TODAY INDIA

10 Things a Small Business Can Write Off

We all have one fear in common – everybody is just a little bit afraid of the IRS. Although a little fear is healthy, for the small business owner or self-employed individual, too much fear of the IRS can be bad for the bottom line.

If you want to pay less income tax, take the time to learn what others in your industry are deducting, and track every legitimate business expense. The savings could easily be several hundred dollars. Start with these ten categories.

Home Office Expenses: If you operate your business from your home, a portion of your household insurance, rent, repairs, maintenance, utilities, and other expenses could be deductible.

Business Mileage: If you track every business mile driven, you’ll pay less tax. But, if those miles aren’t tracked properly they can be disallowed.

Interest on Business Debt: Monthly business checking account fees, bank overdraft penalties, business credit card finance charges, interest on a home equity loan taken out to fund your business, and annual credit card fees are all deductible.

Self-Employment Health Insurance: Self-employed health insurance costs are a business deduction, and are subtracted on your personal tax return.

IRA and Retirement Deposits: Self-employment and small business Retirement Accounts and IRA Deposits are also posted to your 1040 personal tax return.

Promotional Expenses: If you spent money, or traded goods, to get your business name or product out to the public, that cost is deductible as a promotional expense.

Seminars and Classes: Any classes that make you better at what you do to produce income, as well as general business classes are all deductible. Remember to record all mileage and travel expenses if you have them; those are deductible too.

Subscriptions: All magazines, newspapers and newsletters you purchase to enhance your business knowledge, including online subscriptions, can be deducted on your business tax return.

Rent: If you pay rent for an office, desk space, chair space, or storage space, rent tools or equipment, pay for loft space, or have other rent expenses within your business, those expenses are deductible.

Inventory: Inventory costs are only deductible as inventory is sold; unlike most other business expenses, it is not always deducted in the same year as the money is spent. The IRS has specific rules for inventory management.

A tax professional can only work from the information you provide, and unless you understand what you can and cannot deduct on a business return, even a good tax professional will miss valuable deductions. Keeping good records, documenting all business expenses are all you’ll need should an audit arise.

What Are the Advantages of Opting For Audi Business Contract Hire?

While high end and luxury cars give any business organization a dynamic and sound image, purchasing and maintaining them can be a quite expensive and relatively unprofitable investment due to the steady depreciating value of automobiles. One of the best ways for companies to maintain a dynamic image without incurring huge expenses is to opt for Audi business contract hire. The recent consumer reports and Audi reviews point out to the fact that when it comes to leasing out a vehicle, the Audi is one of the most popular choices in the corporate line.

While a car can be leased out for personal as well as commercial purposes, the system of Audi business contract hire has become highly beneficial for companies and organizations in contrast with purchasing vehicles for corporate use. According to the latest Audi reviews and news reports about the car leasing industry, companies are finding hiring a vehicle a much more viable option than other methods for car financing. The following section lists some of the advantages of opting for Audi business contract hire:

o Small investment – The most attractive aspect of Audi business contract hire is that companies have to make a fraction of the investment as compared to buying a vehicle which makes the whole deal very cost effective.

o Low down payment – An Audi business contract hire requires companies to make a small down payment amount usually for the first three months which is very low as compared to huge upfront payments required for other methods of car financing.

o No maintenance hassles – Most car dealers include servicing, repair and maintenance of the car into the lease agreement of Audi business contract hire which makes the company completely free from such additional responsibilities and expenses.

o High flexibility – Another unique advantage of leasing out a vehicle is that organizations can constantly refresh their image by changing their cars every few years according to the latest Audi reviews, which are not feasible through any other means of finance.

o Better options – With Audi business contract hire, an organization can opt for a better quality vehicle instead of purchasing a standard car.

o Special incentives – There are a wide number of dealers offering special incentives to organizations interested in Audi business contract hire through bargain deals, low interest rates and various discounts which makes the whole deal highly suitable.

The Metaphors of the Net

I. The Genetic Blueprint

A decade after the invention of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee is promoting the “Semantic Web”. The Internet hitherto is a repository of digital content. It has a rudimentary inventory system and very crude data location services. As a sad result, most of the content is invisible and inaccessible. Moreover, the Internet manipulates strings of symbols, not logical or semantic propositions. In other words, the Net compares values but does not know the meaning of the values it thus manipulates. It is unable to interpret strings, to infer new facts, to deduce, induce, derive, or otherwise comprehend what it is doing. In short, it does not understand language. Run an ambiguous term by any search engine and these shortcomings become painfully evident. This lack of understanding of the semantic foundations of its raw material (data, information) prevent applications and databases from sharing resources and feeding each other. The Internet is discrete, not continuous. It resembles an archipelago, with users hopping from island to island in a frantic search for relevancy.

Even visionaries like Berners-Lee do not contemplate an “intelligent Web”. They are simply proposing to let users, content creators, and web developers assign descriptive meta-tags (“name of hotel”) to fields, or to strings of symbols (“Hilton”). These meta-tags (arranged in semantic and relational “ontologies” – lists of metatags, their meanings and how they relate to each other) will be read by various applications and allow them to process the associated strings of symbols correctly (place the word “Hilton” in your address book under “hotels”). This will make information retrieval more efficient and reliable and the information retrieved is bound to be more relevant and amenable to higher level processing (statistics, the development of heuristic rules, etc.). The shift is from HTML (whose tags are concerned with visual appearances and content indexing) to languages such as the DARPA Agent Markup Language, OIL (Ontology Inference Layer or Ontology Interchange Language), or even XML (whose tags are concerned with content taxonomy, document structure, and semantics). This would bring the Internet closer to the classic library card catalogue.

Even in its current, pre-semantic, hyperlink-dependent, phase, the Internet brings to mind Richard Dawkins’ seminal work “The Selfish Gene” (OUP, 1976). This would be doubly true for the Semantic Web.

Dawkins suggested to generalize the principle of natural selection to a law of the survival of the stable. “A stable thing is a collection of atoms which is permanent enough or common enough to deserve a name”. He then proceeded to describe the emergence of “Replicators” – molecules which created copies of themselves. The Replicators that survived in the competition for scarce raw materials were characterized by high longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity. Replicators (now known as “genes”) constructed “survival machines” (organisms) to shield them from the vagaries of an ever-harsher environment.

This is very reminiscent of the Internet. The “stable things” are HTML coded web pages. They are replicators – they create copies of themselves every time their “web address” (URL) is clicked. The HTML coding of a web page can be thought of as “genetic material”. It contains all the information needed to reproduce the page. And, exactly as in nature, the higher the longevity, fecundity (measured in links to the web page from other web sites), and copying-fidelity of the HTML code – the higher its chances to survive (as a web page).

Replicator molecules (DNA) and replicator HTML have one thing in common – they are both packaged information. In the appropriate context (the right biochemical “soup” in the case of DNA, the right software application in the case of HTML code) – this information generates a “survival machine” (organism, or a web page).

The Semantic Web will only increase the longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity or the underlying code (in this case, OIL or XML instead of HTML). By facilitating many more interactions with many other web pages and databases – the underlying “replicator” code will ensure the “survival” of “its” web page (=its survival machine). In this analogy, the web page’s “DNA” (its OIL or XML code) contains “single genes” (semantic meta-tags). The whole process of life is the unfolding of a kind of Semantic Web.

