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Loss of Jobs in America Paul Craig Roberts Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2003How Secure Is Your Job? Laura Barcella Friday, April 7, 2006American Jobs: Going, Going... Jane Birnbaum 2005Companies in India celebrate "loss of American jobs" Mike Crane December 2004Costly Trade With China Millions of U.S. jobs displaced Robert E. Scott
October 9, 2007Immigration Is Hurting The U.S. Worker Steven A. Camarota Spring 2007Outsourcing Not the Culprit in Manufacturing Job Loss Wes Iversen
December 9th, 2003
Welcome to my personal SohoMatic web system. My name's Jacob Paulsen and this web system can offer you a new mindset so you too can compete in this brave new world with absolute confidence! However, what you may not also be aware of is that this is part of a much larger online marketing system that is designed to help you grow your own online business, whatever that may be. You can use this system to learn how to compete in todays world, but you can also get your very own system just like this to generate high-level premium leads to explode your own online business. So, go ahead! Submit your information here and feel free to follow the links on this site to other great, and informative content!
1. Social Media & Personal Branding Tools My purpose in Social Media is quite simple. To establish meaningful relationships, brand myself as a marketing professional, and to make a profit. My greatest fear in all of this is the general amount of time I can waste in all the social media networks. So, my purpose in this article is to share with you the best tools that I have found to accomplish these; my three goals without wasting time.
Ping.fm – Twitter has shown us the power of connecting with large groups of people and sending out consistent updates with meaningful information. Ping.fm is a tool that allows you to send out a “Tweet” from the Ping.fm website that will be automatically posted into your update on your twitter profile, your facebook status, your myspace, plaxo, blogger, linkedin, yahoo, plurk, and 30 other services that you can choose from. This is a sort of one stop status update shop. Send the message once and all of your contacts on all of your social networks will get the update.
TubeMogul – One of the Medias of Social Networking is Video. YouTube does get the most traffic of any video portal site but as long as you are going to put videos on YouTube why wouldn’t you submit them to other sites as well? TubeMogul is the one stop video upload stop. From here you can upload a video and have it submitted to youtube, dailymotion, yahoo, google video, myspace video, and many more. You can also track each video on each site to get feedback on their success.
Mobile Internet – What I mean by mobile internet is internet from your mobile phone. This will be money well spent on a decent phone as well as an internet/data plan for it. There are three reasons why having legitimate (meaning a real browser) internet on your cell phone will increase your social media productivity.
1 It’s the way of the future and it’s also the path to creating time freedom. It’s hard to enjoy life when you are tied to your computer desk. Mobile Internet means a level of freedom!
2 You will always have access to your networks. You can reply to people’s requests & messages faster, you can send out updates from anywhere. Most social network sites have nice mobile versions of their website that make it easy to stay up to speed. Thus you will increase the amount of value you can provide to your networks while optimizing your usage of the value they provide you.
3 You are much less likely to waste time in the social media sites when browsing from your cell phone. It is not nearly as fun to play Facebook’s MobWars on your cell phone and therefore you won’t do it.
Fring – Fring is one of several mobile IM applications that are available for Blackberry, WM, and iphone devices. Fring is my favorite thus far. (Should you not like it or prefer a different program I can also suggest Nimbuzz & Iskoot) If you have followed my advice above you will understand that I’m all about utilizing mobile devices. With that having been said I like to be available to my skype, google talk, msn, and other IM friends when they need me. So I take all of these messaging programs mobile on my cell. I can receive & send IM messages and receive call & make outgoing calls using my skype credit. All of this via the internet on my phone; not the cell minutes. This means that even when I travel internationally I can make calls from my cell anywhere I can get a wifi connection. That is cool!
TweetLater – If you have a large following on Twitter or if you plan on it I would advise getting a free account at Tweetlater.com Their service has several cool features. Here are some of them:
1 Set it up to automatically follow people who follow you. I hate Twitter Snobs (people who want to be followed but aren’t willing to follow) and this way you will be guaranteed not to be one.
2 Schedule Tweets. If you know you are going to be unavailable you can schedule tweets for a certain time of a certain day. This can also be useful to tweet about a specific event such as a webcast that you want people to know about.
3 Auto-Reply. If you have a lot of people following you each day you can set up the service to send people a custom thanks for following me message.
BudURL – If you like to provide value to people by sending them links to articles, services, and more than I suggest getting a free or paid account at budurl.com This service will shorten long urls (much like tinyurl.com) but it will also track the number and type of people that click on that url. Very Cool!
Google Alerts – Want to keep track of your personal brand? Want to know what people are saying about your business, website, or service? Go to google.com/alerts and put in any keyword that you want to follow. Google will email you a list of all the new content that has appeared online with that keyword in the time period you a lot. (I do mine daily).
Depending on what your purposes are in Social Media I would encourage you to take a look at the way you are utilizing these social networks and the way they are providing or consuming value in your life. Create a strategy to spend less time and be more effective in your Social Networking.
Jacob S. Paulsen
www.jacobspaulsen.com
Jacob is a Network Marketing Professional in addition to being a successful business owner. Currently a Regional Director with Agel Enterprises, Jacob has built an organization of 12,000+ people over 32 countries around the world. Jacob’s other business ventures include a private security company, a promotional apparel business, and a small cash-flow consulting firm. Get more articles like this by following Jacob’s Marketing Blog.
Those who are (for all tax purposes) self-employed, fall into two categories: those who work for a marketing or sales organization (MLM, Real Estate, Insurance, Sales) as 10-99 contractors; and those who run a small business out of their home without any business license or business entity protection.
There is nothing illegal about these scenarios. The IRS is quite happy to allow people to operate a “business” without setting up a legal business entity. This is because the IRS will make more in taxes on that business income.
10-99 contractors have a great opportunity to pay less in taxes than any other group of people in society, but 85% pay more than 4 times what is necessary. Companies are finding it increasingly more convenient to hire 10-99 contractors in place of employees. It saves companies both money and hassle.
The government tries to collect approximately 15% in taxes from everyone. This covers Social Security, Medicare, and Federal Income Taxes. In addition to these taxes, 10-99 contractors and other self-employed business owners are charged a 15.3% SELF-EMPLOYMENT tax. That makes for a total of over 30% in taxes. That is far too much to spend. What can we do about this?
Creating a business entity such as an LLC or S-Corporation will eliminate that self-employment tax and create a situation to maximize deductions available to businesses only. 10-99 contractors have nothing to lose and everything to gain by setting up a business to pass their taxes through. It doesn’t take much time, energy, or effort. Most CPAs, accountants, and attorneys charge between $500 and $800 for the initial setup cost. JP Squared Consulting offers businesses residing in Utah this service for only $100.
Contact JP Squared Consulting at www.jpsquaredinc.com and click on the link for New Entities.
Jacob S. Paulsen
Jacob is a Network Marketing Professional in addition to being a successful business owner. Currently a Regional Director with Agel Enterprises, Jacob has built an organization of 12,000+ people over 30 countries around the world. Jacob’s other business ventures include a private security company, a promotional apparel business, and a small cash-flow consulting firm. Get more articles like this by following Jacob’s Marketing Blog.
Not to long
ago someone explained to me how the auto-pilot system of an airplane functions.
I have always been under the impression that the auto-pilot maintained all the
system controls at a specified position keeping the plane going straight. I was
mistaken. It seems that if a plane were to maintain constant controls such as
speed it would eventually go off course because the elements working on and with
the plane are not constant. The wind, pressure, air density, etc are always
changing. For this reason the auto-pilot program is nothing more than a
"constant correctional, re-alignment system." Every second as the plane moves
against gravity and the elements the auto-pilot system makes adjustments in the
controls in order to maintain the correct course.
In our
spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, and professional lives we are also beat
upon by the elements. If we continue to maintain the same course by doing the
exact same things all the time we will over time be beat off course by the
elements of the world. We must each create an auto-pilot program which in effect
is a lifelong "constant correctional, re-alignment system." A series of rituals
and habits that help us re-commit, re-align, and re-focus ourselves on our own
goals.
Here are a
series of ideas that I would suggest can help each of us stay on the straight
and narrow path leading to our goals.
Reflect on the past.
When we remember the lessons we have learned in the past it tends to
strengthen our commitment to the future. The key to reflecting on the past
is in record keeping. We must first keep a record of the now so we will have
something to reflect on later. Traditionally we tend to think of record
keeping in the form of a written journal. While I believe in the importance
of keeping a written journal I have tried to teach the importance of all
types of records. Picture albums, home videos, blogs, school projects,
emails, family newsletters and many other forms of record keeping can play
an important role in keeping track of the past if organized in such a way
that allows for it to be reviewed in the future. In addition to keeping the
record we must also reflect upon it. I know many people who keep a separate
journal just for more emotional and special events. This facilitates future
reflection upon the events that shape our lives.
Plan for the future.
The greatest reason why most fail to reach their goals is because of the
lack of a plan of action. Reaching your goals will never come any closer to
reality until you establish the necessary steps required to achieve them. On
a very regular basis you need to sit down and look at where you are in
relation to your goals. You need to set weekly, and daily action steps that
will take you closer. I recommend a strong weekly planning session in which
you plan for the following week's activities. Such a planning session if
done correctly should last at least an hour. Short daily planning sessions
will also help you stay on track during the week.
Participate in
regular renewal activities. Search out activities that remind you why
you are doing what you are doing. Religious worship tends to help you
re-align with your deepest purpose. Company & industry conventions and
parties help you remember the best practices in your business. Seminars,
vacations, business trips, and other events that break up routine always
help you "wake up" from the elements that have been dragging you off course.
After you
have decided on your purpose & goals, and have committed yourself to success,
remember to consistently put yourself in an auto pilot program of constant
recommitment. While rituals are important they can bring you down if you don’t
search out ways of bringing yourself back to the center line.
Jacob is a Network Marketing
Professional in addition to being a successful business owner. Currently a
Regional Director with Agel Enterprises,
Jacob has built an organization of 12,000+ people over 32 countries around the
world. Jacob's other business ventures include a
private security company, a
promotional apparel business, and a small
cash-flow consulting firm. Get more
articles like this by following Jacob's
Marketing Blog.
What
do you want? Most of America is satisfied with the 40 by 40 plan, which is 40
hours per week for 40 years. In choosing a career, you see, we pick between two
different factors: freedom and security. At first these two are opposites. If
you choose security you will never achieve true freedom. If you choose freedom
you will likely begin with no security at all and only achieve it after time.
That is why the first decision you must make is Freedom; freedom over your time,
your resources, and your property both material and intellectual.
As
long as you trade your time for money you cannot achieve freedom. Some people
argue that being paid salary or being self-employed doesn’t constitute trading
time for money but I disagree. Ask yourself this question: If you don’t do any
work for the next two weeks would your paychecks still arrive? If you answer no
than you are still trading your time for money. The only way to stop this cycle
is to own your own business system. See the Diagram:
Owning
your own business system provides an opportunity for freedom because by
employing others in a predictable pattern of activities you can achieve greater
results than you could alone. If you get paid on the efforts of other people you
begin to have leverage, and leverage is the key to financial freedom. Kiyosaki’s
diagram shows us that only in the “B” & “I” quadrant can you achieve big
results. You must make the conscious decision to move to the “B” quadrant and
become the owner of a duplicable business system that doesn’t require your daily
involvement.
Notice
I said a business system that doesn’t require your daily involvement. Having
your own business isn’t enough. Most business owners in reality only own a job.
You must create or buy a business system that doesn’t require you coming into
work every day, every week, every month, or even every year. This may not be
possible during the first 6 months to a year of your business but it must be the
end goal and your system must allow for it.
Only
by making the conscious decision to desire freedom, own your own business, and
create a true leverage based business system can you achieve your goals.
Jacob Paulsen is a Network Marketing Professional in addition to being a great business owner. To subscribe to Jacob's articles about Marketing & Personal development please visit his blog. To learn more about the fastest growing Innovator in the industry check out Agel!
5. 8 Keys to Financial Success Cont. This article is a continuation of my previous post: "8 Keys to
Financial Success." If you haven't read the previous post I suggest
visiting http://mblog.jacobspaulsen.com
and catching up on it now. The 8 Keys to Financial Success are designed
to help people with an existing stream of monthly income to achieve
wealth and financial freedom. In the previous article I outlined keys
1-4. Here I will outline 5-8.
Let Money
Work For You. Now that you have began to build your
emergency fund and have paid off any credit card debt you will begin to
have excess cash-flow. This "excess" cash-flow can now be channeled
towards investing. How much? No less than 5% of your monthly income
should be put toward investments and after your rainy day fund is built
and your credit card debt is gone you should be contributing between
10-15% of your income every month toward investments. Where &
What? You need to purchase assets. Assets are investments that put
money back into your pocket. Your job is to find assets that will
increase your monthly cash-flow and bring you closer to financial
freedom. If you are wondering which investments are safe, the answer is
that only the investments you are totally familiar with and comfortable
with are safe. The risk of the investment is based on your own
knowledge of it.
Multiple
Streams of Income. No one source of income in this world
is
100% solid. You could loose your job or main source of income at any
time and it therefor becomes necessary to have a back up stream of
income. It also goes to reason that the only way to come closer to
financial freedom is to work harder at your current job or to get a
second income source. I am an advocate for owning your own business
instead of getting a second job. Only by owning your own business are
you creating leverage and potential residual income which is the base
of true financial freedom. Look for opportunities or ideas that will
allow you to build a side-income. Don't be afraid to invest some cash
and some time into the success of a side business since it may become
your greatest asset.
Automate Your
Finances. The reason a lot of people don't achieve
their financial goals is due to a lack of discipline. Even after you
begin to track your finances and set goals it can take a lot of work
and discipline to carry them out. Learn to automate everything possible
about your money to guarantee achieving your goals. If you can set up
an automatic transfer from your checking each month to your rainy day
fund, or a auto-pay on all your bills do it. Take human error out of
the picture as much as possible to ensure achieving your goals.
Educate
Yourself. The last key to your own wealth is education. In
order to be worth more you must first become more and in your financial
stewardship this can only be done by increasing your financial
education. Read business and investing books. Study the industry of
your side-business and seek out advice from successful people in your
family and in your industry. Learn everything you can about different
investment strategies such as stocks, bonds, real estate, hard money,
etc. Attend local seminars about wealth building and investing. Teach
what you learn to all those around you.
If you can harness these 8 keys of financial prosperity you can achieve
any financial goal you choose. You aren't limited by your income but by
your own financial intelligence and skills. Learn, Plan, Do.
