what is business image by amiro

What Online Business to Choose? – what is business

There are many different ways of earning money from home. My intention isn’t to give you a list of them. I would rather point you or help you to choose the right one. When deciding what to do, where to go or who to follow, you have to ask your self first what are your goals and what are you willing to put into it. Every online business demand time, money and a lot of your personality.

By time I mean, there are things you need to do, to set up, to run and they simply take some time.
If you want to run more professional home business than you’ll have to consider using services that will automate it and they aren’t free.
Your personality is the most important thing when it comes to deciding what home business you will go for. You see we all have different views just about anything, so when you decide to run something interesting online always seek for success stories then put some of your self in it and simply repeat it over and over again.

If you are a quick cash seeker than simply tab such terms into your browser and you’ll find a lot of different offers about how easy is to earn money online. But the truth is usually far from it.

At very start of your online journey try first with more reliable and proven methods of online business such as get paid to surf, make money doing surveys or become a ghost writer,.. and if you are a person of action than you’ll build your website, blog, online store and use all of known promotion tips and tricks to get as much traffic as you can.

No matter what home business you’ll choose always learn first then act. There are many Quick and Easy ways of making money online, heck my personal blog’s have such domains, but the reason to choose such domains is simply to show you that no matter what online biz you choose, if you put enough WILL to earn and understand one, than results are not far away.

You are not going to believe me but there actually are ways to earn money quick and easy.

online business image by SEOPlanter

Online Business – 8 Powerful Reasons To Start Your Own – online business

I wish I had discovered the magic of online business earlier in my life. The benefits of having one are enormous, and there’s no major risk for starting one of your own as of today. So allow me my fellow reader to give you some of the great reasons for starting your own online business right now. Here we go…

1. The Market Potential

Let me spare you the huge numbers and statistics of the enormous Internet growth. It has made a huge impact in our lives, the way we communicate, and of course, the way we shop. Utilizing the Internet, your market is not narrowed to where you geographically live. Your products can be sold to anyone with an Internet connection world wide, without limits.

2. Don’t Have Your Own Products?! So What…

Well, the beauty in online business is that you do NOT need to have your own products. There are countless affiliate programs in the net with astonishing products, a wide variety of products, for you to market. The products range from nutritional supplements, cleaning products, pet care products, long distance services, books, tapes and hundreds of other products that you will personally love as well.

3. The Network Style Of Business

Here’s a little ‘secret‘: The secret for wealth is having the following two kinds of income – Residual and Leverage income…

With residual income, you get paid for a work you did once. It’s the do-it-once-get-paid-forever style of income. Leveraged income is where you get paid for work which is done by others on your behalf. Utilizing the online affiliate opportunities, you can build a network of people, your own affiliate network, which brings you those two powerful kinds of income.

4. An Auto Pilot Business

The real and proven online affiliate programs provide you with the powerful, MUST have tools to maintain your online business. You get your own websites; A tracking software to track your sales, your marketing campaigns or your network of people; An automatic contact manager to follow-up with potential leads or your network and more. Moreover, all of the orders processing and shipment management is done on your behalf, without lifting a finger. The best part is…

You can join some of those great affiliate opportunities for free. You get the tools and the system, without being charged.

5. A Part Time Kind Of Business

If you have a ‘regular’ job, you can promote your online business on a part time basis. 5 to 10 hours a week would be good enough. You can start your online business part time until you have enough income that can gradually replace your current job.

6. The Wheel Was Already Invented For You!

How do you promote your online business? Well, as the cliche’ says, you do NOT need to re-invent the wheel.

The real online business opportunities provide you with a system. The system includes detailed information on how to promote your business, what exactly should be your next step and plenty of training and support for any wonders you might have. Your success is also theirs, so they are willing to invest in you with proper training and support even before they see a penny from you.

7. The Money You Need To Invest

As in any other kinds of businesses, it would be naive to think that you can build your online business without investing a dime. However, the beauty in online business is that there are no huge investments involved. Let me explain…

If you join a good affiliate opportunity, you’re already freely provided with the basic, MUST have tools to run your business. You are also provided with free and proper training so you would make wise choices. As you will also learn, there are many free to low cost online marketing methods to promote your business effectively. Not to mention the huge amount of freebies that can be easily found online.

