Commercial University

Albert Einstein once said there is nothing more powerful than compound interest. Apply that logic to buying a stock in the stock market, and you can double your money in ten years. Further leverage that logic by putting 5% down on a home, and you can possibly multiply your money by four times, eight times… even twelve times in those same ten years!

Need Proof?

Let’s say you have $10,000, and want to find the best return for your investment. You can certainly put your money in the stock market, and if your stock goes up by an average of 7% per year, your $10,000 nest-egg will be worth nearly double after 10 years. ($19,472 to be exact.) Not bad for passive income!

However, if you take that same $10,000, and apply it as a down payment toward a 200,000 home that appreciates by half the rate of the stock market (3.5% a year average), your home will be worth over $282,000! Even if you get an interest-only loan, your initial $10,000 investment will be worth over $92,000 after selling the home and paying off your loan! If your home appreciates at the same rate as the stock market (an average of 7% per year), and your initial $10K investment that bought a 200,000 home, will parlay into owning a $384,000 home! Pay off your $190,000 loan, and you’ll be sitting on $194,000 in cash!

If you’re wondering about monthly payments, you have two options: If this is for a home you will live in, the monthly payments will likely be the same as you would be paying in rent anyway, and there are additional tax benefits that haven’t even been discussed in this article. If you buy this property as a rental property, your tenant’s rent payments should more than cover your mortgage payment. (There’s nothing more beautiful than letting someone else pay for your real estate invenstment. You just can’t do that in the stock market, but it’s done all the time in Real Estate.) If you’re still in doubt, you might want to read a couple other well-known books — “The Wealthy Barber” by David Chilton, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki, or “How to get Rich” by Donald Trump. If you don’t feel like running out and buying a book right now, feel free to listen to a free recording where a Colorado real estate investor shares his secrets to success. Listen to the free recording at: http://www.automatedhomefinder.com/education/investments101.php

Too much risk?

Yes, there is risk, but it is doubtful that your risk is any higher than the risk involved with investing in the stock market in the first place. The higher the risk, the higher the reward, and real estate has been a time-proven investment vehicle for millions of wealthy individuals — Donald Trump, Warren Buffett and David Chilton (”The Wealthy Barber” himself.)

How to get started:

If you’d like to explore the idea of investing in real estate in your area, simply look up a buyer-agent in your area, or start a search on the internet and start a couple real estate searches to see what kind of home you can get in your area. If you’re not sure how much home you can afford, your Realtor can help, or put you in touch with a lender who can.

Among many things, Donald Trump is a successful businessman and an extremely wealthy individual. Donald Trump is perceived by the mass public as a true corporate King. The question is who are all these people that competed so fiercely against each other during the hour that the Apprentice show was broadcasted and why did they strive to prove their skills so as to secure their position in his empire? One might support that they are the products of America’s powerful media networks, the gladiators of our postmodern reality. But are these reality shows we tend to watch ritually, the mirroring of our contemporary culture, or are they the outcome of today’s spectators’ confusion regarding the prevailing notions of modernity, revolution and self-development?

To be a citizen of the modern world, is equivalent to remain open to change and evolution, to be able to explore and create, accept or reject, all those forces and trends that shape the global scene and the mere self at the same time. This ongoing change, the development of human history, has been classified according to scholars as the act of relating modernization (the socio-economic process) with modernism (the cultural vision), through modernity (the historical experience). But this powerful process, although once considered linear, has evolved over time to the point that it can now be conceived as “curved,” since modernism has experienced a major decline during the 21st century. This realization can be partly explained by the fact that social, political, or economic revolutions have ended, while the upcoming reformations are not fostered by the bourgeois engagement, but mainly by the continuous technological progress limited to specific time fragments which make any kind of revolution seeming obsolete.

