Finding Success on Twitter with Sponsored Tweets

If you’ve had your Twitter account for at least 60 days, and have at least 100 followers on Twitter, then you are already capable of succeeding with making money from Sponsored Tweets with your Twitter account. Those are the basic requirements which Sponsored Tweets has in place for eligibility. If you don’t meet these first two requirements, then advertisers won’t even see your account as a possible advertiser. However, if you do meet these two requirements you are eligible and advertisers can see your account.

Does this mean that you will automatically begin making money? No, it does not. There is a specific formula for success that advertisers are looking for. If all of the specific variables are met, then the value of your account goes up in their eyes. If they aren’t met, then you account value is low, and they will most likely not choose your account for their campaigns. So, what is the miracle formula and its invisible variables?

1) You Key-Words Must Have Weight - If you selected keywords for your Sponsored Tweets account because that was what you believed advertisers were looking for, then you made a mistake. You need to select key-words that you talk about on a daily basis. You must select key-words which summarize what you Tweet about from day to day. This ensures that your followers are interested in what you talk about on a daily basis, which in turns means that they are interested in your key-words.

2) Your Followers Must Be Targeted - If you actively search for followers, then you want to ensure that your followers are interested in what you talk about - which ensures that they don’t un-follow you AND that they are more likely to re-tweet what you talk about more often. Advertisers WANT their ads to be re-tweeted as often as possible! If you have an extremely viral following, then it increases the chance of their ads to be visible to your followers AS WELL AS their followers because they re-tweeted their ad.

To properly obtain a targeted group of followers, you must do the following:

A) Allow them to find you naturally via the content of your tweets.
B) Use hash tags as often as possible, as people often conduct key-word searches within Twitter. Using your keywords as hash-tags is HIGHLY recommended.
C) Use an account management tool which allows you to find and follow users interested in your key-words.

Tweet Adder - Best Twitter account management tool on the market. It maximizes your effectiveness, allowing automation of many Twitter functions (including a follow-back feature), while still maintaining your own personal tweets to your account. It comes with life-time support, updates, and upgrades. I use it and am definitely a supporter. (Avoid RSS feeds and automatic DM’s as they lack value and are frowned upon by the Twitter community). If you do have a blog that you write to daily, and it is related to your Twitter account, then by all means update your Twitter account with a link to that day’s post!

3) Be an Active Tweeter - The more that you tweet, and provide valuable information to your followers, the more likely that you will get re-tweeted by your followers. Considering that some people follow HUNDREDS of Twitter accounts, the more you tweet the more likely you’ll be noticed. However, remember that Twitter does have a limit to the number of tweets that you can post daily. Plus, you don’t want your followers to think that you are only automating your tweets. So, keep your daily automated tweets to a low number and frequency.

4) Use a Twitter Cockpit Tool - You will need to re-tweet your follower’s tweets that you feel are extremely valuable for the rest of your followers. This will enhance your value in their eyes, as well as the value of your tweets. This is pretty much common-sense Twitter etiquette, but I’m putting it here JUST IN CASE you haven’t been taught this lesson yet. Sharing good information is the BEST thing that you can do on Twitter - especially if it’s another user’s tweet! Twitter cockpit tools allow you to see when someone mentions you within Twitter, as well as your follower’s tweets (because you are following them ALL back if you are doing things correctly).

Tweet Glide - An amazing Twitter cockpit tool, which has a built-in advertising feature that can earn you free advertising for your website(s). It has a referral feature that can also earn you major dollars for anyone who upgrades to their premium service

Tweet Deck - Another amazing Twitter cockpit tool which helps you to monitor as well as Tweet to your followers - Added feature of sending your tweets to your other social network accounts simultaneously, although if you link your Twitter account from your other social network accounts, it also accomplishes this goal.

5) Keep it Real - No, I’m not trying to bring back a pop-culture statement from the 80’s and 90’s. By tweeting about things you know about, experience, and have an intimate familiarity with, you offer valuable Tweets that people will be interested in reading. Faking it is extremely obvious to any reader, and will only lead to getting un-followed fast! Provide them valuable insight, information, links to press releases and articles, or other informational web resources, regarding your keyword topic(s). Do this, and people will flock to you in droves! Offer them junk, and you will get junk in return…

6) Be Patient! - So many people walk away from ventures when they don’t see immediate success. What they don’t realize is that it takes time for an account to gain “clout” and followers who are interested in what you have to say. There is also the possibility that advertisers aren’t looking to advertise for the keywords that you are using. However, this can change and there may be a day or month when advertisers ARE ONLY looking for your keywords and you make all the money while other members suffer.

7) Motivate Yourself!!! - Set up an alert within Outlook to forward an alert message to your cell phone every time you get paid from Sponsored Tweets. This way, you get that good feeling of immediate satisfaction when you hear that chime or musical melody… Leave me a comment if you want me to send you the exact syntax for my Outlook rule, and I’ll send it to you!

Start Your Asking Price Low - By asking for only $1 or $.99, you will lower your average cost per click to be extremely low. Having a low CPC is one of the magic variables, and will make you far more attractive to advertisers. Then, when you start getting a steady stream of advertisements, just increase your rate slightly to see if you continue to receive offers. Continue to do this until you stop to see success, then drop it back to the last asking price. I suggest only changing your asking price once a month - at the beginning of the month.

Remember, success comes one day at a time, and at varying speeds between one person to the next. Just do everything as I’ve indicated above, and you’ll eventually find yourself earning money on Sponsored Tweets!

(Not a member? Join Sponsored Tweets today!)

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Creating & Growing A Business With Twitter - From Scratch

Twitter is the fasting growing real-time social medial site on the planet. Everyone from Jack, Jill, and some of the biggest companies on the planet have Twitter profiles. They are communicating their thoughts, ideas, expressions, and business information - but they are also listening. If you have a lot of credible and useful information to hand out, you’ll find yourself having followers in the hundreds, and then in the thousands. So, once you get to this point, what do you do?

First and foremost, don’t degrade the quality of the information that you’re disseminating to your followers. Stick to what you know, and Twitter useful knowledge to the rest of the Twitter community. By doing so, you will establish credibility, trust, as well as like-minded followers. Secondly, follow people that follow you, and follow people who also Twitter about what you know. By doing so, you are building a solid community who think, talk, and plan their lives around what everyone is talking about - this includes spending money on items which relate to these topics.