8. Your Working Day…

Here’s the best part: Combine an auto-pilot, part time business with leverage and residual income, and you get eventually what we truly desire – control over our own time. Isn’t that what we all desire?

We desire control over our own time either to spend it with our beloved ones, travel the world or pursue our hobbies. We want to spend our time on the things that really matters, not on following the 40-40-40 plan (that is, working 40 hours a week, for 40 years, and be left with $ 40 in the bank).

These are 8 reasons ONLY that make online business a great opportunity to rebel against the void “safe, secure, regular job” as some might be thinking. Of course, as in any other businesses where great promises exist, false online opportunities are quite wide as well. Make sure you choose the right online opportunity, that is willing to train you, guide you and provide you with the proper MUST have tools to succeed.

I know it all sounds great and for some it might sound too good to be true. Let me just say this: It is all up to YOU. The ONLY thing that can make this a success or failure is YOU. If you are willing to learn, be persistence and invest some of your time, you will grab those great benefits.

online business image by MDGovpics

Online Business Broker: Stress Free Help Selling Your Business – online business

You’ve spent several months, perhaps years, putting everything you have into building a thriving, high-demand online business and now you have decided to sell your baby.

Thousands of businesses change hands everyday, oddly enough the channels you can use to get maximum price and exposure for your online business are extremely limited.

You have a few options:

Ebay. It’s perhaps the biggest venue for listing and finding new businesses forsale, but you have to be concerned over the quality of sites listed on eBay. For every quality site listed there are at least 100 crappy, low-priced, cookie-cutter sites that can put the wrong impression in the minds of your prospects.



Classified pay-per-listing sites. The leading online business listing site is http://www.buysellwebsites.com run by experienced professional Nelson Bates. This is a super service for sites under $ 50,000 with proven results and proven demand. A great technique for lower-priced sites, but perhaps not the right option for the site you want to get maximum exposure and price for.



Experienced and Focused Business Broker. You’ve invested heavily in your online business. A professional can help you through the sometimes complex tasks of placing a price on your business, getting it in front of the “right” buyers, helping to separate the tire kickers from serious buyers and take your deal to an optimal close.

Online business brokers can…

Get more money for your site

Get your site exposed to buyers with money

Reduce your stress by only putting you in touch with serious buyers

Handling the paperwork and forms associated with securely selling your high-value online business

Handling the uncomfortable “selling” role for you – you just decide which deal to accept

Let you move on to other things, confident that your online business is being represented by the best

Help you through an emotional process – they will be your rock through the entire process

Give you the benefit of experience closing many deals, something most sellers do not have

Open up new markets and opportunities you may not have even thought of yet

Help you wade through legal, tax and regulatory issues that can be quite intimidating.

What To Look For In An Online Business Broker

Finding a great business broker can make a massive difference to the success of selling your online business, getting the value you deserve.

Here are 4 characteristics to watch out for:

Experience with selling businesses. This one tops the list. Skillful business brokers have spent years mastering the art of negotiation and undersatnding the market. If you are selling an online business, then it is even more important that you find a specialized online business broker, someone who understands getting maximum price for internet-based businesses.



Proven Reputation. You want someone who has a rock-solid reputation with years of experience helping sell businesses. The ideal online business broker will have sold hundreds of online businesses already and can point out some specific examples.



Great Communicator. Selling your business can be a lengthy and detailed process, in order to get the most out of your online business broker, they need to be a great communicator – it’s absolutely necessary.



Must Ensure Your Confidentiality. You can’t afford to have your customers, partners and competitors know that you are about to sell your business. Look for a broker that guarantees confidentiality using appropriate protection forms every step of the way.



Specialize. Focus on a business broker that understands your type of business. Just as you wouldn’t go to foot specialist about your stomach problem, you want to make sure you find a broker that specializes in online business.

