Understanding Bonds

There are certain things you must understand about bonds before you start investing in them. Not understanding these things may cause you to purchase the wrong bonds, at the wrong maturity date.

The three most important things that must be considered when purchasing a bond include the par value, the maturity date, and the coupon rate.

The par value of a bond refers to the amount of money you will receive when the bond reaches its maturity date. In other words, you will receive your initial investment back when the bond reaches maturity.

The maturity date is of course the date that the bond will reach its full value. On this date, you will receive your initial investment, plus the interest that your money has earned.

Corporate and State and Local Government bonds can be ‘called’ before they reach their maturity, at which time the corporation or issuing Government will return your initial investment, along with the interest that it has earned thus far. Federal bonds cannot be ‘called.’

The coupon rate is the interest that you will receive when the bond reaches maturity. This number is written as a percentage, and you must use other information to find out what the interest will be. A bond that has a par value of $2000, with a coupon rate of 5% would earn $100 per year until it reaches maturity.

Because bonds are not issued by banks, many people don’t understand how to go about buying one. There are two ways this can be done.

You can use a broker or brokerage firm to make the purchase for you or you can go directly to the Government. If you use a brokerage, you will more than likely be charged a commission fee. If you want to use a broker, shop around for the lowest commissions!

Purchasing directly through the Government isn’t nearly as hard as it once was. There is a program called Treasury Direct which will allow you to purchase bonds and all of your bonds will be held in one account, that you will have easy access to. This will allow you to avoid using a broker or brokerage firm.

Investment Strategy

Because investing is not a sure thing in most cases, it is much like a game – you don’t know the outcome until the game has been played and a winner has been declared. Anytime you play almost any type of game, you have a strategy. Investing isn’t any different – you need an investment strategy.

An investment strategy is basically a plan for investing your money in various types of investments that will help you meet your financial goals in a specific amount of time. Each type of investment contains individual investments that you must choose from. A clothing store sells clothes – but those clothes consist of shirts, pants, dresses, skirts, undergarments, etc. The stock market is a type of investment, but it contains different types of stocks, which all contain different companies that you can invest in.

If you haven’t done your research, it can quickly become very confusing – simply because there are so many different types of investments and individual investments to choose from. This is where your strategy, combined with your risk tolerance and investment style all come into play.

If you are new to investments, work closely with a financial planner before making any investments. They will help you develop an investment strategy that will not only fall within the bounds of your risk tolerance and your investment style, but will also help you achieve your financial goals.

Never invest money without having a goal and a strategy for reaching that goal! This is essential. Nobody hands their money over to anyone without knowing what that money is being used for and when they will get it back! If you don’t have a goal, a plan, or a strategy, that is essentially what you are doing! Always start with a goal and a strategy for reaching that goal!

eBay: The First 10 Years.

Yes, you read that correctly: ten years. eBay was created in September 1995, by a man called Pierre Omidyar, who was living in San Jose. He wanted his site - then called 'AuctionWeb' - to be an online marketplace, and wrote the first code for it in one weekend. It was one of the first websites of its kind in the world. The name 'eBay' comes from the domain Omidyar used for his site. His company's name was Echo Bay, and the 'eBay AuctionWeb' was originally just one part of Echo Bay's website at ebay.com. The first thing ever sold on the site was Omidyar's broken laser pointer, which he got $14 for.

The site quickly became massively popular, as sellers came to list all sorts of odd things and buyers actually bought them. Relying on trust seemed to work remarkably well, and meant that the site could almost be left alone to run itself. The site had been designed from the start to collect a small fee on each sale, and it was this money that Omidyar used to pay for AuctionWeb's expansion. The fees quickly added up to more than his current salary, and so he decided to quit his job and work on the site full-time. It was at this point, in 1996, that he added the feedback facilities, to let buyers and sellers rate each other and make buying and selling safer.

In 1997, Omidyar changed AuctionWeb's - and his company's - name to 'eBay', which is what people had been calling the site for a long time. He began to spend a lot of money on advertising, and had the eBay logo designed. It was in this year that the one-millionth item was sold (it was a toy version of Big Bird from Sesame Street).

Then, in 1998 - the peak of the dotcom boom - eBay became big business, and the investment in Internet businesses at the time allowed it to bring in senior managers and business strategists, who took in public on the stock market. It started to encourage people to sell more than just collectibles, and quickly became a massive site where you could sell anything, large or small. Unlike other sites, though, eBay survived the end of the boom, and is still going strong today.

