Photo artist anyone?

art photographyWith “aim and click” digital cameras, even a dummy can take good photos. So where is the art?

It turns out our lives not snapshots of existence but a continuous flow of events. Capturing a moment out of time in itself can be a creative expression if the event is worth remembering. So the first form of photographic art would be to walk around – camera at the ready – to immortalise a take of something worthy, aka candid camera.

The buzz of catching people unaware (and the risk of being punched in the nose, or getting your camera smashed) is in itself the reward for those who like to live dangerously. The internet has opened up the genre of photo scoop to all budding news photographers simply because you can readily publish online the fruit of your labour.

Lying in wait for something worthwhile to show up covers indeed a whole range of photography. Animal watching and sport competitions are current subjects in photo contests. These images require intimate grasp of your subject matter. You could be waiting all day for that one picture of a bird delivering a worm to its young or a soccer player driving the ball past the goal keeper deep inside the net.

Instead of waiting for something to take place why not make it up? This is the posing endeavour which cameramen took over from portrait artists. This type of composition is supposed to trigger our visual impression through different contrasts, tussle of shapes and colours, optical illusions, etc…

Another take of this is natural scenery. Even though the subject matter has remained in place for times immemorial the forever changing foreshore, lighting and passers-by can turn it interesting, unusual – creative (?)

Another method to investigate is making a study on a well known landmark. Take as a subject the Eiffel tower or the Tower of Pisa and go and shoot as many unusual angles of that subject. Challenging the tourist images and discovering an uncanny setup is creativity – you sought out several out of bounds views of a well known subject.

Finally art could be exploring the possibilities of your gear. Photo-retouching in the photo chemistry days was definitively a skill even if the end product wasn’t meant to be artistic. Today photo retouching computer programs make it so easy to change an image. Besides removing pimples or flaws photo-retouching becomes artistic when you manipulate the lighting, push the contrast or do whatever to give the image a new identity…

See classic images to enjoy and behold for some fine examples.

Who spies over social media?

connect with social buzzSocial media relates to a variety of things to different people but is there room for options? If you want to remember websites relevant to your project, pictures of your last travel and updates on your activities where can you go? Evidently facebook comes top of the list to fulfil those needs but are they trying to be all things to all people? After all they are now a public listed company and shareholders want to rake in the dividends from advertising revenue.

Talking about revenue it’s not just the ads which bring in cash but more importantly your profile. Yes you read OK marketing companies are always on the prowl for ways to quantify your buying pattern and social media portals are a prime source of information for that. So for a fee you can buy a report on the geo-tagged demographic footprint that fits your precious keyword.

Indeed the problem of privacy is the one that gets targeted the most against the social media juggernaut. But is it a fad or is it to stay? It is one thing to have some exposure towards your family and friends but what about if your ex, your employer, your neighbour starts to spy on you? Introducing Social Buzz a facebook look-alike without the heavy footprint.

The desires of an online community are fairly simple. Leave an article, quote a web page, upload an album of collated pictures or a video, track a topic or an issue through tags and that’s basically it. Certain social media portals are growing through invitation only – others allow any person to sign-up. Some cause you to rummage through your inbox and blast an imessage to any email in sight – a bad spamming method if there was one.

The other problem with facebook is the exponential growth of applications that try to latch on the immense pool of connected friends and weave a web of intrigue. It started with games, then birthday reminders now job hunting networks and whatever will follow. No wonder we all know someone we would love to connect with but can’t because they run away for cover from the social media landscape.

Just like in the past you would pursue in private now you can do that offline. No I don’t mean resorting to the old fashioned mail service. I mean moving to a less popular social media platform away from those spying eyes.

Happiness is appreciating what you’ve got

Being thankfulAdults just like children need to be taught the wonders of giving thanks. Or is it too late by then? Taking things and people for granted is a worrisome trend these days probably accounts for much of the ill-will in our society.

As always it is as a result of a setback that you suddenly become graceful about the things that you have left. As human beings we are by default self-centred. On the other side of the coin we are craving for recognition and acceptance. So if you build the habit of dropping a well thought of and deserved “thank you” in the appropriate conversation, the rewards are manifold. You have heard the phrase: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” When we meet a new person an instant recollection goes in our mind to distinguish ally from opposent.