Finally, you can take the stress out of selling your online business by using an experienced, professional online business broker. Don’t leave the sale of your business to chance, consider consulting your very own online business broker today.

business online image by Photasia

The Best Business Online – business online

We often receive e-mails about the best business online ever created and if we don’t seize the opportunity right away we are basically not worth to be in the industry. Therefore, every single opportunity that we receive is the best business online. Many of us have actually believed such claims and tried some of these so called opportunities. If we want to look at the bright side we would say that the lost money is the price we are paying to gain more experience. Some would say that those claims were just hype.

The question that forces itself to be asked here would be; is there such a thing called the best business online? If so, what are the criteria that would make a business better than another, and therefore, what makes a business to be the best business online?

All questions will have to be answered only if the answer to the first question was positive. If the answer to the first question was negative then we don’t need to bother about answering the remaining questions.

In short, I don’t believe that there is such a thing as the best business online. Let’s take a look at the offline marketplace. A good business idea depends on factors such as competition in the industry in question, market size…etc. But we don’t see a huge industry in the offline marketplace that basically concentrates on building a downline. The offline marketplace concentrates on producing and selling products and services.

Business Online went astray from the concept and concentrated on building organizations of marketers without paying any attention to products and services. It went to the point that people are paying money for absolutely nothing. Business online should get back to the main track of producing and selling.

The beautiful thing about establishing a business online, is that you can create any business you want either with your own products/services or other people’s. The trick in online business is visibility and how to make your target market find you without you having to spend a fortune. This is of course the quest of every person who has a business online, but it is not the purpose of this article.

Therefore, similar to the fact that the best business offline does not exist, the best business online is a myth. It is an illusion that will lead any one who is interested in creating a business online to fail before even starting.

All that has been said about the best business online should not be confused with business opportunities that exist in the online marketplace. Similar to the offline marketplace, the online marketplace is full of opportunities. The purpose of this article is to show that there is nothing called “The best business online,” but it will be a huge mistake to interpret this article as trying to show that there are no opportunities in the online business marketplace. There are actually sites dedicated to helping people find the best business online that would suit their skills, needs, interests.

What we are trying to show in this article that there is no such thing as the best business online in absolute terms. Such a term is only used for hype and has no real substance in it. Therefore, so as to have an objective eye when studying opportunities online, try to classify those opportunities in the following manner:

1- A hyped message with a hyped opportunity

2- A hyped message with a sound opportunity

3- A sound message with hyped opportunity

4- A sound message with a sound opportunity

It is obvious that the advice would be not to even consider the first type. The second type is very tricky as you need to strip all the hype from the message to realize that the copywriter made a huge mistake by hyping the message while the opportunity is solid enough to sell itself.

The third business online type is also tricky, usually it is marketed by someone new in the online business, who is genuine but believed the hyped claims of the first type and now he/she is trying to market it.

The fourth is a business that we should consider seriously. I said consider and not jump into it because we need to study if it suits our skills, needs, aspirations, interests…etc.

Finally, the best business online does not exist in absolute terms. It becomes as such only if it fits you and you were able to reap its benefits because you have the skills to do so.

business online image by MDGovpics

The Secrets to a High Income Home Business Online Revealed – business online

How many times have you asked yourself “self…is there a more desirable job in the world than working from home? Then asking yourself the next question, “is the home business online?” Followed of course by “where exactly is this high income home business online?”

I am going to go over some valuable information for you take with you and I promise by the end of reading all this you will have learned something valuable to take with you through your successes to find the a high income home business online.

I am going to break down the concepts that produce a high income home business online with the following ingredients necessary. The first is what it takes to succeed in a high income home business online. Point blank it is consistency and knowledge. Here is what I mean. If you want to succeed you have to keep plugging yourself into all of the things that I am discussing on this page. This consistency of work must be applied everyday for the time you have set for yourself. The knowledge portion is about taking everyday as a learning experience. My best gift to myself for my first year was learning and soaking up knowledge everyday about home business online, learning from some mistakes, and most of all keep driving, kept going. I was consistent. Both the need for knowledge and consistent work combined daily will lead to growth and wealth for your business. Now, can you earn a high income fairly quickly from a home business online? Yes, I see it in my own team fairly regularly. I encourage that kind of drive. However, to sustain that high income levels for your home business online you are required good solid personal development and basic online business training. Guess where that comes from? It comes from that knowledge you seek everyday, soaking up and reading everything you see about home business online.

