What is a bond?

With the proper savings plan or with a lucky financial windfall, many of us are ready to start investing. However, if you didn’t take any economics classes in high school or in college, you may not be familiar with the basics. Having seen the morning financial news for years, you’re probably familiar with terms like stocks, bonds, commodities and Wall Street, but you might not know exactly what they mean. Let’s take a closer look at exactly what a bond is.

A bond is described as a debt security. Now, don’t let that term confuse you, consider it much like an I.O.U. When you invest in the bond market, what you’re doing is giving your money to something, whether it is a corporation, a government, a federal agency or a municipality that is known as a bond issuer. Now, what do you get in return for this act of faith? You get interest. When you buy the bond, you agree to receive a particular interest rate from whoever you bought it from, and then once the bond “matures,” you get however much you bought the bond for back (usually the face value of the bond.)

The different types of bonds you can choose from are varied. Most people have heard of war bonds that are issued by the country to raise money for war. These were extremely popular during World War II and became a very patriotic thing to do. There are also things like asset and mortgage backed securities bonds, bonds issued by foreign governments and many other kinds.

Now, bonds sound like a pretty good investment, but it doesn’t sound like something that’s going to make you rich overnight. Well, that may be true but that doesn’t mean that bond investing is a bad thing. Think of investing in bonds as good long-term planning. They are perfect for families that need to save for their kids’ college education. If you don’t have kids, don’t worry, bonds are a fantastic way to save for retirement. Bonds are also highly recommended to have as part of your investment portfolio. No matter how much risk you can afford, it’s good to have a rock solid investment, too, so if things don’t’ work out well with your other investments, you have something reliable to fall back on.

Today’s bond market is varied and there are options for everyone, whether you’re just out of college and are looking ahead or if you are a Wall Street high roller and you need an anchor to your portfolio. Investing in bonds can be a fun and educational way to begin investing, and you likely won’t lose your shirt in the process.

What is stock?

For those that are new to investing, learning the lingo that is used on Wall Street and in economics classrooms around the globe is essential. When you hear the phrase “stock market” you get a vague picture of a group of men and women running around like crazy people with slips of paper in their hands and yelling out numbers and words that you can’t quite make out. To understand what’s going on, let’s start at the beginning and find out what stock is.

Stock can be described as the wealth (or capital) raised by a company or a corporation from the issuance of shares.

If you own stock in a company, say Microsoft, that would make you a shareholder in Microsoft. If you take all the shares available from Microsoft, or any other company and put them together, that is called Microsoft’s market capitalization. This is figured by multiplying the current price of a stock times the number of shares.

Stock falls into four major categories. There is common stock, preferred stock, duel class stock and treasury stock. Common stock is, just like the name says, the most common kind of stock available. Ownership of common shares usually comes with some voting rights when it comes to decisions made by the corporation. Preferred stock is different from common stock in the sense that they usually get paid more dividends and usually come with extra rights and decision making abilities for the company they are for. Dual Class stock is a combination of the previous two kinds of stock and the rights attached to each share vary. Finally, treasury stock are shares that were once issued to the public, but have since been bought back by the company.

The history of stocks goes back many hundred years to the Dutch East India Company, who began offering shares of their stock as far back as 1602. The East India Company helped to pioneer the idea of joint ownership and helped the economic growth in Europe at that time.

The most popular place to trade stocks in the United States is, of course, the New York Stock Exchange, where millions of shares change hands on a daily basis.

The world of economics and stock trading can be very exciting and very profitable for those that know the ins and outs. Hopefully, this article helped shed some light on what stocks are and how they are used by companies.

What was the dot.com bubble?

In the world of investing, certain phrases catch on like wild fire. Before you know it, you’re hearing catchphrases on the news, on analyst shows and even on the street from strangers. Maybe no other phrase exemplifies this better than the dot.com bubble. The dot.com bubble was a mini-crash of sorts in the stock market that only affected one segment of stock: the internet company.

The origin of the dot.com bubble can be traced back to 1994. The rise of the Internet from being a Department of Defense secret to a widely used tool in everyday life caused the formation of thousands of new businesses seemingly overnight. Many of these dot.com’s were not run by people who knew that much about business, but the ease of starting their own company over the Internet was so simple, most investors didn’t realize this.

