Balance is everything. Do you find yourself constantly thinking about the next move in your business or financial situation?

Let me Share With You My Most Productive Day Of The Week: GODDESS DAY

I used to have a T-Shirt company called Wear ME Naked. Whenever I’m running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get things crossed off of my list I always remind myself that there was a time I had an entire list of duties for Wear ME Naked when the only thing on that list should have been “GET OUT Of RETAIL.” Unlike a lot of you wonderfully crafty and business minded artists out there I had no idea what I was doing and I was suited for other ventures.

Women by nature have the most amazing ability to take 17 steps back and look at the bigger picture. We are professionals at it and in my opinion it is one of the most important aspects of being an entrepreneur. But it helps in life as well, it helps in relationships and it REALLY helps with your relationship with yourself.

This is why ever Saturday I have a Goddess Day. I am not allowed to work at all. I have to have fun and get present. It’s one of my most productive days because I always come back to my work, my financial situation, my relationships with a refreshing perspective. And a list that is 100% in line with my mission.

So make time for yourself, if you are a man you can have God Day. Whatever it takes to take a few steps back and relax. The irony is you will be way more productive and you will love your life more.

We are always going to have a list. We are always going to want to move forward. You don’t want to look up and realize that too much time has passed and you have not been living your life. This is what being abundant is about. We focus on being the best we can possibly be, and lots of money is just one of the many side effects of that;)

Cheers,

Chantelle

Money Be What? Question #8

“I Am A Waitress And I Make Most Of My Money In Cash. How Do I Manage That?”

Submit YOUR Money Questions

Related Articles I Recommend: What Is The Jar System?

Get Your OWN Hand Made “Paint Your Own” JAR Kit To Put Cash In At HOME

For Budgeting HELP Mint.com

GREAT Book For Money Management Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

Disclaimer: I Am Not A Licensed Financial Advisor. We keep it a bit more laid back and relaxed on this site;)

P.S.  Hey:) Did someone you know who could REALLY use this information pop into your head just now? Don’t hesitate! Please, choose from the following icons below and Redistribute…Thanks

Money Be What? Question #9

“Do You Have Any Advice For Poor Struggling Artists Trying To Survive?”

Submit YOUR Money Questions

CLICK BUTTON BELOW to SUBMIT YOUR Questions

This Book REALLY Helped With My Attitudes Around Money

Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

Articles I Recommed: What Is The Jar System?

The Laid Off Artist’s Survival Guide

Discalimer: I Am Not A Certified Financial Advisor. We keep it a little more laid back and relaxed on this site;)

P.S.  Hey:) Did someone you know who could REALLY use this information pop into your head just now? Don’t hesitate! Please, choose from the following icons below and Redistribute…Thanks

Have Credit Issues?

Check out FDI. One of the many services they offer is CREDIT TRAX. These people fight like pit pulls to improve your credit score they are nuts! FDI is as Low As $39.99 a month

$39.99/month

***********************************************************************************************************

Budgeting Help!

Mint! This site is amazing. They email you to let you know when you have exceeded your budget and THEY make the budget for you, it’s FREE And it’s too easy.

They also email you when your bank charges you anything. I have avoided a few shady fees from a banking institution that shall remain nameless. Tee hee.

FREE

************************************************************************************************************

Large Amount Of Debt To Pay Off?

Once again FDI. They have EQUITY TRAX which will help you save up to 50% of the cost of your debt. I like how they don’t try to charge you a bunch of money to consolidate your loans and then hurt your credit score in the process. They go after the REAL enemy, which is interest.

Go to “Memberships” Under “Everything Financial” Credit TRAX will be listed there. You can check it out.

$39.99/month…you get More than Credit TRAX for this price.

***********************************************************************************************************

Looking For Grants?

Yep, that’s it. Watch out for scammy sites on this one.
My advice would be to go this route. It takes a long time. Don’t wait around
for the Government or anyone to fund your business. May I give you a tip?
If you are offering services or products have your customers PRE-PAY for them.
Say no to Receivables. Say HELL NO! You need Cash Flow to stay in business.