The second concept that produces a high income home business online for yourself is lead generation. This ingredient is always necessary for any high income home business online. For this what you do need is a pipeline filled with prospects (leads). This pipeline can be manifested for your business in two ways; free lead generation and paid lead generation. Paid lead generation does wonders for your time management for your home business online. Here are a few paid lead generation tactics: P.P.C. (Pay per click), lead campaign buying, and ezine ads, just to name a few. Some of the successful free lead generation tactics are email marketing, forum posting, article writing, and my favorite video marketing. It is best to experience both paid and free marketing to see what works for you and your business. This experience and consistency of free and paid lead generation will create growth for your business, that I promise. The key is to generate more leads that you can handle in a single day. Because after you have gone through all the leads you can handle in that one day, you have the next day ready with enough leads from the previous day to work with. No single lead, prospect or person is the drive or success for your business. The only single person is you.

The third concept that produces a high income home business online for yourself is true mentor and guidance. True mentorship and guidance is providing real value and teaching you about real marketing. It is to help build a mindset of a real entrepreneur. For me also what I do is really give out all the goodies. Duplication! All the tactics that I test that work and make money, I give out. Now that doesn’t mean you won’t be working hard to apply those tactics, oh you will. But there is no need to struggle on something that is already hard enough for most new people to grasp. What you need to do is look for true mentorship and guidance to produce a high income home business online for yourself.

The forth concept that produces a high income home business online for yourself is effective marketing campaigns. It’s all about what you are trying to do for your home business online. If you are direct selling for a company making $ 1,000 sales off of each sale it doesn’t make sense to use crappy banner ads on a site for car ads. More than anything you must find out what works for your home business online. Called simply “testing.” In a successful team for home business online the testing has been done for you before you join a home business online. When it comes to finding the best marketing campaigns for your home business online the true marketers have to test it. I personally tested my home business online before I went out to promote it to my list and new prospects. I would never want to market something to the masses that doesn’t work. Once I tested the business itself, my team partners and I started testing out the marketing campaigns that would either work or not work for the home business online. I tested, tested, tested, until there is enough feedback that calls for the right adjustments. All that was left is the right direction to earn high income from my home business online.

The fifth concept that produces a high income home business online for yourself is true leverage. Any online company that claims that they are the 9th wonder but they can’t prove they DUPLICATE true leverage with their compensation plan in a reasonable amount of your attention span is not a wonder for you to waste your time investing in. To save yourself months or years of frustration on finding a high income home business online follow everything that I am discussing here on this page. You want 1 hour each out of 1000 people rather than 1000 of your own hours

The sixth concept that produces a high income home business online for yourself is high conversions. Without high conversions there is no high income. The first crucial step in high conversations for your home business online is web copy. The web copy has to be crafted with content where that content contains a funnel that produces desirable information and opportunities. The business I work with contains $ 20,000 a page web copy. Most web copy for their home business online sites are not designed with the psychological conversions tactics needed to truly convert.

The seventh concept that produces a high income home business online for yourself is automation. One of the big problems with ANY home business online is that people can not communicate effectively. People cannot close sales effectively. After the opportunity is surrounded their life, time and money, action is then required, they take action by get their prospects on the phone…then they screw it all up. Well let’s start with the problem of the phone. If you are a high income home business online earner then chances you are not on the phone. Trying to convert your prospects on the phone does not earn you high income for your home business online. Automation. What you need is to remove human error of people who cant sell by setting up automation from a system.

