Dec 27, 2009
Posted by admin on Dec 27, 2009 in business | 1 comment
When you are considering taking advantage of working at home you will want to be aware of the many schemes that exist in the work-at-home industry. Many people begin working at home because they want to have the opportunity to make money on their own terms, without having to deal with a boss to pay them or to set their hours. Well while that is the best decision for some people who have a specific talent, this may be a very scary time for those who have not yet decided which avenue of a work-at-home business is the best for them.
Many work-at-home opportunities offer you the promise of a large gain in money but unfortunately turn out to be nothing more than a scam to get your money. These promises are intentionally made to appeal to you and your ideas, it is important to understand that not all of these opportunities are able to deliver the promises they make. Many of the people who advertise these types of “scams” fail to mention that you will be required to work many long hours without any pay whatsoever. Additionally, they often fail to let you know all of the costs that are associated with undertaking this type of work-at-home opportunity.
Many of these schemes will required that you spend a good deal of the money you have of your own on items like advertisement, photocopies, paper, stamps, envelopes, or any other type of equipment or supplies that may be needed to properly perform the job. Two basic types of schemes that are the most popular are stuffing envelopes and work doing assembly or crafts.
The envelope stuffing industry often advertises that you are to provide a small fee, then they will provide you with information on how stuffing envelopes at home can earn you money. After you have sent in your hard earned money, you are likely going to find out there was never any real employment opportunities to provide to you. Instead, you will possibly get a preformatted letter that gives you the instructions to place an add into local newspapers or a magazines. What this means is that the only real money making opportunity you have, is to send the same offer and hope they others reply to you.
When considering a work-at-home opportunity you should make sure that it is a real and viable opportunity. Know the tasks you will be required to perform, what the salary will be, how the salary is based, who pays you, when you will get your first pay, what it costs, and what you will get in return for your investment.
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Dec 22, 2009
Posted by admin on Dec 22, 2009 in business | 0 comments
If you want to work at home, start a home based business on the internet. Basing a business on the internet broadens your client . It also has the advantage of low or no overhead.
Home based businesses on the internet abound. To find one that suits you, work within a field you enjoy. The internet increases your client base, but because of the competition you will have to work hard to make your product or site stand out.
Home based business on the internet can be started in almost any field of interest. If you want to offer services, writing web content and designing websites can provide good opportunities. Artists can offer services ranging from graphic design to pet portraits. You can offer advertising services on the internet. Think of any field you are interested in and search the web. You will probably find somebody offering services in that field. If the competition is too much, you narrow your services to a specific group. For example, instead of offering pet portraits you could offer dog portraits.
Most people think of selling products online when they think of home based business on the internet. You can sell through a website, but first learn about website promotion. If you promote your website well you can also sell other people’s products through affiliate programs. If you don’t want to build a site or don’t know how to promote, consider selling your products an an auction site. Many people have found internet auctions work well for them.
If you are interested in working for yourself, consider a home based business on the internet. It works for others. Research well, know what you are doing, and it should work for you.
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Dec 19, 2009
Posted by admin on Dec 19, 2009 in Advertising | 0 comments
Many factors have to be considered when making an advertising plan. Like the type of message to be delivered, the audience to be targeted, how they should be targeted, budget, etc. all of which depends on the nature of the advertisement.
Regarding the type of message to be delivered, try thinking from the point of the customer. What will impress him and catch his fancy. Note down points what the customer expects from the company and what advantage will he have when dealing with the company. Effort should be made to retain viewer or listener’s or reader’s interest in the advertisement until the end. This procedure is known as message selection.
After creating the outline of the picture, pick lines that will actually attract the customer. The message shouldn’t be long enough to bore the customer. Some advertisers are under the illusion that more the matter written, the better the message delivered. Usually they fear that they don’t miss out any information. This does nothing but decreases the effectiveness of the ad and customer is left unsatisfied.
For example, the heading of the advertisement shouldn’t be just “We Sell Clothes”, which is too precise. The liking of the people should be studied and the headline should be designed such that the customer feels that his needs are met. It should also take into consideration seasonal changes like If the season at that time is summer and there are lots of beaches around that area, the heading of the ad should be something like “Summer Clothes for Sale” or “Get the heat off – Buy Swimwear”. The body of the advertisement should talk of the necessities to switch to summer clothes like cotton clothing. It should discuss the health point of view too, like cotton cannot be used as swimwear as it will cause contamination, therefore the swimwear is made of synthetic material. Also include lines about swimwear for overweight people.
Ads are either traffic builder or relationship builders or reputation builder. Suppose the budget involved is less, the target should be relationship builder. Because once the customers are established, they will start trusting the company and won’t switch to other companies. According to a research it takes ten percent less resources to retain existing customers than attracting new customer. If the focus is on brand recognition, the advertisement should be traffic building.
The next point is whether the advertiser wants quick results or long lasting results. If quick result is desired, then a time limit should be levied. Like in case of seasonal sales, the customer hurries to get advantage before the offer is over. So quick results are expected in this case. But the disadvantage with advertisement with time limit is that the customer are bound to forget about the product or the company within a short period and it doesn’t creates a deep impact on the minds of the customer.
Competing against rival company’s ad also contributes to a successful advertising plan. The power of the message should be compared to that of the competitors’. It doesn’t mean that the advertiser should use the same plan like his competitor, it would look like imitation and effectiveness will be decreased. But the advertisement should be planned smartly via a different and effective path, to out-do the competitor’s advertisement.