FREE

************************************************************************************************************

Need HELP With Receivables? Can’t wait for that Check Any Longer?

Advance Me

************************************************************************************************************

Need A Loan?

Prosper

FREE

************************************************************************************************************

Looking For Investors?

Like I mentioned above…have customers PRE-PAY. Most Investors like to see a company that is already making money. They have a system that if you Invest more money into it can be duplicated, expanded and therefore make more money. Don’t be that person waiting around for Investors, GET STARTED!

If you Are Already Successful and Looking to expand…

Looking For Angel Investors

Angel Capital Education

Angel Capital Association

Angel’s Den

K 4 Forum

Looking For Venture Capital Funding

VC Finance

FREE

*************************************************************************************************************

Legal Advice…

FDI (yes I mentioned them again, they handle a lot of problems at once) Has something with Legal Club of America where you can get FREE legal consultations when you need them. A lot of time we don’t need a lawyer to go to trial we just need some quick advice…

Tax Mastery Bootcamp/ Entity Structures…FOR BUSINESS OWNERS

I wound up going to this in March. A WEALTH of information. It’s REALLY important to learn how to PROTECT yourself and pay the FAIR amount of taxes you should be paying. Did you know that you are a sole proprietor by default? And as a sole proprietor you have the LEAST amount of protection and pay the MOST taxes.

You will walk away from this course knowing EXACTLY what entity structures you will need for your business if you have one so you will have MAX protection and pay the LEAST amount of taxes.

Money Be Green Loves you, so Go Here and enter THIS Code…D123

You will Save $500

Do we hook you up or what?

You may want to try these blog out too. They give some advice as well that you may find helpful for quick questions…My friend Josh recommended them and I checked them out, they are pretty cool!

Startup Company Lawyer

The Start Up Lawyer

***********************************************************************************************************

Need Someone You Can Trust To Manage Your Retirement?

FDI has something called “Wealth Diagnostics” Go to the main page and click on “Memberships”then click on “First Class VIP.” It will explain the details under “First Class Retirement.” They are not Mutual Funds. For those of you who don’t know, I definitely don’t promote Mutual Funds. Especially in this climate. They work with ETF’s ONLY. If you are not sure what I’m talking about you may want to check this out.

A lot of times you need to be an accredited Investor (make $200,000 a year at least and your net worth is $1 million or more not including the house you live in) in order to get people who know what they are talking about to even look at your money.

What I like about “Wealth Diagnostics” is that you have access to a good system and you can Invest as little as $100 a month. So do your research and check them out.

$129.99/month

As most of you know on this site we   talk a lot about being abundant as opposed to only focusing on growing our wealth. And as artists, who better to grasp this concept?

That’s why this month’s Featured Jar from The Artist’s Money Management System is THE GIVE JAR.

The Artist’s Money Management System is a Money Management System that is well suited for creative minded people and artists. It’s a well balanced, interactive system that is more your style. It focuses on Giving, Playing, Expenses, Long Term Savings, Investing and Education. You can read more about “The Artist’s Money Management System” Here.

I don’t tell people who to give or contribute to, I think you should donate 5% of your income at least to a cause that you are really passionate about, but Is it OK if I share with you a cause that I’m passionate about this month with you? Thanks!

UNITE FOR HUNGER AND HOPE: The FIGHT TO End World Hunger!

Did you know that…

• Over 500 million people are living in “absolute poverty” and more than 15 million children die of hunger every year.

• In The U.S. Alone, 46 percent of African-American children and 49 percent of Latino children are considered chronically hungry.

Here is How You Can Help…RIGHT NOW!

• Join this event and add a badge to your blog before April 29.

• Watch for upcoming news releases and topic backgrounders.

• Visit Heifer International to learn more about Pass On The Gift.

