Interview With a Network Marketing Master

Christopher Terry. By day, stocks trader. By night, network marketing genius. Because of his second "night" job, Terry will be resigning from his primary day job. The really amazing part of that is he will have done this within 5 short months of joining his network marketing company.

Within the network marketing company itself, Terry is a leader and a mentor. He does not abandon his downline members. He keeps us informed of company events and policies on an almost daily basis. He lets us know he is here to support us; as long as we are willing to do the work, he will do anything within his power to help us succeed. He is a network marketer's dream upline sponsor.

How did he do it? What is his secret? I sat down with him to find out and share with you his ideas for success.

Denise: Thank you for granting me this interview, Chris.

Christopher: Thank you, Denise!

D: How long have you been working at your career as a stocks trader?

C: I have been a Stock and Futures trader since the mid 1990's. I owned a construction business prior to that. I wanted to be able work and make money from home. Although I started trading in 1995, it was not until 1998 when I was able to walk away from my construction business and trade full time.

D: How successful were you at doing that?

C: I have done very well. I find it fascinating that I can create wealth from home. I love the fact that a person can take a relatively small amount of money and create a growing stream of income; however, it's all based on your own efforts. For example, in my business if I don't trade, I do not earn income. Also, trading takes years of dedication, time and effort to become successful; in other words, there is no such thing as an overnight success.

D: I understand you became a leader and motivational speaker in your industry. Share with me how you rose to that level.

C: I was actually in Amway for several years in the 1990s. I was fortunate to hit levels of success here in the United States in that company. I then went overseas as Amway opened up new markets, which gave me the opportunity to have an international business. I owe my "positive thinking" to that network marketing experience, since the leaders in Amway always recommended we read positive thinking books and listen to positive thinking tapes. At the time many considered it "brain washing." Today it is called "Laws of Attraction." So, l was into positive thinking and Laws of Attraction before it was a cool thing to do. That time period in my life gave me the foundation to grow both mentally and financially. I started a business outside of Amway, and then I went into the trading business.

D: What qualities do you see within you that helped you achieve success in your trading career?

C: I would have to say vision and foresight. I look at the future of what things can be, not as they are, and then I take action. I have always taken action, I am not afraid of whether that action turns out right or wrong. The worst thing to do is to have an idea and a plan but never actually do anything to put that plan into action. It is better to do something and fail than to never have done anything at all. I have always had a drive for success once I realized I have the power and the ability to become whomever and whatever I want. There is a four-letter word to success, and its spelled W-O-R-K; the reality is anything worthwhile takes work, trading and network marketing included!

D: Do you think those same qualities helped you build your network marketing business?

C: Those, and also reading positive thinking books and books on success, as well as overcoming my fear to speak to people. I was very shy growing up, so I learned to say "Hi" and start a conversation, to truly become interested in other people and what they had to say. I also am not afraid to work; if I had to dig ditches for a living, I would be the best ditch digger I could possibly be. I believe once you get your mindset right and you learn to ask the right questions, the game is 90% won, and success will be yours.

D: Tell me how you got involved in network marketing.

C: Interesting story! I was dating a girl and she was bragging about how her boss was making $5,000 a month in some business and that I should talk to him, so I did. He signed me up, and then my girlfriend, the very one who told me to speak to him, wanted me to quit because it was Amway! I told my sponsor that I had some problems and I had to quit. He told me, "Get rid of the problems." So, I broke up with my girlfriend and built Amway, and as you already know, I became very successful in that business!

D: Were you familiar with network marketing before that?

C: No, I was not.

D: What were your thoughts and, perhaps, preconceived notions, about network marketing in general, prior to joining your first network marketing company?

C: I had no idea what it was, all I knew was I had to bring people in the business with me, sell some products and I would get rich. Unfortunately, though, it does not work that way!

D: Could you elaborate on that idea? Most of us are brought into this industry with that same notion, and we all eventually experience the same rude awakening that you just described, that it is not as easy as they make it sound. So please, for the people reading this who are not yet in network marketing and are considering it, as well as for those who have started and perhaps are failing, explain what you mean.

C: Well, of course you do not just get in and get rich, this is the most common misconception about network marketing. There are people who enter the business and think everybody they know will get in with them. Then there are people who come in saying they have this "one guy that if he gets in, he will make us all rich, he knows everybody!" and it is the furthest thing from the truth. This business is a numbers game. To be successful, you must expose people to the business every single day, to be consistently meeting new people and telling others about our dynamic opportunity. The more people you come in contact with, the more likely you will find people who want to become a part of your team and earn an income with you. This is true from day one; even though you may have a list of 100 or 500 people that you know, you still want to always be in the creative mode and working what I like to call the ABC's - Always Be Contacting. You do not know where the next million dollar earner will come from.

The hardest thing for me is I cannot take the feelings inside my heart and mind that motivate me and give them to someone else, although I wish I could. The truth is, everybody has to find their own will, desire, and hunger to succeed; without them, they will end up like the rest, having some success, but not truly creating wealth. We all know or have heard the hard, cold fact that 98% of the people in this great country are broke and do not have a backup plan; if they lose their job or business, they will be 90-120 days away from poverty. People can blame it on the government, but the responsibility ultimately falls on each one of us. We should be proactive when we do not actually need to be and start our own home based businesses, which will get us out of that 98% and into the 2% income earners.

One final thought on this topic: I think the reason most people fail in the network marketing industry is that they treat it like a job and not like their own business. When you act as if it is just another job, you do the least amount of work possible for whatever pay you can get. These people want to work very few hours and get rich right away. Unfortunately, this does not happen in network marketing. Those who invest their time and effort into growing the business, even if there is no income at first, can see the vision of the future. At the beginning they will work 20 hours a day for zero pay, because they see that putting in 20 hours will pay the equivalent of 2,000 hours' worth of work one day, and eventually zero hours will pay 10,000 hours. Fortunately, in our business the compensation for our work is amazing, but if you do not expand with people, you will not take advantage of the true income potential of network marketing.

D: Thorough and well said. I would like to add that when you said one should always be in the creative mode, in addition to working the ABC's, I think the creativity part should apply to marketing your business. Be creative in your marketing efforts. Think outside of the box and create many different marketing campaigns. Utilize technology and the internet. The more you put yourself out there, the more you achieve exactly what you are saying, Chris, which is maximum exposure of the business to as many people as possible so you can increase your odds of signing up significant numbers new members into your downline. I do this on a daily basis myself, and I also make it a point to talk to people every day to make new contacts, as you have recommended.

Getting back to my questions, what were your first thoughts when you were introduced to the specific business we are in together?

C: I was actively looking for an online business to get into. I was not looking for network marketing/multi-level marketing, I was searching for an online business that was cutting edge and in which I could earn a residual income. When I saw this business it was in a cutting edge industry, doing business in 170 countries, it offered a strong income opportunity without having to sponsor people, yet by sponsoring people, it offered the ability to create wealth and long term residual income. They say to be successful you need a product that people want, need and can afford, that will be used over and over and is desired in the market place. I found it!

D: As we already know, this is not the only network marketing business you have ever been involved in. Were there any others besides Amway and ours?

C: I looked at a few others along the way, but I did not join any.

D: Why not?

C: Well, I am a high income earner in the trading world, both as a trader and an educator. I have been doing this for 17 years, and nothing really struck me as good enough for me to give it my full attention. I have seen MANY companies, products and services. When I saw the opportunity in the industry you and I are in together, I saw an industry that was young, dynamic, and that people loved. It has a place in the market because it meets people's desires to find a bargain and/or make a deal. Also, it is VERY profitable, so I wanted to be a part of it. I got in first, and then I learned about it as I grew with it. I have not looked back. I have built an incredible team that's growing in leaps and bounds. You are a part of that team, Denise, an amazing student and downline member.

D: Thank you, Chris! How do the other network marketing companies you've analyzed compare to the one you and I are in together?

C: They cannot compare.

D: Besides what you have already stated about our company when you actually found it, what made you think that this was the company to join?

C: I have no products to carry around, no juices or vitamins to purchase or sell, I did not have to sneak up on my family and friends, and I do not have to sell expensive products that I can buy in the store cheaper. We get paid to advertise. Period.

D: Now, I would like to share with our reading audience your own personal tips for network marketing success. Please tell me, what works for you?

C: Relationships are everything; your network is your net worth. I am always in the creative process and always opening doors to new people, saying hello and breaking the ice to get a conversation going. In network marketing, our job is to leverage time and money; without people on your team it becomes impossible. I would suggest genuinely becoming interested in others, going to events, whether it is a show or a business event, or any gathering where good quality people who you may want to work with will attend. I also suggest speaking to people who you would not normally speak to and might even make you feel a little uncomfortable; those are often your best prospects. We tend to feel heroic because we got the number of the drive-through window guy at Mc Donalds; meanwhile, we get false impressions of success when we see somebody dressed in a nice suit and tie and just assume they are already successful, so we say nothing to them because we think they've got it all already and don't need a change in their lives. Both of these people may be your best prospect, or your worst, but you will never know unless you open up the door and say something to break the ice. With the "successful business man" (or so we assume) who we are often afraid to approach, you can start with something as simple as, "Hey, nice tie, where did you get it?" Then see where the conversation leads.

