Network marketing is one of the simplest ways to start a home based business as the model boasts low startup costs with highly flexible time and location commitments allowing you to get started on any budget and any schedule. While I don’t have decades of experience, I found the network marketing model as I entered college and had a number of glorious failures – something of which I’m quite appreciative. Failure is often the best teacher and in order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.

It is the process of learning these hard lessons that often leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many people who would otherwise be very successful in their network marketing business. It is my hope that this two part series will help you skip over the classic newbie failures and move closer to being a successful network marketing professional. I will do this by focusing on the two areas in which people most often fail – evaluating a network marketing opportunity and managing your time more maximum efficiency. Below you will see nameless reference to a few of the companies I have worked with in the past as I wish to keep this series as unbiased as possible. There are hundreds of thousands of different network marketing opportunities out there so searching for, researching, and evaluating which one is right for you is an essential process.

For those of you that are unaware, network marketing (also called multi-level marketing) is a marketing strategy in which the sales force is compensated not only for sales they personally generate, but also for the sales of the other salespeople that they recruit. This recruited sales force is referred to as the participant’s “downline”, and can provide multiple levels of compensation through a variety of structures.

Let’s get started…

Searching For A Network Marketing Business

Most business choose to promote their products through a network marketing model because they require that little bit of extra education so as the consumer can understand how they are different from the competition, why they have premium pricing, or what benefits some of the more unique products will bring them. It is for this reason that the network marketing as a whole thrives off of word of mouth marketing.

As the saying goes, “the best thing about network marketing is that anyone can do it and the worst thing about network marketing is that anyone can do it.” In reality it is not someone’s personality or character, but rather the training system available and their availability to follow its direction. Network marketing training systems are often though of as formal resources (videos, tapes, books, etc.), but some of the most valuable training will come from the team with whom you are working.

For the reasons listed above, your first homework assignment is to talk ask your friends and family about their past experiences. When you build a network marketing business you are in business for yourself, but not by yourself. It is essential that you go into business with people that you like promoting products that you are passionate about. This will make your business more enjoyable and therefore more profitable. The more you are excited working with the people on your team and sharing the products your are promoting – the more successful you will be. If you haven’t found that yet, keep looking.

I once met an 18-year-old network marketing wizard who was driving a Bentely and making over $60,000 per month. I asked him to share his secret to success and he responded, “I don’t know, I’m just excited!” Your energy is contagious so make sure the opportunity you are getting involved with is something that truly excites you.

Questions to ask your friends and family:

• Have you ever purchased something from a network marketing company?
• Did you repurchase them after your initial order? Would you recommend it?
• How did you feel about the product that you purchased? (before and after)

• Have you ever been a part of a network marketing business?
• What work did you do to promote your network marketing business?
• How long were you with the company? Why did you quit?

Many network marketing businesses are marketed as “get rich quick” businesses and the amount of work involved is often under-emphasized. Many people will often have very negative opinions of network marketing businesses as they were once involved with a company and didn’t make any money after one or two months of doing no work at all. Make sure not to take any feedback as absolute and commit to doing a wide breadth of research by surveying people from different generations, industries, and social circles.

Researching A Network Marketing Company

Once you have found a network marketing company that has a team you enjoy being around and a product that excites you it’s time to do some more focused research. Researching online is great, but I would also recommend going to their business presentations so you can talk to people in person. You should focus your research on four key areas: competition, leadership, products, and public opinion.

Competition – With network marketing being a word-of-mouth business a good majority of the customer’s experience is based on their opinion of the person presenting them the products. With this in mind it is still important to look at the competing network marketing companies and related products. You can do this by a simple Google search or asking your prospective sponsor. There are many areas of network marketing that are rather crowded with the nutritional industry being the primary example.

In my personal experience I have been a distributor for three network marketing companies that promote nutritional products and (while I loved the products) there are considerable advantages to marketing products in a less saturated market. Another consideration from my experience is that while people had amazing results with the products I was highly limited, through a menagerie government regulations, with how I could share their testimonials. The nutritional market is highly competitive with a lower customer retention rate which makes for important considerations once you get to the ‘evaluation’ stage of this guide.

Leadership – This is a very important element of any network marketing company as the leadership team can quickly boom or bust an organization. In this step a healthy dose of Google searching is recommended and highly encouraged. Researching the background and experience of an organization’s leadership will help you to see if they will be capable of building a sustainable business, working within government regulations, and if they have the distributors’ best interests at heart. The longevity of a network marketing company will often be tied directly to the decisions of it’s leadership.

