Many baby boomers dream of working from home. Anne Wayman, over at The Golden Pencil, recommends a freelance writing career might be your way to get out of your 9-5 job and into a home-based job. But it’s not easy.

In this recent post, Anne gives some advice to an aspiring freelancer. She also lists lots of freelance jobs each week for you to check out. And if you want information about how set up the business side of your writing, see my blog, The Thriving Writer.

And if you want some more great advice on becoming a freelancer, here’s another recent post from Glen at LifeDev: “How Freelancers Can Kick Crappy, Outdated Business Norms.”

Tags: baby boomers, freelance writers, The Golden Pencil, The Thriving Writer

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If you’re tired of me going on about my own email habits, go over to Home Biz Notes and watch Yvonne Russell do it.

Yvonne mentions in the post that she has a spam problem. Here are some recommendations for those who are encountering the same thing (I’d have to say this probably includes almost everyone with an email address):

Try SpamBayes. SpamBayes is a spam-deleting plugin that’s compatible with many versions of MS Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Gmail, and Thunderbird. Some of the versions are tested, while some aren’t. I’m using the version for Outlook 2003 and it works great. Here’s a better description of the plugin from the website:

SpamBayes will attempt to classify incoming email messages as ’spam’, ‘ham’ (good, non-spam email) or ‘unsure’. This means you can have spam or unsure messages automatically filed away in a different mail folder, where it won’t interrupt your email reading. First SpamBayes must be trained by each user to identify spam and ham. Essentially, you show SpamBayes a pile of email that you like (ham) and a pile you don’t like (spam). SpamBayes will then analyze the piles for clues as to what makes the spam and ham different. For example; different words, differences in the mailer headers and content style. The system then uses these clues to examine new messages.

Source: SpamBayes Sourceforge Website

Nip it in the bud, I mean, server. Another method of attacking spam is by tightening your mail protection from your mail server’s end.  This is much easier if you own the domain name or the host where your email is put.  For example, I own, state, example.com.  My email address, celine@example.com can be controlled via an online panel that let’s me control how tough the mail server is on spam.  The procedure depends on your control panel, or server, but when you do this there’s a risk of getting “false positives”.  To avoid that, make a whitelist of email addresses or domains that your mailserver will see as “ham” instead of “spam”.

If you must give away an email address to potential spammers, use Mailinator or a similar throwaway email address service.  I wrote a post about it here.

If you place an email address on a website, odds are the spam-bots are crawling it.  To avoid this, especially with a new account, use an email address encoder.  Web browsers can read it, but most automated email harvesters can’t.

Do you’ve any suggestions on how to cut back your email spam?  Please share them with us in the comments.

Tags: anti-spam, avoid spam, delete spam, E-mail, Email, spam

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Image by, well, me. Celine Roque.
PimpYourWork.com

The 80/20 Principle is also known as the “Pareto Principle” or “the law of the vital few”. Generally, this means that 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of the causes. Here’s example of how this relates to business:

• 80% of your work is done in 20% of your working time
• 80% of your income comes from 20% of your sales
• Originally, the ratio was used to illustrate that 80% of wealth was distributed to 20% of the population.

80/20 isn’t meant to be a fixed ratio. Other ratios such as 7o/30, 90/10, and 95/5 also exist. However, the general “grouping” idea is the same.

So what? How do I use this 80/20 Principle?

If you’re in charge of marketing, see which marketing efforts produce 80% of the leads (or the general bulk, since the rule isn’t intended to be exact) and focus your resources and energy on those.

If you want to boost your productivity, try to measure if 80% of your required daily work can be accomplished in 20% of your required daily work hours.

If you take care of product development, see which products bring in the bulk of the sales,  and focus on selling, manufacturing, and improving those.

Are you a team leader?  Figure out which of your members produce the bulk of the results, and find a way to improve the output of the others or assign them to other tasks.

Other articles on the 80/20 principle:

The 80/20 Principle: 11 Ways to Boost Your Life from Life Optimizer

A more academic approach to the 80/20 principle can be found here

Do you use the 80/20 rule in the office?

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Filed under: Estates, Celebrity Shopping

It’s the season for worrying each last deduction you can possibly take on your taxes. As you are sweating those last minute details here’s a story to make your blood boil. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison will get a $3 mllion tax break because his Japanese-style home in Woodside, California is “functionally obsolete.”

Ellison’s Octopus Holdings LP purchased the 23-acre site in Might 1995 for $12 million and then sent to work on a nine year project constructing his version of Xanadu, a lavish 8,000-square-foot home based on a Japanese emperor’s 16th century estate. Ellison seems to have a taste for all things Japanese, he also purchased a home in Atherton in 1987 and turned it into a Japanese-style palace with seven bedrooms, a traditional tea home, bath house, gardens, a koi pond and waterfalls on 2.8 acres. That home was quietly put on the market in 2005 for $25 million. The property website for that home is here.