1999 saw eBay go worldwide, launching sites in the UK, Australia and Germany. eBay bought half.com, an Amazon-like online retailer, in the year 2000 - the same year it introduced Buy it Now - and bought PayPal, an online payment service, in 2002.

Pierre Omidyar has now earned an estimated $3 billion from eBay, and still serves as Chairman of the Board. Oddly enough, he keeps a personal weblog at http://pierre.typepad.com. There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay - that's a lot of laser pointers.

Now that you know the history of eBay, perhaps you'd like to know how it could work for you? Our next email will give you an idea of the possibilities.

Finding Hot Selling Products to Sell

In order to locate products that sell online, we need to understand what people already want to buy. Finding a good choice of idea or product is always accompanied by interfacing the demand for the product in the current market and the level of competition or market share that the product will be having in the long run.

"What should I sell? What products are hot selling? These are the questions most people are trying to find an answer in order for them to make the definite decision. And if we really want to know the answer to this question, our only choice is to do some research. There are all kinds of twists along the road that may lead you to think you have a high-demand idea. We must be able to understand and satisfy the need, wants and expectations of our customers on a certain product that they're trying to buy. This three are called the basic needs or minimum requirements in a purchase. Needs are the basic reasons or the minimum requirements consumers are looking for in a product or service. They are called the qualifying or "gatekeeper" dimensions in a purchase. Wants are the determining dimensions among many choices. Expectations, on the other hand, are values or intangibles associated with a product or service. Expectations are actually part of "wants" but they become extremely important when products or services are not differentiated.

For example, in reading a logic book, university students look for the following: Relevant logic concepts use of simple language, easy to understand and affordable prices. These similar ideas can be applied to Internet Sales as well. After all, the Internet is just another place to sell products. The basic concept of demand is the same there as it is anywhere else, and has been all the time.

Now, the second thing that must be considered in finding "hot" products to sell are the level of competition or the market shares do your product will have. Market share or level of competition means the ratio of your brand sales versus the total market sales. While companies would naturally define its target competitors, it is actually the consumers who ultimately decide the competitive frame, or the list related products or services that consumers consider when exercising their purchasing power. We must therefore choose the market segment where we can have a potential leadership or at least a strong challenger role. Because the overriding objective of getting into this business is not just to satisfy the needs and wants of our customers but to do so profitably better than his competition. Otherwise, our competition will end up satisfying the customers better than our own interest.

Third factor to be considered in finding hot selling products is finding out the general interest level about the product. General interest in a product helps us to gauge where our demand and competition numbers fall into the big picture. Simply saying, if there isn't much demand for the product, and there isn't much competition, it would seem that it might not be good a good put up for sale. But the research doesn't stop here; there is one last thing to be considered to exactly find the hot selling products that you've been looking for. We must also learn how others are advertising those products. If there are a good number of them doing so, it may mean that it's a good product to get into. Coming to the last phase of the process is analyzing and evaluating all the information that has been collected. We have to look at all of the data we have collected on demand, competition, and advertising, and make decision as how they all balance out.

And here are several factors or aspects that must be measured: (a) not enough demand means not enough people are going to buy (b) too much competition means not enough of a profit to go around (c) too much advertising drives up the price of pay per click ads, and competition as well (d) not enough general interest, combined with low demand, means there may not be a good market even if there is competition trying to make the sales.

What Is Your Investment Style?

Knowing what your risk tolerance and investment style are will help you choose investments more wisely. While there are many different types of investments that one can make, there are really only three specific investment styles – and those three styles tie in with your risk tolerance. The three investment styles are conservative, moderate, and aggressive.

Naturally, if you find that you have a low tolerance for risk, your investment style will most likely be conservative or moderate at best. If you have a high tolerance for risk, you will most likely be a moderate or aggressive investor. At the same time, your financial goals will also determine what style of investing you use.

If you are saving for retirement in your early twenties, you should use a conservative or moderate style of investing – but if you are trying to get together the funds to buy a home in the next year or two, you would want to use an aggressive style.

Conservative investors want to maintain their initial investment. In other words, if they invest $5000 they want to be sure that they will get their initial $5000 back. This type of investor usually invests in common stocks and bonds and short term money market accounts.

An interest earning savings account is very common for conservative investors.
A moderate investor usually invests much like a conservative investor, but will use a portion of their investment funds for higher risk investments. Many moderate investors invest 50% of their investment funds in safe or conservative investments, and invest the remainder in riskier investments.

An aggressive investor is willing to take risks that other investors won’t take. They invest higher amounts of money in riskier ventures in the hopes of achieving larger returns – either over time or in a short amount of time. Aggressive investors often have all or most of their investment funds tied up in the stock market.

