Property Options Empire

Archive for March, 2009

I’ve come to realize that, if you are a roller coaster lover, Southern California is the place to visit. In particular, Orange County and Los Angeles County are home to two of the best theme parks for thrill rides. No, Disneyland is not one of them, although it (and its adjacent sister park Disney’s California Adventure) does offer some exciting action rides worthy of a visit.

I’m talking about Knott’s Berry Farm and Six Flags Magic Mountain (aka Magic Mountain to the locals). According to the SoCal Vacation Guru website, these parks have made roller coasters a strong priority in competing against The Mouse.

Magic Mountain is crazy with wild coasters; the place is lousy with thrill rides. Check out the SoCal Vacation Guru for more information about the park, as there’s lots more to do there besides roller coasters (for the rest of your group who may not be coaster fanatics).

Knott’s Berry Farm also has really focused on thrill rides, although they offer Camp Snoopy, Ghost Town and many other fun attractions and themed areas within the park. My daughter worked on the new Silver Bullet ride and she says that is one of several coasters that will really help you lose your dinner.

Speaking of dinner, if you go to Knott’s, don’t forget to allow time to eat at Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant. It is a landmark, serving thousands of dinners weekly since the Great Depression years. There is also good information at the SoCal Vacation Guru on Knott’s Berry Farm. You can find out about nearby hotels, and also about the many other vacation opportunities in Southern California.

In addition you can learn about the other Los Angeles-area theme parks, namely the Disneyland Resort and Universal Studios Hollywood. Those parks offer many great attractions and some good thrill rides, but not as many as at Knott’s and Magic Mountain. I hope this is helpful if you love coasters!

A fantastic vacation with your family or friends would include a Hawaiian cruises. Hawaii cruises are enjoyable at any age and on any occasion. The beautiful and breathtaking islands will thrill you to the core. Perhaps this is why cruises are one the world’s most popular vacations.

There is no lack of things to do during your stay here. You can swim, fish, go snorkeling, go for a parasail, take a hike or so much more. When you arrive, you will be greeted and welcome by the natives. They will put a lei around your neck, which is a traditional necklace made of flowers to express gratitude and welcome.

With the endless beaches and pristine waters, Hawaiian cruises are the ideal vacation idea for any body that enjoys sun and surf. When booking a Hawaii cruise, you may look for other activities in which you would like to participate. Many cruises offer packages that may include special tours and events.

A luau is a traditional Hawaiian event in which many tourists are eager to participate. In a nutshell, a luau is a feast in which food, entertainment and good company are available. Pig roasting is a standard routine at luaus. In addition to this, poi, pineapple and coconut juice are the other cuisine that are included. After arriving on Hawaii honeymoon cruises one looks for a traditional, festive luau for a perfect first night meal.

Hawaii is full intrigue and romance. While the children learn how to scuba dive, you can take a walk along the quiet beaches, or sail away to blue-green waters with your loved one. You can even stroll the streets at night and window shop in your flip flops and shorts. Make the vacation just as wonderful as you want it to be by personalizing Hawaii cruise packages to fit your needs.

Several companies offer deals specially during the off season months, when tourism is at its slowest. You can score wonderful discounts like this and leave you with money left over to spend while ashore on the island too. Depending on how many people you bring ashore and how you arrange your travel plans this can influence your spending as well.

The best thing to do is to thoroughly search the internet for Hawaii cruises. There you will find the best rate and the best possible package. You will also get some insight as to what to expect when you reach your oasis as well as ideas for fun activities, places to eat and more!

The wrong autoresponder email marketing can collapse your business, not build it.

A lot has been said about email marketing as an excellent tool for web marketing but few have been said about its pitfalls. If you plan to use auto responders as a booster for your online sales effort, you should pay particular attention to how your information is delivered to the readers. Basically, you should be concerned about the format in which the information is carried over.

In this article, we try to look at some of the much overlooked points that are a recipe for an email marketing campaign disaster.

Text format

When it comes to text on the internet, there are principally two main types that you can use in your email auto responders as part of your email marketing plain text like the one we see in notepad and html, the commonly used format on the web. Plain text normally contains no formatting but html text has formatting, variable background and can contain graphics.