In a prophetic paragraph, Dawkins described the Internet:

“The first thing to grasp about a modern replicator is that it is highly gregarious. A survival machine is a vehicle containing not just one gene but many thousands. The manufacture of a body is a cooperative venture of such intricacy that it is almost impossible to disentangle the contribution of one gene from that of another. A given gene will have many different effects on quite different parts of the body. A given part of the body will be influenced by many genes and the effect of any one gene depends on interaction with many others…In terms of the analogy, any given page of the plans makes reference to many different parts of the building; and each page makes sense only in terms of cross-reference to numerous other pages.”

What Dawkins neglected in his important work is the concept of the Network. People congregate in cities, mate, and reproduce, thus providing genes with new “survival machines”. But Dawkins himself suggested that the new Replicator is the “meme” – an idea, belief, technique, technology, work of art, or bit of information. Memes use human brains as “survival machines” and they hop from brain to brain and across time and space (“communications”) in the process of cultural (as distinct from biological) evolution. The Internet is a latter day meme-hopping playground. But, more importantly, it is a Network. Genes move from one container to another through a linear, serial, tedious process which involves prolonged periods of one on one gene shuffling (“sex”) and gestation. Memes use networks. Their propagation is, therefore, parallel, fast, and all-pervasive. The Internet is a manifestation of the growing predominance of memes over genes. And the Semantic Web may be to the Internet what Artificial Intelligence is to classic computing. We may be on the threshold of a self-aware Web.

2. The Internet as a Chaotic Library

A. The Problem of Cataloguing

The Internet is an assortment of billions of pages which contain information. Some of them are visible and others are generated from hidden databases by users’ requests (“Invisible Internet”).

The Internet exhibits no discernible order, classification, or categorization. Amazingly, as opposed to “classical” libraries, no one has yet invented a (sorely needed) Internet cataloguing standard (remember Dewey?). Some sites indeed apply the Dewey Decimal System to their contents (Suite101). Others default to a directory structure (Open Directory, Yahoo!, Look Smart and others).

Had such a standard existed (an agreed upon numerical cataloguing method) – each site could have self-classified. Sites would have an interest to do so to increase their visibility. This, naturally, would have eliminated the need for today’s clunky, incomplete and (highly) inefficient search engines.

Thus, a site whose number starts with 900 will be immediately identified as dealing with history and multiple classification will be encouraged to allow finer cross-sections to emerge. An example of such an emerging technology of “self classification” and “self-publication” (though limited to scholarly resources) is the “Academic Resource Channel” by Scindex.

Moreover, users will not be required to remember reams of numbers. Future browsers will be akin to catalogues, very much like the applications used in modern day libraries. Compare this utopia to the current dystopy. Users struggle with mounds of irrelevant material to finally reach a partial and disappointing destination. At the same time, there likely are web sites which exactly match the poor user’s needs. Yet, what currently determines the chances of a happy encounter between user and content – are the whims of the specific search engine used and things like meta-tags, headlines, a fee paid, or the right opening sentences.

B. Screen vs. Page

The computer screen, because of physical limitations (size, the fact that it has to be scrolled) fails to effectively compete with the printed page. The latter is still the most ingenious medium yet invented for the storage and release of textual information. Granted: a computer screen is better at highlighting discrete units of information. So, these differing capacities draw the battle lines: structures (printed pages) versus units (screen), the continuous and easily reversible (print) versus the discrete (screen).

The solution lies in finding an efficient way to translate computer screens to printed matter. It is hard to believe, but no such thing exists. Computer screens are still hostile to off-line printing. In other words: if a user copies information from the Internet to his word processor (or vice versa, for that matter) – he ends up with a fragmented, garbage-filled and non-aesthetic document.

Very few site developers try to do something about it – even fewer succeed.

C. Dynamic vs. Static Interactions

One of the biggest mistakes of content suppliers is that they do not provide a “static-dynamic interaction”.

Internet-based content can now easily interact with other media (e.g., CD-ROMs) and with non-PC platforms (PDA’s, mobile phones).

Examples abound:

A CD-ROM shopping catalogue interacts with a Web site to allow the user to order a product. The catalogue could also be updated through the site (as is the practice with CD-ROM encyclopedias). The advantages of the CD-ROM are clear: very fast access time (dozens of times faster than the access to a Web site using a dial up connection) and a data storage capacity hundreds of times bigger than the average Web page.

Another example:

A PDA plug-in disposable chip containing hundreds of advertisements or a “yellow pages”. The consumer selects the ad or entry that she wants to see and connects to the Internet to view a relevant video. She could then also have an interactive chat (or a conference) with a salesperson, receive information about the company, about the ad, about the advertising agency which created the ad – and so on.

CD-ROM based encyclopedias (such as the Britannica, or the Encarta) already contain hyperlinks which carry the user to sites selected by an Editorial Board.

Note

CD-ROMs are probably a doomed medium. Storage capacity continually increases exponentially and, within a year, desktops with 80 Gb hard disks will be a common sight. Moreover, the much heralded Network Computer – the stripped down version of the personal computer – will put at the disposal of the average user terabytes in storage capacity and the processing power of a supercomputer. What separates computer users from this utopia is the communication bandwidth. With the introduction of radio and satellite broadband services, DSL and ADSL, cable modems coupled with advanced compression standards – video (on demand), audio and data will be available speedily and plentifully.

The CD-ROM, on the other hand, is not mobile. It requires installation and the utilization of sophisticated hardware and software. This is no user friendly push technology. It is nerd-oriented. As a result, CD-ROMs are not an immediate medium. There is a long time lapse between the moment of purchase and the moment the user accesses the data. Compare this to a book or a magazine. Data in these oldest of media is instantly available to the user and they allow for easy and accurate “back” and “forward” functions.

Perhaps the biggest mistake of CD-ROM manufacturers has been their inability to offer an integrated hardware and software package. CD-ROMs are not compact. A Walkman is a compact hardware-cum-software package. It is easily transportable, it is thin, it contains numerous, user-friendly, sophisticated functions, it provides immediate access to data. So does the discman, or the MP3-man, or the new generation of e-books (e.g., E-Ink’s). This cannot be said about the CD-ROM. By tying its future to the obsolete concept of stand-alone, expensive, inefficient and technologically unreliable personal computers – CD-ROMs have sentenced themselves to oblivion (with the possible exception of reference material).

D. Online Reference

A visit to the on-line Encyclopaedia Britannica demonstrates some of the tremendous, mind boggling possibilities of online reference – as well as some of the obstacles.

Each entry in this mammoth work of reference is hyperlinked to relevant Web sites. The sites are carefully screened. Links are available to data in various forms, including audio and video. Everything can be copied to the hard disk or to a R/W CD.

This is a new conception of a knowledge centre – not just a heap of material. The content is modular and continuously enriched. It can be linked to a voice Q&A centre. Queries by subscribers can be answered by e-mail, by fax, posted on the site, hard copies can be sent by post. This “Trivial Pursuit” or “homework” service could be very popular – there is considerable appetite for “Just in Time Information”. The Library of Congress – together with a few other libraries – is in the process of making just such a service available to the public (CDRS – Collaborative Digital Reference Service).