Compliments from someone you don’t know always seems phoney because they don’t have any background with you to warrant any feedback on your personality – good or bad. Salespeople of all creeds have memorized the good one-liners from Dale Carnegie’s book “how to win friends and influence people”. In today’s world of rampant divorce and suspicion at work the motto is akin to “how to alienate strangers and bust your marriage”…

If something is going to change it might as well be you. To give is better than to receive. Expanding on that, you will find more long lasting satisfaction in empowering a friend to be the best thei can be than in concentrating on your short term comfort.

Amazing isn’t it? Would altruistic motives be the cure for a decaying society? Utopians have dreamed about that one for centuries but the reality is that we live in a spiritual world beyond our physical world. Unless you acknowledge the forces at work which pull your behaviour one way or the other you will keep being indecisive not knowing who to obey.

Notice I use the world obey here. You thought you were a mature person – in control of your own destiny. Just check your past and you will find this is not the case. You find it hard to connect with God? You’d rather not relate to God at all, expecting you don’t have to be accountable to anybody for your existence? You are wasting away searching for value and reason in a world that’s going nowhere fast? Why don’t you start giving thanks that someone dared to tell you about Jesus Christ, the Son of God

How To Make Money Trading Forex

Trading foreign currencies can be a great way to make and earn good money. Whether you are a beginner in the game or you are an experienced trader, there are many ways in which one can make money trading forex.

However you do need to be careful as forex trading is not as simple as it sounds. A lot of people will try to make you believe that trading is a walk in the park. But nothing is farther from the truth. The foreign exchange business is a risky business and in order for you to get the most out of it, you have to have trading skills and patience to go along with it.

Learning how to trade however is a simpler thing. There are a lot of tools and resources available out there, especially on the internet, that you can put to use to help you learn the ropes of trading forex and develop your knowledge and skills.

So what exactly is forex trading and how can we make money trading forex?

In the simplest of terms, forex trading is the process of buying and selling currencies with the main purpose of reaping profits and rewards from the currencies’ differences in value during the time of trades. It is not that different from buying and selling stocks in the stock market. If you have experience when it comes to stock trading, then it’s going to be a lot easier and smoother for you to transition to forex trading.

The main objective of trading forex is to exchange a foreign currency that you already own for another currency with the hope that the one you bought will raise in value. Whether you are a beginner or an accomplished trader, it’s not too hard to find forex trading to be both exciting and a lot of fun. It can really become very addictive especially if you make good profits at your initial trades.

In forex trading the prices of the currencies are always quoted in pairs. For instance, they can be quoted in USD/JPY or USD/GBD. This is because more often than not you are selling one currency as well as buying another. If you are looking to make money in forex, the differences in the values of the currencies you’re trading is where the money is made.

When it comes to forex trading, the general rule is that you don’t trade when you’re not 100% ready. Being ready means to have an idea how trading works and knowing the basic trading strategies.

The best way to gain this experience before you really trade is by using a demo account. In this demo account you’ll get to buy and sell currencies just like the way it is done in the real world except that you are using virtual or fake money.

A demo account enables you to grasp how things are run in the real trading platform. There are no risks attached to it because you are using imaginary money. These demos are more often than not free to use so there is no reason why you shouldn’t take advantage of them before you put any real money upfront.

Before you make your first real forex trade, make sure you do the following:

  1. Know everything you can about forex trading. The more you know the better the chances you have in being successful on your trades. This is where a lot of aspiring traders make their mistakes. They just dive in into the mix without getting themselves prepared first. There are numerous ways of learning forex. There are of course the demo accounts we mentioned earlier. And don’t forget the internet; everything you need to know about forex trading is just a few clicks away so take advantage of online resources including blogs, websites and discussion forums.
  2. Familiarize yourself with all of the common terms used in forex trading. Just a single term you have no idea about can easily turn things upside down when you’re there trading. Learn all of the terms so that when they come up, you’ll know what they mean and most important of all you know what to do.
  3. Keep yourself updated with the recent trends and happenings in currencies, economies, and financial situations in countries whose currencies you usually trade. Laws, policies and certain news can greatly affect the way in which currency values go up or down and knowing these things can help you to spot the right time to buy and sell specific currencies.
  4. Read blogs and websites about forex trading. There are a lot of these sites online many of which you can browse free of charge. So read them and digest what you read. If you have the budget for it, subscribe to premium newsletters or magazines. The information and data you can gather from these sources will help you a lot and you can never get enough education.

