Some time ago, I read an article about blogging and there were some interesting numbers listed there. The article stated that Technorati, a search engine that monitors blogs, indexed around 150 million blogs, up from 100,000 just a few years ago. It seems that a new blog is created every few seconds, which adds up to thousands new blogs a day, hundreds of thousands of posts a day, and thousands of updates an hour. As you see, the growth rate of blogs is really impressive. But what are really blogs? I think that blogs are lowering the cost of publishing, enabling the rise of content, which is replacing the centralized, controlled content done by professionals. I am not saying that some bloggers do not go pro, but most bloggers are only blogging part-time. Blogs are becoming more and more popular with each passing day. One of the reasons is that very often bloggers allow their visitors to ask them questions, leave comments, etc. A user that visits a blog can actually interact with the writer and that is not possible in case of newspapers.
The article had the conclusion that blogging is still in its early days and it is analogous to where the Web was in 1995 and 1996, so it is not clear how it will turn out. However, as a blogger myself, I am predicting that the popularity of blogging will not cease to grow and some bloggers will become even more influential.
Category Archives: Money and Business
Small Business and Donations
If you own a small business, it is a good idea to donate some of your money to organizations who might need your money. Even if you do not earn a lot, a few dollars donated to a noble cause can change the way people look at your company. The research shows that companies that donate money to various organizations benefit from their generosity. If people see that a company donates money, they are more likely to choose to buy products from this company. Below is a short list of ideas where you can donate money:
-Local events. If an event is going to take place soon in your neighborhood, hurry and donate some money.
-Charities. This is probably the most obvious choice. Your reputation will grow as people start noticing how charitable you are.
-Scholarships. By helping young people make their dreams come true, you have a chance to gain new customers.
Product Management
In these days in order for a business to be successful it has to be competitive. There is a lot more competition than there was ever before and product management consulting may be more needed than ever before. The key to every business are its services and products. It is important to have a good strategy when it comes to product management and consulting can be useful in various cases. There are many business that are successful, but there are also many business that simply fail. In order to be among those successful ones some steps have to be taken, so if you have a business make sure that you own a successful business.
Another thing that is of interest to many people is an assisted living business. If an entrepreneur owns such a business than he will want it to succeed no matter what. There will always be a need for such services, so that is one good news. Another good news is that there is software out there that can help assisted living businesses to be more competitive by taking advantage of technology. Such software can be of help to most businesses of this type and more and more of them use such software.
When it comes to businesses in general, advertising by Adwords may be a good way to market their business or product. Not everyone knows of course how to market the best or the most efficient way. That is because there are many factors to consider. If a business takes advantage of an adwords consultancy, then this can make advertising a lot easier. Knowing how much to spend on Adwords and in which way is something that can benefit a business, so it is important not to forget about that if you want to be successful.
Google Adsense
It seems that these days many webmasters are putting ads on their website to earn some money. A lot of them use Google AdSense, so I will focus on this particular program in this post. When it comes to AdSense, it is important to understand that you will not make the most money when someone sees your ads, but rather when someone clicks on them. The ratio of people clicking on your ads to the people seeing them is generally called click-through rate. So, if a webmaster puts ads on his blog he should focus on bringing attention to the ads, and blending them with the rest of the website in order to improve the click-through rate. That is because you can earn the same amount of money with a 10% click-through rate while having 100 visitors per day, as having a 1% click-through rate with 1000 visitors per day.
While AdSense can bring you a lot of money, there are also other things to consider. There are some people who are great at earning money online, they earn a lot of money these days, and there is no question about that. Those people often post on their websites how much they earned, and are not hesitant to spread the news of their success. There is nothing wrong with such approach, but let me give you some financial advice. Good times might not last forever, and I am not saying this to scare my readers, but to remind people of the truth. There are always better years and worse years. If we have an exceptionally good year, it does not mean we should spend all of our earned money. Save some money for the time where it will be harder to earn money, especially if you heavily depend on it. It is also a good idea to have income from different sources and not only from ads.