The description of the product is also very vital like suppose an advertisement is made for a restaurant, it will get customers immediately, if it is attractive. But if the advertisement is for a computer, it won’t yield immediate results, as it’s not every day that someone buys a computer. This is called analysis of the purchase cycle.
If targeting for a higher impact, newsletter is the best bet. But if the newsletters are sent to the real potential customers, then this approach should be adopted for message delivery. It should only be opted be after thorough analysis, no matter what the budget is. Another important point is to always hire a professional advertiser or an ad writer because not hiring one will sometimes be more expensive and results in more losses.
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Dec 14, 2009
Posted by admin on Dec 14, 2009 in Advertising | 2 comments
After the advent of online selling sites, shopping has been made so easy that it can be done within the comfort of the home. Online selling gave rise to online advertising also known as iAdvertising, which is proving to be the best way to reach a larger audience within a short time using less money.
There are many options available on the Internet to get started. Creating a website and then placing its link on different websites is one of the ways. Pages can be submitted to the search engines after applying search engine optimization techniques. Websites offer various payment methods. Some take money for simply placing an ad or link on their website, some take money only if a visitors clicks on the link or website and some take money only if the visitors visits a link and have bought something or availed some service. There are options available for the type of ad being placed. There are pop-up ads, banner ads, wallpaper ads, polite ads, video ads, etc. Businesses with really low budget can send mails to targeted customers.
Radio stations offer a good price to advertise during the non-peak time. Get in touch with the local station and try to ask for a discount. The same applies to television; even they have a minimal amount for advertising slots during the non-prime hours, especially after midnight. Contact different television station to compare pricing.
The age-old tradition of advertising in yellow pages directories is always a success. All businesses from small to big register themselves in the yellow pages and have sworn to be benefited from it. People can look up for contact numbers, addresses and services offered directly from the pages.
Newspaper is the next best thing. First analyze the audience to be targeted by age group, sex, and location. Choose the local newspaper and section where the ad should be placed depending on the audiences to be targeted. The classifieds department of the local newspapers have special offers, find out in detail about the pricing structure for the size of the advertisements, number of words, font size, etc.
Design the business cards with accuracy. Try to include all the vital information about the business like the name of the company, where it is located, services provided, working hours, and contact information like landline number, cell number and person to be contacted. Personalized business cards are good way of reaching the genuine customers.
Other way to advertise is to give presentations on your products. Brochures can be inserted in the business presentation package. Other than things like history of the company and annual turn-up, once again business cards can be included in the package. Distribute newsletters with information about the latest offers and discounts. Informational letters of a page length and e-mails can be sent too on a regular basis. All this can become lot easier by getting in touch with companies who can provide the mailing list of a particular locality and it comes for a very small price. Again the yellow pages can be referred to get information about such companies. After getting the information get in touch with company to get a copy of the latest mailing list. Different companies charge different prices
The word of mouth is also a good method of advertising. Try growing the links in your network and join organizations which deals with advertising like trade associations and chamber of commerce. Active participation in events of these organizations eventually helps reaching more number of people.
Dec 8, 2009
Posted by admin on Dec 8, 2009 in Advertising | 0 comments
With many young designers coming from a pre-dominantly web design background the transfer over from web design to traditional design for print can bring with it a multitude of design sins. Images supplied at 72dpi and crunched down to load fast on a website are going to reproduce very badly in print you can get away with small thumbnails but blowing things up to any appreciable size is going to be pushing your luck. There are a number of online sites offering free or very cheap quality hi resolution.
1. Using web graphics on printed material.
With many young designers coming from a pre-dominantly web design background the transfer over from web design to traditional design for print can bring with it a multitude of design sins. Images supplied at 72dpi and crunched down to load fast on a website are going to reproduce very badly in print you can get away with small thumbnails but blowing things up to any appreciable size is going to be pushing your luck. There are a number of online sites offering free or very cheap quality hi resolution images which are a good source for suitable imagery.
2. Forgetting about or not allowing enough bleed.
A very common error is to send to print a document or flattened image that has no bleed at all. Generally speaking you should allow at least 3mm around every cut off edge. Failing to do so will give the printers no leeway and will either crop off the side of the page or give you a white border. It is always a good idea when supplying image files to save layered psd files then if things need extending or cropping you can do this on the background layer and hopefully cut down your work
3. Using obscure fonts and not embedding or outlining them for output.
We’ve all been guilty of this at some point and things are generally fine if you are going to be the only person accessing your artwork or documents. However if someone else needs to amend the files or use your vector logo on one of there publications. Unless you package up the used fonts, they are not going to be able to open the files correctly and some software programs may replace any unknown fonts with a default. This is a particular problem when you need to dig out stuff that was created several years previously and you no longer have your old fonts installed.
4. Supplying print ready artwork using spot colours or rgb
There are valid reasons for using spot colours in artwork, logos that need to reference particular pantone colours for example. In general design work however most print is sent through on 4 colour presses CMYK with occasional 5th colour for luminoius or metallic colour or for spot UV varnish. It is very common for lazy designers to just place rgb images into files and expect the vibrant colours seen on screen to reproduce in print.
5. Allowing design illiterate clients to lead you round the houses
The customer is always right, goes the old adage. However it is often said with gritted teeth and a sense of patience that recognizes that these morons will at some stage be handing over a fat cheque for your troubles. It is often a good idea when first submitting visuals to throw in a couple of stinkers to hopefully get them to appreciate the design you would like them to accept. There is the very real danger of course of them loving the piece of absolute arsewipe that you knocked up in five minutes to make them think you’ve been earning your money. Still it’s a living.
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