Jacob Paulsen
801-494-3672
www.jacobspaulsen.com
All rights to this article are reserved. Any duplication must be a
complete duplicate of this article including the author's signature and
a return link to mblog.jacobspaulsen.com
6. 8 Keys to Financial Success Now for the purpose of this article I want to assume that you currently
have a steady stream of monthly income. I am going to discuss the
Paulsen 8 Keys to Financial Success but in order for these 8 keys to
truly bring you success it is necessary that you already have a
consistent income. For 95% of America financial problems do not come
from the lack of a strong income but the lack of skills necessary to
manage thier income. You see we spend the first 25 years of our lives
being taught how to go into the workplace and make money, but nobody
ever teaches us what to do with money once we have it. That is where
the 8 keys of financial success come into play.
A quick disclaimer: I did not invent these 8 ideas and I don't lay
claim to any of this content. From all my study I have simply organized
my favorite and key concepts into these 8 Keys. In this article I'm
going to discuss the first 4 of the 8 keys to success. Stay tuned for
the last 4 keys in a future article.
Track Your
Finances. This is the first step because it makes
everything else possible. What is measured can be improved and studies
have shown that even corporate executives who look at financial
statements everyday tend not to know their own financial situation. You
must know where your money comes from and where it goes, what assets
and liabilities you own, and how your current performance lines up with
your financial goals. Very few people have the accountant like skills
necessary to do it themselves and so to those I recommend hiring
someone to do their book-keeping. In my home state Utah I highly
recommend JP2Consulting.
Once you have a handle on your own finances the true work can begin.
Have a
Cash-Flow Budget. This is a two sided coin. First you need
a budget which is a simple idea of where you want your money to go. How
much do you want/expect to spend each month in dining, gasoline,
groceries, etc. Second is to work on your cash-flow. How much is left
over each month? How much do you spend vs bring in? This is called your
Profit vs Loss in the business world and knowing that number should be
your life. The other part of your cash-flow is your Assets vs
Liabilites/Expenses. This number will show how close you are to
retirement. Assets are things that bring you income without any work on
your part. Liabilities and Expenses are everything that take your money
away from you. Once your assets bring in enough each month to cover all
your expenses and liabilities you can stop working your day job and
retire. Making that number positive is your number one goal. To start
working on your cash-flow now download
this sheet from JP2.
Create a Rainy Day Fund. Before you begin investing your
money into assets or toys your number one priority is to put some cash
away into a 100% liquid account with the highest interest rate return
possible. MMA, or money market accounts offer the best solution. In
this account you need to have enough cash to cover a minimum of 3
months of expenses and liabilites. Get this account filled as quickly
as possible. You shouldn't be sleeping well at night if you don't have
this cash set aside. Once you hit the 3 month goal continue to
contribute a little each month until you reach at least the one year
mark. As your expenses go up in the future you need to make on going
adjustments to this fund. One year may seem extreme but this cash fund
is vital to your long term financial stability and success.
Use Credit Cards like Debit Cards. Credit Cards were
designed to hurt you. If used properly however they will bring you more
freedom and success. Credit card debt is never, never, never
acceptable. The interest rates are way to high to justify carrying any
balance at all. Many people will tell you that it is necessary to carry
a balance in order to build credit but that is a only myth. If you
think of a credit card the same way you do a debit card you can win the
game. Never charge your card unless the cash is already in the account
to cover the charge. By paying off your card each month you will slowly
build strong credit over time. Also if you get a good rewards card you
can accumulate points and cash back rewards that will put extra in your
pocket.
7. You Must Become More to Get More! Ultimately you must become more if you want to earn more. In the
insurance industry there is a term called "Human Life Value." It seems
almost wrong that anyone can assign an actual dollar value to our lives
but this is necessary in when determining what kind of life insurance
policies you can buy.
For purposes of this article when I refer to your "Human Life Value"
I'm not talking about your insurance life value, but instead how much
value you create for the world. As you work hard to become more, you in
turn are able if you chose to contribute more to the world. As you
actively create value for those around you, your true Human Life Value
increases. Your human life value is tied directly to your wealth. As
your Human life value increases your wealth must also increase.
Understand that the term wealth doesn't always apply to money. Wealth
can be a great number of things including strong & fulfilling
relationships, inner peace & satisfaction, etc.
There are three distinct lessons we must take from this truth:
1. Our skills and knowledge alone do not create value for anyone. Only
the application of skills and knowledge with correct direction can
begin to create value for those around us. Therefore our Human Life
Value only increases when we create value for others.
2. It is only in creating value for others that we can increase our own
wealth. Since all our wealth is a direct reflection of what we receive
from others and from society it is only in creating value for others
that we can experience an increase.
3. Only through exchange can value be created. When you sell a good or
service both parties become wealthier for having made the exchange even
though the amount of goods or services exchanged remained the same. If
you hug your 2 year old child both of you are wealthier for the
exchange even though the hug was constant.
Understanding these principles, we can begin a discussion about how
your Human Life Value affects you in Marketing. The first applied
lesson to learn is that if you want to sell more goods or services you
must become more. This is true both because your overall attractiveness
affects your ability to sell and because your ability to create value
in the life of your client is increased. Of course when speaking of
attractiveness we aren't referring to your physical attraction, but the
overall impression that you carry with you everywhere you go.
How do we become more? Allow us to separate your person into 4 common
categories. Physical, Mental, Emotional, & Spiritual. To become
more physically we must exercise and eat well. To become more mentally
we must expose ourselves to new ideas and concepts. We must study and
strive to learn more about more. To become more emotionally we must
interact with people. We must understand people. To become more
spiritually we connect with an inner purpose and divine potential ever
striving to follow our creator.
All four of these categories are inseparably connected. As you grow in
one you must grow in the other. This isn't to say that we are all
balanced all the time but simply put they are connected and how you
grow or don't grow in one area will have an impact on the other four.
Becoming more is the end purpose of everything we do. As you increase
your ability to serve your fellow man, or put differently create more
value for society you in turn increase your own wealth. Ironically it
is the only way to do so!
In the last month I have been able to read (actually listen) several
new books that I have enjoyed. I wanted to take this post to talk a
little about each of these recent reads.
"His Excelency George Washington" really blew me away. I always knew
George Washington had to be a powerful and unique person but this
really got me pumped. I learned a lot about this amazing man and it
inspired me to memorize all the U.S. presidents and eventually I would
like to read a biography about all the US presidents. George was a
unique and powerful hero. He was the very first person to put his life
on the line of American Independence and he knew it. His general lack
of military experience and general failure in warfare during the war go
to prove that his success was due to the principles he lived by and
"providence itself."
"The 5 Lessons A Millionaire Taught Me" had great, but unoriginal
content. I was dissapointed in how obviously copy-cat the material is.
I realize that there is only so much content to be taught in reference
to wealth principles but Richard Paul Evans even goes so far to quote
George Clason's "Richest Man in Babylon" in almost every chapter it
seems. I'm super glad I read it just the same because we all need on
going reminders of what we need to be doing and how true wealth is
created. Richard Paul Evans is a great author and it show in this work.
It was very easy to read and he is a great teacher.
I have always been a fan of Robert Allen as a person but his book
Nothing Down turned me away a little because it was just hard for me to
get through. I enjoy real estate but I'm not super passionate and
toward the end I just wanted to be done. This book on the other hand
really held my attention. Both Authors do a good job of teaching
principles of business, investing, and wealth. They laid it out in two
different formats which helps different types of people who learn
differently and that is something I really liked.
Jacob Paulsen
www.ageljacob.com
skype: jacob.paulsen
9. Biggest Mistakes made by Network Marketing Amateurs 1. Hoping for a free ride. Too often people think that by signing up
one or two "key" people they will be all but done and enjoy a big bonus
check forever. The other free ride lie is when you are told by your
upline that you will inherit a huge organization or downline from them.
While the comp plan may allow your upline to build underneath you that
won't make it free money. It is going to take work and time to build a
profitable organization and any thought that you can get around that is
nothing more than a lie.
2. Ashamed to be a Network Marketer. In order to have Huge Break
through income in this business you must make it a part of your life
and who you are. All too often people see the earning potential and
decide to get involved but they are never truly committed, only
interested. The products, and the business need to become a part of
your lifestyle if you want to have the BIG residual income. That
doesn't mean this has to be the only thing you do for 40 hours a week,
but it must become a part of your lifestyle.
3. Forgetting this is your own business. Unlike a 401K or Mutual fund
your Network Marketing business requires attention. You would not buy a
fast food franchise and expect it to send you a paycheck if you hadn't
done any work. Your Network Marketing business is a business and like
all other business ventures it requires: 1. An initial investment. 2.
Ongoing Overhead 3. Training by Experts 4. Time & Energy (equal
to the rate of growth you desire) 5. Branding & Advertising. If
you aren't willing to treat it like a business don't expect to be
successful.
4. Not Patient Enough. Getting out of the business in less than 6
months is always a mistake. There are four phases to this business and
the first is the investment stage. Just like any other business venture
in the first 6 months are so you will invest more time, money, and
energy into your business than you will get out. That is normal and to
be expected. If you are in the right company and working the system
correctly after 6 months you should enter the Momentum stage and begin
to get paid well for what you are doing.
5. Looking for people who need your business. A big mistake that many
people make is to look for the people who need your business/product
and forget to look for the people who your business needs. A CEO of a
mouthwash company would not recruit employees based on the criteria of
having bad breath. It would be important to tell all people with bad
breath about your product but as the CEO of your own Network Marketing
business you need to look for the people who will help your business
grow. The people with the international contacts, existing network,
business sense, track record of success, etc.
6. Massive Pro-Activity without Massive Training. In this business you
need a strong concentrated but balanced dosage of both Pro-Activity and
Effectiveness. Pro-Activity only takes committment and can be done by
anyone. Being effective on the other hand requires going through the
trianing material and finding a coach/mentor within the business to
hold your hand. One without the other will prove your doom. Both
together will make you un-stopable.
10. Analyze the Companies in Network Marketing If you have read my post about why the principles that govern Network
Marketing are superior to those that govern traditional business then
this post is the next logical step in understanding the industry. If
you haven’t yet read it I would encourage you to do so
at mblog.jacobspaulsen.com
Now, I’m assuming that you have read my article about
Principles of the Network Marketing model and that you are across that
bridge. I am assuming that you have reached that logical conclusion
that the network marketing business model is indeed superior. The next
step then is the ability to analyze the companies and opportunities
within the industry and determine what factors make some better than
others. The logical conclusion is that if some companies are better
than others at any given moment there must be consistent factors that
we could recognize that determine which are the better companies and
opportunities. This article’s purpose is to find those
factors and without applying them to any specific company or
opportunity.
If you truly understand the business model than you can agree with me
that the number one factor that separates the true
“opportunity” that exists in a company is
it’s timing in the marketplace. It is the Golden Law of this
industry and it lays the foundation for the rest of this article. 70%
of the fortunes created in this industry are generated by people who
get involved in the foundation of a company. What is the foundation?
All business go through three standard cycles of business. Foundation,
Hyper-Growth, & Maturity. Big money can be made in the
Hyper-Growth stage and even perhaps in the Maturity, but History and
logic tell us that the big financial opportunities exist for people
that get into the foundation of a company.
Ok, that’s the first law of the industry. Get into the
beginning of a company. How do you know if it’s the
beginning? Generally if a company hasn’t hit hyper-growth by
its 8th or 9th year it isn’t going to happen. When the
business has a stronger focus on finding new team members you might be
in the foundation. Generally as a company begins to hit hyper-growth
the products become popularized and a larger portion of the volume of
sales come from customers and return customers instead of new team
members.
If we accept that the best thing you can do is get into the beginning
than we also have to understand the number one risk involved is that
your company being so young could tank, fail, and crash. Most
businesses do in our industry just like every other industry. How do
you manage that risk and at the same time find a company that has the
potential to become a huge giant.
Lets start by talking about the history of the industry and what we can
learn from companies that have already come along and become
substantial players. To the best of my knowledge there have only ever
been 7 companies in the history of this industry to achieve what we
call Billion Dollar status. Billion dollar status means they have
reached a point in which they are doing over one billion dollars or
more in sales within one year and have sustained it. Seven
isn’t many for a 60 year old industry. In fact history has
shown that a new Billion Dollar company only comes around every 6 to 10
years or so.
So, lets dive into the meat. What are those factors that minimize the
risk of failure and maximize the potential of hitting Billion Dollar
status? These are the factors that create the “perfect
storm” in this industry once the timing requirement of being
in the foundation is met.
1. Experienced Management
2. Financial Backing
3. Global Vision
4. Product Line
5. Compensation Plan
6. Training/Coaching –
Duplication
Experienced Management. It takes more than a couple of
rookies to really have huge success in this industry. You have to have
a team of executives that have massive experience and success in the
industry. They have to know how to ship product on time, pay on time,
open international markets, and create a profitable payplan.
Financial Backing. Companies fail most of the time because
they are under managed and under capitalized. In our industry the under
capitalized is the bigger killer. It takes big money to create a
product line, open markets, and attract the big leaders that we talked
about in number one. Some companies may have enough money to survive
those first few years until they are profitable but you are looking for
a company that has the big money necessary to go global, attract
leadership, and launch products.
Global Vision. If you really want to have massive financial
success logic dictates that you need to go international. More market
share means more money and the earlier in the company that
international markets open the better. This can create an international
frenzy when other markets also have a ground floor international
opportunity. This is so super rare that I have only seen it happen once
or twice.
Product Line. For most people they think this is the only
factor. While it is super important it isn’t alone. There are
many “sub-factors” to the product line that
determine it’s long term success.
First to Market. Copy-Cat products will never make
Billion Status. Pepsi will never be bigger than Coke, Wendy’s
will never surpass McDonalds and the Microsoft Zune will never beat out
the IPod. First to Market worldwide products are a must.
Universal Appeal. This is about Target Market. Can
children & seniors use the product? Is it limited to one per
household? Will it sell in every international market?
Consumable. Repeat Business is important so the product
has to be consumable.
Marketability. Can you give out samples, show results? Is
the product tangible to the person looking at the business? Can they
understand it inside of a 5 minute presentation?
Comp. Plan. Can you be profitable quickly? Do you have
strong incentive to help others be successful? Is there a such thing as
a bad position?
Training/Coaching & Duplication. You can have all
the perfect factors in place but if you don’t have training
and support than what difference does it make? It is necessary for a
company to attract BIG Field Leadership from other companies. These big
leaders who have a track record of success not only have to be a part
of the organization but they need to create simple systems of
duplication. The success in this industry is in duplication. How easy
is it for anyone to do it? Big leaders create training and action
programs that are duplicable and follow-able for anyone.
I hope that this has been helpful. These are the factors that you can
use to look at the companies that exist in this industry. Choosing the
best company for you is the number one decision you can make if you
want to have huge financial success. By taking the “Outside
In” look at the industry you are doing what most
don’t. Most people learn about the industry via a company
that gets them involved. They then have the unfortunate
“Inside Out” look at the industry and
don’t understand why they aren’t having the success
they want and why one company might be better than others.