Again, determining what style of investing you will use will be determined by your financial goals and your risk tolerance. No matter what type of investing you do, however, you should carefully research that investment. Never invest without having all of the facts!

Why Should I Make a Budget?

You say you know where your money goes and you don’t need it all written down to keep up with it? I issue you this challenge. Keep track of every penny you spend for one month and I do mean every penny.

You will be shocked at what the itty-bitty expenses add up to. Take the total you spent on just one unnecessary item for the month, multiply it by 12 for months in a year and multiply the result by 5 to represent 5 years.

That is how much you could have saved AND drawn interest on in just five years. That, my friend, is the very reason all of us need a budget.

If we can get control of the small expenses that really don’t matter to the overall scheme of our lives, we can enjoy financial success.

The little things really do count. Cutting what you spend on lunch from five dollars a day to three dollars a day on every work day in a five day work week saves $10 a week… $40 a month… $480 a year… $2400 in five years….plus interest.

See what I mean… it really IS the little things and you still eat lunch everyday AND that was only one place to save money in your daily living without doing without one thing you really need. There are a lot of places to cut expenses if you look for them.

Set some specific long term and short term goals. There are no wrong answers here. If it’s important to you, then it’s important period.

If you want to be able to make a down payment on a house, start a college fund for your kids, buy a sports car, take a vacation to Aruba… anything… then that is your goal and your reason to get a handle on your financial situation now.

SEO Considerations

Search engine optimization (SEO) means developing Web pages so that they win top ranking on the search engines for selected keyword phrases. SEO considerations Quality. The quality of your Web site affects the directory editor's evaluation of your submission. "Quality" refers to utility or usefulness and comprehensiveness. Terrific Web sites are favorably reviewed and may even get "extra credit" in the rankings by being selected as "editor's choice." The quality will also influence other Web masters’ decisions to link to your site, which affects “popularity” (see below). Title. The title is one of the most important factors in your site's eventual search engine ranking. Because directory search engines such as Yahoo! only search through the title, description, and URL you submit, having important keywords in your title is critical. Description. The meta description tag must speak convincingly to the search engine user and must include key words and phrases. Content. For search engines that index your page using an automated process, such as AltaVista, Inktomi, AllTheWeb, Teoma, and Google, the content is critical. The ultimate example of a Web page with good content would be a page from an encyclopedia. The content must be brief, focused, and internally consistent. Optimization. Optimization fine-tuning the code on your page to help you win for specific searches, using Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI). Popularity. Popularity is a term used to describe search engines' measurement of your site's importance to the Web community. It factors in the number, quality, and type of Web pages that include links back to your page. Google has a branded version of popularity it calls PageRank. Links to your Web site increase your “popularity” and offer search engine spiders or bots more opportunities to index your page.

Where to apply for a Merchant Account

The following are payment gateways that you can use to process your payments. We are not responsible for the services they offer. The values of rates and fees may differ.
This is an example for the payment gate away :

Real-time solution price : None
Gateway fee: None
Monthly minimum:None
Rate:2.9%
Trans. fee:$0.30
Tech support fee:None
Options:Visa, MC, Dicover, AMEX
Merchant account:Selected countries

Merchant Account

What is a Merchant Account?

A merchant account is simply a relationship between a retailer and a merchant bank that enables retailers to accept web-based credit card payments from their customers. This is the account into which a Merchant Account Provider deposits payments into your business checking account from the transactions made online. To qualify for a merchant account, retailers must meet the bank's requirements.
Do I qualify for a merchant account? Merchant account providers require merchants to meet certain requirements for opening an account, requirements that often are particularly strict for e-commerce businesses. In general, the riskier the provider deems your business, the more difficult it will be to open an account and set up your web site for e-commerce.
What basic requirements will you have to meet? To process credit cards online, you need an Internet merchant account. This is the account into which a merchant account provider deposits payments made through your web site. All business owners who plan to process credit cards must have a merchant account.
Requirements for obtaining a Merchant Account:
Almost every merchant account provider maintains the following basic requirements for opening a merchant account:

• Have a web site.


• Provide your business name or Doing Business As (DBA) name.


• Clearly display your return policy.


• Have a U.S. checking account.


• Have a U.S. postal mailing address for the checking account.


• Not be in active bankruptcy.



• Not have been convicted of credit card fraud or a related felony.


• Not appear on the Terminated Merchant File List or MATCH file.