The eighth concept that produces a high income home business online for yourself is a system. Here it is, the big reason for the success of anyone I have seen online. I can’t tell you enough how key this is for any high income home business online. It is so important to have some sort of system in place so the human error of bad communication can be removed. Once human error is removed the system sells for you, trains your prospects, and automates your business for you. This way people you sign up can actually make money. Otherwise 95% of the people who join the home business industry and try to earn high income from their home business online don’t make that much money because they have to do all the selling, all the training, with almost no automation. Unless you want to seriously develop the skills of communication that most humans lack so much in selling and be that system yourself. Get a home business online that has a system that communicates for you. Where can I find the right one your asking huh? Well, contact me and check out what I offer and I will explain more for you.

online business image by blacknight

Online Business Start-Ups: The Agony & The Ecstasy – online business

Any business start-up can be difficult but the online business start-up is more so. Both business owners have the same problems of financing, product selection and marketing. However, the “brick and mortar” business owner has one major advantage over the online business start-up. The conventional business owner can see their potential customers. Their potential customers walk by the windows every day. They may even walk into the store and ask questions. With an online business, other than some hard to decipher website statistics, the only time you know you have a potential customer is when they contact you or order from you. This creates many sleepless nights.

At 2:00 a.m., an online business owner wakes up in a cold sweat. Where are the customers? Have I chosen the right online marketing strategy from the millions that are available? How do I know? Will a sale come in tomorrow or never? There are literally hundreds of concerns made more difficult by the invisibility of the potential customer. The agony of the online business start-up is in full swing. Will there be any ecstasy at the end of the road? What will it take?

Ecstasy will occur once the owner knows the business is successful. The elements of success are actually the same for the “brick and mortar” business as they are for the online business. The difference resides in the feedback mechanisms. The online business owner can’t count on that face-to-face meeting with potential customers when they enter the store or that fleeting glimpse of a customer as they walk by the window. An online business owner must create feedback mechanisms on their website which encourage customers to interact and let him/her know they were there.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get your potential customers to leave you their email addresses? Not only would this help you understand that people are actually visiting your site but it would also be helpful for future marketing efforts. As online business owners, how can we do this?

First, add a simple guest book to your site. Some people will voluntarily sign your guest book, but many will not. So, let’s add a little incentive for the potential customer. How about associating their signature in your guest book with a free drawing for one of your products (like http://www.sweet-vibrations.com, a one-of-a-kind jewelry site) or a free newsletter on an interesting topic (like http://www.aaronzwebworkz.com)? In this way, you offer something of value in exchange for their email address. And, it doesn’t have to cost you anything.

There are many free website guest books available online. We use a free guest book from http://www.htmlgear.com on our website http://www.obinstitute.com. Check it out!

Secondly, an online business owner can also add a refer-a-friend link on their website. Why not offer potential customers the ability to easily market for you? They may know a friend who would really be interested in your product. That friend might buy something from you, or sign your guest book. The website mentioned above, http://www.htmlgear.com also offers a free refer-a-friend link for your website. And, again, you can check out an example at http://www.obinstitute.com. Is there anything else we can add to a website to make our potential customer more visible before a sale? Yes, an online survey.

Thirdly, add an ongoing survey form regarding issues of importance to your potential customers? Most of us find it’s interesting to cast a ballot on an issue and then see what position others are taking. Remember, you have two purposes in mind for this strategy. The first is to make the potential customer and their visits to your website more visible to you. This will help maintain your sanity until someone actually orders. But, secondly, you are developing a website that people will return to in the future. This will increase the potential for sales.

Each time the potential customer interacts with the website, using a guest book, a survey or a refer-a-friend link, the online business owner is building a relationship with that potential customer. The more they like using your site, the more likely they are to return. The more often they return to your site, or tell others, the better your chances of the sale.

real estate image by buckshot.jones

Reinventing Real Estate, Part 1: Online and Empowered Consumers Are Taking Charge and Paying Less – real estate

For decades, the real estate world turned in a predictable manner. The roles of buyers, sellers and real estate professionals were fairly well defined and transactions followed a predictable path of yard signs, newspaper ads, open houses and miles of paperwork.

