Monday, September 10, 2007

What to Sell on the Internet?

The phenomenal growth of ecommerce lures more and more people to dream about starting an online business. The question that bothers many and restrains them from realizing their dream is what to sell on the Internet.

If you have spent sometime on the Internet trying to figure out what product or service you should choose to sell online, you must have noticed that people are selling every conceivable product and service over the Internet. Contrary to popular belief, even big ticket items are also selling on the Internet very well. But, nevertheless, it is not very easy for a newbie to find a product rather quickly and start marketing online.

If you are having difficulty in finding a good tangible product to market on the Internet or afraid to manage all the hassles of shipping and handling you may seriously consider selling information online.

According to data, most people browse through the Internet in search of some sorts of information that they require. Survey conducted by Neilsen Media Research shows that Books and Information Category tops the highest selling product and service on the Internet with a significant margin in comparison to other categories. This makes information a natural product for sale on the Internet. Information sells online in the formats of e-books, articles, reports, data, whitepapers etc. If you have expertise in any specific field, you may consider selling your ideas in one of the mentioned format. Check out Clickbanks marketplace to get a good idea what people are selling. You will be truly amazed by the scope of ideas!

Although, information is the most sought after product on the Internet; that does not mean it is an easy-to-sell product. For one thing there are tons of free information available on the Internet, and the second is people on the Internet are not very willing to pay for information. This is the reason why you have to be very careful in choosing the right product to market online.

People will buy your information product, if it is:

- A particular knowledge that they crave

- It makes their life easier, i.e. saves time

- It teaches them some subject that they would like to learn.

Which are the products that fall in these categories?

Expert advises, tips and ideas in a niche field:

Body building tips, dieting secrets, dating ideas, stock trading secrets, Internet marketing ideas are examples of this category.

Trend forecasts:

Businesses spend fortunes to have a better understanding of specific trends. If you have enough expertise to predict a trend of a specific field, i.e. high technology, stock market, Internet, etc., you may have a comfortable living by selling newsletter and whitepapers. The hard part is: you have to prove that you are really an expert in this field.

Courses:

Thanks to Internet, more and more people are willing to learn different subjects from the comfort of their work and home. If you have enough knowledge of a particular subject, create an online course and market it through Internet.

Surveys and data:

Business bases on various marketing, demographic, sales and other data. You may collect those data from various sources and by conducting your own online surveys. This also requires enough knowledge of a specific business field and their requirement.

Research and Analysis:

People are often ready to pay for research and analysis information of their fields because, in general, this saves their own time. That is why subscription based stocks and other research websites are thriving on the Internet.

There are number of other reasons why you should consider selling information on the Internet.

Audience size

Millions of people from all over the world are browsing through the Internet in any given time. Your information product can be exposed to a very large number of prospective buyers in no time.

Easy to develop

Information products like reports and e-books are fairly easy to create. All you need is the knowledge of the field, a little determination and enough time to spend on it.

Low cost and low over head

You can create and market a report for less than US $100. You can take advantage of numbers of free marketing tools available on the Internet. You can even keep your overhead low by doing things all by yourself.

You can start part time

This is one business you can start from shoestring and spending only couple of hours a day. You can keep your job until you feel comfortable with the earning you generate through your online endeavor.

Conduct business from anywhere

The best thing about this business is you can do it from anywhere. You are no longer confined to a specific geographical region. While developing your information product keep in mind the following aspects:

- Does this product satisfy a need or does it solve a problem?

- Is their enough value in it?

- Is it a better product than others available on the Internet?

- Is this product easy to market to your chosen market segment?

The last question is very important as the sheer size of Internet makes it virtually impossible to focus on it as a whole. You must segment your market as clearly and as specifically as possible to become a successful Internet marketer.

Once you finished developing your product, initially, try selling your product through a marketplace similar to Clickbank. This will allow you to setup your online business fairly quick. You will not need a merchant account of your own and you can build your affiliate program with an ease.

Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present CEO of Rusbiz.com a Global B2B Exchange with solutions to create e-catalog, Web store, business process management and other features to run a business online. You can read various articles written by Nowshade Kabir at http://ezine.rusbiz.com.

Something About California Loan Rates

According to the majority of ads for California loan rates, rates are at an all time low. Of course, they would say that, now wouldn't they! However, it is true; California loan rates are low at this time. California loan rates seemed to have been quite low than what we usually find this season.