There are also a lot of different online tools and resources that you can utilize to help you get the most out of forex trading. One of these is a premium forex trading system. In the simplest of terms, a premium forex trading system guides you in deciding on your trades.

Sometimes, it even dictates what and when you should trade. Many use automated software programs to spot trends, peaks, troughs, and ebbs and flows in the numerous currency markets – something which just can’t be done manually with as much ease.

A premium forex trading system is certainly a good way to start trading, especially if you are just getting started.

As stated earlier, there are people out there who will tell you how to make money in forex and push their offers as easy and fast. They make the impression that forex trading is a make-money-quick scheme when in reality it’s not.

The truth is it’s hard to make money in a forex market if you don’t have the proper training, skills and passion to learn everything you can about the business. You can also risk a lot of money by making the wrong trades based on uneducated guesses. And if there is one virtue that you need to have as a trader, that virtue would have to be patience.

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Sharon McCarley is a freelance writer & researcher for the popular “Teach Me How To Make Money” blog. For more creative ideas and ways to make money, whether you’re looking to earn money online or offline, or to simply get in touch with Sharon, check out http://www.teachmehowtomakemoney.com now.
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Online Education Programs May Help You

I chose to earn my accounting degree online because of an already well established career in another field. I had decided to switch fields because I was growing bored of the day in, day out grind of the job I was performing. A major career change can be difficult, but you can find a way to pursue furthered education with an online education program that will not require you to give up any of the benefits or money that you previously earned in your current career. An online education program may also be the best route to take if you have a busy home life or need a flexible schedule that will allow you to study from home at any time, because there are usually not physical lectures that you need to attend traditional classes for.

Many state colleges and large universities even offer an online education program to help introduce more students in to the realm of online education. This is important, because you may be able to dedicate more hours on a given day than on another, and setting up your account and registering for classes may require you to have this same kind of flexibility in order to pursue it with the greatest intentions toward completion.

An online education program can also help you achieve your educational goals much faster than a traditional brick and mortar institution, by giving you the ability to take a course overload and, again, being able to study at any time of the day that you can fit in the time to do so. It should not be misunderstood that this type of education is of a lesser quality than the type you would get at a traditional school. Often, the curriculum for online schools is more difficult than that of the traditional university model, as a result of more reading assignments and paper writing.

If you are looking to achieve a high quality of education from home, so that you do not have to sacrifice a current career or busy schedule in order to pursue it, you may want to look in to an online education program which can help you reach your goals and achieve your degree more quickly. Try to do as much research as possible in to every degree program you are considering, as the requirements will vary from institution to institution and you may find a more accurate class set for what you want to achieve at another college or university.

Charging your time

time billingHow do you keep track of where your time goes into? What about the staff who work for you? How do your clients feel about the labour rate invoiced to them or the total hours billed?

Knowing the state of play, is the key to run any parts and labour operation successfully. Here comes the internet and the amazing technology it brings.

There is no longer any escape for not knowing where your employees have been, what they did and how long they spent to perform the task.

Some companies feel they are obliged to charge the same rates in their profession no matter who executed the task. Customers also have set expectations as to how long a given task can stretch in time. So why bother to account for every detail you may ponder?

The issue is that unless you have some history of where the company hours have gone, you will never find out what is profitable and what is not. Again in a competitive landscape the last thing you want is to be drawn into a competition war where contenders undercut each other to gain a market advantage. This game of bluff will eliminate all participants until the biggest loser is found.

You need to stand out in what your business does, how it does it and rpduces value for the customer. Once the benefits are well spelled out, the right price is your outcome.

Have you ever realised that your invoice might in fact be a mighty piece of marketing for repeat business?

What about if customers could access online and check the progress of a job in terms of billable hours? Would you like to work at the client’s premises to pacify a nosey customer or at your headquarters where you can allocate junior employees and train them at the same time?