• Make a donation or take some other action to end world hunger.

• Post about world hunger on April 29 with links to solutions all over the world.

If you find that you are a person who often really wants to give but never has the money or time to feel free to get in touch with me on any specific questions or issues you may have. You can Ask Me Anything!

Looking forward to hearing from you! Thanks for hearing me out, and way to take action and be a part of the solution to an ongoing problem:)

Cheers,

Chantelle

Visit Money Be What? Now! And Ask Anything!

Visit Money Be What? Now! And Ask Anything!

A Master List of FREE Resources You Need to Build The Perfect Blog!

Most people spend 80% of their time building and refining products and services that nobody knows about. The other 20% of their time is spent on imaginary administrative duties they can’t possibly HAVE because they barely have any customers.

YES, pat yourself for putting something up online to sell in the first place. You are ahead of the crowd. But here is how you win the race…MARKETING MARKETING MARKETING. Start with a Wordpress Blog and I can help you from there!

I put together a super sweet list of Blog Building and Internet Marketing Tools that really helped me out. So here it is, all in one place. All that’s left is to take action. I present to you…

THE Artist’s FREE Blog Building and Marketing BIBLE!

*All of these puppies are FREE (except maybe 2 or 3)…I Keeps it REAL!

Da Button Factory- FREE! For making buttons
on your blog that can lead
to other FREE pages

Photo Bucket- FREE! For for hosting photos. Also has photo editing software but Picnik is better for that.

Wufoo -FREE! One of faves. If you need forms for your readers to fill out of any kind. Wufoo’s got you! GREAT for collecting data from your visitors.

Weebly - FREE websites! I make buttons on my blogs. Then I link those buttons to a Weebly website where I sell my products and services. All of this is for FREE by the way.

Pay Pal - You can generate buttons here to accept payments. It will lead buyers to your Pay Pal Account. So make a button on your site that leads to your FREE Weebly website and paste the Pay Pal Button Code to accept payments…FOR FREE! You don’t need a Merchant Account!

Feedburner -For Website Subscriptions. You are going to want to collect email addresses to build that database. When folks subscribe to your site, every time you post an article on your blog/site they will be notified by email. Very powerful.

Google Analytics- Everything is MEASURE and MODIFY! You NEED this! It gives you detailed data on your website. You will be able to see graphs of EVERYTHING. So when you see something is working put more energy behind it. When it’s not. Kick it out of bed and focus on what IS working. Good for seeing monthly visitors, bounce rate, percentage of new visitors, page views, average time spent on site, geographical where people are tuning into your site, which articles of yours are the most popular, the specifics of SEO on your site, where traffic is coming from and much more…

Wordpress- Just trust me on this one. I just recently moved my blog and it was…well it wasn’t all that bad actually because Wordpress is so amazing they have a really cool transfer feature for blogs. But, yeah. Start off with Word Press.

Twitter- Status updates. A good way to drive attention towards what you are doing. Re-tweeting, hash-tagging, @replying hell of a good time!

Facebook- Facebook Fan Page! Make a low key group, use it to invite all your friends to your Fan Page.

Adsense- Website Ads that pay out very well. You’ll insert their code onto your website and they will put relevant ads on your site. It’s really easy. I don’t use these ads because I am talking a lot about financial stuff. I’m kind of afraid of the ads that might pop up and I want to make sure no one is clicking on questionable ads on my site. I only recommend products and services on this site that I have used and most of them I am currently using. But Adsense is cool! Quick Tip: DON’T Click on Your Own Ads! You’ll Get Banned!

Chitika- More ads to run on your blog/website. Never say no to extra revenue. These ads are search engine oriented.

Amazon Affliates- Very easy Affiliates for your blog/website

Mechanical Turk- Get people to rate, comment, follow and read your blog for REALLY cheap. { like .02 cents a hit} Click on “Get Results.”

Jottit- Great for linking people to information of any kind. Like A “Special Thanks” page, “More Information” page, or just really good Web Copy.

