Creative Real Estate

I just found out about this magazine that is described as being “The how-to journal for anyone who wants to make money in real estate. How you can get rich, stay rich, and enjoy being rich with Creative Real Estate.” I’d like to know more about it. Does anyone have a spare copy? Contact me if you have an issue of this mag you can send me. I just don’t want to subscribe without seeing it first.

Google is going to Auction its IPO

In a novel approach to its IPO, Google is considering holding a massive online auction to sell the shares directly to investors, not via an investment bank.
Google would sell a stake of about 10 per cent, valuing the company at about $20 billion. Google is the company whose name has become a verb (to “google” something is to search for it on the internet). In a novel approach to its IPO, Google would sell a stake of about 10 per cent, valuing the company at about $20 billion. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and eight other investment banks are vying to underwrite a $US2 billion ($2.84 billion) float by Google Inc, the world’s most popular internet search site, said a banker competing for the business.

At one level the news that Google is considering holding a massive on-line Initial Public Offering (IPO) is, hopefully, a barometer of the growing revival in technology stocks and Internet-related stock in particular. But while investment banks may underwrite the issue, Google is understood to be contemplating an online auction of the shares which would limit the level of fees to banks. An on-line offering via a web-based auction of shares in the company would have number of distinct advantages. It would avoid the costly investment banking fees, which invariably accompany an IPO. The price literally would be set by the market than the creative methodologies, which have been devised by investment banks to value web based technology stocks, subject to any underlying reserve price, which the company may wish to set on the stock. Any underlying perceptions in the eyes of potential investors that the price was set to low or that favoured clients were benefiting from preferential allocation on the stock, would be avoided. The stock would mark its debut on the market by a strong display of transparency with the way its IPO was handled and its price would reflect the market price. Integrity and reputation in this context are of significantly greater importance with this stock than they are with most IPOs.

Site Build It

I have been investigating Site Build It for a few weeks now, and wanted to put down in writing some of my thoughts. They bill themselves as “E-Commerce for the Rest of Us”, and in fact seem to have registered that as a trademark. What I’ve found most
interesting about their service is its effectiveness with internet marketing.

The best aspect of Site Build It is the amount of time it saves you on the behind the scenes stuff. You can build your site without any knowledge of HTML. Also, search engine optimization, building a newsletter and opt-in mailing list, are the features that really stand out and save you a lot of time. You can have Site Build It Manager research your theme and keywords, giving you a head-start in marketing, for example. The “AnalyzeIt” function might be worth the price by itself.

For the new person just starting out I think it is an excellent place to start. Take the time learn it and move forward. Following the Site Build It guide is essential, it’s the keystone of the system. Visit Site Build It for more information.

Business Startup Advice

Advice for Entrepreneurs: Mistakes Are the Key to Success

Considering starting your own business? You are not alone. In fact, entrepreneurship has become an increasingly popular career choice in the last few years. (ARA) - Considering starting your own business? You are not alone. In fact, entrepreneurship has become an increasingly popular career choice in the last few years.
Some people decide to build their own businesses out of a desire to be out on their own or because they have dreams of turning a hobby into a career. Others may have been laid off and are frustrated with their current job prospects, or they may simply need greater flexibility in their lives.
But starting your own business can be challenging, and requires long hours and a lot of hard work and determination. In fact, only 30 percent of business start-ups survive more than five years. To avoid the pitfalls, new entrepreneurs need to do their homework and seek out all the advice they can get.
Michael Kerrison, 50, an IBM salesman turned self-made millionaire has recently chronicled his entrepreneurial experiences in a new book called

ecommerce startup

There are five steps to building your ecommerce startup. Before transacting business on your Web site, you should select vendors to assist you in each step of establishing your ecommerce startup, or look for a vendor that provides an integrated solution. Choosing a single vendor that offers a complete suite of ecommerce services can often simplify the process, save time, and be less expenive in the long-run. The following five steps you need to to complete before launching your ecommerce starup.

1. Choosing and registering a domain name.

What’s in a name? Plenty when you are an ecommerce starup. It is not only your brand, it’s also your address on the web. Once you’ve selected what name you wish to use, you must register it with a domain registration service. You can select from hundreds of domain registration services that cater to ecommerce starup websites. Even though your Internet Service Provider or your web host is ofte able to perform this task for you, you should ensure the domain is registered in your name only to avoid domain name hijacking.

2. Website Design and Development

The key decision at this step is to determine whether you plan to build your site yourself or have a provider build it for you. If you choose to build your site yourself (either by purchasing a related software package or using a “browser-based” store-building package that you download from the Web), keep in mind you will not only have the initial task of construction but also the ongoing responsibility of making modifications to the site.

With many Web building services and software products available to assist businesses in designing a Web Store, you do not have to take on this project by yourself. However, even with a Web building service provider, you still must consider several critical issues to ensure that the site you build meets your vision and needs:

What products/services do you want to sell? What do you want the look and feel of your logo and your site overall to be? What type of navigation tools do you want to use? By what forms of payment do you wish to transact business? How are you going to calculate tax and shipping charges?

Once you’ve made these decisions, you are ready to develop your product catalog. You’ll need to provide necessary information on each product, i.e. description, color, size and price. This catalog is expandable, so that you may add to it as your business and product offering grows.

After the product catalog is completed, your Web building vendor can publish your Web site online.

3. Server Hosting

Another major decision that businesses joining the electronic marketplace must face is whether to buy a server and host their Web site in-house, or to outsource the entire operation to a service provider. For many smaller businesses, outsourcing is the most viable and cost-effective option. Establishing your own operation is complicated and can take several months to set up, whereas using a hosting service can take less than an hour to set up. It will also speed the time it takes customers to download pages on your Web site, improving the customers’ experience on your site.

