Power Ideaz

By Pinaki Ghosh

‘Hacking’ is a concept known by most of the people who log on to the internet. Hacking is a crime! By simply punching some codes, one can get a copy of the passwords and then in turn misuse the account that belongs to someone else. These spoofs hamper the safety of the internet users. Generally people wanting to explore the possibilities of getting into someone else’s account indulge themselves in these hacking tactics. But this is also a way of misusing the information. People who indulge in these crimes are known as Hackers. Usually the hackers hack the computers of big companies and leak the important information.  Hackers normally are not differentiated from the crackers, who are the people who get the unauthorized access to any of the restricted computers. The security of the computers is hampered due to the hacking that takes place. Most of your important information is leaked out due to the hackers. If most of your files are deleted or blocked by the hackers, you cannot access your own PC. This is when we end up saying “My PC has been hacked!”
Just as to protect your PC from such cases, you can install the firewall that can help you and protect you from the existing hackers to a certain extent.

I will continue my series on hacking, phishing, viruses and all other online threats, and how to protect yourself. I shall discuss later who ar ethical hackers and how they can be helpful.

By Pinaki Ghosh

More than 9.9 million people have been hit by the cases of the identity thefts in just a matter of year. This too, only in the United States region. This shows the seriousness of the problem. Even though the people are told to take care of their details, most of the times, a minor mistake can get the consumer in trouble. People are mainly advised to change their passwords at regular intervals. Laptops that are stolen also are a source from which the data is misused. Most of the professionals in hacking get the easy way in stealing the information. If one may see the past records, most of the thefts are done by the teens. This may be due to the lavish expenditures and the interests that the people have nowadays. The teens from your own family can be lured in committing this crime.

To protect your family and yourself from getting hit by these scamsters and con men, you can take the following precautions:

For the overall protection of your personal and financial matters, you must try and keep the information to yourself and avoid mailing such details over the net. You can also have a one to one talk with the teens in the family just so that the information does not leak from your boundary.

Try not passing such details from the cyber cafes and the other internet cafes. Keep such matter on your lap top if necessary or on your home PC. If in any case, you have to mail the details, make sure you log off completely. Clear off the SSL slate and the history in any case.

If at all you receive any mails from any companies for your details, take proper care in getting the details of the same, as most of the times this is in just a part of the phishing scams.

If you use you office computers too, there are chances that your information is been jotted down by people looking over your shoulder

Try not shopping over the net in sites that are not secure, as your credit card details are being passed on across the internet. Secure sites should bear a security seal at the bottom (or elsewhere) and the site will be visible even if you type https:// instead of http:// in the address bar with the url of the site.

Also, giving your teenagers credit cards can be risky.

If you are a victim of the Identity theft, do not waste any more time! Inform the police as well as your bank to stop all the transactions that are being done from your cards. If you have any online accounts, change your passwords immediately. Keep your records intact.

By Pinaki Ghosh

To go out and hire your manpower after settling your finances in setting up your office is the big question! Where would you find manpower?

The first step: chalk out
1. Your wants of the exact number of employees and what are the various types of employees for the suitable designations needed for setting up a small office.
2. Write down the duties to be given to each employee which is extremely essential for setting up a small office.
3. The mode of training is also extremely necessary! It is essential even if you are setting up a small office.
4. Decide upon the justified returns for your workers.

Next step: how to get employees
1. Placement agencies–these are private agencies that are skilled in the job of finding the right candidates and at times charge a minimal fee to do so.
2. Online job sites– pretty effective and also a quick way of finding the right employees.
3. Interns— are the college students who will do your work to gain some professional knowledge. You must get in touch with college authorities for this. They will help you out to get interns.
4. Window poster—pretty simple but effective technique of getting employees for a small office.
5. Hiring freelancers– Hiring freelancers is common in the world of internet marketing. You can keep projects low cost, and compare prices and work of several freelancers.

You also have to decide how you want to keep your employees.

1. Service contract— When you hire your employee for a limited or fixed period of time. After the period is over, you may say goodbye to them. You can get fresh faces and new talents at regular intervals by this system. Also you can keep low on the salary part by this arrangement. You can also go in for this system of getting an employee if the nature of your duties is temporary. The drawback is that the employees may lack motivation and attachment for the office; since they know they will be there for just a few days.
2. Permanent employees– These will be under your payroll. Then you will have to face with all HR related and union related issues. But since there is no middleman between you and your employee, you may save on the payments you will be making for compensation/wages/salary. Employees give their best in this system. A raise that is given regularly is what the biggest drawback is in this case!
3. Professional Employer Organizations— You can take the help of these organizations that can supply you with employees. The organization will deal with the HR related headaches and you can be much relieved in these issues. Employees will be under their payroll and will be actually the employees of that organization. The drawback here is that the organization will eventually control your office.

By Pinaki Ghosh

Once you take the plunge into the internet marketing business, mostly your mode of payment would be via the credit cards to make the online payments. It’s not always secure to make online payments through the credit card.

You can follow some of the tips from experts on online credit card safety:

• Truly, encryption technology means online transactions can be much safer than using your card over the phone or by fax.

• But the buying must be done from the secure sites only. A small closed lock symbol towards the lower, right side of the site (Internet Explorer), or an unbroken key on a dark blue background at the bottom of a site (Netscape Navigator assures that the site is protected. It also means that your credit card, and purchase information is scrambled over the net; which means your credit card information is safe. But the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) reports that these symbols can be duped also.

• It’s not safe to pass on your credit or debit card info out via email, nor use it as proof of who you are.

• In case of getting any deals do the needful with only known companies. If it is a little known company, ask for their printed documents for your records.

• Mostly you must pay through a third party between you and the merchant, like Pay Pal, rather than directly giving away your credit/debit card information to the merchant.