11. The Principles that Govern Network Marketing are Superior to those that Govern Traditional Business Are you remotely curious about Multi-Level Marketing? The Network
Marketing Industry or MLM industry has been around for over 60 years
and while the general public often regards the industry with great
contempt recent studies have shown that the industry is stronger than
ever. Now with companies such as General Electric, Verizon, GM Motors
marketing some or all of their products via the network marketing
business model a lot of consumers are begining to take this industry
serious. Great economists such as Paul Zane Pilzer and wealthly
men/authors like Robert Kiyosaki & Donald Trump have also
spoken out in great extent recently about the amazing opportunities
that exist for average people in Network Marketing.
The title of this post is "The Principles that Govern Network Marketing
are Superior to those that Govern Traditional Business."
Why Network Marketing? What makes it so unique? White traditional
business delivers products to end consumers via a variety of third
party steps such as distributors, wholesalers, and retailers the
network marketing business model delivers products directly to the end
consumer's doorstep from the manufacturing facilty. Taking out all the
middle men brings down total cost. Also by removing the middle men you
remove geographic barriers allowing you to do business anywhere people
are willing to listen, look, and buy. Are you starting to understand
why the principles that govern this business model are superior. Lets
keep going.
Lets talk about opportunity in business. A traditional company is built
in the shape of a pyramid with CEOs and presidents at the top all the
way down through management and eventually to the large group of
employees. The people at the top make most of the money and the people
at the bottom do most the work. This is not a the bad part; on the
contrary it is natural. The bad part is the lack of opportunity. The
bottom line staff/employees don't have the same opportunity to make
money as the top level management. In fact there is a scarity of money.
The more money the staff makes the less there is left for the
Management. True scarcity with no opportunity at all.
The next step up is the Commission pay model. This model is superior
because the upper level management has an incentive in the successful
of the regular bottom level salesman. The more sales they make the more
money it makes both parties. Everyone is paid based on their actual
production and so nobody can break the principle and therefore people
are rewarded correctly. Opportunity is much stronger because of two
things. First, abundance is much more present because the people at the
top want the people to succeed even though there can still be a strong
feeling of scarcity between same level salesreps. Second, Each person
is resposible for their own results and so by working harder you can
make more money. However there is still a fundamental flaw. Though
opportunity exists for success it is not equal. A real-estate agent
does not have the same opportunity as a real-estate broker because the
realtor can not hire other realtors. The same is true for the insurance
agent and for every other commision paid sales rep. Though there may be
an opportunity for advancement and management positions, the
opportunity will never be equal to the people at the top. What will
eventually happen to the successful sales rep? He/she will go out and
start their own company in order to have that equal opportunity. Now
the salesrep has become the competition to the company that trained
& coached him.
Network marketing is the answer to all these problems. Abundance is
real because the marketplace is endless (or at least infinity larger
than the traditional marketplace). Opportunity not only exists because
you get paid on your own efforts but it is also equal because the
compensation plans that exist in this industry allow for equal
opportunity for everyone. People at the bottom of the pyramid can make
more than the people at the top. In fact it happens a lot. I
sometimes explain it to people this way:
Imagine buying a franchise.
Now imagine that your franchise could sell it's product in
every country around the world.
Now imagine that your franchise had no employees at all.
Now imagine that your franchise didn't handle any customer
service at all.
Now imagine that the complete upfront cost of your
franchise is only between $500 to $1500 one time.
Now imagine that the ongoing overhead expense of your
franchise is only between $100 to $300 each month.
Now imagine that you got a cut out of the prodution of
every other franchise the company sells.
Now imagine that you could stop working anytime after only
your first 6 months to a year and not only would you continue to get a
check but it continues to get bigger each month even without you.
Now what you have is a Network Marketing Business.
12. Favorite Web Services 2 In continuation from my previous post "Favorite Web Services 1" I would
like to show you a couple more awesome webservices that everyone should
be aware of.
Geni is an online
revolutionary geneology service. Its modern design helps you catolog
your ancestory but in addition you will be able to keep track of
birthdays and other recent news shared by family members. Search for
long lost relatives and even add friends not related to you.
Google
now has a new Website
Creator. The genius of this new google program is that unlike
many company website design programs google will also host your site
for free. You can have as many pages as you would like and can
integrate images and links etc. The one downside may be that the domain
for your site will be http://yourgoogleid.googlepages.com This can be
quickly solved though by purchasing a domain from somewhere like GoDaddy.com and
forwarding your domain to your google page. When you do the forward be
sure to mask it.
Google
has also developed an elaborate SMS
information system. You can send a text message from your
phone to googl (46645) with an inquiry such as a phonebook request,
weather info, sports scores, etc. The service is amazingly fast. It
never takes more than 10 seconds to get a text message back with the
requested info. If you are looking for the phone number or address for
the local Staples just text "staples denver, co" to 46645 and in
seconds you have all the info you want. There is no cost in addition to
the normal cost to send and receive the text message.
Woot.com
is an amazing site that offers exactly one product each day. You can
often buy multiple of the one item but watch out because they have
stellar deals. The webmasters are very creative and even if you don't
want the item of the day it might be worth reading about it anyway.
13. Favorite Web Services 1 So when it comes to home based business owners like myself, we really
tend to feed on the coolest of the internet services. Especially the
free ones. Today I just wanted to highlight a few of those. (No
surprise any of these are google services).
IGoogle:
Customized Home pages aren't anything new but Google has made a huge
innovation in personalized home pages. With bazillions of different
"widgets" you can add to your site there is almost little need to even
leave you home page anymore.
Google Reader: Now that I'm into blogging and more
importantly keeping up on other people's blogs I love this program that
alerts me every time anyone on my list posts a new blog entry. Because
I have a Google reader "widget" on my Igoogle home page I know
immediately when family and friends post. I love it.
Skype: Instant Messaging isn't really new either but Skype
has changed the way we do this. They have integrated a full feature
video VOIP phone. Fancy way of saying you can make phone calls for free
via the internet to anyone anywhere in the world who also has the free
software installed. Turning on the video is an option and we generally
only use it for family who want to see the baby but still... Super Cool.
Plaxo: Plaxo does
a lot of things but the coolest is its ability to synchronize your
contacts and calendar between your Google, Yahoo, MSM, Hotmail, excite,
email services in addition to MAC, Outlook, Express, etc. HOLY COW this
is amazing. The premium services are cool too, but the free account
does about everything I need it to do.
Ok. I'll stop for now. No doubt I will rave about more programs in the
future.
14. The Power of Blogging For those of us who are interested in Internet Marketing there are few
things as powerful as blogging. At first the word blog may make you
think about stay at home mom's posting pictures of their children to a
webpage, but blogging is much more than that. Blogs have a special
ability to be crawled by search engines and their content reaches a
very large audience. Search engines work off of many things but one of
them is keywords. Reaccuring keywords in a blog are likely to make it
very visible. Search engines also like changing content. Because blogs
have a tendancy to have new content added almost daily they are extra
"crawled" by the search engines. Also because blogs strongly resemble
forums because posts to a blog can be commented on by visitors to the
blog this can also increase the tendancy to be found by search engines.
Also blogs can have a tremendous impact on the increased visibility of
your other marketing sites because of the RSS technology. Let me give
you an example. This very post that you are reading right now will
automatically be inserted into over 40 different sites today when I hit
the "Post" button. Blogs can be subscribed to via an RSS feed. This
allows me to automatically embed new posts into whatever website I
choose. This allows my marketing sites to also have a constant change
of content every time I post a new blog entry even though the general
content of the site never changes. It also feeds a constant new set of
key words into my marketing sites also making them more search engine
friendly. The obvious key word in this post is Blog and if it weren't
such a common key word it might get some of my pages listed in the top
20 results of some search engines.
What service should you use to Blog? If you are interested in a social
climate where you can have your friends read and remark to your blog I
would suggest google's very own Blogspot.
They allow a lot of customization to your blog and because they are
hosted by google they are crawled fairly regularily by the search
engine. You can opt to have a non public blog if you choose.
If you are interested in creating an ongoing stream of new RSS content
for your marketing website(s) I would suggest a service called BlogFather.
Blog Father was created by the internet marketing company Veretekk and
their system is optomized for both search engine customization as well
as RSS feeding.
Both of these services are free of charge so go to it! Start blogging
today!
15. The Advantage of Online Conferencing
Technology is changing the way business is done in many ways. One of
those is conferencing. The old days of flying all of your team into one
location and paying for a hotel conference room are over. The expenses
of leasing a conference room, travel, etc are just to much, and frankly
not necessary.
Web conferencing has created a more practical solution. Now your
team can join you in an online webcast room from anywhere in the world where
they have an internet connection. This means that nobody needs to get
dressed up or travel anywhere. There are various web conferencing
software options available. I have tried at least a trial of all of
them and I have found that the Vereconference system designed by Ivocalize is by far the most stable and the most versatile. Also, I
found it to be the least expensive option out there.
Here are some advantages to the VereConference webcast system.
All you need is a computer with an Internet connection of
any kind.
You can use it to provide live, online support for your
existing customers and website visitors.
Perform live onling training sessions for your team.
Clean interface. Extremely easy to use! Just click the link
and you're in!
Rich, quality sound. All you need is a headset and speakers!
Text chat for your guests
without a microphone!
Private text
chat conversations on the side of the main presentation!
Keyboard commands for visually impaired users!
Synchronized
web browsing allows you to push web pages for 1000's of
viewers to see.
Superior white board features!
Supports IFRAMES in html web pages.
100% Internet
based - no phone line or teleconference needed.
Recording feature - archive your meetings and post them on
the web! (not included with free rooms)
Unlimited monthly web conferencing!
Customize the look and feel of your room.
Live customer support - just when you need it!
For more information or to try a VereConference trial room for free
visit: www.onlineconference.info
16. Personal Development Books to read Every Year There are certain books that I try to read/listen to every year. These
would be my all stars of personal development and business. Though you
may not choose to read these books every year I do highly recommend
reading them at least once and creating your own list of "every year"
books. To see all my book reviews visit my iread list on my facebook or
myspace profile.
7
Habits of Highly Effective People. Stephen R. Covey is a
genius without question but this book is still very applicable even 25
years after it was written. It seems like every time I read it a
different habit really sticks out to me.
Rich
Dad Poor Dad. Robert Kiyosaki is an amazing author in
addition to being an investing genius. This number one best seller
teaches the basic principles of business & money that I believe
govern our financial world. He does a great job of teaching these
principles along with telling a personal story.
21
Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. John Maxwell is a great
teacher. In this book he outlines the governing principles that dictate
leadership. By mastering these laws you begin to lead, like it or not:)
Who
Took My Money. Robert Kiyosaki does it again for me. Here he
continues the Rich Dad story and teaches the basic principles in
regards to cash flow and investing. An absolute must.
Think
& Grow Rich. Napolean Hill sacrificed many years of
his life to put together this book of governing principles. He
interviewed the most influencial and richest people in America and this
is what he learned.
Some other books I try and read over and over again.
How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
17. Mac VS PC, Iphone VS Windows Mobile, Ipod VS ? So 5 years ago I never would have believed that Apple could make such a come back. PCs had such a hold on the market place. Although Mac has been making huge innovations for sometime nobody cared or noticed until the Ipod was launched. Since the Ipod has or at least had no competition people were forced to look at Mac. Well about a month ago I converted to a Mac book laptop and now I feel the pressure to convert to the Iphone. Since I'm not the only one out there feeling torn in two directions I thought I would take this opportunity to share my two cents comparing these two platforms and their simple pros and cons.
Mac VS PC
* Easier: Once you are accustomed I think the mac is easier
* Safer: Anyone who knows anything would concur that the Mac is safer from viruses and crashes
* Customizable: Thought mac is very easy to customize I think the PC is still more customizable because there is a lot more freeware (free software) out there for PCs.
* Software: Once again the PC wins. Developers make their programs for PCs first and macs second. There is just more out there for PCs. On a sidenote you can get a windows terminal on your mac to run pc programs.
Iphone VS Windows Mobile - Thinking of getting a iphone or a smartphone?
* Easier: If you use a PC that a windows mobile smartphone will be easier. Works the same like with a start menu etc.
* Business Use: Windows Mobile wins again. Iphone can convert word & excell files but they are read only. Windows Mobile can edit and save word, excell, and powerpoint files. Also the Iphone has a haphazard sync possibility with outlook but its really not that good.
* Trendy: Here is where the Iphone shines. It just looks cool.
* Music/Video: Windows Mobile comes with windows media which plays music and video very well. But since anymore most of us use itunes and not windows media the Iphone is easier to use and comes with a lot more built in memory to hold more songs and movies.
* Keyboard/Input: Though all the Iphone users I know defend the touch screen keyboard to the death I just can't believe that its easier/quicker/more accurate than a full sized keyboard available on many windows mobile phones.
* Availability: Windows mobile is a common platform that every cell phone carrier will have. Iphones are only made for Cingular. Though you can unlock them for other GSM carriers (T-mobile) you could never use them on TDMA/PCS carriers (Verizon, Cricket, Sprint, Nextel, etc).
* Customizablitiy: Once again there is so much more software out there for windows mobile because it is a pc platform. Iphones come with more cool stuff stock, but the windows mobile can do so much more
* Summary: Show me something that an Iphone can do that my Windows Mobile can't and I'll switch :)
IPod VS ??? OK honestly though there are some knock-offs on the market I've never given any of them any consideration.
18. InstantBuzz/TrafficSwarm I have been experimenting with Instant Buzz
and TrafficSwarm for over a week now. For those of you who are
unfamiliar with these programs they are both designed to drive
additional "Free" traffic to your marketing website.
Instant Buzz installs a toolbar in your browser (available for both
firefox and IE) that displays one line text only ads from other Instant
Buzz users. Each time a new ad is displayed you earn credits. For each
credit you earn one of your ads will be displayed on the tool bar of
another Instant Buzz user. The bonus to this program is clearly that it
is free. The big downside is that it doesn't really drive any traffic.
Though your ad will have thousands of "views" within a week the click
ration is very low. In my first week of use my ads have been displayed
over 5000 times and I haven't had a single click yet. But hey, its free
I guess.
Traffic Swarm provides you with your own user page where 5-6 ads of
other Traffic Swarm users are displayed. Unlike Instant Buzz the only
real way to generate significant credits is to click on the ads of
other users. The obvious plus side is that you might actually have some
people clicking on your ads in order to earn their own credits and just
maybe if your site is compelling enough they might spend more than the
required 20 seconds on it before moving on. The downside is that it
takes some time and work to build up your own credits as you browse
through the ads of others. Once again the program is free so if you
want to play with it in your spare time and build up a bunch of credits
you might see a result. So far in one week my ad has been clicked on
aout 40 times but I haven't seen any sales from it.