E. Derivative Content

The Internet is an enormous reservoir of archives of freely accessible, or even public domain, information.

With a minimal investment, this information can be gathered into coherent, theme oriented, cheap compilations (on CD-ROMs, print, e-books or other media).

F. E-Publishing

The Internet is by far the world’s largest publishing platform. It incorporates FAQs (Q&A’s regarding almost every technical matter in the world), e-zines (electronic magazines), the electronic versions of print dailies and periodicals (in conjunction with on-line news and information services), reference material, e-books, monographs, articles, minutes of discussions (“threads”), conference proceedings, and much more besides.

The Internet represents major advantages to publishers. Consider the electronic version of a p-zine.

Publishing an e-zine promotes the sales of the printed edition, it helps sign on subscribers and it leads to the sale of advertising space. The electronic archive function (see next section) saves the need to file back issues, the physical space required to do so and the irritating search for data items.

The future trend is a combined subscription to both the electronic edition (mainly for the archival value and the ability to hyperlink to additional information) and to the print one (easier to browse the current issue). The Economist is already offering free access to its electronic archives as an inducement to its print subscribers.

The electronic daily presents other advantages:

It allows for immediate feedback and for flowing, almost real-time, communication between writers and readers. The electronic version, therefore, acquires a gyroscopic function: a navigation instrument, always indicating deviations from the “right” course. The content can be instantly updated and breaking news incorporated in older content.

Specialty hand held devices already allow for downloading and storage of vast quantities of data (up to 4000 print pages). The user gains access to libraries containing hundreds of texts, adapted to be downloaded, stored and read by the specific device. Again, a convergence of standards is to be expected in this field as well (the final contenders will probably be Adobe’s PDF against Microsoft’s MS-Reader).

Currently, e-books are dichotomously treated either as:

Continuation of print books (p-books) by other means, or as a whole new publishing universe.

Since p-books are a more convenient medium then e-books – they will prevail in any straightforward “medium replacement” or “medium displacement” battle.

In other words, if publishers will persist in the simple and straightforward conversion of p-books to e-books – then e-books are doomed. They are simply inferior and cannot offer the comfort, tactile delights, browseability and scanability of p-books.

But e-books – being digital – open up a vista of hitherto neglected possibilities. These will only be enhanced and enriched by the introduction of e-paper and e-ink. Among them:

Hyperlinks within the e-book and without it – to web content, reference works, etc.;
Embedded instant shopping and ordering links;
Divergent, user-interactive, decision driven plotlines;
Interaction with other e-books (using a wireless standard) – collaborative authoring or reading groups;
Interaction with other e-books – gaming and community activities;
Automatically or periodically updated content;
Multimedia;
Database, Favourites, Annotations, and History Maintenance (archival records of reading habits, shopping habits, interaction with other readers, plot related decisions and much more);
Automatic and embedded audio conversion and translation capabilities;
Full wireless piconetworking and scatternetworking capabilities.
The technology is still not fully there. Wars rage in both the wireless and the e-book realms. Platforms compete. Standards clash. Gurus debate. But convergence is inevitable and with it the e-book of the future.

G. The Archive Function

The Internet is also the world’s biggest cemetery: tens of thousands of deadbeat sites, still accessible – the “Ghost Sites” of this electronic frontier.

This, in a way, is collective memory. One of the Internet’s main functions will be to preserve and transfer knowledge through time. It is called “memory” in biology – and “archive” in library science. The history of the Internet is being documented by search engines (Google) and specialized services (Alexa) alike.

3. The Internet as a Collective Nervous System

Drawing a comparison from the development of a human infant – the human race has just commenced to develop its neural system.

The Internet fulfils all the functions of the Nervous System in the body and is, both functionally and structurally, pretty similar. It is decentralized, redundant (each part can serve as functional backup in case of malfunction). It hosts information which is accessible through various paths, it contains a memory function, it is multimodal (multimedia – textual, visual, audio and animation).

I believe that the comparison is not superficial and that studying the functions of the brain (from infancy to adulthood) is likely to shed light on the future of the Net itself. The Net – exactly like the nervous system – provides pathways for the transport of goods and services – but also of memes and information, their processing, modeling, and integration.

A. The Collective Computer

Carrying the metaphor of “a collective brain” further, we would expect the processing of information to take place on the Internet, rather than inside the end-user’s hardware (the same way that information is processed in the brain, not in the eyes). Desktops will receive results and communicate with the Net to receive additional clarifications and instructions and to convey information gathered from their environment (mostly, from the user).

Put differently:

In future, servers will contain not only information (as they do today) – but also software applications. The user of an application will not be forced to buy it. He will not be driven into hardware-related expenditures to accommodate the ever growing size of applications. He will not find himself wasting his scarce memory and computing resources on passive storage. Instead, he will use a browser to call a central computer. This computer will contain the needed software, broken to its elements (=applets, small applications). Anytime the user wishes to use one of the functions of the application, he will siphon it off the central computer. When finished – he will “return” it. Processing speeds and response times will be such that the user will not feel at all that he is not interacting with his own software (the question of ownership will be very blurred). This technology is available and it provoked a heated debated about the future shape of the computing industry as a whole (desktops – really power packs – or network computers, a little more than dumb terminals). Access to online applications are already offered to corporate users by ASPs (Application Service Providers).

In the last few years, scientists have harnessed the combined power of online PC’s to perform astounding feats of distributed parallel processing. Millions of PCs connected to the net co-process signals from outer space, meteorological data, and solve complex equations. This is a prime example of a collective brain in action.

B. The Intranet – a Logical Extension of the Collective Computer

LANs (Local Area Networks) are no longer a rarity in corporate offices. WANs (wide Area Networks) are used to connect geographically dispersed organs of the same legal entity (branches of a bank, daughter companies of a conglomerate, a sales force). Many LANs and WANs are going wireless.

The wireless intranet/extranet and LANs are the wave of the future. They will gradually eliminate their fixed line counterparts. The Internet offers equal, platform-independent, location-independent and time of day – independent access to corporate memory and nervous system. Sophisticated firewall security applications protect the privacy and confidentiality of the intranet from all but the most determined and savvy crackers.

The Intranet is an inter-organizational communication network, constructed on the platform of the Internet and it, therefore, enjoys all its advantages. The extranet is open to clients and suppliers as well.

The company’s server can be accessed by anyone authorized, from anywhere, at any time (with local – rather than international – communication costs). The user can leave messages (internal e-mail or v-mail), access information – proprietary or public – from it, and participate in “virtual teamwork” (see next chapter).

The development of measures to safeguard server routed inter-organizational communication (firewalls) is the solution to one of two obstacles to the institutionalization of Intranets. The second problem is the limited bandwidth which does not permit the efficient transfer of audio (not to mention video).

It is difficult to conduct video conferencing through the Internet. Even the voices of discussants who use internet phones (IP telephony) come out (though very slightly) distorted.

All this did not prevent 95% of the Fortune 1000 from installing intranet. 82% of the rest intend to install one by the end of this year. Medium to big size American firms have 50-100 intranet terminals per every internet one.