Now let’s look at the reasons behind your choosing one or the other.

If you are reaching a simple readership without the need for extensive formatting and illustrations in your materials, then the best way to go is plain text for your email marketing. This style of text is easy to read ( as it has a white background) and loads easily because there are no graphics.

However, if you need to put links in your email marketing auto responders that readers will click on, then a problem emerges. People usually associate long links with affiliates. Even if you own the product being offered for sale, many people will shrug at the idea of clicking on a link because they know you are trying to hide behind an ezine or article to sell them a product.

Browsing Internet News

Ok, so this is a bit of a conspiracy rant on Mack Michaels, millionaire owner of Maverick Money Makers Club wealth building website for online entrepreneurs.

I have been both promoting, and using, his internet business video training for 4 months now. Every week one of my blogs gets a post from someone raving about how he is an imposter, that there is secret video showing he is really someone else, and oh yeah, they tried his stuff and it didn’t work.

For some reason the USA seems to be prone to conspiracy stuff (is it something in our water supply?), but let me add MY two cents in here, since so many other crackpots seem to be able to:

Mack Michaels isn’t really Mack Michaels?

I don’t care if Mack Michaels’ REAL name is “Green Cheese!” There is a long history in the writing world of people using pseudonyms when writing books they would rather not be associated with (those torrid love tales by high ranking officials come to mind?)

If he wants to have more than one “business life,” and his real name is Michael Mack, I don’t really care. Maybe he just likes the letter “M.”

I DO care if the training is any good, and works, so let’s address that separately.

(1) If Mack Michaels was purely out to rip people off, he would outsource all the videos he personally makes each month … on average 12-15 hours or more each month of new entrepreneur training video. BTW, the quality is very high, and the details are easy to follow, and Mack records every minute of it himself.

So Maverick Money Makers’ Mack Michaels must be the STUPIDEST con man alive, because he is actually doing all this work every month, like clockwork, when he could be doing cheap, shoddy stuff, short videos rather than 60 minute videos, and just outsourcing all the recording to someone in India, anyway.

(2) Hmm … about claims that “his stuff doesn’t work.” You know what? That’s true!

Even if you KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING, 80% of the projects you try on the internet will fail. Why?

Not quite enough skill … too much competition … Google zigged when you zagged … you name it. Of course, this is a dirty little secret, because most marketers would not sell as much stuff if they REALLY told you about internet marketing life reality … but it does not make the info any less VALID.

I have tried some of his stuff that fell flat on its face. Why? I don’t know .. I moved on. Because other things I did that he taught DID catch hold, and I have MULTIPLE Top 10 rankings in Google to prove it.

Once, I even used some of his techniques to capture the ENTIRE FRONT PAGE of Google for a few days. (Yes, EVERY Top 10 listing in Google on that project was a link to ME.)

Get a grip: So what if Mack Michaels is REALLY George Bush?

So … go right ahead with your conspiracy video theories … and spending all your time “proving” why Mack Michaels ISN’T real, and why you CAN’T make money using Maverick Money Makers training … in the meantime, I will be using the Maverick Money Makers information Mack Michaels provides to steal your lunch, kick internet sand in your face, and continue to put money in MY bank account.

As we are all aware flowers are the perfect gift to give anyone. Many of us may hesitate at the thought of giving these beautiful gifts because we believe that there will be very high prices for these flowers. This does not necessarily have to be true as we can order flowers for delivery and in the process find places that sell beautiful flowers that are still high in quality.

The best way that you can buy flowers is to buy them from reputable local florists as you can be sure that your order will be filled with a selection of good and undamaged flowers. Likewise while you are looking at the quality you can also select from a variety of lower priced flowers from their many different baskets, vases and trays.

There are times when you can order flowers for delivery and have these florists deliver the flowers to someone as a gift. You will have to see if you are paying for any other costs besides your flowers as some florists could be charging you extra. These extras will be in the form of surcharges, delivery fees or even a service fee.