I've found there are bazillions of other "free" traffic driving
services out there, of which most are being advertized on the two
services above. As far as I can tell these are the two more popular
services and because they offer a free account it could hurt to try,
but don't hope for big money!
Does your company do business to business prospecting? Have you ever considered using an outbound telemarketing company? If you are wondering if your business will be able to endure the current economic troubles, this article is exactly what you need to read. There are six tips that can help your business find success even in a bad economy.
The following six tips are ways your company can not only survive, but thrive during tough economic times. Increasing your marketing budget, using the power of leverage, focusing your efforts where they will be most effective, properly training your employees, providing excellent customer service and keeping a positive attitude are all ways to keep your business profitable in difficult economic times.
The first way for increasing profits during a recession may sound backwards, but increasing the amount of money you spend on marketing your business instead of reducing it is one thing that can help your business make a profit during a recession. Countless businesses make the mistake of considering their marketing an expense instead of an investment and wind up destroying their businesses by cutting back in this area.
The second tip is to use the power of leverage by hiring a business to business prospecting company to do outbound telemarketing for your business. This helps your team use their time more wisely.
The next tip is to focus your efforts where they will be most effective, which is spending time closing sales. When the telemarketing programs do their job effectively your team can spend the majority of their time making sales which means increased profits for you.
The fourth tip involves properly training your employees to work with the highly qualified leads they receive from these lead generation companies. Proper training will help them make the most of these leads and sales will go through the roof regardless of what is happening in the economy.
The fifth tip for business success in tough economic times is to provide excellent customer service. Getting repeat business is much more cost effective and profitable than having to constantly prospect for new business so it is vital to keep your current customers happy.
The sixth and final tip for business success in tough economic times is keeping a positive attitude. People have a tendency to create the exact amount of success they believe they will and your positive attitude will be reflected in your employees' attitudes and achievements as well as your own.
Implementing the six ways listed above can help your business to increase profits during a recession. Business to business prospecting is one area to concentrate your marketing efforts in since this will make four of the six ways happen. Then all you have to worry about are the last two ways including treating your clients to outstanding service and maintaining an optimistic outlook.
Career Step has recently partnered with HCIT Solutions to help develop the Jamaican medical transcription field within the growing global healthcare industry.
oDesk oConomy reports that freelance writing jobs, including technical writing, business writing, blog and article writing, editing, and translation services are all part of the growing demand for online jobs found on oDesk.
While we don't often think about - or even care - how the Google search engine works, it is very important for an online marketer who is using search engine optimization, or natural search marketing for their online business to understand the basic principles that drive Google.
There are three main parts to Google: Googlebot, The Indexer, and the Query Processor. Each of these three parts is crucial to online businesses, believe it or not. Let's take a deep look at each of these Google elements to see how they work.
Googlebot is the search engine spider that comes to your website and spiders your pages. It isn't an actual spider, of course.
It actually works more like a web browser by calling a server and requesting pages, and downloading them - just as you do when you open your browser, type in an URI, and then the web page loads.
Googlebot, however, is run by big number of computers and performs this task much faster than one user could on their home or work personal computer. And Googlebot doesn't know if a website exists until a URL is put into their Add URL form, or until they find a link point to that site on another web page.
When Googlebot comes to a page, they take all the links from that page, and put them in a queue for crawling, and repeat this process over and over again. Once Googlebot has found a link, and downloaded the page, it hands that page off to the Indexer.
The Indexer stores the pages in Google's Index Data base. The Index then sorts all of the pages in its data base, alphabetically, by looking at all of the keywords on the pages. The Indexer does not pay any attention to what Google calls stop words, such as is, on, or, why, how, etc. It just pays attention to more important keyword type words.
The Indexer, after Indexing pages, waits for the Google Query Processor to ask it for a list of documents. A keyword is given to the Query Processor, which in turn asks the Indexer for a list of stored websites contain that keyword.
The Indexer then supplies the Query processor with a list of the documents, and the Query processor presents the documents to the user who requested the keyphrase.
You see, each element is important to the others. It all starts with the Googlebot finding your web page link on another site, or by you going to Google and using the Add form to submit your site.
GrandCentral Phone Service as a voice of the recycled products, Google introduced at the beginning of Google Voice Services, which provides integrated voice telephone service, including all the features of GrandCentral (useful for SOHOs).
In addition, Google will also provide a voice mail features automatic text copying, as well as send and receive text messages, Google voice communications will also be recorded with the Gmail integration implementation. Users can make free calls to any number in the United States.
Like Gizmodo, according to reports, Google Voice will soon appear in the form of application at the iPhone and iPod Touch. The application will include a dial-up, and it can be set aside (from Google Voice your number), and the iPhone will make its own bilateral linking.
It can also dial-up and cell phone, and contact list to work, while sending SMS. Google Voice also includes standard features such as phone logs, voice mail and so on.
The latest model stars Netbook - X-Slim and really drive map Wind U123 has just emerged, both CULV notebook using Intel's ultra-low voltage processor, running Windows Vista Home Premium system, only 0.7 inches thick, 2.8 pounds, is the MSI Dell used to combat the Adamo's flagship product, version with high prices also reached a level of more than 1000 U.S. dollars, the minimum should have 700 U.S. dollars, this series of products will also have 11.6, 14 and 15.6-inch version, let us Figure it together!
GIGABYTE is expected at the end of the second quarter with the cottage Internet Protocol of the Company products will be delivered, and the deal will allow Gigabyte notebook sales doubled compared to 3 last year! Last year, the Gigabyte notebook sales are only 15 million units, while in 2009 this figure grew to around 50 million units.
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Since 2006, Matthew Bredel has built a successful online, home based business that's growth has depended largely on page 1 Google rankings and other SEO organic traffic. The SEO Exciter Series outlines many of his personal strategies in getting top search engine rankings for some of today's most competitive search engine keywords.
Leading L.A.-based computer repair service company E-Geniuses illustrates how businesses can utilize technology and telecommuting to not only survive the economic crisis but to grow in a down market.
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There are no secrets on how to rank high with the major search engines because effective search engine optimizations are now immense. What is search engine optimization? Before we discuss that thing, you have to understand first how search engines work and a bit of know-how.
Search engines are into providing their users with the most relevant and up-to-date information to match the search term that was used. They are sophisticated pieces of technology which allow users to quickly find relevant websites by searching for a word or a phrase. Search engine results are useless to users if the information doesn't relate to the search term, or if the results are old. People expect the most up-to-date and fresh information that is useful to them.
Updating your website everyday and adding some materials will help you get noticed by the search engines. So, if you are going to sell any type of product or service online, you have to optimize your website for the search engines, in order to boost traffic and sales. It is because over 90% of your business will likely come directly from search engine results. And for that reason, it is absolutely important to optimize your site for search engines for you to have the greatest deals in the entire world.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process by which webmasters or online business owners utilize strategic copy to augment their website's status. It is certain that the internet has grown so fast over the years and the competition for the best search engine position has created an enormous market. Therefore, better understanding the fundamental elements of Search Engine Optimization is vital for an online business' success.
Making use of effective search engine optimization techniques will improve the page rank of your website. There are many tricks that can be used to increase page rank; the most effective method is to provide high quality content consistently. This seems like a simple concept but there are many websites that fails to provide content that visitors find interesting. Sites which provide content that are interesting, well-written and regularly updated create highly engaged visitors who are more likely to return to the website in the coming days. So, if you can set your website apart from those boring, lifeless sites then do it. You'll surely have a step closer to achieving high page rank through search engine optimization.
The next significant factor for an effective search engine optimization is to include keywords and phrases within your content. To make sure that you are properly targeting your market, you have to make sure that the keywords and phrases you have on your site are the keywords and phrase that your site is actually optimized for. The more keywords you use in your content, the more likely it is that online visitors will find your site when they do some research with those words. If you are unfailing with these techniques, then your overall search engine optimization will increase, boosting your page rank.
You should also have to develop a linking strategy as a part of your search engine optimization. Not only does this provide free advertising for your site, but it makes the impression that your site is imperative because of its affiliated links. For each link that you have pointing back to you, that is another chance for your potential customer to find you. The more inbound links that you have pointing to your site, the higher you will be ranked in the search engines.
Another is to develop a content stratagem. People who get to search from the internet are looking for information. The more information you provide for them and the more helpful it is, the more likely you will make the sale. Writing articles is the most effective way to build up content for your site. When writing articles to post on your site, make sure that you develop a clear means of arranging their content. You can do this by simply adding a new page to your site. This will allow room for extra articles to be added as you write them, and will allow you to build up an archive of articles which will maintain to draw online visitors. Make sure also that you have included your archived articles in a directory that is next to the root web of your site so that the search engines will catalog your online articles.
Always keep in mind that search engine optimization methods are important in developing your site's status. With that thing in mind, make sure that you write high-quality, keyword rich content and link your site to and from a deliberate family of other sites. These things will help improve your site's popularity and coerce increased business through your online business.
About the Author:
A survey poll that was conducted shows that 80% of Australians choose to use internet search to find local businesses while only 17% use the Yellow Pages. Dont waste thousands on a Yellow Pages ad when you can tripple your clientele at a fraction of the cost. For more info, go to Adelaide SEO.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.----Peplink, the pioneer in Internet link balancing and failover solutions, today announces the release of its Balance 20W mobile load balancing router. Peplink's innovative new product gives Internet reliability to mobile and remote locations where it is not currently possible.
These days, most everyone is familiar with an autoresponder, although many don't know why they are beneficial to businesses. If you aren't familiar with autoresponders, you would probably find yourself amazed with them. An autoresponder can help your business by automatically emailing your clients and customers with a preset message that will help to increase your sales.
An autoresponder can help your list of clients grow, even send each one of them their own personalized email message. If you choose, you can also follow up each individual email with repeated emails, varying the content whenever you wish. These programs will also allow you to keep track of conversations, and send out broadcast email messages whenever you have news or new products to offer your clients.
As research in the past has shown, personalized email from autoresponders is a great way to boost your business. When you send a personalized email to one of your clients, the autoresponder by can address him or her by their name - which always makes a customer take notice. While you could do this yourself using traditional email, it could take you a few hours if you have a long list of customers.
Autoresponders make sending personalized email a snap. All you need to do is set up your email template, then select where you like the name to go. You can add everyone in your customer list to the autoresponder, which makes sending emails a snap. Once you have everything ready to go, all you need to do is send out the emails with one simple click. Best of all, you don't have to set it up again when you need to send out broadcast messages.
Although there are some people who will buy products after one or two emails, most people require about seven or eight emails before they will purchase anything. Autoresponders can really help you there, as they will do all of the emailing for you. You dont have to keep sending manual emails or anything like that. All you need to do is set up the email address, type in your preset message, and then feel free to send it as many times as you like.
Through the use of an autoresponder you can really boost your business. If you run an Internet marketing business, this tool will prove to be invaluable. You can spend less time sending messages and more time doing what you enjoy. If you've never tried an autoresponder before, you owe it yourself to check out everything they will do for you and your business. Online businesses can get a lot of emails on a daily basis, which is where the autoresponder will really start to shine and show you just how great of an asset it really is.
About the Author:
David Jessee is and experienced online marketer and knows how to make money online. Visit his make money online blogtoday for some great tips and tricks to help you increase your online income. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service
Landing a new job is hard work. Just getting through the first interview is a challenge especially for a professional who's been laid off from a position he has held for years. Media consultant Suzanne Spurgeon says, "Interview skills get rusty if you don't use them.
As world leaders gather today at the G20 summit to discuss the global financial crisis, the AA's own president, Edmund King, is reminding motorists that with rising motoring costs upon us, it has never been a better time to shed the pounds. Drivers could save over £6 billion per year by following the AA's money saving tips.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & LOS ALTOS, Calif.----The Anti-Phishing Working Group announced today a new public education initiative to deliver free counter-crime video instruction to consumers.
Most people advertising in Adwords today don't realize that they are losing tons of customers and leads all due to the fact that they don't know the 7 Key things they must do to set up a successful adwords campaign. If you follow these 7 key steps to setting up your adwords campaign, not only will your ad show up a lot higher in Google, but you'll also pay less per click than people advertising below you! Applying these 7 Crucial Steps will increase the amount of clicks you're getting per day and at the same time decrease the amount of money you're having to spend now!
Optimize Your Campaign For Google Are all of your keywords stuffed into one or just a few adgroups? Google hates it when campaigns are like this and determines that your campaign has 0 Relevancy! I know this strategy works, so for all of my clients I make their campaigns Super Relevant by taking each individual keyword and putting it in ad adgroup all on it's own! I know, it's days worth of work, but it reduces their click cost by an incredible amount! If you don't follow crucial step #1 you're going to be slapped! This means that Google will charge you insane amounts of money for your clicks and give your ads horrible placement.
Optimize your ads for Google The structure of your ads play a huge role in determining how much you pay per click. Just like in step #1 Google is obsessed with "Relevancy". Google's idea of a perfect ad actually has the keyword that was searched on show up twice in the ad; Once in the ad title, and once in the ad text. If Google see's that your ad displaying for the keyword, "injury attorney" actually has the keyword "injury attorney" appearing in your ad title and inyour ad text then Google is going to reward your ad for being perfectly relevant to the keyword that was searched on.
Google is going to reward you in two ways, 1) by charging you less per click and 2) by giving your ad a higher ad placement! But that's not all! Who searches on the keyword "injury attorney" will be more inclined to click on your ad because the actual keyword they searched on shows up twice in your ad! That means that by optimizing your ads you get more clicks, you spend less, AND you get higher ad placement! It's a win win situation!
You might ask, "Well how will I ever have time to write a super targeted ad like that for every keyword I have? That seems impossible!" Well, if you don't have time you should make time. My company write a super targeted ad for EVERY keyword that you have! It's a huge load of work, but we've found it's definitely worth it for our clients. Stay tuned for part 2 of this article series, on "Optimizing your site for Google and Keyword Swiping".
About the Author:
Claim Your Free Video Revealing the Secrets of how you can spend far less in Google Adwords and get even more clicks! George Kristopher, a respected Adwords Management expert will reveal to you the "7 Secrets" of getting lower click-costs and Great ad placement. Grab your PPC Management video now!
13. Privacy Policy - The SOHO Quest Blog Our Commitment To Your Privacy To better protect your privacy we have provided this notice explaining our online information practices, and the choices you may make about the way your information is collected and used. Here is information on what types of personal information we receive and collect when you use and visit this website, and how we safeguard your information. The SOHO Quest Blog will never sell your or trade your personal information to third parties.
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Our Commitment To Data Security To prevent unauthorized access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the correct use of information, we have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.
Our Commitment To Child Privacy Protecting the privacy of the very young is especially important. For that reason, we never collect or maintain information at our website from those we actually know are under 18, and no part of our website is structured to attract anyone under 18. Under our Terms of Service, children under 18 are not allowed to access our service.
