Learn How To Sell

There are so many people that are looking to either change their careers or to be able to supplement their income.  For those that are looking to increase their income, they probably need to learn how to sell.  One of the faster ways of generating additional income, is to be able to sell some sort of product or service.  Most people are amazed at some of the unique ways that they can earn additional income, just by learning how to sell. 

Sell things you own on eBay

For many this will be a complete adjustment to some of the skills that they already have.  They will need to learn new skills in order to be successful in selling their products and services.  You can learn how to sell some of those things just sitting around at your house, through understanding of the ins and outs of auction services such as eBay.  Perhaps you are interested in other Internet income generating ideas, and need to learn new skills in order to be successful in this area.  When you learn how to sell, you will begin to understand some of the marketing and sales techniques that will allow you to be successful.  These sets of skills can be used for just about any endeavor that you are looking to get involved in.

Learn to sell with online courses

There are a variety of websites that can help you learn how to sell.  These sites may teach you how to sell products on your own website, or even affiliate marketing.  With the Internet being such an untapped resource for potential earnings, we begin to see more and more people explore this.  With the economy being in such a difficult state, there are more people willing to learn to sell on the Internet.
There are often many websites that will offer programs for small charges.  These will help you to learn how to sell.  These can be a great tool for those that may not know how to sell, especially using the Internet.  They will explain the different ways as well as the potential to begin to learn how to use the resources of the Internet.  You can learn how to sell items that are collecting dust, or begin to sell information that can lead to earning potential.
 

Be open minded to selling

As long as a person has an open mind and willingness, you can learn how to sell just about anything.  You need to have a good positive attitude, as well as the time and the energy to begin your journey into sales.  This will not turn you into some use car salesperson, but will give you the tools to be successful in learning how to sell just about anything.
Take a look at a variety of websites that offer tips and tools on how to sell.  Before you choose a program, make sure you know that it is from a reputable source.  You can take a look at what other people have said about that particular program as well as their success.  You can always check with the Better Business Bureau to make sure that the company has a good reputation.  If you learn how to sell using the technology at our fingertips, you may find yourself far out earning what you have in the past.

Learn how to invest

These last couple of years of financial crises has scared many people off from learning how to invest, and certainly from actually investing in the market. People are afraid that sustainable market gains are a thing of the past, and that nobody will ever make money in the market again. In this Learn new Skills article, called learn how to invest, we will look at some of the myths surrounding stock market investments, and also explain why it can be safe to invest in stocks if you invest for the long term.
 

How to invest in the stock market

Just to make this clear from the get go, Learn new Skills does not and will not recommend specific stocks to invest in or not to invest in. In other words, the “Learn how to invest” article series does not contain specific stock advice, only information about methodology and principles for your investing education only. What stocks you decide to place your own money in will be your own choice. None of the companies mentioned in this article series are in any way affiliated with this site or endorsed by this site.

Ah, great, now that we have got that out of the way, let’s look at the different methodologies investors commonly use when they invest in stock. As a side note, learning about investing is a lot about looking at what the time-proven investors have done, like Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham. You will never find a detailed roadmap by studying them, but you will clearly see the framework they use to choose the stocks they invest in. Now, back to methodologies.
 

Value investment – Value investing – Long Term Buy and Hold (LTBH)

The investment style popularized by Warren Buffet and conceptualized by his mentor, Benjamin Graham, is in simple terms a method of buying companies with a long history of solid earnings, and with products that never go out of fashion (often because they have never been in fashion).

Value investors, or LTBH investors for short, often study the balance sheet in detail, and do Discounted Cash Flow analysis’s of the company’s cash flow to arrive at their estimate of value. This leads to one of the main tenants in LTBH, the specific notion of price vs. value.
 

Value vs. Price

Warren Buffett is famous for saying that price is what you pay for the stock, value is what you get. And these two are often completely out of synch. As an example, for much of decade of 2000, stock prices were far ahead of a stock’s, or underlying companies’, value.

A stock is simply a piece of paper (or electronic equivalent these days) that documents your ownership of a fraction of a company’s assets. This means that you actually own a part of the profit the company makes each year. You are in essence a company owner, on a small or large scale. This is very important to understand before you start to invest. Successful investing isn’t about lottery tickets, it’s about company ownership.
 