You can also look for the best online flower store where you can buy just about any kind of flower you can imagine. While you can’t make your actual selection in person you can see the various flowers and flower arrangements that are in stock for those stores.

As with your local florist you will need to choose a flower store that will provide you with a wide range of high quality flowers like petite roses, mixed iris flower bouquets and even exotic floral beauties like Peruvian Lilies.

You should select online florists that are reputed for providing their customers with beautiful arrangements of fresh flowers for great prices. Also if you want to send flowers to friends or loved ones who live in other countries you will need to order flowers for delivery from online florists who can deliver your flowers on the day that you want without any large extra costs for the delivery.

When you are looking for good online florists to send flowers to someone you can look for a service that is a member of a floral network where the member florists are dedicated to providing their customers with high quality service for low prices. Some of these places will provide beautiful vases for displaying the flowers you send for no additional charge.

As with so many items, when you need to order flowers for delivery you should look for flowers that are beautiful, fresh and undamaged as well as being acceptable in price for your budget. With the right care and thought only you will know whether or not you have chosen the perfect flowers as a beautiful present … Order Flowers For Delivery

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If you have recently begun your pursuit into affiliate marketing, then you probably realize that it can be an enormously profitable way to make a living. But as I am sure you have also realized, it can be an incredibly difficult way to make a living as well.

The enduring method of using Adwords campaigns to promote Clickbank products is still very popular, and it still makes people plenty of money from commissions. Unfortunately, if you are just beginning to understand how all of this works, mistakes can be very costly and success very slow.

However, that doesn’t mean success is impossible, as there are pieces of software which can help give you an edge. By using Affiliate Elite, for example, you can get a crystal clear view at the data which can tell whether or not a product will likely sell successfully.

By graphically displaying trends and data, you can get a glimpse at how a product is fairing in the market, and how it will likely fair in the near future. This will allow you to find only the very best products among the many thousands currently listed with Clickbank and other affiliate marketing stores.

For a beginner, this can be nearly invaluable, as many people seem stricken by a paralysis-like affliction when it comes to trying to find a product to promote for the first time. The Affiliate Elite software takes all of the guesswork out of the equation and puts you directly in the “know”.

Of course, finding a product to promote is only the first step of the process when using Adwords. You also need to know what keywords to use and how to word your ads. Luckily, even this can be solved with the Affiliate Elite download.

By using another feature of the software, you can quickly look at what other advertisers are doing, and you can actually see what keywords and ad variations they are employing. All you have to do is hand pick the same successful keywords that your competition uses, create a similarly effective ad, and run your campaign.

If you are new to using Adwords and Clickbank, then this program will save you countless hours of grief and agony caused by trying to get a grip on campaign and keyword tactics. The entire process gets boiled down to a few very simple steps, and the clear path to success will become immediately illuminated. Without a doubt, the Affiliate Elite weapon should be in every marketer’s arsenal.

Learn About Affiliate Marketing.
Affiliate marketing makes it simple for even the least marketing savvy entrepreneur to earn from a website, it is also a superb introduction to the world of e-commerce.  A simple overview is that you promote products belonging to someone else, when you make a sale you get paid a pre set commission, All the delivery, returns and other headaches are dealt with by the product owner, the more people that drop by your website, the greater your chance will be at creating an excellent income|the more people you send to the site, the more money you will make|its the simplest form of internet marketing and easy for anyone to do}.

Affiliate Marketing Programmes
Affiliate marketing is the act of providing a company or product owner with traffic to their website in return for a share of the profits generated by sales made by the visitors you send.  Even visitors who don’t buy initially can make you money if they return and buy in a pre set period of time you will still be credited with the sale, different programs have different time scales and can range from 24 hours to 90 days or more. 

Affiliate Marketing Methods
There are many ways to focus on affiliate marketing, some work better than others for different people, depending on your own choice and style of site.  You could promote several affiliate products on each page or Single products on individual pages can be successful, product promotions disguised as affiliate product reviews are another popular affiliate marketing strategy. Another form of affiliate marketing is just to host some advertising banners to raise some income from your site|Advertising banners can also be used to promote affiliate products without any content referring to the actual affiliate product|The least effective affiliate marketing strategy is likely to be the practice of having unrelated banners on your site pointing to affiliate products that bear no relation to your site content}, Undoubtedly the more successful campaigns are the ones that provide quality content to your readers.

