Workout without equipment is possible if you hate the idea of spending monthly fee for a gym membership or taking up precious space in your home with a huge home gym. When I spend the time researching ways to set up a fitness program for myself inexpensively, I was surprise to find I can burn way more calories per hour by doing activities without the involvement of expensive gym equipment.

For people who are researching ways to get more fitness in a regular basis, joining a gym is ideal for those who require inspiration to get them to be more active, since a gym environment is specifically geared toward fitness. Obviously, a gym provides more equipment and offers more amenities compared to what most people could afford to equip their own home in the same standard.

After all, how many people do you know who can outfit a house similar to a gym? So if this is within your budget, a regular gym membership is often a step in the best direction to get more exercise. There’s only one problem standing between lots of people and joining a gym membership…which is a combination of the cost of initiation fee plus an ongoing monthly fee. Even one of the most bare-bone gym isn’t cheap, and when you’re looking to join the gym that offers all the amenities plus the juice bar, you’re looking at a possible investment of several hundred or so dollars in regular membership and one-time startup costs. Beside money, you need to be sure you will have the time and are willing to commit to using your gym membership regularly.  Otherwise, it is probably not an option for you.

But don’t give up yet, the good news is you do have so many other exercise options to  get fitness on a budget. Living healthier and being more active can be done without adding a huge expense to your monthly budget. Workout without equipment can be fun too if you keep an open mind. For example, joining a hiking or biking group allows you to socialize and workout at the same time. Or you can sing up learning a new sport or skill such as riding a Ripstik (a skateboard/snowboard hybrid) or dancing. If you can find a friend to commit to the same workout with you, you’ll less likely to give up and quit.

For a visual comparison as seen in the table below, you can see that workout without equipment when being planned out carefully can actually burn more calories per hour when compared to activities using gym equipment such as a treadmill, elliptical machine, or even an exercise glider.

Indoor Air Pollution

Did you know that household cleaners and pesticides, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, are largely responsible for the air inside the typical home 2-5 times more polluted than the air outside the home?

Did you also know that every year Poison Control Centers receive over 200,000 calls for toxic exposure to cleaning products. And almost two-third of these cases involved children under six, who swallow or spill cleaners stored or left open inside the home?

Lucky for us, there are plenty of nontoxic green cleaning products that work just as well at about the same costs as our harmful household cleaners. Some of the companies who focus solely on keeping toxic cleaners and pesticides out of the environment even offer business opportunities to expand their consumer base.

When you are doing your homework as to which of the companies would be the ideal green business opportunity, these top criteria will help you selecting the right one.

• Making cleaning supplies safe for people is harder said than done. Any chemical, if being used not as intended, is more than likely harmful and downright dangerous. A green cleaning product should be able to pass the Green Seal Standards and Certification requirement.

• Safe for the planet requires green cleaning products to be biodegraded into, high concentration, and reduced packaging in common, all of which benefit the earth.primarily take advantage of  recovered and recycle material in packaging.  source reduction, and recyclability

• Reuse containers should be a priority for the company you want to affiliate with. Another creative way is to have refill stations at local stores for consumers to reuse their old empty containers.

• An example of reducing waste is green companies who package their cleaning products in concentrated forms to be diluted  with water by end users.

• Don’t you hate green cleaning products that just don’t work as well as the manufacturers’ claims? So test them out on your own toughest cleaning jobs before becoming a distributor.

• Green cleaning products need to be affordable compared to regular cleaning products in stores. Although we all want to do our part in helping our planet, we don’t necessarily want to pay more than others for everyday products.

• In order to become a successful distributor marketing green cleaning products, the company you affiliate with need to have easy to use instructions and demo so you can simply and effectively explain the benefits to others.

• It’s important to ask yourself that these green cleaning products are what you would buy as a consumers anyway even if there is no money-making opportunity being offered.

• If you plan to become a distributor, make sure the company you picks stands behind their green cleaning products with solid product warranty and return policy.