Mailing Check - When emailing your friends about your new blog, check your emails to make sure they don’t end up in someone’s Spam Folder. Did you know “hello” puts you up in the spam rankings? Quick Tip: Make sure your email text is the width of 21 W’s. This will keep people’s attention. Double space your paragraphs and be sure to only write 2-3 sentences per paragraph;)

Linked In- Use this account to ask compelling questions to drive traffic to your Blog or Facebook page.

Quantcast- Use this to look up other sites’ demographic information, and your own. Great for getting the 411 on your competition.

You Tube- For embedding videos on your blog. Pictures and videos and very important. Promote your channel on your blog/website of course!

Ezine- submit your best articles for massive exposure! Don’t re-post articles you have already published elsewhere. Google will Penalize you!

Moo! - Cheap and very cute business cards. God I love these little slivers of bliss! Always have cards on you, marketing yourself in person is very effective. Quick Tip: Consider the back of your business cards a billboard. You know how much people pay to advertise on those! So don’t leave it blank! Use it offer people something for visiting your site. Be creative! Give stuff away for FREE! Don’t be greedy, it’ll get you nowhere. You should always be searching for extra value you can offer the people that support you. That being said don’t go passing out free conflict free diamonds or anything.

Tube Mogul - Guaranteed Video Views!

Jing Project - Screen capture software FREE!

Picnik- FREE Photo editing software. For resizing images, cropping, auto adjusting, basic things you don’t have to pull up Photo Shop for…

Flickr- Got a Photo Gallery? This site is pretty sweet for embedding photo galleries on your website or if you just want to use the link to lead visitors to your photos you can do that as well. Plus the individual site drives traffic to your images. FREE!

Log Me In - Logs you into your computer at any computer…

Click Bank- Affiliate for anything digital, e-books, audio, video products (no merchant account needed)

Google.com/options- list of FREE services Google has to offer

Google Sk Tool- Search based Key Word tool. Find the best key words, find out how popular they are and what your competition is. FREE!

Archive.org-  Internet Archive of websites. Again, great for sniffing out the competition. FREE!

Special Thanks! Hoan Ton-That, Paul Mc Kellar, Alex Mandossian, Christine Comaford, Peak Potentials Guerilla Business School

P.S.  Hey:) Did someone you know who could REALLY use this information pop into your head just now? Don’t hesitate! Share the wealth. We can’t expect wealthy people to share their money with others if we ourselves are not willing to share what we have Right Now. So please, choose from the following icons below and Redistribute…Thanks

written by Christine Whitmarsh

originally posted on her blog September 25, 2008

With each drunken daily dive of the stock market, arguments that the economy remains strong beneath it all grow ominously silent. Even the most resolutely optimistic economic experts are now sitting in an overwhelming cone of silence and self-doubt with tapping fingers and furrowed brows.

Regardless of whether you agree more with the doomsday crowd or with the finger tapping skeptics, it’s easy to agree with one indisputable piece of evidence: something is happening to the financial foundation of our country – and it’s not good.

Trying financial times like these remind me of the classic lifeboat story (no, not the one with the pope and Raquel Welch). The basic premise, no matter how it’s told is that some type of global catastrophe has happened and a number of survivors of various vocations are trapped in the last remaining lifeboat. There are only enough resources remaining for a certain number of people to survive and of course there is one too many survivors. The group is forced to decide who to jettison. In all these stories, doctors seem to fare the best and they can’t dump the lawyer and tax collector overboard fast enough.

Assuming we continue on this turbulent economic course, I can’t help but see the national business marketplace as that lifeboat. The exception, of course, would be the lawyers. When people drown in the ocean they reach for life preservers. When businesses sink, they reach for lawyers (or now, the federal government). Although we can still safely evict the tax collector from the boat, especially in light of the new tax bills they will unfortunately be tasked with delivering door to door next year.