If then we accept that modernism has ceased to exist then what exactly are we left with? How can we identify ourselves in this endless game of change and evolution? The answer is hidden in the method used to analyze the present living circumstances and humanity’s past actions. Postmodernism or post-historicism, is another generic title given to the period after modernism, in order to characterize a shift in mentality, methods, and processes used by society to deploy a new system of reference. Having to deal with an almost static capitalistic scheme that blocks the likelihood of any profound cultural renovation comparable to the great Age of Aesthetic Discoveries in the first third of this century, society is left to revolutionize itself through the ruins of the past, equipped with the belief that a true revolution would be to abolish modernity as a whole.

Where is the Apprentice show on this check board? Is it the King, the Queen or the soldier in this game of power and control? Various arguments may be raised to answer such a question, but the underlying truth is that television, along with other technological innovations of the 21st century, like the Internet, have succeeded in becoming a new type of artistic expression, where the spectator has no intention to classify and analyze what is seen using specific labels, since their existence is considered temporal. The threat is hidden on the simple fact that the majority of the viewers, regardless their age, as the citizens of this global village, remain almost indifferent to these alterations in the scenery of life and consume these preheated meals without questioning their source while sitting in front of a TV or PC screen, unable to resist the magical world of consumption, misinterpreting it as the best solution available in this chaotic mode of living. It may seem pessimistic or oversimplified as a view, but Apprentice, Big Brother and many of these reality shows, are actually an analysis on the cultural shift of today’s societies, towards an epoch whose title has not yet been articulated.

“You can have the most wonderful product in the world, but if
people don’t know about it, it’s not going to be worth much.
There are singers in the world with voices as good as Frank
Sinatra’s, but they’re singing in their garages because no one
has ever heard of them. You need to generate interest, and you
need to create excitement.” Donald Trump, American real-estate
tycoon

Advertising doesn’t cost, it pays! And good advertising can pay
you well. Bad advertising, or no advertising at all, invites
disaster.

You have to advertise if people are to be made aware of your
business and the benefits it offers them. Without advertising
you rely on word of mouth recommendation or press editorial,
both extremely effective, but slow and generally unpredictable.

Advertising takes many different forms, from painting your name
on the side of a van to delivering leaflets door-to-door or
posting printed cards in shop and post office windows. More
often the term applies to classified and display promotions in
appropriate media, usually newspapers and magazines, and it is
with this definition we concern ourselves here.

Advertising by itself does not sell. It will not sell a bad
product (customers will ask for refunds) and it won’t open up
new markets. It is not a miracle cure that can generate sales
for a dying product. Conversely, advertising will not sell your
must successful products to people who simply don’t want them.

Main Points About Effective Advertising

* It reduces the entire population to your target audience and
reaches as many of those people as possible at least available
cost.

* It must always have an objective. This means having a clear
idea about what you want to accomplish in your advertisement.
Reasons for advertising include:

* To invite orders or enquiries

* To launch new products

* To publicise price changes.

* The message must attract your target audience, it must
interest them, create a desire for your product and prompt
people to act (order or ask for further information). This
acronym AIDA is one you will encounter many times in advertising.

* It must be truthful and straightforward. The nearer your
advertisement is to reality, the more effective it is.

* Sufficient resources must be allocated to accomplish your
advertising objectives.

* Testing is crucial to effective advertising, allowing good
promotions to be repeated and bad ones to be eliminated.

* Every aspect of your advertisement must be prepared from the
customer’s point of view. That person wants to know how you and
your product can benefit him. The most important feature of any
advertisement is the benefits it contains.

* It must be placed in the appropriate media.

Newcomers to business tend to confuse the real benefits of
advertising, frequently considering it a necessary, and
expensive, evil, not the long-term investment it really is. In
short, effective advertising is the lifeblood of your business.
Without it you will surely fail!

Deciding When and How

Advertising can be a major headache for many firms, not just new
businesses or those without specialist advertising departments.

But it isn’t always costs that are to blame as much as making
that vital choice between classified or generally more costly
display advertising.

Returning to basics, all advertisements must follow the general
AIDA principle. They must attract attention, generate and retain
interest, create desire, and stimulate action.

