Are Online Ads Worth Your Buck?

By: Vadim Kirienko

Whenever you are surfing the internet looking for information you will see a plethora of online advertising offering virtually every conceivable product or service under the sun. As more people hit the information highway, often shunning traditional information sources such as print, television and radio, advertisers are also making the switch. Online advertising can a cost-effective method of reaching web surfers and getting their message in front of a different audience.

One of the biggest advantages of online ads is also one of the biggest disadvantages. Online ads can reach a wider audience and if you have a global internet business can expand the boundaries of your customer base. In most cases you have the ability to determine the types of sites on which your online ads will appear, but in many instances once you place the ad, especially if going through an online ad agency, your site could end up on sites that are inconsistent with you beliefs.

If your business is strictly locally based, with print, television or radio advertising you can restrict the geographic locations where the ads will be heard or seen. For many local-only businesses this type of target advertising reaches only those are likely to be interested in your business and be reasonably expected to visit in person. It all depends on whether you want your advertising effort to have a shotgun effect or a rifle shot.

While a shotgun approach can reach more people in the least amount of time in a much wider area, it will also have many of the ads whiz out into cyberspace with no contact with potential customers. With the rifle approach you can aim your advertising at a specific customer base and even with a potentially higher cost can often realize a better return on the advertising dollar.

When considering online advertising you have to look at the potential return to determine if they are worth your investment. With internet advertising, as will many other forms, it is a numbers game. If you anticipate that 10 percent of those who see the ad will respond and ten percent of those respondents will result in a sale, you should consider that 10,000 advertisement in print media would see 1,000 respondents resulting in 100 sales.

With online ads, your advertisement may reach a million viewers, resulting in 100,000 respondents and 10,000 sales. Weighing these purely hypothetical numbers would seem to make online advertising a good investment. However, depending on the placement of online ads, such as on sites that customers for your products or service rarely if ever visit, the number of respondents may be considerably lower, reducing the potential return on your online ad investment.

If you have an online business, it may pay to advertise where your customers are looking. If your business is completely offline, advertising online may simply make the business with which you advertise the recipient of any income.

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/online_business/article_5351.shtml

“This is a newly revised and expanded version of The Houses That Sears Built.

This new edition includes more than 20 new photos of existing Sears Homes throughout the country as well as a plethora of recently discovered information.

This major revision also includes reproductions of newly-discovered original documents from the Sears Modern Homes Department as well as compelling interviews with men who worked at the Sears Mill in Cairo, IL. You’ll also hear the fascinating stories from Sears Homeowners who actually built their own Sears Kit Home many decades ago!

Want to learn how to identify a Sears Home? This book contains new graphics, photos and easy-to-reference bulleted points that will tell you and show you - step by step - how to identify a Sears Home.

It also includes four brand new chapters, such as “Chapter 3 - The Amazing Mr. Sears; A Brief Look at The Handsome Genius and His Store,” “Chapter 5 - Milling About Sears Homes, A Look Inside the Sears Mill at Cairo, Illinois,” “Chapter 8 - Homart Homes, The ‘Other’ Sears Homes, “Chapter 11 - Those Dandy Houses, Testimonials; Trivia and Reminiscences of Building a Sears Modern Home.”

Since the first edition of The Houses That Sears Built was published in Spring 2002, the author has appeared on CBS Sunday Morning News, PBS’s History Detectives, A&E’s Biography and WGN-TV News, as well as the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Dallas Morning News and more than 50 regional publications. As a result of this publicity, Ms. Thornton has received more than 1,000 emails and letters from readers all over the country, telling stories and sharing precious memories about their own “Sears Modern Homes,” and she incorporated many of these stories into this new edition.

This new edition of The Houses That Sears Built is more than a revision - it contains a tremendous amount of new information and trivia and wonderful photos that the Sears Home enthusiast will treasure and enjoy!

About Sears Homes: Between 1908-1940, Sears customers ordered about 75,000 houses out of the Sears Roebuck and Company mail-order catalogs. The houses were shipped by rail to city lots and farms all over the country.