As people poured onto the Internet, excitement grew as to the possibility of reaching such a large number of people so easily and so cheaply. It was, however, the misunderstood nature of the Internet that caused the eventual dot.com crash. Reaching all those people and getting them to buy your product turned out to be a little more difficult than most thought.

Three particular companies that would come to represent the dot.com age were WorldCom, who would end up not surviving the bubble, Netscape, which is still in business today but is considered an also-ran by many, and Yahoo, who isn’t the industry leader it use to be, but is still doing quite well.

The “bubble” referred to in the name comes from investors speculating about a companies future, and as the stock for that company begins to rise, the bubble builds. It’s called a bubble because the speculation and the rise in stock prices isn’t based on any real, ironclad evidence that the company is really worth all the hype.

The Dot.coms began to fail en masse midway through 2000. The Nasdaq market felt the full brunt of these failures since so much of their listed companies were dot.coms. Many companies, such as WorldCom and Pets.com ended up going out of business, costing investors millions. Others, such as Yahoo and Amazon survived, with Amazon being stronger than ever.

It’s unknown if there will be another dot.com bust in the future. With Google having bought YouTube for over a billion dollars, anything is possible. But one hopes that investors will be more careful this time and heed the lessons of dot.com bubble’s past.

Forex alerts are a handy way of staying on top of the market

Because currency exchange covers the entire world and all 24 time zones, forex is a 24-hour-a-day market. This is good in that it results in billions upon billions of dollars of transactions per day. But it also means that forex traders have a constant influx of information to keep track of, unlike the stock market, where once trading closes at 5 p.m., that’s it. So how do forex traders stay on top of things? Most of them use forex alerts of some kind.

Forex alerts are available from many online forex brokers and other companies. A forex alert is simply a message sent to the user informing him of the latest developments in the forex market, often recommending action of some kind. These alerts can be sent via e-mail or cell phone text message.

The idea behind them is that no one can follow all the markets all the time. Even if you limit yourself to just the “majors” -- U.S., Euro zone, Great Britain, Australia, Japan and Switzerland -- that’s still 15 currency pairs to keep an eye on. What’s more, sometimes things are steady for long periods of time, while other periods are marked by great activity.

The sites that offer forex alerts go about it in one of two ways. Some simply send out alerts every 24 hours, offering the latest info on the forex market. Others send alerts only when something crucial happens. These systems use formulas of their own to determine what constitutes “something crucial,” and they may charge a lot more for their more specific alerts. And of course it’s still up to the individual trader to act on or disregard the information send to him in the alerts.

Some brokers include forex alerts as part of their service, while others charge for them. Some are part of a wider alert program that also handles your stocks and bonds. You can tailor the type of alerts you get based on whether you’re a conservative or aggressive trader, and how actively you plan to trade.

Serious traders who use forex alerts swear by them. No system is perfect, of course, and a smart trader will always do a little browsing on his own to make sure his latest alert didn’t miss anything. But alerts are an invaluable way for busy investors to go about their daily lives without having to constantly watch the forex rates.

Is a Bull Market on its Way?

Recently, the Dow Jones industrial average broke an all time high, and recent stock news shows that the index is ready to break through to 12,000, which would also be a record high. Investors all over the world are asking themselves if this means another bull market, meaning a market that is going to be going up and up is about to start? Or is this a short term rise, and a bear market, or a market that is going to be going down, is starting? Investors have argued over the direction of the market for generations, just like sports fans arguing over who has a better defense.
Pessimists of the current markets point to the fact that while the NYSE is way up, the other markets like the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 are far below a possible record high. They also point to the fact that recent economic indicators are showing a downturn in the economy, although optimists argue that any economic downturn will be short-lived.

One of the best bellwethers for the overall economy is real estate. Since the real estate market deals in such “real” terms, meaning that they deal in land, homes and large buildings; things you can see and touch, the real estate market is very stable and not prone to seismic shifts in price and quality.

If you are going to judge the real estate industry on how stocks might do over the next year, than you might want to think about selling off your holdings now. Real estate experts agree that a “housing bubble” is about to burst, sending the price of real estate across the country into the basement, and a good chunk of the economy with it. A real estate bubble is caused when a flurry of investing causes the market to become overvalued. With the 5-year long real estate boom over, prices from California to Arizona to Florida are coming back down to earth, and the economy at large is going to suffer.