Product – The product (or service) in which a network marketing company represents is an important component to research, but it can often be a less important consideration. Most of the product on the market do work to some degree and finding unbiased reviews can often be very difficult. At the end of the day one of the most importants aspects to consider is how passionately you feel towards the product(s) and how they support your personal mission.

I have been a part of several network marketing companies in which (when I started) I wasn’t overly passionate about the products. What I was passionate about was how those products enabled me to help people (‘how’ I did that wasn’t really a consideration). Your passion doesn’t need to be based on ‘what’ you are promoting, but rather ‘why’ you are promoting it.

Public Opinion – This is the least important of the four elements to research about a network marketing company as it is one of the most simple to overcome. Finding unbiased opinions in this regard are not easily found online so I would recommend talking to people directly. Talk to distributors on the team, find who their customers are, and ask friends if they have ever heard of the company.

One of the most infamous network marketing companies is Amway as the tactics they have trained their distributors over the last thirty years have been less than reputable (ambushing people with business presentations, withholding the name of the company in a presentation, misrepresenting the income of their distributors, etc.) While you will encounter resistance in presenting any network marketing company make sure to do your due diligence so you join a reputable business.

Evaluating A Network Marketing Opportunity

Once you have identified and researched a network marketing company you will want to evaluate its viability as a business opportunity. While the above steps are in place to find a credible business that fits you it is important to evaluate if you can make money as a distributor (it’s a business after all). Evaluation should primarily focus on four key areas: products, timing, market, and support systems.

Product – While the majority of network marketing companies promote luxury items it is a great advantage to find an opportunity to promote something people need. Whether in a recession or after the loss of a job, it is much easier to promote a product people ‘need’ instead of something they ‘want’. The old adage of “selling ice to an eskimo is not a position you want to put yourself in, regardless of your sales experience. Network marketing is not sales it is sorting (we’ll get more into this in Part Two).

Another consideration is the diversity of the product line as (in this case) more is not better. It is already difficult to change someone’s purchasing habits and it is exponentially harder to change them all at once. Remember how most of network marketing is about educating the consumer? Well with a massive catalog it can take significant time to train someone to be an avid product user. For this reason it is recommended to find an opportunity with a network marketing company that is somewhat focused.

Timing – When you are evaluating a network marketing business it can be a huge opportunity to get in early. This can often be a risk (less so if you follow the above steps), but offers even greater rewards. When you are evaluating whether to join a company based on its age make sue you also evaluate the level of risk. As most network marketing have a very low investment your greater risk will often be time, but neither element will be as traumatic as losing millions in a failed traditional business.

The Harvard Business Review classifies any network marketing business with less than 50,000 distributors “Cutting Edge” while any company with less than 100,000 distributors is classified as “Ground Floor”. Getting in early to a network marketing business promoting a product that everyone needs and no one knows about is kind of the golden goose in terms of rating an opportunity. While the opportunity of a young company is much greater the business as a whole is much more fluid and it’s longevity is tied directly to the decisions of the leadership. For this reason it is recommended to to additional research on the leadership team of a new network marketing company.

Market – Similar to the ‘Competition’ analysis in the ‘Research’ stage above you will want to evaluate the market of the network marketing business you are about to enter. Is this a market that will grow with time or does the opportunity have an expiration date? Are you competing with companies using a traditional business model who are spending millions of dollars on advertising? What is the differentiating factor between your product(s) and others on the market? Identifying a network marketing company that is unique, but not impossible to explain, will make your promotional efforts much more effective.

Support Systems- Regardless of what business you are planning to launch (network marketing or otherwise) you will want to rely on the skills and expertise of people who are better than you. One of the easiest ways to fail is to have the arrogance to assume that you know everything. Historically, the people who have no idea what they’re doing are faster to make big checks because they follow the training exactly. A wealth of training systems, support teams, and educational tools at your disposal is a huge asset to your business. As a distributor if you are able to take a look at the back office and training system so you can see if it will be of use to you. Joining a team of distributors that have regular meetings to present the opportunity is a valuable asset to be able to rely on.

Making A Decision & Getting Involved In Network Marketing

Go through the steps listed above and find a network marketing opportunity that is right for you. Remember not to go at it alone and ask for the advice of those around you while keeping in mind that if you buy someone’s opinion, you buy their lifestyle. Don’t take advice from grouchy people who live paycheck to paycheck and instead seek out the guidance of people who are happy and successful. Take a look my post 5 Tips For Better Decision Making or email me directlyfor some additional guidance.