Learn how to invest = learn how to value a company

Since there is no way of concluding in a definite manner what a company is worth, the skills part comes to play in how good you are at estimating said companies worth. This is exactly where Warren Buffett excels. He is extremely good at valuing a companies assets and their long term earning power. He is also very attuned to recognizing management that can be trusted, and that has the talent to bring the company forward, even though he often says he wants to buy companies that could be run by monkeys (because their products are so good). Or perhaps that was Peter Lynch who said that, never mind.
 

Trustworthy management

This is another main principle in value investing, to find companies with management that can be trusted to do what’s best for the shareholders. With company scandals like Enron and Arthur Andersen starting to fade from memory, it is important to remind oneself that the people you are letting run your business are important. Investing in a company with bad management can literally be like throwing money out the window.

How do you spot good management from bad? Reading the annual reports from the company and noticing how the CEO communicates with the stockholders is one of the best ways to gauge the competency of the management. Also looking at the company’s track record for the last 5-10 years can give you clues. But ultimately you want to buy stock in a company where bad management really wouldn’t make that much difference. Yes, bad stewardship over years could dent the return on investment, but not bankrupt the company, as in the case of Enron and Andersen.

That’s about it for part 1 of the Learn new Skills article. Read more about investing in part 2 of Learn how to invest – coming soon

Photography skills

There are tons of fun and cool skills to learn, and one that is highly popular is photography skills. Photography is one of the most common hobbies in the world, and with the invention of digital cameras high quality photography is in reach for even the most budget minded.

Some go to college to learn how to make the most of a camera, but you don’t have to do that to take some really great shots. If you take your time and learn photography skills, you will lay a foundation for exceptional picture taking. When learning a new skill, grasping the basics is the foundation you need to excel and have fun with your hobby. Photography is no exception.

Tutorials and reference material

When you start learning photography skills, you may want to get reference material or read a tutorial that explains how a camera works, and the fundamentals of light, focus, and distance. There are various settings on a camera, and the manual ones are the ones that take the best shots. Auto setting works well for many, but for those truly artistic and breath-taking photos, you have to know what the most important settings on the manual camera really do. This should be part of your basic photography skill training also.

Good beginner camera

The next step in acquiring photography skills is to find the perfect camera for you. Some of them are very expensive, and this is for a very good reason. However, you can find a great camera no matter what your budget is, but you do have to be aware that some of the lower end cameras have their limitations. In any event, you don’t want to start with the most expensive and fancy equipment when you start to learn a new skill like photography. You don’t start out with a Formel 1 race car when learning to drive. Buy a camera that has the basic functions and not much more. You want to be creative through fundamental photography skills, not through preset, fabricated, effects.

Photography classes

Taking classes to learn photography skills is of course a fast track to getting your fundamentals in order. But for those that can’t attend classes, teaching yourself can be just as good. There are tons of web sites and books that teach you the basics about lighting, F stops, framing a shot correctly, and lots more. Online courses are also popular, and are a great way to learn photography skills at your own pace in your spare time.

Taking pictures is fun

Learning photography skills should be fun, or there is no point in having it as a hobby. As mentioned earlier, learning the fundementals is crucial if you want to see great results. The difference between a good picture and a bad picture is never the camera, always the one taking the picture!

Learn MMA

MMA stands for Mixed Martial Arts, and is one of the fastest growing sports in the US. The rest of the world isn’t far behind, with the Netherlands, UK and Japan as big MMA nations. The sport might seem brutal at first, but when you get to know it most people are thrilled by the complexity and variety involved with an MMA bout.

Not everyone wants to go a professional or armature fight. Getting hit for real just isn’t something that is compelling to most people, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn MMA. The fundamentals of MMA are great skills to learn and don’t involve getting beat up. They are also great sports to train and get in shape.

Fundementals

MMA has it’s roots in many different martial arts, but the most profound have been boxing, wrestling and brazilian jiu jitsu (BJJ). It was actually an BJJ effort by the Gracie family (credited with inventing BJJ) that led to the UFC which is the most popular MMA-promoter in the world.