Each “kit home” contained 30,000 pieces, including 750 pounds of nails and 27 gallons of paint and varnish. A 75-page instruction book showed home buyers, step by step, how to assemble those 30,000 pieces of house.

Only 10% (approximately) of the Sears homes in the country have been discovered.

Because of this, our communities’ best architectural treasures - our grand collection of Sears homes - are being damaged by remuddling and worse, demolished.

There is tremendous interest in this topic and hopefully, The Houses That Sears Built will spur that interest even further.

When you have finished reading The Houses That Sears Built you will be your community’s expert on Sears homes. You’ll learn how to identify Sears homes from the inside, outside and from courthouse documents. You’ll learn the interesting details of Sears homes’ construction. One chapter is devoted to the $1 million order of Sears homes that was shipped to Carlinville, Schoper and Wood River (Illinois).

Another chapter is devoted to “The Lost Sears Homes.” These are Sears homes which appeared only once in obscure Sears Modern Homes catalogs and were not included in “Houses by Mail: A Guide To Houses from Sears, Roebuck and Company,” by Katherine Cole Stevenson and H. Ward Jandl.

Author:Rosemary Thornton
Paperback:158 pages
Company:Gentle Beam Publications(2004-02-25)
ISBN:0971558817
List Price:$19.95
Amazon Price:$19.95
Used Price:$16.71
The Houses That Sears Built

“Investing is all about common sense. Owning a diversified portfolio of stocks and holding it for the long term is a winner’s game. Trying to beat the stock market is theoretically a zero-sum game (for every winner, there must be a loser), but after the substantial costs of investing are deducted, it becomes a loser’s game. Common sense tells us—and history confirms—that the simplest and most efficient investment strategy is to buy and hold all of the nation’s publicly held businesses at very low cost. The classic index fund that owns this market portfolio is the only investment that guarantees you with your fair share of stock market returns.

To learn how to make index investing work for you, there’s no better mentor than legendary mutual fund industry veteran John C. Bogle. Over the course of his long career, Bogle—founder of the Vanguard Group and creator of the world’s first index mutual fund—has relied primarily on index investing to help Vanguard’s clients build substantial wealth. Now, with The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, he wants to help you do the same.

Filled with in-depth insights and practical advice, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing will show you how to incorporate this proven investment strategy into your portfolio. It will also change the very way you think about investing. Successful investing is not easy. (It requires discipline and patience.) But it is simple. For it’s all about common sense.

With The Little Book of Common Sense Investing as your guide, you’ll discover how to make investing a winner’s game:

• Why business reality—dividend yields and earnings growth—is more important than market expectations
• How to overcome the powerful impact of investment costs, taxes, and inflation
• How the magic of compounding returns is overwhelmed by the tyranny of compounding costs
• What expert investors and brilliant academics—from Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham to Paul Samuelson and Burton Malkiel—have to say about index investing
• And much more

You’ll also find warnings about investment fads and fashions, including the recent stampede into exchange traded funds and the rise of indexing gimmickry. The real formula for investment success is to own the entire market, while significantly minimizing the costs of financial intermediation. That’s what index investing is all about. And that’s what this book is all about.

JOHN C. BOGLE is founder of the Vanguard Group, Inc., and President of its Bogle Financial Markets Research Center. He created Vanguard in 1974 and served as chairman and chief executive officer until 1996 and senior chairman until 2000. In 1999, Fortune magazine named Mr. Bogle as one of the four “Investment Giants” of the twentieth century; in 2004, Time named him one of the world’s 100 most powerful and influential people, and Institutional Investor presented him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Author:John C. Bogle
Hardcover:208 pages
Company:Wiley(2007-03-05)
ISBN:0470102101
List Price:$19.95
Amazon Price:$10.46
Used Price:$10.44
The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (Little Book, Big Profits)

“Praise for ADVENTURES of a CURRENCY TRADER

“A truly easy, unique, and enjoyable read! Rob has done it once again to teach us in the funniest way possible how not to make the most common trading mistakes. If you are tired of reading how-to books, this is perfect for you. I highly recommend this book to all traders. Everyone will learn something about themselves by reading this book.”
—Kathy Lien, author, Day Trading the Currency Market, and Chief Strategist, www.dailyfx.com

