Start your first business. Make money from home.

Start your first online business. Make money from home.

Make money from home Most people who want to start their own business don’t have a ton of money laying around and it’s probably one the most common questions I get emailed about: How can I get started without a lot of cash? Well I’ve put together a list below of the best ideas I’ve heard and personally used. I hope you find it useful! The three basic strategies to starting a business without much money are:

• Delay the normal “business starting” activities like incorporating, hiring, renting office or retail space, etc until AFTER your business has started earning money. This is known as bootstrapping.
• Doing everything yourself and spending your personal time instead of hiring an expert. (Takes longer but costs less.)
• Using some neat tricks and little known deals below.

Start With The Easy Stuff: Eliminate Expenses

1. Don’t rent an office! - work from home. Or better yet work from the best free office with locations everywhere: Starbucks. If you need to meet with a client and are worried about seeming small time without an office, don’t be. Just meet them at a restaurant for a lunch meeting. This is what people with the nicest offices do anyway.
2. Don’t hire any employees! - do it all yourself until you have some $ coming in the door.
3. Don’t hire lawyers, technical people, graphic designers, or assistants (see below)

Legal Stuff and Incorporating

1. Get a free lawyer and legal advice from the mentors at Score.org
2. Find a website with a similar legal document and modify it to your needs
3. An LLC is probably the best business structure, but don’t worry about incorporating until you’re earning money, just do a sole proprietorship, you can always incorporate later (you can get it setup with the IRS in just a few minutes by calling them at 800-829-4933)
4. Learn how to do your own financial statements for your business in Excel instead of hiring a CPA or bookkeeper (again you can do this after you’re making money)
5. Take a Quickbooks class at your local community college

Make a website for your business

1. Don’t pay a premium for a top end domain name, there are plenty of good ones left
2. Test out your ideas by writing to a blog, you’ll get feedback on what people like and don’t like
3. Get a free business website at www.wordpress.com or tumblr.com. It won’t be your own domain (it will be something like yourbusiness.wordpress.com) but…
4. When you’re ready to have your own domain, register it at domain.com and add this as a custom domain to your Wordpress or Tumblr site.
5. Get a professional website design for free with a wordpress theme that you can install with a few clicks (no programming knowledge needed)

Getting a Logo

1. Don’t hire a fancy graphic designer. At least not yet. Use LogoYes to create your own logo (or at least get ideas that you can recreate on your own for free)

Accepting Credit Cards

1. Don’t bother with a full merchant account to start off with, they are complicated, come with monthly feeds, and require programming expertise. Instead try a simpler (and much cheaper) solution like Google Checkout or Paypal
2. For a more professional look and a complete shopping cart for only $5/month use E-Junkie, its great and I use it on this site
3. If you have lots of physical products, try a Yahoo Store

Starting a service business where you consult, coach, teach, etc

1. Create several pages on your wordpress site: one for your experience, testimonials, rates, availability, etc
2. Pick a domain name with your #1 keyword in it! (Assuming it isn’t a very competitive keyword you’ll rank on the first page of google within a month or two for that keyword which means customers!) here’s some more info and an example

Creating Info Products

1. Use an ebook template like these from Eben Pagan
2. For print books, self publish it at www.lulu.com and use print on demand (they don’t print a single book until someone buys it which means you have zero up front cost for inventory!)
3. Use a $20 webcam or digital camera to create educational video products
4. Use camtasia ( $200 for PC) or iShowU ($20 for Mac) to record your screen and make great videos like this one. Or record powerpoints and do the voiceover to make great educational products. Update: even cheaper useScreenToaster.
5. Use a mac to edit your videos (iMovie is free) and you can even produce DVD’s

Before investing in a retail location…

1. Go to a local fair or festival and rent a booth to see if anyone buys your product. Talk to potential customers and get feedback.
2. Try selling it on ebay

Always be learning about business and Make money from home.