D: Is there anything that you've done that didn't work so well?

C: Yes. As I've mentioned before, it takes years to become an "overnight success." I have made, will make, and will continue to make mistakes. It is okay to fail; the more you fail the closer you will get to winning. Becoming immune to failing is the key to success. You may wonder why I say this. Well, if you have somebody who is not used to failing and thinks failing is bad, then when he/she hears "No" enough times, it damages his/her confidence, and that person is afraid to keep trying. However, if you are not afraid to fail, you will not let those "No's" stop you. Instead, you will become more motivated to find the people who will say "YES" to your opportunity or presentation. Become a failure to become a success. This goes for ANY business!

D: What is the ONE business building idea you can share that you think is the MAIN reason you are where you are today, about to retire from trading, and about to embark on some major journeys in life, both literally and figuratively?

C: First, let me clarify something very important. The word "retire" is loosely used in the network marketing industry. I have been trading for 17 years and it is time for me to take a break. Do I think I will stay out of it for long period of time? No, it has always has been and will always be a passion of mine. I have built my name and reputation as a trader and educator, so I will most definitely return to the industry; however, I welcome a break in the action right now.

I love to help and give to others, so this is my current mission. There is nothing better than creating a profit in network marketing and helping others create wealth in the same fashion. Then, bringing my profession back into the mix, profiting on those profits as a trader too is a home run! However, I really do have the freedom to either work or not work; that is how large the income that I have created in our network marketing business is already. The MAIN reason I am where I am today is I will do whatever it takes; I will work 100 hours in a 24 hour day until I make it. As I said earlier, the main ingredient for me is that four-letter curse word, W O R K... and I have a LOW "IQ" ("I QUIT") level!

D: Lastly, you are extremely jazzed about the network marketing company we are in together. What are the defining qualities of this company that makes it so good? Based on that, what should people look for in their own network marketing company or when deciding to actually join one?

C: Well, it seems lately I am sleeping no more than 3 hours per night! The energy of the team, of the company, and of the industry has taken the world by storm, and this keeps me "jazzed" as you say! I believe I had already mentioned earlier the reasons why I like our company, because there are no products to lug around and there is no trying to sell to friends and family a product or service they do not want. I have been approached by other network marketing companies that involve selling legal insurance, utility companies, juice companies, vitamin companies, weight loss companies, you name it! I have found that ours is so simple; our work is to advertise and it takes no more than two minutes per day. I am from the Amway world. I got my PhD in network marketing. In my opinion, the most ideal situation is the one that does not require a person to sponsor people to become successful, yet offers the opportunity to earn larger income because you do sponsor, train, and motivate others, and once you help them earn income, you earn additional bonuses. I come from a world where, when you help enough people get what you want, you in turn will get what you want. Everybody has their own version of what is best for them. Some may like a particular industry. My advice? Do your due diligence, figure out what you are passionate about, and run with it. That's all.

I want to thank Mr. Terry for taking the time to answer these questions so thoughtfully and thoroughly.

On a side note, Christopher Terry is one of the most benevolent and philanthropic men I've ever met, and he does it without creating great publicity or accolades for his generosity. He believes very strongly in the idea that "it is in giving that you shall receive." I am honored to know him and very glad we have gone into business together.

So there you have it. Christopher Terry's story and his tips for helping you create success in your own network marketing company. If you want have any questions or want to learn more, please email me at denise@bettermlmsuccess.com.

Making Money Online: 3 Steps to Success Revealed

As you will probably know, the internet is scattered with Make-Money products of a very poor quality. Made by people who want to make quick dollars over the back of people who want to earn some honest money. I know more than 95% of all the people on the internet fail making money online. Would not you be one of the 5%? How?

1. Obviously, the competition in the 'Make Money Industry is huge. For example: When you type at the Google AdWords Keyword Tool: 'Make Money Online' you will see that those specific words are typed monthly 450.000 times. That's 5,4 million times each year, only on those 3 words.

To see what your up against in this industry notice that on Google, when typed all in title: Make Money Online, there are over 661.000 websites having these exact words in their website title. Due to this heavy competition that's why a lot of people will actually fail, or even go broke having success as an online entrepreneur.

2. You either want to make or promote an excellent product, but maybe more importantly promote your product in multiple ways. So you want to have knowledge of building a website, writing a blog, copywriting, e-mail-marketing etc. etc. Knowing the fact that the competition is killing and you have to be a expert in order to not fail. I want to share with you a step by step tutorial helping you survive and guarantee your success.

3. Do you want to become an expert in:

- Video marketing
- Website-building
- SEO
- Reverse Engineering
- Blogging
- E-mail-marketing
- etc., etc.

Take a look at this step-by-step- tutorial at my bio-box and become one of those 5% who will have success as an online entrepreneur.

Booting Linux From a Flash Drive For File Recovery

After a long time we are back to talk about some more cool tech stuff you can do with a USB flash drive. Today's topic will focus on booting the Linux OS from a USB stick. The purpose for booting Linux from a USB drive, at least the purpose of this guide, is to recover files from a broken install of the windows OS or any other OS for that matter. We can also run virus scans from the Linux distro securely without infecting other PC's or having to boot the infected PC.

What you will need:

* A USB stick anywhere from 512mb to 2GB (depending on the distro)
* A main board capable of booting from a usb device.
* and about 15 minutes plus download time.

Software to be used:

* Latest stable version of UNetbootin

Step # 1: Prepare the USB Drive

Once you have all your materials together go ahead and plug the USB drive in and backup all files you may have on the disk.

Step # 2: Installing to The USB

Start up UNetbootin and select the following:

1. Use the first radio button "Distribution". This will download and install, automatically, the distro we want.
2. Pick SystemRescueCD. We are going with this because it is easy the ntfs file system driver comes prepackaged so no additional customization is required.
3. Next select your flash drive.
NOTE: Be sure to select your flash drive and not your windows partition or primary partition, 'cause if you do then you will destroy the currently installed OS.
4. Finally click "Ok".

UNetbootin options to select are shown in an image in the source article located at the link at the bottom of this article.

Step # 3: Configuring Bios

We will need to setup your computer to boot from the USB stick. To do so first you mother board will need to support this feature and second you will need to do some configuration.

1. Reboot your computer and hit "F2 or" del "depending on your mother board to enter BIOS config.
2. Search for the section labeled boot sequence, or named similarly. This will sometimes be filed under a separate section like advanced BIOS features, or similar.
3. Move removable or USB to the top of the list. If you do not see these options listed your mother board most likely does not support USB boot. Consult Google for more info on this.
4. Reboot the computer with the drive plugged in.

Step # 4: Booting Linux

We are going to boot into command line for this guide. There are options to load a GUI for those of you who tremble in the face of CLI. I must warm you though Command Line is by far easier and faster.

1. Once your computer passes post you will see the boot loader screen. Navigate to "VMLinuz64" and hit enter.

After a bunch of OK's on the screen and most likely 1 red FAIL you will be at the prompt "root @ sysresccd / root%". This would indicate a success.

Step # 5: Copying files from a windows partition onto an external hard disk.

For this you will need an external medium on which to move your files have this ready to receive your data. You can also use the usb stick which you booted from, if of course there is enough space on it.

1. First we will need to identify our drives. I will assume you have two storage devices plugged in one being the flash drive and the other your windows hard drive. Execute the command below:

fdisk -l | less This command will show you all the storage devices on your system. Use the down and up arrows to navigate the output as it may be larger than your screen. My output for this command is shown below:
Disk / dev / sda: 160.0 GB, 16000000000 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors / track, 19452 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0xd0f4738c Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System / dev / sda1 * 1 19451 156240126 7 HPFS / NTFS Disk / dev / sdb: 2085 MB, 2085617664 bytes 2 heads, 63 sectors / track, 32329 cylinders Units = cylinders of 126 * 512 = 64512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00502bcd Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System / dev / sdb1 * 1 32330 2036720 6 FAT16 My device is 160GB NTFS partition. Knowing those two bits of info we can take an educated guess and say / dev / sda is our windows device.

NOTE: To exit this output screen press "q".

2. Mount the windows drive so that we can access the files on it. Run the mount command below:

mount / dev / sda / mnt / windows NOTE: you will need to replace "/ dev / sda" with your device found from the output of fdisk -l. It is likely that they will be the same.

3. Lets find out if we mounted the right device now. Run:

ls / mnt / windows This command will list the files and folders in a directory. If you see the tell program Program Files and WINDOWS directories it was successfully mounted.