Making Money on the Internet
There are many ways to make money on the Internet and that is great news to many people. However, there are some things that you should keep in mind. First of all, if you have a full-time job, then you might not have that much time to actually earn a lot of money. There are some people who spend many hours per day trying to earn some money online. If you only have an hour or two, then you can probably still earn some money, but it might be hard for you to compete with others who try to earn money on the Internet many hours per day. If you have realistic expectation, then you will not be disappointed.
There is another tip I want to share with you. Many people like spending a lot of time on the Web and that is because you can find there a lot of useful information. However, it is also important that internet users realize that not everything they find on the Internet has to be true. As a matter of fact, an internet user should be very careful and watch out for various scams. There are many websites that try to trick people into paying them money. They might promise that they will reveal to you some very successful business idea, while in reality you might lose money in the process. I strongly urge anyone to be very careful and not trust everything they read on the Internet.
Tips for Businesses
Many business owners strive to make their businesses profitable. It is an obvious thing, as we found businesses in order to make a profit. I have been thinking about some tips I could offer to business owners. Here are some of my thoughts:
-Remember what your goals are. Try to stick to them no matter what happens and no matter in what circumstances you find yourself. In some circumstances, altering your goals might be necessary. If this occurs, try to be careful. Altering your strategies has to be a thought-over decisions, not a hasty one.
-Try to improve your business performance whenever possible. This is a crucial part of running any business. You need to be competitive so keep that in mind.
-Try to focus on a big picture rather than on details. This will help you in the future. If you choose to focus on small details, you might not notice bigger, more important things.
-Do not go for your business alone. Have a partner such as spouse or close friend. Having business partners can help you a great deal. It is usually worth it, even if you will be forced to split profits.
Blogging for Your Company
Many companies employ at least one person responsible for maintaining a blog about their company. If you work for a company that does not have a blog yet, this might be a great opportunity for you. If you like blogging, and if you would like to dedicate a few minutes per day to blogging about your company, here is what you can do:
� Approach your boss and tell him how popular blogging is and how the company you work for can benefit from maintaining a blog. Blogging is getting more and more popular each day and that is because blogs are a very convenient platform. They allow visitors to quickly check whether any new content got published and more and more people are getting used to using blogs.
� Work out the details before you approach your boss. Study the list of topics you could write about or prepare an example of a blog post you would be willing to publish. A well-written post is going to convince your boss that maintaining a blog might be a good idea for your company.
� Establish contact with your marketing department to discuss with them how the blog can contribute to the company. Blogs can be a powerful marketing tool, so discussing various issues with your marketing department seems like a good decision.
I believe that more and more companies are going to set up their blogs. It is true that some of them might abandon it at some point of time; however, the overall number of business blogs is going to grow.
Savings
I know that it might not be always possible to have savings each month, but it definitely helps to have at least a little extra money. Every time I manage to save extra money, it makes me happy. It makes me happy to know that I can have peace of mind knowing that I have more money than I spend. I know that I could always use a credit card if I wanted to cover some extra expense, but being able to do it without having to resort to a credit card is so much better. I encourage you to make sure that you have at least a little savings each month. This should already make you feel better.
The main features of cloud computing
Allow me to talk about the main features of cloud computing and cloud hosting:
� A hosted virtual desktop is simply a virtual machine that can be accessed remotely from anywhere in the world to conduct all types of operations that a business owner otherwise would not be able to perform. One of the most obvious benefits of using a hosted virtual desktop is that you no longer have to worry about the performance of your PC: no more lost time due to crashes, no more slow performance, and gone are the days when viruses plagued your computer. A hosted desktop managed by a reputable company is always on and is always fast. Additionally, most cloud computing providers offer software upgrades free of charge.
� Virtual servers are servers that host multiple domain names on a single server. The solution is brilliant because it allows one server to share all its resources and distribute them evenly among all domain names. One obvious benefit of virtual servers is that business owners don�t need to host their own websites on their own computers, but can outsource such needs to companies that specialize in virtual hosting.
� Cloud backup can store your files in the cloud. If you know that you have some documents you cannot afford to lose, you should move them to the cloud where they will be stored in safety. File theft happens in companies all the time, so often it is logical to use cloud backup services to prevent any sensitive data from leaking.