“Network marketing isn’t a get rich quick business. It’s a get rich slow business, but that is a hell of a lot better than a get rich never business.”

Taking My Own Advice

I have discovered a solution that large industrial companies have been using to save money on fuel for over twenty years and now have the opportunity to release it to the world through network marketing helping millions of people save money on something they hate having to buy. Interested? Take a look at the video on my website or email me directly.

If you think working overtime, skipping your lunch hour and staying chained to your desk will make you more productive, you need to cut yourself some slack and take a break.

Working non-stop without taking a break can increase your chances of weight gain, heart disease and worse. Staring at a computer screen for more than 2 hours per day can cause Computer Vision Syndrome, a real affliction, which causes blurry vision, headaches, dry eyes and can lead to long-term nearsightedness. However, getting up and away from your desk for just 5 minutes can alleviate eye strain and reduce fatigue in addition to making you feel better. The mere act of standing at your desk instead of sitting at it can help you burn up to 2500 calories per week. Not bad for just standing around.

Work hard and break hard; doing so will make you a healthier, happier and more productive employee.

Image via Wikipedia

Many users chose Google Chrome over internet explorer due to its superior connection speed and simplicity. Google Chrome is a visually attractive application that is both elegant and stylish. You have the option of taking the browsing phenomenon with you as it can be packaged as a portable app. Many users fell in love with Google chrome, and I am certain that many more users will fall in love with Google Chrome Plus.

Google Chrome plus is an updated version of Google Chrome. It has been upgraded to have several characteristics that its predecessor did not have. At the moment, five major additions have been added to Google Chrome Plus. Future upgrades have also been promised to Chome users. But the best news of all? It’s free! Also, unwanted Chrome background communications can also be disabled if I user desires it so!

Its 5 new additional features include:
- A double click tab; that users can use to close pages. If you decide you want to exit a tab, you just double click on that certain tab to close it.
- Gestures with the mouse
- A “super drag” feature; you now have the option of just dragging a link onto anywhere on the screen and it the link will be viewed on a new tab.
- Users can also view Google Chrome Plus whilst having an internet explorer tab open; you are able to open internet explorer links onto Chrome (the links will have to be compatible though). To do this, click the internet explorer button that is placed towards the end of the location bar.
- Whilst in the context menu, users can download tools support; You now have the option of downloading files situated in your download manager. To download, right click the link that you are interested in and select the download manager.
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Pastime users of Google Chrome will be positively delighted with this new upgraded version. Although it is to be noted that Google Chrome is renowned for its simplicity and speed, the addition of several other features will definition add to the consumption that is needed to run this application. However, I highly doubt that this will affect most users. Google Chrome Plus still retains its previous features, and the additions of these applications are interesting. Current chrome users should definitely give Google Chrome Plus a shot.
If you are interested in downloading Google Chrome Plus, you can find this free application here

But I’m still hesitant about downloading the application…
Just try it out! You have nothing to lose with Google Chrome Plus, and if you are not satisfied with the application you have the option of uninstalling the applications. However, if you do test it out and end up liking the feel for it, then that’s great! You have nothing to lose with using Google Chrome Plus, and I personally recommend just trying it out. I installed this application about a month or two ago, and I love how unique and easy to use it is. I personally love the fact that I can disable ads and pop-ups.

By Brian Baulch

www.rechargelife.org

www.facebook.com/rechargelife

Related articles

• Are You On Google Chrome And Not Using Their Extensions? You Are Missing Out! (benwizzi.wordpress.com)
• Google Chrome on track to overtake Firefox in 2011 (digitaltrends.com)

A while back, I started a project called Blog Topics, which is still running and provides hundreds of people with ten or more post ideas plus writing advice every week. As I looked into what else people were asking me for, it came out that people were also interested in understanding how to better leverage their blog to build business. I gave a free webinar on the topic and had almost 3000 people register. Because of that, I’m ready to offer the budding web entrepreneurs in the audience a new product that might be helpful to you called How to Blog For Business.

This Isn’t Get Rich Quick Stuff

There are Internet marketers aplenty who will tell you that you can be making six figures in a few months’ time with just a few simple, tested formulas. I’m sure some of those things work rather well, and I am not saying that some folks aren’t making that kind of success, but that’s not what I’m selling. With “How to Blog for Business,” you and I are going to look over several things, from how your site is designed and ready to accept business, to some of the various online business models that might or might not work for you, to how you might promote your offline business via your blog, and more. None of what I offer will fall into the camp of “get rich quick,” and so, if that’s the goal, you might look elsewhere.