GROWTH

As you grow, it will become necessary for you to manage your Twitter account more effectively. Personally, I use Tweet Adder in order to schedule my tweets that I want to cyclically repeat on my profile. These scheduled tweets consist of important information, inspirational quotes, and insightful suggestions that I want to ensure people receive. Since they may only see a couple of my posts at any once sitting, having a few hundred of them cycle through each week will maximize the chances of a single person seeing and benefiting from all of them eventually.

Tweet Adder has many automated features that will allow you to tailor specifically how you want to manage your Twitter account, and then will continue to do so on auto-pilot. It will continue to schedule everything from following others, following people back, un-following people who aren’t following you back, auto-reply to DM’s and to Tweets, schedule DM’s (although I discourage using this feature), and search for followers based upon Tweet keywords, profile keywords, geo-location, followers of a specific user, or users that a specific user is following. All in all, Tweet Adder is the most versatile Twitter management tools that I’ve found, and has lifetime support and upgrades once you purchase the application.

You will also need to have a control panel that will allow you to see different types of information on Twitter in an organized manner. The two tools which I recommend for this is Tweet Glide & Tweet Deck. Both of them are free, and will become your “Twitter Cockpit”. In the sense of the word, they arrange Tweets mentioning you, DM’s, & Tweets of those who you are following, into columns so that you can see them as they come in. I use both of the tools - Tweet Deck because it allows me to post to my Facebook & MySpace accounts at the same time as my Twitter account, and Tweet Glide because it allows me to post advertisements within the application which other Tweet Glide users can see while they use the application. There is some performance issues with Tweet Glide, but Mike Filsaime (@MikeFilsaime) and his team are tightening down the application and are sending out updates as often as possible.

MONETIZING FROM ADVERTISING

After several weeks of using the above tools and applications to grow your Twitter profile, and to continue to send out valuable information to your followers each and every day, you should have a pretty solid Twitter community. Once you get this solid community established, create accounts with Sponsored Tweets & Magpie. This will begin a new journey of turning your Twitter profile into a business as well as a valuable community. Both of these sites are Twitter advertising networks, which will post advertisements to your Twitter profile.

Magpie will pay you for these advertisements based upon the type of advertisement that are posted - Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead, or Pay Per Sale - and the amount of activity that is achieved from your followers. I suggest that you enable the feature to require your approval of advertisements before they post them to your profile, as this ensures that only advertisements which you feel are pertinent to what you talk about will get posted to your profile.

Sponsored Tweets will pay you a set dollar amount, which you set within their site, for a single advertisement tweet to your profile. So, if your profile and followers talk mostly about fitness and physical conditioning and exercise, and you have your profile post value set at $1.50, Reebok or Nike may pay you $1.50 to post a tweet mentioning a new shoe model release or a particular sale beginning on their website. This dollar value may increase as you gain more followers, and they will actually suggest a dollar value to you on their site as a guide. However, if your CPC is too high for advertisers, you may have to drop your price in order to make yourself appealing to them. You have to choose which keywords to associate to your profile within their site, so choose keywords that you will talk about on a daily basis!

Don’t expect tons of advertisements to get posted to your profile right away. Be patient, and don’t have any expectations regarding how much you’ll make and how soon. This is totally dependent upon how many advertisers are paying to post to profile with the specific keywords that you are using in your posts, as well as what keywords your followers are mentioning in theirs. The best that you can do, is continue to post real and valuable information to your profile, and to stick to what you know. By doing so, you will continue to build the value of your profile, and this will ensure that you are eventually noticed and desired by advertisers.

LIST BUILDING WITH YOUR TWITTER PROFILE

Twitter users are pretty loyal to Twitter and use the site pretty regularly on average. However, some users will go through high and low points with their use of Twitter. These types of users, or users who use it and then lose interest, are those who may still be interested in what you have to offer in regards to the valuable information that you are sharing, as well as the products and services that you are promoting. So, you must begin expanding your reach to include these users, and to compliment your tweets for those users who are actively using their Twitter profile.

If you have websites which you are currently using to build your lists for specific subject matters, then be sure to include a tweet occasionally letting your followers know that they can obtain more information at that particular site. I suggest tailoring them to offer free information, or free products and services, that they will use and appreciate from you. Free items are more conducive to active traffic, and your followers will appreciate your more for the free items or advice. Remember, giving to your followers is more beneficial to you in the long-run by building a positive relationship. They will appreciate you more, and will be more likely to buy products from someone that they have a good relationship with.

If you don’t have list building sites, or wish to supplement those sites, you can actively build your lists within Twitter as well. The best method to do so, is from free list-building services, as users again will desire something that they can use with absolutely no cost to them.

Twitter List Builder - This is a list builder website, tailored specifically to be used within Twitter, and brands itself as a Twitter follower builder. When people join the site using your affiliate link, they will become your followers on Twitter, and will be added to your referral list within the Twitter List Builder website. It is one of the only sites which I recommend as a 3rd party follower builder, as there are many of them which hijack your profile to post tweets without your permission.

ZoomMoola - This list building website, is also free to join. It allows your list to build on auto-pilot because EVERY person who joins the site after you get added to your mailing list. I highly suggest paying the $20 lifetime Pro membership, as you get 1 free mail credit added to your account every day, which accumulates. So, you can let your list grow to a significant amount before you begin using your mail credits, which will make your emails that much more effective.

Viral Traffic Dominator - This is a link cloaking, list building, and traffic generating site. You can start with a free membership to the site, and get all of the features listed, or you can pay for the Platinum level membership and get 2 to 5 times more from the site as a Gold membership. Essentially, when you use the Viral Traffic Dominator link cloaking links in place of your own links, you earn traffic to the sites which you list on the website as active ads. What I do, is create shortened Twitter friendly links for my VTD links, which then point to my sites. It’s a double re-direct, but the shorter links allow me more room on Twitter posts, and I still get the benefit of hits against my VTD links. If you create a VTD links for a website, and then list it as an ad within VTD, you can achieve 2 - 10 times the traffic to your site with a normal promotion campaign!

UTILIZE THIS BUSINESS MODEL

Now, I have given you the core plan to my current Twitter business model. If you begin putting these tools and methods to use for you or your business today, you’ll see a steady growth within your Twitter community, and will begin to passively earn money from your profile, grow your mailing list capabilities, as well as dynamically increase traffic to your website(s). Each and every one of these steps helps to compliment the next, increase the efficiency of your Twitter efforts, as well as elevate your earning potential from your Twitter user community. By doing so, you will position yourself better within your Twitter community, as well as within your business community.