� Disaster recovery is all about ensuring that all critical data a company stores on a virtual server together with all the applications are protected in the case of a disaster. These days, cloud computing providers are ready to go to great lengths to make sure that all files you store on their computers are stored in safety. Cloud vendors usually like to brag about how secure their networks are, and how ready they are to overcome the results of any disaster in case it happens.
� Hosted exchange refers to a hosted email exchange. The main purpose of an email hosted exchange is to allow business owners to access their email from anywhere in the world without compromising its security. Sure, you might want to opt for free email account such as a Gmail account, or any other free email you can think of, but the results can be disastrous for you and your company in case somebody hacks into it. It is always better to dish out a few quids in exchange for better security and higher performance of your email.
� Software as a service is software that is centrally hosted on the cloud. The main advantage of this type of software is that there is no need for individual companies to purchase it in order to be able to use it. Multiple companies can take advantage of the same application at the same time, which reduces the costs considerably. The software is typically accessed by the users via a web browser, and as with all the features that the cloud offers, it can be accessed anywhere in the world at any time.
� If you are familiar with Microsoft Office, and you probably are, you will be relieved to know that some files you are so accustomed to, such as Word and Excel files, are available on the cloud as well. I am thinking here about Office 365. The main purpose of the software is to allow Microsoft users to be able to access their files from anywhere in the world while preserving the original look and feel of the files.
As you can probably imagine, there are many cloud vendors in the UK. A business owner will need to do his homework by making himself familiar with all the options that he has to choose from. With such a wide array of options, it is wise to dedicate some time to comparing the plans offered by various cloud vendors. Doing so will definitely be a time well spent, and can result in a lot of money being saved, so I suggest that you give it a try whenever you surf the Web.
Cloud Computing
Many cloud computing end users that this solution is one of the best things that happened to business owners over the last couple of years. The important thing to understand about cloud computing is that it offers on demand access to resources of a server. For example, if at a particular moment more processing power will be required for some task, then it will get automatically allocated. This is contrary to traditional hosting models where a company might easily outgrow its hosting needs and in such a case would need to change their hosting plan.
Due to how cloud computing works, some people consider it even to be a heavenly-sent solution for all kinds of business owners: small, medium and large business owners. A small company may not require a lot of processing power or storage space, but that can change and in this case cloud computing would still be able to take care of all of such company�s hosting needs as simply more resources would get allocated. A medium and large company�s needs may change regularly as well and cloud computing allows to accommodate for this growth. Since cloud computing features on-demand self-service, a user can provision computing capabilities without the need for human assistance.
In some cases for a new small business owner, creating and maintaining a website and then hosting this website can prove to be a complicated and daunting process. Not only a small business owner needs computers as well as point of sale terminals in his day-to-day operations, but he also needs proper server infrastructure allowing him to conduct his business operations more efficiently. This is where the idea of cloud computing comes in as the fact that the user does not have to know exactly how much particular resources he is going to utilize (such as RAM, processing power, etc.) makes it easier to get started. A user will not have to concern himself with optimizing resource allocation as that is something that cloud systems automatically control.
For the last couple of years, cloud computing services have become more and more affordable allowing small business owners to take advantage of them more often than ever before. These days, those services are competitively priced and working under a cloud is becoming an apparent choice due to its many benefits I am going to write about soon.
One other thing that is worth mentioning when it comes to cloud computing is that in some cases a small business owner might not need all the features that cloud computing has to offer. If there are some features that a small business may decide not to use, such as disaster recovery for example, in some cases he can opt out and simply take advantage of all those options and programs that interest him most.
The bottom line is that cloud computing is an online server platform that allows its capabilities to be elastically provisioned and released. It offers access to resources such as networks, storage, servers, services and applications on a demand basis. All those resources are distributed continuously between all users of a particular cloud based on how much resources are being requested at the moment. A small or medium-sized company doesn�t have to worry about �outgrowing� its equipment. As a company grows and as their server needs grow, it will be able to have more resources allocated to it.