But what will best achieve this objective: classified or display?

The answer depends on a number of things, not least of all an
understanding of what these two methods involve, how they differ
and what similarities, even overlap, might exist.

Classified advertising, sometimes called ‘lineage’, generally
employs just words, without embellishment, other than perhaps a
few words emboldened, and sometimes impact lines or boxes around
the advertisement. Where these minor forms of decoration are
included, the format is frequently referred to as ’semi-display’.

Display advertisements, on the other hand, are designed to stand
out from the crowd, using a variety of techniques including:
occupying a set position on the page, taking up a specified
amount of space, including graphics and illustrations, adopting
a variety of fonts, and so on. The argument is that display
advertisements are more noticeable, more profitable than their
counterparts buried amongst countless others in the classified
columns. Hence the far higher cost of display advertising.

The following main points will help you decide:

* Classified ads are usually cheap and are excellent for
generating enquiries. Many successful classified advertisers use
the two-stage enquiry method, allowing the customer to obtain
further information before placing an order. A major benefit for
dealers is the chance to build a useful mailing list for future
offers.

* Display advertising is best for selling straight from the
page. Readers are more likely to trust their money to someone
who has paid for a larger advertisement than someone whose
advertisement occupies a tiny space among so many competing
entries. Classified advertising is rarely effective for selling
off-the-page except for very low cost items, commonly Ј10
or less.

* Classified advertising can be used to test interest in your
product before venturing into more costly display advertising.

* Classifieds can be used to test and compare advertising
sources.

* Classified advertising is generally unsuitable for anything
that requires a lot of ‘telling’ to accomplish the task of
selling. Too much grey matters in classifieds is boring and
readers can easily lose interest halfway. If it can’t be said in
a few words, try display advertising.

* For classified advertisements, the words themselves must do
the job of selling. Sometimes a maximum wordcount is set and
every word must pay its way. Conversely, display advertising
allows a variety of other techniques to be used to attract and
retain reader interest. Based on what they say about a picture
being worth ten thousand words, it follows that, if the design,
style or appearance of your product is important to the
potential customer, display advertising is usually best. If the
product markets well ’sight unseen’, classified ads might be
appropriate.

* Classified ads usually focus on a single offer. Display
advertisements can include several products, or an invitation to
send for further information, obtain a catalogue, send for
samples, and so on.

If there is one lingering image of success in real estate investing, it is that of the charismatic Donald Trump. He is the icon of the highs, and lows, of the business of real estate. His rise from an intrepid investor to a billionaire developer holds out several lessons.

The sheer scale of operations of Trump could overwhelm us all. But, he did not attain it overnight. Sure, he had a legacy of real estate development, the Trump Organization, handed down by his father. However, he worked hard and brought in shrewd business acumen to enlarge his canvas of operations. His vision and commitment made him move away from the traditional strongholds of his father’s business and develop multi-million dollar projects with the high and mighty queuing up to grab a cherished piece of property.

There are a couple of lessons here for the retail investor in real estate. Whether one is clutching on a property for a few thousands or closing out with million dollars, the principles underlying real estate investment are just the same. Here is a quick checklist from Donald Trump’s life:

â?¢ Be convinced about the real estate investment before you set out to negotiate. Unless you carry your conviction, others who are part of the scenario would not share your viewpoint. Trump’s enthusiasm for the Grand Hyatt project from the dilapidated Commodore Hotel resulted in one of the best landmarks of New York City at a time when others dismissed it as impossible.

â?¢ Actively involve everyone who is a part of the project. The seller, broker, inspector, lender and yourself are in partnership trying to arrive at a deal that is beneficial to all. To ensure smooth completion of the transaction, communicate effectively with each one so that misconceptions are removed and the deal goes through without glitches.

â?¢ Do not burn your bridges. Keep your contacts alive through effective networking. Greeting cards, phone calls, messages and gifts are some of the methods to remind others that you are interested in upcoming projects.

Copyright © 2006 Joel Teo. All rights reserved.