How Do I Make Affiliate Marketing Work
All of the program styles mentioned work on the same type of basis, each affiliate program you join will give you a piece of code to use on your site, ensuring all visitors are tracked and registered to your account. Without this code, your visitors will not be tracked meaning you will not get any payments for them as codes let the company know which affiliate  sent which visitor.

Business Networking is alot like great French bread the formulation for hosting a legendary networking event are easy yet the way we combine them make the difference between a wonderful treat and saw dust.

First Ingredient: Start with a great big helping of advertising. Showcase your networking event in every place possible and especially wherever that your ideal attendees are likely to look for networking events. Cultivating a Who’s Who guest list of attendees mandates boldness, especially in Long Island! Successful Long Island Association networking events begin and end with proper leverage. Showcase your networking events wherever and whenever your audience go to plan their calendar and that usually means an online networking calendar like  Networking Event Finder’s Long Island Networking Guide.

Second Ingredient: Make sure that market knows the precise nature of your networking group. Whether you’re a Chamber of Commerce, Referral Club, Women’s Networking Group, Open Networking Group, Business Association, Special Interest Group or Business Opportunity Meeting make sure that you promote the precise type of networking event you host. Nothing frustrates networking event attendees more that losing both time and money to attend a networking event at a Long Island Organization only to learn that the group is not what they needed it to be. Disappointed attendees complain to at least 10 people! The price of upset customers is your networking groups success.

Third Ingredient: Create an ideal venue for your networking group and networking event. You may be surprised how much business is lost because of inappropriate Long Island networking venues. The right combination of price, service, ambiance and location will serve you well. Using a networking venue that is too large, too small, too noisy or has an awkward layout distracts attendees and they forget the purpose for the networking event in the first place.

In a Los Angeles where both time and money are in short supply, the need for excellent networking events has never been greater. By properly combining the right networking event marketing, the right networking group description and the right networking venue you will leave a wonderful experience for your networking event attendees and happy networking event attendees only tell one or two people about their experience, but they usually invite them along the next time.

Introduction

Welcome to An Insight into Stock Photography. This article is based on a talk given at Focus on Imaging 2007. I hope you find it interesting. Just remember these are my views only, they are not gospel and have been put together based solely on my experience of shooting and making money from stock photography, primarily through Alamy and photographic magazines.

We’ve seen a lot of change in the markets and the economy in general. This has affected the stock photography market. But don’t lose hope, magazines and newspapers have an insatiable appetite for images.

One Approach

Having many options – and finding opportunities to build a business from photography. And stock photography is just part of that – a chance for someone else to sell your images for you and to for you to get paid, while off doing something else. It’s like having commission only sales people working for you. The thing is you have to give them something saleable but you can’t give them a kick up the backside if you’re not selling much!!

Some professional photographers don’t do it, some do, some make a living from it. The choices and balance is up to you, as a commercial photographer I do some of it.

It may seem like an uphill challenge but it’s not and it’s within most people’s grasp. Provided you understand the customer. This applies to both the Picture Library and the Ultimate Buyers.

Take a look around you. Pictures are everywhere – the printed media in its widest context has a massive need hunger for images on a daily basis.

Humans generally don’t like reading online – well not for very long – they like tactile magazines to flick though and dip into and if they didn’t, the magazine industry would be long dead by now – wouldn’t it !!

Every magazine, exhibition, web site, company brochure and newspaper all need images on a regular basis – and if they don’t have it or can’t send a photographer to go out and shoot it – then they’ll buy it.

Printed media works on deadlines that go right down to the wire, so immediacy is important and the shots can’t be the same old ones used month in month out.

The image buyer generally will work to longer lead times and less tight deadlines – but not always – the images they buy can be more general or iconic – like these motivation posters you see in some work places.

