During a baseball game recently, an aquaintance told me he recently became unemployed. His specialty is building exquisite homes. So it’s not surprising the economy of the housing market destroyed his ability to get new contracts.

I asked what he is up to now and discovered he’s doing handyman work. He also stressed if I needed anything done, to give him a call.

Of course I’d call him. But it occurred to me he wasn’t doing a good job of selling his expertise.

Let me explain. What is your highest level of expertise? And can you explain it to me in a provocative way so that I want to take action and hire you today?

We can get into elevator speeches and closing methods, but what it boils down to is putting pre-thought into your message.

Instead of making someone else brainstorm possible ways they could use our services, we need to do the thinking ahead of time so they don’t have to. And wrap it up into a nice pretty package with a big bow on top.

What if he said “recently, I’ve been rescuing homeowners from $5000+ roofing and siding repairs by applying a specialized gutter and storm drain solution that costs only $350.00″?

I probably would have hired him on the spot. But since he left it up to my imagination, I’ll just call him when something breaks or I need something painted.

Thinking is hard. Most people don’t want to do it. Especially in these tough times, thinking ahead and selling your expertise is the difference between winning the jobs you want versus getting whatever scraps other people can dream up.

– Brad Isaac

Back in the dark ages of the Internet, 1995 or so the number of web businesses you could start were limited.

There was web page builder.  If you didn’t like that, there was always web page builder. 

Now, there are options.   There are many little cottage businesses you can start.  Some require more experience than others.  But a little creativity can go a long way in creating a side business quick.

Photo by Steve Woods  

Seth Godin posted two simple web businesses the other day that are both great ideas:

The world needs fixed-price web podiatrists…  

So, a pretty smart web-savvy person could have a checklist of fifty items and work her way through a corporate website. She could come back with a simple, easy to execute list of things worth changing:
–put USA above Afghanistan on your country pull down list
–make it so clicking on your logo takes me back to your home page
–the font is too small on this page and it’s hard to read
etc….  

…Second gig: Web analytics pro. Someone who can, for a generous hourly fee, set up analytics for a website and do weekly reports (by email) that are actually useful and actionable.

I find myself in need of services all the time.  There’s just not enough time in the day to do it all.  So if you are wanting to dip your big toe into the water of entrepreneurship, here are 4 of my simple web business ideas you can start in an afternoon:

1.  Comment moderator - The bigger the blog or web forum is, the more comments.  With comments comes spam, off topic jeers and endless irritations for the blogger or webmaster.  You can relieve these woes by stepping in and firefighting all these comments.

2.  Virtual assistant - This one is great for the Jack or Jane of all trades.  Here you’ll handle day-to-day tasks for a business owner.  Making copies, writing emails and so forth.  Do the smaller tasks right and it will open doors to the bigger ones.

3.  Software/web support - Is there a software program or site you are head over heels in love with?  If so, you can be a support specialist for the product.  As long as there is software, there will be people who don’t know how to use it.  This is where you step in and save the day.

4.  e-book from Blog Creator - Prolific bloggers write a lot.  Much of their best stuff gets buried in their blog archives.  You can be the one to dig it out, format it nicely and convert it into e-Book format.  I think this one is my favorite because I need that right now

Do you have any ideas for simple web businesses you can start quick?  If so, share in the comments!

To get more articles on improving your success and personal income, subscribe to the the Persistence Unlimited RSS.

This post is for online and offline professionals who are sick of chasing their tails.  It’s for people trying to market their business.  It’s for job hunters.  And it is for employees who want to get ahead at work.

You know who you are.  You try the next big thing trying to get sales or subscribers.  Little tricks and techniques to get you ahead of the game.

But many of these produce little or no results.  We’re still confused.  We’re still not getting what we want.

This isn’t an indictment of you or anyone else.  I jump on many of the “latest techniques” as quick as the next guy when I am searching for answers.  But more often the techniques end up as interesting diversions when all is said and done.