Best of luck, and feel free to ask any questions within this forum. I will answer them as quickly and effectively as possible, and may even involve myself directly if you need it.

To Your Sucess!

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Internet Marketing Fundamentals - Networking & List Building

Every marketing firm on the planet knows the importance of two things - 1) Networking, and 2) Building a customer list. These two key factors, and a firm’s ability to successfully achieve both of them effectively, will either make or break their business. The EXACT same methods pertain to internet marketing, and need to be considered lesson number one when someone is beginning their education within the arena of internet marketing.

NETWORKING

Networking is a very simple concept, but one which many people fail to execute properly. It is the act of building relationships withing your business community, some of them as peers, some of them as customers, and some of them as guides or gurus. Your ability to effectively categorize people into these categories, and then properly manage contact information for these individuals, as well as ensuring that you don’t cross any boundaries which may upset any specific category within your various networks.

Usually to make everyone happy in each networking group, you have to provide them with something that they want or need. It has to be something of value which they will appreciate so that, even if they already have it, they will recognize the quality of what you’ve offered them and will feel gratitude. Trust is key towards establishing your networks, as well as keep them, so don’t abuse it.

Also, avoid desperation! Don’t send garbage messages out to everyone, and don’t try to sell to everyone. Be sure that information sent to a specific network group is tailored specifically for them. Desperation is recognizable from a mile away, and will turn anyone off to whatever it is that you are trying to say to them. Instead, be casual when you send them information, and hit on the key points of interest that you feel they will benefit from knowing. Make recommendations, and suggestions, so that instead of you telling them to “do this” or “buy this product” it is their decision to do so. They are choosing to follow your guidance and advice, not giving into a sales pitch.

EXCELLENT ORGANIZATION

Organizing your networking efforts can be tricky, especially when you want to overlap your list-building with your marketing efforts. However, there are a few tools out there that will make your life much easier. Documentation is key to replication, automation is key to time management, and using the correct tools will make your life easier when facilitating the activities for both of these categories, as well as everything else that you will be doing throughout your business day.

Firstly, I ALWAYS, use Excel Spreadsheet to track the various websites and URL’s which I use for all of my networking as well as marketing. It allows me to associate the full URL for a site with a shortened one, as well as to provide the name and description of the site for future reference. I can also group them together, i.e. Twitter related URL’s, List Building URL’s, and Affiliate Programs are three categories in my spreadsheet.

Secondly, I utilize The Traffic Plan to organize my core networking, marketing, and list-building efforts. Because I am assisting other Internet Marketers to find success, 90% of the people that I network with are Internet Marketers. I discovered that with The Traffic Plan, I can build my network, develop a mailing list, consolidate my top recommended products and services for other internet marketers into a single “iVault” area, AND enhance their education at the same time. The Traffic Plan offers free internet marketing training, as well as in-depth tutorials about how to maximize the benefit from their free services that they are providing to you.

LIST BUILDING

List building is definitely an art-form, and will take you some time to master. You will need to build your lists in a way that will be of future use to you. This is most effectively done by building a single list where everyone has a common interest. You may get some overlap between several lists, so be sure to document your lists as much as possible in regards to what keywords people used to get to your site and then to become a part of your list.

One of the best places to start, as well as the cheapest, is List Quick. List Quick is yet another free service which allows you to not only build a list with their site, but gives you immediate limited access to their list once a week! You can send an e-mail to 100 random members of their list every 5 days, which equates to 73 emails a year - reaching 7300 people - all for free. You can promote List Quick and develop your list over time, which will get you used to putting in the effort of building a list. Then, once you’ve mastered the art of list-building and managing your lists, you can move onto owning your own list-building software that you will have installed on your own hosting server.

However, don’t forget about The Traffic Plan! It has a free list builder built within the site, which builds your list as people join the free website using your link. In fact, what I actually did, was create a product listing in my Traffic Plan iVault for List Quick. This way, I’m promoting both of my free list-building services by only promoting a single URL, on top of my affiliate marketing products. Internet Marketers love to get free stuff, as does everyone, especially when it saves them time, money, and effort!

List building is the solid foundation which internet marketing was founded upon. It always results in success, although the success varies depending upon the quality of effort during the list building process. Plus, once you have a well-designed process in place, your list building efforts are then on auto-pilot. Your work after that point is deciding what to promote, how to promote it, and which of your lists would be best for that particular marketing campaign.

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Twitter Account - Is Yours Putting Money in Your Pockets Yet?

Twitter has officially taken its place in the arena of powerful and effective social media sites on the planet. With its user base in the millions, the amount of “140 byte” transmissions daily is astronomical. People are sharing everything from the most mundane pieces of information, spiritual insights into their lives, professional advice, and business notifications. Colleges are buzzing with the sounds of students Twittering away with their laptops and cell-phones. Cell phone companies have television ads showing 45 year old parents Twittering away with their cell phones, all while real parents are Twittering on their computers at home.

However, out of the millions of users which are currently Twittering away, how many of them have realized the fact that by doing what they’re doing everyday on Twitter, they can earn a little cash? Companies have already begun creating profiles on Twitter so that they can market new releases, update existing customers on product updates, and notify them of issue resolutions. Now, they are looking to expand their marketing just one step further, allowing the everyday person to send out an advertisement on their behalf, and to pay them for that service. Basically, these new Twitter marketing service providers are allowing everyday people to turn their Twitter profiles into an affiliate advertising resource.

Now, before you get upset with this change, realize that Twitter, like Facebook, has an excellent reputation with maintaining the organic integrity and value of its traffic. Advertisers have no intention with ruining this value by flooding your profiles with tons of advertisements. In fact, the marketing companies which do provide this marketing service for companies have strict guidelines which allows them to terminate any advertising account for anyone who tries to violate their Terms of Service. All in all, they want to make money but not at the sacrifice of ruining Twitter’s integrity. They ALL wish to maintain a good working relationship with Twitter, and to do so for many years to come.

Firstly, the advertising agencies have made their services highly customizable to each user’s account, allowing you to not only control what advertisements are displayed on your profile, but how often that they appear. Others only work with high profile companies, and get infrequent amounts of business, but at a higher dollar value to them and to the users posting their advertisements. They have also designed built-in safeguards to keep their users from posting more ads to their profile than they should, and run automated scans of their users’ profiles on a regular basis to make sure that they aren’t violating their Terms of Service. All in all, after reviewing several of the Twitter marketing services, I can tell you that these three are definitely getting A’s and are being recommended to all of my readers:

Sponsored Tweets is my top recommended Twitter advertising network. It pays per tweet on your profile, at a dollar value determined by yourself, and recommends to you what you should charge based upon the number of followers that you have!