4. Time to get our backup device out. Plug it in and wait a few seconds then run the fdisk command again:

fdisk -l Egypt
cat / proc / partitions You should see both devices you saw last time and now a new one should be there. Match the size of the device to yours and note the device location most likely / dev / sdc.

Mount this device to the pre-made backup folder using the mount command again:

mount / dev / sdc / mnt / backup 5. Now it is time to copy things from the old windows drive to the backup disk.

If you want to copy your entire windows drive to your back up drive run this command:

cp -R / mnt / windows / * / mnt / backup / YOUR_FOLDER_NAME If you plan on copy single files type the full file path and then the full destination path.

Additional Useful Commands:

* Sometimes a virus can infect the very first bit of code that is executed on your system the MBR (Master Boot Record). Luckily we can clean this up with relative ease in linux. Execute:

dd if = / dev / zero of = / dev / sdb bs = 512 count = 1 Remember to replace "/ dev / sdb" with your device cause if you miss and clean the wrong one you may have some issues.

* Maybe you do not have an external device to back stuff up but you have another computer with a network share. Well lets mount that network share so we can copy files to it. Create a mount point:

mkdir / mnt / network Mount the share:
mount -t smbfs // computername / folder / mnt / network -o username = user1, password = mypasshere Now you can copy and move files to the network share just like any other directory.

To mount a share without a password use:

mount -t smbfs // computername / folder / mnt / network Until Next Time.

Essential Features of Devops Technology in This Cloud Era

DevOps is the evolution of traditional application development and operations roles driven by consumerization of all software and business demand for agility. DevOps facilitates the needs of today's businesses to stay relevant by constantly innovating through software.

DevOps is about people and processes as much as if not more than tools. Without cultural and process changes, technology alone cannot enable DevOps success. DEVOPS, one of first challenges is to find out what the industry really thinks "DevOps" means. DEVOPS asked experts from across the industry to define what DevOps means to them. The purpose of this list is not to come up with a one-sentence definition of DevOps to appeal to all. The goal is to show just how many varied ideas are connected with the concept of DevOps, and in the process learn a little more what DevOps is all about.

Several of the top experts in the DevOps arena made this very clear while DEVOPS was compiling this list. That being said, a variety of technologies can be critical to supporting the people and processes that drive DevOps. DEVOPS asked experts from across the industry for their recommendation on a key technology required for DevOps.

DevOps tools are designed to support those definitive aspects of DevOps: collaboration, breaking down silos, bringing Dev and Ops together, agile development, continuous delivery and automation, to name a few.

List covers performance management, monitoring and analytics.

1. APPLICATION PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: There are clearly so many tools vital to DevOps advancement, but Application Performance Management is the one that stands out today as it has become so highly ingrained as the primary vehicle by which practitioners aggregate and share critical data.

2. MONITORING: While DevOps is most often associated with automation and continuous delivery/integration tools, I believe the single most important tool that organizations need to properly adopt and use to make a transformation to DevOps is a monitoring system. You cannot improve what you can't measure. Implementing key metrics across the business to help recognize areas that are in most need of improvement is the key to identifying the bottlenecks that prevent DevOps adoption.

3. END USER EXPERIENCE MONITORING: The parts of DevOps which turn the tide around and start exposing data from production to developers are also increasingly deployed, but the processes around these are not. For example, tools that enable exposure to the actual end user experience in production would need to become more transparent for the engineering departments instead of just operations. Even more so, many of such tools provide value to the business side as well, so a successful deployment in the user experience monitoring domain would satisfy even more stakeholders.

4. SYNTHETIC MONITORING: DevOps implies that you need to communicate between Ops and Dev in a good way. Using application/API driven synthetic monitoring will always give you the yardstick to measure your success.

5. INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT: If you are stranded on a desert island (but with a strong and reliable Internet connection) you still need to ensure your infrastructure is performing and your users are happy with their experience. What's needed is a solid and extensible Digital Infrastructure Management Platform that can collect data from every layer of your stack, analyze what's normal, what's not, and visualize the impact of anomalous behavior. This will allow you to catch issues that can affect your operations before they truly impact your business.

6. INCIDENT MANAGEMENT: Organizations must understand that tools are only one part of the answer. They must have the people, processes, and tools in place in order to successfully implement a DevOps environment. There are a number of helpful tools in the DevOps ecosystem. You want to think along the lines of productivity, repeatability, and safety when considering tools best suited to facilitate a DevOps mindset.

7. ANALYTICS: DevOps needs tools that go beyond continuous release and deploy. They need tools that provide continuous analytics in order to measure and analyze application activities against business objectives. While the focus is often on continuous release and deploy, that is not always possible in some firms due to regulatory concerns. However, the need is there for continuous monitoring, tracking and analytics. First, use monitoring to gather end-user experience data as well as infrastructure and application data. Then, track and stitch transactions together to show a timeline of what happened. Finally, create shared metrics that enable the analysis to be compared to both technical and business objectives.

8. MANAGER OF MANAGERS: The DevOps agile development model extends to its tools, and we've seen a huge proliferation of tools introduced to improve some aspect of monitoring. While each tool solves a specific problem, the proliferation has inadvertently fostered silos of expertise, domain-specific views and massive data volumes generated in various formats. As application count and architectural complexity increases, the must-have tool to scale production support is an analytics-driven Manager of Managers. It has to ingest all of this operational event data and apply machine learning to automate the noise reduction and alert correlation. This gives DevOps teams earlier warning of unfolding issues, better collaboration, visibility into root cause - ultimately reducing the impact of production outages and incidents.

How to Use Article Marketing to Conquer the Search Engine

Successfully marketing your business online comes down to one very important factor: making search engines work for you. With a well planned article marketing strategy, you can use your knowledge of the product or service you're selling to boost your page rank and conquer the search engine.

Phone books, newspaper ads, and mailed fliers are things of the past. These days, when a consumer is on the hunt for the perfect product they often turn to their computer and the internet. The first place they go is a search engine like Google, Bing or Yahoo. With article distribution, search engine success leads to business success.

Identify Keywords

Identifying and learning to use the best keywords to promote your website is the first step to a successful marketing campaign. Looking at other sites offering similar products and services to the ones you offer can be a great way to start determining strong keywords.

Another strategy is using online keyword tools to determine the keywords customers search most in your genre. Think about the words you would use for a search if you were looking for your own product or service. Make sure you think about everyday people and the terms they would realistically use to find your merchandise.

Once you've got a sturdy list of promising keywords, you'll need to do a little bit of research and learn about how to place and use keywords in the articles you distribute. Keyword density is a very important factor when working with article distribution.

Websites should generally never contain more than 7 percent keyword density. The optimal keyword density for website content is 3 to 4 percent, meaning that for every 100 words you write, no more than four should be a keyword. For articles you write and distribute, it's best to stick below 2 percent.

Keyword stuffing, or using too many keywords, is highly frowned upon by article publishers. It can cause rejected content and can also trick spiders and crawlers into wrongly indexing your site or article. Using too many keywords in content can also cause your content to sound a lot like spam.

Article Marketing Strategy

Once you've got the keyword game down, a good article marketing strategy is one of the best ways to increase your search engine results. Distributing original content to publishers online creates opportunities for search engines to find your material and lead customers back to your website.

One important aspect of your article marketing strategy is focusing on multiple products. Product reviews on a single topic are often considered unobjective spam. To highlight a specific product in an article, you must include at least two other comparable products.

Consumers are looking for a merchant they can trust, and good communication skills and relevant information pave the way to that relationship. Articles should be designed to share your knowledge and information with your niche of potential customer.

The bottom line is that websites filled with quality, custom content are going to receive much higher page ranks than those filled with random, biased, and questionable information. Focus on keeping your content simple and relevant at the same time.

Article Distribution

This is where the difference comes in between advertising with banners, graphics and forums with backlinks and advertising with original content through article distribution. At first glance, more seems like a good strategy, but search engines actually like links that are relevant.

The relevancy of a link is based on the content of the website on which it appears, and the content of the website it links back to. Posting a link to a dog food website from an auto parts website will definitely not lead to high page rank. However, posting a link from a dog food website to a dog health and wellness website earns points for being relevant and useful.

Search engine results are important for many reasons, but they can also be a great way to judge how your articles are doing. By searching for your own articles by title or a specific section of content, you can see how many times they've been republished. Every article marketing strategy must include a strong article distribution service.

7 Powerful Ways To Make Money From Adsense Using Only Free Tools

There is really no doubt that there are amazing incomes currently being made on Google AdSense and the really interesting thing is that even relatively small sites and blogs are finding new ways to make money from their AdSense sites every day.