In the past two weeks I’ve had 2 companies contact me for help with their marketing.  One had read an online affiliate through Adwords e-Book.  The other was a stand alone business.

In both cases their questions went something like..

I am struggling with my business, how can I market it so that I am making money?  My web site is popular and gets decent traffic.  But few people buy.  Lately, however, I am making no sales at all. 

A quick visit to each of these sites revealed the main problem with both.

Both company sites were nice.  Created by professionals.  The designs were slick.  The graphics were eye-popping.

But they lacked one important feature.  The feature itself can be summed up in a question.

Before I tell you the missing piece of the puzzle, let me tell you about a recent chat session.  Rick contacted me about his goal to make more money.  He professed good computer skills equal to or greater than others in his industry.  But he was making less money than the others.

He wrote:

I keep contacting these companies to set up job interviews.  I go to the interview and think I make a good impression.  But they never call me.

Rick, like the companies above hasn’t asked himself the most important question anyone should ask before marketing anything…

BTW, marketing can be any promotion.  You promote yourself at work.  You can promote a book.  You can promote your church to other churchgoers.  It doesn’t matter, it’s still marketing.

By making that connection, you’ve won half the battle. 

A universal problem in all marketing

Which problem?  You are thinking.  Yes, there are many problems in marketing.   You can have bad breath one day.  You can say the wrong words the next.  But there’s something else that outweighs all the others. 

The problem all marketers face, be you a job hunter, shoe store owner or web affiliate is action. 

Action decides it all.  Someone takes action and you win.  Someone doesn’t take action and you lose.  Could it be any more simple?

Ahh.. but it’s not simple.  It’s a struggle.  Getting other people to take action is hard.  Heck, sometimes it feels I fight tooth and nail just to get people to sign up for my motivational articles via RSS which is only one button click away!

Or how about when I try to persuade dieters to take up walking and eating more veggies?  Some people will take action, others won’t.   But that’s ok.  I learned a long time ago persuading others to take action is tough.

The point being as a marketer you want someone to take action.  If they don’t, your message is flawed.

The #1 Question for Marketers

If your message is flawed, then what? 

You’ve been marketing up a storm, but the action response ain’t happening.

Do you quit trying to sell your products?  Do you stay working at a job you hate?  Do you deed a Kindle over to me?  By all means. On the last option anyway.

Instead of quitting, consider the #1 question.

By answering this question, you will be far ahead of your competition.  After years of doing what I do, I’ve come to realize very few people ever ask this question.

When I tell you, you’ll probably see it as being obvious.  I did when I first learned it.  I took it for granted.  I didn’t apply myself.

Only when I realized how important it was did things start to turn around in my work advancement, my software sales and my subscriber numbers.

Since action is the main result you seek from any marketing, it begs the obvious question.

What 1 action do you want your potential client to take?

The Power of the #1 Question

Let me break down the #1 question and explain why it’s so powerful.

1 Action - I stress only 1 action because you’d be lucky to get someone to take 1/2 an action if it were possible.  See the examples above.  A positive action – however small, opens the doors. 

If you throw more than 1 action at someone, statistically, they will do nothing.  People get confused.  They get overwhelmed by alternatives.  Sure there are those enthusiasts who sign up for everything.  But the key to marketing success is in the one action realm. 

What action do you want them to take? - Wow, here’s where you get your say.  What do you want a visitor to your web site to do?  What do you want the interviewer for that hot IT job to do?  Choose the action carefully.  You’ll almost always get what you want.

Hopefully a light is going on about the power of this question.

You can see what a disadvantage someone is at who seeks a second job interview or a phone call.  Shouldn’t she put first and foremost in her mind that she wants the company to offer her a job? 

When I first started marketing my software, I wanted people to take the action of downloading it.  So people downloaded it.  But what is critical to a business?  You have to make sales.  Since I focused so hard on getting people to download, I let things slip on the sales side.  Often times the sales link was broken.  Other times, I’d get emails telling me the sales page was missing entirely! 