The MATCH file is analogous to a credit-reporting agency. It is a file maintained by the credit card associations and contains information about businesses that have failed to handle their merchant processing responsibilities. You must work with the company that originally placed you on MATCH to get your named removed. You cannot get approved for a merchant account if your name is on the MATCH list.

These are the minimum requirements. Merchant Account Providers often ask for more extensive information and documentation in addition to that listed above especially for merchants expecting more than $5,000 per month sales volume. They may require you to:

• Provide tax returns.


• If these are not available, you might be asked for proof of corporation,
  partnership, limited liability, or nonprofit status.


• Submit to a site review and answer questions about the company business
  plan. * Have good or excellent credit.


• Provide trade references.

Why is it so difficult for e-commerce businesses to get a merchant account in comparison with a brick-and-mortar business?

In one word: risk. Transactions conducted via the internet are considered by merchant account providers to be by their very nature riskier than 'normal' transactions:

• Credit risk. This is the risk the merchant
  account provider takes with respect to the amounts you, as a merchant,
  might owe the bank in the future. For new businesses with, for example,
  $5,000 in charges per month, this risk will be relatively low. Nevertheless,
  personal credit history figures bly into the decision-making process
  for some merchant account providers.



• Fraud risk. This is the risk of incurring chargebacks
  due to the fraudulent use of credit cards. Fraud risk is the greatest
  concern for merchant account providers. As described above, if the customer
  contests a charge, the customer's bank is required to refund the money
  it has fronted to the merchant. The customer's bank passes this loss on
  to the merchant account provider, which passes it on to the merchant.
  Newer businesses and certain types of products are considered to be at
  greater risk for fraud.


• Contingent liability risk. This includes not
  only fraud but risks associated with unforeseen consequences of marketing.
  Businesses that offer a lifetime service guarantee present a large contingent
  liability risk because if they should go out of business, the merchant
  account provider could be held liable.


• Length of time in business. The longer you
  have been in business, the better off you will be when applying for a
  merchant account.


• Type of product. Retail sales is generally
  considered less risky than sales of intangible products such as downloadable
  videos or e-zine subscriptions.



• Cost of items or volume of sales. High-volume
  sales or sales of big-ticket items are generally considered riskier by
  merchant account providers. The more money you make per month, the bigger
  the credit risk for the merchant account provider.


• Personal credit history. Some providers consider
  this to be the most important factor when considering an application.
  This is not universally true, however. Many merchant account providers
  consider risks associated with fraud and contingent liability to far outweigh
  personal credit history. Credit history takes on added importance with
  time, however, as your business increases in sales volume.


• Tax returns. The merchant account provider
  may look at tax returns and other financial documents for proof of financial
  responsibility. Individuals with higher incomes are considered less risky
  because they are less likely to file for bankruptcy if the business fails.

What are the common fees and costs from any merchant account provider:

Internet discount rate.
An Internet discount rate is a fixed percentage taken from every online transaction, usually two to three percent. The internet rate will generally be higher than card-swipe rates, the rate charged when the merchant can swipe the customer's card through a traditional point-of-sale (POS) terminal. The internet discount rate runs at a higher rate because it's not face-to-face and is a riskier proposition for the bank who provides the merchant account.

Transaction fee.
Merchant Account Providers typically have fixed charges and It works like this. On a $100 sale, if the discount rate was 2.39%, $2.39 would be deducted from a $100 sale. There is a transaction fee charged to each order and we'll use 30 cents is this example. Therefore, on the $100 sale, the processor would keep $2.69 , giving you, the merchant a net of $97.31. Note, some banks deduct this fee at time of sale, while most deduct it as a total of charges at the end of each month. Visa & MasterCard and the processor take a fee for every transaction.

Monthly fees and minimums.
There is a variety of charges levied on a monthly basis by the bank, including a monthly statement fee and/or a monthly minimum, excess usage fees, and others.

Chargebacks.
Your merchant account provider may holdback, or reserve, a percentage of your transaction receipts to cover any contested charges. A chargeback is charged to a merchant when a consumer claims their card has been charged and the merchant has not delivered the product or performed the service. A chargeback fee is NOT charged when a merchant processes a return of a charge to a consumer.

Reserve.
If your business is considered high-risk, you may have to pay what's called a reserve. The reserve is usually calculated as a percentage of the monthly credit card volume. It is built up over time and held by the bank in escrow to offset unexpected chargebacks.

The application process may seem daunting, but keep in mind, the better the merchant account provider understands your business, the better the relationship is likely to be.

Source: rumler.com
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