There are four lessons you should learn before you get involved in dividend investing.

1. There are no guarantees
Many people decided to ignore this lesson in the years before the recession hit. While collecting interest on other investments, such as CDs and bonds, is something you can count on, the same is not true of dividends. The board of directors get to decide whether or not shareholders will be entitled to cash dividends. Most companies recognize that it is in their best interest to maintain or ideally increase payouts. Continuing to pay dividends is a good sign of a company’s financial health. A financially strong company can also attract more investors, enabling them to grow.

2. Do not go after high yields
In the last few years there were many investors that got too greedy and started taking higher and higher risks to find yields that were acceptable. This was possible because interest rates and market yields were very low. However, this turned out to be a bad decision in the long run. To minimize risk, investors should avoid any yield higher than 2.5 times market average. For example, the current market average is two percent, therefore you should stay away from anything five percent or more.

3. Cash flow is king
Do not just look at a company’s earnings this year, but also look carefully at the cash going out and coming in for the last five years, at least. If you focus just on earnings, you will not have a good picture of a dividend’s sustainability. Also try to account for capital expenditures as well. The remaining amount is called the free cash flow and is what the company has available to either pay dividends or buy back shares. Also check how much the company pays out in dividends every year. The free cash flow needs to be greater than the dividends paid so the company can maintain dividend payouts.

4. Don’t put your eggs in one basket – diversify
No matter what the current financial situation may be, diversifying your portfolio will help you weather even the toughest situations. Diversification is the basic rule in your building your portfolio and this is a lesson that should learnt in your stock market basics class. The financial industry was hurt worse than others over the last few years, and even those who diversified were hurt. However, they were also less affected than people who put all their money into high yield financial stocks. Diversifying is still important even if the yields are lower.

These four tips will ensure that you have a much easier time building your portfolio. You will be able to find companies that have a sustainable dividend payout with a higher than average yield.

There are many things to look for when researching stocks and understanding the stock market. First off, is the company large or small, and what industry are they in? Pharmaceuticals are usually great buys since all it takes is one drug to take off and you have a winner. Other things to look at are the companies financials which give you key rations to know. Cash flow per share is important because it tells you how the company is spending their cash. If they are spending a lot of cash, they may not be a safe investment, but of course they could be investing the cash wisely, making them a good buy. Financial grade health is also important, if a company has no money, it isn’t wise to invest.

Companies with the highest grades are the most solid financially, and are normally better options. Growth grade refers to sales and if they are rising or decreasing. Again, the higher the grade, the better the investment. Many big companies and institutions buy stocks in many different things to hold value and make them money over time. If a stock you want to buy doesn’t have any of that, why would you want to buy that if those large companies don’t think they will make money over time?

Another big thing to look at is the accounts receivables of a company. Accounts receivables is how much money that is owed by customers for their purchases. If a company has a lot of accounts receivables, this means that there is less cash and more risk that they will get paid. The less accounts receivable the better. And of course the last piece of research are listening to stock analysts and your broker.

They can give you personal insight and advice on what they might do if they were in your decision. Research can be tough, but all it takes is asking a few people and looking at a companies financial history, and then you can determine if it is a good investment or not.