Saving on Your Hosting Bill with Squidoo Lenses

Hosting can cost from $1 to over $100, though the average price is usually less than $20. Sound cheap? Well, it is until you multiply that number by 100 or even 1,000. And, if you're going to be a serious Internet marketer, eventually, you will have that many sites in your repertoire. This is why it's important to consider free hosting alternatives. One of the best is Squidoo.

What is Squidoo? Squidoo is a powerful Web 2.0 site that allows people to create their own blogs, (also known as lenses). There is no charge for hosting, and virtually no limit to how many lenses can be created. Additionally, Squidoo participates in Adsense revenue-sharing. This means that they will allow you to keep revenue from your Adsense clicks a certain percentage of the time. The exact percentage will depend on what is being promoted.

So, what's the best way to create a money-making Squidoo lens? Well, first make sure you can write solid articles surrounding whatever your official website or affiliate program is about. Don't fall into the temptation to just post a bunch of advertisements on your lens. Readers will only be put off by your lens and not click on any ads, whether they are your own links or Adsense. It's much better to provide valuable information that will build up interest to your product or service rather than advertise it outright.

Anyway, as you are writing your articles, don't forget that you want to try and make secondary income from Adsense, should your reader not click on any of your links. To do this you will need to incorporate keywords that Adsense bots will pick up. Try to use more popular keywords, since this will net you more money. In fact, if you can, consider buying a list containing the most expensive Adsense keywords. You should be able to find these easily by doing a basic search on Google or another search engine. Once you get it, find the keywords that best match what you're talking about and use them 2 to 6 percent of the time throughout your text. If you do things right, the more expensive keywords will get integrated into your lens. Granted, you won't always get the revenue, but at least when you do, you can be assured that it will be high.

Okay now, at this point many Adsense gurus might feel uncomfortable at the thought of sharing any revenue with another company. They may feel that it's better to just get a regular hosting account for their blogs than to go that route. Well, again, there's still the issue of the numbers game if you do massive Internet marketing. But there's another issue at stake presence. Squidoo is already indexed by search engines, and has a high page rank. This means that any lenses produced on their network are more likely to get noticed by search engines than a new, no-name website. And for newbies who may not know how to rank high on their own, this is a major advantage that can't be overlooked.

In conclusion, Squidoo is the best place to turn if you're looking for an affordable way to create a blog or series of blogs. There are no recurring charges, but you will have to share any Adsense revenue you make. This is a disadvantage, but Squidoo's popularity in search engine listings should overcome it at least for the newbie.

About the Author

The 12 part E-course walks you through step by step on how to get the traffic coming to your site. This is traffic that you just put your time into, you don't have to spend any money for it. Find out more at www.newwebtraffic.com

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Decreasing Electricity Costs With PrePaid Electricity Meters

Last year (2008) was a tough year for South African households.As interest rates rose 7 times, mortgage bonds killed excess cash in household budgets.Adding to the problems, petrol prices sawed making an already difficult situation even harder.

Adding to the problems South Africans were faced with "load shedding" power failures to decrease the load on the utility companies which couldn't cope anymore with the high demand on the infrastructure.

Hot on the heels of the "load shedding" debacle, South Africans received the news that Electricity Prices will have to be increased.

Depending on area, utility prices were hiked between 14% and 20% in various areas to upgrade infrastructure, once again placing additional financial pressure on households.

Utility companies have stated that increases are not flat rate but per usage.In other words, the more you use the higher tariffs you pay.For this they created prices breaks per usage.This in turn created a situation where the household has become responsible for using less electricity in order to avoid the higher bracket tariff rates.But how would a household use less, when they only find out how much they use when the bill arrives?At which point it is of course too late to turn back the clock and reduce usage.

Both households and commercial properties need the use of a system that can help them monitor consumption on an ongoing-basis during the month.Greater transparency into ongoing consumption creates greater awareness with which people can take steps to cut usage and conserve in order to reduce consumption before the bill arrives.

For this reason, many residential houses, landlords with tenants and commercial premises have started to use secondary prepaid meters.Such meters enable daily monitoring of use by way of a digital display.When one sees the usage daily, one can take action based on this input.One can replace old devices, trying new devices that are more electricity efficient, switch off lights when and where these are not necessary, etc.

Furthermore, there is no longer a need to budget for electricity usage.Once the usage is prepaid, one can reduce the usage for that budget to last longer.It helps both with budgets and especially with better cash flow in households.

Since the increases in electricity tariffs more tenants both residential and commercial are asking landlords to install secondary meters simply for monitoring purposes.Once installed a very interesting phenomena has been found.Many users of prepaid electricity meters significantly change the electricity usage habits.

Electrical heaters are replaced with cheaper heaters that use gas, geyser timers are installed.Geysers are one of the largest contributors to domestic electricity bills.Timers enable users to switch on their geyser for only a few hours in the day during periods when hot water is required.Other people are buying electricity saving light bulbs, they are far more expensive than normal light bulbs but can cut 1000's in the electricity bill for many months.

In summary, it was found that prepaid electricity was once considered a bad thing because you have to dish out the money in advance, proved to be extremely useful when reducing the use of electricity and therefore the month electricity bill.

One of the major barriers to people and commercial properties using prepaid electricity was payment habit.Why pay in advance, when you can deal with it later?However, since the increases in electricity tariffs, this barrier has been lowered.Consumers that were once unhappy about prepaying for electricity are now happy that prepaid meters have been installed.They never thought they could save so much in electricity until they started monitoring their own use.

About the Author

Sean Wheller is the founder of www.

