Know Your Opponents And Your Weaknesses

Running a business is hard work. It does not matter if it is an online business or an offline business, you have to put in work. There is no money-making machine, that will work for you (except for the ones banks have...). You really need to look out, though. You need to put in work in the right areas.
Are you advertising enough? Are you providing good enough quality of your goods? Are your prices the best? Do people trust you? You need to work on all these areas, to gain an advantage over your competition, otherwise you will fail. You can't spend all of your time and money advertising your business if you provide bad quality goods or services, or your prices are way higher than your competition's.
You need to look out for what is the area you are the least good at and work on that. If your company provides the best quality goods, and has the best price but no one has ever heard of it, that is no good for you. You will need to advertise the company, and get trusted by people.
When people start trusting you, that is when you win. They will tell their friends and family about you, those people will spread the word even more and you will end up with free advertising, every day.
Before you can achieve all that, you will need to work really hard to gain people's trust. So to stay in front of the competition, make a list of areas you need to work on, and just start working on them. If you are not any good at them, outsource. Hire people that are good at these things. You will still profit, even though you will spend some money on these workers.
At the end, success is all about work.
As a reminder, always remember to pay your tax. For more info on tax for businesses in Europe, take a look at A Thing To Look Out For When Selling Goods - VAT

Forex Trading is a Big Gamble

Forex trading. It has made some people rich and a lot of people broke. Sure there are websites, that sell you  'systems that work 100%' and there are online 'gurus' that will tell you all the secrets for a small fee, Forex trading is hard to succeed at. Firstly, these online systems and gurus are probably just a waste of your money. Think of it this way, if you knew a secret that would make you a lot of money in a very short amount of time, with almost no work involved, would you sell it for a small fee? I would not.
Most of you probably wouldn't either. Secondly, Forex trading is a big gamble. Think of online betting websites, like bwin or bet365 for example. Yes you can bid on a few football teams, even if you know them. Their opponents look like they have never won anything in their lives and like they have never seen a ball before, but there is always a chance that they will in fact win.
If you bet at any of these betting websites I'm sure that you have at least once lost because of just 1 match. You bet on 8 matches, 7 were won and 1 was lost. Forex trading is basically like that. You may think you know your field and that you have the right feeling for when the right time is, but in mere seconds you can lose a lot of money. To stay positive, on the other hand, you can gain a lot of money either.
Think through your plan thoroughly, don't let anyone influence you too much and just follow your gut feeling when dealing with Forex trading or you may end up burned, and by burned I mean you may lose a lot or all of your money.

Some More Help With VAT

The Squidoo lens Different VAT Rates Around The World can be of great help when getting info on different VAT rates. It briefly explains what VAT is, different VAT rates and sums up all the info in one small paragraph. There's also a few links that will give you even more information on VAT.

How much is VAT

Value added tax or VAT for short is a tax that businesses must pay to the government when they sell a product or service. It is not the same percentage in all countries.
Nordic countries are the ones with the highest VAT. Denmark for example has 25% as it's standard rate. Finland has 23% standard VAT, Iceland has 25.5% VAT and Norway and Sweden both have 25% standard VAT.
UK and most countries in the European Union have a standard VAT of 20%. This does not go for all countries and all products. Sometimes VAT can be 5%, which is called reduced VAT or even 0% when there is no VAT.
The United States of America do not have VAT. Instead they have a tax called sales tax.
For more information on VAT, check out What is VAT? and How VAT works,

Calculating tax

Tax is a percentage of your income you have to pay to your government. Not paying tax can get you jailed, so you ought to do it. When you pay tax you must calculate exactly how much you must pay.
You can calculate tax by multiplying your value with the percentage of tax and dividing both by 100.
This is a great article on how to calculate tax: How to calculate VAT?
VAT is basically a tax that is applied to goods in the UK and EU. For instance if you are selling purses and your business is located in the EU or UK you must pay VAT. It stands for Value Added Tax and it is currently 20% in the UK.
If you would like to save some time when calculating your tax rates you can use a VAT Calculator, which is a calculator that will help you when dealing with tax. It really speeds up your work and saves you time.
By saving time you again, save money. The secret is not to rely solely on your tools but to use your tools in such a way that you are as efficient as possible.

Money Making Ideas

Making money online is without doubt really hard. A lot of people want to invest their money into something that works and that will make them.. well.. more money!

Tip #1 is Invest:

Find a web business that you think you can handle (you can also hire people, to run it) and buy it. It's as simple as that. If it's a website that makes money by showing ads, just switch the ads with your own and you are good to go. If it's a local fashion-accessories store, with it's own website, update the address and change any details and you're good to go. Of course you have to look out for vat or tax.
Make sure you do your research thoroughly or you will regret it.

Tip #2 is Trade:

When I say trade I don't mean go to the flea market and start trading your old junk. I mean trade stocks. Buy and sell stocks. Join a website, get yourself some stocks and you're good to go. Unless you invest in stocks that won't perform well in the future. In that case, you better think twice next time, because stocks are like gambling. They can rise or descend. You can't really influence on which. What you CAN do is research.. again.. research.. it's the most important thing to do.

Tip #3 is Don't give up:

Just because you failed the last 17 attempts to make a successful business does not mean that your 18th attempt won't be a success. The most important thing to remember is that when you go in action and try out new ideas, you learn new things. Knowledge is worth way, way more than you spend on any failed business ideas.
I hope you found a few useful tips or at least some inspiration in this post.