Recently, online and empowered consumers have changed the game. Real estate professionals now face issues similar to the ones that have transformed the retail, personal finance and travel planning industries. As technology advances and new business models evolve, the real estate industry has begun to transform itself from providing traditional, carefully controlled “agent-centric” transactions to new “consumer-centric” practices. The following is a look at some of the recent industry trends and how buyers, sellers and investors can expect to benefit. The “Five Ds” that are driving change in real estate are:

1. Disruption – Over the past 10 years, the Internet has matured into a powerful platform for delivering real estate information, forever changing the interaction between buyers, sellers and real estate professionals.

2. Displacement – The popularity and acceptance of self-service and consumer-direct business models is being felt by real estate professionals, who are striving to develop attractive new offerings for Web-savvy consumers.

3. Demanding consumers – You now have more real estate knowledge, tools and resources at your fingertips than ever before. More savvy consumers tend to be more independent and demanding.

4. Downward pressure – Traditional real estate commissions of 5-6 percent of a property’s sales price are facing downward pressure.

5. Developing alternatives – The real estate industry is transforming itself to provide targeted services and exciting new options that add value for consumers. Disruption

“We are going to see our industry go through dramatic transformation via the Internet and consolidation of agents and companies.” – eRealty Times Columnist Dirk Zeller

Some industry observers have adopted Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen’s term “disruptive technology” to explain recent developments in real estate. Though it’s easy to point to the World Wide Web and advancing technology as the main changes in real estate, that’s only part of what’s shaking things up. Essentially, the real cause of disruption is not just technology, but technology-enabled real estate consumers.

Web-enabled consumers

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), more than 72 percent of homebuyers now begin their home search online. The popularity of online real estate ads surpassed newspaper property listings back in 2001, and the gap is widening. Less than one percent of buyers first learned about the home they purchased on the Internet in 1995, while in 2004, that number passed 20 percent.

According to a California Association of Realtors (CAR) survey, 97 percent of respondents said the Web helped them understand the buying process better and 100 percent said using the Web helped them understand home values better. Web-enabled homebuyers like you are taking a more active role in researching homes and neighborhoods. You also now spend less time with real estate professionals once you have completed your research. Internet homebuyers also used the Web effectively to filter out properties that did not interest them, visiting 6.1 homes on average versus 15.4 for traditional buyers.

Today, you can view photos and detailed information for hundreds of properties in the time it used to take to visit a single one. And the Web provides much more opportunity than simply moving print listings online. The growing availability of residential high-speed Internet connections has boosted the popularity of virtual tours and interactive maps, providing consumers with powerful and flexible visual search tools.

In addition to making home searches easier, automated valuation model (AVM) software is making a big impact in how properties are evaluated. AVMs, which generate valuation estimates by analyzing and comparing property information data, are becoming increasingly sophisticated and accurate. While not considered a substitute for human appraisals, AVMs are gaining popularity because they are inexpensive, easy to use and produce valuation estimates in minutes. Now AVMs, used extensively in electronic mortgage approval processing during the recent refinancing boom, are becoming available on real-estate Websites aimed at consumers. This is a significant development for independent sellers, who often find it challenging to price their properties correctly when selling on their own.

The MLS goes public

“In real estate, MLS data sits at the apex of the change, specifically the MLS information that is pushed to the Internet every minute of the day.” – Bradley Inman, Publisher of Inman News

Once an exclusive tool for real estate professionals, the multiple listing service (MLS) has in recent years become a very public platform for real estate listings. The MLS is the nation’s most comprehensive database of properties for sale – four out of five homes sold in the United States are listed on the MLS. MLS properties are available to agents and brokers worldwide, and are now accessible via consumer Web sites such as Realtor.com, WSJ.com, Excite, Netscape, AOL and MSN. MLS listings also appear on local, regional and national brokerage Websites through Internet Data Exchange (IDX) agreements that allow participating Realtors to share listings and display them to consumers. Even though only licensed realtors can list property on the MLS, the system has begun to figure prominently for the $ 110 billion independent seller (for-sale-by-owner or FSBO) market. About 13 percent of real estate sales are now FSBO, conducted without a broker’s assistance.

