To Have a Good Living, You Do Not Have to Be an American Idol

Do you have to be the next American Idol to be in show business? You can be a performer in your own hometown and make a very good living ... without having your name in lights, or having a pesky manager tell you what to do.

There are countless performers working out of their homes being independent entertainers. Many of these people are magicians, clowns, singers, mindreaders, jugglers, dancers, comedians, or even tea party planners.

One performer, Silly Billy, works out of New York City, and does comedy and magic for birthday parties. Yet, he makes a good six figure income right out of his apartment.

Maybe you just want to throw flaming bowling pins over the heads of after dinner guests. Your imagination is the only thing stopping you.

First determine what you'd like to do.

Do you want to make a few extra bucks at parties or at the holidays? Maybe all you need to do is sign up to represent the local Santa or Easter bunny at the mall. But if you want to perform at a number of local parties, say, as a magician. You need to get some training.

You could find a local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Magicians or The Society of American Magicians. Look in the local library for books on magic. The web has tons of sites on performing.

Just look around and you'll find some place on the web that can help.

But it's not just about learning to perform. Say, you're very well versed in playing the piano. Do you just place an ad in the phone book and wait for the calls?

I was placed in a local phone book covering about 300,000 people. In the first seven months, I got only TWO calls. But, when I performed for a local daycare and had the director write a letter to all her associates around town, I booked `12 shows.

Getting the word out can be done with you becoming a "Hometown Hero" to other business people by giving special talks about what you do and how it benefits the local community. As you learn how to run your business, you become an expert in small business affairs. You talk to local groups about business topics and then they find out you are a performer!

Imagine going to a local networking meeting and telling everyone that you are an entertainer.

You'll get business right then and there.

Then there's the FREE show. But you have to give out these shows in a very specific way, not just willy-nilly. Can you give a program to a group that has these types of programs often? Can you give a program to a charity that will give you a list of attendees as payment? Can you donate the show and get a receipt from the organization.

Any performers who have been around for a while have been approached and done the FREE show. But before you do it, ask the planner if the food is donated ... are the other acts donated ... Is the power and meeting place donated? If nothing else is donated, except you,then you need to rethink performing for FREE (For the exposure, of course).

Other ways to get exposure is to always carry business cards and when you get within 3 feet of someone, be friendly. The conversation will always come up as to what you do, so you can give out your card at that time.

Is it possible for your to work in a fancy restaurant performing? Even if the pay is low, you will actually be getting money to promote yourself before the patrons.

The main thing you need to do is learn how to become a Marketing Maven. Learn all you can in selling yourself. Once you learn how to sell yourself, you have more shows than you know what to do with.

If your dream is to be in the spotlight, learn how to sell yourself on a daily basis, and your dreams of being your own hometown star will come true.

Millard Grubb has been a professional performer for most of his adult life. He has performed as a magician, mentalist, family entertainer, and had his own tv show in Chicago called, "Miracles of the Mind."© If you want more information on how you can learn to be a performer as well, then go to http://www.millardgrubb.com

The Last Year For Internet Scammers!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

I hope the 2007 to be the last year for internet scammers. I think it is really possible and fortunately I see that officials have started to stop HYIPs, Ponzi scheme and surfing programs and websites. I believe the they can do it if they want. Hope to have a scam free internet in 2007.

Surfing Programs, Good or Bad?

As a person who works at home or wants to work at home, you may be aware that some special websites called surfing sites have started working from about two years ago. Some people have made a lot of money with them BUT some people that can be more than the first group, have lost a lot of money.

What are surfing programs and should you join them or not?

Surfing programs can be considered as different kinds of HYIP programs that I already told you that you should not join. In fact, surfing programs are designed to make the HYIP programs legal. HYIP programs don't have any product to sell and they just take your money and pay you interest (if they pay of course). They have to do it for a while to attract more people. So they take the money from new members and pay it to old ones. This is how they survive for a while and when they succeed to collect a huge amount of money from new members, they escape.

Surfing programs do exactly the same thing but they just try to say that they are advertising programs that can send traffic to your websites when you join them. You have to surf a special number of websites everyday when you join them and they pay the interest t you accordingly.

In fact surfing websites are Ponzi schemes which are absolutely illegal. Ponzi schemes are the programs that take the money from the new members to pay the old ones. They survive just by joining the new members and to do that they have to attract more new members all the time. So they ask the members to refer new members for a commission and this is the time that they will become a pyramid schemes too.

They can not survey for more than few months maximum because they will be stopped by officials OR the merchant services they use will freeze their accounts and ... .