So we have 3 players here: the head of project, the employees and the customers who can see the progress. All these participants can enter the same online system with different access levels to see just what they may see or type the hours spent as soon as a task is completed – even away from the office just using a mobile phone!

Wow! This internet timesheet system built from nothing for a given organisation and now made available to a wider audience. Why re-invent the wheel? Why hold on until everything is perfect? That will never happen… check out the logbook screencast for yourself.

How motivated are you in regard to accomplishing your goals?

goal settingIf you haven’t set any goals and are going through your existence nonchalantly you won’t be frustrated. As the saying goes: “Blessed are those who aim for nothing for they shall not be disappointed”.

Can it mean that life is a mad race? It’s all a matter of balance. How do you know if you are making progress or falling behind if you don’t have a measurable standard to go by?

It’s not simply people who are caught prisoners in an addictive cycle who are hit by the lack of setting clear and achievable goals – it’s also those of us who fail to make a commitment to ourselves and ensure that our circumstances do improve.

Now I am going to spring a dirty word on you – ready? It’s called perseverance! The bad news is that unless you set limits around your life you are going nowhere fast. The good news is that if you manage to rein-in your wild character, you will go somewhere.

So how do you go about doing that? May I suggest you have a good look at this life coaching service. It is your life coach website where you can document your projects to be. More precisely it will be your assessment of achievement where you can gauge your accomplishment. How you spend your time and money speaks heaps about your commitment to reach your goals. Having to keep a log of where you spend each of those precious items will cause you to face a few things about yourself.

Two by-products of this disciplined approach is that you will start planning your week ahead and making a budget. Welcome to the real world of achievers! Life is a fight. Don’t just start the race – finish the race! Obstacles come up against good people for no fault of their own. Say goodbye to yesterday. Forget bad habits caused by your past upsets and take hold of your future. If you don’t begin believing in yourself who is supposed to? You hold the keys to your future no matter your age, your appeal, your background, etc…

If life is a fight then what is worth fighting for? Unless you are committed on achieving your goals your energy will wane at the first obstacle. Prepare for setbacks – they are part of living. If you have obstacles it only means one thing: you are on earth and it’s up to you to discover paths to get where you want to be.

Learn from children. Nobody told them; “You can’t do that.” They dream and role play through activities all day long. They act out and verbalise what is in their mind.

Reconnect with the child you once were and realise your dream.

Knowledge test – playing it right

aptitude appraisalIn a competitive world aptitude tests are just another hurdle candidates have to face to get through the door. Like a rite of entrance you have to show your worthiness to be accepted.

The good news is that it is possible to train yourself for the challenge and avoid the effect of surprise. The goal post has just been shifted. Recruiters are targeting those test-wise persons who have made the effort to comply and those who relied on their appeal or charming character are losing out.

As a result the workplace becomes more and more a factory where people’s output is predominant no matter the cost. You are no longer a endowed one of a kind human being but a replacable part in somebody else’s machine.

Things being as they are you can either prepare yourself to pass or give up altogether. As experts devise questions more in line with real-life decision making the relevance of the exercise will rise. Another good idea to think of is that the bar is now set at the same level for everybody. Those coming out of university consider tests as part of their culture. People re-entering the workforce will find it another drawback revealing their disjunction with the world they try to blend into.

What about tests where there is no right or wrong answer? Unveiling the personality test: This device seeks to identify the values each one of us will naturally move towards. How can a batch of 50 or even 100 questions could ever determine if someone has empathy, customer skills, leadership skills or a taste for detail? From a boss’s standpoint some benchmark is better than no measurement at all.

Giving the same test to a batch of candidates is the easy way to select the more reliable people. Also remember technical advances such as optical character reading, handwriting recognition, speech to text converters and the like. Even if change doesn’t sit right with you doesn’t mean that others will turn away from it. When advancement or reward is involved people become very enterprising and dependable in order to survive.

Practice makes perfect as the saying goes. Having a teachable spirit is a trait every company will be after no matter your age. One thing we know will remain there: change! Be prepared. Avail yourself of an aptitude test service. This could make the whole difference for you.

Someone to look after our home

goal settingIf you go abroad who will take care of your abode? In the past that was never an issue – couples trusted their friends or had family who would keep watch for you. Now things are becoming more complex. People are too tired and run off their feet to do that sort of favour.