Type “flat fee MLS” into any major search engine, and you’ll see dozens of real estate professionals willing to list your property in the MLS for a fee. If you are willing to pay a commission of 2-3 percent, you can attract the attention of thousands of agents who will show your property to prospective buyers. You can then reduce the cost of the sale to about half a traditional 5-6 percent sales commission, plus the cost of the MLS listing. If you find an independent buyer working without an agent, you could make a sale with no commission at all and pay only an MLS listing flat fee. Displacement

Currently, about 2.4 million real estate licensees operate nationally, according to the Association of Real Estate License Law officials. The NAR has more than one million members, up from about 760,000 members five years ago. Many real estate professionals and industry observers expect a significant decline in this number because some tasks traditionally performed by agents and brokers can now be done more quickly and easily by Web-enabled consumers.

“Historically the fundamental driver of the real estate industry was the control of information. The real estate agent and the real estate office were the only sources of comprehensive information on which properties were for sale and those who might be interested in buying them. With this control revenues were practically guaranteed.

Moreover, because this exclusive control was akin to a monopoly by virtue of the multiple listing service (MLS) any firm of any size could serve the customer equally well. As a result, the number of real estate companies grew without regard to market efficiencies.

Simply put, the traditional model is too inflexible. Consumers are seriously questioning the value of a real estate agent. They frequently feel that many of the traditional tasks undertaken by the agents are now either no longer required or can be done by the consumer themselves.”

- Swanepoel & Tuccillo, Real Estate Confronts Profitability

The quotes above, from a popular report on emerging real estate business models and dwindling profit margins, highlight a number of issues traditional real estate professionals are now facing. And if the real estate industry has grown historically without regard to market efficiencies, the issue has only been compounded since 2001, as new agents signed on in droves, lured by low interest rates and skyrocketing home prices in many areas. It’s likely that the number of traditional real estate agents will decline, while new types of real estate jobs will be created to deliver value to Web-savvy customers.

NEXT in Part 2 of 2: – Demanding Consumers, Downward Pressure and Developing Alternatives

Looking to upgrade from multicast positioning to fee-based carriage by year’s end, Universal Sports is launching an ad campaign aimed at raising awareness and getting consumers to call their TV providers.

The “I Want Universal Sports” consumer and trade campaign will begin this week, with promo spots featuring on-air talent on the network’s air and website, as well as ads in local print and digital outlets in priority markets. Messaging will feature the above tagline and a toll-free number, 1-800-55-GET-US, aimed at connecting them to TV providers.

A joint venture of Leo Hindery’s InterMedia Partners and Comcast’s NBC Sports Group, Universal Sports is currently available in some 55 million homes in all of the top 10 DMAs and 20 of the top 25 via multicast carriage and its first affiliate deal with DirecTV. The nation’s top DBS provider made Universal Sports available to all of its customers via a freeview in July and now offers it on a sports package. License fee terms were not disclosed.

David Sternberg, CEO of Universal Sports, said the network launched via multicast on broadcast stations in 2008 and after monitoring that approach determined that transitioning the service to a fee-based cable network was “the best way going forward.” He noted that contracts with the stations expire by year-end and are “synced up in a way to facilitate” this migration.

Sternberg said the network has engaged in such talks with cable, satellite and telco distributors since he joined the company in 2010, with an eye toward increasing distribution for the service, which presents an array of Olympic- and endurance-style sports, competitions and championships.

He noted that Universal Sports is in “advanced discussions with a number of MVPDs. We expect to have some announcements very soon and throughout the fourth quarter. “

The campaign is slated to run through the balance of the year with tactics changing as new distribution partners and carriage in markets are secured. Tent-pole network programming will be used to inform viewers of the switch, including promos running on its coverage of the 2011 IRB Rugby World Cup, Kona Ironman, the Gymnastics Worlds, New York City Marathon, alpine skiing, figure skating and its countdown to London Olympics fare.

