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Have you heard of the Rushcard? Check it out and Enter drawing to get $25 for your Rushcard (New members only)

Update: Offer expired


Have you heard of the Rushcard? It's a pre-paid debit credit card with no interest rates and a cheaper alternative to traditional banking. Rushcard is designed to help you manage your money and gain financial freedom. With the Rushcard you can save money, pay bills and make purchases just as you would with a regular credit card. The difference is, it's pre-paid so you only spend what is deposited on your card. I am suggesting this card from my own personal experience for one reason or another such as no credit, bad credit or if you run into certain situations where a credit card is needed and you don't have one. There is a low or no monthly maintenance fee compared to other pre-paid cards.

Benefits and Features:
~Build a positive credit file
~FREE prescription discount card
~Less fees than traditional banking
~No costly overdraft fees because you only spend what you have on your card
~Avoid high interest rates and fear of going into debt
~FREE budgeting tools
~Online bill pay
~Save money
~Choice of two plans that suit your needs
~Low activation fee
~Earn money every time you refer someone who signs up and activates their Rushcard
~FREE customer service and more


Ready to get started? Click Here to go to their website and apply for your Rushcard.

**Giveaway (Optional/Not required to apply for your card)**

****Want to get an extra $25? Once you have applied for your Rushcard, enter the drawing below and I'll pick one winner to get $25. (We will obtain your mailing address once a winner is chosen). Your card must be activated by December 15, 2010.

Your information is used for the purpose of this giveaway only

and will not be given away or sold.

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Start Your Business With $500

Start Your Business With $500
By Heather Allard Tuesday September 14, 2010

The mogul mom and her three kids.

In 2004, I brought two baby blanket inventions to market and spent $54,300 on: $15,000 custom e-commerce site; $2,000 custom logo; $1,300 stationery and business card; $2,000 merchant account; $1,000 ProfNet PR Leads; $12,000 publicist; $17,000 advertising; $4,000 Google AdWords. I'll never do that again! These days you can start a business for about $500. As revenues increase, you can justify additional spending, but you don't need to pour thousands of dollars into your operations until you have the revenue to justify it.

1. Postpone the custom website. Start with a blog on Wordpress or Blogger. Templates make it DIY easy. Sell your products and services on eBay, Etsy, and Craigslist. Market your services on Elance.com or Guru.com. They have built-in audiences and transaction tools that send money directly to a PayPal account.

Cost: Transaction fees on product or service sales.

2. Design within reach. To design your logo, use crowdsourcing services like CrowdSpring.com and 99Designs.com and have dozens of options to choose from.

Cost: About $500

3. Go to market. Pitch journalists nationwide by signing up for HARO. Add an email opt-in to your site to build your sales list using MailChimp (DailyWorth does!). Set up Google Analytics to track visitors, content, traffic sources and more.

Cost: $0

4. Grow it! Use free services like Picnik (photo editing), HootSuite (a social media dashboard), Feedburner (RSS feed creator), Clicky (real-time analytics), Survey Monkey (easy surveys), sales pipeline CRM (contact management) and Writeboard (sharable web-based text documents) to grow your business without spending a cent.

Cost: Free until you reach a certain level of usage.

Heather Allard is a mother of three and the entrepreneur behind The Mogul Mom. An expanded version of this post originally appeared on The Mogul Mom.