• In case of doubts, take strict and swift action. You must not ignore to report to the bank immediately.

• Go through your statements and be sure that the amounts shown are yours. At times it may happen that the business name is different from the brand name, and what looks like an unauthorized transaction, may really be your transaction! Be careful!

• If you’re assured that the amount was not transacted by you report the card as stolen to the company, and also to your bank. Even if you still have the piece of plastic, someone else has the numbers. So it’s stolen, anyway.

• Use complex, alphanumeric (combination of letters and numbers) passwords for online accounts. Do not use your personal information like wife’s name, son or daughter’s name, your own nickname, your car number, your phone number etc. for such accounts. There are chances that whoever is using your account is acquainted to these details too.

• Try using just one card for the transactions.

  By Pinaki Ghosh 
The Idea:
Most of us would want to agree that Paypal is one of the best things that developed in the e-commerce zone. Paypal has a heavy ranking among the most popular sites, and also is an assured form of sending and withdrawing payments between you and the customer. If you do not wish to give your credit card details to the merchant as it may prove to be a risky affair, send your payments through Paypal! Isn’t that beneficial? Paypal stays between you and the vendor and your details remain a secret. People with an email address can easily, and without hassles and on a faster mode receive and send payments online, using the Paypal system. Paypal works on the existing network of bank accounts and the credit cards, to create a global payment solution. Paypal also is a brand acquired by Ebay.
To open an account:
You really do not have to shell out money to open a Paypal account or even send money via Paypal. A person with an email id and a valid credit/debit card can open a Paypal account and from then start receiving and sending money. However, to withdraw or transfer money you need to get verified, which will cost US$1.95, that will be charged on your credit or debit card account.  In your card statement you will receive a 4 digit expanded use number, which you have to use, to get the expanded use process completed. Once you get verified by Paypal, you can use the seal ‘Paypal verifier’ in your site; which gives more confidence to those who will deal with you.
To get the payments done: Paypal is extremely easy and instant. After getting registered for a PayPal account, you need to get the payments done, and also add your credit or debit card to your account, click on the “Send Money” tab, and then enter the email address of the person who will be receiving the payment. Also you may use your PayPal balance or your checking account to fund your payment.
Is it safe?
Paypal takes the help from the SSL technology to keep the information safe. When you complete the payment through the Paypal system, the much risky information like the credit card number, bank account number, is not revealed. Even the receiver does not know about the payments. However as I mentioned earlier about the phishing mails, which get your information and eventually hack your account are a scary thought! You must be careful with such mails and scamsters. The actual Paypal site would never ask for your password etc by sending you mails.

By Pinaki Ghosh
The Blackhat SEOs are the search engine optimizers who repel the illegal means and practices in order to encourage and boost the website rankings in the search engines. It involves methods that break the TOS of all reputed search engines. Cloaking, spamming, keyword & link stuffing, using doorway pages and site hijacking are some of the methods used by black hat SEOs.
The term black hat SEO is exactly the opposite of the White hat SEOs, who then use legal, ethical means for the search optimization. These terms have evolved from the classic western movies, where the cowboy hero is seen wearing a white hat, and the villains, wear on the black hat. Most take the witches from the tales wearing a tall, wide brimmed black hat. Thus, the black hat symbolizes the evil.
To save money employs the Blackhat SEO’s which are also economical. Most take their help to pull them out from some sort of trouble they have stepped into. Blackhat SEOs are known to solve some of the toughest problems with ease. But still, the Blackhat SEOs are never employed by any famous organizations. Blackhat SEOs do not believe in ethics and follow no ethical guidelines. They will give a high rank to a site by methods that are fair or foul. It is however debated that many SEOs who pose to be white hats, are really black hats in disguise. This theory differentiates that the black hats and the white hats live in the same body. Some white hat SEOs who copy paste content of one site into another, and thus create 50 or 100sites, are really Blackhat SEOs; lacking in ethics. A true writer white hat will never create a second site with content of another site.
The sufferers are the search engines, who are deceived and made to list bogus sites above good sites. Next to suffer are the surfers, who have to make up to choose the better sites from the list containing the bad, ugly and the spammer sites.

Pinaki Ghosh

When one adds the website to any of the search engine, it automatically uses a scanning software called ‘spider’ to go through the content of web pages. The so called spider then adds the links to the other pages to read all information on the different pages and join them in a larger database of the search engine. If then there is any need of the information on certain keywords from the search engine, it would help in searching its database and look out for sites offering information on the keywords that are needed. Most search engine have there own crawlers which vary in code from each other, but at the same time, have a similar set of rules which one can then apply to look on the web.
The simplest forms that are used by these crawlers are the HTML codes that are used by the sites and come free from errors. Why make a face if one does not find his site cached by the search engines; the mistake lies in the poor coding of that particular site. It also can mean that the menu system design restricts the technological spiders to follow it. In such a case your site will not be indexed by the search engines.

You can correct by following the ways given below:

(a) Change the menu system to CSS type, text based menu system.
(b) Add a text menu below the web page (as a second menu system).
(c) Update the latest code to a search engine friendly version.
You can also optimize your web page by keeping the following advices in mind:
(i) When it comes to understanding pictures the search engines are useless. They really understand nothing much but only the text names of the pictures. Thus, using the ‘alt tags’ which are text equivalent of the pictures on the site helps.
(ii) Try and make up a site map away connecting from the main page, to let the search engines find out the other pages of your site.
(iii) Never use the same kind of color of the text and background. Also, making the text appear transparent can get you penalized by any of the search engines for using irrelevant ways.
(iv) Try not to use the ‘hidden text’ in your CSS files.
Make use of the traditional techniques like the title, description, metatags, and at the same time some good content in your site; and then be convinced that your page will be cached.