For conforming California loan rates, interest is running between 6.125% and 6.250%. The annual percentage rates are 7.390% down to 6.363%. (The lower interest rate carries the higher APR.) These California loan rates apply to loans equal to or less than $417,000.00 and go up to a period of 30 years fixed.

For jumbo California loan rates, interest is running between 5.750% and 6.375%. The annual percentage rates are 7.282% down to 6.479%. (The lower interest rate carries the higher APR.) These California loan rates apply to loans greater than $417,000.00.

There are also low down payment mortgages associated with low California loan rates. A low down payment mortgage rate, 30 year fixed, can range from 0% to 20% and carry an interest rate of 6.875% (7.049% APR) to 6.250% (6.367% APR). While a 5 year ARM carries interest rates as follows: with a down payment of 0% (7.627% APR) to 20% (7.174% APR).

While all these California loan rates sound good, beware. The Federal Government says that lenders have been making too many risky loans and have attempted to rein them in by raising mortgage rates. But it is thought that this arrangement will only be a temporary fix' and that mortgage rates will drop again. So you may yet have time to get a good California loan rate before lenders renege on some of their risky loan deals or decide to tighten up their underwriting rules, but you may not have much time. In the meantime, mortgage rates go up and down almost daily---and that can cost you plenty!

This should motivate you to speed your mortgage application through as quickly as possible. You will have a better chance at the home you really want if you can get your loan approved quickly. Because, as you know, the lower the interest rates, the more house you can afford to purchase. With a lower California loan rate, you might be able to afford a home that costs $250,000.00 as opposed to a home you would have to settle for at $200,000.00. Take advantage of the lower interest rates now before it all changes.

Copyright (c) 2006 Darren Dunner

Darren Dunner is the author of this article. Find more information about the same at www.theabclending.com and www.iloanresource.com

The Secret Of Making Money In The Stock Market

You may have wondered if there are people out there who consistently make money from the stock market. And yes, there are people out there who are consistently making money from the stock market because if they were not making money from market they would not be there and the markets would not be there too. These people are no smarter than you. They do not work any harder and neither are they lucky than you.

But, unlike you, they never seem to worry about having money because they know one or two secrets of making money in the stock market. You see most people miss the big idea here. They think it takes a lot of money to make a lot of money. But that is not how it is done. The idea is to make pennies consistently and to use them to build vast personal fortunes. The stock market is a proven wealth builder and can and should benefit all participants. It is only fair that each one of us should be entitled to a piece of the action.

One thing these traders know is that the market is not an issue of trial and error but a fully quantifiable market by any fundamental Mathematics. You see, when we went to school we learn about the Standard Deviation in probability and statistics. This Standard Deviation is Mathematics and is quantifiable in modern science. Standard deviation was introduced by Mathematician Karl Pearson in 1893 although the idea was by then nearly a century old. This is the single most important idea that should explains all those mysteries, myths and legends you hear of in stock market.

Everything on this planet has properties and, or, characteristics. A stock, just like you and me, has properties and these properties are quantified by calculating the Standard Deviation of the stock. It varies from stock to stock. Our brains are lazy and what we can not understand we turn to astrology which gives our brains a rest. Rather than use planets in signs of the zodiac and financial astrology, or imagining of the latest rumors, invest that time in the study of probability and statistics. If its not you to study, who should? Probability and Statistics is that study that has to do with tossing a coin to get a tail or a head. And as simple as it may sound, tossing a coin and getting a head for only two consecutive times is an extremely very difficulty thing contrary to what our lazy brains would want us to believe.

Standard Deviation is all about vibrations. Vibrations is like in music, vibrations in a string, water vibrations, earthquake vibrations, light and electromagnetic vibrations. The stock market is like vibrations too. For the price to move it must vibrate. The stock spends a lot of time vibrating in a neutral sideway range which unfortunately we do not like. We want the stock to go to the roof the next day after we have bought it. Vibrations are waves. Waves have crests and troughs and travels from one price to another. One crest is often followed by a second crest which is followed by a third crest and so on and so forth. Every crest is separated by a trough to create an alternating pattern of crest and troughs.

Like a bouncing tennis ball, a lower bounce than the previous bounce means the ball is coming to a halt. In the stock market, strength is quantified by series of crests where each crest exceeds the highest point of the previous crest and weakness by series of troughs where each trough goes lower than the lowest point of the previous trough.