Sponsored Tweets even has a two tiered advertising system. They pay 1) Per single tweet placed on your profile, and 2) Per click on the tweets placed on your profile. My first payout was $2.81 for a single tweet! This service has customers that are the top dogs in their industry, and have a lot of existing customers with a great respect for their products. Which means that people already do and will want to continue to do business with them. Preferred products means happy customers!

Magpie is another highly respected Twitter interfacing advertising community. Magpie will automatically analyze the information that you are sharing on your Twitter profile, and then decide which advertisements would be appropriate for your audience. You are allowed to control how often they appear as well. Frequency is dependent upon two things:

1) You can set them to post 1 advertisement for every 1 post of yours, all the way to 1 advertisement for every 200 of your posts. This is highly valuable, as some followers will drop you if they get hit with ads more than valuable information.

2) How large of a following that you have - The higher the number of followers, the higher the frequency of ads that you will see ads available to you. Since ads will not occur for EVERY number of posts that you set them for. (i.e. if you set them to occur for every 5 posts of yours, you may not see an add for 20 - 100 of your posts if no ads meet your post content and if there are profiles with higher followers than yours with relative content as well). This is helpful to the advertisers because they know that their advertising dollars are well spent by going to higher profile communities.

Another amazing feature is that you can advertise your own products on Twitter through Magpie. This is a double benefit because if you advertise other people’s products on your profile, and make money from their ads, you can turn around and invest that earned money, into an advertising account with Magpie, to pay for your advertisement posts on Twitter! Can you say, “Free Advertising”?

RevTwt is another well performing Twitter focused advertising community. The RevTwt referral program is a great way to spread the word of this great service and to earn even more money with your Twitter account! Refer friends and receive 20% of their earnings for life! (in fact, all three of these services have a referral program!)

You can pick and choose from the available advertisements that you post on your profile. This allows you to put the ads that you feel your readers will be interested in, as well as minimize the frequency of advertisements on your profile.

There is also an FAQ and forum resource available to users through their site. This ensures that users can get their questions answered, not just by the site owners, but by other users that are finding success using the RevTwt advertisements on their profile!

Again, remember that balance is key when it comes to your Twitter profile content. So, be sure to give TONS of valuable information to your users before hitting them with an advertisement! However, everyone from college students, high school students, and stay-at-home moms and dads can partake in these advertising communities, and put a little cash in their pockets. Making money online has never been so passive and effective!

Complete your Twitter education here - Twitter, Truemors, and Tweeps Marketing

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FOREX Trading With Expert Advisers - From Start to Finish

I have been reviewing FOREX trading products for the last few years. Many of them are informational products, educating you how to get started with trading foreign currency exchanges, also known as FOREX. These products taught you what a pip was, and how to identify leverage opportunities, how to evaluate the value of one broker from the next, and the difference between scalping and using long-term investment strategies. Since I was an old-school internet marketer, I saw this market and their products as “chasing” instead of “leading”. However, after the introduction of EA software, or “Expert Adviser”, I was suddenly intrigued. I saw a unique opportunity to make money within the FOREX industry where the learning curve, for someone off the street with no FOREX knowledge or experience, was drastically reduced!

So, just as all of my other business endeavors began, I started with doing my research. When it comes to evaluating products that are being sold within affiliate networks, you have to evaluate “product reviews” very carefully. Many of these reviews are simply other internet marketers marketing the product for the sake of their own incomes, and not to actually educate consumers. Every once in a while, you find a product that is so amazing that internet marketers ARE actually using AND selling it, but this is a rare exception. So, you have to start, of course, with a Google search. Then, you build a list of the URL’s which you find. Then, as you go through the list, you’ll usually find other URL’s as references - especially with YouTube videos - and you need to add them to your list to investigate.

As you go through the list of these URL’s, you will soon find email addresses of people available if they are truly wanting to give you personal insight, or you will find a dead-end and nothing but promotional materials trying to sell the product. It wasn’t long however, before I found a valuable website that was created by a group of developers which buys, deconstructs, and then evaluates the code for the latest FOREX products - FOREX Trading Robots. These robots are the newest technology of EA products, which allows for anyone to trade within the FOREX market using this new software which actually conducts the trades for you. The robot software uses a specific set of algorithms to predict when it should make a purchase, and when it should make a sale. Many of these robots promote themselves as having a 95% - 97% success rate, which did intrigue me. However, I needed to see for myself and I needed hard core proof. For me, even if they were proven to have a 95% - 97% success rate, I was also worried that the remaining 5% - 3% of failures were significant losses which would negate or almost negate the 95% or 97% of successes, possibly resulting in a loss.

I continued working down my list and later found another internet marketer who positioned himself as also being a true believer and user of the robots to increase his own financial successes. So, I began questioning the administrator of the first blog, as well as the internet marketer which I discovered, and I began to like what I saw. First of all, with my questioning the blog users as well as blog administrators, I discovered the two products which everyone was seeing the greatest earnings success from, and amazingly enough, they were also the top two products which the internet marketer was promoting on his website! I also discovered two new products coming out in the near future which everyone was truly excited about, but I decided to focus my efforts on the two successful products which were currently available, and left the two new products for the 2nd phase of my evaluations.

Product #1 - FAP Turbo

Product #2 - Forex Megadroid

PHASE I - Evaluate both FAP Turbo and Forex Megadroid from start to finish, with the outcome of being profitable money makers. (I have never traded foreign currencies before today)

Evaluation consists of the following:

1. Buy the Products

2. Create Broker Account(s) - Creating multiple accounts is recommended simply because you are hunting for the best broker with the lowest spread. If one broker consistently performs better than another, close out the account with the poor performer and start an account with another broker to see which one comes out on top, and then repeat the process until you find the best broker!

3. Begin Trading with Demo Accounts - These are like trading for pretend - not using your own money, but using live trading data to show what would happen if you were trading with your real money. (It is highly recommended that you do this until you are completely familiar with using the software, and have the optimum settings that are resulting in the highest level of earnings)

4. Begin Trading with Live Accounts - This step will be inclusive of a link to my MetaTrader4 trade results, showing my earnings and losses. Again, I want to show hard core proof of my success, so that you can repeat everything which I’ve done in order to duplicate the success for yourself.