1. Go to a meetup.com groups in your city related to business/entrepreneurship
2. Read all the best business books by getting them from the library
3. Get 3 of the top 10 books on building wealth for free in PDF
4. Make friends with other entrepreneurs and share material
5. Install the stumble upon toolbar and choose business/entrepreneurship as one of your interests to find all the best videos and talks out there (this is literally like going to a free semester of business school, you get to see all the best speakers and thinkers of our time, and those of the past)
6. Read blogs like this one in google reader

Marketing, free website traffic, and getting your first customer

1. Get 250 full-color business cards for free to hand out to people you meet
2. Post an offer on craigslist
3. Post videos on youtube with links to your website
4. Post the same video to all video sharing sites (Google Video, Yahoo Video, MySpace, Revver, etc) at once withTubeMogul (this is some of the best free marketing you can do)
5. Generate leads by offering an incentive on your website for people to give you their contact info (some incentives that work well: Top 10 reports like the top 10 myths about…the top 10 thing you should know before…etc, videos, audio interviews, one page cheat sheets, free ebooks)
6. Write a good article and send it to more popular websites (include your byline at the bottom). This is also known as doing guest posts and is the #1 thing I used to grow this blog when it first started out.
7. Learn how to use google adwords and spend $10 and see if it brings in at least $10 (if so keep going!)
8. If you can’t afford to get links from expensive directories like Yahoo ($299) use Directory Submitter to get links from hundreds of smaller directories for free
9. Pick a good domain name with your keywords in the domain (use hyphens if necessary). This will help you rank in Google for that keyword and get visitors to your website.
10. Do some basic on page SEO
11. Research what keywords will bring you the most traffic (and are least competitive) with keyword discovery,Wordtracker’s Free Service, and (probably the best option) WordTrackers free trial of their full service (just have to remember to cancel within 7 days to not get charged!)
12. See which keywords are likely to bring buyers (instead of tire kickers)
13. Get more incoming links to your site by creating a Squidoo page (these rank very high in the search engines for some reason!)
14. Send an email to everyone in your email program’s contact list with a short friendly note letting them know you are starting a business and ask if they could forward it to just one or two people who might be interested. Offer something free for the first 10 people. This has an exponential effect because it not only reaches who you know, but everyone who knows who you know (an order of magnitude bigger group of people.)

Become your own BOSS.

This is WizMoor. I hope you enjoyed this info on how to start your first online business. Feel free to comment. Make money from home. Don't forget to click below. /makemoneynow.php?id=wizmoor

Make Money from Home.

Make Money from Home

I'm involved with an peer to peer activity that's private and very successful. It's fun, its sharing, caring and most of all very easy. Get all your friends and family involved for they would not be disappointed at all. If anything they'll thank you 100 times over. I wish I were joking but I am not! You will seriously Make Money from Home. I'm gonna be blunt! Scared money don't make money and to tell you the truth I will show you how to get money. That's my word! Your money will do the work for you.

Get On Board!!!!

Get paid from creating multiple streams of income. I am a real person just like you. I still work a 9 to 5 but not for long. I have a mindset of not even trying to work for someone else till the retirement age, if that's still available. That's the mindset we all need to have or look at the fiscal cliff fiasco where we don't have any idea what those government so-called U.S. leaders are going to do with our future.  When we start making it our business to manage our own affairs and forget about them. This opportunity works for all who's involved in it and naturally automated. Think about how much bullshucks you go through at your job every workday? You can't get along with your co-workers, supervisors and/or managers alike. Oh it's like hell at work! This is a cash only community. No debit cards, credits cards, payza etc.. Strictly cash only.

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Join my team and Make Money from Home.  Create your own wealth.

2013 make it or break it year.

The fiscal cliff.

I'll start off with this article by  Matthew O'Brien of  The Atlantic Dec 28th 2012

Beware the looming payroll tax hike

Until or unless Congress actually does something, 2013 will be the year of tax increases. Big tax increases.

The fiscal cliff is a bit of a misnomer, but when it comes to taxes, the metaphor is apt. If all of the tax cuts, credits, and deductions set to expire at year end do in fact expire, incomes will fall off a tax cliff. Median earners will have 4 percent less in take-home pay in 2013 than they otherwise would; households making a million dollars or more would have 11.4 percent less.