It was Michel Fortin who got me to take a hard look at how I was running things.  Although he didn’t start out with the #1 question, he pointed me to the answer anyway.  The answer being that my business (or any business) could not survive on downloads alone.  I needed sales in order to survive.

Asking will change you

The second you know what one action you want others to take, a light bulb should go on.  When you set your sites on the action, your message will more effectively persuade others to take that action. 

Contrasting examples from a job search:

• A job candidate who doesn’t know what action they want the company to take.  He asks if they need a copy of his resume.
• A job candidate who wants the company to take the action of hiring her. She asks for the job.

Contrasting examples from an small business selling an e-book:

• The business owner who doesn’t know the action she wants her customer to take asks visitors to bookmark the site.
• The business owner who knows the desired action, places a special 1-time offer on the book for an immediate sale.

Contrasting examples from the world of work:

• An employee who doesn’t know the action he wants his boss to take works hard, keeps his head down and waits for a raise.
• An employee who does know the action also works hard, but makes it clear to the boss that he is working to one day run the company.  Therefore, the hard work is always in the context of him one day taking over the operation.

I know this is a subtle difference.  But if applied, it will make enormous changes to your results. 

Exercise for today:  Write down your top goal.  What bothers you most about this goal?  And what 1 specific action (if you could get someone else to take it) would help you reach that goal?

P.S.  Again, I’ll stress how important it is for you to subscribe to my my motivational articles via RSS.  You don’t want to risk missing content like this in the future do you?

One of the best email newsletters I subscribe to is Nick Corcodilos’ Ask the Headhunter. 

It is a fun newsletter that’s very informative.  And today’s issue was especially so.  A reader wrote in asking about an email received by a recruiter.  Apparently, the company in question requires all employees sign an agreement to stay on for 18 months and if they don’t, they have to pay to leave:

XYZ company has all of their new employees sign an agreement to stay for at least 18 months. This is because of the importance of their projects and contracts and because of the investment from their part with new employees and training and so on. They have everyone sign an agreement to stay for at least 18 months. If you do decide to leave before then, you are required to pay a small percentage of the fee that they paid to the recruiter for your hiring. The percentage lessens each month and the longer that you stay with them, the less you have to pay if you decide to leave. Unfortunately, this is becoming more common among employers.

Nick rightfully blasted the recruiter. 

What we have here is a recruiter who is a maggot trying to attract flies to a dying company.

It should be obvious to all, that when a company stoops to such schemes to retain employees, that their employees are very unhappy.  The solution to unhappiness is not punishment.  It’s not a poor reference.  It’s not a bill.

This situation is almost laughable if it weren’t so sad.  The company in question has their philosophy upside down.  If they had spent half the time, money and energy treating their employees with respect and appreciation instead of trying to trap them into some jail cell for 18 months, they wouldn’t be so desperate to find workers. 

As someone who hires and is hired, I know the power of employee appreciation.  Just last night, I had a contractor who worked for me before emailing me multiple times excited to get my next project.  That’s not because I made him feel like a prisoner, I didn’t make him pay to work for me.  No, I focused first on keeping him happy to be working for me.  I worked hard on developing positive feedback milestones and rewards for a job well done. 

This philosophy paid off for the both of us.  He acted as if this project was his own baby.  Every last pixel was in place.  His work was brilliant and stunning to look at (You’ll see it soon).  At project completion, I paid him cash within the hour and then sent him off with a sparkling reference he could use for other contracts.

What the company above can’t get through their thick skulls is people don’t want to be slaves.  They don’t want to work for leeches who will use them up and throw them away.  Not when they can go someplace where they feel good, have fun and are rewarded.

Do you have any work nightmare stories?  Feel free to share them in the comments below…

Profit is a bad word to many, but to others if they can’t make a profit, life isn’t worth living.