The world of online business through cyberspace has provided people from all over the world the opportunity of connecting and communicating.. www.focusonprosperity.com.au, is an Australia based company offering home based business opportunity. www.focusonprosperity.com.au.  is the business segment of ‘Life path Unlimited’, a company offering products in the personal development and personal growth industry.
As you log in, the company offers an individual-
1) A home based business opportunity with a unique team support.
2) Personal and prosperity development products that are claimed to be the best in the   industry that transforms life.
3) An opportunity to create an executive-level income within 4 months or so, without being involved in selling, convincing, monthly product purchase, any inventory or product delivery.
4) Secrets of business success from leaders in the online marketing industry.
5) Personal one-on-one training that will help the entrepreneurs to establish and grow their Home Based business.
6) A home based business that is positioned for explosive growth over the next 12 months, transforming the life of the individual as well as the people with whom they work with.
The most unique feature that I came across while going through the business plans of the company is the compensation plan that it offers in the direct sales industry. Even after retirement, individuals will still be receiving a residual income. Apart from the aspect of self development, this is one reason why I would recommend this home based business opportunity.

Good Points
The website has a unique page layout. After logging in to the site, a visitor need not wonder where to go and look for the required information for setting up a business. Every bit of necessary information is laid out in the most simple and unsophisticated way, so that even the most ordinary person can avail of all the information that he/she is looking for. The site has been built up in the most user friendly way as possible. It consists of all the top features that a good website should have.
1)      The site has easy readability, with background colors that make the text attractive and pleasing to the eye.
2)      In terms of navigability, the site is unique as the visitors do not have to look for information and be frustrated .Neither do they face any hassles, as everything is laid out before them in the simplest form. They do not have to click here and there for any information or query that they have. The division on Citizen Corps provides the visitors provides all research based information on home based business, which will guide the individual in the decision making process.
3)      The site loads quickly and the visitors do not have to wait for a long time.
4)      There is no dead link on any page, and the layout ensures that if a visitor visits that page he/she should get all the relevant information regarding the business. It also gives the visitor a very clear picture at the first instance whether this is actually what he/she is looking for.
5)      The content is apt, precise and to the point and interesting for the visitors, and provides a vivid description to the visitor what the website is about. It also contains the contact details of entrepreneurs Brad and Sonya, so that apart from the general information that the site presents, visitors can also personally contact them with any other queries related to the home based business that individuals might have.
6)      The site has been created aptly keeping the target audience of prospective home based business owners in mind. It is simple and bold, expressing what the visitors can expect from the site, an exposure to the business by Robert Kiyosaki, a contact page at the bottom for visitors to fill up to get a glimpse into the reviews that would help them to make a choice, and information about the entrepreneurs themselves.
Suggestions for improvement
1.    After you have glanced the home page, you discover that you cannot locate any other link and wonder where to go from there. There is a form below where you have to leave your name, email address and that is the gate pass to the other pages. Here I had two questions that came up in my mind. This form will discourage a majority of visitors to visit the other pages, because nowadays people do not want to leave their email addresses in order to avoid receiving spam. This is why I left a fake name and email address and while I was wondering whether it will block my way; it allowed me inside! Thus you can fool the system and enter the internal pages leaving a bogus name and email identity.

2.    Though there is an excellent support team provided by ‘Life Path Unlimited’, which truly leads individuals to a wide range of options to choose from, a website that contains all information in a comprehensive manner will always be a better choice for individuals who are venturing out for a home based business setup. When a visitor will get all relevant information from a single site, he/she will remain a permanent visitor and customer to that site.

By Pinaki Ghosh

If you have still not heard of Alexa; don’t feel shy, beauause many internet users still are not aware of Alexa. So, what’s Alexa?

It helps in giving rankings to the sites, and is therefore an extremely powerful tool which can compare the traffic of a site to the rest of the web. Alexa a brand owned by the very famous www.Amazon.com, gives ranking to any site with the help of the users participation. It also includes the webmaster services and data services.
To see the ranking of your site you can either log on to http://www.alexa.com, and then type in the name of any site, whose rank you would want to see, or else install the Alexa toolbar on your browser which is much more convenient. After you have installed the Alexa toolbar, you can view the various numbers on the toolbar, as you visit the sites. These numbers are basically the rankings of the sites. The lowest the number, the more visited site it is. Like Yahoo ranks no1, Google no5 and Amazon.com no 14; it means Yahoo is the most visited site on the internet.
Want to know how it works? As you install the Alexa toolbar on the browser, it starts scrutinizing all the sites that you visit; at the same time using the data to rank the sites. Then Alexa casts a vote to that site for the day. However you do not get more votes if you visit the same site several times during the same day. Soon after, It monitors the number of pages of the site you visit, and then adds up the number of pages you visit during the day (again, it does not count the same page twice, if you have visited it twice). The reach is the counting of each view, and the counting of page visits is called page views. Alexa combines these figures and uses the same data for three months to calculate the traffic visiting a site.

By Pinaki Ghosh

To know the importance of the keyword density, we must know the importance of the keywords first. It is a word used to find the similar web pages. It was popularized during the early days of Internet search, as it was not possible to ask natural language questions and find the desired sites. Searches gave the best results if only a few keywords were chosen and searched for. These “keywords” capture the essence of the topic in a question and were likely to be present on all sites listed by the search engine. Many modern search engines have methods for determining which words in a search string are important and are ought to be treated as keywords. Words like articles (a, an, the) and the conjunctions (and, or, but) are not keywords as almost every English-language site on the internet. Searching for these words is a mere waste of time!

Most of the websites present themselves high on the list of the search results by increasing the keyword density. Which means, if the keywords appear frequently on the website, there are chances that the search engines would find your site several times and list them high.