One of the greatest advantages of the intranet is the ability to transfer documents between the various parts of an organization. Consider Visa: it pushed 2 million documents per day internally in 1996.

An organization equipped with an intranet can (while protected by firewalls) give its clients or suppliers access to non-classified correspondence, or inventory systems. Many B2B exchanges and industry-specific purchasing management systems are based on extranets.

C. The Transport of Information – Mail and Chat

The Internet (its e-mail function) is eroding traditional mail. 90% of customers with on-line access use e-mail from time to time and 60% work with it regularly. More than 2 billion messages traverse the internet daily.

E-mail applications are available as freeware and are included in all browsers. Thus, the Internet has completely assimilated what used to be a separate service, to the extent that many people make the mistake of thinking that e-mail is a feature of the Internet.

The internet will do to phone calls what it has done to mail. Already there are applications (Intel’s, Vocaltec’s, Net2Phone) which enable the user to conduct a phone conversation through his computer. The voice quality has improved. The discussants can cut into each others words, argue and listen to tonal nuances. Today, the parties (two or more) engaging in the conversation must possess the same software and the same (computer) hardware. In the very near future, computer-to-regular phone applications will eliminate this requirement. And, again, simultaneous multi-modality: the user can talk over the phone, see his party, send e-mail, receive messages and transfer documents – without obstructing the flow of the conversation.

The cost of transferring voice will become so negligible that free voice traffic is conceivable in 3-5 years. Data traffic will overtake voice traffic by a wide margin.

The next phase will probably involve virtual reality. Each of the parties will be represented by an “avatar”, a 3-D figurine generated by the application (or the user’s likeness mapped and superimposed on the the avatar). These figurines will be multi-dimensional: they will possess their own communication patterns, special habits, history, preferences – in short: their own “personality”.

Thus, they will be able to maintain an “identity” and a consistent pattern of communication which they will develop over time.

Such a figure could host a site, accept, welcome and guide visitors, all the time bearing their preferences in its electronic “mind”. It could narrate the news, like the digital anchor “Ananova” does. Visiting sites in the future is bound to be a much more pleasant affair.

D. The Transport of Value – E-cash

In 1996, four corporate giants (Visa, MasterCard, Netscape and Microsoft) agreed on a standard for effecting secure payments through the Internet: SET. Internet commerce is supposed to mushroom to $25 billion by 2003. Site owners will be able to collect rent from passing visitors – or fees for services provided within the site. Amazon instituted an honour system to collect donations from visitors. PayPal provides millions of users with cash substitutes. Gradually, the Internet will compete with central banks and banking systems in money creation and transfer.

E. The Transport of Interactions – The Virtual Organization

The Internet allows for simultaneous communication and the efficient transfer of multimedia (video included) files between an unlimited number of users. This opens up a vista of mind boggling opportunities which are the real core of the Internet revolution: the virtual collaborative (“Follow the Sun”) modes.

Examples:

A group of musicians is able to compose music or play it – while spatially and temporally separated;

Advertising agencies are able to co-produce ad campaigns in a real time interaction;

Cinema and TV films are produced from disparate geographical spots through the teamwork of people who never meet, except through the Net.

These examples illustrate the concept of the “virtual community”. Space and time will no longer hinder team collaboration, be it scientific, artistic, cultural, or an ad hoc arrangement for the provision of a service (a virtual law firm, or accounting office, or a virtual consultancy network). The intranet can also be thought of as a “virtual organization”, or a “virtual business”.

The virtual mall and the virtual catalogue are prime examples of spatial and temporal liberation.

In 1998, there were well over 300 active virtual malls on the Internet. In 2000, they were frequented by 46 million shoppers, who shopped in them for goods and services.

The virtual mall is an Internet “space” (pages) wherein “shops” are located. These shops offer their wares using visual, audio and textual means. The visitor passes through a virtual “gate” or storefront and examines the merchandise on offer, until he reaches a buying decision. Then he engages in a feedback process: he pays (with a credit card), buys the product, and waits for it to arrive by mail (or downloads it).

The manufacturers of digital products (intellectual property such as e-books or software) have begun selling their merchandise on-line, as file downloads. Yet, slow communications speeds, competing file formats and reader standards, and limited bandwidth – constrain the growth potential of this mode of sale. Once resolved – intellectual property will be sold directly from the Net, on-line. Until such time, the mediation of the Post Office is still required. As long as this is the state of the art, the virtual mall is nothing but a glorified computerized mail catalogue or Buying Channel, the only difference being the exceptionally varied inventory.

Websites which started as “specialty stores” are fast transforming themselves into multi-purpose virtual malls. Amazon.com, for instance, has bought into a virtual pharmacy and into other virtual businesses. It is now selling music, video, electronics and many other products. It started as a bookstore.

This contrasts with a much more creative idea: the virtual catalogue. It is a form of narrowcasting (as opposed to broadcasting): a surgically accurate targeting of potential consumer audiences. Each group of profiled consumers (no matter how small) is fitted with their own – digitally generated – catalogue. This is updated daily: the variety of wares on offer (adjusted to reflect inventory levels, consumer preferences, and goods in transit) – and prices (sales, discounts, package deals) change in real time. Amazon has incorporated many of these features on its web site. The user enters its web site and there delineates his consumption profile and his preferences. A customized catalogue is immediately generated for him including specific recommendations. The history of his purchases, preferences and responses to feedback questionnaires is accumulated in a database. This intellectual property may well be Amazon’s main asset.

There is no technological obstacles to implementing this vision today – only administrative and legal (patent) ones. Big brick and mortar retail stores are not up to processing the flood of data expected to result. They also remain highly sceptical regarding the feasibility of the new medium. And privacy issues prevent data mining or the effective collection and usage of personal data (remember the case of Amazon’s “Readers’ Circles”).

The virtual catalogue is a private case of a new internet off-shoot: the “smart (shopping) agents”. These are AI applications with “long memories”.

They draw detailed profiles of consumers and users and then suggest purchases and refer to the appropriate sites, catalogues, or virtual malls.

They also provide price comparisons and the new generation cannot be blocked or fooled by using differing product categories.

In the future, these agents will cover also brick and mortar retail chains and, in conjunction with wireless, location-specific services, issue a map of the branch or store closest to an address specified by the user (the default being his residence), or yielded by his GPS enabled wireless mobile or PDA. This technology can be seen in action in a few music sites on the web and is likely to be dominant with wireless internet appliances. The owner of an internet enabled (third generation) mobile phone is likely to be the target of geographically-specific marketing campaigns, ads and special offers pertaining to his current location (as reported by his GPS – satellite Geographic Positioning System).

F. The Transport of Information – Internet News

Internet news are advantaged. They are frequently and dynamically updated (unlike static print news) and are always accessible (similar to print news), immediate and fresh.

The future will witness a form of interactive news. A special “corner” in the news Web site will accommodate “breaking news” posted by members of the the public (or corporate press releases). This will provide readers with a glimpse into the making of the news, the raw material news are made of. The same technology will be applied to interactive TVs. Content will be downloaded from the internet and displayed as an overlay on the TV screen or in a box in it. The contents downloaded will be directly connected to the TV programming. Thus, the biography and track record of a football player will be displayed during a football match and the history of a country when it gets news coverage.

