Locks and Keys

R.T. Hág asked:


Home security is on everybody’s mind these days. If you have a home-based business or a home office you can be the target of both asset theft and personal attack right in your own home.

In this series of articles, we look at three practical security steps you can take to guard your home and home business against attack using personal security and home security assessments.

Step 1 – Physical security

Keeping your physical security simple and cost effective is vitally important. If it becomes a burden, you know you won’t keep it up. This approach uses a combination of home security and personal security.

The underlying issue to consider is what it would cost you if you were robbed, sustained asset damage or sustained personal injury? Look around your home, your home based business and, using a pad and pen or a simple word document, note the replacement costs for the furniture, stationery, paper books, technology products, computer software and downloads and other items that could be stolen or damaged in a home invasion.

Now look at your personal security and consider the cost of physical injury to your body, or your mental equilibrium, if faced with assault, confrontation with a thief or the aftermath of such. Put figures on what it would cost you to repair this damage and to cover your absence from the home based business if that were to occur.

Now, look at the cost of protecting yourself against this physical damage. If you aren’t already familiar with ballpark figures for some of these items, contact a retail outlet, or your local medical center, or look them up on the internet. When you have a list of figures, total it and see what a simple Break & Enter might cost you.

Then it’s time to look at options for physical protection – simple home security and personal security. These will be influenced by factors such as: your location, building style, property location demographics, local police crime statistics, assets on the premises, your psychological risk-management approach (see the forthcoming part three of this article series: Personal Security in Your Home-Based Business).

Some of the options you might consider include:

• a variety of simple easy-to-mount door alarms and locks, and window alarms and locks;

• a driveway alarm to alert you to visitors or intruders before they reach the house;

• a front door viewer or even door viewer camera that gives you a record of who’s there when you aren’t;

• a personal alarm – you don’t want to be hunting for help in an emergency;

• internal door alarm stoppers as an alternative to alarms for external doors and windows – less expense and good for those in shared accommodation or travelers;

• outdoor cameras for deterrence value and recording or indoor viewing;

• fake surveillance cameras for deterrence;

• an indoor safe if necessary, although a safe can be an attraction for some;

• diversion safes – those small container safes that look like everyday items of no value, inside which you hide small valuables;

• personal or door alarms that send out prearranged calls to alert authorities, relatives or associates when there is a break-in;

• emergency lights so you don’t have to come home in the dark; and finally, but just as importantly,

• insurance: for your property and contents, for personal injury, for income protection.

Tick which of these you might like to consider for your home based business and find ball-park costings for them. For some initial product price options for the budget savvy, see the link below.

Now you are ready to compare what it will cost you to pick up the pieces after a theft or attack and what it will cost you to guard against or cover yourself against that attack. This gives you the ability to make your home security decision and act.



EDWARD

Keys To Earn asked:


There are many ways to earn money online some more difficult than others, some more expensive than others but ALL require vasts amount of time to set up and maintain. There does exist a way to earn money online that is not as time-consuming or expensive as other “systems”. In fact, if you can spare ten minutes a day or a half hour or so per week, you can make money online. With that much time and effort I can’t guarantee you’ll earn big money but you’ll earn something. And, of course, once you you do see those trickling dollars here, a few pennies there; you’ll want to place even more time and effort into it! That’s when the ball will really start rolling. This method of making money online ONLY snowball’s into larger and larger proportions the more you put into it. There’s NO selling, NO advertising costs, once implemented there are NO headaches. Who knows maybe you can even quite your job some day and have a veritable “cash tree” at home. It is the one thing ALL the search engines crave, the reason they send out their “robots”. The search engines will eat your site up and deliver you thousands of FREE visitors. You don’t even need a website to start earning online with this method.

So here are the Keys to Earning Money Online:

1st Key - Content

That’s the answer that literally thousands of people package up with pretty bows and landing pages (a.k.a web page) and sell to you for about eighty bucks too much. There may lie a secret out there to making money online but the one I stand with is CONTENT. That is the key to making money online, easily, affordably, and continuosly. 

CONTENT IS KING 

Fresh, informative, unique, quality Content, to be more precise, is what search engines adore. It’s free, you can write your own content and you don’t even have to be an amazing writer (just look at me and I’ve been earning money online for nearly ten years now). You can work on it whenever you like. Your content so way what you will (try to keep it legal).

Keyword Density - Amount of times a keyword or keyword phrase repeats itself in your content.

e.g. You write a fabulous five hundred word review on “Tennis Shoes”. Your topic of choice is Tennis Shoes but this keyword phrase (Tennis Shoes) is only displayed in your title and never again shows up in your content but the keyword phrase “Muddy Terrain” (just an example) repeats itself ten times in your text. What you really want are readers that are looking for “Tennis Shoes” but you’re instead receiving “Muddy Terrain” visitors because to the search engine robots the Keyword Phrase that repeats itself the most is, you guessed it: “Muddy Terrain”.

Try to aim for a 5% keyword density and all should be alright. This figure is often difficult to achieve without your content sounding very very very very very repetitive. If you want targeted readers you need to create a balance between quality and keyword density. This isn’t hard and I can guarantee it gets easier as you go along. Back to our e.g.

5% keyword density on 500 words = 25 repetitions of “Tennis Shoes” is needed. So try to get those into your content right away to ensure that the search engine robots know how to classify your content. (I know that the figures may be off as there are TWO words, its okay to estimate).