You can see what a fully armed and operational tax cliff would mean for different earners in the chart below from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

But not all tax cuts, credits, and deductions are created equal. Some hit much harder than others, and some hit different earners much harder than other earners. The chart below, again from the indispensable Tax Policy Center, breaks down which tax provisions are worth what to different earners. It's pretty crazy that nobody in Washington is fighting to keep the payroll tax cut.

There's a lot going on here, but there are three big takeaways.

1) The middle-class Bush tax cuts, the payroll tax cut, and the stimulus tax credits are the most important tax issues for most households. These three policies are among the two-costliest for everybody making $200,000 or less -- and almost $500,000 or less. The middle-class Bush tax cuts are worth more to the HENRY (high-earner-not-rich-yet) crowd than anything else, since those cuts apply to the bottom $250,000 of income. The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) patch is worth a bit more, but not much more, than the payroll tax to those earners.

2) Higher top-end rates, higher capital gains taxes, and limited deductions only hit the rich -- and mostly the very, very rich. Here's a startling fact: The top 0.1 percent of households earn half of all capital gains. That's why higher taxes on savings only make a big difference at the very top of the income ladder, even if the Obamacare surtax on capital gains didn't kick in only for households making $250.000 or more. But it's not just capital gains taxes that mostly matter to the über-wealthy. The same is true of the high-end Bush tax cuts. Remember, these are marginal rates -- they only apply to income above their thresholds. So the more income you have above these thresholds, the more these cuts are worth to you. That's exactly what we see in the chart above, with the high-end Bush tax cuts and uncapped deductions worth twice as much to households making more than a million dollars than to households making between $200,000 and $500,000.

3) The AMT is a big, big deal. The Alternative Minimum Tax is just that -- a minimum tax to prevent rich households from paying little to nothing in taxes. The problem is its threshold wasn't indexed to inflation when it was created back in 1969, so more and more households are subject to it -- unless Congress patches it over. That's become a regular right of passage for Congress, and if it doesn't do so again, then 28 million more households will pay it in 2013, according to Eric Toder of the Tax Policy Center. AMT collection would more than triple from $34 billion this year to $120 billion the next, with those 28 million new AMT payers accounting for $64 billion of the new $86 billion of revenue.

The good news, if there is any, is President Obama and House Republicans agree on extending the middle-class Bush tax cuts, the stimulus tax credits, and patching the AMT. The bad news is neither side wants to extend the payroll tax cut, or replace it with something similar. In other words, even in a best-case scenario, 2013 will be a year of tax increases for all, just not as big as they would otherwise be.

That's probably about the most we can ask for from this Congress.

WizMoor  

The  Fiscal Cliff

From my conscious mind I believe that 2013 is the make or break year for us individually here in the U.S..  What I mean is we're going to witness a lot of possible cuts here jobs, services and tax hikes on top of this mess. So we're going to have to tap into our creative minds and decide if you're willing to experience change through chaos or enlightenment? The decision between just sitting on your ass and watch all this all go down in the news on tv? Or to start opening your mind and create  your own economics! That's right! Your own economics! Make yo own money and get your family involved because January 1st is next door not around the corner people. This will be the real recession. A lot of 9 to 5 workers are going to face unemployment but department of labor is not paying out either. I know two people right now that are still waiting and all their getting is excuses of them not qualifying for the benefits. Our mindset have to be on creating our own wealth. There's no other way around it. Even if everything turns out alright with not falling off this fiscal cliff we still have to start building our own economics because any fix will be temporary. The time is now to get on the internet find your niche and stop being afraid of stepping out your box and get all in.

Lets Get Going

Use that conscious mind and get creative. A good place to start that works for me is Empower Network /almostasecret.php?id=wizmoor

This business will show you how to market and make a lot of money while learning with all the training you'll need to succeed. Check it out, click link above.