PrePaidMeters.co.za, a PrePaid Metering provider in South Africa, dedicated to create efficiency in metering electricity and water for the benefit of both tenants and landlords.

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A Comprehensive Guide To Sourcing Venues

In a commercial climate where everything is being outsourced, conference and meeting facilities are no exception. Whether that be a small company wishing to raise their image for an important sales meeting or a multi-national wishing to host an internal conference, sourcing the correct venue is essential.

Previously it was commonplace for event co-ordinators to be employed within companies with the express responsibility of sourcing venues, making travel arrangements and hotel booking. Many companies have now streamlined by restructuring and sourcing venue finding services from third parties as and when needed, which is cost effective as their services are generally more moderate than an annual salary.

The venue sourcing industry covers a multitude of companies. Larger organisations with the highest volume of daily usage will use travel companies who arrange meeting rooms, hotels and travel details. These companies tend to have fixed rates with national hotel chains and have a fixed rate per room which simplifies invoicing and projections.

Although these companies usually have an exclusive contract with the travel companies it tends not to cover events outside of a certain specification. For this an event management company can be sourced who will not only find a suitable venue but will also take responsibility for every detail of the event.

Both of these companies will charge an agreed percentage of the total cost of the booking with the client and will sometimes also charge the venue a similar fee. This can be quite expensive so many companies make use of the many venue finding services on the web who make their revenue from preferential listings for venues.

The list of venues is still comprehensive as they offer venues free basic listings and many of the sites contain all the essential information and links to relevant websites. With preferential venues there are many features including virtual tours. Pre-internet, the venue finding service was previously in a book and accompanied by a CD-rom.

The obvious benefits of these services are that the cost is covered by the venue therefore costs nothing for the client seeking a venue. The only issue being that venues who have not paid the website do not have any specific details, however these can usually be found by pasting the venue name into a search engine.
This is an easy way to a venue if you have a specific destination where the event must be located, as you can just shortlist and visit the locations in one visit.

Preferential listings come into their own on venue finding websites when you are looking at multiple destinations, as a brief scan over the venue details or virtual tour can reveal a destination being suitable or not, hence saving a visit.

When deciding on the right destination and venue many considerations have to be made. Primarily the obvious size and budget requirements, however parking, accommodation and transport links must also be high priorities.

Most venues will operate on the basis of a delegate rate. This is an all-encompassing price per head for each delegate, covering room hire, food, refreshments and AV equipment. It is helpful to remember that this price is usually negotiable as the delegate rates are not transparent, usually incorporating an inflated room hire charge.

It is advisable to always visit your shortlist before booking as it is important to meet the staff you will be working with and get a feeling for the location and facilities. The sourcing of the right venue comes down to matching your requirements to the facilities and services of a venue and these are represented most cost effectively through the venue finding websites.


About the Author

Shaun Parker is a leading event manager

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Real Estate Training Course Tips With Simplified Property Analysis

Before you start making offers, learn how to analyze a deal. Many Investors have multi-page spreadsheets that list the return on investment 15 years down the road. It lists every conceivable expense that could ever incur.

If you need a calculator, it's probably not a deal. If you are running these numbers to tell if it's a deal, it's not a deal. If somebody says, I have a house and the after repaired value is $100k, it needs 10k in work and you can pick it for $50k. That's a deal, right?

Remember most deals are made, not found. This means it wasn't a deal until after the negotiation process. You want to hit home runs, especially on your first deals because you need to make sure there is plenty of profit in the deal. The worst thing you can do is get involved in a marginal deal and get discouraged before you get started.

Get used to analyzing and making offers before you get off the first call. The goal is to get your offer to them and start the negotiation process.

Just starting out? I still want you to see the properties before closing on them but eventually you'll complete the transaction without looking at them just like we do. Don't worry because I have included specific techniques to do the work for you.

Before I make an offer, I need the answers to 2-3 questions.

After Repaired Value: People tell me 'the current value is $___'. This makes no difference if it needs work. We're not basing it on 'as is'; we are basing the value on after repaired value. The first thing I need to know is what's the after repaired value?

Amount of Repairs: What's it going to cost to fix up? This is where you're going to catch a little resistance from people and especially with Realtors because they don't want to commit to a figure. One of the phrases that I use alot is 'just a ball park'.

Potential Rent: If this is a rental type property I'll need to know what kind of cashflow it's going to have to make sure the numbers work at the total cost. I'll need to know if it's a For Sale by Owner, what's their loan balance and are they current on the payments. You're probably thinking that the seller or realtor doesn't know this information or won't tell you but I'll show you in the section on negotiating exactly how to ask those questions and get your offer to them before you get off the phone. I'll show you how to make low offers and not have them hang up on you.

In my market we have to be able to wholesale houses at 70% of appraised value. (This may be different in your market) This includes purchase, repairs and closing costs, so I have to buy the property at 60% - 65% or less.

When running numbers, you always want to use worse case scenarios. For example, if your seller says that the house is worth $80-$85k, you are going to use the $80k. If they tell you it needs $10- $15k in work, you are going to use the $15k. We always figure in the rehab closing cost, so that is the worst case scenario.

If an Investor is paying cash or has their own money, they'll actually make out better. If they also do some of the repairs themselves, they'll make out better. Because we are basing our rehab cost on hiring someone else to do the work and we've already gotten 2-3 estimates on the repairs, we give those to the buyer.


About the Author

For more articles and a 10 part e-course on how to create your own Ultimate Buying and Selling Machine! plus over 50 training audios, simply go to www.LarryGoinsFreeOffer.com where you will gain instant access

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