People out there will tell you to trade in the direction of trend and they go further to say getting the trend is easy : do this and that. Contrary to the believe that determining the stock's trend is easy, in real time this is very difficulty and you can not have a probability of 100%, otherwise each one of us would be a winner in the market. Some investment advisers and the media are either oblivious and always bullish or immoral, merely giving the public what it wants. It s only a question of, is it this group of stocks or that group, this sector or that sector?

Back to crests and troughs. Whenever two crests meet up with one another they produce a bigger crest which is constructive, and, whenever a crest and a trough meet one another they tend to cancel each other producing a smaller trough or crest which is destructive. If you have ever wondered why carpenters saw the wood in the directions of the grains rather than up against the grains, wonder no more - these guys find it easier and the bundles they produce are sliced clearly leaving a smooth surface with minimum defects.

A bigger crest or trough is made up of smaller troughs and crests. How many of the smaller ones makes the bigger trough and crest is the puzzle that will make our lazy brains consult astrology. Lets leave that as it is because the market moves yoyo, so we comfort ourselves.

The real forces that move the markets are the moving averages. They are a measure of accumulation of strength and weakness over time due to news, economic growth reports, manipulation, fear and greed. There are many moving averages just as there are different types of traders. It is through the dynamics of the moving averages that there are crests and troughs. The bad thing about these moving averages is that they only tell us about what happened rather than what is happing.

One of the most successful trading tool since time immemorial is multiple moving averages crossover, and the acceleration in all averages is either positive in all averages or negative in all averages that you are using. If the acceleration in averages is positive, you go long, and if the acceleration is negative, you go short. This really is multiple time frame where you trade using the shorter trend but only if the longer trend supports it.

Good trading requires you to have safety measures upfront. Always make sure that every trading position that you open has a corresponding stop loss order, repeat, every position that you open has a corresponding stop loss order. I can repeat this until breakfast tomorrow. Trading without stop loss orders is like driving an automobile with faulty breaking system. Every now and then check to see if your stop loss orders are still active. If your broker's system fails, when it come back it may come without your stop loss orders. These stops are not free. It is among those fees that should keep your broker in business and you should grandly pay him even if your stops are rarely used. And why not? And talking about brokers, get yourself a good and inexpensive broker. There are many out there. A broker who charges more than $1.0 per 100 shares of stock is expensive and if you are paying more than that, then you will develop fear of exiting trades as you contemplates the broker's commission you are to incur. A good broker should embrace modern technology and you should promote them because if its not you, then who? And never get married into certain stocks. A company and its stock are two very different things. A stock that is not making money for you is not a thing. Throw it to the dogs.

The Author's website The Secret of Making Money in the Stock Market is designed to help beginners and average traders make money in the Stock Market. In view of the above I have considered only proven mathematical logics. I now shall invite you to join me here as I attempt to intermarry all these logics and predict profitable market directions with Precision. And if you have been wondering if there are people out there who consistently make money from the stock market, wonder no more.

Forex Trading - Combine Indicators Correctly & Watch Your Profits Soar

If you want to trade forex markets you need to have a forex trading strategy that generates trading signals and the fact is, most novice traders and many so called pros fail to do it correctly.

Here we will look at 3 simple steps that if followed, could see your forex trading profits soar and lead you to long term currency trading success so here they are.

1. Identification of the Opportunity

First of all, you need to identify the trading opportunity and for this there is no better way than using good old fashioned trend lines, to indicate areas of support and resistance.

My view is that trend lines with the back up of moving averages and Bollinger Bands are all you need.

Many traders make the mistake of then buying into resistance and selling into support, but this simply means you are relying on hope and if you hope a level holds you will lose.

You need to get the odds on your side!

You need to time your trading signals in any investment market and that includes forex trading, with indicators that will allow you to see shifts in price momentum, that support your view of market direction.

2. Entry to the trade

What you ideally want is to get confirmation of either a break of support or resistance to go with the break or a waning of price momentum, to indicate the levels will hold.

If you dont trade with price momentum backing you up you will lose as you cannot get the odds in your favour and trading is an odds game.

What are good indicators to use well there are two that are great and should be looked at by any forex trader looking to make consistent profits and they are:

The relative strength index ( RSI ) and the stochastic quite simply, their the best timing indicators you can get there simple to understand and apply and if used correctly, you will increase your odds of success dramatically.

We have covered these articles in other articles so check them out.

3. Exiting the market

If you are exiting the market, then the same indicators above will give you signals when you reach your target levels and you can uuse some others to here are our favourites

We also like to use the ADX Line and use a move above 40% and turn down to take profits.