2nd & 3rd Key - Display & Monetization

These two keys I’ve grouped together for a reason: Display and Monetization go hand in hand. To ensure that you’ll earn money online your content should be displayed in a way that it is both easy for the reader to read. Reading your content should be a pleasure. This is also true for your ads (Monetization), they should display meaningful offers based on your content. Displaying your content can be done in a number of methods:

1. Website- You can always buy a domain, pay someone to build you a website (or build it yourself) and then place ads on your page to monetize your content.

2. Blogs - Same concept as “Website” but without the hassle of building or buying anything as most are free.

3. Article Directories - This is where you submit your content to directories that do exactly what you need them to do: Publish your content. These sites are dedicated to getting people reading your content. Many also offer Revenue Sharing on ads displayed when a visitor reads your content from their site. This is BY FAR the easiest and simplest way to make money online with your content. The more of these you submit your content to the more you’ll earn (generally speaking).

Revenue Sharing - Mainly done with contextual ads, for example: Google AdSense, Overture, FAN, etc. In return for your content (to prove to you the power of content) these websites offer you a percentage (usually in the 50% range) of the impressions of the ads shown when a user reads your article. Confused?

Let’s say 100 people read your article, that means that the ads will in/surrounding your text will display with your Publisher Id for 50 of those views (based on a 50/50 sharing rate). Which means that, during those 50 impressions, if a visitor clicks on an ad YOU earn money for that click! This may not seem like much but don’t forget that these sites receive millions of viewers a month and there is not limit to the amount of dorectories you can submit your content to. Post to as many of these as possible.

Contextual Ads - Remember I told you to keep that keyword density up? Well this is why. The most common ads, contextual ads, work on keywords. These will reflect ads that are pertinent to the context of your content. Why is this important? Higher paying keyword phrases will yield higher paying clicks. Some companies pay up to 50 dollars A CLICK on certain keyword phrases! If your content has a good keyword density of those 50-dollar-keywords then those ads will be displayed and if someone clicks on that ads you’ve just earned 50 bucks!  

Link Backs - Some of the Article Directories don’t offer Revenue Sharing but you should still submit to these as well. Why? You may be asking? Simple. In ALL article directories you can place a link to anywhere you like in your resource box (by anywhere I normally mean a website or page). Why not place a link to one of your submissions on another site? Maybe one that does allow to earn? You still benefit from their mountains of traffic and all it cost you was a couple of minutes filling out some forms.

4th and Final Key - YOU

You, author, writer, poet, blogger, you are the ULTIMATE Key. If you really and truly want to earn money online, whether it be part time of full time, you are the answer. The more work you put into this (like all else in life) the more you get out of it. I have given you all the Keys to Earning online right here and if you have any other questions you may always ask now it’s time for you to open the door as only you have that ULTIMATE key!



FRANCIS

Curt Miller asked:


 

 

 

 

There are definitely numerous opportunities for those interested in making money to purchase their very own turn-key home business. What I mean by “turn-key” is that the home business is ready to go, right out of the box so to speak. No work is needed for market research or business development. You are handed the keys to a fully-functioning home business and all you have to do is market it and wait for the money to pour in. Unfortunately, turn-key home business opportunities are not everything they are cracked up to be and if you want to be successful you need to know the truth.  

 

 

 

The Market Saturation Issue

 

 

 

When you buy a turn-key home business, you have to accept the fact that you are not the only person that business model is being sold to. For example, if you buy a turn-key home business that provides customers with website hosting, not only are you competing with all of the other home business owners who bought their business from the same exact person, but you are also competing with the thousands of other website hosting companies.

 

 

 

 It is possible to make money in a saturated market, but only if you have something unique to offer. With a turn-key home business, others out there are offering the same exact thing you are and uniqueness is not a part of the equation. With this type of situation, pulling a profit is going to be almost impossible.  

 

 

 

Cookie-Cutter Home Business Websites 

 

 

 

While saturated markets are a problem, they are nothing compared to the issues cookie-cutter websites cause. Cookie cutter websites are turn-key home business websites that are literally replicas of each other.  

 

 

 

Somewhere in the world, a web designer with average web skills and a bit of business savvy put together a great home business website idea and then built it. That web designer then made hundreds of copies of that website and gave them each different domain names. If you could not see the domain names, you would not be able to tell the difference between any of the websites because there are not any differences. They are all the same. 

 

 

 

This web designer then sells these one-hundred duplicate websites to one-hundred different people. He then makes one-hundred more copies and sells those to another hundred people. The process continues until there are more than a thousand people promoting and marketing the same exact website, each of them trying to make a profit. Market saturation is bad enough, but when you are not just saturating a market with similar services, but are actually saturating a market with the same exact website, it is a recipe for home business disaster.   

 

 

 

A Little Part of a Big Picture

 

 

 

 There is something I need to clarify. There is a big difference between a turn-key home business and the opportunity to become a part of a bigger business. For example, there are thousands of gourmet coffee houses across the United States. If you open one of the famous ones, chances are you will be successful. That is because opening a branch of a bigger business or becoming a part of a well-known operation is not the same as buying a turn-key home business. There are some business opportunities that have room for many, many people to prosper - but that is because it is a team effort. There are numerous people working towards the goal of pushing the business forward as a whole. That is not the case with turn-key business opportunities. 

 

 

 

Uniqueness Is the Key to Success 

 

 

 

Think about every successful business or product you know. What is one thing those businesses have in common? They had something unique to offer. Whether it was a unique product, a unique service or a unique way of doing business, there is something that sets them apart from the pack.

 

 

 

With turn-key home businesses, the ability to be unique becomes almost impossible and no one is really going to take your home business seriously. If you want a successful home business, take time to build one from the ground up.   



JOHNATHON