The term keyword density mathematically means the number of times the main keyword would appear in any passage, which can be divided by the total number of words in the passage and then multiplied by 100. Like a 5% keyword density means that the keyword appears 5 times for every 100 words of the passage. 4% - 7% is normally the best ratio of keyword appearance. The keywords should not at one place, and must be spaced out throughout the content. The search engines fine the artificial and unjustified ways in which the search engine optimization takes place, like by increasing keyword density, like repeating keywords one after another spacing them out by commas. Some of the black hats SEOs use techniques like hidden keywords by making the keyword color same as the background color, and increasing keyword density. The search engines penalize anyone using text color very close to the background color. Penalized sites therefore, get a poor ranking.

You can take the professional help of www.writer4me.com for your site in this regard.

By Pinaki Ghosh 

The Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns work the best in comparison of the other ad campaigns. By using the keyword search, the Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines have worked in benefit of the people. But they also give the special benefits to the sites which pay them. If you shell out some money with the Google AdWords, your site’s name will flash on a good ranking on the search results. If you pay the ‘Yahoo Search Marketing’ then even Yahoo will list you in the 3 major positions on their search engine. This means they control the natural listings and pull up the names of sites that pay them.
Discover the 7 secrets to improve the performance of your PPC ads. To know more, read the following:

1. Optimize
‘Optimize’ has two meanings:
(a) Make the advertisement copy or banner perfect, professional-looking, and target oriented. As you pay heavily to run the ad campaigns, you must understand which phrase or copy will attract the maximum number of visitors. Use a professional and get the banners and the copy done, rather than trying them yourself. (b) Make your site optimized with a high keyword density for the keywords which you will be paying to run the PPC ad-campaign. Most of the people make the mistake of paying for the PPC keywords, but not optimizing them in their own sites, which means their sites have a low keyword density, resulting in poor campaign-result and wasted funds.

2. Consider increasing your budget if you want your PPC ads to appear more frequently
If some organizations which lie in the same category bid for the same keyword; the highest bidder, will appear on position no. 1 in the search engine listings, followed by the second highest bidder and then the third. When the ads appear in any other websites, the advertisements of the highest bidder (and the payer) will appear most frequently followed by the others. If you want your ads to appear on position number 1, or more frequently, you have to consider paying more.

3. Go with the giants
There are a lot many organizations which provide the PPC ad service, but it is always the best to go with the biggies like the Google (AdWords), Yahoo (Yahoo Search Marketing) or MSN (MSN AdCentre). The others like LookSmart, Kanoodle, Findwhat, BlowSearch are good but cannot be compared and their tools for preventing click fraud are not so well developed.

4. Avoid Flash and flashy pages
The Flash landing pages and pages with music take a long time to load, resulting in visitors pressing the ‘back’ button and moving away from your website. This will be a heavy loss for you. Not only will you lose your customers and still have to pay for their visit. Colorful pages do not look good or professional. The light pages in combination with the formal colors look best to the visitors.

5. Make the correct judgment about landing pages
Most of the sites make their guests land on their home page from the PPC ads. The home page is not always the best page for the business purposes. Try and understand which of the pages are the most convenient to give the maximum business, and link the ads to that particular page. The page should have the ‘buy now’ tabs which can be located conveniently.

6. Run campaigns seasonally
Since these campaigns are not a minor cost, it is advisable to run them seasonally, mostly during your high seasons.

7. Narrow down on keywords
Try and avoid adding many keywords or keywords that are not specific, as that would result in increasing your budget unnecessarily. Mostly try to target the specific interest groups rather than the entire world. Like, ‘vintage car tyres’ will cost much less than just ‘tyres’, as there will be people bidding for the keyword ‘tyres’.
If you’re bidding for $40 PPC, you will have to pay $40 in advance, and the entire sum will be deducted from your account when 100 people click their mouse on your name in the list. Thus, when your PPC balance reaches zero, you will have to pay in advance again.

By Pinaki Ghosh 

Viral Marketing is the most inexpensive and at the same time widely studied strategy of the internet marketing today. The name too, as it sounds, has been derived from the study of the multiplication of the virus which is also the growth. The Virus divides from 1 to 2, 2 to 4, 4 to 8, 8 to 16 and so on. The figure below would help you understand the viral marketing campaign:
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The central idea is; give out interesting things to people free of cost, with the name of your site inscribed in it, and people will happily pass them to others. The name of your site will spread like wildfire.
1. Give some laughing gas to people
People love to laugh no matter what age group they belong to. But however, the strain of modern lifestyle increases the hunger for laughter in people all the more. Giving out funny stuff, free of cost, from your site, and mainly via mails to your friends in and outside MySpace will work positive. It may include very funny pictures and videos. And, not to forget; the funny stuff must carry the name of your site written on them, or your effort is a waste. The people, who receive them, will love them, and pass them to a number of other friends, and the stuff will automatically keep passing as a chain-mail.

2. Give out free e-books, exploiting people’s greed
Most of the people are greedy by nature. If you give them some free e-book which promises success, they will be happy. Do pass your friends some free e-books and they will in turn pass the same to many other friends. This will go on for 6 to 7 stages, and within 2 weeks, the free e-book will reach a huge number of people. People must exhibit a burning interest for the book that will be an outcome of their greed. This will make you successful. Needless to say, the e-book must have a link to your site.

3. Exploit social networks
The viral marketing exploits social networks. Most of the people keep regular contact with 12 people on an average, who are the inner circle of friends and associates. If people love something, they almost invariably share it with these 12 people of the innermost circle. This is one of the secret of viral marketing success.

4. Keep it easy to transfer
The stuff you will give out for free must be essential. That means; it must be something which is transferable and downloadable over the internet. It should be easy and quick to transfer. If it is difficult to transfer or takes a very long time to download, you will fail to achieve the best result.
5. Campaigns must be repeated with new stuff in 2 – 3 weeks
The effect of a viral marketing campaign lasts for at least 2 – 3 weeks, after which it dies out. You have to repeat the process with a new campaign every 2 – 3 weeks, with new free stuff to give away.