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lterations to this Privacy Statement The content of this statement may be altered at any time.
14. SOHO Quest - New Contact Information This post provides updated contact information for this blog. If you have any questions regarding the content of The SOHO Quest Blog, about the products mentioned, or questions of any nature at all, do not hesitate to contact us at the following address.
Your feedback about this website is helpful, appreciated, and welcome.
This blog publishes reviews, informative content, tips and more with regard to working in an small office-home office environment. Navigate this blog by using the side bar links. Follow highlighted links you see throughout posts to learn about the products and services being mentioned.
This blog is intended to provide worthwhile information for those interested in working in a small office-home office.
Direct all questions to: soho.quest@gmail.com
16. Google Gets Voice Google GrandCentral has grown all up is being relaunched as Google Voice. This service will continue in beta testing with many new features. Grand Central was a start up "one-number access" telephone service that was purchased by Google soon after its debut.
This service will be styled similar to the Skype telephony business model, in that some of the calls are free, and international long distance will be offered at attractive rates way below what normal phone charges would be. As an example, calls to Canada reportedly will be one cent per minute.
This will be a great service for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and small office/home office workers, which now includes distance workers, telecommuters and digital nomads. Get in line and queue up for a free Google Voice number.
The folks over at Google are working on a new project called Google Voice. According to the Google Blog site the first beta testing will be for GrandCentral [...]
17. Depression Cooking Teaches Check out Google Trends this morning, and you will see that Great Depression Cooking tops the charts. The television news anchors are starting to own up to the fact that we are in a depression, and not just your ordinary run of the mill recession.
Imports are down 24% and the economy in the US alone shrank over 6% in just one month. If you think there is any good news in this, it probably is only the fact we need to learn to individually become self reliant again. We can't sustain an economy where the only growth is in government.
If you have already lost your job, and are scratching your head as to what you will do when the unemployment insurance runs out, you may have figured out that it probably won't be a job like you had before. We are headed back to a more mercantile style society, where we each make and trade goods and services. Do you believe you can now start your own small office-home office based on new skills found learned and linked on the Internet?
If you are on your own SOHO quest, you may want to consider investing in and learning about working online. In many ways it is a quite separate and parallel economy. Almost unrelated to what is happening in the real world sector.
An alternative avocation is taking up the art of Depression Style Cooking.
18. SpiderWeb Will Rock the Web Whoa Baby! This blog is getting whiskers. Anyone that has followed my path will know that I now have been heavy into educating myself about Internet marketing. Thus, the reason for no posts.
But I have been busy investigating. One of the schemes is a beta program known as The SpideWeb Marketing System. If you have seen it in passing, but did not consider it...keep looking. This had the potential to be the next big monetizing scheme for the web.
Many have tried to create a self-sustained or auto-pilot system. This supposedly started out with 12 streams of income, but now has 22. I have a gut feeling you have to work it like any other business.
It still is in beta, so don't hope for much. I had numerous conversation with the owners and management team of this system about creating an inner circle training program. Alas, everyone wants something for nothing. You can generate free leads, but then you have to know what to do with them.
This is a heads up on Mark Wielgus at 45n5.com. Mark is on top of online trends, and I am here to tell you that he researches, tests, and reports on things you will come to appreciate on a daily basis. All the information in this post was gleaned from 45n5. My belief is that Mark combines some marketing savvy with geekdom knowhow. He even writes simple, but useful utility programs and then gives them away for free on the blog. Here is a recent link to one he dubs "Keyword Scrubber".
45n5.com has turned into one of the few blogs I simply must check out on a daily basis. Now Mark is committed to deciphering Affiliate Marketing as a top priority. Another project he is combining with this effort is his personal mission to produce and post a video every day in 2008.
I think with 365 videos in the planning, his little experiment is one to watch for trends, plus the techniques, tips and tricks he is bound to uncover along the way. So, if you want to make 365 videos in one year, watch this guy in 2008 and I think you will learn something.
This is not for a lack or loss of interest, but merely a necessity of time management. Regardless, my blog niche revolves around the central theme of mobility and using technology to be independent. So, you can always check back here and/or catch my more frequent updates at the Rugged Notebooks or Digital Nomads sites. My plan this year is to move to private domains.
One thing I have been doing is writing more focused posts...themed, if you will, or a series of posts on a subject of interest. Recently, this has had a major slant towards telecom, and in particular new gadgets like MagicJack and VoIP telephoney solutions like Google GrandCentral.
I am finding that being more focused on a particular subject area makes it easier and more interesting to research, test, review, and write. I think my readers appreciate it a well and it is helping in the SERPS.
If you are still blogging, drop me a line and let me know how you are getting on. There seems to have been a drop in the number of friends I met online in 2007 that have continued to blog, or scaled back like I have. -Digital Nomad
I saw this over at the BigString 2.0 website and thought it was good advice. BigString is an interesting concept in itself, which I will let you discover for yourself. These 12 items have been edited somewhat, so not to get dinged for duplicate content. There were some typos in the original text anyway. Enjoy.
1. Do not send email when you are angry. Wait until you calm down before you send that email. Feelings and thoughts can be difficult to interpret and easily misconstrued.
2. Never send a sarcastic email that could be taken out of context. Sarcasm and email do not mix. You can easily offend someone in an email without intent to do so.
3. Do not send email gossip. You never know where the email will end up. Just make a commitment to yourself not to participate in any gossip.
4. Never end significant relationships via email. Email is the equivalent of an electronic paper trail. Not good for any sour ending, whether business or personal.
5. If you don't want your boss or coworkers to see it, better not send that email from work.
6. Never put anything in writing that may come back to haunt you. A good overall policy. Not just for email.
7. Never, ever, hit ‘Reply to All’ when you just want to send an email to one individual.
8. Don’t email pictures of yourself to others. Especially, online acquaintances and complete strangers.
9. Don’t make promises or commitments via email that you cannot or will not keep.
10. When you send attachments, be sure that you have selected the correct files and documents.
11. Good advice from New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, “Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an email.â€
12. Try BigString recallable email. If you do happen to make errors...the recallable, erasable, and non-forwardable features will help to correct such mistakes.
I have had a few email exchanges with Mark, and these are a few of his cautionary thoughts by way of how he has explained the ideas behind how it should work. Most people will not succeed with this mashup concept, or any other website scripting without the underlying concept and knowledge (or experience from learning) of how to build such a niche site.
Cranking out "out of the box" and rubber stamp solutions is what everybody else is doing. Doing the same thing that everyone else is doing online will bring the same results...which happens to be not making any money online. This also happens to mirror Einstein's theory of insanity, and he was no dummy. It's also making many people wealthy for some pretty worthless online information products.
So, if you use the script out of the box, most of your money will be made from luck or successful keyword research (aka) what words and topics you use to build these niche minisites in mass production.
Now is the time to learn. Take the time to consider doing it right. - Digital Nomad
A 25 Year Old Entrepreneur Making a Living Online from Home
You probably have read about or heard of The Rich Jerk and Chis X of Day Job Killer. If not you better stop and do a Google search right now. About 2 years ago, Holly Mann, a young mother started to successfully market directly against high profile Internet marketing gurus like these guys.
Living in a foreign country with no job and few resources, Holly decided she could research, design, and deliver a kinder and gentler approach to online marketing. Evidently she found her niche selling "How-To" information, because she has become successful in a short period of time (well, a couple of years).
"Honest Riches 2" is a 95 page proven guide. Holly shows all the techniques she has used to make money online through affiliate programs starting with no website and no start-up money, then on to free websites that can easily be setup with little or no experience, including free advertising that most people don't know or think about.
Yes, it seems possible to make money online and work from home just about anywhere (Holly lives in Thailand), but don't quit your day job just yet. You need a system and you need the right tools and knowledge to be successful. Changing your career is a life altering decision.
Before taking the leap, do plenty of due diligence and adequate research for information and resources about starting an online business and becoming an online entrepreneur. This e-book is geared for beginners, but is a valuable resource for all online marketers. No "get-rich-quick" schemes here....like any real business endeavor, it involves some effort and some work. But you will learn strategies and techniques to start making money right away.
To read more about Holly Mann techniques and other online marketers, visit Thank You Holly Mann.
After many attempts at beating a dead horse, everyone involved in the Agloco fiasco can now uncross their fingers. It ain't gonna happen. Even John Chow has finally admitted defeat along with almost 30,000 signed up in his Agloco network.
Here is a partial screenshot of his last post on the subject, and here is a link to the post about the Agloco demise at TechCruch. Like John says...it shows that all those MBAs don't always muster up success, even the second time around. For posterity, watch the video on the Agloco viewbar attributes, and think about all the gurus that were on board for this.
It may sound implausible, but it is not impossible. Follow this Digital Nomad and you know that just feeding the blogs is not going to cut it anymore. Blogging should be part of your online marketing network, but not a diversion.
I have been searching heavy for the folks that are making it online and not the wannabes. One such source is 45n5.com authored by Mark Wielgus. This guy tells it straight. You have to hunt an peck to find the good stuff, and you will have to piece it together, but I think a good start is on this website.
Mark will show you how to find a niche, create a website in 10 minutes, and then shove it in the pipeline with some SEO tricks. Theoretically, there is no reason why you could not do this everyday for a month and then have 30 minisites up and running for affiliate programs in thirty days. That's if you want to have a website between you and the merchant.
I am finding that you maybe don't even need a website to market affiliate programs, but you do have to commit to spending some money for Google Adword campaigns. Better have a pad and pen ready.
There is always something to learn. Take the time to learn something new each day. - Digital Nomad American Jobs: Going, Going...
Corporations are escalating efforts to ship out jobs that pay
well and build the middle class—and now they are aiming their axes
at workers in the nation’s fast-growing white-collar sector.
The U.S. recession that began in March 2001 officially ended in
November 2001, say the National Bureau of Economic Research and
other analysts.
So why are so many workers still out of jobs?
“We’ve declared victory over the recession, and we’re still
laying off a couple hundred thousand workers a month,” says Rep.
Pete Stark (D-Calif.). “If it weren’t so painful for so many people
who are out of work, it would be hilarious. But it isn’t.”
The U.S. economy has 3.2 million fewer jobs today than it did
when President George W. Bush took office, including 2.5 million
fewer manufacturing jobs. Bush appears headed for the dubious
distinction of being the first president since Herbert Hoover to
preside over a decline in total employment during his term in
office.
In the past three years, nearly one in five U.S. workers was laid
off from the job, according to The Disposable Worker: Living in a
Job-Loss Economy, a Rutgers University¡V University of Connecticut
report released in late July. Among workers laid off from full-time
work, roughly one-fourth were earning less than $40,000 annually,
the report finds.
In July, a total of 15 million U.S. workers were either
unemployed, underemployed or too discouraged to job hunt, according
to the Labor Department.
In contrast, within a year after the official end of the last
recession in March 1991, the nation had embarked on six straight
months of solid job growth.
This time, say economists, there are crucial differences:
Companies are sending well-paying manufacturing and service jobs to
countries with few, if any, protections for workers and the
environment. And these jobs are probably not coming back.
“The movement of jobs and production overseas is handcuffing the
recovery,” according to Mark Xandi, chief economist at Economy.com,
as quoted in the New York Times.
“With NAFTA, the World Trade Organization and other trade deals
of the last decade, American corporations are now tapping into a
global supply of workers who can be trained to do everything from
design to production, maintenance to marketing,” says Jeff Faux,
economist and founding president of the Economic Policy Institute.
“And while these workers become more productive, their pay doesn’t
rise, because in many of these countries, to be a labor organizer
means you risk winding up in a ditch with a bullet in your head.”
American jobs sent out of the country aren’t likely to return
anytime soon. “As long as employers can take advantage of much lower
labor costs in other countries, there’s no compelling reason to
bring back many of these well-paying jobs,” says Ron Hira, an
engineer and assistant professor of public policy at Rochester
Institute of Technology. “Policymakers seem to be at a loss as to
what to do about this problem.”
Meanwhile, the Bush administration directs multimillion-dollar
tax cuts to the wealthy while supporting trade laws that encourage
offshore outsourcing. And even as Bush opposes unemployment
insurance extensions for some 1 million Americans who have exhausted
their benefits, his administration refuses to embrace job-creating
programs that would repair the nation’s infrastructure and help
balance devastated state budgets.
“The Bush administration doesn’t seem to care about jobs,” says
Center for Economic and Policy Research co-founder Dean Baker. “To
retain and create jobs, there have to be policy changes, and I don’t
think this administration is willing to make them.”
Manufacturing: America’s Foundation Is Crumbling
“American taxpayers...do not
want their tax dollars subsidizing the export of
their jobs.” —USWA President Leo Gerard
Manufacturing jobs traditionally have provided high wages and
good benefits that allow workers to care for their families. But 2.5
million manufacturing jobs have disappeared since President Bush
took office in early 2001.
Multinational corporations are transferring jobs to countries
where workers earn low wages and have few or no protections. And
small U.S. businesses are laying off workers or shutting their doors
because they can’t meet foreign competitors’ prices.
African American workers have been hit particularly hard. Because
of manufacturing job losses, the unemployment rate among African
Americans is rising twice as fast as it is for whites and faster
than in any downturn since the mid-1970s. “The number of jobs and
the types of jobs that have been lost has severely diminished the
standing of many blacks in the middle class,” says William Lucy,
president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and AFSCME
secretary-treasurer.
Manufacturing job loss starts the downward spiral
The loss of good manufacturing jobs has ripped apart communities
and permanently lowered living standards for families throughout the
United States, including in Rockford, Ill., 70 miles from Chicago.
The northern Illinois city is historically second only to Cleveland
as a center for machine tooling, the making of tools used in machine
manufacturing.
Machine tooling, which traditionally employs the most highly
skilled manufacturing workers including members of the Machinists
and UAW, is the bedrock of America’s manufacturing industry.
But the bedrock is crumbling. The Rockford area lost more than 20
percent of its manufacturing jobs—about 10,000—between May 2000 and
2003, according to MBG Information Services President and Economist
Charles McMillion’s analysis of Department of Labor data. General
manufacturing jobs have been among those lost in Rockford, including
jobs held by Steelworkers Local 745 members at the Goodyear tire
plant. USWA members at Goodyear now number 750, down from 1,650 in
1999, before the corporation shipped the jobs to Asia and South
America.
But most manufacturing jobs lost in Rockford have been in machine
tooling. At Greenlee/Textron, which makes drill bits and tools for
electrical contractors, about 180 Machinists now represented by IAM
Local 1553 are employed today, down from about 900 in the late
1980s. The 112-year-old crown jewel of Rockford machine
tooling—Ingersoll International—declared bankruptcy this spring and
laid off 300 employees in Rockford and 70 in Michigan, leaving only
skeleton crews of managers and a few contract workers.