Product #1 - FAP Turbo

1. Purchased 07/16/2009 - $149.00 Clickbank purchase.

I immediately went through the software installation process, which helped me to get through the installation of the software onto my laptop. There is also a copy of the software available for users who wish to install onto a virtual private server. I highly recommend downloading their instructions PDF file and to read through the steps. It shows you how to not only properly install and configure your software, but walks you through setting up accounts with brokers, as well as properly setting up FAP Turbo and activating it with that broker.

The licensing for FAP turbo is managed through the members area, and is extremely easy to use and navigate. You are given as many Demo licenses that you wish you use, but are only given one active license before you have to spend more money for other active licenses to use with other brokers. You are given a discount for other licenses, so don’t worry about that. Besides, if you do your homework by opening Demo accounts with several brokers in order to 1) Tune the software for optimum performance, and 2) identify which brokers result is the highest profits, you’ll only need one to start when you finally begin using your Active account.

I’ve created four broker demo accounts, and activated an FAP Turbo license for each:

Alpari

The Collective FX

ForexMeta

FXCBS

What you’ll find when you create these Demo accounts is that you’re limited upon how much starting revenue you can put into your demo account. The smallest amount seems to be $3,000.00, which is a little far from reality with which what most people have to start with. However, realize that your gains will be proportionate to 1) Your account’s balance, and 2) Your risk settings.








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Using the Force in Internet Marketing: Article I

(Normally I post all of my online articles on EzineArticles.com, but they recently made a decision to disallow any articles relating to Traffic Exchanges. I gave them a compelling reason as to the uses and benefits of traffic exchanges for beginning internet marketers with little or non-existent advertising and marketing budgets, but they decided to not allow my article to be posted. So, I am placing it here within my blog, but will be placing all future articles in my article series “Using the Force in Internet Marketing” within EzineArticles.com - Jason E. Cloninger)

Getting something for nothing in internet marketing is usually an impossible feat in today’s world. There is always a price for everything that you may need or want. There are even people telling you that you’ll get something for free, but then turn around and tell you that you have to pay for something else in order to get the first thing… Still not free. However, what about getting something without paying? This is possible when it comes to free traffic.

Free website traffic is definitely not something new to any of us. Or is it? TE sites have been around for years, being the beginning of some internet marketing businesses, and in the beginning they took off like a rocket! They promised free web traffic for surfing… something that we all do each and every day. However, in the end, there was very little free traffic, and pretty much nothing else after spending countless hours of surfing and surfing. Plus, as soon as you stopped surfing, the website traffic stopped. Not very fulfilling at all!

However, now entering the arena are TE 2.0 sites. They took these sites to another level by initially giving their surfers more free traffic for their time. Some even took that a step further by offering bonus traffic for users who use their site each and every day… or surfed a certain amount the day before… or just for the heck of it for surfing a certain amount of pages. Now, there are even games that you are prompted to play during your surf sessions which give you free bonus traffic!

The true internet marketing value of TE 2.0 sites came after this initial improvement however. The genius who came up with referral programs within these sites was… well, a genius. These programs always have an incentive of earning free traffic whenever your referrals surf and earn web traffic themselves. But they also sometimes include financial incentives whenever your referrals purchase traffic packages or other products and services offered through their site.

This now offers a tremendous value to someone with a low or non-existent advertising budget trying to get free traffic to their website, as well as to earn a little revenue that they can turn around and buy traffic for their website. Spend a set amount of time each day surfing your favorite ones, and you can get referrals that will help you to get free traffic while spending less time surfing, until you reach the point where you don’t have to surf at all!

However, “using the force” does not result in something good… but always results in something amazing! So, what kind of amazing improvement are you expecting now that would be “force level material”? You take your referral programs, and then combine them with another site… one which unites all of your referral programs under one roof! “One site to rule them all”. Okay… No more Lord of the Rings references. However, that statement couldn’t be more true!

These “TE hubs”, as I like to call them, give you a single link to promote which shows them how they too can benefit greater by using that same site to promote their referral programs. Then, instead of promoting one referral link on another referral site, and having to play switch-a-roo with which ones you promote on others, you simply promote your hub’s single referral link on ALL of your other referral sites. This allows you to cross promote all of your referral links using a single URL!

Each person comes in using your hub’s referral link, and joins any of the TE’s listed that they don’t already belong to, if they belong to any at all. By doing this they are effectively joining using your referral link! This is accomplished by you entering your account identifier for each referral site listed on the hub site, which you belong to, and saving them with your profile. Basically, one visitor, coming in using your referral link within the traffic hub, could possibly become a referral on ALL of the other sites that you belong to. In fact, they are encouraged to join all of them so that they too can benefit whenever someone comes to the traffic hub using their newly acquired hub affiliate link.

In the end, this the best, most efficient, and fastest way for you to get referrals and free traffic. Of course, more referrals equals more traffic, and with internet marketing, more traffic equals more money! This does require some work up front but, with proper SEO practices combined with some other free traffic methods, will result in greater organic search engine traffic in the end. Now, there are also other sites that you can promote along side of your traffic exchange hub referral link, which will then amplify the effectiveness of your efforts. However, we will have to save them and their benefit for another “Using the Force In Internet Marketing” article.

Visit EndUnemployment.com for more information regarding this internet marketing resource.




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Free Website Traffic From Traffic Exchange 2.0 Sites

Traffic exchanges are a method for new internet marketers to get traffic to their websites, without spending money in order to do so. It helps them to do the grunt work in order to get their traffic, which in turn helps them to appreciate that time later on and to pay for the traffic in order to save that time. However, it is looking like the newer internet marketers are going to have it easier than the rest of us did when we were green-horns. Traffic Exchange 2.0 sites are beginning to pop up and to take hold. But don’t worry, some of our favorite old school traffic exchanges aren’t being replace, they’re being upgraded.

Traffic Exchanges built themselves a bad reputation over the years due to the amount of time needed for a user to surf the websites within the traffic exchange in order to achieve traffic to their website, and the ratio of time spent versus the amount of traffic received. However, with the drop-off in traffic exchange users, some traffic exchange owners realized that it was time for a change.

Change #1 - We Need More Traffic!