4. Terra Internetica – Internet, an Unknown Continent

Laymen and experts alike talk about “sites” and “advertising space”. Yet, the Internet was never compared to a new continent whose surface is infinite.

The Internet has its own real estate developers and construction companies. The real life equivalents derive their profits from the scarcity of the resource that they exploit – the Internet counterparts derive their profits from the tenants (content producers and distributors, e-tailers, and others).

Entrepreneurs bought “Internet Space” (pages, domain names, portals) and leveraged their acquisition commercially by:

Renting space out;
Constructing infrastructure on their property and selling it;
Providing an intelligent gateway, entry point (portal) to the rest of the internet;
Selling advertising space which subsidizes the tenants (Yahoo!-Geocities, Tripod and others);
Cybersquatting (purchasing specific domain names identical to brand names in the “real” world) and then selling the domain name to an interested party.
Internet Space can be easily purchased or created. The investment is low and getting lower with the introduction of competition in the field of domain registration services and the increase in the number of top domains.

Then, infrastructure can be erected – for a shopping mall, for free home pages, for a portal, or for another purpose. It is precisely this infrastructure that the developer can later sell, lease, franchise, or rent out.

But this real estate bubble was the culmination of a long and tortuous process.

At the beginning, only members of the fringes and the avant-garde (inventors, risk assuming entrepreneurs, gamblers) invest in a new invention. No one knows to say what are the optimal uses of the invention (in other words, what is its future). Many – mostly members of the scientific and business elites – argue that there is no real need for the invention and that it substitutes a new and untried way for old and tried modes of doing the same things (so why assume the risk of investing in the unknown and the untried?).

Moreover, these criticisms are usually well-founded.

To start with, there is, indeed, no need for the new medium. A new medium invents itself – and the need for it. It also generates its own market to satisfy this newly found need.

Two prime examples of this self-recursive process are the personal computer and the compact disc.

When the PC was invented, its uses were completely unclear. Its performance was lacking, its abilities limited, it was unbearably user unfriendly. It suffered from faulty design, was absent any user comfort and ease of use and required considerable professional knowledge to operate. The worst part was that this knowledge was exclusive to the new invention (not portable). It reduced labour mobility and limited one’s professional horizons. There were many gripes among workers assigned to tame the new beast. Managers regarded it at best as a nuisance.

The PC was thought of, at the beginning, as a sophisticated gaming machine, an electronic baby-sitter. It included a keyboard, so it was thought of in terms of a glorified typewriter or spreadsheet. It was used mainly as a word processor (and the outlay justified solely on these grounds). The spreadsheet was the first real PC application and it demonstrated the advantages inherent to this new machine (mainly flexibility and speed). Still, it was more of the same. A speedier sliding ruler. After all, said the unconvinced, what was the difference between this and a hand held calculator (some of them already had computing, memory and programming features)?

The PC was recognized as a medium only 30 years after it was invented with the introduction of multimedia software. All this time, the computer continued to spin off markets and secondary markets, needs and professional specialties. The talk as always was centred on how to improve on existing markets and solutions.

The Internet is the computer’s first important application. Hitherto the computer was only quantitatively different to other computing or gaming devices. Multimedia and the Internet have made it qualitatively superior, sui generis, unique.

Part of the problem was that the Internet was invented, is maintained and is operated by computer professionals. For decades these people have been conditioned to think in Olympic terms: faster, stronger, higher – not in terms of the new, the unprecedented, or the non-existent. Engineers are trained to improve – seldom to invent. With few exceptions, its creators stumbled across the Internet – it invented itself despite them.

Computer professionals (hardware and software experts alike) – are linear thinkers. The Internet is non linear and modular.

It is still the age of hackers. There is still a lot to be done in improving technological prowess and powers. But their control of the contents is waning and they are being gradually replaced by communicators, creative people, advertising executives, psychologists, venture capitalists, and the totally unpredictable masses who flock to flaunt their home pages and graphomania.

These all are attuned to the user, his mental needs and his information and entertainment preferences.

The compact disc is a different tale. It was intentionally invented to improve upon an existing technology (basically, Edison’s Gramophone). Market-wise, this was a major gamble. The improvement was, at first, debatable (many said that the sound quality of the first generation of compact discs was inferior to that of its contemporaneous record players). Consumers had to be convinced to change both software and hardware and to dish out thousands of dollars just to listen to what the manufacturers claimed was more a authentically reproduced sound. A better argument was the longer life of the software (though when contrasted with the limited life expectancy of the consumer, some of the first sales pitches sounded absolutely morbid).

The computer suffered from unclear positioning. The compact disc was very clear as to its main functions – but had a rough time convincing the consumers that it was needed.

Every medium is first controlled by the technical people. Gutenberg was a printer – not a publisher. Yet, he is the world’s most famous publisher. The technical cadre is joined by dubious or small-scale entrepreneurs and, together, they establish ventures with no clear vision, market-oriented thinking, or orderly plan of action. The legislator is also dumbfounded and does not grasp what is happening – thus, there is no legislation to regulate the use of the medium. Witness the initial confusion concerning copyrighted vs. licenced software, e-books, and the copyrights of ROM embedded software. Abuse or under-utilization of resources grow. The sale of radio frequencies to the first cellular phone operators in the West – a situation which repeats itself in Eastern and Central Europe nowadays – is an example.

But then more complex transactions – exactly as in real estate in “real life” – begin to emerge. The Internet is likely to converge with “real life”. It is likely to be dominated by brick and mortar entities which are likely to import their business methods and management. As its eccentric past (the dot.com boom and the dot.bomb bust) recedes – a sustainable and profitable future awaits it.

Top Beauty Influencers on YouTube

Beauty YouTubers are mostly known and often referred to as “Beauty Gurus”, “Beauty Vloggers”, and/or “Beauty Influencers.” They are typically young women and men who create posts and videos all about cosmetics, fashion, make-ups and other beauty related topics on YouTube.

There are more than 45,000 YouTube channels that specialize in fashion and beauty-related content, videos about makeup tutorials, cosmetic/skin care hauls, beauty recommendations and other more topics only on YouTube Community. Each month, there are over 50 million people who watch over 1.6 million minutes of consumer-created fashion and beauty videos on YouTube.

Some Beauty Influencers expand their career in the online industry and earn huge sums just by utilizing their channels as a way to branch out and utilize it for business purposes which are also executed through collaborations with some cosmetic or clothing brands. They generally fall into their designated categories like a product review, makeup tutorials, hauls and personality clips. Other YouTubers choose to abide by the simple uploading of videos as a hobby and did not after how much money they could make with their videos.

Here’s a list of most powerful influencers or let us say Beauty Goddess in the world of YouTube

Zoe Sugg

Born Brit which is also known as Zoella on YouTube. She started broadcasting from her childhood bedroom, her “hauls” or the web parlance showing off cosmetics purchases. Now, she has over 11.6 million YouTube subscribers and has a bestselling line of beauty products at U.K high street chain Superdrug at the age of 27. Her first novel, “Girl Online” broke first-week sales records according to Nielsen BookScan.