Cities like Boston have already been feeling the affects of this burst bubble. The real estate market there has been in decline for months now and the trend is spreading to New York and even out west where the housing market has been red hot for years.

While there is no way to predict what the NYSE and the other stock markets will do over the coming year, if the real estate market is an accurate indicator, than there could be trouble ahead and a bear market might not be far off.

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How To Get Unique Traffic To Your Website?

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Link2Blogs: Free traffic and content from one place

Link2Blogs is a free text link exchange that provides blogs the ability to cross-promote each other. Member blogs display a box containing text links in order to earn credits.
How it works? Very simple. Sign up, place a simple html code into your blog and that'll display Link2blogs box in your blog. Every reader that clicks on blogs listed in your Link2blogs box will earn you credits.

The credits you earn become new visitors for your blog. Your ad will be shown in other blogs of Link2blogs network, in the categories you chose, providing you very targeted blog readers.

You can earn extra credits thru referrals. For every blogger that signs up with Link2blogs (and gets validated) earns you 10% of the credits your downline earns (up to 5 levels deep). And you can always buy extra credits in order to increase the volume of readers to your blog

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How Do I Start

Follow three easy steps to join Link2Blogs:

1. Fill our quick registration form.
2. Place Link2Blogs HTML code on your blog
3. Welcome the new visitors to your blog!

Summary

* 10 visitors when you sign up (if you place our html code within 24 hours, otherwise you'll get 1 visitor)
* Customize the look and feel of Link2blogs box to make it look exactly like your blog
* Referring other blogs earn you credits, plus a whopping 10% for 5 levels on all the credits they earn
* Purchase additional credits at a very low price
* View real-time statistics (updated every 15 minutes)
* Get Banners and Stickers code for referrals
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How To Monetize Your Traffic?

Making Money out of your Traffic

The best and most proven method of making a profit out of your traffic is using advertising. The internet generates hundreds of thousands upon hundred of thousands of traffic everyday. Most of them are searching for something. While some are just looking for information there is also a good percentage that is looking for something that they need.

The internet has proven to be a very reliable source in finding what was deemed to be a very unsearchable product. The internet has made the world a smaller place; you can advertise a product from the depths of Istanbul and still find a buyer from the center of Philadelphia.

Generating traffic is not an easy task. You have to contend with a great number of sites to generate a good number of traffic flow. But if done successfully this could open up a Pandora’s Box of possibilities. One of the benefits is monetizing your traffic flow.

So, to get to the core of it the more traffic you generate the more likely you are considered as a desirable, desirable, in a sense that a good traffic flowing site is easily convertible to profit. Basically traffic equals profit. Advertising is the name of the game; with the good advertising scheme you can use your traffic flow to your advantage.

When you have good traffic you have a good number of potential customers, customers that are willing to pour money into your coffers. Other than that these are also traffic that can be redirected to sponsored links that are willing to pay you for a sizeable portion of the traffic that you have generated.

This scheme is called “pay-per-click”. With every click a visitor of your site makes on an advertised link you will be paid. The more traffic you generate and the more clicks that happens would spell to more profits.

Affiliate Programs

Another method of monetizing your traffic are affiliate programs. You can link up with other tried and tested sites and online companies and monetize your traffic by having a percentage of sales generated by traffic coming from your site.

The basic idea is, traffic generated from your site will go to another site that can offer a product that you do not carry. Many programs can keep track and make records of transactions that was made possible because of site linkage.

When purchases are made by customers that was led by your site to their site you get a percentage of that sale. Affiliate programs would give you the benefit of monetizing your traffic without the actual need of carrying or promoting a certain product.

There are so many ways and methods to monetize your traffic. All it takes is a bit of hard work and the desire to successfully launch a profit-earning site. The internet is a veritable source of information, many tips and guides are offered everywhere in how to monetize your traffic and make your site a good profit earner.

Conclusion

We have got to admit to ourselves. Most of us are into it for the money. We are not going to waste our time and effort just for the fun of it. Many sites would not wait until hell freezes over just to see their profits. While there are some who takes things lightly there are always those who would rather see profit any given day.