Unveiling the house minding idea. You can come in contact with it seems scores of people, versatile enough to come and live in your property and mind it for you while you are away for an extensive period of time.

An empty home is never a good idea. You have to look after chickens and pets. You have to maintain the garden, empty the letterbox, and take the rubbish out on collection day. Lights left on at night give the welcoming feeling that indeed someone resides there. Some have resorted to devices to turn lighting and radio on and off to give that feeling but it fools no one – especially thieves or curious neighbours.

How can you trust your most precious asset – your house – to a complete stranger? Landlords have long known that renters are a kind apart and need to be held at arms length through realtors. Are house sitters any different? While you are having fun away, can you conceal a surveillance camera in the ceiling and from afar check its image across the internet? Will they have wild parties and invite all the scumbags off the road?

Finding the right person will settle all. Any relationship is based on mutual respect. What could be the motivation for a decent person to come and live and care for your home while you are away? For a start, they might be touring like yourself and offer their know-how in exchange for free accommodation. It could be a retiree who adores plants and/or animals but lives in a flat and doesn’t have a garden of their own. It could be a school teacher who is free during school breaks. It could be a divorced spouse who needs the solace and peace of a new place to regain composure in their life. It could be an animal lover who breeds dogs and practices some networking.

In a disrupted life you will find there are many folks who can match your requirements while you can also meet their need. The internet is rife with chances to connect and this is your turn to offer substance and value to a stranger. Who knows – one day it might be you.

SEO 101

SEO circleBeing in the wrong neighbourhood on the internet can be as detrimental as being unseen. There is no shortcut way to build your backlinks inventory in a flash.

The web in just ten years has turned into a very complex marketplace. Gone are the days of the dot-com bust where there was no limit. After the dust has settled down we can review the various waves that swept across our marketing landscape and choose the good ideas from the bad ones.

Banner Ads
Animated GIFs were the pride of many graphic designers who did a marvelous job of grabbing the visitor’s attention but the click rate after a while dropped to abysmal levels. Blatant advertising has turned out to be an overused technique. People do not want to be side tracked in the event of their web browsing. Over time indivuduals have developed a blindness to anything that flashes and grabs.

Link Portals
Similar to a directory service, web addresses with one page after another of links have gone by the wayside. Search engines no longer report links found there. People select to do a query instead of going to some portal and then drill down to their category of interest – only to find bad quality links not at all related to their request.

Two Way
Do something for me and I’ll do likewise for you was the motto of do-it-yourself web builders. Since few people write directly in html any longer, there has been a split between the geeks and the marketers and the result was the prevailing of search engine advertising. Reciprocal links were also cause for foul play. Someone would put up a link for you and take it away not long after you returned the compliment in good honesty.

Commenting on Blogs
The boom of blogging sites 5 years ago saw another form of abuse: planting stupid URLs in every blog opened for replies you could dig out. The response was swift. Fast on the back of counter spam measures people tried to streamline the stamping out of such ill. The no-follow attribute was born. You could click on it but it didn’t register in your website popularity stakes.

Article Marketing
This is the flow of the free economy – bait visitors with something of some value and cause them to come back for something else worth paying for. Writing some useful information in order to raise your repute as an authoritative source provides you the opportunity to leave a lead at the end of the article informing visitors what you do.

Commission Schemes
Pay per click (PPC) programs are doomed by fraud. Your opponents might click on your ads to eat up your advertising budget. Greedy website owners might get friends to click on their ads to bump up their revenue (thinking another IP address might hide their tracks). Instead of paying people for each click on their link, affiliate marketing schemes pay a fee on each sale generated by that link. A cookie is set on the visitor’s browser to track the initial page landing in case the sale is obtained at a later visit.
Affiliators

What To Do In Cairns?

Many of the very best scuba sites upon the Great Barrier Reef are a short boat trip from Cairns. That‘s why Cairns is world renowned as the departure point for scuba diving in the amazing Great Barrier Reef . No matter if you want to go on a live-aboard, go on a day cruise out there or even learn how to dive, Cairns could be the place for you. The Great Barrier Reef is over 2000km long and it’s the biggest coral reef system on the globe. It is also really the only living entity apparent from outer space. It’s definately an example of Mother Nature’s treats and we all must strive to protect it.