Regardless of your feelings about profiting, your ability to make a profit will decide many factors in your life. It will determine what you eat, your quality of health care, where you’ll live, and what you’ll be able to do with your free time.

“The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try
again in a different way.” – Dale Carnegie

The power of profit makes it an important concept to understand and ultimately harness if we want to take control of our lives. If we don’t profit, we are leaving too much up to chance. We can’t get the knowledge we need. We can’t help others to the best of our abilities. And we can’t live our dreams.

You may be new to the idea of developing a profit mindset. So I’ve put together seven simple ways to develop the mindset so you can start profiting immediately:
1. Remember Interest is money earned - When you put money into the bank, it earns interest. Some argue that it’s not a lot, but the bank is the first place to start. You eventually want to move into Mutual funds and bigger investments. But when you are just starting out, the bank is the safest investment. Interest leads to more money. Each deposit becomes a little earner who brings back money to you as the interest accumulates.

2. Spend Interest, not principal - My father had a great saying for holding on to your money. ‘Spend interest, not principal’ What this means is your nest-egg should never be touched, instead, use interest. That way, your investments will continue to earn more interest.

3. Treat found money as savings - If you’ve ever gone through the attic or garage and found a 100 dollar bill. Woo Hoo! That’s found money. Inherit some money or get a paid bonus would be considered found money too.

The thing to do with found money is to immediately put the lions share into the bank or investments. Spend a little if you like, that’s fine. But be sure to get your investments handled first. Saving and then spending is the best of both worlds.

4. Buy a house - When you have a decent amount invested it is time to think about owning a house. A fixer-upper is a good place to start. A house will gain value over time. Don’t let the housing market scare you from never buying a house. The houses that are depressed right now will be worth a lot in the next 10 to 20 years.

5. Buy a modest dream house - Once, someone advised me to “buy as much house as the bank will loan you.” I think that is bad advice.

Sure you want to buy a house of quality, but be very conservative. When you stretch yourself out with high house payments, you aren’t compensating for when life comes along and whacks you on the head. People lose jobs, people get sick, sometimes a leaky roof needs a $10,000 repair. If you are stretched to the point of breaking on a house payment, you can’t afford much of anything else.

Therefore, it’s better to buy a house with a lot of wiggle room in the piggy bank.

6. Invest for long term, not short - Don’t buy into the latest trends. I’ve learned this one the hard way when I bought a bunch of Cisco stock in 2001. They don’t call it playing the stock market for nothing. If you are going to put your money on the line for an investment, think “how much will this be worth in 20 years?” If the answer is “not a lot” or “I don’t know”, then don’t invest. That means it’s not a good investment for you.

7. Find something to sell - Do you have a specialized skill at repairing something? You can purchase stuff that’s defective, fix it and sell it at a profit. I know a guy who collects old LCD monitors, repairs or tunes them up and resells them for $100 a piece. Often, he gets them for free, but then makes $100 a pop. Not bad money considering he makes less than $20 an hour when his day job is janitorial. This is pure profit that he socks away into the bank.

You too likely have specialized skills or knowledge you can sell at a profit. When you own your own product or service, your ability to profit skyrockets. It’s no longer dependent on the will or whim of employers.

For more info: If you are looking for some good books and resources on making personal profit, you might also want to check out JD’s Get Rich Slowly Post.

If you like this post, please vote for it on del.icious, StumbleUpon & Digg – I really appreciate it !

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-Brad Isaac

“It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose your own.” — Harry S. Truman

Experts are debating whether the US and inevitably the world economy is headed for a recession.

Currently opinions among economists are split at about 50-50 to whether the US will experience recession in 2008. Other economists say that fear of a recession could help to cause one. And still others claim we are already in a recession.
If the economy is heading for recession, what should you do? Should we just plan on standing in soup lines and getting government cheese? Or is there a better way?