Actually there are a lot of increasingly creative ways to make money and maximize on AdSense earnings that are being discovered and also being put to use every day. And what's even more fascinating is the fact that most of these tools being used do not cost anything. They are actually free. Here are 7 of the most effective currently being used.

a) Ways to make money from AdSense by distributing articles through ezine and article announcement lists

Some of the most effective methods ways to make money from AdSense clicks involve the simple step of just increasing the volume of targeted traffic to a site. One of the ways of doing this is by distributing interesting content to ezine lists and article announcement lists. It is not too difficult to quickly build a list that reaches a million or so email boxes and can so give a lot of visibility and drive tons of highly targetd traffic to your AdSense site or sites. Probably the most popular place for doing this is at Yahoo groups, but there are a few others that you can find easily by using your favorite search engine.

Success here depends on three main factors. Firstly you should be careful to join article announcement lists and ezine lists that are as relevant as possible to your subject matter and offering. Secondly your headline has to be a killer headline that will grab readers by the scruffs of their necks and force them to open your email message among the dozens or even hundreds of others they receive daily. It goes without saying that the content must meet the promise of your sensational headline. Anything less will cause annoyance and leave all those potential visitors to your AdSense site feeling cheated. And believe me, you do not want to cause this sort of reaction because it is definitely not one of the ways o make money from AdSense or any other program for that matter. Thirdly, you will need the sort of resource box in all your articles that will leave most of your readers with no option but to visit your AdSense site.

Within a very short of consistently applying this technique, my daily AdSense earnings increased seven-fold.

b) Ways to make money from AdSense by distributing free articles to high traffic article sites
Some people find the recent trends that have seen an increase in article sites surprising. I do not. The net is primarily an information-seeking tool. Anything that will help improve the search and quality of information will greatly benefit the people making that effort.

Some of the older article directories receive very high traffic, mainly from web masters and site owners seeking quality free content for their sites. So apart from the immediate exposure these sites also guarantee plenty of future targeted traffic to your site, when individuals find your articles useful enough to re-post at their sites.

The more new articles you release to these sites every week, the more targeted traffic your AdSense sites will receive. This is in fact one of the most effective ways of making money consistently from AdSense clicks. One of the reasons for this is that targeted traffic will tend to spend more time at your site or sites, and the more time they spend, the higher the chances that they will click one of the adsense ads posted there.

c) Ways to make money from AdSense by Using Articles And A Viral Marketing Website

Any online marketing technique that involves the use of referral marketing or viral marketing automatically has a huge chance of being a success. The net is ideal for viral marketing and in fact gives any viral marketer huge leverage. Viral marketing or referral marketing is one of the most effective ways to make money online. Just ask Bill Gates.

When Gates was trying to play catch up on the Internet after an earlier mistake of underestimating the future importance of the net, he launched his Hotmail free email service when rivals like Yahoo already had millions of users. He decided to use a simple referral marketing technique. Every Hotmail message that went out had a brief signature at the end requesting the recipient to sign up for their free Hotmail account. Within a few short months, Hotmail had millions of users. And there are many other amazing stories which viral marketing boasts of on the net.

There is one of the very simple ways to make money from AdSense by going viral. Sign up at a leading viral marketing site. You will automatically get your own viral site. You can then use some of your articles to point people to your viral site. The way these sites work is that anyone who signs up at your site will have to visit your AdSense site if you register it at the site. So within a very short time you will be driving thousands of visitors to your AdSense site.

Find more details on this at my blog which address you'll find in the resource box below.

Admittedly this traffic is less targeted. Still the huge potential and possible numbers you are able to receive using this tool more than makes up for this.

d) Ways to make money from AdSense with Your Email signature

People greatly underestimate the power and potential effectiveness of a simple email signature as one of the ways to make money online. Actually this is a viral marketing method because emails get forward all the time and are even copied to several other people sometimes.

Do not waste another minute. Go to all your email accounts right now and create a signature that points to your AdSense site or sites.

Writing effective email signatures is a skill that you will have to develop, but I have found that using famous quotes is more effective than a straight advertising message. Always remember that people hate to be advertised to online.

e) Ways to make money from AdSense By Asking Questions At Discussion groups

I recently had an interesting conversation with a young Internet and computer techie. He asked me if there were quick ways to make money online by answering technical questions and helping people to solve their computer and web-related problems. My answer was that there were many discussion groups where participants would get these answers for free. I advised him that he had a better chance of making money by making use of this free advice available online rather than trying to sell his own advice.

There are tons of online discussion groups where leading world experts will answer your questions and give you valuable insight for free. It is amazing why most people do not think of using these online forums to learn as much as they can about the most effective ways of making money from Adsense.

These forums can easily be found through you favorite search engine.

f) Ways to make money from AdSense By Bartering your online skills for valuable AdSense keywords

In the old days, before the invention of money, if somebody needed something, the first question they asked themselves was; "What is it that I already have that I can exchange for what I need? Barter trade seems to have been forgotten but it is a very powerful method of trading. to send them money for an item they need.

You can barter whatever it is you have, your skills, products or services, and exchange them for genuine valuable AdSense keywords. Valuable AdSense keywords are the most effective way for a small site with low traffic to earn big cash from Adsense. And you can do this barter trade on an ongoing basis so that you always have a constant supply of valuable AdSense keywords which you can use at your site or blog as one of the ways to make more money from Adsense.

g) Ways to make money from AdSense By Sending Teaser Emails

To Everybody In Your Inbox And Also To Your Opt-in Email List
Most of us receive tons of email in our inbox every day. You'll be surprised at the huge number of people you know by simply going through your email inbox. No matter how good your spam filters are, you are also bound to be receiving more than your share share of SPAM or unsolicited email. All this is "gold" lying in your email inbox and there are ways to make money using these emails. All you need to do to process the emails into pure gold is to send out "teaser emails about the most interesting aspects of content at your site. to send out teaser email on this content here is how I would construct it;

Subject: Free Tools Currently Being Used To Increase AdSense Earnings

Hello,

Just thought you might be interested in this subject, since so many people online use AdSense these days. If not please accept my sincere apologies. Details are at my site.

www. your site's address .com

Regards,
Chris.

I am sure you can write an even more effective teaser email. It would be a better idea to have a different message for your close friends, a different one for your business contacts and yet another one for those nasty guys SPAMMING you.

These are just some of the many creative ways to make money from Adsense.

10 Ways to Attract New Business at No Extra Cost

Last week I went shopping and saw a sign in the window: "Going Out Of Business Sale". This week I noticed a new cardboard headstone "Space For Rent" in my neighborhood. These are results of the same problem ... not enough business.

It is great when you can open a business and attract new customers immediately or when your website guarantees you a constant stream of income. But, none of these simply 'just' happened. Growing your business means self marketing and planning ahead every step of the way. Here are ten strategies to help you attract more business. And the best part: They will not cost you anything.

1. Be a walking example of how effective your product or service is

Let's say you sell beauty products. Make sure your own skin, make up, etc. is perfect whenever you go out for business. If people see how beautiful your products work or look on you they want to buy them. Or, you're a professional organizer. What will people think of you if you're late for a meeting, forgot to bring the promised brochures, and when you open your calendar it looks all chaotic. BE A MODEL for your business.

2. Seek to serve instead of just seeking to sell

What comes around goes around! Help others to grow their business or supporting them in any way you can go a long way in growing your own business.

3. Add value by networking all the time. Carry business cards wherever you go

Networking opportunities are everywhere where: at the supermarket, the doctor's office, even at the playground. I know that for a fact! When someone asks you what you do, give them a card. You want them to be able to hear and see the name of your company. You would be surprised how often business cards will be passed around and / or turn up months later. Also, find out how you can help. What does that person need? Whom do you know who could help? BE A MATCHMAKER every single day.

4. Sell the benefits, not the features. Nobody buys features anymore

People buy what those features will do for them. Everyone hates to buy insurances, so why are so many sold? Simply because of what insurances will do for you. So, know your benefits and practice your elevator speech.

5. Add value to your potential customers by expanding their professional vision and goals

People appreciate it when they feel that you understand their business needs and you're able to provide creative ideas that will help them to realize or even expand their vision and goals. Go on an exploratory journey with your potential customer.

6. Follow up, follow up, follow up

The secret of keeping your current customers is to show interest. Add value to your customers by making sure they're making the best use of your product or service. Let them know that you have their business at heart, that their success is your success. Show them that YOU CARE!

7. Turn your customers into your company's research and development department

It is of much more value to you to find out why people buy your product or service instead of focusing on why certain people are not interested. Ask your customers why they buy your products and service and use this information to improve your marketing and refine your value proposition.

8. Improve your communication skills and be an active listener

Take time to listen to your clients, prospects, and business partners; listen carefully - do not let your mind wander during the listening process. Never make any assumptions. Take time to find out the real motives and emotions, perceived and real problems. If you can refer to people they want to be around you.

9. Learn from people who are naturally attractive

Some people are; some people are not. Spend time with those who are and emulate them; ask them for help. They will be happy to tell you how it works. Just be ready to make changes in your assumptions, thinking, actions, and behavior.

10. Strengthen your personal finances, so you do not need the money anymore

When you feel financially secure you will become an even stronger magnet for attracting new business - because you do not needily need it anymore.