“Adventures of a Currency Trader is a must read for anyone who has ever traded or is thinking about trading in the Forex markets. Rob Booker has a unique way of taking years of market knowledge and transforming it into an educational and entertaining experience. It has quickly become a cult classic in my trading library!”
—H. Jack Bouroudjian, Principal, Brewer Investment Group

“Brilliant! Rob’s humor and humanity shine through in this parable about trading and life. Filled with wisdom and wit, it’s an exhilarating rollercoaster ride through the peaks and valleys of the learning curve, with many valuable lessons learned along the way.”
—Ed Ponsi, President, FXEducator.com

“Rob’s fable of everyman ‘Harry Banes’ is destined to become a trading classic. This is both the missing piece and the foundation that comes before the strategies and methodologies. The search for the Holy Grail begins and ends in the heart and mind. The journey is authentic and real and if you’re willing to take it with Rob, you will be rewarded in the end. Seldom has psychology and wisdom been so entertaining!”
—Raghee Horner, trader and author of Forex Trading for Maximum Profit and Days of Forex Trading

“In a series of insightful and entertaining vignettes, Rob Booker teaches both the novice and the experienced trader some hard won truths about the currency market. It’s a must read book written by a guy who survived the trenches and went on to prosper in the biggest and most competitive financial market in the world.”
—Boris Schlossberg, Senior Currency Strategist, Capital Markets LLC, and author of Technical Analysis of the Currency Market

Author:Rob Booker
Hardcover:240 pages
Company:Wiley(2007-02-09)
ISBN:0470049480
List Price:$55.00
Amazon Price:$28.86
Used Price:$28.86
Adventures of a Currency Trader: A Fable about Trading, Courage, and Doing the Right Thing (Wiley Trading)

Advertising Is Key To Home Business Success

By: Earl Williams

There is no question that advertising is key to the success of any business ? large or small, new or old. Without advertising and marketing practices a business simply cannot succeed or last long. To ensure long and lasting success, a business must engage in marketing and advertising in some way. If you have heard the old adage that ?it takes money to make money? then you know that advertising does not come for free. A business must consider an advertising campaign budget to keep their numbers up.

It has been said that the best form of advertising is word of mouth advertising. Word of mouth advertising is free and lends an air of credibility to the business. Usually, word of mouth advertising comes from happy and satisfied customers and clients that wish to share their positive experience. Most of the time, they tell their friends, family, and coworkers about a particular product or service and in turn new customers come to the business.

While word of mouth is a wonderful and free way to get the word out about a business, it is not the ?be all end all? of advertising. Advertising with television spots, radio spots, on billboards, and in print are all still very effective ways to get the word out. These methods of advertising are quite expensive and not as realistic for many small businesses.

A more economical yet effective way for a business to advertise is online. The Internet is such an integral part of daily life now that it is hard not to advertise on the World Wide Web. The ways in which a business can advertise online are seemingly endless. There are several types of email marketing campaigns, banner advertising, link advertising, websites, and viral marketing. Usually, to engage in a successful email marketing campaign, a business will send past customers an email to announce new products or specials on their website or in their store.

By large, advertising online is usually very cheap. The key is to find a place online where lots of your customers are going to go. In order to do this, you have to be sure that you know who your demographic is and who is using your business. This might require some work on your part. Once you have identified who the people are that are using your business, you can go to other sites that these people are also going to be using, and you can advertise on these sites, quite easily.

Many business owners engage in strategic networking with other business owners in an effort to advertise their businesses. Strategic networking is a way for business owners to meet each other, get the word out about their company, and even to expand their resources and business prospects.

One of the newest ways to get the word out about your business and successfully advertise is that through social networking. Social networking is much like strategic networking in that it is usually free and occurs through meeting and discussing issues and products. However, social networking is done through modern media such as websites, blogs, and the Internet community. It is highly effective and inexpensive.

Regardless of the method of advertising used, a business must use constant advertising campaigns to keep success on the horizon.

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/online_business/article_5309.shtml