Here are 9 ways to recession proof your life you can start today…

Recession proof you:

1. Pay off credit - Probably one of the most powerful recession proofing moves you can make is to pay off all your debt. Paying off your credit means you won’t be a slave to your bills. It gives you the power of your paycheck and interest when you place money into investments.

• Sell off to pay off
• Pay off your smallest credit first
• Increase credit card payments without charging more

2. Delay gratification - Long gone are the days of allowing 4 to 6 weeks for delivery.

Now almost every business is designed to provide immediate gratification. You want to rent a movie? Fire up iTunes and watch it – now. Want some new software? Download it – now. Want a new gadget or gizmo? Order it today get it tomorrow via free overnight delivery.

What this “fast service” sets us up for is a feeling of need for immediate gratification. However, immediate gratification also hits your wallet very hard.

3. Develop long-term savings goals - How much money do you want to have when you retire? Starting earlier on that savings plan than later always works out better than starting later.

Recession proof your Work

1. Develop your niche - As you work at your career, moving toward a specialization is what brings in the bigger bucks. What is your specialty? What do people need from you the most? That is likely your specialty or niche that if honed will

2. Learn more - I sometimes hear stories of employees turning down free training. An employer offers to send you off to skills development training and you say no? Why would someone do that? Training offers opportunities to grow. It is also a good way to get away from the daily grind and give your mind some new ideas. But long term, it means more money in your pocket because you’ll develop new skills.

3. Take on the hard jobs - What are some of the jobs you can do well, but other people hate? For me, it’s marketing analytics (statistics). I love doing it, but others either don’t have the patience or simply hate the constant anylizing… By becoming the analytics guy, I become recession proof because if they get rid of me, then someone has to step up and do it.

What “hard job” do you actually like that you can volunteer to do? By doing it, you become the hero, the person they have to keep around.

Recession proof your family

1. Get your spouse/partner to sign on - Family men and women, it’s critical to get your “better half” to sign on. If you are saving but your partner is spending, then you are countering each other’s efforts. Have a sitdown where you both can express your thoughts and feelings about money. Do you want to constantly be running from creditors? Or do you want a sense of freedom that financial independence provides? Talk it out and reach an agreement.

2. Teach your children to delay gratification - Kids want everything. It’s your job as a parent, or older sibling, to help teach them their wants will always exceed the money. This is a challenge when they face the pressure of other kids and their toys. I think the best way to do this is I teach my kids to make things. Whether it’s a woodcarving, origami, dream catchers or planting a terrarium, by making things, patience is a natural by product. Patience is also a key to to delaying gratification, obviously. And when they learn to build, they learn that they don’t necessarily have to buy something when they can make something of equal interest.

3. Involve your children in family savings goals - Help your kids learn not to spend every dime. When they get a gift from Aunt Rose or earn some money for vaccuming the floor, take a portion and put it into savings.

For more articles on living your financial dreams subscribe to my RSS feed.

It was a gift I couldn’t afford to give…

When I was in college, one semester I was so bogged down helping other students with their studies, I did not have enough time for my own. As a result, my grades were suffering in most of my classes. How did I get into this predicament? I didn’t say no.

I wanted to help my friends and some acquaintances, because I am a nice guy. But by not saying no, it was costing me.

Chalk it up to youth, but I even felt angry sometimes at people for requesting my help. “Don’t they know I’m busy? I just helped them last week! How dumb can they possibly be???”

My advisor pulled me aside one day for a sanity check. He said that he could see I was over-committing myself to other people’s grades but not my own. I’ll never forget him saying, “It’s ok to say no every now and again.”

Something about the way he said that seemed to flick on a light bulb. I knew if I just said no more often, I could get my work done.

So in my typical style, I decided I would turn this into an experiment.

I vowed right then to say “no” to every request made of me for the next 30 days. This should be interesting…

My advisor didn’t like the idea. “That’s a little extreme don’t you think?”