Michelle Phan

Phan’s name is a byword for influencer-turned-entrepreneur a decade after posting her first YouTube Video. She is now the co-founder of subscription cosmetics box Ipsy, which was valued at upwards of $500 million in 2015. She has stopped posting sponsored content as her business has grown, she quickly learned that it would not be sustainable for long since viewers prefer authenticity over ads.

Huda Kattan

While working in a finance job, the Dubai-based entrepreneur started blogging in 2010. Seven years later, she and her two sisters oversee a beauty empire that includes false lashes favored by Kim Kardashian and also sold in vending machines with Kattan’s face splashed on the side. Her makeup line is sold in Sephora.

Nikkie de Jager

Since she uploaded her first video in 2008, the Dutch makeup artist has accrued an enviable following which had reached over 7.2 million on Instagram. In March 2017, she debuted a collaboration with professional line Ofra, including liquid lipsticks which she had designed and a highlighter palette.

Shannon Harris

Known online as “Shaaanxo” started vlogging in 2009 to fill what she saw as a void. “I was obsessed with watching YouTubers from the USA and could never find anyone from New Zealand or Australia,” said by the Kiwi digital star. Eight years later she has now a beauty brand, xoBeauty which sells lashes and brushes.

Jeffree Star

Jeffree has been building online following since the days of MySpace. Today, his YouTube channel boasts over 4 million subscribers and a recent video announced a collaboration with fellow Top Influencers list member Manny Gutierrez.

Kandee Johnson

She started blogging in 2008 and then uploaded her first vlog the following year using her grandparents’ ancient video camera. Soon, she was hosting ‘glaminars’ or beauty and business seminars from her YouTube channel.

Manny Gutierrez

The digital star who is known online as MannyMUA was considering medical school when he started focusing his attention on social media. Now, he is on of a rising crop of top male makeup aficionados. He first gained a following on Instagram, then took to YouTube at his followers’ request. Now, he is an ambassador for Maybelline with a total audience upwards of 7 million among his many partnerships.

Christen Dominique

Busy mom and a full-time student with a full-time job, that is how Christen started posting to YouTube in 2009. Now, with an audience upwards of 4 million across all platforms, she is now partnered with the likes of L’Oreal, Sephora, and Urban Decay.

Wayne Gross

The British-born makeup artist has been growing his YouTube channel since 2009. At the year 2012, a tutorial on how to highlight and contour like Kim Kardashian has accrued over 11 million views to date and helped propel him to the big-time among beauty influencers.

From professional makeup artists to amateurs reviewing drugstore buys on camera. Today, these influencers had reached 135,000,000 followers, likes and subscribers online.

How to Convert Your Prospects Into Downlines in Your MLM Business

In order to succeed in network marketing, you need to build an ever growing database of subscribers through email techniques.

Here are four methods for building your lists through direct and online methods:

Build an email list – Using email marketing is the best way to increase your lead database for your network marketing opportunity. It is important to know that you need to have a list of leads before you can generate an excellent cash flow. A lot of the top leaders in the industry are not simply working on building a downline. They are creating giant lists of email subscribers from which their downline comes out of. A good autoresponder will allow you to communicate with your list and increase the rate of opt-in subscribers.

Marketing through direct response – You need to build a strong relationship with your prospect in order to connect with them. You need to have mutual trust, and you need to promote the right offer that fits their needs. This is the only way that people will purchase affiliate offers from you. If your list is aimed to those interested in going into business, then promote business building news and techniques.

Teleseminar lists – Getting your prospects to log into a Teleseminar and listen live or recorded conversation is a great way to turn your customers into your downline. It’s a common technique used by network marketing leaders across the nation. These teleseminars teach subjects like phone prospecting skill sets, network marketing techniques and even round table discussion seminars. Teleseminars are great because they allow your prospects do listen in from home.

Promoting seminars and workshops – When you are perceived as a leader in this field, your credibility skyrockets. Consider starting your own line of seminars and training workshops. You don’t need thousands of people to attend one of your meetings. A small group of fifteen to twenty will work. Once you have a small group attending on a regular basis, you will be able to build your downline quite quickly. Your attendees will interact with each other, sharing advice and stories that will help their businesses, benefiting everyone who attends.

Keep in mind that you need to make sure that you and your downline are equipped with the training they need to succeed in their network marketing business. Relationship building is key because it keeps the business strong and it lowers your attrition rate. Work together to increase your revenue!

Make Money Online

In today’s economy a lot of people are wondering how to make money online. The secrets to making money online are the same as making money in the “real world”: Hard work, creativity, innovation and knowledge. The Internet is the real world, it just has some aspects that allow a person of lesser means compete with people with much deeper pockets. That is its biggest draw.

Hard Work

Perhaps the biggest myth to making money online is that you don’t have to work hard. This is far from the case. In fact, in the beginning you might be working harder than you are now. Most people who succeed online do so by working very hard work at whatever project they are doing online. They did not just put up a website and sit back and wait for checks to flow in. They worked hard to get their businesses off the ground and were rewarded for it. A person who wants to make money online will have to commit several hours a day at least and lots of sweat equity to the project. If you’re not prepared to work hard forget about making money online. You have a chance to make a good deal of money online but you do have to earn it.

Creativity

The people who make the most money online are those who come up with new ideas and concepts. Whether it’s SEO marketing, blogging, selling through Twitter whatever somebody had to create it. The biggest fortunes will be made by those who are willing to create something new and work hard at it. This has been the case in the “real world” for some time. It was Bill Gates who decided the PC need a new operating system Now he can give away billions and not miss it. The same creativity takes place now on the Internet.

Innovation

After the creators the people who make the most money online are the innovators. These can be those who come with a new idea or those who have the courage to try and implement a new idea. If an innovator sees something new that looks like a big money maker they try it, they adapt it and they start doing it. In many cases innovators simply take somebody else’s idea and run with it. Next time you see a really great money making idea don’t just try to figure out how you can get in on it. Instead, try to figure out how to do it better. That will make you an innovator. It was Henry Ford who realized cars could be made efficiently with an assembly line process. That innovation changed the way cars are built.

Knowledge

The old saying that knowledge is power has never been truer. The online world is all about knowledge; those who have the most knowledge will succeed online. That means learn as much about your business or product as you can. Read, do research online, talk to others in the business, or develop a mentor relationship with a more experienced marketer. Do whatever it takes to get more knowledge and you make money online.

Recruit Like Crazy: The Sure Mantra To MLM Success

Recruit like crazy? In this steeplechase running of MLM business, the real challenge lies in recruiting the ideal candidate for building the network. It might seem to be a vicious circle, but there is a ray of hope to all your concerns and worries. Professional programs, like Recruit like Crazy is available to help you find the ideal partners and customers for your MLM business.

Recruit Like Crazy is a Great Tool

Those, who have not heard of this program before, will be glad to know that this successful tool has helped millions of people already in growing their business. Before, you proceed further in knowing the details of this program, it’s a must that you should honestly ask yourself, whether you are committed to your business? If the answer is yes, then you can surely take your business to new horizon of success.

The best part of this program is that you will never need any helping hand once you are clearly following the guidelines. Once you step in the program, you just need to relax, as it is an autopilot program that will take care of your website and business. Recruit like crazy will build your network, even when you are not working on the system. Isn’t that fantastic news?