We Will Talk About Motivation As Well as Actions

Selling is okay. Wanting to make some money via your blog is a valid wish. If you’re a person who wants to grow your business, this is for you.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job (Yet)

We’ll cover different topics every week, and along the way, you’ll find some things that resonate with you and others that won’t. Don’t jump into this whole hog and think that you’ll be paying your mortgage right away. Instead, let’s figure out what works well for you, how you intend to build your web business via your blog, and let’s see if we can find what makes you successful.

If This Sounds Interesting

If you’re interested in learning more, swing by How to Blog For Business and read through the offer. You’ll also see the free gift I’m including for people who purchase this before the offer expires (on Thursday, August 11th). I hope you’ll find it useful for your own business goals.

And if not, hey, a new free and potentially useful post comes out tomorrow!

Tablets are becoming a popular mobile device, and their impressive endurance is one of the greatest draws. Most tablets can last eight to ten hours even when displaying mobile video or surfing the web.

This is plenty for most users, but there may come a time when you need even more life. These five tips can help you extract every second from your tablet’s battery.

Reduce Display Brightness

Most tablets are simply hardware strapped to a display, resulting in the characteristic tablet appearance. This provides a large display with minimal weight, but it also means there is a large viewing area to power. As with large smartphones, the display often draws more power than any other component.

As such, simply dimming the display will have a positive impact on battery life. While there’s often an automatic brightness feature available, it’s usually less aggressive than needed to provide maximum battery life. Taking control of brightness yourself is often a better option.

Turn Off Wireless Radios

Tablets do not rely on mobile data quite as much as smartphones, but they still make heavy use of it. Wi-Fi is standard on virtually all tablets, and many also include access to 3G and/or 4G from a major mobile data carrier.

These radios suck power, however. A 3G/4G radio can have a negative impact on endurance if used often or if used in areas with a poor signal. The solution is to just turn the radio off.

Obviously, disabling 3G/4G will cut of mobile data access unless Wi-Fi is available, but this is a trade-off that will sometimes be worthwhile. Turning of Wi-Fi as well as Bluetooth can further improve life, but the impact won’t be as drastic as turning of 3G/4G. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios are built to communicate over shorter ranges and consume less power as a result.

Dan Finnigan is CEO of Jobvite, a SaaS platform for the social web that companies use to find and hire people. You can follow him on Twitter at @DanFinnigan and read his blog — the Jobvite Blog.

About 120 million people now use LinkedIn, and 1 million more join every week. But how many users have a professional profile that’s actually attracting interest from hiring companies? Research my company has conducted shows that 87% of companies use LinkedIn for recruiting, so it’s a good bet that your next employer will look for talent there.

But how easy are you to find? With all those millions of profiles available, recruiters use specific search terms and network connections to narrow the number of prospects. However, it’s still worth taking the time to tune up your profile so that it pops. Furthermore, using the new “Apply with LinkedIn” plugin, you can also use link your profile to job applications on many company career sites.

Here are some tips to maximize the likelihood a recruiter with the perfect job contacts you first.

1. Profile Headlines: Simple and Direct

The headline is one line of text that appears underneath your name and in search results. In your headline, avoid overused buzzwords or over-the-top phrases (“game changer” or “change agent” are two that come to mind).

Your headline doesn’t have to include your job title, but it should be clear and concise. Use it to describe the qualities you can offer, and position yourself for relevant job opportunities without inflating your experience. There are even times when it’s smart to downgrade a title. Say that you are a VP at a small company, but would happily consider a director title at a larger company — it may be strategic to leave out the “VP” title in your headline.

2. Summary and Experience: Keep Your Story Tight

People will scan your profile just as they do a news story. When I worked as a reporter, we used the inverted pyramid method to structure a story, making sure all the important facts were stacked near the beginning. You too should answer the who, what, when, why and how in your profile summary section. Point to results and quantify your impact to render your record more concrete. If you’ve written a compelling summary, your audience will read on.

Underneath the summary is a section for specialties. This area frequently contains keywords used to make profiles findable. Optimize your profile for search engines (SEO), but not too much. The Google algorithm is too smart for keyword stuffing — and so are recruiters. If you include five lines of special skills in this section, chances are you won’t be great at any of them.

