now, if one of her customers clicked on that link and bought the book, she earned a small commission. Pretty cool, she simply made it easy for her client to purchase the book, and she earned a little commission from Amazon. It gets even better though, if that client clicks on her link to look at the book she recommends and then does other shopping while they are there without leaving the website, she earns a commission on the entire sale when they check out! Wow.

My daughter does not consider herself a salesperson, however when she mentioned that she had signed up with Amazon, I used her link to connect to Amazon and do all my Christmas shopping. She was pleasantly surprised when she saw her PayPal account the next month.Needless to say, in 2010, she made a point to share her link with family and friends who would be shopping on Amazon anyway. They did not pay a penny more to shop, Amazon simply shared some of their profit for the referral.

Our school has various fund raising programs (yes, cinnamon roll sales are one).  They sell SCRIPT cards also. Those are cards offered by the local and national retailers that are sold by the school. For example I buy a SCRIPT card for my favorite grocery store for $100. I use it to purchase $100 worth of groceries. I do not pay any extra for those groceries, but that store pays the school a commission for referring a customer to them.

Those examples are both great examples of affiliate marketing. It is what in the good old days was called “word of mouth” advertising. It used to be more localized, but the internet has changed all that. Now, you can recommend a product you really love and believe in  to others through social media,blogs, websites etc, provide a clickable link  with your affiliate id. When they click the link, it takes them to a page with information about a product. They can decide yeah or nay, with no sales pressure.

If they purchase, they will pay no more for the product, the merchant pays the commission. Sometimes those affiliate links can even make the purchase cheaper because sometimes the merchant will provide their affiliates with a special code that gives the customer a discount.

Now I never have had a great love of selling. When I had my catering company I had to learn how to do sales and marketing. It was never my favorite part of the business. I liked the baking the best, but as I got to know my customers, I learned to love interacting with them and learning what they needed that I could help them with.

As I learn more about affiliate marketing, I can see how I can “shop” for good deals on products and services, and when I find something I personally love, I can recommend it to my friends. Even if you hate to sell, once you understand the concept of affiliate marketing, I believe anyone can do it.

I have found some people I have really gained a lot of respect for in the affiliate marketing world. Recently, one of them told me about an online conference they are having to teach affiliate marketing at all levels. I am attending, so I wanted to tell you about it too. You can go and check it out for yourself. If it sounds like something you are interested in, I even have a code to get you a discount. It is: UnderTheWire.

Check it out for yourself. you can get  the information here If you decide that is something you are interested in maybe we can chat there. You have to hurry though because the conference is 1/14-16/11. By the way, that link is my affiliate link and if you choose to use it you will be a blessing to my family, but if this is not a good fit for you, no worries.

I would love to hear your thoughts, so please leave comments and we can chat about it. By  the way, don’t forget to check back for the menu for next week and we will all start the new year out right.

photo credit: marek.sotak