Wealth Building Strategies For The Financially Challenged

The internet is a great tool for learning how to make investments and creating a wealth building strategy.  However, this kind of activity assumes that you have at least a little money available to invest in the first place.  But how does an individual start with nothing and still develop a successful wealth building strategy?  There are several options, and if you are serious about building wealth and not just making a few bucks, you will need to remain focused and strategize in tiers or phases.

Phase One:  Choose a Money Making Opportunity

The first online vehicle for making money when you have no capital is eBay.  With eBay, there is very little risk.  If you post an item that does not sell, your loss is nominal.  Otherwise, there is no risk because the consumer pays you for your item and for the shipping costs before you ship.  If you think eBay sounds like a viable possibility, take the time to watch items that have been posted that are similar to things you are interested in selling.  This will give you an idea of whether or not your belongings will move.  This will also help you make a judgment too, when you find a box of books or records for sale at a flea market or garage sale. 

As funds begin to accumulate in your PayPal account, try to save it so that it builds to one lump sum.  In this way, you will be saving the capital necessary to make future investments.  Be sure to price the shipping costs of your items accurately so that you do not lose money while shipping your products.  Remember that books, dvd's, records, and cd's can all be sent at media rate, which is much lower than standard shipping.  It is important that you ship your items as soon as possible, because your buyers will post feedback about your transactions, and these postings will affect your success in future transactions.  It might be a good idea to plan your posts such that they auction ends on a Friday, or a day when you are consistently available to take your items to the post office.

Phase 2:  Low Yield Investments

Once you have accumulated a substantial amount of money from your eBay commerce, you can take a portion of that money and invest it in municipal bonds or a certificate of deposit, in the second phase of your wealth building strategy.  These are relatively safe investments; they are low risk, and low yielding, but they will earn money for you without the hands-on participation required in eBay selling.  While it is necessary that you stay on top of the activities of your money, municipal bonds and cd's are low maintenance investments.  Your wealth building strategy  will work best if you continue to sell items on eBay.  Once you have established a substantial amount of money with the bonds and cd's, it is time to move on to phase three.

Phase 3:  Diversification

Eventually, you should get to a point at which your eBay earnings have grown again, and you have substantial returns from your investments.  Now it is time to diversify your weath building strategy.  Leave your initial investment where it is to continue to earn income from the low risk resources, and continue to run your eBay business.  With a portion of the returns you have pulled out of both activities, seek out slightly higher earning, higher risk stocks and investments.  If you research them carefully, and plan your wealth building strategy carefully, choosing only products that appear to be the best at the time of your investment, you will now have your money making money for you on three different tiers, and at three different levels.  The beauty of a diversified portfolio is that one of the investments loses money, you have a safety net in the other investments.  Be careful to track the activities of your investments; monies can be moved from one investment to another pretty quickly if it makes sense to do so, but you do not want to do this very often because it will success of your wealth building strategy.

Other Ideas For Building Wealth

If eBay is not for you, there are other ways to build capital from scratch.  Technology has afforded us the ability to work from home in a number of different ways.  An internet search and  a stroll through Craig's List will reveal the multitude of opportunities to create a wealth building strategy, to write, proofread, and edit from home; other sites utilize and pay mystery shoppers for their stores.  Mystery shopping, medical transcription, and at-home administrative positions are only the beginning of work that can be done from home and the monies earned can be used in the same fashion as described above for the eBay based business.  Build up your earnings so that you can use them to invest in various stocks, forex, and high yielding accounts.