What do George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere have in common? Apprenticeship training, of course!

Apprenticeship training is the oldest kind of job skills learning and has been used for centuries to train blacksmiths, silversmiths, printers and the like. In fact, Congress enacted the National Apprenticeship Act I n1937 to recognize the importance of apprenticeship in developing highly skilled workers in various trades. Apprenticeship is important in manufacturing, public utilities, fire, police, safety and of course in becoming a real estate mogul like Donald Trump!

Learning any highly skilled profession takes more than classroom training. You need hands on experience with someone who is an expert in the field. This is where an apprenticeship can give you what you need to excel at your profession. Apprenticeship fills in the gaps from books to real life and gives you a solid understanding of how a specific process works. Apprenticeship is one of the best ways to develop skills in any highly technical craft.

Apprenticeship usually consists of full time on the job experience where you learn how to do the job in the real world, Here, you will be working with a skilled trainer who will teach you the skills you need. One great benefit is that you get paid while you are learning. You can also take classroom training that are related to your desired occupation.

There are hundreds of different apprentice ship programs and indeed, these programs create some of the most highly-skilled, highly-paid individuals who work at their jobs anywhere in the world.

In the US, such programs are federally approved although each state oversees and administers the details of their programs. Once you complete an apprenticeship training program, you will get an apprenticeship certificate which is recognized nationwide. It is also the credential you will find the most useful and portable within most industries around the country.

Apprenticeship is for those that have a burning passion for their occupation as it is no easy road. Even before you can get start, you will need to have an application accepted and there could be a lengthy wait until an opening comes up for you. While a fantastic opportunity, this is not one to be pursued lightly. It requires commitment and dedication, so think about it carefully before you jump into an apprenticeship program.

Introduction

Google’s search engine undoubtedly changed the world of search and the Internet by storm when it first came out. With its simple design and fast relevant results Google fast became the number one search engine in existence and Google soon became a household name. Yahoo! and other search engines were clearly affected, but with Yahoo’s wide range of product offerings Yahoo was still safe and had their own niche. Google, however, started offering other products that clearly stepped on Yahoo’s toes and the battle began. One such product is Gmail. Gmail shocked the other email providers out of their complacency when they offered 1GB of space for their users and along with it introduced cool new features (i.e. conversations) previously unheard of in the email industry. Gmail also operated with unprecedented speed and left new users wondering how they ever had the patience with their other email providers’ speed. Yahoo then became clearly competitive and started ramping up their efforts to improve not only Yahoo Mail but their whole line of products. They knew that the days of complacency were over. Finally they had a worthy competitor. As for the users, good times was coming because with competition came better services for them.

Many of Google and Yahoo’s products offerings, like web and image search, are almost indistinguishable from the user’s point of view. However, there are also products that differ quite significantly, reflecting Google and Yahoo’s difference in their general approach. One such is the Alerts. Google and Yahoo Alerts are simply updates on certain topics of interest delivered to individual users. Google and Yahoo Alerts differ in the kinds of alerts they offer, in the look, and the features they bring. A casual glance at their alerts page would even make a user think that they do not have the same function.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts, just like their web search, is a simple, no fuss, and result oriented product. It gives email updates of the relevant Google results based on your choice of query or topic. Google Alerts deliver updates only via email and gives the users the option of telling Google how frequently they want to receive updates. Google Alerts offer only three types of alerts based on Google search results from the Web, the News, and blogs. It is somewhat limited compared to the alert types that Yahoo has to offer. However, since it is query-based the alerts can be virtually about anything you are interested in getting updates of. The key with Google Alerts is to enter keywords or key phrases that will give you the most relevant results.

The Google Alerts page is very simple and is very easy to manage. It, however, lacks any aesthetic appeal whatsoever, except maybe for the fact that the text is very readable and the color scheme is not garish. The alerts page looks really bland. But for those who are after function and relevancy of results this should be no problem.