To improve your business, challenge yourself! Pick one of the 10 strategies described above, the one where you seem to struggle the most. Then, see if you can implement this strategy in the way you do business. Please feel free to share your successes with me - and any questions about how to grow your business.

Making Money Online With a Forex Trading System

In this article I will discuss making money online, Forex trading, and software related to Forex trading. Both good and bad. As well as cover some other things. Although there are a lot of systems out there, more importantly scams, there's not quite as many as there are online get rich quick schemes and ponzi schemes in general. There are still hundreds if not thousands of scams that directly refer to Forex Currency Trading. These scams come in various formats but often get the record set straight on them quickly, however a few others somehow escape the negative publicity and go for years and hit unsuspecting profit seekers where it hurts the most daily. The problem with Forex is that so much seems too good to be true, and a lot of stuff is, but it's also true that many people have made millions and some are not really all that smart at it. You can profit from the right robot.

The first thing I would like to discuss is the topic of sales pages, that common pitch page that a lot of products use and you often think it's gone too far or it must be a scam just by looking at it. But when you think real hard about it, over half the time this is not actually the case ... These sales pages are so long and packed with information since they are commonly advertised on the web and it is more or less business strategy, as opposed to anything reflecting the product. Certain sellers force you to use pitch pages, they need a specific landing page and it makes things much easier for sales transactions.

So rather than guide you through a structured web site with more details through various sections; they often use this pitch page and they generally pack it with information and a ton of hard selling. This has proven to be the trend and it's gotten harder and harder for some EAs to market their software without these types of pitch pages. It is often the case with digital products and or / stuff you can order online. When it comes to these make-money-online and Forex sites they often have a lot of flash to them and obviously many things to draw customers in. In reality it's not much different from any other form of advertising, most certainly not the likes of gambling, and so forth. They need to have some sort of appeal and be competitive. My conclusion is that even if it looks like it could be a scam, do your homework anyway and it may not be. It just depends. Some things are signs, but in my opinion web design and hard selling are not direct signs of a scam. Although in the Forex Market something to hope for would be charts and proof.

With regards to the surveys and other things, it amounts to filling out spam for pennies pretty much, data entry is the same and much more annoying than even the most desperate realize. It also makes you look bad if you tell your friends. You still have to spend time to make any real money, not prizes, and some also require a credit card number on file, and they text you and stuff too. Let's be honest, it sucks. It's bottom of the barrel work that just is not worth it. It's for the ultra-lazy. The kind of human being who for example might get scammed by a Forex system. Not a serious adult who is looking to profit from investment and extend their savings, along with make more money in general.

I once tried a clicking service just to see if I actually could make money, on the popular moneytec forum it was this highly recommended thing by a bunch of lazy work at home users, but I bought into it at the time, and, no joke I signed up and they told me it would be easy and they would make it easy to visit 1000 sites or whatever they have you visit for 15 cents. So I clicked a link and it just starting loading every 2 seconds, it was awfully slow, I waited 15 minutes and that was only like 25 sites, i got a virus after, and i closed it fast. I abandoned the 15 cents for it and thought instantly that these poor souls who do this are a whole helluva lot more desperate than I am. I do not belong in these sort of slums of the internet. This is the first time I have ever written about it. During that several years ago before I started trading Forex I also wrote a few surveys and never got paid once. I have marketed online to some success but mainly my success has been through Forex Trading. That's why I do not need to work a real job and can sit around doing stuff like this all day. Publishing is very important to me. Once something you write online get indexed by a major search engine like Google, chances are that it will be there for a very long time. I find that important anyway ...

There are other ways you can make money online without Forex Trading, though sadly it is often below the barrel work; boring data entry, filling out surveys for pennies, to name a couple of the more common ones. If you're into making web sites you may also advertise on one of your sites or a network of sites, and for that you need fresh content and you need to get traffic, which is way harder than one might think. You can sell products as an affiliate, although you need to find your niche and work very hard at it, it becomes a time consuming job for some people and no matter what you're likely to going to need to invest in something no matter what you do. Whether it's Forex, Web Design, Advertising or whatever it is or a combination of things, most importantly it takes time and ability to adapt your passion. Although you still have much more freedom, affiliate marketing online is very crowded and has been for years. You can also use a revenue-share article and / or video submission service in hopes of being one of the few who can actually earn a living at it. Though that is not for everyone. If you've got four young children and only have an extra hour or two a day to pull in some extra income you most likely do not have time to play a Martha Stewart like figure. Most people do not.

Forex Trading on the other hand is more convenient in the sense that it is an extremely profitable investment opportunity given the right expert adviser, to advise your trade and supply signals, generally to guide you. That is option one. You need a broker. It's way easier than you think and in the Forex industry not as big of a word as you might think, easy to get and you do not gotta meet them in person or anything. It's an online thing.

There are many options to trade Forex, one of the most common would be the use of automated Forex platforms and Forex robots, all automated Forex trading in general. There is nothing wrong with it. This is where expert advisers come in, EAs for short. These are the Forex experts as I mentioned above who supply your trades and information to you. They pretty much tell you what to do. Some are much better than others. Some are not out to supply signals at all and simply selling their software to make profit from that end. Proper automated Forex software oftens runs on the metatrader 4 Forex trading platform, or at least the more popular ones do. Your EA software is like plug-in software for it. I'd actually be wrong to say all EAs use it, but many of the ones I have experience with use the Metatrader 4 Platform and I prefer it.

The other way to trade Forex is to study the market, find all the relevant information you need, take a very long time of a few months to several years to learn something, only to have it blow up as you were still too inexperienced to do something with your strategy when the market changed. Strategy is a very important element of online Forex trading but not just having a strategy, it's about having enough strategies and being able to adapt properly with the market. This is why a lot of people fail without popular EAs, because the EA is usually a well-trained trader and your common trader can not provide himself with signals even half as good and a lot less consistently. The well known EAs are usually like 15 year traders and so forth who studied the market like a school subject and make extra money on the side by selling there signals too you, or software which grants them.

A lot of Forex EAs today simply do not have that sort strategy or ability to adapt with the market ... So not making them scams, but just not prepared for the long haul in general. I have a lot of experience with failed systems and systems that worked for just a little while. I have others that work to this day but I am always seeking new ones. I can review several including one I use now however that has already been done a few times over.

If you're looking for the cross between really learning Forex and just really having to learn complicated signals and software I'd suggest Forex Fap Turbo. The downside of this is you often need to buy extra stuff to learn it and some of it is useless. All of this for pretty decent software but it takes way more time and skill and not something I was happy with. I requested and received my refund for the software and some other software related to it, as it was just not for me and the only people i heard reviewing and bragging about it were a lot more educated before they tried it than I was. I was not ready then, am not ready now. Although it's a well reviewed Forex system and not a scam, I've provided a lot of help, but there are too many of the same, some are forex advertisements so that's not a lot of help. It also brings up a lot of the Fap Turbo related software that is not even the direct software and you gotta buy it separately. So it's a lot of hassle even more than some typical investments that are not related to Forex.

I have also tried automoney and several other Forex robots and automated Forex platforms. I have found that many of these automated Forex systems are a dime a dozen and send you through far too many loops to get the desired results. If they do not eat your entire investment ... Some systems do not have stops and you have to do too much often, others are slow, and sometimes the EA is simply just not your sort of teacher and you get lost sometimes. ..Some EAs will simply sniff you out and then screw you over in the end. This is why it's important to watch for signs of proof either by service trial or physical proof before making your purchase of expensive Forex software.

I have also used Forex Assassin, the eToro Forex trading platform and Forex Harvester but nothing really significant has come up from any of those systems for me.

Some Forex marketers, EAs and employees in general and so forth are so wicked that they monitor new "Forex" related domain registration and somehow get your email address and solicit you ... So you have to be aware that in the Forex market as far as Forex expert advisers go, there is a lot of them competing to get your money. You are sincerely seeking the ones who are also looking to have a solid reputation and actually provide you with profitable trades, your EAs # 1 objective should be successfully trading Forex and not selling their software. This is another thing that makes the simple "pitch page" easy for EAs with very little maintenance, on that end of things. The software should be and often is a side venture for Forex experts who can actually profit from their knowledge of the market and have the means to market themselves ... Can anyone create automated software and sell it? Probably not, I think it's a bit of a stretch but then again it depends if you even get software, or whatever, most systems that are fully developed and have good features but do not work - were more than likely meant to work at some point.

I have read up on quite a few of the most popular Forex review sites like Forex Peace Army and many other well known ones, and to me they all pretty much point towards the same complicated software and their voters are already experts investing 10s of thousands already and they barely feel some of their losses. They switch around a lot; nothing turns out to be solid in the end. The reviews on sites like that most likely got started through advertising. Too many people get to review their own systems on Forex sites like that, etc. You never know who the reviewer is. Searching for automated Forex software reviews is almost impossible nowdays since they all say pretty much the same thing and are mostly positive ...