“The lesson of Rockford,” says Faux, “is it disproves the free
traders’ argument that America could afford to lose manufacturing
jobs in areas like textiles and steel because we would ultimately
triumph in global competition by making the things hardest to make.
In fact, those things are machine tools—and we’re losing them.”
A loss of manufacturing jobs reverberates throughout the
community—and ultimately the nation. When manufacturing factories
aren’t being built, maintained or expanded, jobs disappear in areas
such as construction.
“Our union has about 30 percent unemployment,” says Mark Bramble,
business agent for Electrical Workers Local 364 in Rockford. “Guys
burn through their unemployment, lose all their benefits, get
divorced and then go where the grass looks greener or settle for
working as a greeter at Wal-Mart.”
A question of national security
There’s a sense of betrayal in Rockford these days. “Free trade
was sold to America with the line that it helps us export more
goods,” says Eric Anderberg, who manages his family’s 37-year-old
machine tool company, Dial Machines Inc. “But what’s happened is the
exportation of our jobs and means of production so multinational
corporations can exploit foreign labor and sell their goods back to
us.”
Today Dial employs 40 workers, down from 75 in the late 1990s. It
recently lost work to a lower-bidding Czech Republic manufacturer
that nabbed a contract making parts for a supplier of General
Electric Wind Energy Corp.
Anderberg and other Rockford employers worry that a Chinese
government-owned machine tooling company, which already has bought
two divisions of Ingersoll International, may now be poised to buy
another—one containing intellectual property, including high-level
research and design and military technology. “I cannot understand
how our government can justify not only the debasement of our
manufacturing industries but also our national security in a time of
war,” he says.
The Rockford community and U.S. national security would get a
boost from Buy America provisions House Armed Services Committee
Chair Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) added to legislation authorizing
the 2004 Pentagon budget.
Rep. Donald Manzullo (R-Ill.), who represents the Rockford area
and helped write the bill, says, “The Pentagon wouldn’t care if
everything it buys is made in China.” Joined by armsmakers such as
Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the White House says the Buy America
provisions are “burdensome, counterproductive and have the potential
to degrade U.S. military capabilities.” But the administration does
not mention jobs.
“American steelworkers are also American taxpayers, and they do
not want their tax dollars subsidizing the export of their jobs,”
says USWA President Leo Gerard.
White-Collar Jobs: America’s Growing Export
Ask anyone which sector of the U.S. economy comes to mind as the
most likely to be shipped overseas, and chances are he or she will
say manufacturing.
But though the United States lost 2.5 million manufacturing jobs
since the Bush presidency beginning in 2001, U.S. corporations now
are racing to outsource white-collar jobs—including work in computer
sciences, engineering, entertainment, financial and medical
services—to countries where workers earn far less.
Terry Antisdel was a Chicago-area engineering associate for
Lucent Technologies Inc. and its predecessor AT&T for 35 years
until his entire 42-member International Federation of Professional
and Technical Engineers Local 81 was laid off in July. He figures
his job will end up in India or China. “The words management used
were a 'less-expensive offshore site,’ ” recalls Antisdel, who
estimates Lucent will send a total of about 5,000 U.S. jobs offshore
this year. “I feel let down,” he says. “Companies used to provide
jobs for people, but now they’re just there to give money to
executives, board members and shareholders.”
In late July, the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers
(WashTech), a Communications Workers of America affiliated group
that helps high-tech workers win a voice at work, released a tape of
a conference call in which IBM’s top human relations executives
discussed transferring 3 million U.S. service jobs to countries such
as China and India by 2015.
Testifying in June before a House Committee on Small Business
investigating the globalization of white-collar jobs, AFL-CIO
Department for Professional Employees President Paul Almeida said,
“If these cost-saving jobs shifts are taken to their logical
extreme, even American corporations should be wondering where their
future consumers will be located and how they will buy the goods and
services.”
A Forrester Research study predicts U.S. employers will move
about 3.3 million white-collar service jobs and $136 billion in
wages overseas in the next 15 years, up from $4 billion in 2000.
White-collar jobs going and gone
The jobs already are leaving. By the end of this year, General
Electric will have sent a total of 20,000 aircraft and medical
research and design jobs to India and China, according to Business
Week. And the Accenture consulting firm, which incorporated in
Bermuda after splitting from Enron accountant Arthur Andersen, plans
to send 5,000 accounting and software jobs to the Philippines in
2004, the magazine says.
According to WashTech, Microsoft plans to eliminate at least 800
full-time call-center jobs near Dallas and shift the work to India
and Canada in the next fiscal year. It would be the largest one-time
firing of full-time Microsoft employees in the company’s history.
WashTech says a Microsoft senior vice president recently urged
company managers to “pick something to move offshore today,” though
Microsoft publicly has repeated it will not lay off U.S. workers and
send the jobs offshore.
While the Bush administration remains silent about offshore
outsourcing, states such as New Jersey are considering corrective
measures. New Jersey legislators acted after the state outsourced
the electronic administration of welfare and food stamp benefits to
a company that then sent the jobs to India. When New Jersey citizens
called to ask about benefits, they were connected with Indian
workers who gave Americanized names.
A bill authored by state Assembly member Linda Greenstein (D)
would have required such offshore subcontractors to disclose to New
Jersey residents their employers’ true names and locations. But even
this common- sense measure had no chance in the face of massive
opposition launched by Indian and American corporate interests, such
as Verizon.
“We got a copy of an e-mail Verizon sent managers in New Jersey,
thanking them for sending 1,800 e-mails opposing the bill,” says Don
Rice, CWA’s New Jersey legislative coordinator. Activists and
legislators hope to bring the bill to a vote before the legislative
session ends this year.
U.S. security at stake
Offshore outsourcing of white-collar work also raises security
concerns. U.S. firms are sending mapping and other such work to
India, Pakistan, China, the Philippines and other countries with
lower labor costs, says John Palatiello, administrator of the
Council on Federal Procurement of Architectural and Engineering
Services.
“This practice raises issues regarding access to data about the
location of¡Kcritical infrastructure by individuals in foreign
countries who have not been through any degree of security clearance
and where control of access to data simply does not exist.”
Bush’s January 2002 State of the Union address made clear the
danger of access to data by unfriendly foreign operatives: “Our
discoveries in Afghanistan confirmed our worst fears....We have
found diagrams of American nuclear power plants and public water
facilities¡Ksurveillance maps of American cities and thorough
descriptions of landmarks in America.”
Activists are demanding Congress review trade and tax policies
that encourage white-collar offshore outsourcing. Without government
intervention, warns Almeida, “short-sighted corporate policy focused
on saving a few bucks in the short run will have an enormous
deleterious impact on the entire U.S. economy.”
Low-Wage Jobs: Betray America’s Workers
Laid-off U.S. workers thrust into a hostile job market
are discovering another ugly part of the American economy: low-wage
work that pays too little to keep even a small family out of
poverty.
Nearly a quarter of all U.S. workers labor in jobs that pay
little but are essential to society. Sixty percent of these workers
are female, and many are people of color. They care for nursing home
patients and clean offices at night. They prepare food, answer
call-center phones and care for our children.
These jobs generally pay less than the $8.85 hourly wage the U.S.
government says it takes to keep a family of four out of poverty.
Even so, many low-wage jobs offer only part-time hours, with few or
no benefits. And workers in low-paying but essential jobs often are
treated as disposable, quickly fired if they get sick or stay home
with a sick child.
As more good jobs leave the country, the percentage of low-wage
jobs keeps growing. By 2010, about 30 percent of working Americans
won’t be making even poverty wages, according to the U.S. Department
of Labor. A Labor Department list of the 10 occupations likely to
show the largest job growth this decade is dominated by jobs that
typically pay poorly—food preparation, customer service, office
clerking, security and food service.
This world of low-wage jobs and the workers who do them is
illuminated in The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 35
Million Americans, published on Labor Day by the New Press.
“Traditionally, there was a promise in this country that if you
worked hard, you could take care of your family,” explains author
Beth Shulman, an attorney and former United Food and Commercial
Workers vice president. “That promise has been broken¡Kand we have
built our national prosperity on their backs.”
No job is inherently low wage
Workers in low-wage jobs frequently are labeled as lacking skills
and in need of training to move into better-paying positions. But
while education is a traditional route to higher pay, Shulman
contends no job is inherently low wage. “Take autoworkers, who
had horrible jobs that became good ones because of unions and social
legislation,” she says. “The same thing must happen with currently
low-paying service- sector jobs. In Las Vegas, for example, the
housekeeper represented by the Hotel Employees Restaurant Employees
has decent wages and benefits thanks to unionization.”
Low-wage jobs tend to imprison the workers who perform them
because of what Shulman calls a “piling on” of hardships. Workers in
low-wage jobs are unlikely to have sick leave or health insurance or
make enough money to afford reliable transportation or child day
care. At the same time, they are likely to be in inflexible
situations in which being late or missing work can result in a quick
firing.
“It’s not just that you make less money in these jobs, but you
have none of the basic things many of us take for granted, such as
health insurance, time to care for a family member, adequate child
care, some kind of retirement security, even a telephone,” Shulman
says. “And this applies to one in four U.S. workers.”
Gap is growing between U.S. rich and poor
As low-wage work continues to replace jobs that pay well, the
U.S. economy increasingly resembles that of a less-developed nation,
with a wide gulf between rich and poor. Among all western
industrialized nations, the United States has the greatest income
and wage inequalities, with the best-paid 10 percent of workers
making 16.6 times the amount made by the lowest-paid 10 percent,
according to a 2003 analysis by the United Nations Development
Program. “That’s the way we’ve been moving for some time now and
continue to move,” says Heather Boushey, a Center for Economic and
Policy Research economist.
To reverse this trend, the United States needs to change the
rules of the game, according to Shulman. “For starters, we should
immediately raise the minimum hourly wage to the poverty guideline
for a family of four—$8.85 an hour versus the current $5.15 hourly
federal minimum wage—and then have automatic increases so there’s
not a big political battle every time it needs raising. Then, all
Americans should have access to affordable health care. There are a
variety of ways to do this, and we should just get it done.
“Finally, all American workers should be able to care for their
children—to have access to affordable child care, and to stay with
them when they’re sick or go to a PTA meeting without getting fired.
The consequences for the children of today’s low-wage workers are
enormous—they’re following their parents into this low-wage world.”
Companies in India celebrate "loss of American jobs"
One interesting comment that was documented in that article
was:
As Vivek Paul, Wipro VC, said after
the Presidential poll, “The elections are over and so is the
rhetoric; it will be easier for American corporations to step
out with their outsourcing plans.”
Well a little research has found some estimates from within
India about what that meant. First and foremost, it means that India
is celebrating the "loss of American jobs." Folks, that is the jobs
of friends, family or perhaps even your own.
Specifically on November 4, with time zone changes, roughly a
day after the polls close the following was published in the India
Times:
The industry is quietly celebrating
that outsourcing and loss of American jobs will not be the
hot-button issues any more.
And that is why they believe that "it will be easier for American corporations to
step out with their outsourcing plans." Does this mean
that American companies put their plans on "hold" to minimize the
impact on a close election?
But the folks in India gloat a little more:
Of the documented jobs that left the
US for other countries in January through March 2004, 23,396
went to Mexico, 8,283 to China, 3,895 to India, 4,419 to other
Asian countries, 5,511 to Latin American countries other than
Mexico and 2,933 to other countries.
A brief look at these numbers show what they call a documented
American job loss of 48,237 for the first quarter of 2004. On an
annual basis this would be 192,968 American jobs. And they expect
American companies to now - step
out - with their outsourcing plans.
Some will say that 192,968 jobs is not very many. But as you
will see in coming articles that is just what is called BPO and is
not the whole picture.
Lets look at the effect of three policies that affect American
jobs:
Outsourcing - In this article it has been shown that it is
at least close to 200,00 jobs a year for the BPO segment and
expected to increase
H1-B
visa program - allows high tech foreigners to take American
jobs here without being counted in immigration totals. Used by
many companies to train personnel for their foreign outsourcing
programs. There are roughly a million H1-B visas active today.
Legal immigration of about 1 million a year and illegal
immigration of about 3 million a year resulting in lower
American wages and increased social costs.
Ladies and gentlemen, you are paying the salaries of the
elected and appointed officials who are doing this to you. Is this
what you want to pay for? If so, why are you reading material on
this web site?
If not, you are being ignored!
It should be obvious to all that this trend can not continue
forever. Are there any signs that it is getting better:
A recent study of A T Kearney shows
that nine out of 10 chief executives wanted to outsource to
India. 25 % of the respondents wanted IT and auto component work
to be given to India, 15 % favoured China and 13 % Mexico.
That should answer that question beyond a reasonable doubt.
Interesting that 15% of the outsourcing chief executives favor Red
China! Remember these are the folks that make the big campaign
contributions that have so much influence on many of your elected
officials. How will you feel when YOUR job is sent to Red
China?
If you do not agree with these policies you are being ignored
and your elected officials are representing special interests more
than you! If you believe that this is a serious problem it is time
to get involved now. The longer you wait, the harder it will be stop
these destructive trends.
The BPO and your elected officials are doing offshore
calculus, are you?
BPO biggies do offshore calculus
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 04, 2004 02:13:09 PM]
India’s silicon valley is delighted to move out of the
limelight. The industry is quietly celebrating that
outsourcing and loss of American jobs will not be the
hot-button issues any more.
BPO bigwigs are already
computing the gains from mega-offshoring plans on hold waiting
for US presidential race to be over.
Though most of
the industry majors refuse to comment on who will safeguard
their interests better, they feel that economic benefits of
transfer of jobs to low cost destinations will now overshadow
the political rhetoric against outsourcing in the run up to
the US poll.
The US presidential election was fueling
the protests against job losses due to transfer of jobs.
“American law will remain the same and the outsourcing
will go up irrespective of who wins. Already, we see our
clients getting ready for bigger offshoring plans,’’ says head
of a leading Delhi-based BPO firm. Insiders also feel the
American clients might be more open to talk about their
outsourcing plans to low-cost destinations like India now.
Though Kerry’s tax proposals that seek to end tax
breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas could deter
fence-sitter, analysts feel they are no more than short-term
sentiment dampeners. After initially branding the shipping of
jobs to countries like India and China as a threat to the US
economy, Kerry has gone on record saying he can’t stop
outsourcing.
Clearly, what is of greater concern is
that a clear decision comes soon, irrespective of whether it
favours Bush or Kerry. Though Bush is more popular, the $ 2.6
billion BPO industry is convinced that “it will soon be
difficult to differentiate between Democrats and Republicans.
Obviously sector’s fate is closely tied up with the US
elections, with US accounting for over 70 % of India’s IT
exports. A recent study of A T Kearney shows that nine out of
10 chief executives wanted to outsource to India. 25 % of the
respondents wanted IT and auto component work to be given to
India, 15 % favoured China and 13 % Mexico.