Google is however out to address the problem of visual design. For the first time since Google came out they have asked a visual design guru to join the company to give their products a much needed facelift. Hopefully Google Alerts will be one of the first to get some makeup on.

Yahoo Alerts

Yahoo Alerts offers a volley of alert types. Some of the alert types are: Missing Children, Auctions, Breaking News, Feed/Blog, Health News, Horoscope, Mail, Market Summary, Movie Recommendations, Music, Sports, Stocks, The Apprentice: Donald Trump, Traffic, Weather, Travel Destinations, Yahoo! 360, etc. Each alert type has a different format and has to be activated in different ways. For example to for Blog Alert users have to enter the URL for a website’s RSS feed, choose how often they want to be updated, and then choose the mode of delivery. For Travel Destinations Alerts users have to choose among a list of cities the destination they are interested in. Yahoo will then send the users updates on airfare, hotel and car deals for that destination as well as photos, reviews, and news. The alert types Yahoo offers are very interesting and varied and will surely be of importance to many people. Due to the many options it appears to be more customizable than Google alerts. However, since the alert types are all pre-packaged there is actually less versatility as compared to the alerts one can get from Google, which if used properly can actually give you a more customized and specific alert.

An advantage Yahoo Alerts has over Google alerts is their varied modes of delivering the updates. Google sends updates to users through email only but Yahoo users have the choice of receiving updates through emails, yahoo messenger, and even their mobile phones and other mobile devices. This is of course very useful to users who are not online all the time and wish to be updated whenever and wherever they are.

Another big plus for Yahoo is their look. The Yahoo Alerts home looks simple and but is very pleasing to the eye. It’s very easy to shift from creating new alerts to managing your present alerts. The format for creating each new alert is not very consistent though (i.e compare create Music Alerts and Destination Alerts). The inconsistency is not such a big deal but I would prefer a more consistent look so as to not be confusing and generally pleasing. That’s just my preference though. But for the eye candy factor, Yahoo Alerts, unsurprisingly, wins over Google Alerts.

Using Yahoo and Google Alerts

The key to making either of the two alerts work for you is your innovativeness. Although most users probably use Yahoo and Google alerts to simply keep track of simple updates like the weather, stocks and news, which by the way are the most popular types of Yahoo Alerts, some users have taken it a step further and made the alerts work for them. People use the alerts not only to keep track of their interests but to keep track of other things as well like:

â?¢ their competition

â?¢ how widely and how fast their press releases are being picked up by other publications

â?¢ emerging trends

â?¢ websites that are try to sell hacks or downloads of a certain software owned or sold by their company

â?¢ add a news update section to their site

These examples can be found on a forum discussion on Google and Yahoo Alerts from Web Pro World.

Don’t put the cart before the horse.

You can’t do SEO (optimize your web site for search engines)
until you’ve researched keywords. You can’t research keywords
without a clear view of your target market, your prospect types,
and how your offerings fill their needs.

Affordable Small Business SEO

Affordable small business SEO not only uses the same old
business and marketing basics, but also leverages the depth of
accessible metrics for creating increased online traffic and
better web site ROI.

When small business people ask me how their web site could be
improved by SEO, I give them some version of the following list
of questions. When you know the answers to these questions,
you’re much less likely to waste money on SEO efforts, and more
likely to succeed online. You might even pull off some of this
stuff yourself- and that’ll save you big in consultant fees!

To find the right keywords to target with SEO and/or PPC,
consider the following…

Goals: How much monthly traffic and sales do you get now?
Where would you like these numbers to be? What are your most
wanted responses- what do you want your ideal prospects to do on
your site? (e.g. buy something, sign up for your ezine, etc.)

Market Segmentation: Who’s your ideal customer or target
market? If there is more than one group, characterize each.

Keywords that work: How do people find your site? What
search phrases show up in your web logs?

PPC Metrics: Do you already use pay per click (PPC)
advertising? What are your conversion rates? Are your bids
profiting, or at least breaking even?

Getting more traffic is pointless if your site isn’t an
efficient sales machine.