Traffic Exchange 2.0 sites are about giving more value to their surfers. They know that you need quality traffic to your site, and as much of it as possible. So, they are tightening down security on their sites and incorporating more effective captcha systems in order to ensure that users aren’t abusing the site by utilizing “bots” to surf their sites and to get traffic. At the same time, they are increasing the amount of traffic that their members are receiving. 3:1 is no longer an accepted ratio for free members. 2:1 is the worst that you will see for a free membership, with as high of a ratio as 3:2 or 1:1!

Change #2 - We Need More Value For Our Referrals!

Ok, the old referral system was pretty lame. If you brought 10,000 users to a traffic exchange, you were given hits to your sites whenever they surfed, usually at an extremely low ratio (such as 4:1 or 3:1). Now, you can receive a 2:1 ratio of traffic earned from their surfing, as well as earning a referral bonus for products which the purchase through the traffic exchange. (such as traffic packages, or paid memberships). Hence, you now have a monetary incentive for referring others to use the traffic exchange, on top of the increased traffic to your site(s)!

Change #3 - We Need Better Price Points For Products and Services!

In the past, paid memberships for the traffic exchanges were a little too high for internet marketers just starting off in their careers. Considering that a great deal of starting internet marketers now seem to begin their careers in college, and sometimes in high school, their budgets were not enough to justify a significant monthly or annual expense. So, traffic exchanges not only brought down the prices on their memberships, but they also dropped the prices for their traffic packages! This allows for more of you starting marketers to get your hands dirty, and to enjoy significantly more traffic to your sites without breaking the bank.

BONUSES

In the past, it was necessary for internet marketers to advertise their traffic exchange splash pages on other traffic exchange sites, or to blog, chat, launch an email campaign for, or network via social networks in order to get refer other user to their traffic exchange sites. However, a few ingenious entrepreneurs took it upon themselves to offer up a much easier method for you to not only generate referrals for your sites, but to generate referrals possibly for all of your sites at the same time!

These four sites are the top recommended hubs when it comes to managing your traffic exchange sites, sending traffic in order to obtain traffic exchange referrals, and much, much, more!

Hits Connect

Hits connect is an amazing link tracking system, which also allows you to build your dowlines simultaneously. By creating tracking links for your Traffic Hoopla, Viral URL, and all of your affiliate links which your promote, it allows you to build statistics and maintain visibility of all of your traffic that you are driving towards them.

This is not as powerful of a downline builder as Viral URL since you can’t e-mail your downline, but you can earn commissions from purchases within your dowline. However, it is a stronger link cloaking site as it offers greater visibility of your links performance, and has better statistics features available to you. You actually will want to upgrade your account once you have steady revenue coming in, to allow you to utilize all of the statistics features.

JOIN HITS CONNECT FIRST SO THAT YOU CAN CREATE TRACKING LINKS FOR THE OTHER SITES THAT YOU WANT TO PROMOTE!!! - You will want to actually promote your Hits Connect Tracking Links within the Traffic Exchange sites that you are surfing.

Traffic Hoopla

Basically, you create a Traffic Hoopla account. After this is done, you join each traffic exchange and safelist in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd join lists. You do so, and then return to Traffic Hoopla to update your user-id, referral-id, or account-id into the field listed next to each resource. Next, you promote your Traffic Hoopla account on ALL of the traffic exchanges and safe-lists which you’ve just joined.

In the beginning, you will only surf those sites found on the 1st list. This will keep you focused on your goal of building your downlines. You will switch to the 2nd list once you have significant followers, and the 3rd list after that. (However, you can also choose to alternate working with each list from one week to the next, or one day to the next, to keep things interesting). However, you want ALL of your accounts listed on Traffic Hoopla just in case someone clicks on your URL and jumps straight to the 2nd or 3rd lists.

Hoopla! Pro Members earn 50% commissions, free affiliates earn 10%, on all direct level 1 pro upgrades. This applies to normal upgrades as well as OTO and/or yearly upgrades. Commissions are paid automatically, through Paypal, on or around the 15th of each month, no minimum, all is paid out, and up to date.

#1 reason for Hoopla! Pro, the key reason to our success here, is the weekly Hit Exchange and Safelist Reports. These are like small e-books or guides, yet filled with current data/info. Use them both to plan, organize, increase, and maximize your advertising. The Hit Exchange Report is updated every Tuesday, the Safelist Report on Thursdays.

In addition Hoopla! Pro members may contact their direct downline once a week with encouragement and support as it relates to TrafficHoopla, the advertising resources listed within, and other common useful tools and/or resources. A Signature URL of your business is acceptable, but this is not the place for advertising.

What is the cost of Hoopla! Pro? Less than ten dollars. Current retail value, including bonuses? At least 150, likely closer to 200.

Affiliate Funnel

The initial value for Affiliate Funnel is going to be their Referral or Downline Builder found beneath the Traffic Exchanges and Tools tabs whenever you log in. It will list the current highest ranked programs within their site, and enable you to enter your user-id, referral-id, or account-id, just like you did with Traffic Hoopla above. Next, you add the Affiliate Funnel splash page link to ALL of the traffic exchanges that you joined.

With your free membership, you will receive all the benefits of promoting your affiliate sites, plus earning you 10% commissions on all upgrades and purchases from your direct referrals. Affiliate Funnel is set up to allow you to start your marketing funnel for your affiliate program/s. You can use this to create traffic sources and still promote your affiliate program not one that is decided for you. Used properly this can be a great way to build the relationship that is necessary to create an ongoing business.

Add your Affiliate Funnel referral link to Hits Connect and add your Tracking Link to your Traffic Exchanges.

Traffic Python

The Members Area is very well laid out and intuitive–I could figure out what to do after only a few minutes and was able to get up and running in less than 5 minutes.

Inside the site, you create links and ads–the links you simply enter any URL links you use into the generator and it transforms them into “Traffic Python” links. You create ads for anything you want to promote using the Traffic Python Ad Generator, which is very easy to use.

You can create as many links and as many ads as you like. And they are organized in a logical way–links are displayed in the order you create them but also your 5 most recent links appear on the main page for quick reference. Also, since the link generator is the tool you’ll use most, it is also right at the top of the main page when you login. Very smart!

After you’ve created at least 1 link and 1 ad you can start to generate traffic. Just use and promote the new Traffic Python link instead of the original source link you had. Every time the Traffic Python link is clicked, the page loads followed by a cool slide-up ad window at the bottom. It displays an ad PLUS an image with your affiliate link that goes back to Traffic Python. So if anyone clicks the Traffic Python image they see the site, and if they signup they become your referral. It’s a great viral feature because you can build referrals without even trying to just by using the site.