Cairns is a semi-tropical comfortable city with superb beach locations, such as Kewarra Beach plus Ellis Beach, modern sea food places to eat, a really nice salt water lake perfect for a dip and also the well maintained Cairns Esplanade for a romantic stroll looking over the beachfront. You can take a look at the palm-fringed beach towns Mission Beach and Port Douglas or perhaps go on a boat tour to ever popular Fitzroy Island. In from the coast you’ll find stunning heritage listed rainforests, massive waterfalls and also crystal clear blue lakes. You may want to visit the towns Kuranda, Mareeba along with the capital of the tablelands, Atherton. Most definately don’t miss the breathtaking Crater Lakes National Park. Along with the much more well known Great Barrier Reef excursions you will find rafting tours, seakayaking organized tours, cable cars, jungle canopy treks and bungee jumping. Clubs, pubs, eateries and a pumping Cairns club landscape add to this already wonderful vacation option featuring things to do and attractions for everyone.Do you still need to ask what to do in Cairns?

The actual weather in Cairns will likely be nicer in winter, from July to December, with significantly lower humidity, but quite simply Cairns is often visited all year long. Water temp levels around the low thirties, excursion providers for a lot of forms of Great Barrier Reef visits and particularly healthy and fish covered dive destinations help make Cairns one of the better scuba dive destinations on the earth.

 

A website that turns heads

web designDid you ever wanted to know what could make you special in the competitive landscape? Beyond price or product can you think of something to make the user experience something to brag about?

If clients reach you in cyberspace how can you make their browsing a worthwhile experience? A happy customer is the best form of promotion as the slogan goes.

There are reasonable one-size-fits-all website packages on the market claiming to do everything you need for a pittance. Well, maybe so… but how will you differentiate yourself if your competitors also run the same general purpose internet service?

It will take more than flashy images or a multimedia experience to make your mark. What about if you go beyond the customer expectations?

If you are a mail order operation, free delivery is a token of trust. You absorb freight charges in your general costs and clients are pleased that they won’t be penalised if they live in a remote area.

Going one step further – can you integrate your offerings with some interactive widget to personalise a profile for each visitor? Mortgage repayments, dieting plans come to mind. What about an area calculator if you are selling carpet or tiles?

If you are a hotel or a resort what about featuring a plan of your establishment? As you mouse over each room an picture pops up how the place is furnished and if you click further on the window the exact view from that room scrolls on the screen. Click again to see the prices offered for weekends versus mid-week and the vacancies.

A custom-made website is what your company deserves and if you have to change your office procedures for the exercise why not. If you consider the cost of driving people to your web address why not make the most of theopportunity once they reach you?

Bruno Deshayes web design

Anybody out there that I can help?

lifesaverLooking after yourself is a reflex we barely need to learn. But an easy life can also be known by another name: complacency.

Just like you see avid joggers running on a cold winter morning just to get physical you may be curious if some people really willingly stretch themselves in the area of finance, education or family.

Do you know somebody who has been hit by a divorce? Have you offered your home to offer a safe environment for healing?

Do you keep abreast of upcoming changes in your profession so that you will engage your vocation where new opportunities will be? Or do you expect to be retrenched to do something about it with the view of receiving a golden handshake or some government welfare?

Is the guest room in your home filled with junk, discarded furniture and assorted obstructions or it is kept in shape so that you can provide for an unforseen visitor?

Do you earn simply enough money to cater for your needs because you want to avoid taxes or do you aim at having sufficient cash to be empowered to act on the cause you feel motivated about?

Do you go the extra mile to see eye to eye with a disenfranchised family member or do you ignore their plight?

Have you put aside some funds for a rainy day? Would you be willing to use it to stand in the gap for someone in need of redemption?

If you run your own company do you shy away from hiring staff – cruising along nicely just by yourself, or do you see your potential to train and generate employment for others?

Do you offer to teach at the local school or do you spend your spare time following degrading reality shows to ease your lack of fulfilment?

Do you speak to the cash register operator when you do the groceries or do you dash home to surf social media – folks you can never see face to face?

Do you know your neighbours by name, do you keep abreast of local events, do you participate in local politics or have you decided to think your voice does not matter?