Of the
documented jobs that left the US for other countries in
January through March 2004, 23,396 went to Mexico, 8,283 to
China, 3,895 to India, 4,419 to other Asian countries, 5,511
to Latin American countries other than Mexico and 2,933 to
other countries.
Costly Trade With China Millions of U.S. jobs displaced
Contrary to the predictions of its supporters,
China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) has
failed to reduce its trade surplus with the United States or
increase overall U.S. employment. The rise in the U.S. trade
deficit with China between 1997 and 2006 has displaced
production that could have supported 2,166,000 U.S. jobs. Most
of these jobs (1.8 million) have been lost since China entered
the WTO in 2001. Between 1997 and 2001, growing trade deficits
displaced an average of 101,000 jobs per year, or slightly
more than the total employment in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Since China entered the WTO in 2001, job losses increased to
an average of 353,000 per year—more than the total employment
in greater Akron, Ohio. Between 2001 and 2006, jobs were
displaced in every state and the District of Columbia. Nearly
three-quarters of the jobs displaced were in manufacturing
industries. Simply put, the promised benefits of trade
liberalization with China have been unfulfilled.
As a matter of policy, China tightly pegs its
currency's value to that of the dollar at a rate that
encourages a large bilateral surplus with the United States.
Maintaining this peg required the purchase of about $200
billion in U.S. Treasury Bills and other securities in 2006
alone.1 This intervention makes the yuan
artificially cheap and provides an effective subsidy on
Chinese exports; best estimates are that the rate of this
effective subsidy is roughly 40%. China also engages in
extensive suppression of labor rights; it has been estimated
that wages in China would be 47% to 85% higher in the absence
of labor repression. China has also been accused of massive
direct subsidization of export production. Finally, it
maintains strict, non-tariff barriers to imports. As a result,
China's exports to the United States of $288 billion in 2006
were six times greater than U.S.
exports to China, which were only $52 billion (Table 1). China's trade surplus was
responsible for 42.6% of the United States' total, non-oil
trade deficit. This is by far the United States' most
imbalanced trading relationship. Unless and until China
revalues (raises) the yuan and eliminates these other trade
distortions, the U.S. trade deficit and job losses will
continue to grow rapidly in the future.
Major findings of this study:
The 1.8 million jobs opportunities lost nationwide since
2001 are distributed among all 50 states and the District of
Columbia, with the biggest losers, in numeric terms:
California (-269,300), Texas (-136,900), New York
(-105,900), Illinois (-79,900), Pennsylvania (-78,200),
North Carolina (-77,200), Florida (-71,900), Ohio (-66,100),
Georgia (-60,400), and Massachusetts (-59,300) (Table 2A).
The 10 hardest-hit states, as a share of total state
employment, are: New Hampshire (-13,000, -2.1%), North
Carolina (-77,200, -2.0%), California (-269,300, -1.8%),
Massachusetts (-59,300, -1.8%), Rhode Island (-8,400,
-1.8%), South Carolina (-29,200, -1.6%), Vermont (-4,900,
-1.6%), Oregon (-25,700, -1.6%), Indiana (-45,200, -1.5%),
and Georgia (-60,400, -1.5%) (Table
2B).
China's entry into the WTO was supposed to bring
it into compliance with an enforceable, rules-based regime,
which would require that it open its markets to imports from
the United States and other nations. The United States also
negotiated a series of special safeguard measures designed to
limit the disruptive effects of surging Chinese imports on
domestic producers. However, the core of the agreement failed
to include any protections to maintain or improve labor or
environmental standards. As a result, China's entry into the
WTO has further tilted the international economic playing
field against domestic workers and firms, and in favor of
multinational companies (MNCs) from the United States and
other countries, and state- and privately-owned exporters in
China. This has increased the global "race to the bottom" in
wages and environmental quality and caused the closing of
thousands of U.S. factories, decimating employment in a wide
range of communities, states, and entire regions of the United
States.
False promises
Proponents of China's entry into the WTO
frequently claimed that it would create jobs in the United
States, increase U.S. exports, and improve the trade deficit
with China. President Clinton claimed that the agreement
allowing China into the WTO, which was negotiated during his
administration, "creates a win-win result for both countries"
(Clinton 2000, 9). He argued that exports to China "now
support hundreds of thousands of American jobs" and that
"these figures can grow substantially with the new access to
the Chinese market the WTO agreement creates" (Clinton 2000,
10). Others in the White House, such as Kenneth Liberthal, the
special advisor to the president and senior director for Asia
affairs at the National Security Council, echoed Clinton's
assessment:
Let's be clear as to why a trade deficit might
decrease in the short term. China exports far more to the
U.S. than it imports [from] the U.S….It will not grow as
much as it would have grown without this agreement and over
time clearly it will shrink with this
agreement.2
Promises about jobs and exports misrepresented the real
effects of trade on the U.S. economy: trade both creates and
destroys jobs. Increases in U.S. exports tend to create jobs
in the United States, but increases in imports tend to destroy
jobs as imports displace goods that otherwise would have been
made in the United States by domestic workers.
The impact of changes in trade on employment is
estimated here by calculating the labor content of changes in
the trade balance—the difference between exports and imports.
Each $1 billion in computer exports to China from the United
States supports American jobs. However, each $1 billion in
computer imports from China
displaces those American workers, who would have been employed
making them in the United States. On balance, the net
employment effect of trade flows depends on the growth in the
trade deficit; not just exports.
Another critically important promise made by the promoters of
liberalized U.S.-China trade was that the United States would
benefit because of increased exports to a large and growing
consumer market in China. This market, in turn, was to be
based on an expansion of the middle class that, it was
claimed, would grow rapidly due to the wealth created in China
by its entry into the WTO. However, the increase in U.S.
exports to China has been overwhelmed by the growth of U.S.
imports, as shown below.
Growing trade deficits and job losses
The U.S. trade deficit with China has
increased from $50 billion in 1997 to $235 billion in 2006, an
increase of $185 billion, as shown in Table 1. Between 1997
and 2001, prior to China's entry into the WTO, the deficit
increased $9 billion per year on average. Between 2001 and
2006, after China entered the WTO, the deficit increased $30
billion per year on average.
While it is true that exports support jobs in
the United States, it is equally true that imports displace
them. The net effect of trade flows on employment must look at
the trade balance. The employment
impacts of growing trade deficits are estimated in this paper
using an input-output model that estimates the direct and
indirect labor requirements of producing output in a given
domestic industry. The model includes 200 U.S. industries, 86
of which are in the manufacturing sector (see this paper's
methodology appendix for further details).3
The model estimates the labor that would be
required to produce a given volume of exports, and the labor
that is displaced when a given volume of imports is
substituted for domestic output.4 The job losses
presented here represent an estimate of what sectoral
employment levels would have been in the absence of growing
trade deficits.5
U.S. exports to China in 1997 supported 138,000
jobs, but U.S. imports displaced production that would have
supported 736,000 jobs, as shown in the bottom half of Table
1. Therefore, the $49 billion trade deficit in 1997 displaced
736,300 jobs in that year. Job displacement rose to 1,000,000
jobs in 2001 and 2,763,000 in 2006. Prior to China's entry
into the WTO, an average of 101,000 jobs per year were
displaced by growing trade deficits between 1997 and 2001.
After 2001, an average of 353,000 jobs per year were lost.
Growth in trade deficits with China has reduced
demand for goods produced in every region of the United States
and has led to job displacement in all 50 states and the
District of Columbia, as shown in Table 2A and Figure A.6 More than 100,000 jobs
were lost in California, Texas, and New York each. Jobs
displaced due to growing deficits with China equaled or
exceeded 2.0% of total employment in states such as North
Carolina and New Hampshire, as shown in Table 2B. An
alphabetical list of job losses by state is shown in Table 2C.
Growing trade deficits with China have clearly
reduced domestic employment in traded goods industries,
especially in the manufacturing sector, which has been hard
hit by plant closings and job losses. Workers displaced by
trade from the manufacturing sector have been shown to have
particular difficulty in securing comparable employment
elsewhere in the economy. More than one-third of workers
displaced from manufacturing drop out of the labor force
(Kletzer 2001, 101, Table D2). Average wages of those who
secured re-employment fell 11% to 13%. Trade-related job
displacement pushes many workers out of good jobs in
manufacturing and other trade-related industries, often into
lower-paying industries and frequently out of the labor
market.
Some economists have quibbled with job-loss
numbers extrapolated from trade flows, based on the
presumption that aggregate
employment levels in the United States are set by a broad
range of macroeconomic influences, not just by trade flows.
There is a grain of truth to this—the trade balance is but one
of many variables affecting aggregate job creation in the
United States.
That said, the employment impacts of trade
identified in this paper can be interpreted as the "all else
equal" effect of trade on domestic employment. The Federal
Reserve, for example, may decide to cut interest rates to make
up for job loss stemming from deteriorating trade balances (or
any other economic influence), leaving net employment
unchanged. This, however, does not change the fact that trade
deficits by themselves are a net
drain on employment.
Administration officials and other economists
have argued that the capital inflow that is the mirror-image
of trade deficits supports jobs in the United States by
keeping interest rates lower than they would be absent this
inflow. During the late 1990s, for example, these capital
inflows fought rising trade deficits to a draw in terms of
aggregate employment effects, and, through much of the 2000s
recovery, interest-sensitive industries (housing and
construction, for example) have surely expanded more than they
would have absent foreign capital inflows. While these claims
may be correct from a simple accounting standpoint, they do
not support assertions that trade flows are a useless
indicator of job loss.
First, and most simply, it is just not true that
foreign capital inflows always make up trade-induced
employment losses one-for-one. In the 2001 recession and the
jobless recovery following, growing trade deficits accompanied
aggregate job loss, even as interest rates scraped historical
bottoms. Clearly, low interest rates do not always translate
into enough growth in investment and consumption in
interest-sensitive sectors to always sterilize the impact of
growing trade deficits.
Second, the job-loss numbers identified in this
report are a good measure of just how unbalanced the U.S.
economy has become due to rising trade deficits. Tradable
goods industries have hemorrhaged jobs, while
interest-sensitive, often non-tradable, industries have seen
rapid growth. At that point in the future when trade deficits
begin to close (and this will happen—it is only a question of
when and how), the U.S. economy will need to return many of
the jobs displaced by rising trade deficits out of
non-tradable and into tradable industries. Moving millions of
workers back and forth between sectors is no mean trick, and
accomplishing it without a recession in between will be hard;
trying to do it after another couple of years of deficit
growth—and an even more lopsided U.S. economy—will be even
harder.
In short, while aggregate employment in the
United States may well not respond job-for-job with the
numbers reported in this paper on trade deficits with China,
these numbers provide insight into how much harder other
macroeconomic influences have to work to eliminate the
employment drag from these deficits, and they provide a good
(and ominous) measure of how lopsided employment growth in the
U.S. economy has become owing to the unbalanced U.S.-China
trade relationship.
Conclusion
The
growing U.S. trade deficit with China has displaced huge
numbers of jobs in the United States, and been a prime
contributor to the crisis in manufacturing employment over the
past six years. The current U.S.-China trade relationship is
bad for both countries. The United States is piling up foreign
debt, losing export capacity, and facing a more fragile
macroeconomic environment. Meanwhile, China has become
dependent on the U.S. consumer market for employment
generation, has suppressed the purchasing power of its own
middle class with a weak currency, and, most importantly, has
held hundreds of billions of hard-currency reserves in
low-yielding, risky assets, instead of investing them in
public goods that could benefit Chinese households. Its
repression of labor rights has suppressed wages, thus
subsidizing its exports and making them artificially cheap.
This relationship needs a fundamental change: addressing the
exchange rate policies and labor standards issues in the
Chinese economy are important first steps.
April 2007
The author thanks Lauren
Marra for her research assistance and Josh Bivens and Ross
Eisenbrey for comments.
This research was made
possible by generous support from the Alliance for American
Manufacturing.
Methodology
This analysis
utilizes an input-output model to estimate the relationships
between changes in trade flows and production that could
support domestic employment. The analysis covers trends in
goods trade, which is dominated by manufactures. Services
trade is not considered because of problems with the data, and
because many of the services traded involve returns to capital
and intellectual property that have little or no direct effect
on employment. In addition, goods trade dominates the nation's
international accounts.
This study uses the model developed in Rothstein
and Scott (1997a and 1997b). This approach solves four
problems that are prevalent in previous research on the
employment effects of trade. Some studies look only at the
effects of exports and ignore imports. Some studies include
re-exports (transshipments)—goods produced outside the United
States and shipped through this country to other nations—as
U.S. exports. The trade data used in many studies is usually
not adjusted for inflation. Finally, a single employment
multiplier is often applied to all industries, despite
differences in labor productivity and
utilization.7
The model used here is based on the Bureau of
Labor Statistics' employment requirements tables, which were
derived from the U.S. input-output tables that are published
by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. These tables are adjusted
to 2000 price and productivity levels (BLS 2007b), in real,
chain-weighted 2000 dollars. A base year with 2000 employment
requirements was used to estimate the employment content of
trade in all years covered in this study. This assumption was
needed to control for the effects of technology. This
technique isolates the effects of trade on employment from
pure technology effects. This model is used to estimate the
direct and indirect effects of changes in goods trade flows in
each of 200 industries. This study updates the 1987 input
employment requirements table used in earlier reports in this
series (Rothstein and Scott 1997a, 1997b).
This analysis requires four-digit, trade data
based on the North American Industry Classification System
(NAICS) (U.S. International Trade Commission 2007), deflated
with industry-specific, chain-weighted price indices (BLS
2007a), which were updated using industry-specific producer
price indexes (BLS 2007b).8 Trade data were
downloaded from the U.S. International Trade Commission (2007)
Web site in NAICS format. The data for 2006 are preliminary
estimates; this report will be updated and expanded when the
final 2006 trade data are released in June 2007. State-level
employment effects are calculated by allocating imports and
exports to the states on the basis of their share of
four-digit, industry-level employment for 2000 (U.S. Census
Bureau 2001).
The trade data were converted into
chain-weighted 2000 dollars. A domestic employment
requirements table for a particular base year was used to
estimate the employment effects of trade in each year of the
analysis, holding technology constant. The domestic employment
requirement calculates the labor required to produce all of a
given product within the United States. Thus, it reflects the
complete labor content of output, including jobs indirectly
supported in service industries. The base year of 2000 was
chosen for this study because it was an approximate mid-point
in the data covered in this study.
CPS data on employment by industry by was
collected for each of the detailed sectors in the model. These
data were used to calculate each state's share of national
employment.