• Last but not least, make sure the compensations have to be  profitable for when you sell to retail customers as well as when you help sign up new distributors for the company.

According to research firm Mintel International, the fast-growing sector of green products will grab 30% of the market by 2013. So it makes sense that there will be plenty of potential business ideas to cash in with green business opportunities.

Okay, so it’s not a new threat but with all the green living trend going strong recently, I am more aware than ever of the toxic stuff I use to clean my home. With young kids around, it’s not enough to just hide the cleaning supplies under the sink. My youngest daughter, 7 years old, is at the “can I help you mom” stage and my biggest fear is she’d use these cleaning supplies to clean the house when I’m not looking.

I recently looked at the warnings on the labels of my cleaning supplies and these national brands are what you’d find typical at any grocery store. I discovered plenty of words such as Danger, Corrosive, Poison, Toxic, etc. as well as cautions such as “May cause severe irritation or damage to eyes and skin.” or “May cause: Chemical burn” or “INGESTION: Corrosive to mouth and digestive tract”. I couldn’t believe that I have never really pay attention to these warnings before. I read somewhere recently that over a million kids under age 6 each year were poisoned by household products.

Recalled Cleaning Products

At this point, I realized I need to replace all my current cleaning supplies with safer and greener alternatives.  So I went online to do some serious research. I look at Health and Safety Information on Household Products, where you can dig deeper for explanation on health effects of a particular household product from data on the product’s MSDS. (MSDS stands for Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) which gives the proper procedures for workers who handle large quantity of or spend lots of time working with a particular substance.) It’s not really for consumers who use the product once in awhile.

Another place to visit is OSHA/EPA Occupational Chemical Database where you can research any chemical for its health hazards or lack there of. For example, I checked on this chemical, Formaldehyde, a substance presence in the list of ingredients on my current disinfectant product. The full report from OSHA/EPA Database called it a carcinogen, or cancer-causing substance. This fact is confirmed at the National Cancer Institute with this quote from their website:

Formaldehyde has been classified as a known human carcinogen (cancer-causing substance) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and as a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Needless to say, I won’t be using my current brand of disinfectant around my children anymore. By the way, you can use these same websites to make sure that a nontoxic or “green” cleaning product really lives up to its manufacturer’s claims.

So how do I plan to turn this into a home based business opportunity? During my research, I discover network marketing companies such as WowGreen, have focused primarily on green cleaning products. Their product demonstration videos online are very convincing. Their pricing comparisons to mainstream cleaning products have me excited that I won’t be paying more than what I usually spend on cleaning supplies anyway.

My only problem is so far it’s hard to find a local distributor whom I can purchase from and test out these green cleaning products. I plan to test these products inside out before signing up as a distributor. Can their stain removal pen really completely erase wine stains on my husband’s favorite shirt? What about the blood stain on my carpet? And if their laundry detergent won’t trigger my son’s allergy, then their green cleaning products will win me over as a consumer and distributor.

My goal is to find really effective green cleaning products that are still safe enough to be around my children and also sell through distributors. I will blog my results (good and bad) in upcoming posts to share with you. I also welcome any help and suggestions from readers to help speed up my search for a perfect green cleaning business opportunity.

To make sure you don’t miss finding out which green cleaning business opportunities really live up to their companies’ claims, be sure to subscribe to my Newsletter to receive updates.

My favorite places to sell used books online for top dollars are amazon.com, ebay.com, Half.com, bluerectangle.com, ckybooks.com, bookbyte.com, and Craiglist.org. Depending on what categories your books are in, you can get exposed to millions of buyers, no cost in listing your books for sale, and in some instants, receive fast quotes and quick payments from book buy-back websites.

Advantages of selling used books online?

• After getting quotes or list your books online, you only have to make 1 trip to the post office vs. lugging your heavy books to sell at used bookstores all over town.
• With buyback websites, you’ll know exactly how much you’re getting paid for your books.
• There is no cost in listing your books for sale, you only have to pay percentage fees when you sell them.
• Most of the these websites can do direct deposit to your PayPal account or bank account so your money is available faster than waiting for a check in the mail.