Profit Margin: What is your online profit margin for each
offering?

Conversion Rate: What percentage of your offline
prospects make the purchase? (to gauge expected conversion rate
for your services and find disparity in online results)

Customer Loyalty: How many people are on your ezine list?
How often do you email them? What do you send them?

5 Common Critical Website Errors and How to Fix Them

About 75% of the web sites I’ve seen make all of these mistakes.
As a result, their rankings and traffic suffer, and they lose
potential sales revenues.

No Sitemap. No matter how well your pages are designed
and no matter how nice the graphics are, every site need a good
â??sitemap’ page for search engines to index it more easily. This
is a simple page of links- no frills except perhaps a bulleted
outline structure. Even better, you can use the new Google
sitemap xml template, and upload it to Google to increase the
chances they’ll index your whole site.

Insufficient Search Engine and Directory Submission. In
the ideal cyberworld, you wouldn’t have to submit your site
anywhere- it would just get indexed and put where your prospects
could find you. The reality is we still have to meet these
services halfway. There are only a half dozen super-big sources
of traffic (e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.), but you have a
better chance of showing up in them if you’ve submitted your
site to the 100-200 minor directories and search engines. Also,
there are niche directories that will help you rank on your best
keywords and attract more prospects directly. Submit your site
to these places with a free tool like WebCEO.

Mysterious Website Owners. Your visitors want to know,
“who are the people behind this website? Can I trust them?”
Unless you have a particularly snobby target market, put your
picture and brief bio on the very first page of your site (if
not every page). Let them know who you are. This might be taboo
in offline marketing (not really- look at Ben & Jerry, Steve
Jobs, Donald Trump, etc.), but online, genuine personality is a
competitive advantage. It fosters trust, creates credibility and
emotional bonds, and bridges the cold gap of cyberspace. You can
do it appropriately for most target markets. The real question
is: are you ready for the prime time?

Confusing Site Structure. Does your site confuse people?
Do you know where they want to go, what they’re really looking
for? Where do you want them to go? Good site structure both
guides your various prospect types to the places you want them
to go and satisfies their needs. Get some of your target market
to sit in front of you and use your website- watch what they do-
it’ll surprise you. And put a search engine on your website that
gives you reports on what people search for- you’ll get clues
about what else to put online.

Ezine Neglect. The ezine signup form isn’t prominent on
some sites - make it obvious and ’sell’ your visitors on signing
up. Tantalize them into ezine subscription with a free bonus.
Why? Not everyone will become your customer the first time they
reach your site. They may like your offerings but not trust you
enough yet or be ready to buy. They may have questions. Once you
have them on your list, you can sell them on you and your stuff
(by helping them with tips) every week or two until they buy.

Not only do they need a free bonus to stimulate them to sign up,
they also need to know what kind of thing you’ll be sending
them, that you’ll keep their email address private, and that
they can unsubscribe anytime. And I’d suggest using double
opt-in to avoid spam- that means they sign up (you don’t add
them), and they confirm via email before they ever get an email
from you.</p

That would be Hugh Hefner. Donald Trump was on the list until he
married the first pretty face that smiled at him.

Then there is the real world’s most admired and envied man. That
would be Elvis Preston King. The only reason this man has not
topped the list is because the mainstream press has not taken
the king of playboys to the attention of the men of the world.

This man gets laid by the playmates of the world. The man is 56
years old and gets laid more than any man on the planet by new
girls each and every day! Most of his girlfriends are 18 years
old. The man does not do escorts, dancers, pros or sleazy women.
He has an animal attraction that women cannot resist. He works
smart and not hard that also includes having the world’s number
1 wingman. His wingman was hand picked and trained by the king
himself. A wingman is an assistant who helps one in the pursuit
of hot chicks!

Why do so many women want to bed this man? No one knows. He is
nice looking but he is no Brad Pitt and age is slowly taking
it’s toll but for some unknown reason hot 18 year old chics the
world over throw themselves at the man.