Get extra cash peer to peer

Change your life financially by joining a private peer to peer activity that is helping people in need of paying off bills, getting rid of debt or just having a piece of mind worry free of not ever having enough cash to travel and do whatever we feel like. Very low one time start up cost for life then keep receiving for as long as you want. Please share this with a your family and friends. This link does all the work for you. Click here sign up and get started and you will not regret it. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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46 Ways to Start a Business With No Money

This is a post from 2008 by Brian Armstrong I find interesting. Basically Make Money from Home. I really like this.

Most people who want to start their own business don’t have a ton of money laying around and it’s probably one the most common questions I get emailed about: How can I get started without a lot of cash?

Well I’ve put together a list below of the best ideas I’ve heard and personally used. I hope you find it useful!

The three basic strategies to starting a business without much money are:

• Delay the normal “business starting” activities like incorporating, hiring, renting office or retail space, etc until AFTER your business has started earning money. This is known as bootstrapping.
• Doing everything yourself and spending your personal time instead of hiring an expert. (Takes longer but costs less.)
• Using some neat tricks and little known deals below.

Start With The Easy Stuff: Eliminate Expenses

1. Don’t rent an office! - work from home. Or better yet work from the best free office with locations everywhere: Starbucks. If you need to meet with a client and are worried about seeming small time without an office, don’t be. Just meet them at a restaurant for a lunch meeting. This is what people with the nicest offices do anyway.
2. Don’t hire any employees! - do it all yourself until you have some $ coming in the door.
3. Don’t hire lawyers, technical people, graphic designers, or assistants (see below)

Legal Stuff and Incorporating

1. Get a free lawyer and legal advice from the mentors at Score.org
2. Find a website with a similar legal document and modify it to your needs
3. An LLC is probably the best business structure, but don’t worry about incorporating until you’re earning money, just do a sole proprietorship, you can always incorporate later (you can get it setup with the IRS in just a few minutes by calling them at 800-829-4933)
4. Learn how to do your own financial statements for your business in Excel instead of hiring a CPA or bookkeeper (again you can do this after you’re making money)
5. Take a Quickbooks class at your local community college

Make a website for your business

1. Don’t pay a premium for a top end domain name, there are plenty of good ones left
2. Test out your ideas by writing to a blog, you’ll get feedback on what people like and don’t like
3. Get a free business website at www.wordpress.com or tumblr.com. It won’t be your own domain (it will be something like yourbusiness.wordpress.com) but…
4. When you’re ready to have your own domain, register it at domain.com and add this as a custom domain to your Wordpress or Tumblr site.
5. Get a professional website design for free with a wordpress theme that you can install with a few clicks (no programming knowledge needed)

Getting a Logo

1. Don’t hire a fancy graphic designer. At least not yet. Use LogoYes to create your own logo (or at least get ideas that you can recreate on your own for free)

Accepting Credit Cards

1. Don’t bother with a full merchant account to start off with, they are complicated, come with monthly feeds, and require programming expertise. Instead try a simpler (and much cheaper) solution like Google Checkout or Paypal
2. For a more professional look and a complete shopping cart for only $5/month use E-Junkie, its great and I use it on this site
3. If you have lots of physical products, try a Yahoo Store

Starting a service business where you consult, coach, teach, etc

1. Create several pages on your wordpress site: one for your experience, testimonials, rates, availability, etc
2. Pick a domain name with your #1 keyword in it! (Assuming it isn’t a very competitive keyword you’ll rank on the first page of google within a month or two for that keyword which means customers!) here’s some more info and an example

Creating Info Products

1. Use an ebook template like these from Eben Pagan
2. For print books, self publish it at www.lulu.com and use print on demand (they don’t print a single book until someone buys it which means you have zero up front cost for inventory!)
3. Use a $20 webcam or digital camera to create educational video products
4. Use camtasia ( $200 for PC) or iShowU ($20 for Mac) to record your screen and make great videos like this one. Or record powerpoints and do the voiceover to make great educational products. Update: even cheaper useScreenToaster.
5. Use a mac to edit your videos (iMovie is free) and you can even produce DVD’s