According to the Chronicle, the assessor’s office based its January 2005 valuation of Elllison’s Woodside home on reproduction costs, the $166.3 million it should have cost to build the home. The construction actually cost more than $200 million. But attorney William Bennett representing Octopus Holdings argued that the property was worth only $64.7 million at that time and in the two tax years, since entitling Ellison to a $3 million rebate on taxes paid. The appeals board concurred and so the $3 million will come from San Mateo county’s property taxes paid this year. Of that $3 million it is estimated that almost $1.4 million would have gone to schools in the area .

Ellison’s home decline in value is shocking in an area that boasts very high-priced real estate thanks to the Googleaires, people who made their fortune at Google and invested in massive homes locally. The reason for the dip in value is essentially that Ellison created a home that no one else would want to purchase. The home is stated to suffer from “significant functional obsolescence” because the Japanese architecture, elaborate landscaping and over improvements to the property have made it a home that’s high-priced to maintain and has reduced value to to others.

Ellison, who has a net worth of $25 billion according to Forbes, has turned his attentions to Southern California in recent years. In 2005 he picked up five lots in Malibu’s expensive Carbon Beach area for a reported $65 million and is stated to be looking into buying an NFL franchise for Los Angeles.

As the Chornicle article points out, perhaps the only good news out of this might come from the fact that it draws attention to the fact that homeowners can have their property values reassessed. With the declining real estate market in many regions some people may be in a situation where their property is being over-assessed but they’re not aware of it.

[Thanks to Uncle Roger and Lana for calling our attention to this one]

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Filed under: Estates

For the next couple of weeks we’ll be checking out some homes in the most costly zip codes in the United States, up this day, 02554. This zip code is is on the island of Nantucket off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. While not the ideal place to wait out a long winter (it’s a 30-mile ferry ride from the Cape) it is a very popular place to spend the summer months. This zip code has a median price of $1,550,000 and an appreciation rate of 321% since 1990.

Today’s home is a newer build but it has many of the qualities associated with Nantucket homes includes a shingled exterior, plenty of clean white walls and blue accents, a widow’s walk and views of long sandy beaches and the Atlantic Ocean. This almost two-acre property is located in the Squam area of the island and is actually two houses on one property, a four-bedroom main home, and a two-bedroom guest home with a pool and spa. This property is listed at $11.75 million.

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Continue reading Most Expensive Zip Codes: 02554, Estate of the Day

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When the E-Bay reseller idea became popular last year, several people in my town jumped on the idea, but they quickly learned it wasn’t such a great idea.  Sean Kelly at Franchise Pick discusses why these reseller stores might not be the franchise opportunity they were billed as.

Both of the people who signed up for these franchises are now closed.  It is a good idea to check Franchise Pick regularly if you’re interested in a franchise opportunity.  Sean keeps his ear to the ground and passes the news on to you.   You can also search companies (down the right side of his blog) for those that interest you.

Tags: , ebay, Franchise Pick, franchises

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When the E-Bay reseller idea became popular last year, several people in my town jumped on the idea, but they quickly learned it wasn’t such a great idea.  Sean Kelly at Franchise Pick discusses why these reseller stores may not be the franchise opportunity they were billed as.

Both of the people who signed up for these franchises are now closed.  It is a good idea to check Franchise Pick regularly if you are interested in a franchise opportunity.  Sean keeps his ear to the ground and passes the news on to you.   You can also search companies (down the right side of his blog) for those that interest you.

Tags: , ebay, Franchise Pick, franchises

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Jim Gordon over at the Boss Hatch blog has a great post on how to form an LLC. I’ve formed two of them, and they are super easy to form, without an attorney. Which is one reason attorneys often won’t tell you to form an LLC. They want you to form a corporation so they can take your money (it’s pretty tricky to form a corporation without an attorney).

An attorney friend of mine stated, “Attorneys who tell you not to form LLCs don’t understand them.”

Think about an LLC for your business.  Go to the website of the Secretary of Say for your state and get the information you need to set up your LLC.

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Jim Gordon over at the Boss Hatch blog has a great post on how to form an LLC. I have formed two of them, and they are super simple to form, without an attorney. Which is one reason attorneys often won’t tell you to form an LLC. They want you to form a corporation so they have the ability to take your money (it’s pretty tricky to form a corporation without an attorney).

An attorney friend of mine said, “Attorneys who tell you not to form LLCs don’t comprehend them.”

Consider an LLC for your business.  Go to the website of the Secretary of State for your say and get the information you need to set up your LLC.

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When the E-Bay reseller idea became popular last year, several people in my town jumped on the idea, but they quickly learned it wasn’t such a great idea.  Sean Kelly at Franchise Pick discusses why these reseller stores might not be the franchise opportunity they were billed as.

Both of the people who signed up for these franchises are now shut.  It is a good idea to check Franchise Pick regularly if you are interested in a franchise opportunity.  Sean keeps his ear to the ground and passes the news on to you.   You can also search companies (down the right side of his blog) for those that interest you.

Tags: , ebay, Franchise Pick, franchises

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