Take for instance a sports shot of runners on a track – you might see it in the sports pages of a newspaper for a day, then maybe in a Athletics magazine that month – but it can soon become a poster with a motivational statement “Defeat” or “Winner” that has a whole new market.

So where are you – the photographer – in the pecking order so to speak. Take a look below.

• The Photographer
• The Stock Library
• The Picture Buyer

You’re on the top of the list with the image library between you and the buyer, but at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to getting paid. But whilst you need to meet the technical specifications of the library and other submission requirements, it’s the image buyer you must be thinking of long before you even contemplate picking up the camera.

The picture library will do the sales and marketing of your images, for a percentage which varies from library to library, but they must have images that buyers want.

Before you sign up, read through the agreement and see if the set up suits your requirements.

Diverse Sectors

Each of these publications, Gossip magazines, The Times Newspaper, Corporate Publications, serve a specific market – but each buy photos from Alamy to mention just one library – they also buy from many others too – in order to make the publication that day, week or month.

So what sort of pictures do these publications buy? Well it’s very varied. Just glance through and look at the side of the shot, it’s likely to have an image source next to it.

• Take a Break – items / products, staged poses – youth etc.
• Daily mail – travel
• Environment – utilities, waste, pollution etc, – front cover.

Easy Money – NO!

Some say it’s a numbers game – true to some extent, but the way I look at it is this, if you’ve got 10,000 images of shots that won’t sell – you’ve got nothing .

For me as a professional photographer that provides photography services, it’s the long term view – looking to build up and maintain a set of saleable images.

Remember pictures are perishable – i.e. – they go out of date – and this will vary dependent upon the industry sector or subject they apply to.

Transport, fashion, IT, business, communications all need, in my view, re-shooting each year. For example a man in a suit by a computer the size of a house in the 1950′s isn’t the modern industry image of today.

Wildlife, sky scenes, landscapes, travel pictures – less so – but look at any developing city – take London – since the Wheel and the Gherkin went up all the skylines are different, also look at Dubai – changing all the time.

Get rich quick – no it’s not – but you can build up an underlying income if you think about saleable pictures and keep them relevant – remember they have to illustrate a story – so need to tell a story in their own right.

What is Stock

So let’s take a look at how you get accepted and who there is to choose from. Each Library has its own benefits and key target markets, so find one that suits you and what you are good at shooting.

• Getty
• Alamy
• Comstock
• Jupiter
• Superstock
• Fotolibra
• Istockphoto,
• Pixtal
• Jumpimages
• Adams
• Nevstock

Most will have web sites and these will stipulate how to join of make submissions.

$ Sites

Personally I don’t like them and here’s why. I’m going to set you a project and at the end of it I will buy the photograph off you. So you go and shoot a subject you like, do your research, do the shoot, post produce the image and upload it to my site and hey presto – I pay you 50p at today’s exchange rate — any takers ? I rest my case!

Submission Rules

All stock libraries will set technical standards and these will vary depending on how much server space they want to invest in.

Alamy work to 48mb TIFF minimum – 1, to keep the bar high enough that only the serious photographer applies and 2, to give their customers’ choice and immediate access to high quality images. Now they’ve changed this from the above to accept JPEG images – so your file size is down to around 8 meg.

Others work on thumbnail sizes then let the buyer contact you. Personally, I think, trying to judge a shot off a 100 or 200k image is not doing the shot justice.

Others specify minimum standards of camera / model, or make you go though an approval or recommendation process. The thing with this is to find a library that matches your needs and capabilities. Also the amount time you have available to dedicate to stock photography.

Licenses

Non-Exclusive License

The buyer pays a licence fee each time they use the picture , but another picture buyer can also purchase and use the image under the same licence.

The image buyer must specify, each time: intended use, media, territory and duration.

Pricing is based on intended use, media, duration and territory. The territorial pricing will be matched to the specific country.

Exclusive License

The image buyer pays a licence fee each time they use the image.

The picture buyer obtains exclusive use of an image under the terms of the licence: these terms may affect the use, media, territory and/or duration in which the image can by used by other buyers.