I told him that after a lifetime of saying yes to virtually any request, I needed some “no practice.”

“What about your girlfriend? What if she asks?”

“Then the answer will be no – at least for 30 days.” I said. I truly wanted to see what would happen when the people I normally said yes to suddenly got a “no.”

Would they stop being my friend?

Would they argue incessantly?

Would they call the police? Ok, I just made that last one up.

I would love to tell you that the first time I said no to one of these people, they fainted, and lightning cracked in the distance and there was a loud Hosanna. But, alas, saying no was not nearly as emotionally impacting as I originally thought. In fact, I only recall one person asking “why?” during those 30 days. To which I responded I was busy. He stopped asking after that.

Turns out, if you say no, the one asking you will just go find someone else to ask.

I feel it’s a tragedy at least personally when one spends all their time working toward the goal achievement of others while ignoring one’s own personal goals.

Part of mature goal Setting is concluding you only have limited time. You can spend most of that time worrying about what other people want or you can split that commitment between what you want and other people want. That’s a win-win.

I recommend balancing time spent on your job with time spent on your own goals. Jim Rohn put it best when he said “You’ve got to learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your JOB! If you work hard on yourself, you can make a living. If you work hard on yourself you can make a fortune.”

That speaks volumes doesn’t it?

Put simply, you have to say no sometimes. Not only to mean people, or to the users, but sometimes you have to say no to people you want to help and the ones you care about.

Shakespeare said there are two certainties in life death and taxes. I think there is one more… Requests. The odd thing with requests is there will always be more. You can do a great job knocking out everything your boss, friends or family members ask of you and there will still be more to do. Requests will consume all your time if you don’t learn to say one this one tiny but important word.

A sure sign of low self-esteem is saying yes when you should say no. Maybe you don’t have the energy. Maybe you feel you have given enough to this person today and you want to do something for yourself. If you say yes, when you should say no, you are giving a gift you can’t afford to give.

Saying no to others every now and then gives you the freedom to pursue your goals. It buys back time and leads to others respecting you.

I’m not saying to say no every time, but if you find yourself doing for others but not for yourself, there’s a problem. Stretch your “no” muscle to fix it.

Have you ever had a situation where saying no helped in a dramatic way? Maybe it freed you up to pursue a dream or just much needed time alone. Heck maybe it saved your life. If so, post a comment below and tell us about it.

This is tip #84 of 101 Goal Setting Breakthroughs: A 31 Day Blog Series That Will Make 2008 Your Best Year Ever! Subscribe to my free RSS feed to get the rest of the series and never miss a tip!

Over a decade in network administration, I’ve found the #1 rule is most important to all computer users: Rule #1: First ye backup.

Rule #2 is: If you haven’t followed Rule #1, update your resume!

Do you backup your files or do you leave it to chance? If you don’t, why not?

Is it too difficult? Too time consuming? Cost too much? You don’t know how?

In this post, I’ll give you the nitty gritty on why why you should back up your own work followed by some free tools to help you do it. That way, you have no excuse not to do it.

Here are the 5 career saving reasons you should back up your work today:

1. Backups are your get out of jail free card – How would you feel if you had an 8 month project due on Thursday morning and on Wednesday, due to some unforeseen problem, all of your work vanished? It happens every day – probably millions of times a day.

When it happens, you have very little recourse. You can make excuses. You can blame someone else, like me – your network administrator. But enough of these excuses over time start to sound like “the dog ate it.”

Where everyone has the option of performing their own basic backups.

2. You can go back to former versions of your work – It happens to us all. We get to working on a project. We get tired and insert 300 mistakes into our work. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one “undo” button that took you back in time? There is a time machine at your disposal. It’s called a backup. When you restore your work from backup, you cleanse yourself of all your work sins and get to start a new.

Refreshing, isn’t it?