Before investing in a retail location…

1. Go to a local fair or festival and rent a booth to see if anyone buys your product. Talk to potential customers and get feedback.
2. Try selling it on ebay

Always be learning about business

1. Go to a meetup.com groups in your city related to business/entrepreneurship
2. Read all the best business books by getting them from the library
3. Get 3 of the top 10 books on building wealth for free in PDF
4. Make friends with other entrepreneurs and share material
5. Install the stumble upon toolbar and choose business/entrepreneurship as one of your interests to find all the best videos and talks out there (this is literally like going to a free semester of business school, you get to see all the best speakers and thinkers of our time, and those of the past)
6. Read blogs like this one in google reader

Marketing, free website traffic, and getting your first customer

1. Get 250 full-color business cards for free to hand out to people you meet
2. Post an offer on craigslist
3. Post videos on youtube with links to your website
4. Post the same video to all video sharing sites (Google Video, Yahoo Video, MySpace, Revver, etc) at once withTubeMogul (this is some of the best free marketing you can do)
5. Generate leads by offering an incentive on your website for people to give you their contact info (some incentives that work well: Top 10 reports like the top 10 myths about…the top 10 thing you should know before…etc, videos, audio interviews, one page cheat sheets, free ebooks)
6. Write a good article and send it to more popular websites (include your byline at the bottom). This is also known as doing guest posts and is the #1 thing I used to grow this blog when it first started out.
7. Learn how to use google adwords and spend $10 and see if it brings in at least $10 (if so keep going!)
8. If you can’t afford to get links from expensive directories like Yahoo ($299) use Directory Submitter to get links from hundreds of smaller directories for free
9. Pick a good domain name with your keywords in the domain (use hyphens if necessary). This will help you rank in Google for that keyword and get visitors to your website.
10. Do some basic on page SEO
11. Research what keywords will bring you the most traffic (and are least competitive) with keyword discovery,Wordtracker’s Free Service, and (probably the best option) WordTrackers free trial of their full service (just have to remember to cancel within 7 days to not get charged!)
12. See which keywords are likely to bring buyers (instead of tire kickers)
13. Get more incoming links to your site by creating a Squidoo page (these rank very high in the search engines for some reason!)
14. Send an email to everyone in your email program’s contact list with a short friendly note letting them know you are starting a business and ask if they could forward it to just one or two people who might be interested. Offer something free for the first 10 people. This has an exponential effect because it not only reaches who you know, but everyone who knows who you know (an order of magnitude bigger group of people.)

This is WizMoor. I hope you enjoyed this info. Feel free to comment. Make money from home. Don't forget to click below.

/makemoneynow.php?id=wizmoor

Great business for newbies.

If you can walk and chew bubble gum you can work this. If you have fear your gonna have to get past that fear of doing business online and start generating some cash this coming 2013. Don't let next year be like 2012 where nothing had popped off for you financially. This program offers all the training you'll need to become successful in just a short period of time.

The time is now if your tired of not having enough cash to do what you really want to do plus creating residual monthly income. Now the reason you'll wanna get in now is because of the very, very low start up cost that I think won't last very long. You would have to click and check out presentation to find this out.

Today's economy is a roller coaster to say the least. But if you research this for yourself there are hundreds if not thousands of people or more earning income online from home. Whats good with this business is that if you have never ever did any kind of making money online and are afraid that you won't know what your doing then this is the program for you and all newbies. A teenager can do this. Click on link check it out for this can change your life financially forever.

http://www.empowernetwork.com/makemoneynow.php?id=wizmoor

Anybody into the universe? I find this really interesting.

From massive bodies that fell just short of becoming stars to the tiniest solar systems  known, 2012 has brought an array of intriguing exoplanets to light. And double-star systems that once seemed unlikely to host planets have produced a wealth of them this year.  

J. Pinfield, for the RoPACS network at the University of Hertfordshire

This artist’s impression shows the newfound potentially habitable alien planet HD40307g in the foreground, with its host star and two other worlds in the six-planet system also depicted. The atmosphere and continents shown are neither detected nor constrained by the discovery team's observations.

