Bringing a Product to Market: Florida's Forgotten Coast Calendar - 2013!

After reading The $100 Startup, I got motivated to bring a product of my own to market.  I've coupled my talent for photography with Lulu.com to create a calendar documenting my time on Florida's Forgotten Coast.  You can see a preview of the Florida's Forgotten Coast Calendar - 2013

Have a $100? Start a Business!

Even though many of us have been set back financially, even though many of us have lost jobs do to global competition, even though the deck can seem rigged, we still live in America.  It's a free country.  We can engage in commerce and start a business on a shoestring.  We can harness the same Internet that globalized the world economy and use it to provide for ourselves and our families.  It's really NOT that complicated.  It's simply a matter of finding the intersection of our passions and what customers are willing to buy.

If you'd like a manual, a how to guide, to help you think about starting a shoestring business as a side job or main source of income, you have to check out Chris Gillebeau's book, The $100 Startup.  It has great advice and success stories that will help get you started.  You can read a complete review of the book here:

Book Review:  the $100 Startup by Chris Gillebeau

The Best Things in Life Are Free: At Least, TV's are Free

There's no reason to spend a lot of money on a fancy television.  The world is literally awash in perfectly good TV sets.  You can pick them up for free by the curb, on craiglist, and by apartment complex trash compactors.  Here's how to the put a free TV to good use:

How to Make the Most of a Free TV

By John Atherton [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Saving on the Water Bill: Taking Shorter Showers!

Our water bill has just gone up!  We're putting in maintenance requests for anything that looks like a slow leak and we're trying to conserve water.  Here is a very useful article:

Eight Ways to Take A Short Shower

How to Flip Your Way to a Better Car

Every American wants a nicer car!  In a country of highways, bi-ways, and scenic routes, a decent car seems like a God-given right.  Unfortunately, having a decent car is hard when you are flat broke.  However, there are ways to work your way up to a cool car.  There are also ways to make extra money buying and selling used cars.

Check out this entry on car flipping on Side Hustle Nation:

 Side Hustle Nation: Car Flipping 

Eating Cheap!

My wife recently found an interesting blog for foodies who are on a tight budget:  The 99 Cent Chef.  It provides lots of ideas for meals where the main ingredient is only 99 cents.  He even features foods from the 99 cent store.  Every once in awhile, we will buy food from a dollar store.  However, we aren't very trusting of food Made in China.  We'll buy American-made foods and brand-name foods that we recognize at the dollar store from time to time.  But, watch out!  Sometimes canned foods at the dollar store aren't a good deal simply because the same canned food might cost less than $1 at the grocery store.

Instead of resorting to fast food, next time you may be able to whip up something good like this Peruvian creole dish called Ají de gallina..

By Dtarazona (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Cleaning Products for $1

If you want to save serious money, you need to check out your local dollar stores.  You can save serious money on lots of basic products like household cleaners.  On a recent visit to Dollar Tree, we were pleased to get a wide variety of cleaning products for only $1 each.  At the grocery store, you'd easily pay 3 or 4 times as much.