I have read up on many "free Forex signal" reports on the web and I also participate actively on various Forex forums and other Forex related sites. I often find with these particular Forex signals at least my impression is that you get someone looking to be a mentor of some sort for you, they are usually shady and turn out to be lacking when you need them the most. These guys are usually empty handed. They are trying to freelance or whatever so that they can supply systems and build a name for themselves, but the problem is that these are the guys who after so many followers do create a commercial system and then extremely end up failing, their the failed EA newbies to some extent and you want an EA who is an accomplished Forex expert.

One should consider it much better and safer to use an established system that is known to work, and not the work of an aspiring EA, or even worse, somebody who does not have those credentials at all and are just trying to stuff their ego . I have not enjoyed the free Forex signals and find it more like looting through them then finding anything that productive, not much is there or else all the Forex signals would have to be free and would be for everyone, all the best Forex signals would be free. At least that is my concept. I do not want a rookie EA telling me what to do, since the trend in the Forex market nowdays is most definitely for more popular and well established EAs to sell systems, mostly automated software. That is one thing I do not understand, who these people are that clog up the forums with nonsense and think they can compete in the market with actual successful Forex EAs who really know how to trade.

How much you want to trade really depends on you. If you're a Forex starter you need to have a good EA for starters, and while I can not hand pick one for you, I can provide at least one review since I have spent time on the subject, in this article off- site to an excellent EA which i have tried and complies with several of my standards. I feel it is an excellent resource for people like me at least who gets lost on the big stuff. There are many fish in the sea.

Option Trading Basics

Options trading can increase the profits you make when trading Stocks if you understand how to use them and know what you are doing. Options can be a very useful tool that the average investor can use to enhance their returns.

This article - Options Trading Basics, looks at what options are and discusses some of the options trading strategies traders can use with these versatile instruments.

Options - An Overview

Options give the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy (a call option) or sell (a put option) the underlying Stock or futures contract at a specified price up until a specified date.

In other words, options are like tradable insurance contracts.

An investor can purchase a Put option as insurance against a decline in the Stock price or a Call option in case the Stock rises. Buying an option gives the purchaser time to decide whether they will buy or sell the underlying Stock. The price is locked in until the expiration date, which in the case of LEAPS can be years into the future.

Options trading has several advantages that every Stock Market investor should be aware of, such as high leverage, lower overall risk than owning the physical security, more versatility and the ability to generate extra income from a current Stock portfolio.

An option of value fluctuates in direct relationship to the underlying security. The price of the option is only a fraction of the price of the security and therefore provides higher leakage and lower risk - the most an option buyer can lose is the premium, or deposit, they paid on entering into the contract.

By purchasing the undering Stock of Futures contract itself, a much larger loss is possible if the price moves against the buyers position.

An option is described by its symbol, whether it's a put or a call, an expiration month and a strike price.

A Call option is a bullish contract, giving the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy the underlying security at a certain price on or before a certain date.

A Put option is a bearish contract, giving the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to sell the underlying security at a certain price on or before a certain date.

The expiration month is the month the option contract expires.

The strike price is the price that the buyer can either buy call) or sell (put) the underlying security by the expiration date.

The premium is the price that is paid for the option.

The intrinsic value is the difference between the current price of the underlying security and the strike price of the option.

The time value is the difference between current premium of the option and the intrinsic value. The time value is also influenced by the volatility of the underlying security.

Up to 90% of all out of the money options expire worthless and their time value primarily Declines until their expiration date.

This clue offers traders a very good hint as to which side of an options contract they should be on ... professional options traders who make consistent profits usually sell far more options than they buy.

The option contracts that they do buy are usually only to hedge their physical Stock Portfolios - that this is a powerful distinction between the punters and small traders who consistently buy low priced, out of the money and close to expire puts and calls, hoping for a big payoff (illegally) and the guys who really make the money out of the options market every month, by consistently selling these options to them - please read the rest of this article.

The seller of the option contract is obliged to satisfy the contract if the buyer decides to exercise the option.

Therefore, if he has sold Copped Call options over his Shares, and the Stock price is above the option strike price at expiration, the option is said to be in-the money, and the seller must sell his shares to the option buyer at the strike price if he is exercised.

Sometimes an in-the-money option will not be exercised, but it is very rare. The option seller (or writer) has to be prepared to sell the Stock at the strike price if exercised.

He can always buy back the option prior to expiration if he chooses to and write one at a higher strike price if the stock price has rallied, but this results in a capital loss as he will usually have to pay more to buy the option back than the premium he received when he originally sold it.

Many option writers simply get exercised out of the Stock and then immediately re-buy more of the same or another stock and simply write more call options against them.

The buyer of an option has no obligations at all - either either sells his option later at a profit or a loss, or exercises it if the stock price is in-the-money at expiry and he can make a profit.

The vast majority of options are held until expiration and simply decay in price until there is no point in the hapless buyer selling them. Very few options are actually exercised by the buyer. The vast major expend worthless.

Having said all this, lets look at an example of how to use options to gain leverage to a Stock price movement when the trend does go in our favor ...

For this example we will use MSFT as the underlying security. Let's assum MSFT is trading for $ 24.50 a share and it is early January. We are bullish on this Stock and based on our technical analysis we think that it will go to $ 27.50 within two months.

In this example, we will ignore Brokerage costs, but they do have an effect on the percentage returns. The prices and price moves of the Stock and the options are hypothetical - they are intended as a guide only.

Buying 1000 physical shares will cost $ 24,500 and if we sell our position at $ 27.50 a share, we will make a profit of $ 3,000 or a 12% return on our capital. We will have $ 24,500 at risk if we take this position for a potential of 12% or $ 3,000 profit.

Instead of using cash to buy the physical Stock, we can buy 10 call options with an expiration that is at least three months into the future and a strike price that is close to current price of the underlying security.

10 contracts represent 1000 shares of the stock, a call option is bullish, three months until expire gives us some time for a quick move, and buying an option with a strike price that is close to the current price of MSFT allows us to get the full potential of the intrinsic value.

We buy 10 MSFT $ 22.50 April Call options. These options are currently selling for $ 2.80 and they are in the money.

$ 24.50 (the current price of the Stock) minus $ 22.50 (the strike price) is $ 2.00, which is our Intrinsic value. $ 2.80 (the option premium) minus $ 2.00 (the Intrinsic value) gives us $ 0.80, which is the Time value.

If the price rallies to $ 27.50, as we believe it will, the intrinsic value of these same options at that point will be $ 5.00 ($ 27.50 - $ 22.50). That means that if the Stock gets to $ 27.50 a share, our option premium would be at least $ 5.00 plus a small amount of time value, depending on the remaining time until expiration.

Ten option contracts will cost us $ 2,800 ($ 280 times 100) and if MSFT goes to $ 27,500, we could sell our option contracts for at least $ 5,000 ($ 500 by 10 contracts), maybe more.

We will have $ 2,800 at risk if we take this position, rather than the full price of the Stock ($ 24,500) for a potential of 80% or $ 2,200 profit, plus whatever time value is left in the option, probably another $ 100.

Our options buying strategy cave us a much larger percentage profit with a much smaller potential risk. Do not forget that, for us as the buyer, these options will expire worthless if not sold or exercised by the expiration date.

The option seller or writer simply has to sit back and wait until expiry to see if he is going to be exercised. If the Stock price is below the strike price at expiration, it keeps the premium and can write another option over the same Stock.

If the Stock price is above the strike price, he will most likely be exercised and will have to sell his shares if he does not exit the position by buying his options back on the open market (quite often at a higher price than he originally sold them for).

The downside of buying the option over the physical Stock is that if you bought the Stock itself, even if the price had not moved, you would still own it, but by buying the option, if the price does not move in the desired direction , you lose part of your trading capital.

To make options trading work, the undering security must move fairly quickly in the direction you expect, or you will lose money at an ever increasing rate as the expiration date draws nearer.

As you can see, options strategies can offer much higher percentage returns with less risk for the same trade. The majority of your cash is still safely in your trading account rather than being exposed to the market.

This is just one example of using options trading to increase your Stock Market returns. There are many more strategies and ways to use options and I encourage you to explore them further.

All options expire worthless if they are not in-the-money at expiration, so the buyer must close out or exercise his position on or before the expiration date or he will lose the entire premium.

The time value portion of the option premium decreases periodically until expiration date. The closer to expire, the faster the time value decreases, as there is less time for the option to move in the desired direction for the buyer.

For buyers, top traders advise never to hold an option with less than 30 days to expire due to the exponential rise in time decay during this period.

For sellers, it is usually most profitable to write options that have 30 days or less to expire, due to this same time dece effect ... the buyer of these options has the odds stacked against them and will require a large price movement in his desired direction to make a profit - remember, the vast majority of options expire worthless - so this is the side of these instruments the wealthually find themselves on - just a thought ...