Welcome all queries and doubts of the candidates, who want to be a part of your business. It is natural to have curiosities, so the new candidates, who want to join, will also have some doubts. Handle these positively and explain why they are the appropriate candidate and why your business will work for them, despite it might not have worked for their friends.

Do not disclose all the details of your company to the down line instantly. Keep certain details to yourself and reveal them at the appropriate time. Curiosities always keep an upsurge to proceed further and maintain optimism. Address the candidates as a part of your team, and not your employee. You can also share some details of the company and the compensation plan to keep their faith and confidence in the business.

Recruit Like Crazy Helps to Find the Right partners

Recruit like crazy not only helps you find the right candidates for your business, but also helps you self analyze and evaluate your business’s true potential. Remember, in MLM business, both top and down the line need to be committed to facing and overcoming any obstacles and adopting new ways to succeed. The program emphasizes focusing the mistakes, which are the cause of failure in network marketing. Recruit Like Crazy emphasizes the do’s and don’ts for the success in the networking business. The first and foremost consideration is to remove the business owner mentality in the networking business. It is a network, and each candidate must behave as a boss.

Next, be patient! Do not believe that networking is an instant business. The more recruitment you do the more the network will expand and the more success you will have!

Making the right decision at the right time is of utmost essential in Network Marketing, because opportunities wait for nobody. Sometimes, you may feel that your job is over, once you have built your network, but that is not true. Constant monitoring and helping your down line to build their network is equally valuable. Working in spurs is another common mistake that is adopted at times, however, it is teamwork and at end of the day the results will follow! The entire network will perform well and this produces a wonderful feeling. To Recruit Like Crazy consistency and persistency are the keys. Developing leadership qualities in the entire network is crucial. Always keep the lines of communication open and the mastermind discussions going.

To Recruit Like Crazy – Be an Awesome Leader!

As a leader, review and evaluate your business model from time to time. Test! Test! Test! Before putting new ideas and practices in place, test them and ensure that the results are satisfactory before introducing them to your team. Remember, your vision is going to be your team’s mission, so make sure you’re guiding them in the right direction. Once they are on the right path, you can sit and watch the magic of Recruit Like Crazy. You will certainly feel proud to sit back and look at the statistics of your company roaring sky high. At the end of the day, opportunities knock at the doors of those who have a constant focus and intent to handle success! So go right ahead – Recruit Like Crazy…

Vets Holding Dogs Hostage – Threatening Death

Veterinary medicine, like human medicine, has its share of good and bad practitioners but I’ve been seeing an alarming trend in the area of veterinary medicine. There was a time when vets treated animals for the love of animals and because they cared. Veterinary medicine had gotten as bad as human medicine and in some ways even worse!

At least many people have medical insurance and there are programs for people who need medical care. For pets, yes, there is medical insurance available but compared to the numbers of pets, coverage is not wide spread yet. And yes, there are some low cost programs available but they are mostly spay/neuter programs and vaccination programs.

Veterinary medicine has turned into ‘big business,’ revolving door, ‘bottom line’ watchers. Most vets require 75% upfront payment for any kind of surgical procedure and if there’s any doubt about paying the bill, which can easily mount in the thousands of dollars, they won’t touch your pet. Vet visits and surgery cost dog owners almost $800 and cat owners $500 last year, according to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association. And this is just an average! Few vets are willing to set up payment plans.

I’ve come across several stories in the news lately that have really bothered me, vets holding dogs ‘hostage,’ threatening ‘death’ over bills. People doctors don’t even do anything like that, so how can vets get away with it? Because animals are considered nothing but ‘possessions?’

Josh Gomez of Gwinnet, Georgia, say that his vet, Dr. Garry Innocent of PetFIRST Animal Hospital in Duluth is holding his black border collie, Pilot, hostage and is threatening to send him the an animal shelter where he could be euthanized.

Gomez has already paid Innocent the agreed on amount of $1,125 for the treatment of the pup’s virus in August. The next thing he knew there were all kinds of additional charges that had not been agreed on. The bill jumped to $1,640 and has been increasing daily, with the vet holding the puppy, because of a $27 a day boarding charge. As of the 14th of September, Gomez owed almost an additional $1000 over what he initially agreed to pay Dr. Garry Innocent and PetFIRST Animal Hospital. As a 22 yr old, at home music teacher, Gomez says he just can’t afford to pay the outrageous charges. He’s already run up $400 on his girlfriend’s charge card and used a $750 loan from his employer.

And just what does Dr. Innocent have to say about this, “He’s being such a twit, he just needs to pay his bill.”

How’s that for understanding and compassion?

On Tuesday the vet plans to send Gomez’s dog, Pilot, to an animal shelter. Gomez has filed a lawsuit in Gwinnett Superior Court this week to block Innocent and PetFIRST Animal Hospital from handing Pilot over to animal-control authorities. His lawyer, Ed McCrimmon, says the Georgia law is unconstitutional because it enables pet clinics to take people’s property without ‘due process.’

In another story from San Antonio, Texas, Jacqueline Hines rescued a little Chihuahua off the streets. She was just being a Good Samaritan, helping an animal in need. And of course when the little dog, who she named Macho, got sick, she took him to the vet.

Hines, a 76 year old widow on a fixed income, told the vet that she couldn’t pay more than $100 and the vet told her ok, treated the dog and charged her $93. Sounds pretty good so far, right?

Well the next morning Macho was even worse so Hines took him back, another $341!

Then two hours later she was back in the emergency room with her little dog because he was worse yet! “I was definitely having an anxiety attack,” Hines said.

Here the dog had been ‘treated’ and sent home twice to a total of $434, after Hines expressly told the vet that she was on a fixed income and could only afford $100. To me, a reputable vet would have done a little better at ascertaining the situation and honestly let Hines know what was wrong with the dog or if he didn’t know, at least tell her that he would not be able to treat the dog within her financial restraints and allow her to see if she could find other options. He would not have repeatedly ‘treated’ the dog, charged her and sent the dog home only to have her bring the dog back for additional ’emergency’ treatments!

This last time she was unable to pay the bill and had to leave her little dog at the vet’s office because, of course, they couldn’t let her take him home. Five days later Hines gets a letter in the mail.

“Telling me that if I did not pay within 12 days, they were going to kill the dog,” Hines said.

The actual wording of the letter was, “We intend to dispose of the animal,” wording taken directly from Texas law that allows vets to dispose of abandoned animals.

The vet did say that contrary to Hines’ belief based on the wording ‘dispose of the animal,’ that they try to find a home for the animal, not kill it!

Luckily for Hines, before her little companion could be ‘disposed’ of, a friend paid off the vet bill and now she and Macho are reunited and she can repay her friend over time.

That’s two stories of pets being held ‘hostage’ with vets threatening to ‘dispose’ of them if they don’t get their money. I have no doubt that Jacqueline Hines would have agreeably worked out some kind of payment plan with the vet if that had been an option, after all, she’s worked one out to repay her friend.

And here’s just one more. No dog is being held ‘hostage’ but because the owner couldn’t pay up-front, a dog in grievous pain was turned away at the door of numerous vets even though the owner offered to set up payment plans with them to get her dog treated.