References
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Office of Employment
Projections. 2007a. Special Purpose
Files—Industry Output and Employment. Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Department of Labor. http://www.bls.gov/emp/empind2.htm.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Office of Employment
Projections. 2007b. Special Purpose Files—
Employment Requirements. Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Labor. http://stats.bls.gov/emp/empind4.htm.
Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2005. Access to
historical data for the "B" tables of the Employment Situation
News Release. http://stats.bls.gov/ces/cesbtabs.htm.
Faux, Jeff. 2007. Globalization That Works for Working
Americans. Briefing Paper #179. Washington, D.C.:
Economic Policy Institute. http://www.sharedprosperity.org/bp179.html.
Ratner, David. 2006. "Appendix: Methodology and
Data Sources", in Faux, Jeff, Bruce Campbell, Carlos Salas,
and Robert Scott. 2006. Revisiting NAFTA:
Still Not Working for North America's Workers. Briefing
Paper. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute. http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/bp173
Rothstein, Jesse and Robert E. Scott. 1997a.
NAFTA's Casualties: Employment Effects on
Men, Women, and Minorities. Issue Brief. Washington,
D.C.: Economic Policy Institute. http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/issuebriefs_ib120
Rothstein, Jesse and Robert E. Scott. 1997b.
NAFTA and the States: Job Destruction is
Widespread. Issue Brief. Washington, D.C.: Economic
Policy Institute. http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/issuebriefs_ib119
Scott, Robert E. 2005.
U.S.—China Trade, 1989-2003: Impact on Jobs and
Industries, Nationally and State-by-State. Working
Paper # 270. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute.
January. http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/wp270
U.S. Census Bureau. 2001. 2000 Basic Monthly
Survey of the Current Population Survey. U.S. Department of
Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau. Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Commerce. http://www.census.gov/cps/
1. These purchases financed about one-quarter of
the U.S. $857 billion current account deficit in 2006 (the
broadest measure of all U.S. trade and income flows). But for
these purchases, the reduced demand would have put significant
downward pressure on the U.S. dollar. A substantial
depreciation in the dollar would begin to improve the U.S.
trade deficit within a few years.
3. See Ratner (2006) for a more complete,
technical description of this model.
4. For the purposes of this report, it is
necessary to distinguish between exports produced domestically
and re-exports—which are goods produced in other countries,
imported into the United States, and then re-exported to other
countries, in this case to China. Since re-exports are not
produced domestically, their production does not support
domestic employment and they are excluded from the model used
here. See Table 1 for information about the levels of U.S.
re-exports to China in this period.
5. This model assumes that everything else is
held constant and the results are counterfactual
estimates.
6. See the methodology appendix for
computational details.
7. Other studies—see California State World
Trade Commission (1996), which finds 47,600 jobs created in
California from increased trade with Canada alone—have
allocated all employment effects to the home state of the
exporting company. This is problematic, because the
production—along with any attendant job effects—need not have
taken place in the exporter's state. If a California dealer
buys cars from Chrysler and sells them to China, these studies
will find job creation in California. However, the cars are
not made in California; so the employment effects should
instead be attributed to Michigan and other state with high
levels of auto industry production. Likewise, if the same firm
buys auto parts from China, the loss of employment will occur
in auto-industry states, not in California.
8. Industry-specific producer price indices are
unavailable for certain industries between 2005 and 2006. In
order to construct price deflators for all 200 BLS industries,
we used a combination of commodity PPIs and industry PPIs. For
instance, NAICS-based industry 3331 (which maps to BLS
industry 72) is composed of agricultural, manufacturing, and
mining machinery manufacturing. To compute a price index for
this industry, a trade-weighted average of the commodity
indices for agricultural machinery and construction machinery
was used as a proxy for the industry PPI. Industry PPIs were
used wherever available.
Outsourcing Not the Culprit in Manufacturing Job Loss
Productivity gains spawned by factory automation are driving a worldwide decline in manufacturing
jobs, even in developing nations, says researcher.
For many Americans, the word “outsourcing” conjures up images of
manufacturing job decline. But the United States is far from alone in losing
manufacturing employment, points out Dan Miklovic (shown above), vice president
and research director at GartnerG2, the business research arm of Stamford,
Conn.-based Gartner Inc. “Recent studies show that manufacturing jobs are
declining everywhere,” said Miklovic, during a Nov. 17 panel discussion on
outsourcing, part of a Global Media Summit sponsored by Rockwell Automation,
Milwaukee.
Over the past decade, U.S. manufacturing jobs have declined by more than 11
percent, Miklovic noted. But at the same time, Japan’s manufacturing employment
base has dropped by 16 percent, while the number of manufacturing jobs in
countries including Brazil have declined by some 20 percent, he pointed out.
“And one of the largest losers of manufacturing jobs has been China,” Miklovic
added. “We like to pick on China and say that all of these jobs are going to
China, but they’re losing jobs in manufacturing as well.”
The reason for the job losses? Miklovic summed it up in one word: automation.
Through automation, he said, “we are really doing a good job of improving the
productivity of people.”
Miklovic reminded media attendees at the panel session that 25 percent to 30
percent of the U.S. population was at one time involved in agricultural jobs.
But today, only 3 percent of Americans work in agriculture, yet they have turned
the United States into a net agricultural exporter, he noted. “The same thing is
now happening in manufacturing,” Miklovic said. “Through automation, through
improved productivity, we’re driving the number of jobs down on a global
basis.”
Job loss in India
Confirmation came from another panel participant, K. Muralidharan, senior
general manager for Sundram Fasteners Ltd., a major Indian automotive parts
manufacturer. In India, he said, growing use of automation is holding down
manufacturing job growth despite the large amount of outsourcing work that is
flowing to the country. “I find that outsourcing in India has actually cost jobs
in Indian industry, though in the long term, it will probably have a positive
effect on employment,” Muralidharan said.
Manufacturing employment remains at about the same level in India today as it
was during the recession of the late 1990s, according to Muralidharan. “The
Indian economy is booming now, and it is predicted that in the next five years,
the curve will only be upward. But still, the jobs and employment are not really
growing at the same pace,” said Muralidharan. “The economies of scale that have
been created due to outsourcing from developed countries have forced Indian
industry to take on automation heavily, which was not the case about 10 years
back,” he said.
GartnerG2’s Miklovic noted that the use of automation contributes to a
cyclical situation in many industries. When a U.S. manufacturer develops a new
product, for example, the company has first-mover advantage for a time. But in
the next phase, when other manufacturers enter the market, competition often
shifts to price. In response, some U.S. producers may move manufacturing
offshore to developing nations, to take advantage of lower labor costs. However,
said Miklovic, they frequently find that the level of automation and technology
available in developing nations is less than that of the United States.
This means that U.S. manufacturers who then invest in sophisticated
automation technology at home can gain the upper hand for a time over
lower-priced imports, thanks to the higher quality product allowed by the
automation, said Miklovic. But the automation technology used in the developing
nations eventually catches up, giving products produced there the advantage, he
added.
“We see this in semiconductors all the time,” Miklovic said. “Semiconductors
typically have been produced in Japan and Taiwan. But now there is a booming
semiconductor market that’s starting in China.” While the density and
sophistication of semiconductor chips produced in China cannot yet match that of
Japan and Taiwan, said Miklovic, China’s technology is moving in that
direction.
“Automation only works for a period of time,” said Miklovic. The lesson for
manufacturers is that they must continually reinvest in automation and
innovation, he said. “If you stand still, ultimately you lose.”
All programming done by Americans
Sure it cost us more to build the Inetekk technology by ourselves and outsourcing to US programmers and US software developers. The prospect of sending our work abroad was never a consideration. Primarily doing so we lose the security of proprietary development to another country were we have little if any legal control regardless of how cheap that option could be. Then quality and communications is another factor, but we are also sensitive to doing business within our culture because of the process of getting what we are looking for and having the ability to have laws in effect that protect our interest in getting just what we are paying for.
Customer support by Americans
We are constantly getting offers to do our work at deep discounts by these foreign nationals, primarily India, but we are not cheap price motivated. Even our support service is run by Americans in America. We may ad to our support from Australia, but that is because they can offer the needed time frame for that region, not a cost consideration, so we can offer 24/7 seamless support for our clientele. Plus we have many Australian and New Zealander subscribers using our services and we love their accents.
Collocation in San Jose, CA USA
When we first started building the Inetekk systems, we went from a shared server in Florida to needing our own servers. We could have co located our servers in a foreign company for 1/3rd the cost but we realized by doing so our proprietary technology and secured databases would be at risk. Not a good idea. So we contracted with a well know company in San Jose. This was expensive but a very good decision. As the Internet has grown, the necessity to keep your data well secured is of the utmost importance and again, keeping this service local has proved to be a very good decision.
Servers built in USA
As we started building our server farm, again quality and service were the key issue. We went to a local shop in San Diego and hired them to build them. The first server, unaware to us, was built from foreign parts and within weeks the server started having failure issues. From then on we have demanded that all parts be US made as best we could and we have never had issues since. Our farm now runs with US made servers like NetAps, Intel, etc.
IT services by Americans
As with any server farm and web systems, having good IT professional's is imperative, and again, we hired US IT database engineers and server engineers. Same reason as our security is key and far more important than cost. For example, to use foreign IT services cost around $10 per hour. US costs are around $150 per hour. In my humble opinion, you get what you pay for.
The bottom line is future forecasting. I subscribe to the belief that our customers deserve the very best. Not only in the quality of the service, or the best customer support, but also security and the dedication to keep Inetekk around for the long run delivering the very best.
It seems the the big corporations in the US have lost sight to this fact and are all heading for serious issues as they continue down this road to losing control of their companies to the quest for seeking the lowest prices regardless. Take the Mattel toy company for example. Not long ago all their toys were US built. Today, they have lost major market share because the toys the sell now coming from Red China are toxic and low quality. It is scandalous that our children are getting toys painted with lead paint.
Q: I've been out of work for nearly five months, and the prospect of getting
a job in my field (mechanical engineering) doesn't look good -- unless I want to
move my family across the country. I've always wanted to have my own business,
but I'm worried about the comparative lack of job security that goes with it.
What's your opinion? I'm over 50 and in good health. -- Deidre N.
A: You have a lot going for you: you've always wanted to have your own
business, you're over 50, and you have good health. Security? You don't have it
now, and you didn't have it when you got laid off. I don't think there's
anything more secure today than working for yourself. Companies will cut any
costs they have to just to stay in business, and the popular trend for the past
several years has been to cut staff -- fast. And consider this: when you work
for someone else -- big company or small -- only a few people -- your boss and
one or two more managers -- control your future security. But with your own
business, if you lose a few customers, you still have others to back you up.
I've always thought that having my own business gives me more security, not
less, than I'd have if I worked for someone else.
Another stunning fact of life: at 50, you're more likely to be more
successful at hiring yourself than trying to convince someone else to do it.
Fortune magazine once ran a cover story: "Finished at Forty," detailing the
corporate trend of hiring younger people. As one CEO put it: "Why should I hang
on to someone who's over 50? He's tired of the long hours and wants to spend
more time with his family. He probably hasn't kept up with the newest
technology. I have to pay him $75,000 a year or more, and he argues with me. I
can hire someone in his 30's and pay him $35 to $40,000. He'll work 60 to 70
hours a week without complaining, and he won't argue with me. This is a
no-brainer."
What Do YOU Want?
My best advice: do what feels right for YOU. When you're motivated and
committed to a career you really like, the money and security usually take care
of themselves. There's a big difference in putting in 50-60 hours a week into a
job you love, and one you just feel so-so about. If you don't look forward to
going to work when you get up in the morning, you're in the wrong job. Life is
too short to work at a job you don't like.
Think carefully about how you want to spend one-third to half of the rest of
your life (your waking hours). It you really think it's time to have your own
business, then write your answers to these questions. They'll also form the
foundation for a good business plan -- an absolute must if you want to
succeed.
How would you describe your business (name, location, product/service?)
How would you describe your total target market -- the customers who will be
willing to pay you for your products/services?
What industry, local, or consumer trends or needs will you react to?
How would you analyze, and then describe your competition (how many; current
prices; their strengths/weaknesses)?
What are your marketing and business goals?
What are your first-year growth problems -- and how will you solve them?
What finances will you need to start the business and keep it going until it
can stand on its own? How will you get them?
What's your operating plan for the next five years? (At least half of the new
businesses started each year fail within the first 12 months. You must plan for
a long-term business.)
What's your management plan to control and develop your basic
operation/service?
What equipment, inventory, labor, space, overhead do you need?
Talk to Your Banker
Once your business plan is ready, prepare your personal financial statement
(all your assets and liabilities). Next. prepare a projected balance sheet and
profit and loss statement for your business -- at least for the first year. Then
it's time to meet with your banker.
A good banker can advise you on the likelihood of your succeeding in getting
a loan. He or she can point you in the right direction to get additional
information. An excellent source for learning about starting your own business
is on-line: Search for "sba.gov" and you'll discover a site that has all you
need to know to write your business plan and finance your business. You'll even
have models of nearly 100 business plans to study and benefit from. The rest is
up to you -- and your energy and commitment.
Bill Repp is president of Organization Development Group, and has
extensive experience in creating and delivering programs in marketing,
communication, team building and business writing. E-mail Bill Repp at billrepp@rochester.rr.com
NOTE: All of these testimonials are recent and unedited
When you subscribe to the Sohomatic back office you will be able to meet many of these people and hear their recorded meeting talking about what this system has done for them.
Butch Hamilton
My name is Maria Angelozzi. I signed up previously, as a Silver member and was truly, amazed with what the system has to offer . I want to Thank Thom, and Mike, for putting such a Wonderful system together, and allowing others to share in this Wonderful Opportunity! I also, want to Thank the Trainers, they are all Wonderful! :)
Thanks Again,
Maria Angelozzi
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For the keywords free premium email leads I have the first 5 returns and the 10 return on page 1 of Google. I am anxious to see what this will start doing for me. This really is working!
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Ron-Smalley
Veretekk Internet Marketing At Its Best
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I was a Silver Veretekk member for two years before I discovered the power that lies within the Veretekk Marketing System. It is not an easy system to understand but with the expert help of trainers such as Butch Hamilton and Leo Silvestri, I began a journey which is leading me on the road to my goals.
My business is growing with out having to send out emails, surf for hours, join traffic exchanges and safe lists. My sites are taking on a life of their own and people are contacting me, and as this success is growing, I am able to pass on what I am learning to others and it is most rewarding.
I still have much to learn in this ever changing Internet world but can honestly say there is nothing to match the Veretekk Marketing System
David Ogden
There are more, a lot more, but you get the picture.
Google
now has a new 
Woot.com
is an amazing site that offers exactly one product each day. You can
often buy multiple of the one item but watch out because they have
stellar deals. The webmasters are very creative and even if you don't
want the item of the day it might be worth reading about it anyway. 