Establishing your own E-commerce site is not like what it used to be. There are thousands of competition that is all too willing to get a bigger share of the pie. Every scheme and method you can find to augment your sales would be very beneficial.

It is common knowledge that without traffic we have no business. Like any business, without any customers you don’t get sales. Traffic represents all the people that gets a chance to see what you have to offer. The more people who see your products the more people there would be to buy them.

Nobody puts up an E-commerce site that doesn’t expect profit. We have a startup capital that needs to be regained. With a consistent traffic, we at least have a fighting chance to achieve that probability. Monetizing your traffic would optimize your chances of making the best out of it.

Easy Profits Using PPC In Your Affiliate Marketing Business

PPC is one of the four basic types of Search Engines. PPC is also one of the most cost-effective ways of targeted internet advertising. According to Forbes magazine, PPC or Pay Per Click, accounts to 2 billion dollars a year and is expected to increase to around 8 billion dollars by the year 2008.

Let us take a quick look at how PPC Search Engines work.

These engines create listings and rate them based on a bid amount the website owner is willing to pay for each click from that search engine. Advertisers bid against each other to receive higher ranking for a specific keyword or phrase.

The highest bidder for a certain keyword or phrase will then have the site ranked as number 1 in the PPC Search Engines followed by the second and third highest bidder, up to the last number that have placed a bid on the same keyword or phrase. Your ads then will appear prominently on the results pages based on the dollar amount bid you will agree to pay per click.

How do you make money by using PPC into your affiliate marketing business?

Most affiliate programs only pay when a sale is made or a lead delivered after a visitor has clickthrough your site. Your earnings will not always be the same as they will be dependent on the web site content and the traffic market.

The reason why you should incorporate PPC into your affiliate marketing program is that earnings are easier to make than in any other kind of affiliate program not using PPC. This way, you will be making profit based from the clickthroughs that your visitor will make on the advertiser’s site. Unlike some programs, you are not paid per sale or action.

PPC can be very resourceful of your website. With PPC Search Engines incorporated into your affiliate program, you will be able to profit from the visitor’s who are not interested in your products or services. The same ones who leave your site and never comes back.

You will not only get commissions not only from those who are just searching the web and finding the products and services that they wanted but you will be able to build your site’s recognition as a valuable resource. The visitors who have found what they needed from you site are likely to come back and review what you are offering more closely. Then they will eventually come back to search the web for other products.

This kind of affiliate program is also an easy way for you to generate some more additional revenues. For example, when a visitor on your site does a search in the PPC Search Engine and clicks on the advertiser bided listings, the advertisers’ account will then be deducted because of that click. With this, you will be compensated 30% to 80% of the advertisers’ bid amount.

PPC is not only a source of generating easy profits; it can also help you promote your own site. Most of the programs allow the commissions received to be spent for advertising with them instantly and with no minimum earning requirement. This is one of the more effective ways to exchange your raw visitors for targeted surfers who has more tendencies to purchase your products and services.

What will happen if you when you integrate PPC into your affiliate program?

PPC usually have ready-to-use affiliate tools that can be easily integrated into your website. The most common tools are search boxes, banners, text links and some 404-error pages. Most search engines utilize custom solutions and can provide you with a white-label affiliate program. This enables you, using only a few lines of code, to integrate remotely-hosted co-branded search engine into your website.

The key benefits? Not only more money generated but also some extra money on the side. Plus a lifetime commissions once you have referred some webmaster friends to the engine.

Think about it. Where can you get all these benefits while already generating some income for your site? Knowing some of the more useful tools you can use for your affiliate program is not a waste of time. They are rather a means of earning within an earning.

Best know more about how you can use PPC search engines into your affiliate program than miss out on a great opportunity to earn more profits.

"Folksonomies" - a New Viral Marketing Tool

A new consumer phenomenon is called "tagging" or "folksonomies" (short for folks and taxonomy). Tagging is powerful because consumers are creating an organizational structure for online content. Folksonomies not only enable people to file away content under tags, but, even better, share it with others by filing it under a global taxonomy that they created.

Here's how tagging works. Using sites such as del.icio.us - a bookmark sharing site – and Flickr - a photo sharing site - consumers are collaborating on categorizing online content under certain keywords, or tags.