6. Allow others to use your stuff
Make your stuff copyright free, so that they can be freely used and transferred to others.

7. Be ready for a magical growth
As people say, the virus that you create can kill you. This kind of viral marketing can lead to unbelievable rapid growth. If you are not ready to grow with it, it’s your business that will suffer. You must be ready to handle 10 times the order within a given time, or a bigger bandwidth for your website, to handle the additional traffic-load. You must be ready to hire people whenever necessary. If you can’t supply at par with the growing demand, you die!

By Pinaki Ghosh

This kind of a site allows the webmasters the ability to promote their sites or the associates, marketing campaign absolutely free of cost. This is just like the Click bank site, except that the exchanging is free. Without paying any charges to the traffic trading site, one can opt to surf and browse through the hundreds of affiliate programs which are offered.

The advantages of using free traffic sites are:

•  Saving; It is free!
• These sites get lots of visitors and members. You will get the attention of these visitors.
• Search engines give a lot of attention to traffic trading sites for:
  o Their heavy traffic.
  o Rapidly changing content.
  o Have several outgoing links.

By Pinaki Ghosh

1. Give away freebies: The most common methods that work is to forcefully make people sign up and give their details so as to give out free gifts. These free gifts should preferably be digitally downloadable. It should be automatically downloadable, to cut off any hassle.

Such free gifts are generally:
E-books on subjects like:
o Self help
o ‘How to’ topics
o ‘7 Secret tips’ type topics
o Business/career tips
o Internet business related
o Stress management
o Relationship development
o Health/fitness
o Travel
o Child care

• Software products of small niche utility, like mail management.
• Games
• Video
• Music

2. Disable some features for non members: While making your website, make an option for signing in. This means visitors have to become members to use all the features i.e. they will have to sign in to use the features. Non members should be allowed to see everything, but should not be allowed to use all features. If your website has appealing material, visitors will view everything and ultimately sign up.
This way you can get paid members too!

3. Allow a trial, create an addiction: Most of the times give a 30 day trial period to your users. After 30 days if they want to use all the features, or the software, they will have to sign up, may it be with payment. This will definitely work.

4. Offer discounts to members: You must showcase two types of rates for your products and services. One should be for the members; and the other for non members. This difference of rate will automatically make your visitors sign up.

NEW DELHI: Not just the economy even the US newspaper industry is going through tough times these days. Shrinking circulation, dwindling

advertising revenues, growth of the internet edition and rising newsprint prices have together put pressure on their margins. Even the best and most established US newspapers are feeling the heat.

To cope with the pressure, most newspapers have adopted various cost cutting measures. From reducing global coverage, cutting down the number of pages, streamlining resources and cutting excess jobs, they are trying out all kind of combinations to stay ahead. Now, the industry is also contemplating outsourcing some work outside the country to reduce costs.
The trend started a few years ago, as some US-based newspapers offshored their editorial work to India. In the next five years, offshoring is expected to gain traction.

According to a study done by Pune-based research firm ValueNotes, the offshore opportunity from newspaper publishers (including both the US and UK) is estimated to be around $3.5 billion.

It’s expected to reach $12 billion by 2012. The number of people employed in this industry is also likely to cross 5,500. Interestingly, the overall publishing outsourcing industry too has been growing fast in India for some years now.

There are over 100 vendors in this space. What’s more, revenues from Indian publishing offshoring is slated to grow from $444 million in 2006 to reach $1.46 billion in 2010. An estimated 26,000 people work in this space and the number is likely to grow to 74,000 by 2010. Most (96%) of the India-based vendors have capabilities to service the academic publishing segment. But newspaper outsourcing is different. And its this space that’s gaining ground now. As of now, only the top Tier 1 newspapers from the US are offshoring. Their work is largely limited to ad production services.

However, as the space matures, Tier 2 and Tier 3 publishers too are expected send a wide range of work to India. Since its still in the early stages, only a few service providers are active in India. According to ValueNotes research, the total number of people employed in the newspaper outsourcing industry is around 2,300, as of July 2008. However, there is a scarcity of ‘end-to-end’ service providers. And as the space grows vendors are expected to build complementary capabilities to achieve this objective.

However, as the space matures, Tier 2 and Tier 3 publishers too are expected send a wide range of work to India. Since its still in the early stages, only a few service providers are active in India. According to ValueNotes research, the total number of people employed in the newspaper outsourcing industry is around 2,300, as of July 2008. However, there is a scarcity of ‘end-to-end’ service providers. And as the space grows vendors are expected to build complementary capabilities to achieve this objective.

Source: Times of India News, 23 Sept, 2008 

Given below is a typical agreement which you can sign with your ghostwriter.

CO-WRITER/GHOSTWRITER-AUTHOR AGREEMENT OVER A BOOK

By this memorandum of understanding, signed this _____________ 2008; both the parties described herein under as PARTY A, represented by ______________, address, _____________________________________ also described as the ‘author’; and PARTY B, represented by ___________, address ____________________________________________________________________________________, also described as ‘ghostwriter’, do hereby agree to all the terms described and given below:

1. Party A is commissioning Party B to begin the project of writing a book on the subject: _______________________________________________________.
2. The tentative working title of the book shall be _______________________________________________________’. This title is subject to change subject to mutual consent of both the parties.
3. The deadline for completion of this book is _______ days after the signing of this agreement.
4. Party A agrees to pay Party B a consolidated sum of $_________ for the project that will include the following:
   1. Writing the content of the book on the guidelines of Party A.
   2. Getting it edited by a pro-editor before submission.
5. The fees of the co-writer/ghostwriter will be paid as follows:
   1. 50% advance to get the project started.
   2. 50% within 10 days of complete work submission (irrespective of whether Party A found time to go through it in 10 days or not).
6. Party B (ghostwriter) is subject to NO royalty or commission on the sales of the book. He is only entitled to the one time fees of $_________.
7. Party B (ghostwriter) will maintain full confidentiality about this project.
8. The book will be __________ pages long.
9. Party B agrees that he will not take the help of any plagiarism, meaning he will avoid using borrowed material in this book exactly as they are found elsewhere.
10. Party A will own all copyrights for this book, including sale and distribution rights.
11. Party A will have full freedom to set the retail price of this book, deal with any publisher, and may even distribute it free of cost if she wishes. Party B will have no say on setting the price of this book.
12. Party A can request party B to make a reasonable number of changes and edits during the period of production of this book and within 7 days of completion of the book.