Sternberg said the network will also ply on-site grass-roots marketing initiatives at a number of events, including the NYC Marathon and Skate America in Los Angeles.

Part of Universal Sports’ pitch for carriage centers on primary and secondary research indicating that its affluent, highly-educated and gender-balanced audience has affinity for these types of sports throughout the year. The network also over-indexes against premium channel, high-speed data and high-definition subscribership.

Speaking of HD, Sternberg said Universal Sports will launch an enhanced signal in January, an offering that was previously hamstrung by multicasting bandwidth constraints.

Since Universal Sports holds the rights to its myriad sports properties, it can also present video-on-demand and “TV Everywhere” services. Sternberg said DirecTV will launch an authenticated product with Universal Sports in the fourth quarter.

Rural businesses and employers in central-west Queensland have been told they need to promote the country lifestyle to attract and retain workers from the city and growing coastal regions.

A federally-funded seminar was held in Longreach yesterday on some of challenges of doing business in remote areas.

Gold Coast-based business consultant Jan Timms says while rural jobs do not pay as well as the mining sector, money often is not the main selling point.

She says living in a safe and low-cost community should be promoted.

“There is plenty of research to show it is not the number one issue and most people would prefer challenging and rewarding work,” she said.

“Of course there are people that will go after the money, but it will only be for a certain period of time they are doing it because they want to get ahead, but it is not going to be forever.

“Where are they going to go after that ?

“Going off and working in the mines if for most people a temporary thing.”

She says the low cost of living, family-friendly and safe environments should encourage people to work in the bush.

“There are a lot of people out there in cities who are really a bit fed up with the stress, the lifestyle, sitting in traffic – it’s all impersonal, it’s not so friendly, people don’t know each other,” She said.

“You come from your house, you came back to your house at night, you don’t even know the names of your neighbours and that sort of thing.

“There is an attraction to a lifestyle that is different to that.”

London – Exercise daily? Eat your fruit and veg? Stopped smoking? Bad news. You could be doomed, nonetheless.

David Barker’s theory sounds pretty hokey when you first hear about it.

The idea is that, irrespective of that gym membership, those five-a-day and that kicked habit, much of our health has been determined by the time we get out of the womb.

You can see why mothers don’t believe it when, on Horizon: The Nine Months That Made You, they are asked about Barker’s theory, at random in the street. It seems less a scientific prescription, more a kind of fortune-teller’s ruse. I’m not sure I want to believe it, either. After all, life would have been a lot more fun if I’d known I had a free pass all along (for this was one enormous baby, back in the day).

Of course, diet and exercise and all those other things do come into it, too. But they are at their most significant where birth weights are particularly low. The lighter you are when you are born, the more you will be affected by your lifestyle.

That is why, or so the theory goes, people like my grandfather live to their late eighties while smoking like chimneys. It’s also why Dr Ranjan Yajnik has discovered a new body type, the thin-fat Indian – considerably slimmer than their English counterpart, but carrying significantly more body fat. It explains, he argues, India’s epidemic of obesity-related ailments: heart disease, type 2 diabetes and so on.

It is not just our health that may have been pre-determined in this way.

In the US, Dr Janet DiPietro has been testing foetuses for their reactions to disturbance, sounds and movement, then monitoring babies to see if the traits persist. She is adamant that they do. Elsewhere, studies indicate that testosterone levels in the womb are related to the kinds of activities we enjoy later in life. It’s convincing – though the real test is still to come.

Back in India, one of Barker’s colleagues is leading a drive to boost birth weight, to see if his theory provides dividends. Potential mothers are put on a diet of specially-prepared snacks, to ensure maximum nutrition and boost baby weight. This, of course, is the ironic part. Our own lifestyle might not be quite the self-imposed sentence we tend to assume. Instead, our mother’s behaviour is what shapes us – because diet and lifestyle determine birth weight.

However, even more amazingly the lifestyle of your maternal grandmother comes into play, too, since women are born with all their eggs. So the debate is less one of nature versus nurture, but of who was nurtured when. If Barker is right his work represents, as several interviewees noted, a paradigm shift. – - The Independent