By Nola Taylor Redd

Here's a look at some of the most exciting alien planets discovered in 2012:

Potentially habitable worldsIn the fall of 2012, astronomers announced two new planets, discovered separately, that may have the potential to support life outside of our solar system. Both planets were found in the habitable zone of their stars, the region where a planet could hold liquid water on its surface. Water is thought to be a key ingredient in the formation of life.

HD 40307g, a "super-Earth" announced in November, is about seven times as massive as the planet we live on. The planet, which could be either rocky or a Neptune-like gas giant, sits in the middle of its habitable zone, making it possible for water to exist. [ Gallery: 7 Potentially Habitable Exoplanets ]

PHL (at) UPR Arecibo

Artist's rendition of the "super Earth" Gliese 163c, which may be capable of supporting microbial life.

HD 40307g is the most distant of the six planets in its system, taking about 200 days to orbit its star. Its distance means that it isn't tidally locked, with one face perpetually turned toward its star, making it more likely to have Earth-like conditions. Because the planet is only 42 light-years away from Earth, it could potentially be imaged by telescopes in the future. Its parent star is smaller and dimmer than the sun.

Gliese 163c also lies within its star's habitable zone, although it skirts the edge. Like HD 40307g, it is about seven times the mass of Earth, and could be a large rocky planet or a smaller gas giant. The planet orbits a red dwarf that is slightly dimmer than our sun, flying around it once every 26 days. Depending on its composition, Gliese 163c could host an ocean and a dense atmosphere, or it could be too hot for life to exist.

Both planets were found using the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS, the European Southern Observatory's telescope located at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.

Advertise | AdChoices

Two suns, four starsA number of double-sun systems were discovered in 2012, but perhaps the most astonishing was found by amateur astronomers. The gas giant PH1 orbits a pair of stars that are part of a four-star system, the first discovery of its kind.

A close binary set of stars with masses about 1.5 and 0.41 times that of the sun, the twin stars at the core of the system dance around each other every 20 days.

1. Space news from NBCNews.com
   1. 
      Free e-books bring the cosmos to lifeScience editor Alan Boyle's blog: Free e-books from NASA, the Hubble Space Telescope's science team and the European Space Agency bring Earth and the heavens to life.
   2. Pyramids have their day in the sun
   3. New 'baby picture' of universe unveiled
   4. Catch Ursid meteor shower this weekend

Two more stars circle the pair at about a thousand times the Earth's distance to the sun.

Circling the central pair once every 138 days, PH1 is a gas giant, with a temperature ranging from 484 degrees Fahrenheit (251 degrees Celsius) to 644 F (340 C). Just bigger than Neptune, the planet could potentially host rocky moons, but such moons would also be too hot for liquid water.

PH1 was discovered by two amateur astronomers participating in the citizen scientist program Planet Hunters. A dip in the light from the system signified the potential presence of a planet, which was then confirmed by a team of professional astronomers.

In addition to being the first planet discovered by Planet Hunters, PH1 is also the first planet found orbiting a double star in a quadruple system and the first planet found in a quadruple system. [ A Galaxy Full of Alien Planets (Infographic) ]

Lynette Cook

"Tatooine" Planet Kepler-35b: "This piece went through numerous adjustments as William Welsh and I iterated back and forth about orbit lines, lightning on the planet's dark side, the brightness of the aurora, and more," Cook said. "Attention to detail is what especially impresses me when I work with research astronomers, as all of us strive to 'get it right.'"

Near-habitable Tatooine systemScientists discovered two separate binary systems this year with planets that lay near their habitable zone. Often referred to as "Tatooine planets," due to the famous double-star-system home of Luke Skywalker in the film "Star Wars," planets orbiting a binary star system have two suns overhead. Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b are particularly notable because they lie near their stars' habitable zone.