The choice is up to you: you may choose to venture out of your comfort zone at your own choosing or at the worst possible time you will be thrown in the deep end because you avoided all the opportunities beforehand.

rebuilding our lives together

Trading In Time

Trading PalThe fractal nature of a stock chart is unbelievable. Within each rise and fall there are more of the same at a smaller scale!

Depending on how much data they are collecting two investors could argue that the market is rising or falling and they would be both right depending on their time span.

Is there a method to cut to the chase and have just one point of view? The answer is yes. You can decide to trade solely when two timeframes are in agreement. Let’s assume the slow trend is moving up and the fast trend is also rising – you should buy. Let’s say the slow trend is going down and the fast trend is falling – you should sell.

The technique is that you use two timespans to correlate one another. If they disagree and you are out of the market – you stay out. If they are in dissonance and you have a live trade on – you stay in the market unless your stop order is being hit.

A commodity price can tell you one thing on a daily graph but a rather different story on a weekly chart. What about a monthly plot? There you have it – 3 timeframes now!

You might say: “But you are leaving too much money in the market with that setup!” In hindsight anybody can pick the highs and the lows of the market. It’s when your face is stuck on the right edge of the chart that you are not so proud anymore. That’s where the panic attack occurs.

A multi-timeframe method can help you keep your composure. Indeed the short term will give you a faster decision (larger gains or shorter losses) but it will give you also a lot of wrong triggers. Only when confirmed with the longer trend will you have more opportunities of being correct.

At the end of the day it is a game of numbers. You want to make more profits than losses and it is impossible to remove losses altogether. But you can use this method to make sure you don’t mess up your good trades. If you keep a log of your transactions and calculate your averages you will be able to become reliable. For more info check out Trading Workshop – Trading Pal is your coach

Harness The Power Of Pinterest To Attract Visitors And Backlinks To Your Site

This is a guest post by Philippa Willitts. Philippa is a freelance writer, specialising in writing about social media.

Pinterest is creating buzz all over the internet. This relatively new social networking site is based around its users sharing (“pinning”) images and videos from all over the internet. These images are pinned with a link to the source website embedded within them, so when a Pinterest user clicks on the image, they are taken to the website the image came from. Fellow users can then reshare (“repin”), comment upon, or “like” what has been posted, creating yet more backlinks to the original website.

Pinterest’s use as a source of backlinks is clear, yet many webmasters do not know how best to harness the power of this social media site. They are missing out! Pinterest is driving immense amounts of traffic, moreso even than Twitter, and its user numbers are expanding at an impressive rate. Ignoring this network means you are missing out on traffic, visitors to your site and potential customers.

So, how should a business promote themselves using Pinterest?

There are actually two stages in Pinterest self-promotion. The first is to create a Pinterest account for your business. The site is still invite-only, but invitations are relatively easy to come by. Once you have an account, create “boards” (like folders, themed and personalized) for different aspects of your business or website. Some examples might include:

  • artistic photos of your best-selling products (linking the product page)
  • photos of customers in the process of using your products (also linking to the product page, these are valuable backlinks)
  • aspirational photos – many people are using the network to post pictures they find which fit their ‘ideal house’ dream, or ‘perfect wedding’. Think creatively and build an aspirational board for your business too.
  • Don’t just self-promote. Like anywhere else on the web, you need to provide value to your visitors, so make your Pinterest account irresistible by filling it with wonderful content: from your own site and elsewhere.

The second stage is to make your website “pinterestable”, by which I mean encourage your site visitors to pin your images or videos.

If you already have links on each page of your website to “tweet this”, “like this on Facebook”, “+1” etc. (and you should have!), then add a “Pin this!” button too. Making it as easy as possible for your site visitors will increase the likelihood of them sharing your page. The “Pin this!” button can act like a call to action, reminding readers that they can share your page.

Additionally, make your images compelling. Whereas some users might pin a page purely for the quality of the writing, Pinterest’s focus being so strongly on the visual means that many users pin images purely for what they look like, regardless of the rest of the page. Making sure that every page of your site, and every blog post, has an image that people are likely to adore, and want to share with their friends, vastly increases your chances of getting “pinned”. If the image is really great, then it will be repinned numerous times, creating multiple backlinks to your website.