4. Payment Solutions

In order to become truly e-commerce enabled, you must have the following: Payment software, a merchant account, payment processing services and a gateway to connect all these elements of the payment process. You also will need cash register software to help easily calculate sales tax as well as shipping charges, and may want to include a shopping cart function as well.

In order to start transacting business and accepting payments, you must first open an account with a merchant bank. Checking out dozens of merchant banks to find the one for you can be an arduous process, but a fully integrated solution eliminates the need for this task.

Once you have established an account, your merchant bank retains the services of a payment processing company to “acquire” transactions of your customers, secure the funds from the customers’ credit card issuer and place that money into your merchant account. This is the last part of the payment solutions equation

5. Traffic Coverage

“If you build it they will come.”

If only it were that easy with e-tailing. However, no matter how great your Web site is, no one will come to it if they don’t know you are there. This is where driving traffic and transactions becomes an essential element of your e-commerce plan.

The first step in building traffic is registering your site with search engines. Again, there are vendors that will do this for you. For registration, you will need to think of keywords that will be associated with your site, and acquire links to your website using those keywords as anchor text.

Another advantage of building a link exchane program is the possibility of cross promotions with other ecommerce startups. You can establish relationships with sites that reach a similar demographic group and offer premiums in exchange for links, referrals and demographic information. For instance, you and another ecommerce starups could include taglines about each other’s stores in your purchase confirmation emails.

Web Ranking Software

I hear so much about Alexa’s web ranking software, and I’m a real skeptic. I’ll explain why. It’s difficult to evaluate web ranking software when there are really no great products on the market, and Alexa is one that I do rely upon a lot, however I believe that people need to understand its weaknesses. Why do people put so much attention on Alexa’s web ranking software, commonly known as the ‘toolbar’? Doesn’t anyone realize how easily manipulated this, and other web ranking software are? I see this constantly mentioned as a measure of a site’s success. I consider it a very poor measure of success. Yes, I do look at Alexa rankings using its web ranking software, but not for the reasons people here look at them. I have several sites in Alexa’s top 100,000, and I don’t consider any of them successful (yet).

Let me explain a bit about how Alexa’s web ranking software works, and why it’s not a good measure of a site’s success. Alexa ranks sites according to how many people who’ve installed their toolbar visit those sites. Let me put that in a context everyone can understand. Let’s say in New York City, you have a group of friends, Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine. George, Kramer, and Elaine visit Jerry’s home far more often than the group visits any of the other’s homes. Thus, Jerry must be the most successful person in New York City. Well, maybe he is successful, maybe he isn’t, but you couldn’t really measure that based upon these terms, could you?

Alexa’s sampling is very small, and the problem that webmasters who use this type of web ranking software in particular might face is that you’re only looking at Alexa, and you’re all looking at one another’s websites, thus the rankings aren’t going to be a good measure of any individual site’s success. There are many other measures of a web site’s success that are better than using web ranking software.

Steps to Starting a Small Business

What is the first step you would take in starting up a small business? Would you seek funding first? Would you find a location for your business first? Would you hire employees? Open a bank account? Write a business plan? No The first step in starting up a small business is the idea. What kind of business is it going to be? Nobody will fund you without knowing your idea first. Your business plan, also one of the first few things you do, is entirely dependent on what your idea is for this business. Location depends on your idea. How would you hire an employee, if you don’t know what they’ll be doing?

The Small Business Forum has a New
Business Ideas section where you can discuss potential ideas with knowledgeable entrepreneurs. See you there!

Make a Free Website for a Charity

Building Websites for Charity
Student volunteers help non-profit organizations create Websites. Learning doesn

Wordtracker

A few questions about Wordtracker. I’ve been using Overture’s keyword suggestion tool up until recently. Another discussion I started pointed out a key reason that Wordtracker might be more useful to plotting your Google strategy than Overture’s tool. (Thanks Aspen)

So, I’m wondering how other’s use Wordtracker. Does anyone have a membership? I’ve just been using the trial, is the paid version worth it? Are there enough enhancements to justify the cost?

Also, what do you make of the Keyword Effectiveness Index? see http://www.wordtracker.com/help/keihelp.html Some of what I’ve seen with the KEI is around the opposite of what I’d expect. So, either some of my unconscious assumptions were wrong, or the KEI isn’t always right. I’m wondering how much importance I should put on what the KEI is telling me.

Any other tips and suggestions about making good use of the information Wordtracker provides is appreciated!

Selling Web Sites On Ebay

Before you consider selling websites on Ebay, take a careful look at the marketplace. You might be scared off by what you see. It’s good that you looked before you started putting time into this. The problem with most of the things you see in that category on Ebay is that hundreds of the same exact site have already sold. The way to get a good sale in Ebay is to have a unique site for sale. That, of course, takes time to build and IME it’s a very low return for the amount of time you need to invest into it. If you want to spend a lot of time and hard work and make a little bit of money, it might work out for you. The other problems, you might see a glimpse if you look at the category regularly (I do), are it’s full of spammers and scammers. I’d say that about 95% of the listings in the category are junk spam. A lot of stuff in there isn’t even a website for sale, it’s people selling garbage on the hope that an idiot will actually give them money. Most of the websites for sale are template sites that took five minutes to build. The sellers put them up over and over again hoping to catch a sucker. Or, they’re a hosting company and this is a way for them to bring in new hosting customers. Then, there’s the deadbeat bidders. Some of those have buyers remorse, some are your competitors trying to mess with you. Ebay has done a very poor job of keeping categories like this clean. This one is one of the worst.

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