For instance, an individual can post photographs of their iPod on Flickr and file it under the tag "iPod." These images are now not only visible under the individual user's iPod tag but also under the community iPod tag that displays all images consumers are generating and filing under the keyword. Right now Flickr has more than 3,500 photos that are labeled "iPod."

Tagging is catching on because it is a natural complement to search. Type the word "blogs" into Google and it can't tell if you are searching for information about how to launch a blog, how to read blogs, or just what. Large and small sites alike are already getting on to the folksonomy train. They are rolling out tag-like structures to help users more easily locate content that's relevant to them.

Although tags are far from perfect, marketers should, nevertheless, be using them to keep a finger on the pulse of the American public. Start subscribing to RSS feeds to monitor how consumers are tagging information related to your product, service, company or space. These are living focus groups that are available for free, 24/7. Folksonomy sites can be also be carefully used to unleash viral marketing campaigns - with a caveat. Marketers should be transparent in who they are, why they are posting the link/photos and avoid spamming the services.

Life Mapping: A Vision of Success

Success is more than economic gains, titles, and degrees. Planning for success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. Similar to a map, you need to define the following details: origin, destination, vehicle, backpack, landmarks, and route.

Origin: Who you are

A map has a starting point. Your origin is who you are right now. Most people when asked to introduce themselves would say, “Hi, I’m Jean and I am a 17-year old, senior highschool student.” It does not tell you about who Jean is; it only tells you her present preoccupation. To gain insights about yourself, you need to look closely at your beliefs, values, and principles aside from your economic, professional, cultural, and civil status. Moreover, you can also reflect on your experiences to give you insights on your good and not-so-good traits, skills, knowledge, strengths, and weaknesses. Upon introspection, Jean realized that she was highly motivated, generous, service-oriented, but impatient. Her inclination was in the biological-medical field. Furthermore, she believed that life must serve a purpose, and that wars were destructive to human dignity.

Destination: A vision of who you want to be

“Who do want to be?” this is your vision. Now it is important that you know yourself so that you would have a clearer idea of who you want to be; and the things you want to change whether they are attitudes, habits, or points of view. If you hardly know yourself, then your vision and targets for the future would also be unclear. Your destination should cover all the aspects of your being: the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Continuing Jean’s story, after she defined her beliefs, values, and principles in life, she decided that she wanted to have a life dedicated in serving her fellowmen.

Vehicle: Your Mission

A vehicle is the means by which you can reach your destination. It can be analogized to your mission or vocation in life. To a great extent, your mission would depend on what you know about yourself. Bases on Jean’s self-assessment, she decided that she was suited to become a doctor, and that she wanted to become one. Her chosen vocation was a medical doctor. Describing her vision-mission fully: it was to live a life dedicated to serving her fellowmen as a doctor in conflict-areas.

Travel Bag: Your knowledge, skills, and attitude

Food, drinks, medicines, and other travelling necessities are contained in a bag. Applying this concept to your life map, you also bring with you certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes. These determine your competence and help you in attaining your vision. Given such, there is a need for you to assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at present and what you need to gain along the way. This two-fold assessment will give you insights on your landmarks or measures of success. Jean realized that she needed to gain professional knowledge and skills on medicine so that she could become a doctor. She knew that she was a bit impatient with people so she realized that this was something she wanted to change.

Landmarks and Route: S.M.A.R.T. objectives

Landmarks confirm if you are on the right track while the route determines the travel time. Thus, in planning out your life, you also need to have landmarks and a route. These landmarks are your measures of success. These measures must be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. Thus you cannot set two major landmarks such as earning a master’s degree and a doctorate degree within a period of three years, since the minimum number of years to complete a master’s degree is two years. Going back to Jean as an example, she identified the following landmarks in her life map: completing a bachelor’s degree in biology by the age of 21; completing medicine by the age of 27; earning her specialization in infectious diseases by the age of 30; getting deployed in local public hospitals of their town by the age of 32; and serving as doctor in war-torn areas by the age of 35.

Anticipate Turns, Detours, and Potholes

The purpose of your life map is to minimize hasty and spur-of-the-moment decisions that can make you lose your way. But oftentimes our plans are modified along the way due to some inconveniences, delays, and other situations beyond our control. Like in any path, there are turns, detours, and potholes thus; we must anticipate them and adjust accordingly.