There are many other intricacies of options trading that investors and traders should be aware of. This article is only an introduction to options trading and there is a lot more information for you to learn.

For a more in-depth look at the various Options strategies available, visit AcornTrader.com.

This page has a series of articles on options trading and outlines some of the strategies merchants can use to profit from these extremely flexible vehicles.

We encourage you to study these instruments carefully if you decide to trade them. Then use the trend trading strategies outlined in these stories and articles to position yourself on the right side of the market - whether as a buyer or a seller.

To Your Trading Success,

SEO for Business IT Marketing

Onsite SEO is related to everything on your actual website. Titles, meta decryption, internal linking, keywords density, sitemaps, alt tags for images and video. Keywords are the words or phrases that potential customers type when searching for your products or services on search engines.

Ranking high for relevant keywords matters because it brings your business to the top of the search results, helping you reach more potential customers. Offsite most important are: Listings refer to all the sites and directories where your business's information appears. Listings matter because they enable potential customers to find you or your business on relevant sites, and because they can improve your position on search engines like Yahoo, Google or Bing. If not, you're missing out on reaching consumers at the most critical stage of the buying cycle - when they're comparing products, price and services to choose a business. Do not assume that having a website is enough to succeed online. With many of your competitors already promoting themselves online, you need to make sure your web presence is effective as well on all major local search sites. The good news is that promoting yourself online and expanding your clientele can be easy and affordable. By investing in your online marketing, you can attract new customers while reducing your overall advertising budget!

One of these other SEO strategies is called ATO (Ad Text Optimization) which is a type of paid search advertising. Now, a successful SEO campaign can create organic traffic (a natural relevance to search terms instead of being an advertisement), but it could also include paid advertising, creating great quality web pages, setting up a way for owners to gauge their online success, and improving a website's conversion rate (which is the ratio of people who visit a site versus the amount of people who take action). The problem with SEO is that search engines change their algorithms and there are no guarantees on continued referrals. Because of this a business that may require a lot of help from search engine traffic could suffer losses if a search engine stops sending visitors to their site. This being the case it is advised to keep from dependence on search engine traffic. Most search marketers will share that it is better to receive traffic from links as they are stronger. For advice on how to link your business website to another website, you should seek professional company for help.

Make Money Online Sharing Tips

Have you ever imagined a situation in which to make extra money, you do not need to wake up, start thinking of how to get to work each day? Rather than working when you need to work, you only work when you want to. Through the internet, you can make a lot of money and live the kind of life you always dreams of. In this article, we will be discussing some of the ways you can make money online.

Here are 5 tips which I would like to share and help you to explore making money online. Go through each tip and choose the best one which will work for you. I believe with your perseverance, results will show gradually and turn into a long term passive income source for you.

CB Passive Income













The idea of CB Passive Income is teaching individual various methods of generating quick traffic which is then sent to a squeeze page. With this, you can build a money-making email list. After then, various Click Bank products are then sent to every email on the list. Once a sale is made through a link, a certain commission will be received by the owner of the list.

Freelancing













Freelancing is another simple approach in which you can make money on the internet. As a freelancer, you work online by offering little services. You can offer totally anything varying from writing, playing tricks, interpreting, making music, short video clips, voice overs, and lots more. Freelancing gives you the opportunity to make money online while doing what you love most.

Email Marketing













Email marketing stands at the heart of each effective activity on the internet. If you are really serious about making money on the internet, email marketing is unquestionably a great avenue in doing this. If those email subscribers are effectively and acutely inspired by what you need to say, and they joined directly through your web page or blog, your rate of success will be much higher.

Websites that pay













Another way to make extra money while you work from home is by performing various tasks on some website. The task may range from shopping to taking surveys to testing products. Some of the websites include Swagbucks, InboxDollars, Project Payday, User testing, and so forth. However, do not dream of earning millions. Just an opportunity to save extra money.

Work-at-Home Companies













Furthermore, certain companies are ready to hire your expertise, even if it requires that you work from home. You will be assigned specific tasks to handle. Once you complete the task, you will be get paid. Some of these work-at-home companies include CrowdSource, Liveops, Leap Force, and Demand Studios.

Are Your Managers Ready for Generation Y Employees?

Generation Y or the "Internet Generation" will dramatically change every aspect of your business in the next five years!

Change will be constant, rapid and revolutionary. Want proof?

First, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is putting all of their 1,500 courses on the Internet. MIT believes that the "disclosure of knowledge and information can open new doors to the powerful benefits of education for humanity around the world." That means students, educators and self-learners will be able to audit these courses when and where they want.

Second, Bob Lutz, General Motors Vice Chairman, has a blog to communicate directly with his customers. It is an invaluable way to get important information out to the market. It is also a vehicle for timely and accurate feedback. Other GM executives are setting up blogs to talk directly to and get information from their employees. By comparison, Microsoft has over 1,500 customer and employee blogs.

Third, YouTube is an Internet overnight success story. It allows people to upload and share videos over the Internet. To date they have 100 million videos on their site and receive another 65,000 per day. The company was founded in February 2005, and was never profitable. Yet, Google understands the potential of their technology and purchased the company nineteen months later for $ 1.65 billion.

While Gen X employees understand Internet, multitasking and instant communications, Generation Y members excels at use of these three tools, and they will use them to transform business. They will challenge every aspect of the workplace.

How do the different generational employees look managers?

B oomers: The boss is not always right, but the boss is always the boss. I will put in long hours to get ahead. If necessary, I will do so at the expense of my family.

Generation X: The boss is not always right, but I'm not going to be here very long. I watched my parent's jobs being downsized or outsourced so I do not have the same loyalty to a company they did. I'm not married to the company; I value my life outside of work.

Generation Y: The boss is not always right, but are they open to new ways to do business? Events like 9/11 and the Columbine High School shooting have taught us that life can be fleeting. The Internet as exposed us to new ways of approaching life and work. I want to flexibility, to be valued for my ideas and my work and I want time off to volunteer.

They are called Generation Y, as in "why," because they are constantly questioning the status quo. They are almost as large as the Boomer generation and are over 65% larger than the Generation X group. In the next twenty-five years 80 million Boomers will be retiring. As the Boomers retire, the Gen X employees will become the Gen Y's managers. However, because of their sheer size Generation Y will be the overwhelming influence in the workplace for the next fifty years.

Generation Y fully embraces technology. Today's twenty-year-old college graduate was only five years old when the Internet was developed in 1992. They have always had the world at their finger tips. They grow up with instant messaging, text messaging, cell phones, iPods, PDAs, MySpace, YouTube, multitasking and blogging. They think, and act, in terms of instant communications. While Gen X employees understand and used these vehicles, Generation Y is totally immersed in them.

Baby Boomers changed the culture on civil rights, woman's rights, and gay rights. Their world was shaped by the Cold War. The members of Generation Y were born after the Civil Rights Act was passed (1964), the gay rights movement started (1969), the first woman sat on the US Supreme Court (1975), and the Berlin Wall came down (1990). The struggles many of us remember are accepted facts in their world. Generation Y individuals overlap diversity as an accepted norm and until recently knew nothing about war. Their world has always included diversity.

Each of us has memories of some recent tragic events: the Oklahoma bombing, the Columbine High school shooting, the World Trade Center bombing, and three wars-Iraq, Afghanistan and the War on Terror. If you were a thirteen to fifteen year old, how would these events shape your thoughts about the future? In a practical way These Generation Y's remain optimistic.

Generation Y members are group-oriented, confident, goal-oriented and civic-minded. They have a more worldly view than Generation X'ers. These new employees have been coddled by their parents. As children they received trophies for simply participating on a team. Parents told them were special and capable of doing anything. Their non-school activities were scheduled (eg, karate, soccer, etc.), and their parents were not afraid to call a teacher, coach or boy Scout leader if they did not think their child was being treated fairly.

Generation Y kids have been raised with instant communication, unrealistic feedback and rapid decision making as the norm. They believe they have the world in the palm of their hand. And, with their knowledge of today's technology they do.

So what can your managers do to get ready for Generation Y employees? Generation Y employees want to be heard and valued by their company when they start with your company. They place a high value on family and flexibility and will volunteer their time to cause them feel are important. They are fearless and not intimidated by titles or corporate organizational charts.

They love variety and are not afraid of change. If they think they have a good suggestion they will take ownership of the idea. And, they will not be afraid to take the idea up the corporate ladder to be heard.

Successful companies must find ways to harness the new employee's talents, integrate them into the company and turn ideas into a competitive advantage. Progressive companies understand that learning is a two-way street. Generation Y employees will revolutionize internal and external communications. Companies have a lot to teach the Gen Y's, but they have a lot to learn from them also. That will be difficult in rigid, highly structured companies.

Jack Welsh, former CEO of General Electric, stated that "... ebusiness knowledge is usually inversely proportional to age and rank." Hiring, challenging and retaining good employees have always been the hallmark of successful companies.