In a good sustained up trend, you can use surges outside of the top Bollinger band to bank profits, or if prices dip and penetrate the midline exit the trade.

One of the hardest parts of FX trading

Is deciding on when to take profits Many traders like to trail up stops closely to get taken out of the market, but I personally favour working with a target and moving stops up very slowly its all down to individual preference you dont want to be stopped out to soon and you want to make as much as you can.

Experiment with the above indicators and take your time to get a strategy that suits your personality and forex trading strategy.

There are other indicators of course in addition to the ones we have outlined above but you should seriously consider these first in your forex trading, as they can get the odds in your favour and lead you to currency trading success.

GRAB 3 X FREE TRADER & FREE TRADER PROFITS NEWSLETTER

On all aspects of becoming a profitable trader including features, downloads and some critical FREE Trader PDF's and more FREE Forex Education visit our website at http://www.net-planet.org/index.html

Buying Into Japanese and German Exporters

With the euro down nearly 15% this year and at a two-year low against the U.S. dollar, the worlds largest exporting nation is worth a good look. So is another country that has thriving exports in spite of a stronger currency. Were talking about Japan and Germany, respectively, the worlds second- and third-largest economies.

The top lines at leading German industrial companies are rolling in with impressive numbers for an almost zero-growth economy. Quarterly sales at Siemens rose 13%, the fastest since 2003. BMWs sales rose by 11% in the third quarter, although high raw-material costs and pricing pressure resulted in weak net profits. A bright spot is Asia, where BMW expects to sell 150,000 cars per year by 2008.

Overall, German exports are up for the third-straight month and sales to countries outside of the European Union rose 18% annually from a year earlier. Clearly, the Germans are good at making stuff and selling it to the world, and the weaker euro is helping spur growth. Germanys DAX stock index is taking notice and is up nearly 20% year-to-date.

Meanwhile, U.S. exports are up a paltry 2% since 2000. Although exports to China are up 35% during this same period, Americans are now buying seven times more from China than we are selling to them. A good reason why is that, according to research by Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach, consumer spending represents 71% of Americas gross domestic product. The figure is 42% for China and 55% for Japan.

Speaking of Japan, the aftermath of the financial bubble has obscured the fact that it too, remains an exporting powerhouse, despite a currency that has risen more than 20% since 2002 and 13% this year alone. Just look at Japans current account surpluses over the past three years: $113 billion in 2002, $136 billion in 2003 and $172 billion in 2004. China is a major market, and despite political difficulties, bilateral trade between China and Japan now exceeds trade between Japan and America.

A majority of Japans exports are manufactured goods and components. Fifty percent of its exports to China in 2004 were electrical equipment and machinery, and its top exports to the world include autos, electronic components, optical instruments, imaging equipment and computer parts.

Much is made over Chinas huge trade imbalance with America, which reached $126 billion in the first eight months of this year. No doubt a sizable share of Chinese exports to America are chock full of Japanese components. While some of these components were made in offshore facilities, many were made in Japan, which has been able to hold on to its industrial base better than America.

How do they do it? First, the Japanese are continually moving up the value-added curve and are careful to keep the R&D and manufacturing of sophisticated components close to home, while outsourcing the low-end to low-wage countries.

Secondly, even though Chinas wages are about 5% of Japans, factory automation has lessened the importance of labor costs. For advanced high tech products, it accounts for only 10% to 15% of total costs. Having manufacturing closer to home also shortens new product lead times and increases cooperation between R&D and production teams leading to a crucial edge in staying ahead of its nimble competitors. Supply lines of 2,000 miles can be problematic.

Perhaps most important, there is the critical issue of protecting intellectual capital. Having research, development and production closer to headquarters better protects proprietary technologies.

Canon, Sharp, Hitachi, NEC and Toyota are all good plays on Japans manufacturing edge, while Sony will continue to lag until it boosts its R&D and catches up in product development.

The iShares MSCI Japan Index exchange-trade fund is an attractive option, since it has about 50% exposure to Japans manufacturing sector with an annual expense ratio of only 0.59%. Similarly in Germany, the iShares MSCI Germany Index is loaded with that countrys top exporters and would be an excellent proxy for overall German export growth.

Carl Delfeld is head of the global advisory firm Chartwell Partners and editor of the the "Asia-Pacific Growth" newsletter. He served on the executive board of the Asian Development Bank and is the author of "The New Global Investor." For more information go to http://www.chartwellasia.com or call 877-221-1496.