3. You are trusting your work to external circumstances – How important is your work to you? To me, your work is very important. But this isn’t true of all network administrators. Some don’t give a sh*t about your work. Pardon my French. But having these years under my belt has given me the opportunity to work with all kinds. Most of us care, some do not.

It’s an unfortunate reality of life but you need to know it if your work is dependent on computers. All categories of employees contain some maniacs… what would make network administration any different?

But even with the best, most conscientious admin, stuff does happen beyond their control. Fires, break-ins, stolen equipment, dual (raid) hard drive crashes, disgruntled employees destroying data and hundreds of other unexpected scenarios.

You can take a few minutes initiative and help your tech guru help you. True, it might be his or her job to keep your files safe. But like it’s the Police’s job to prevent crime, still you have to do some due diligence to make sure you are covered.

4. Stuff gets lost over time – What happens if a file or program you had 2 years ago would be helpful on your brand new computer? If you don’t have a backup, sorry you are out of luck. If you are looking for an old software title, you may have to buy it again. If it’s an old file, you’ll have to recreate it from scratch

A backup though, lets you retrieve stuff you lost in the past.

Backing up and keeping the archives for 2-3 years has saved me countless hours and money too.

Just be careful to label backups and keep them organized.

5. Your computing confidence improves - When working with some computer users, I’ve found they are afraid they’ll make a mistake and ruin everything. If, however, that same user spent 1 hour learning how to do a backup and restore, their confidence would improve.

Think of it this way. If you do not have health insurance are you more or less comfortable risking a trip to the doctor? Insurance makes it all ok. A backup is insurance that lets you confidently try new things without fear that all is lost if you “mess something up.”

Simple Ways to Backup Your Files

Windows Explorer Simple Copy Method

Possibly the most simple and free way to backup important files is with a flash drive. These little tools are extremely portable. Many people, me included, attach them to a key chain so you never lose it – except when you are running late and you can’t find your car keys anyway.

Once you insert a thumb drive into your computer. It becomes just like another hard drive. Just open Windows Explorer to get there.

Then, all you have to do is copy your important files to a folder on your thumb drive and away you go!

With flash drives as cheap as $8.99 for a 1 GB drive (Amazon) is there really any excuse to lose that important data?

If security is an issue, you will probably want a secure thumb drive such as the IronKey. This is virtually the same as a Flash drive but it encrypts your data so it can’t be viewed without a password.

Burn important files to CD

The other ultra-simple way to back up your important files is to simply back them up to CD.

CD Writers are becoming commonplace so you probably already have one installed on your computer. If not, they are inexpensive (as low as $19.95 on sale).

To burn, you would use the same method as the flash drive method above. Simply drag and drop your important files to a CD writer drive.

You have dragged your files to the CD burner, you can open the burner drive through Explorer and you’ll see semi-transparent icons representing the files to burn.

Right Click anywhere in the white area under your files and choose the “Write these files to CD” option.

A CD Writing wizard will appear. Enter a name for your CD and hit Next.

Then just put in a blank CD and burn, baby burn!

Take Backups Offsite

What if your house burns down and all your important data is on a home computer and your backups were sitting next to it? Or what if there’s a break in that causes your computer and all of your backups to become MIA?

It’s that type of emergency where you’ll be glad you took your backups to a safe location away from the main data source. If your important files such as family photos, scans of passports, IRS documents and legal forms are on your home computer, consider making your backup and then storing the backups in a safe deposit box.

At the very least, encrypt your data and store it in the trunk of your car. That way, if you do (heaven forbid) lose everything, your backups can be restored.

All -in -all backing up your files is up to you. Personally, I don’t want to be caught as my friend Jack says “with your pants down.” Losing a computer and all your data is embarrassing. You have to make excuses and spend too much time doing over your work. So save the pain of tomorrow by backing up today.

Update: Good news! Giveaway of the Day is offering a free copy of Titan Backup today Monday Dec. 10, 2007. This is great backup software. But you HAVE to install by midnight in order for it to run. Download it here.