Rights protection can be an advantage for high-profile projects such as ad campaigns and promotions.

Royalty Free (RF)

The picture buyer pays a one-off fee – they do not have to pay royalties to contributors on a use-by-use basis.

The image buyer will not know who else is using the image.

The image buyer should check that the image has the appropriate releases before using the image where a release is required, for example Model release for people and property release for prominent buildings or logos.

Commission

• 50/50
• 60/40 but with global distribution
• 70/30
• 80/20 – Photographers Direct

Again find one that works for you and also find out when you’ll get paid and any minimum balances you must have to get paid. Sometimes you can wait 3 months for your money.

Work Flow

As a provider of photography services I shoot RAW and make minor adjustments to pictures . Now I’m using Adobe Lightroom in place of Raw Shooter and it’s speeded up my work flow considerably. Photoshop – I use this far less now but only to colour and touch out any dirt or what might look like dirt – by this I mean the occasional bird in the sky can look like sensor dirt if it’s a way off in the distance. Resize your image. Output the file to the required format.

Then depending on the library upload over the Internet or cut a CD / DVD.

An Example

Take an older camera the Nikon D70 – 6.1 mega pixel camera. Raw files were around 4 or 5 MB and a TIFF was at 17MB with the JPEG at 4MB.

To meet the submission guidelines you need to Interpolate the image – make it bigger. In Photoshop this was Image > Image Size>Percent. Increase by 168% to give a 48 – 50 MB sized image. Then Save as Jpeg – 5 – 7MB.

I now shoot on a Nikon D300. RAW files are now 18 – 19 mb, opened in CS3 at 34 mb – requiring interpolation by only 20%.

What I’ve Sold

Wonderful sunsets, superb travel pictures, glamour images, or maybe my Dad’s cat! These are just a few examples of shots that have sold.
My dad’s cat, police cars, road signs, street scenes in New York, studio models and traffic jams.

Finding More Value

There are plenty of publications that will promote your sold work, FPME (Now out of print March 2009) is just one of them and if you have sold a shot just let the editor know – chances are it can earn you some more money.

Not only that, look out for sites like Photographer Direct that offer an Image Request service – all you need to do is send 1 email. Also look to the corporate clients – they too may take an image if it fits with their style – be brave, make that approach, but do your research first.

Top Tips

 

Find a picture library that suits you

Don’t be put off by submission guidelines

Know your end image buyer

Start shooting what you are comfortable with – then move on

Check out what images already exist

Read the Picture Needs

Remember pictures images are perishable

 

Check out how many images of your subject matter already exist in a library, then ask yourself – can these be improved, shot differently or updated.

Read the images needs issued by Stock libraries, they tell you what sells and what is needed, don’t ignore them.

Thank you for reading this article, I hope you found it interesting, should you have any questions, please feel free to make contact through the web site.

Author : Peter Davey Ma DipM
First edition Feb 2007 – updated March 2008 and March 2009 

What do you guys think the best way to make money online is? A lot of bloggers earn money online through Google AdSense and most of them also depend on it as their only source of online income generation. But do you see that the number 1 reason why they don’t earn any money online ever is because they don’t do it properly.

There are many ways to make money on the net some you don’t need clients for like adsense you just need to drive traffic to your site. Making money from Google Adsense is the easiest way and most popular way to make money online. If you have never heard of AdSense, where have you been?

Google AdSense is a contextual advertising program for which publishers simply have to add a piece of code to their sites that helps Google analyze what your page is about so they can serve Ads on that topic. AdSense will pay you whenever your visitor clicks on an ad on your site. You can place a maximum 3 Adsense ads on a page.

You need to take note that Adsense does not allow other contextual ads on the same page. These include Bidvertiser, Adbrite, and Text-Link-Ads. If you want to be successful with Google Adsene, make sure that you built numerous websites and that your target audience do not know about Adsense. In order to make money online as a blogger you should not depend on just AdSense or any one revenue source alone.

For a Free report on how you can start earning your first 100 dollars online, you can visit earn cash make money online site to learn how internet business make money online really works. You can also get an idea of what internet marketing is.