Both the parties do hereby agree to the terms laid and set above.

Signature

Party A (author)

————————————————————————————-

Signature

Party B (ghostwriter)

Date:

By Pinaki Ghosh 

Who is a ghostwriter and why are they hired?

People who pen down the articles on behalf of any other person are known as Ghostwriters. He generally does not get his name published in those writings. Most of the time, the celebrities get their autobiographies done from these Ghostwriters. The rich people too, hire these ghostwriters for the same. To name a few, Hillary Clinton, JF Kennedy and also the pop diva Madonna have hired their writers for the books. As these celebrities cannot find time to write themselves, but have the money to hire a ghost writer, they go in for one. The politicians too have their own Ghostwriters who are the people who write the speeches and the other correspondences.  As the Ghostwriters do not get any name or recognition for the service, they take heavy one time fees.

Recognition
Not always do the ghostwriters go unnoticed. Most of the times, the names of these writers are given on the acknowledgements page or sometimes as the co- writers. Thus, here they aren’t called the Ghostwriters, but collaborators.

Varieties of Ghostwriters
Not always do the people who hire these Ghostwriters lack the talent of writing. Sometimes established professional writers hire ghostwriters due to their lack of time, and also for refinement of their work. Just like, the Star Wars Novel, which was mainly a ghostwriter’s work, anmd also the Hardy Boys series that had the main author as Franklin W Dixon.

Why do you need a Ghostwriter?
It is definitely a good idea to get professional writers, especially a Ghostwriter for your articles. The best reasons are:

• They can give you the best content for your site
• They can write a blog everyday according to your requirement
• They can prepare you tailor-made, refined and good e-books

You can get some good writers and ghostwriters from the following sites:
• www.writerpinaki.com.com (bestseller ghostwriter hire)

• www.writer4me.com (affordable ghostwriter hire)

• www.123writer.com

These sites charge you somewhere in between $ 9.99 to $20 for every web-content piece/page that you order. For e-books the rate is about $400 to $1000 for every 100 pages.

Okay, now for some laugh… here are some common office phrases compiled by us, with what these phrases mean. Whether you agree is up to you. Cheers!

1.”We will do it” means “You will do it.”

2.”You have done a great job” means “More work to be given to you.”

3.”We are working on it” means “We have not yet started working on the same.”

4.”Tomorrow first thing in the morning” means “Its not getting done “At least not tomorrow!”

5.”After discussion we will decide-I am very open to views” means “I have already decided, I will tell you what to do.”

6.”There was a slight miscommunication” means “We had actually lied.”

7.”Lets call a meeting and discuss” means “I have no time now, will talk later.”

8.”We can always do it” means “We actually cannot do the same on time.”

9.”We are on the right track but there needs to be a slight extension of the deadline” means “The project is screwed up, we cannot deliver on time.”

10.”We had slight differences of opinion “means “We had actually fought.”

11.”Make a list of the work that you do and let’s see how I can help you” means “Anyway you have to find a way out… no help from me.”

12.”You should have told me earlier” means “Well even if you told me earlier that would have made hardly any difference!”

13.”We need to find out the real reason” means “Well I will tell you where your fault is.”

14.”Well Family is important; your leave is always granted. Just ensure that the work is not affected,” means, “Well you know…”

15.”We are a team,” means, “I am not the only one to be blamed.”

16.”That’s actually a good question” means “I do not know anything about it.”

17.”All the Best” means “You are in trouble”

By Pinaki Ghosh

You can see a lot of products flooding the internet sites and also the ecommerce sites. But as one may see, not all products get to do the equal business. Some rules go in without consideration and need to be known by the people. The following are a few rules that you may have to follow develop if in case you want to sell your product and in turn earn profits.
1. Go for high profit margin products
The maximum number of people that went on to become millionaires was due to the internet business. Online business is the only business wherein one can expect around 100% profit. The margin of the profit that one can get during the other business is merely 20% to 33%. The original cost price of the product is around 67% - 80% is covered by the cost price. But if the product is a virtual one, there isn’t much of a cost-price or production cost (except the early investments), and as such you can expect to make a 100% profit from every sale. You can take the example of the software giants who gain 100% profit from every sale that they make. It is just the same for e-books.
2. Target niche market rather than the general market
Whenever we experience a heart pain, we take the initiative to visit the cardiologist rather than the normal physician. The same way, it’s a not a bad idea to select a position a niche market than targeting the general market, which is often over-saturated. As you go into the niche market, which deals with just a specific range of products, the chances of you getting noticed are much higher. You must try and develop the product which is aimed at specific interest groups.
3.  High quality
While selling your product, one thing that is utmost necessary is that you never compromise on the quality of the product. Remember, the old or the existing customers and clients are your best clients. Keeping them happy with the quality would compel them to remain satisfied with the product that they receive from you. If you have around 300 customers who are satisfied with the service and the quality, you will get a steady sale from them all the year round. Therefore keep them updated with the newsletters especially while announcing your new products.
“
Remember, the old or the existing customers and clients are your best clients… If you have around 300 customers who
are satisfied with the service and the quality, you will get a steady sale from them all the year round.
”
4. Quick delivery
One might observe that the humans are highly impatient. They would want quick service. Thus, your products must be easily accessible and auto downloadable, preferably quickly downloadable…something that the customers would be able to get their hands on immediately after payment.
5. Trial version
When you deliver a trail version of the product which is absolutely of no cost to access, sometimes, there are 40 % chances that the people who get to access this, would want to purchase the original full version. Therefore, in such cases, the trial version that is, when the product has a time limit, the item needs to be downloadable then may it be a software, e-book or a mere courseware.
6. Research
Look out and find more about the products that you need to sell online. Better if you can get the copies of the product and study them. If they sell well, then you can be assured of the plan and the product. You must try and do something related to the subject or may be the same in a different fashion. To start with, your product must be better than that product and at the same time, at a lower price than that product.