Kepler-34b is a gas giant with almost 70 times the mass of Earth. It travels around two sunlike stars once every 289 days, staying about as far away as Earth stays from the sun. It lies 4,900 light-years from Earth.

Kepler-35b weighs in at about an eighth of Jupiter's mass. It takes 131 days to travel around its parent pair, which are both slightly smaller than the sun. The system is only 5,400 light-years from Earth.

Both systems were found using NASA's Kepler space telescope.

Tatooine twinsIn another double-star system twist, two planets were found orbiting a binary pair, the first time multiple planets have been seen around twin stars. The Kepler-47 stars are 5,000 light-years from Earth. One is sunlike, while the other is smaller and fainter. They orbit each other once every 7.5 days.

Kepler-47c is a gas giant that takes 303 days to circle its suns, and rests in the habitable zone of its stars. Although it is considered unsuitable for life, its existence means that other planets could survive in the habitable zones of twin-star systems. It could also host rocky moons that have the potential for life.

Kepler-47b takes less than 50 days to orbit the pair of stars. Only three times the radius of Earth, it is the smallest known planet orbiting in a binary system. Scientists think the rocky planet may be a sweltering world with a thick atmosphere.

Closest known exoplanetEarth's closest star system, Alpha Centauri, hosts a molten terrestrial planet, scientists found. A rocky planet orbits Alpha Centauri B, one of the three stars in the system with 90 percent the mass of the sun, once every 3.2 days. The planet passes within only a few million miles of its star, hovering at a tenth of the distance between Mercury and the sun.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / T. Pyle

This screenshot from a NASA animation depicts the two known planets in the Kepler-47 system, as well as their double parent stars.

Although the overheated planet likely has a scorched surface too hot for life, scientists think the system has the potential to contain other planets. Only 4.2 light-years from Earth, such planets would be easier to image with telescopes in the not-too-distant future than more faraway candidates.

Astronomers used HARPS to identify the nearby planet.

Tiniest solar systemMost of the newly discovered planets have been "super"-size: super-Earths, super-Jupiters and so on. Larger planets are generally easier to find. But three new planets only a fraction the size of Earth, including one Mars-size body, make up the smallest alien system found to date.

Smaller and dimmer than the sun, red dwarfs are the most common type of star in the Milky Way galaxy. Scientists once thought they were too small to have a sustainable habitable zone, but a separate study earlier this year showed that more could maintain planets with the potential to host life. Such small planets would have been a challenge to find around a larger, sunlike star. [ Alien Planet Quiz: Are You an Exoplanet Expert? ]

Kepler found the planets orbiting their star KOI-961 between 0.6 to 1.5 percent of Earth's distance to the sun, tearing around the red dwarf in less than two days. The rocky bodies have temperatures ranging from 350 F (177 C) to 836 F (447 C), resulting in broiling hot surfaces unlikely to support life. The three planets have diameters 0.78, 0.73, and 0.57 times that of Earth, with the smallest being Mars-size.

A planet that's almost a starKappa Andromedae b, or Kappa And b, is a massive planet that came in just shy of the ability to be a star. The gas giant, which is 13 times as massive as Jupiter, fell just short of having enough mass to be classified as a brown dwarf, failed stars too low in mass to sustain fusion in their core.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/  S. Wiessinger

The "super-Jupiter" Kappa Andromedae b, shown here in an artist's rendering, circles its star at nearly twice the distance that Neptune orbits the sun. With a mass about 13 times Jupiter's, the object glows with a reddish color.

Astronomers were able to take a rare direct photo of the planet using Japan's Subaru telescope at Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

The wannabe star orbits Kappa Andromedae, a star 2.5 times as massive as the sun that lies 170 light-years away. Circling the young star at almost twice Neptune's wide-reaching orbit, Kappa And b averages 2,600 F (1,400 C) and would appear bright red if seen up close.

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• The Nearest Stars to Earth (Infographic)
• 6 Most Likely Places for Alien Life in the Solar System
• The Top 5 Potentially Habitable Alien Planets

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By Nola Taylor Redd

updated 12/21/2012 1:24:37 PM ET

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