Interest will wane further down the page, so spend your time making the top sections of your profile (summary and recent experience) the most substantial. Although in most cases, not every job you’ve held needs a detailed description.

3. Company Name: What Does It Do?

Recruiters and hiring managers search by industry terms as well as skills. If your employers haven’t all been household names, describe those companies in a couple of words. That way, recruiters will know whether you’re right for a job in fashion or social gaming, for example. If a former employer has been purchased since you left, and no longer exists, use the name of the acquiring company instead.

Briefly describe ways in which that company was successful: for instance, a market share leader in a $6 billion industry, the leading patent holder or the highest-rated for customer service. If you worked in a very large company, focus on your particular division or project to help readers understand your experience better.

Bogus Twitter users do not have to steal accounts and tweet garbage about famous people to be menacing. Attackers use phony handles to Spam and scam unsuspecting users and send malicious links as well.

During Twitter’s “Red Carpet Era”, in October 2009 alone, the 140-character broadcasting service flagged twelve percent of all accounts as malicious and kicked them off, according to data from Dr. Paul Judge, a Social Network Security Research Team Leader at Barracuda Networks. Today, Twitter regularly flags two percent of accounts before giving them the boot. With legitimate users following and friending hundreds to thousands of others, a one-in-fifty chance of encountering an attacker is too great a risk to ignore.

“And what about the ones who are not caught?” asks Dr. Judge. The Barracuda expert estimates that as much as 70-percent of accounts are at least suspicious. Though the damage potential is disconcerting, the methods for spotting tainted Twitter connections are simple and effective.

Spotting Scammers

When a Twitter account follows a high number of accounts but does not have that many followers in return, it is probably a scammer who is trying to quickly build up followers by following many people and hoping that they will follow back. “A normal user follows the same number of people who follow them. But a scammer aggressively follows a lot of people,” Dr. Judge explains.

To address scammers, Twitter blocks users from following more than 2,000 people unless they have that many followers in return. Scammers try to beat this rule by following no more than, say, 1,100 to 1,200 users at a time while waiting for them to reciprocate. To stay under 2,000 follows and still build a following, scammers will unfollow all accounts that don’t eventually follow them and simply try following others. As a result, scammers who have not successfully built up a large number of followers may follow 1,100 people or so but have only 40 people following them.

The statistics of scammers who have been successful will be just the reverse. Though they started out with more friends in order to build up their followers, they now have plenty of followers. And because they need fewer friends to support that, they have unfollowed all but a few.

The green and red graph from Barracuda below illustrates this “Friend-Follower Delta”. The red area on the right represents accounts that Twitter cancelled for having too many friends and too few followers. The red area on the left represents accounts that had too many followers and not enough friends. Look for friend-follower numbers skewed to these extremes in order to pinpoint scammers.

Ferreting Out Fraudsters

“An account that tweets links and URLs with no text surrounding them is almost certainly a fraudster who is quickly distributing malicious URLs,” says Dr. Judge. Sometimes they include trending topics to ensure the tweet shows up in searches or a few words to convince people the link is an interesting article.

“In the end, it leads to a web exploit kit that attacks the user’s computer,” says Dr. Judge. Check a user’s recent tweets; if they fit this description, run!

Expert, influencer, thought leader, guru — regardless of which of these terms you identify with, Facebook can help to show off your expertise and share useful content with your friends.

Public relations tacticians know that one way to build credibility is by sharing relevant information, such as interesting news clips, information about events you’re attending, speaking engagements, press mentions, awards and blog posts, with the people who matter.

Maybe you’re a real whiz in a particular subject, like baseball statistics, personal bankruptcy law or credit default swaps. Facebook is a great platform to express your unique point of view.

Following are a few Facebook features that can help issue experts get the most out of their social networking presence.

Polls

You know the saying, “Content is king?” On Facebook, engagement rules the day. The polls feature is a great way to stay connected to your community and hear what they have to say.

Questions

Experts can take advantage of the same benefits that Facebook questions offer major brands and businesses; the ability to tap into the online opinions and recommendations of friends. Facebook questions is also free, putting the power of market research directly into the hands of an expert.

It’s something we don’t like to admit very often is it? No matter how great of a freelancer we are, no matter how fantastic your contracts and vetting process is, you’ll ultimately end up with a client you feel that you can no longer work with. Hopefully, you’ve protected yourself so that these occurrences are rare, but no matter how rare, they’re never easy nor pretty.