7. Keep upgrading
If the item that you are promoting and dealing with is the one related to the software field like the e-books, constant up gradations and improvements are necessary. At any level when you stop you tend to stall your business which is the untimely death. Thus, you must upgrade the same at least every 6 months. Even a minor up gradation would work.
As you may notice, the 7 tips are neither costly nor very difficult to keep in mind. The lower versions of the software’s and the games or even the e-books can be rated around $30 for every time that one downloads.  If you have around 200 visitors every day, one can expect 3% - 5% conversions which may increase later on after the trail versions have been tried and used, which also means approximately $250 of the daily sales which sums upto about $7500 every month. If you go on at this rate, this figure would be achieved along the 4th month. Therefore, why wait, put along your best foot forward!

By Pinaki Ghosh

If you are planning to start up with your own ecommerce site or already own one, you must get your updates and facts revised. Here are 7 main strategies which would help you instantly to gain profits. These policies are tested and confirmed.
1. Solid product description
While advertising your product online you must be able to make some good descriptions about the product which can create an interest among your customers. The products (in case of 50 plus articles) must be described in around 125 -150 words in length. For quality sake, getting the articles done from a professional person is imperative.  In case you are on the look out for professionals or freelancers, you may log on to sites like Writer4me (www.writer4me.com), 123writer (www.123writer.com), Guru (www.guru.com) and Elance (www.elance.com) to hire copywriters/content-writers who will work on your descriptions and give an amazing outcome or even help sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo.  In the case that you are selling an e-book or some course through your site, you can get the sales copy made, which may comprise of 3000-5000 words in length. Also, you can add in the feedbacks from your clients.
2. Accompanied by picture
Sometimes pictures provide the best explanations ever. Until and unless you put pictures on the products for the net, you really would not be able to create the interest on the customers. People like to see the products that they would want to buy, as said by Mark Luetke the marketing guru. But messy images are not really appealing. In case of really small products you can give them the satin background or maybe give it a cropped look and can even replace it with maybe a plain background. When the products such as car and bikes are promoted, you may get the shots outdoors. The cover pages of the e-books must be of high quality, cost of which is $30 upwards. You can visit the sites such as Writer4me (www.writer4me.com), if your budget is around $50, to get the best and the most professional e-book covers in the market.
3. Cross selling
Chain your other items just below the description of the products of each item so that people who want to purchase the product can also look out for other related products.  This way you can increase your sales upto 30%.
4. Free gifts to visitors to get their email address
Give out free gifts like ebooks from your squeeze page to any visitor who gives his/her email address. This way you can create your own database of your visitors whom you can keep updated with your newsletters.
5. Newsletters
Spam mails differ from newsletters. I would be surprised if anyone says he/she likes spam mails. They are advertisement-mails that go directly to the folder that has been assigned in your email account for ‘spam’. But newsletters give some really useful information to the customers and thus, most people mark the mails as ‘not spam’. This may be one of the powerful tools in keeping the update on the new products and schemes. Newsletters are far better than spam mails as promotional tools.
6. Discount
Giving various discounts throughout the year such as ‘winter bonanza: 25% off’ or maybe the ‘Spring Festival-up to 50% discount’ can boost up your sales. Keeping a track of your old customers and the ones that rely on you and then complementing them by giving some additional benefits can help.
7. Show professionalism with your affiliates
In case you are heading an affiliate program, you must act professionally. Clearing off the payment of your affiliates on time, and giving them codes for your banners can help in keeping good relations with them. Do not keep the affiliates hanging for a lot of time to get their commission.
Also, you can work on increasing your sources of getting some extra income by tying with the other service providers as an affiliate (and get commission) and also Google YPN (contextual pay per click). You can earn several hundred or even thousands of dollars every month from this.

By Pinaki Ghosh

So, are you all set to put your best foot ahead in the internet business field? Greetings to the internet marketing field of the world! The success stories such as those like Yahoo and Google are true, especially with the internet based business, it’s also true that a website which does not have any marketing plan is more or less like a store about which one would not know, and thus would not see a bad happening. Merely setting up your site is not important but how to gain the popularity is what is important. What would actually make your website popular and work is what one should be stressing on. Ultimately your site is your own money minting factory in just 6 months?
1. Writing articles
Content is often crowned as the king. Your site visitors are often attracted to the content more than anything. A good-looking site without good content is like food that looks yummy but does not have any taste, and hence finds no takers. Not many master the art of writing good articles.
“
A good-looking site without good content
is like food that looks yummy but does not have any taste, and hence finds no takers.
”
The articles should be keyword rich (repeated use of the keywords), so that they are found quickly during keyword search. Informative articles are extremely helpful and thus these articles must be posted in the various blogs and article banks, directories and ezines. And they should in turn be linked to your site. If you are very busy, hiring a copy writer is a good idea.
2. Pay per Click Marketing
One of the most expensive but the best ways of drawing the traffic is pay-par-click marketing. If you do not lie in the lower budgets but are keen on the profits, you should without hesitation try PPC. Mostly, success comes guaranteed.
Some of the popular Pay per Click schemes is:

•   Google Ad Words
•   Yahoo Search Marketing
•   Microsoft AdCenter

When you go for PPC advertisements, you must pay beforehand. Every time someone clicks on your ad, your pre-paid balance instantly gets debited. The advertisements also appear in the websites which have similar content such as your own site; as well as Google, Yahoo and MSN search engine listings. Sponsored results appear over natural search results. There have been however reports of click fraud, which may result in your loss of money.
3. Traffic purchase
Some of the sites offer visitor packages for fixed prices. The ultimate decision maker is you, who can make your decision and choose from the various packages that are available. Example: you can choose from a package of 1000 guaranteed visitors per month for a payment of $50 or 5000 visitors for $180 so on. You can choose the one that fits in your pocket and can get the traffic diverted to your site according to your requirement. But you must also keep away from the frauds.
4. Buying expired domains
Supposing someone hands over the keys of a new car which has been purchased by someone else, and then says, “Have fun! It’s for you!”  Would you instantly take it? Most possibly you would take it. Well, most of us would in such cases. In the world of internet too, sometimes websites that are owned by one, are often handled by people who get to manage it. To talk in clear terms, if I have my own website, I work hard to build up a traffic that can be beneficial to me, but gradually, maybe my other commitments and busy schedule and forgetfulness or maybe my carelessness to renew the website adds up, and after a time, the website expires. People are on constant vigil. As soon as the site expires they start up their own with the same domain name, and thus get a ready made traffic flow.
5. Viral marketing
One of the cheapest and the affordable ways of internet marketing is Viral Marketing. It works on the concept of chain mails, just the way hotmail used it for its popularity. Pictures, videos and e-books which are free are mostly loved by people. Especially when these items are placed on your site, people love to use them and forward them to their loved ones. Thus, by personalizing them and giving your name somewhere on the items, you end up marketing your site. Also, in case your product is liked by people they would end up forwarding it and thus, the number of viewers of your site goes only higher. The popularity of your site increases.

By Pinaki Ghosh

Keeping a track of your emails isn’t a big problem when you’re receiving a mere ten or less than ten mails a day. As your business grows the picture will change. As you end up sending approximately hundred mails a day, you too will receive as many mails. Thus, planning out a mail management system is advisable than to find yourself in a pretty nasty soup. The following tips may prove to be of great help:
1. Do not open your mails every time they arrive
One of the worst time killers, which often goes unrealized are incoming emails. Most of the email programs, have the email notifications like, when one receives a mail, you have little pop ups or some beeps and some shiny icons which act like mail alerts. But immediate reactions can end up as a distraction for those who work. While working, you must continue to work and not react to these mails. Time yourself to read the mails too. Set aside 2 or 3 fixed time in the day when you will read and answer mails…rather than reading them the moment they arrive. This is one of the most accepted and the best remedy overall.
2. Managing storage space 
Nowadays, one can see a lot many email programs which have a highly large space to offer. For example, Yahoo Mail got its Yahoo Mail Beta into market and offered a total 1 GB storage email space which was in turn a huge up gradation factor. Thus, the end result is such that if one is a light user of the emails, he would never have to delete mails. The same was the case when Microsoft launched its Windows Live Mail and the storage space was twice the space that Yahoo offered.

2 GB mail storage space was astonishing! This also meant that one would never have to delete mails and can also keep the attachments!
For those who have opted for the other programs or sites, they should keep in mind the 2 basic principles: (a) you must try and shift or go in for some mail program which would offer you a better space to store your mails (b) you may erase most of the mails as you receive them especially those which aren’t necessary. Once the attachment has been downloaded, you could delete the mails or just if you want to save them, you can do so in one of your separate folders. Adding any of the advertisements and the junk mails could be named as ‘spam’ and eventually you spam folder can be cleaned after a period of time.
3. Sending heavy attachments with your mails
Winzip can condense attachments of your mail to some extent. Most of the people who excel in this field know that this is not really sufficient, mainly when one has to send in the mails with heavy attachments and content with large graphics. Leave aside the others, MS Word documents which have graphs and graphics are not really lucky enough to be delivered as attachments if they are heavy files exceeding 10 MB. Thus, people have to find a solution for the same. Programs like http://rapidshare.com, http://megaupload.com, or http://4shared.com to upload the most important and heavy files are helpful. Once you are done with the uploading, you would receive a downloading link. All you have to do is mail the link to solve the entire problem. The main receiver must click on the link to download.

4. Keep a copy of sent items
Saving the mails that have been sent is another good option. To keep the sent items folder enabled always would help you keep a record and not lose any important information ever.
5. Spell Checking
It’s really sad that most of the email sites and programs do not offer the spell check facility like Microsoft Windows Live Mail. Thus, it’s advisable that you are a little cautious about your spellings when one is sending the mails to the big companies. A lot of the typos may change their attitude about you.
6. Use filters for better email management
One must make proper use of filters or even better known as folders. If you receive a lot of mails from many organizations, you may sort them according to your preferences in different folders. Naming the folders by different names would help you locate faster. When all the mails accumulate in one place it gives your inbox a messy look.
7. How to find email addresses
It gets annoying when you cannot find the email addresses of the person you are wanting to mail while sending an email. A Gmail or the Yahoo Mail Beta user would find that easy as the contacts appear when you happen to type in the first or the first two letters of the person you intend to mail, which is extremely convenient. Even Windows Live Mail happens to give you the freedom to check the email address of the person from the icons given next to compose and send column. If the email program that you are using does not help you out here, you may use the sites such as www.four11.com, www.switchboard.com and www.whowhere.com.
Once you follow these seven simple steps, it will help you in the management of your emails which is otherwise a nightmare, especially when have your business at the peak.