Now every time the ad window displays (your Traffic Python links get clicked) you earn credits that get YOUR ad displayed in the ad windows when other members’ links get clicked. So the more clicks, the more times your ads get displayed.

Plus, again you can email your downline once a week with your free membership. This gives you even more power towards advertising your other downline builder sites, and allows you to get faster results. Add this link to Hits Connect and start promoting your tracking link within the Traffic Exchanges.

Viral URL

Viral URL is another amazing downline builder. The main benefit is that you can grow a downline virally. Let’s say that you are able to refer 10 people. Normally you would only be able to email those 10, but with ViralURL’s VIRAL list-building benefits, you can email your entire downline.

This means that those 10 you have referred, if they each refer 10, you can now email 110 instead of only 10. You see the power? Here it starts getting really good, if those 100 each refer 10 then you can email over 1,100 people and if they do the same your mailing list is a minimum of 10,000 not to mention what will happen when those 10,000 start referring people too!

Link masking or cloaking feature within the site also protects your affiliate URL’s from being hijacked by Black Hat affiliate marketers. This is an amazing security feature offered for free, that you would normally have to pay a monthly membership for, or buy the software to mask them yourself.

In totality, you can now add your Viral URL splash page link to ALL of your traffic exchanges that you’ve joined so far, so that you can start building this downline as well. Then, as your downline builds within Viral URL, e-mail your downline once a week promoting Traffic Hoopla, Affiliate Funnel, and (mentioned below) Hits Connect. This empowers you to build your downlines within your traffic exchanges that much faster! Add your Viral URL referral link to Hits Connect and start promoting your tracking link within your Traffic Exchanges.

FINAL RESULT

You now have a truly viral and effective downline building model, that requires approximately 1 hour of work each day to achieve! Ensure that you do it each day, and your downlines will build steadily over time. As you are able to email your downlines within Viral URL and Traffic Python, you will also get sudden bursts of increases in your downlines occasionally which you give you even more traffic power. Once you are getting tons of traffic from your downlines, you are now ready to begin promoting your business website, or your affiliate marketing URL’s, and watching your commissions roll into your bank account!

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Surveys & Online Jobs are Building Earnings Momentum!

Making money online can be as simple or as complicated as each entrepreneur wants it to be. There are small communities that are capable and adept at taking the most complex methods in the industry and turning them into daily profits. However, what about the rest of the online money makers? Where are they building their revenue?

Believe it or not, more and more people are opting into the low-hanging fruit when it comes to making money online. The most popular, and the one gaining the most momentum, happens to be online surveys!

Surveys Make You Money

Surveys, are by far, the simplest method for you to make money online. Not only are they fast, fun, and easy to complete, but they have pretty significant earnings for those just getting into making money online. Now, while I recommend getting into more advance and more profitable ventures later in your career, I also highly recommend these ventures as a starting point for you to build some extra capital. This is definitely something that you can also do in your spare time to make some extra money. Take these earnings and then set them aside to pay for future online ventures!

Legitimate Online Jobs Make You More Money

Now, the next phase in your online business venture transformation is actually doing legitimate online jobs. Companies are in desperate need of cheap and efficient labor for them to accomplish some of their internet related work. Whether it involves writing ad copy, ezine articles, both, are any other function in the internet marketing world, there is a demand for it and you can make money from it! This definitely is a way to help people get their feet wet when it comes to internet ventures, by getting them used to doing some of the work necessary for them to find success on their own later on.

(Every item that you will do for these businesses, you will need to do for yourself at some point!)

Both of these methods will allow you to earn money immediately. They may not make you a millionaire overnight, but you will begin making money right away, and may even be able to walk away from your job at some point. Doing them simultaneously can result in your making significant money, and allow you to have the starting capital necessary for you to begin pursuing other business ventures online.

Start small, work your way big. You will grow financially, and your level of knowledge and understanding will grow with you. As you learn the small methods, they will lead to learning the medium methods, and then you will eventually learn the gigantic ones! BUT GET STARTED!!! You can’t get at the end of the road until you take the first step at the beginning…

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Twitter + Magpie = Internet Marketing & Affiliate Advertising Success

Advertising on Your Twitter Profile

Magpie is an emerging Twitter-focused advertising network, that is seeing a great deal of success. This is a great opportunity for internet marketers, because of the double functionality of the network. With the astronomical success that Twitter is now seeing, and nothing but signs of future growth on the horizon, it is definitely the next generation of internet marketing advertising opportunities. The future success, as well as the valuable features that Twitter and Magpie both have, makes them valuable marketing and advertising tools.

The primary focus of Twitter is to enable users to publish real-time updates to their lives and experiences. While a lot of posting is relating to personal matters and experiences, giving you a more intimate viewing of people’s lives that you know or may not know, there is also a healthy amount of advertising and personal development information to be found as well. This type of real-time social media is growing in popularity, which can be see with the new Facebook home profile’s “Share” feature in the center of your Home screen, as well as MySpace’s “Status and Mood”, “Friend Updates”, and “Bulletin”.

Initially, when you join the Magpie network, you become a Magpie publisher. This means that you allow Magpie to interface with your profile, and for them to publish advertisements to your profile. The good news is that you can control not only the frequency of these updates, 1/1 all the way to 1/200 ratio of Magpie ads to your own posts, but also which ads that they display on your profile. This means that you can set it up to where you approve the ads before they are displayed. This is extremely valuable, because it allows you to ensure that you are providing more valuable information to your readers than you are having them to read advertisements. Remember the number one rule to success in internet marketing - “Tis better to give and give and give, then to receive.”

Twitter’s advertising is extremely successful with their ability to obtain advertising contracts with Advertisers because of their ability to ensure that the readers of the posted advertisements are interested in the advertisements content. Essentially, Magpie monitors the content of information posted to each individual profile. They monitor the keywords used, and the frequency that they are used, and then post advertisements to the profiles with the most keyword use that their advertisers are interested in. This, on top of their monitoring the number of readers or “Followers” that each profile has, allows them to ensure that each advertisement post gets the most focused exposure to quality readers.