Websites where you can sell your used books for top dollars:

• Amazon.com – This is my current and most favorite website to sell used books. With its generous shipping allowance and no listing fee upfront, I can list my books for as long as they’re available. It also allows me to list practically any book in any category for sale. It’s even better and more profitable now with its FBA program. Want to learn how using FBA can make you more money? Get your own copy of Sell Books with FBA.

• Ebay.com – Ebay auctions can be a great method to get top dollars for your books especially if you often have access to complete book series for popular authors. For example, certain paranormal book series enjoy fast sales and multiple bids. I rarely list single book on Ebay any more due to its listing fees.

• Half.com – In my experience, I look at Half.com as similar to amazon.com except its shipping allowance is not as generous ($3.07 vs. $3.99 on Amazon.com). Personally, I’m comfortable with the listing interface for Amazon and since the arrival of the FBA program, I find myself exclusively using Amazon.com to sell most of my books.

• Bluerectangle.com, Ckybooks.com, Bookbyte.com – If you have lots of textbooks or nonfiction books in very good condition, you could try to sell them on these book buyback websites. They specialize in buying and selling books which most often fall in the non-fiction and general-interest categories. When I happen upon a chance to purchase books in bulk, I usually check these websites to see if I can turn around my bulk purchases for quick cash.

• Craigslist.org – I used to sell some of my books here but with small kids at home, I get concern when more than a few buyers want to do pick up instead of paying for postage to have me mailed their books to them. I still use Craigslist to find items to buy but not to sell my books anymore.

There you have my favorite places to sell books online. If you’re just started with your used books selling business, my advice is to go with Amazon.com and their FBA program. You’ll earn more for your efforts and have fun in the process as well. If you need to take your business to the next level, check out my reviews on two resources that help me tremendously to bring top dollars for my book inventory.

Selling used books for fun and profit has to be the easiest way for me and now my kids to pick up some extra cash. No experience necessary, but a love for reading is definitely a plus.

Within days of posting your books for sale online, you could be receiving many of these emails from Amazon.com notify you of your customers orders.

What you’ll need: List of all upcoming used book sales events and stores within driving distance and a price scanning subscription to check which books are profitable.

Where to get your own list of upcoming book sales events?  Book Sale Finder

What price scanning service I use to check  which books will make me money and which books to skip?  ASellerTool

Tip: If you often visit the local libraries, don’t forget to scan through the books for sale in the lobbies of those libraries. You’ll be surprise how often you’re able to spot books of  high resale value for pennies.

Selling used books online  is a great way for anyone regardless of experience to pick up extra cash. Now I taught my two teenagers (13 and 15 years old) the same method to earn at least $25  per week from selling used books online in their spare time. At an average of $1-2 net profit per book, it doesn’t take many books to earn $25 per weekend.

Now if they want to buy something, my kids know better than to ask me for an allowance   They just hustle more books at the next book sale.

Recommended Resources:

Used Books: Big Business - Check out the incredibly detailed Table Of Content and sample pages. My favorite section has to be the What Not To Buy chapter -knowing what books to skip doubles my profit margin and leave me more storage room for fast-selling inventory. I cringed after reading his stuff – Adams gives away way too many secrets in this business. If you follow his tips and strategies, your chance of being profitable from day one is a given.

Sell Books with FBA: This book has such a huge impact on my used books business, helping me become a serious used book seller instead of just having a profitable hobby. His guide levels the playing field and you will be selling profitably like the big guys or gals in the business of used book selling. Nathan provides step-by-step how-tos with ton of screen captures, even his online book selling account user id. I actually have some of my books listed right next to his books on Amazon.

Bottom Line: If you’re going to start a used book selling business and want to increase your chance of being profitable from day one, you would get both of these resources. Want to know how much I love these resources? Let just say if these authors were to discontinue selling their guides right now, I’d never resell my copies