The three martial arts mentioned above have dominated the sport of MMA since it’s inception. Learning MMA therefore should start with getting a grasp of these disciplines. This doesn’t mean that you have to train all three specifically, starting out, but you need to understand the vital roles they play in the sport.

BJJ

Of the three disciplines, BJJ is designed most specifically to be an all round self-defense skill set. It has its roots in traditional Jiu Jitsu from Japan, but has a greater focus on ground fighting. Most fights, either in self-defense or sanctioned, hit the ground at one point or the other. Being able to control your opponent, offensively and defensively, is the focus of BJJ.

The sport is usually trained wearing a Gi, which resembles the outfit used in Karate, and the practitioner relies on a combination of technique and leverage to outmaneuver their opponent.

Boxing

Learning how to box is important if you are to become a successful MMA athlete. It can also be fun for those that want to learn MMA as a hobby. Boxing is a large part of the stand-up element of MMA.

The point of knowing boxing in MMA is so that you can either out-stike your opponent, throw punches as a set up for a take-down, or go for a knock out. Do be worried about getting knocked out in practice if you go train at a gym that accepts beginner boxers. Quality gyms have strict rules about how hard members are allowed to spar in practice.

Wrestling

Many of the top MMA competitors come from a wrestling background. The UFC heavyweight champion was an outstanding wrestler in college, and he has built his MMA success on that foundation.

Although you do not need to join a wrestling club to learn mma, you should practice your sprawls, clinch, and take downs with a partner. If you train BJJ, you will probably learn enough wrestling there to get by.

Learning MMA is safe and gets you in shape

Remember that learning MMA doesn’t mean stepping in to a ring and beating someone up or getting beat up. The sport is practiced under guidance, wearing protection, and at a pace and intensity that prevents you from getting hurt. All sports have risk of injurie and so has MMA. But the risks are comparable, if not lower, than in sports like soccer or american football.

Amazing Magic Tricks

When I was a kid, the most simple illusions could sometimes seem like amazing magic tricks. I would see a card trick where a magician did some sort of elaborate divination to discover which card you had picked, not realizing that he already knew it. I would completely fall for the illusion, hook line and sinker. I suppose that is one of the things that is such a delight about being a child. So many things seemed wonderful and mysterious, completely baffling the mind and misleading the senses. Adults, however, need a more convincing illusion. Not just any card shark can perform an amazing magic trick that will hold the attention of people of all ages.

My magic beginnings

When I was in my late teens, I started to learn some magic tricks online. It wasn’t that I wanted to be a magician or anything, but I did think that knowing a few tricks would help me to understand the magic of illusions that fascinated me so much. In my late teens, I had a great cigarette trick that entertained my friends. I could easily make a cigarette disappear, then reappear behind someone’s ear. It was an easy trick to do. All it was was a bit of misdirection and sleight-of-hand – the fundamental illusions that all magicians use. Nonetheless, my friends thought it was an amazing magic trick. Being able to see one of their own do something so mysterious was a great opportunity for them.

Party tricks

I learned some similar amazing magic tricks with coins which I do to show off the parties from time to time, but I never got much further than that. I had seen so many stage magicians in my life that I felt like it would take a lot of talent to really stick out – talent that I wasn’t sure I had. For me, the magic was gone.

Taking it to the next level

Then I saw something that changed my perception. I was exposed to a magician doing so-called mental magic. He was guessing the numbers people were thinking of, convincing people that he was a psychic, and performing all other sorts of mental illusions. Some of them were quite uncanny. I really couldn’t tell how he knew what was in people’s heads unless he had plants in the audience. When I saw what he was doing, I knew that I had to try it myself.

Mental magic

What was interesting is that these amazing magic tricks required a much different sort of skill. Unlike sleight-of-hand tricks, mental magic requires a lot of psychology. You cue people in with subtle suggestions, read unconscious clues they give you, and in general learn to anticipate and understand various aspects of human nature. It is a subtle skill, and altogether different from most magical illusions. Nonetheless, it makes for some of the most amazing magic tricks there are.