Following this logic, and based on my profession as a writer, I’m thinking I’d better either become Michael Phelps real fast or pull a MacGyver and learn to perform surgery with shoelaces and a pen knife. In economic end times like these, I seem to have found myself in a group perceived as even lower than tax collectors on the lifeboat survival priority list.

As a professional writer, I am disturbingly aware that my position in the corporate food chain is a precarious one. I hate to break any hearts, but here are some others whom I count as my compatriots in this dilemma: painters, dancers, sculptors, singers, actors, website and graphic designers, photographers, and all the other folks not directly related to keeping clients’ and consumers’ lights turned on, kids clothed and food on the table.

During Great Depression Part I in the1930’s, President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration created a slew of government programs devoted to putting artists to work, practicing their respective crafts. The result was a permanent reflection of life during that time (for example, John Steinbeck’s classic novel “The Grapes of Wrath”). This time around we have the free form accessibility of blogging along with endless hordes of artists who don’t feel the need to wait for money or permission to document their perspective for posterity.

That’s all well and good, but what about those of us whose careers depend upon a client company’s need for a creative product? What is the value of creativity in a failing economy?

Creative professionals craft the words, images, colors, sounds and moving images that companies use to connect with the public. How likely would you be to shop at a department store with an empty (or so dull that it might as well be empty) store window? Or if you passed the window day after day month after month and nothing changed – would you predict the store inside to be terribly interesting? You get the point, I’m sure.

As the economy continues to leak and more and more businesses find themselves in danger of going down with the ship, the creativity at the core of those companies may turn out to be their saving grace. Those who stand out from the crowd are apt to be more noticed now than ever. In a thriving economy, it’s easy for a company to get lost among the bright colors and flashing lights of entrepreneurial fever. Creativity in times like these is reserved for companies who dare to keep their image and message fresh, dynamic and the center of attention.

It takes a certain amount of guts to continue acknowledging the existence of the folks who keep the creative heartbeat of your company beating. Sometimes it takes a moment to remember that we’re not in the corner sketching fruit baskets and landscapes (no offense to those who do). Creative professionals are there to see your organization through a fresh set of eyes and make sure that your message is seen and heard by your target audience.

Without creativity, any economy, failing or otherwise, is at risk of becoming extinct under a cloak of invisibility.

As we all wait anxiously for the stock market to somehow sober up and fly right again, let’s not forget the “less essential” occupants of the lifeboats that we’re all piling into. We may seem to be the most expendable at first, but if you ever find yourself in a lifeboat with a writer or any other artist… when it’s time to toss someone overboard, do us a favor and at least give us a pity vote.

For More Creative Action Go Here.

This Blog Lives HERE Right Now, But Don’tWorry, It’ll be crawling back;)

Read “Credit Where Credit Is Overdue” HERE on Ezine…

P.S.  Hey:) Did someone you know who could REALLY use this information pop into your head just now? Don’t hesitate! Share the wealth. We can’t expect wealthy people to share their money with others if we ourselves are not willing to share what we have Right Now. So please, choose from the following icons below and Redistribute…Thanks

I want to thank Etsy.com so much for having me today and letting me present “Money Tips For Artists” So much fun! I really loved the vibe and the energy from the Etsy Community in the Classroom today.

If you didn’t get a chance to catch it I had a few people ask if it was recorded. I couldn’t record it I apologize, but I want to leave you with something.

The Artist’s Money Management System was the outline of the Lab

Cut Those Coupons Captain is a great resource for saving money on groceries.

The Laid Off Artist’s Survival Guide is an excellent resource for passive income through the internet and some helpful tips in the Health Insurance Department.

Credit Where Credit Is Overdue 10 Quick Tips On How to Save Your Credit, Even In THIS Economic Climate.

If you have any questions at all or would like to share with me where you are financially right now and where you would like to be I’d love to share my resources with you!

lessworkmoreart@gmail.com

Cheers and Much Love,

Chantelle