One of the best examples of the surfing program that cause thousands of people to lose thousands of dollars is 12dailypro.com. It worked for ten months. They were using a merchant account which was a scam (StormPay) and when StormPay saw that 12dailypro.com has millions of dollars in its account, decided to rip off the 12dailypro.com and all its members. They froze the 12dailypro.com and then stole money from all the members of the 12dailypro.com accounts.

Something that seems so strange to me is that the the StormPay is still up and running BUT there is nobody to answer people where their money is gone.

So Avoid Suring Programs.

HYIPs? Good or Bad?

Those who want to work from home and look for good work at home jobs will definitely find programs called HYIPs because you can find them everywhere on the web.

What is HYIP and should you participate in such programs or not?

HYIP stands for High Yield Investment Program. As you can see they are investment programs that you can invest in them and earn interest from the money you have invested. I said those who look for work at home jobs will find them because they will search for easy and probably fast money making opportunities on the web and because most of them are new to internet and even computer and so they love to find a work at home job that needs no skill.

This is the best opportunity for scammer to cheat people and specially people who want to make some easy money within the shortest time.

No let's talk about HYIPs a little more. I don't like to refer you to one of the HYIP websites because I don't like you to lose any money but it would be good if I could do that as an example.

What would you do if you found a website that paid 3% interest in one month? So if you invested $100, you would have $103 after one month.

It could not attract you because the interest is not that high and on the other hand you could do it the bank which is more reliable.

BUT what if you find a website that pays 200% in ten days??? and it lets you reinvest and reinvest and reinvest...?
It means if you invest $100 you will have $200 after ten days. You can reinvest the $200 and after ten days you will have $400 and ... . So if you reinvest, after two months, your $100 will become $6400!

What if you invest $1000 instead of $100? You will have $64000 after two months and after one year you will become even richer than Bill Gates.

It is amazing, isn't it? This is the way the HYIP websites attract peoples' attention. When people calculate the money that it can make for them, they will become greedy and don't even think that how the HYIP program that pays 200% interests after ten days makes this huge amount of money. They always say on their websites that they invest your money in stock market, foreign exchange and ... but one should be stupid to believe that investing in stock market and foreign exchange can make such a huge amount of interest and NO loss.

Some of the HYIP programs pay regularly for a few weeks or even a few months to attract peoples' trust. So those who were skeptical and started with investing of low amounts will invest more. Then the HYIP website will be disappeared with peoples' money. I knew a HYIP program that escaped with about $24 million dollars. I wish I knew where?

Some other HYIP programs are not that greedy. They escape after a few days with about $20,000 but I think they have several different HYIP websites at the same time and when they close one they will open another one.

Some others scammers love to know how HYIP scams do it without getting caught. Well I'd better to say "I don't know" OR "I wouldn't tell them if I knew" but the good news is that there are many good people who know and can BUT they don't and won't.

It is good to make money but the way that you do it is more important.

So if you like to work at home and make money over the web, another golden rule is avoid HYIP programs and websites.

Legitimate work at home jobs should be free to join!

There is a golden rule for choosing work at home jobs to join. If you don't like to be scammed or get involved in fraud, you should keep in your mind that a legitimate work at home jobs should be free to join. If you have found a program that needs membership fee you should become skeptical and proceed with caution. You'd better to forget about it but if it looks good, you should find out that how long it has been working on the web. You should find some other members in the forums and ask them if they are happy or not.

If the program has been working for more than one year without any problem and if there is no unhappy member or a bad record in BBB (better business bureau), it will be a good point otherwise you'd better to forget about it. Such programs not only don't make you rich and will not make any money for you but waste your time and money and cause you to give up at the first steps of your work at home business.

Please keep in your mind that forums are full of scam programs. Most of the so called HYIP always look too good and most people lose their self-control and dive in. Do not join any of them because it is very possible to lose your money. I know people who have lost as much as $120,000 in such programs. Unfortunately the end losers are poor people who want to make some more money to improve their family living.

So please keep in your mind that legitimate and genuine work at home jobs are and must be free to join. Happy working from home!

Work at Home Jobs, News and Updates

Welcome to my work at home jobs, news and updates blog. In this weblog, I am trying to help people to find the reliable and legitimate work at home programs and avoid scams.

I have been working from home online for many years. In all these years I have been cheated by scammers many times BUT I was able to make loads of money with the legitimate and good programs. Indeed, working from home and making money through the internet is not that hard but you have to know what to do and what not to do. You need someone who shows you the way and help you avoid scams.

I have not created this weblog to make money because I already have several websites and weblogs for making money. I may only post Google Adsense to this weblog to make a few bucks through clicks. As I told you, my goal for creating this weblog is helping people to work at home legitimately, legally, ethically and morally and - of course - they should make money. This is what that will make this business pleasant and joyful. Hope to be any help. Please also join my mailing list to be informed when I update this weblog. Thanks a lot!