The man, Elvis Preston King is simply an enigma to the world.

Opportunity may be seen as the existence of a situation whereby it presents itself to an individual or group of individuals to profit in someway by pursuing it in a certain manner? The results may yield a favourable outcome for the pursuer(s) but the reason only a small amount of opportunity is exploited to present its rewards is that along with most opportunity comes an element of risk.

It is almost possible to show this graphically illustrating the greater the potential, the greater the risk, e.g. A small business owner contemplates opening a bistro bar in a shopping centre with a potential yield of $100 000 per annum, risking $250 000 whereas Donald Trump may risk $100m on a new golf course development, with a potential yield of $10m per annum

Hence, in the world of business, the universal search is for opportunity! There is plenty out there so what stops us from taking it? As has been well documented throughout the years, people have vastly different attitudes to risk, thus by definition, vastly different attitudes towards opportunity. As a result many of these great opportunities are passed by in favour of security whereby the individual(s) dismiss the opportunity and move on? What governs this thought process?

We constantly are told through various mediums not to miss out on this opportunity - by simple reasoning and the law of numbers - a great ally if one wishes to use it correctly -
EVERY OPPORTUNITY CANNOT BE FLAWED! Therefore by failing to at least examine each opportunity is a gross mis-service to our experience in this life.

What many of us fail to realise is that we are economists constantly involved in decisions and choice under the constraint of limited resources - great to have the opportunity to examine an opportunity but held back by a famous, or infamous, economic concept- opportunity choice.

Opportunity Cost may be defined as the cost of choice, when output, time and money are limited. On a practical everyday level one may fail to even examine an opportunity, or examine an opportunity, but look at what this will cost to undertake.

This is where our thought processes enter the debate. Aside from the natural character of the individual(s) involved; this may involve how we are taught to think from a young age. Are we bombarded by positive or negative thoughts and statements from a young age?

Do we really believe that we will live forever and can take the assets that may be involved in an opportunity or have been accumulated over time with us? If we are lucky enough to have an opportunity it probably means we have been given an opportunity already. Circumstances, freedom from war, starvation or the basic need to devote every hour to survival- is it then correct, for us, even morally, to fail to examine an opportunity?

Luckily, we have tools with which to examine opportunity. The ability to do our homework, freedom to access any amount of information to aid us in our evaluation, the law of numbers and the aforementioned favourable circumstances.

Like them or not, the Americans produce great opportunity takers. Is this conditioning? They are certainly no cleverer than any other country’s populace! They merely do their homework and apply the basics to each opportunity presented more than any other people.

The underlying message must be to at least examine every opportunity using the basics, irrespective of the final decision, producing a circular process:

Circumstances enable Opportunity. This gives us a chance to do our Homework. The Law of Numbers dictates that at least one Opportunity will work. The Opportunity Cost will help us make a Decision.

This method of Opportunity Seeking cannot fail to produce results; whether or not they produce the desired results, one at least owes it to themselves and those not fortunate enough to have opportunity, to examine it properly.

“You can have the most wonderful product in the world, but if
people don’t know about it, it’s not going to be worth much.
There are singers in the world with voices as good as Frank
Sinatra’s, but they’re singing in their garages because no one
has ever heard of them. You need to generate interest, and you
need to create excitement.” Donald Trump, American real-estate
tycoon

Advertising doesn’t cost, it pays! And good advertising can pay
you well. Bad advertising, or no advertising at all, invites
disaster.

You have to advertise if people are to be made aware of your
business and the benefits it offers them. Without advertising
you rely on word of mouth recommendation or press editorial,
both extremely effective, but slow and generally unpredictable.

Advertising takes many different forms, from painting your name
on the side of a van to delivering leaflets door-to-door or
posting printed cards in shop and post office windows. More
often the term applies to classified and display promotions in
appropriate media, usually newspapers and magazines, and it is
with this definition we concern ourselves here.