All of the analytic features built into the Twitter website allows Magpie to take advantage of their high marketing value, which in turn give Magpie a great deal of advertising leverage. However, they also provide another feature which gives you more advertising leverage. As your number of “Followers” grow within Twitter, and you start to consistently make money from Magpie advertisements, you can then turn around and re-invest your earned advertising revenue to in turn start your own advertising campaign within Magpie. (Translation: You will have free advertising within Twitter!) Remember: “Tis better to give and give and give, then to receive.”

Investing your time within Twitter and Magpie is highly recommended, as they are showing significant signs of growth and success in the future. While they are seeing some infrastructure issues, due to the growth of their success exceeding the server resources which they currently have, they are working towards resolving them. You will read some negative hype regarding these issues. DO NOT BELIEVE THEM! A lot of those are posts from other Internet Marketers that want to drive away their competition. Spend your time, post valuable information for others to read and take advantage of, and share, share, share. Follow some of the larger internet marketers as they will follow you in return, which results in your achieving more followers in a short amount of time. As you grow within Twitter, you will then watch your success grow within Magpie!

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Affiliate Advertising

AFFILIATE ADVERTISING

If affiliate advertising is new to you, you are definitely going to be surprised at how SIMPLE making money through this method is. In fact, this will be another moment in your life where you will wish that you had discovered this method sooner.

Affiliate advertising is basically you doing the job of a sales staff for a vendor, without actually being an employee. You send a person to their website, and if the person buys their product you earn a commission. It’s that simple! However, the trick is to get YOUR website out there and to ensure that people that are actually interested in that particular product FIND IT! When they go to your website, your site redirects them to your affiliate link, which then sends them to the vendor’s website. All of this happens extremely fast, so that the user doesn’t get bored with waiting to be send to several different sites. All in all, it is a highly effective method of sales, and earns millions upon millions of dollars for people around the world!

Your first step is to get yourself signed up with one or several affiliate networks. These networks obtain agreements between themselves and vendors, so that people like you can sell their products on the internet. Pay attention to the terms of use, which basically lists what is considered appropriate methods to use, and what methods cannot be used in order to promote these products.

You are always assigned an account manager, so do not hesitate to ask them ANY questions. It is their job to help you get oriented, as well as to assist you with getting established and through any technical difficulties that you may have with their offers. Be sure to save their phone number, email address, and any chat engine user-names that they provide to you. This will ensure that you can get to them quickly, and get the answers that you need right away.

Top Affiliate Networks:

ClickBank.com
Here is a product which will help you to utilize ClickBank.com without you having to go through the trouble of creating your own website: CBMall

ROI Rocket

PayDotCom.com

Affiliate.com

Commission Junction

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Student Grants

Federal Pell Grant Program

CFDA Number: 84.063

Also Known As: Pell Grants; formerly called Basic Educational Opportunity Grants (BEOGs)

Program Description

The Federal Pell Grant Program provides need-based grants to low-income undergraduate and certain postbaccalaureate students to promote access to postsecondary education. Students may use their grants at any one of approximately 5,400 participating postsecondary institutions. Grant amounts are dependent on: the student’s expected family contribution (EFC) (see below); the cost of attendance (as determined by the institution); the student’s enrollment status (full-time or part-time); and whether the student attends for a full academic year or less.

Students may not receive Federal Pell Grant funds from more than one school at a time.

Financial need is determined by the U.S. Department of Education using a standard formula, established by Congress, to evaluate the financial information reported on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and to determine the family EFC. The fundamental elements in this standard formula are the student’s income (and assets if the student is independent), the parents’ income and assets (if the student is dependent), the family’s household size, and the number of family members (excluding parents) attending postsecondary institutions. The EFC is the sum of: (1) a percentage of net income (remaining income after subtracting allowances for basic living expenses and taxes) and (2) a percentage of net assets (assets remaining after subtracting an asset protection allowance). Different assessment rates and allowances are used for dependent students, independent students without dependents, and independent students with dependents. After filing a FAFSA, the student receives a Student Aid Report (SAR), or the institution receives an Institutional Student Information Record (ISIR), which notifies the student if he or she is eligible for a Federal Pell Grant and provides the student’s EFC.

FSA Handbook Federal Pell Grant Program

Federal Pell Grants are direct grants awarded through participating institutions to students with financial need who have not received their first bachelor’s degree or who are enrolled in certain postbaccalaureate programs that lead to teacher certification or licensure. Participating institutions either credit the Federal Pell Grant funds to the student’s school account, pay the student directly (usually by check) or combine these methods. Students must be paid at least once per term (semester, trimester, or quarter); schools that do not use formally defined terms must pay the student at least twice per academic year.

via Federal Pell Grant Program.

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Government Grants

Government Grants

Here is an excellent resource where people are listing specific grants that they are offering.  You will also see people listing grants that they themselves have successfully received!  Be sure to continue your search for the grant which is right for you… Also, check out the links to the right to see all of the grant products that make finding and applying for grants that much easier!

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When Are Government Grants To Corporations Not Taxable Income? : Corporate Finance Law Blog

There have been several questions that I’ve received, both online and offline.   I will provide more information as it is found, but this is definitely a valuable resource to company owners wondering about tax implications of successfully obtaining a government grant!

When Are Government Grants To Corporations Not Taxable Income? : Corporate Finance Law Blog.

SEO Friendly Web Directory

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Unemployment Numbers

In 1878, Carroll D. Wright set out to do something that nobody in the United States had apparently ever done before. He tried to count the number of unemployed.

As is the case today, the 1870s were a time of economic anxiety, with a financial crisis — the panic of 1873 — having spread into the broader economy. But Wright, then the chief of the Massachusetts Bureau of the Statistics of Labor, thought there weren’t nearly as many people out of work as commonly believed. He lamented the “industrial hypochondria” then making the rounds, and to combat it, he created the first survey of unemployment.

The survey asked town assessors to estimate the number of local people out of work. Wright, however, added a crucial qualification. He wanted the assessors to count only adult men who “really want employment,” according to the historian Alexander Keyssar. By doing this, Wright said he understood that he was excluding a large number of men who would have liked to work if they could have found a job that paid as much as they had been earning before.

Just as Wright hoped, his results were encouraging. Officially, there were only 22,000 unemployed in Massachusetts, less than one-tenth as many as one widely circulated (and patently wrong) guess had suggested. Wright announced that his “intelligent canvas” had proven the “croakers” wrong. From Massachusetts, he went to Washington, where he served as the inaugural director of the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics and later as the head of the United States Census. His method for counting — and not counting — the unemployed became the basis for Census tallies of the jobless and, eventually, for the monthly employment report put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.