As well as I think my personal vetting process has been, I’ve had some clients who’ve been unreasonable, demanding, and some have been downright crookish. I’ve had everything from a client demanding extra free work to the client who didn’t read the contract, demanded non-refundable deposits back and told me they hoped karma’s a you-know-what to me.

While a lot of this stuff was due to shortcomings on my end. I should’ve watched the designer’s mockups and caught the “extras” the clients were putting in, I shouldn’t have made an exception to a business rule I have, you matter how patient you are, no matter how hard you try to work with your client, sometimes it’s unavoidable. You have to part ways.

There have been several times that I’ve been unsure of whether I should finally fire the client and move on. Some of my “worst” first clients have turned out to become fantastic ones in the long run. So when should you decide to fire that client or continue working with them (and hopefully educating them so it’s easier the next time)?

Rude, Immoral, or Downright Criminal Behavior

There are certain times where I never hesitate to fire a client or to refuse a potential client. You should never stand for anyone who treats you with anything less than respect. You are a professional business owner, no matter what your age, and you should expect to be treated as one. I’d give the client a warning or two, but after that I’d refuse to work or even respond to their emails. There are too many nice clients in the world for you to have to work with the jerks.

Is the client being immoral? Are they demanding free work or extra revisions? Do they want work down on something you’re morally against? (Be it religious, politics or porn?) One of the major reasons people go into freelance is so they can choose what kind of work they can do. At one of my old jobs, I was forced to do work for clients that I was politically and morally, against. I promised myself I would never compromise on my values as a freelancer, and neither should you.

If the project is downright illegal, don’t even think twice about turning that one down. You don’t want the CIA kicking down your front door, do you?

Will They Agree to Pay a PIA Fee?

A fellow business owner, who actually runs a medium size agency, gave me some great advice once. They mentioned that if I found myself dealing with a client that I was unsure about, so raise my prices until it made me eager to work on the project, or to turn them down. This goes for working with the client as well. If you think the client is going to be a big pain, charge them double or triple fees. I’ve actually had clients come to me telling me that they’re very demanding, so make sure to charge extra to anticipate extra work (a nice way of calling the PIA fee).

If getting extra money for dealing with a bad client sounds good to you, go ahead and do it. If you have a short fuse though, it’s best to skip the client and the potential for things to turn sour and move on.

Why pay Apple $69.99 when you can build your own Lion install drive for the App Store purchase price of $29.99 — plus the cost of an inexpensive thumb drive. Here’s how to create a full install on a drive, not just the recovery disk that we recently posted about.

You’ll need a copy of the OS X Lion installer. If you saved a copy when you first installed Lion, great. If not, you’ll need to re-download it from the Mac App Store.

To do so, launch the App Store and option-click the Purchases tab. An “Install” button should appear next to Lion. Click it to re-download the installer. You can use this option-click-Purchases trick to re-download any purchase, not just Lion.

Once the 3.74-GB installer finishes downloading, go to your Applications folder to find the installer itself. It is called Install Mac OS X Lion. Right-click (or Control-click) the installer and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual pop-up. A new Finder browser window opens, showing the normally hidden material inside the installer bundle.

Navigate to Contents > SharedSupport. There you'll find a disk image called InstallESD.dmg.

Open a new Finder window with Command-N (File > New Finder Window). Navigate to /Applications/Utilities and launch DiskUtility.

Attach a thumb drive to your Mac that is at least 4GB 8GB in size. (Update: some readers say 4GB isn’t enough. As you can see, I used a 16GB drive) Prepare it for use by creating a single HFS+ partition. Select the drive (e.g. SanDisk Ultra) in the left hand column. Drives are listed first with their partitions listed after them, each partition indented slightly.

With this drive selected, click the Partition tab and choose Partition Layout > 1 Partition. Choose Format > Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

Click the Options button at the bottom-right of the partition layout. Select GUID Partition Table.

Click Apply. Disk Utility asks you to confirm. Click Partition. Wait as it unmounts, partitions, and remounts your disk.

Next, select the new partition (Untitled 1 by default). Click the Restore tab.

Click Install next to the source field. Drag InstallESD.dmg into the file-open window and click Open. Drag Untitled 1 from the left column to the destination field. Click Restore and agree to Erase the drive and replace it with the contents of InstallESD.dmg. You may have to authenticate as an administrator.

Wait. It will take some time for the drive to be written. Once it’s done, eject it, label it clearly, and put it away for a rainy day.

Meanwhile, go out and spend the $40 you just saved wisely.