Successful companies today must develop a culture of learning, sharing and embracing change. They will employ two-way mentoring, blogging, new training platforms, and new ways of hiring and promoting people.

Training Generation Y employees will change. Boring, all-day seminars will become less frequent. Generation Y employees will text message their friends during those seminars. They need the information in the seminar, but companies will have the training available in different platforms and in smaller "bite-sized" portions. These training modules will be downloadable to an employees' Blackberry, iPod or computer. The employee will view the sessions at home, or on a plane or listen to them in the car driving to an appointment.

This is an exciting and dynamic time for business! Change will be constant, rapid and revolutionary.

Generation Y employees will change how we look at hiring, turnover, mentoring, performance reviews, employee orientation, retention issues, and how we communicate with our employees and customers. Are your managers ready for this new employee?

Questions for Discussion:

1. A new employee takes approximately six months to "learn the routes," and they will probably leave the company within four years. How will your managers take full advantage of the Generation Y employee's creative energies?

1. What systems within your company need to be reviewed to take advantage of these upcoming changes?

1. How can you dramatically change the way you communicate with your customers and your employees?

An Inspiring History of a Small Business

In 1980, a husband and wife, purchased their first home in Arizona. The husband was managing a vacuum cleaner store, and the wife was a cashier at a grocery store. The husbands only day off was Sunday, and the wife was off 2 different days of the week, so, they never had much time together. They had no children, but the wife was breeding Afghan Hound dogs.

The husband was watching TV one peaceful Sunday afternoon, and all of a sudden the TV sparked, smoked, sputtered, and lit on fire. He jumped off the sofa, opened the front door, unplugged the TV, picked it up and thread it in the front yard.

Even with both the husband and wife working, they did not have enough money to buy a new TV. The new house had eaten up all of their extra money, and there were a lot of new expenses in owning a new home.

The husband was talking to a friend of his about his financial problems. His friend stated that his father used to own a vacuum business, and said, "Why do not we go to the Flea Market in Phoenix on weekends and sell vacuum cleaners, bags, belts, and parts." I told him that it sounded like a good idea, but my only day off was on Sunday. We agreed that he would work Saturday, and we would both work on Sunday.

The only other problem was that this person had no money for inventory, so his friend said that he would put up the money for some inventory to get their business started. They both agreed that they would put all the profit into buying more inventory, and vacuum cleaners that they would both rebuild and sell.

They followed through with their plans, and their new business was a success. They were selling huge amounts of bags, belts, and parts, as well as buying old vacuums, fixing them up, and reselling them. All of the profit they made went back into the business, and they started doing more and more business. It was all very exciting, but the only problem was that one of the partners was now working 7 days a week, and still did not have enough money to buy a new color TV.

After about 2 months, the one partner mentioned that he would like to get a little money from the business to buy a new color TV. He was kind of surprised when his friend said, "No Way". He tried to talk his friend into it, but his friend was totally against the idea of ​​taking any money out of the business. His partner said that he would rather just buy him out of the business that they started, and have the business all to himself. They agreed, and the one partner was paid about $ 800.00, for his share of the business.

Finally the one partner was able to go out and by a new color TV. Then, he thought of what he could do with the other $ 400. Well, right or wrong, he called the vacuum parts distributor that they were both buying from and ordered $ 400.00 worth of bags and supplies, and the following Sunday, he went to the Flea Market, and started his own business. His friend ran into him and kind of smiled and said, "Oh well, I guess we did not talk about you doing your own thing out here." The other partner said that all he wanted was some money to get a new color TV, and that he was the one who wanted to split up the partnership. They both laughed and remained good friends and competitors that helped each other for many years.

The one partner continued to buy more and more supplies, and soon had a huge display of parts, bags, belts, and new and used vacuum cleaners. He was so busy that most of the time, he had no way of going to get lunch, or a coke, or anything. After a couple of months of suffering alone, he needed help so badly that he asked his wife to quit her job which she did, so that she could help out with their new business.

During the next several years they continued to grow, and soon they had a 30 foot trailer and 4 employees helping them at the Flea Market, and at their home, where they were repairing and rebuilding vacuums during the week. They got to know all of their neighbors at the Flea Market, including the ones who sold futons behind their stand.

After a few more years they became friends with their futon friends, and they decided to rent a store together. It was their first actual store, and they split the store space and rent. I all seemed to be going well for both of them, but one morning, after a couple of months, the vacuum people went to open their store, and all of their futon friends things were gone. All of their futons, desks, computer, everything was gone. They had vanished in the night. All that was left was a note explaining that they were not making it, and that they felt bad, but they had to abandon ship and move to Seattle. This was quite a surprise to the vacuum people, who were left with all of the expenses of the store, but luckily their business was able to handle the bills.

The first day that the futon people were gone, they had 2 or 3 people come into their store and ask them where are all of the futons were? They could have told them that the futons were gone, and that all there were now were vacuums. Instead, they asked the potential customer what size they wanted and what color, and they knew enough about futons, and where to get them, that they were able to make a couple of sales without any futons in the store at all.

This was the beginning of a kind of a strange combination that was not planned at all, but it worked, and they had many customers who bought both a vacuum cleaner and a futon. Sometimes the futon part of our business was so busy that they had less and less time for the vacuum part of the business, so they ended up selling it to one of their competitors. This futon business has continued to grow year after year, but was never planned.

That is a story of how 2 people started a business on the side, which developed into a full time business, and then completely chaged to a different business altar. It shows how in business you must be able to adapt, and to go with the flow, in order to survive.

BOTS Companion of a Modern Revenue Manager

Bots have become an important part of human life both, at the personal and professional front and their involvement is climbing new peaks with every passing day. They surround us in our daily life in the form of Artificial Intelligence, Search Engines, and Software. Part of it has also paved way for smarter and efficient revenue management for hotels fueling the debt that if humans should be irrevocably replaced with bots for this complex round the clock function. Although the practice may be at a nascent stage to draw concluding, it has certainly made a mark in the real of the hospitality industry and has become an indispensable part of any hotel revenue management.

Artificial Intelligence powered robots can analyze and synthesize large chunks of hotel data collected at various touch points in a fraction of seconds to present meaningful insights about the booking pattern, demand, guest behavior which is impossible to be grouped or processed by any amount of human workforce with the same efficiency as bots. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the Artificial Intelligence has sort of revolutionized the hospitality industry across the globe, enabling every business to improve on multiple fronts like hotel pricing, price optimization, revenue management, guest experience management, booking management, demand and even capacity optimization of properties.

Furthermore, these bots are also capable of analyzing trends and trace upcoming events in the town to estimate the rise in demand, providing enough room for revenue managers to tweak the pricing and availability instead of fire fighting the situation at the last minute.

Leading hotels have already started betting big on AI powered bots and poised to explore new ways to make bots a part of their business operations. One significant advantage bots have over humans is that they can work tirelessly 24X7 with the same precision. Hotel industry requires attention 24X7 and is one of the most dynamic industries with continuous fluctuations in trends, demand, and prices. That is where these robust machines have huge value to add to the revenue management realm. These invisible machines can not only quickly determine the best rates at a particular time for your property, (room rate optimization) but also advise the revenue managers on which segment to target and the kind of promotional offers to be run to maximize the revenue.

Another major area where hotels continue to hustle is direct bookings. Hotels have been continuously trying to improve booking numbers on their own website since OTA missions are touching skies, eating up a major revenue share of hotels. Hotels would be surprised to know that even in this area, bots can improve their game and help increase the number of bookings by a decent percentage. With advanced learning capabilities and rigorous analysis of visitor's purchasing behavior, AI powered bots can refine the visitor experience and personalize every visitor's journey to their needs and interests. This increments visitor engagement and reduces the cycle time of purchase leading to conversion on the hotel website itself.

This again brings us to the joke that wherever revenue managers can be gradually replaced by bots completely risking their roles and jobs in the industry altogether. The answer is obviously NO since these micro machines can only process and analyze only a set number of parameters in their decision and often neglect external market implications that may not be considered by such bots but are easily identifiable only by human revenue managers and this acumen is gained by experience.

Therefore, the ideal mix should be machine results mediated and supervised by human revenue managers. For eg, Pricing is one area which could have been automated with a reasonable amount of diligence and control of the revenue manager. Similarly, online reputation management can also be monitored with technology; however, a personalized approach will take you a long way. The key is to automate the processes that require minimum human intervention and involve human where necessary. This will help revenue managers to don more hats at the same time like exploring more avenues to maximize per guest audience and focus on other revenue increasing strategies.

Thus, witnessing the scenarios discussed above, we can conclude that the status of the bots is of a companion to revenue managers instead of a successor who will complement them at every step with razor fast information and analysis of the market and competition, enabling revenue managers to take informed decisions in no time and help them optimize revenues and drive the hotel towards new millions of success.