Advertising by itself does not sell. It will not sell a bad
product (customers will ask for refunds) and it won’t open up
new markets. It is not a miracle cure that can generate sales
for a dying product. Conversely, advertising will not sell your
must successful products to people who simply don’t want them.

Main Points About Effective Advertising

* It reduces the entire population to your target audience and
reaches as many of those people as possible at least available
cost.

* It must always have an objective. This means having a clear
idea about what you want to accomplish in your advertisement.
Reasons for advertising include:

* To invite orders or enquiries

* To launch new products

* To publicise price changes.

* The message must attract your target audience, it must
interest them, create a desire for your product and prompt
people to act (order or ask for further information). This
acronym AIDA is one you will encounter many times in advertising.

* It must be truthful and straightforward. The nearer your
advertisement is to reality, the more effective it is.

* Sufficient resources must be allocated to accomplish your
advertising objectives.

* Testing is crucial to effective advertising, allowing good
promotions to be repeated and bad ones to be eliminated.

* Every aspect of your advertisement must be prepared from the
customer’s point of view. That person wants to know how you and
your product can benefit him. The most important feature of any
advertisement is the benefits it contains.

* It must be placed in the appropriate media.

Newcomers to business tend to confuse the real benefits of
advertising, frequently considering it a necessary, and
expensive, evil, not the long-term investment it really is. In
short, effective advertising is the lifeblood of your business.
Without it you will surely fail!

Deciding When and How

Advertising can be a major headache for many firms, not just new
businesses or those without specialist advertising departments.

But it isn’t always costs that are to blame as much as making
that vital choice between classified or generally more costly
display advertising.

Returning to basics, all advertisements must follow the general
AIDA principle. They must attract attention, generate and retain
interest, create desire, and stimulate action.

But what will best achieve this objective: classified or display?

The answer depends on a number of things, not least of all an
understanding of what these two methods involve, how they differ
and what similarities, even overlap, might exist.

Classified advertising, sometimes called ‘lineage’, generally
employs just words, without embellishment, other than perhaps a
few words emboldened, and sometimes impact lines or boxes around
the advertisement. Where these minor forms of decoration are
included, the format is frequently referred to as ’semi-display’.

Display advertisements, on the other hand, are designed to stand
out from the crowd, using a variety of techniques including:
occupying a set position on the page, taking up a specified
amount of space, including graphics and illustrations, adopting
a variety of fonts, and so on. The argument is that display
advertisements are more noticeable, more profitable than their
counterparts buried amongst countless others in the classified
columns. Hence the far higher cost of display advertising.

The following main points will help you decide:

* Classified ads are usually cheap and are excellent for
generating enquiries. Many successful classified advertisers use
the two-stage enquiry method, allowing the customer to obtain
further information before placing an order. A major benefit for
dealers is the chance to build a useful mailing list for future
offers.

* Display advertising is best for selling straight from the
page. Readers are more likely to trust their money to someone
who has paid for a larger advertisement than someone whose
advertisement occupies a tiny space among so many competing
entries. Classified advertising is rarely effective for selling
off-the-page except for very low cost items, commonly Ј10
or less.

* Classified advertising can be used to test interest in your
product before venturing into more costly display advertising.

* Classifieds can be used to test and compare advertising
sources.

* Classified advertising is generally unsuitable for anything
that requires a lot of ‘telling’ to accomplish the task of
selling. Too much grey matters in classifieds is boring and
readers can easily lose interest halfway. If it can’t be said in
a few words, try display advertising.

* For classified advertisements, the words themselves must do
the job of selling. Sometimes a maximum wordcount is set and
every word must pay its way. Conversely, display advertising
allows a variety of other techniques to be used to attract and
retain reader interest. Based on what they say about a picture
being worth ten thousand words, it follows that, if the design,
style or appearance of your product is important to the
potential customer, display advertising is usually best. If the
product markets well ’sight unseen’, classified ads might be
appropriate.

* Classified ads usually focus on a single offer. Display
advertisements can include several products, or an invitation to
send for further information, obtain a catalogue, send for
samples, and so on.