Loraine Standifer of Fort Worth, Texas, was moving and asked a friend to watch her shepherd-mix dog, Amir. All was fine until one day her friend got home from work and found that someone had poured some corrosive liquid, like acid, on the dog’s back. Standifer rushed over and tried and tried to find a vet who would work out a payment plan for the extensive and costly surgery that Amir would need. The dog was in pain but all the vets she contacted turned her down.

Luckily for her and Amir, the rescue group that she adopted Amir from did put her in touch with a vet that actually did the surgery and cared for Amir for free. There actually are still some vets out there who work from the heart rather than with wallet.

Veterinary salaries have risen, and newer veterinarians are demanding higher starting salaries before they even walk in the door. A new graduate will start at 60,000 dollars a year. Higher end corporate practices will pay even more. Those practice owners earn in excess of 100,000 dollars a year. I do know that veterinary medicine has changed and become much more specialized. I realize that there are overhead costs and salaries and equipment but I also feel that medicine, whether animal or human, should be practiced from the heart and not the wallet. What would be the harm of adding a little compassion, at no charge?

5 PR Strategies For 2021

2021 has finally arrived. As most anticipate a better year in both health and in business, marketers will continue to face new challenges brought about by the pandemic.

A number of trends brought about by the coronavirus will most certainly continue onward well into the middle half of the year, if not beyond. Public relations professionals will have to maintain flexibility and adjust accordingly to help their employer, or their clients, reach their objectives.

Here then are five strategies to contemplate as you create your public relations game plan for the new year.

1. Build strong relationships with key writers and editors. Most experienced public relations professionals understand the value of maintaining solid relationships with key reporters who cover their or their client’s industry. Those relationships will have even higher value as print publications, TV and radio stations continue to scale back their staffs due to the decline in ad spending. Reporters and editors remain hard-pressed to do more with less and yet still put out a quality product in a timely manner. Establishing a strong relationship with a reporter can set you up as a solid resource, able to deliver valuable ideas and news items the writer can use to shape or enhance their stories. This high level of trust is now more important than ever, and can result in multiple articles and opportunities that benefit both your client and yourself for the long-term.

2. Focus on clicks and hits. Media outlets are busily building digital audiences to grab their piece of the shrinking ad revenue pie. Reporters too are tasked to develop news items that can be optimized online and read by thousands. The goal is to not only get those stories placed on the publication’s site but also recirculated on social media to increase overall readership. PR pros should create and pitch stories in a manner reflective of that objective. Turning a run-of-the-mill news release into something with more meat and excitement will help to not only get the story published but get it optimized on social media for greater reach and market penetration.

3. Write for immediate impact. Public relations professionals need to pitch their stories where the most interesting aspects are at the top of the page, not buried in the fifth or six paragraph. As mentioned earlier reporters are hard pressed for time and have little wiggle room to spend trying to decipher a confusing news release, especially when there are hundreds of others to sort through. PR pros should deliver a hard-hitting first paragraph and then provide any support material below. That material should be easy to read and can even be broken out into bullet points to make it easier to digest.

4. Know how to reach your client’s audience, today. Key research about your client’s prospective buyers is paramount to generating top line results from your PR efforts. Properly targeting those buyers can make or break your campaign. This is true for any year but especially in the pandemic driven work-at-home environment. Are business to business buyers still reading industry publications, listening to podcasts and attending webinars? Can they be reached on social media or is their time focused on other areas? Determining the best ways to reach them will help you greatly improve results.

5. Think visually. Since so much of media now relies on photos and videos, PR pros should think about visual elements to go with any story pitch. A short video or a series of interesting photos (if possible) should accompany any news release, whether print or broadcast. Visuals are ideal for digital and social media, and help make your story pitch stand out above the rest. Small photos can even be inserted into the news release to peak the reporters interest and enhance coverage opportunities.

You Can Get Rich (Still) As a Home-Based Online Entrepreneur

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. “

Thomas A Edison

You may recall the late 90s when it looked as though anyone with a computer and access to the internet could become a millionaire overnight. Those were dotcom bubble and bust days. But that was only the first phase – the hype and sensation phase – of the Internet revolution. The dust has cleared and we can see things much clearer now, hopefully.

By some accounts, we’re now in the consolidation phase. And in this phase, it is quite easier to distinguish a good, real money making business opportunity from a bad one conceived and crafted in a scam artist’s lab.

Start Small and Grow it Big as You go

Given the state of the economic mess we’re now in, it is much harder to raise capital for any entrepreneurial venture be it on- or off-line. But this is the really good news. You don’t need millions of dollars in start-up money to start profiting from the online money making ideas we’re talking about.

What you need to understand is that the Internet is a communication medium par excellence – a most effective and reliable way to transmit information. And just like the telegraph, the telephone, and television before it, it has expanded the business and consumer marketplace by making it easier and also cheaper for people to buy and sell things.

Some of Those Who Wrote the Initial Online Success Stories

And some of the savvy entrepreneurs who understood this and jumped in early in the first phase came out fabulously reach. Just take a look at some of these top early performers who built billion dollar fortunes from their online business ventures Jeff Bezos, creator of Amazon.com; Jay Walker of Priceline.com; Pierre Omidyar and Margaret Whitman of eBay; Joe Ricketts of Ameritrade, Steve Case, Barry Schuler, Robert Pittman and Ted Leonsis of America Online; and Silicon Valley venture capitalists Johan Doerr and Vinod Khosla.

Then there are the “latter day saints” – otherwise average folks who are creating great wealth online as I write Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskvitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin the founders of Facebook.com; Reid Hoffman and his group who founded LinkedIn.com; Jack Dorsey and others who founded Twitter.com.

The Lesser Known Among Them

Others like Bill Bonner, Founder of AgoraInc.com – one of the largest and most successful consumer newsletter publishers in the world, my very own business mentors, Michael Masterson – who has recently “retired” again as a business builder, Jay Abraham, Bob Bly, David Cross, Rich Schefren, Mary-Ellen Tribby, and many other astute entrepreneurs have also built great wealth online. These individuals are writing their own internet-based business success stories.

Unfortunately, not every one of the lucky billionaires referred to earlier – especially those in the first phase of the Internet revolution, created good businesses. Some of them got rich simply by ‘selling a hot idea into a frenzied market’.

What this means is that there are all manner of ‘success stories’ out there. And if you want to build your own fortune online today, you have to choose the right success story for you. You’ve got to find a proven online business building model to follow. Two of my favorite recommendations come from Mark Zuckerberb and his colleagues who founded Facebook.com and AgoraInc.com. The Agora model is by far the most successful online business building model I know of. It is a model developed in part by my main business mentor, Michael Masterson. This is the model we’ve adopted and are refining in our own business. And it is what makes us the destination of choice for those who want to start and grow a profit making, Internet-based home business today and don’t have a large bank account to use as start-up money.

You really don’t have to reinvent the wheel. All you need is to learn from a successful model and adapt it to your peculiar situation.

So, are you ready to finally to start creating your own little fortune online while there’s still a chance to do so even when you don’t have that much money?

Remember, nothing happens unless you take action. The best time to start creating your own little web fortune is NOW!