Having a website which users want to share on Pinterest presents you with a wonderful opportunity. Easy, good quality backlinks, as well as new visitors to your website, are within reach with just a little thought and planning. Ignoring Pinterest’s potential, on the other hand, will mean you are missing out. Early adopters always do the best on social networking sites, and although latecomers can still make an impact, the sooner a business owner can learn how to take advantage of a new form of social media, the better they tend to fare.


How To Become A Self Employed Beautician

Working for yourself is the dream of many skilled beauticians currently working in the industry. The freedom of working the hours that suit, being rewarded financially for providing a great beauty service and being able to make the decisions that affect how successful your business is are appealing thoughts.

The industry has faired well over the last few years, as people become far more conscious of their appearance, and also the recent trend of the amount of men, that are now receiving regular beauty therapy treatments in order to enhance their looks.

As well as providing an excellent service, its important to provide a relaxing, clean, UN-disturbed environment for your clients as well as being fully aware of the regulations involved with running your own beauty business, such as insurance and having the required certification for many treatments.

Mobile therapists and new salon owners have to register themselves as self-employed. Contacting HM revenue and customs and filling out the necessary paperwork, is one of the first steps you must take in your business journey. You must also register for VAT if your total turnover is going to exceed £65,000 for the year.

As with any business, conducting the necessary market research before hand is vital if you are to succeed. Find out who your competitors are, what they are offering and how you can provide a better service. Being competitive in price is important, although its not always best to be the cheapest. When setting your prices calculate your running costs, the price of any products you will be using during the treatment and of course how much you wish to earn for the work you will be carrying out.

When deciding on the beauty treatments you will be offering, its a great idea to have a wide selection, which will attract more interested clients. Offering a treatment that your competitors aren’t will help to build your client list, and offering a service you are particularly good at, will help to spread a positive word of mouth for your business.

Mobile therapists have to be practical when purchasing equipment for their treatments. If you are planning on setting up a mobile massage therapist business, its important you consider the transportation of your massage table. if your clients request a treatment at their home, and live in a block of flats you will be forced to carry the table up flights of stairs, meaning it has to be relatively light and portable.

Your own safety is paramount, so remember to leave a diary schedule of your whereabouts with a family member or friend. Particularly at the start of your business journey, you will be visiting clients you have never met before, meaning its important someone knows where you are at all times.

Tips For Making The Most Out Of Your Finances

Being in debt is a scary place to be. Getting calls from bill collectors and having to contemplate title loans is awful. It’s stressful on you and your family to be in debt. Even worse, it seems like many people are deeper in debt than ever. With so many people stuck in this rut, it can be hard to look for examples of people who have successfully got out.

I’d like to share some tips with you. With a little perserverance, you can beat your debt and stop the calls.

Everything that’s important about personal finance can be boiled down into a few rules. The most important rule is that any money coming in has to be more than the money going out. If this isn’t happening then you cannot build wealth or get out of debt.

Another avenue to look into is whether you could be eligible for r&d tax credits, this could be a big benefit, more so than people think.

Figure out income and expenses:

Here’s how to find your income and expenses. Take your last three months of bank statements and cash receipts and record every penny you spent and where it went. Take an average for your categories across the three months. These are your monthly expenses.

Then record all money that comes into the house from all sources during those three months and take an average of that. This is your income. Your goal is to make the income number higher than the expenses number. Reducing your expenses is the fastest way to start seeing results.

Start reducing expenses:

This is the painful part of the process. It’s like exercise for your body; it hurts at first to live without things you’re used to having. Take a look at your categories and find out what you spent the most on over the past few months. Ignore things like your rent and bills, and look at things like food, entertainment, and transportation. Your goal each month should be to reduce your biggest expenses by 10% every month and putting that money into your savings or directly into a debt. Try to build up around £1000 worth of savings to start to cover emergencies before you get into serious debt payments.

Starting a debt snowball:

This is a way to pay off your debts very quickly. Ideally, you’ll want to already have enough income that you’re paying the minimum payments every month and an emergency fund with £1000 set aside before starting the snowball process. You’ll need to get there first through reducing expenses.

Now take a look at the list of debts you have. Order the list by the amount you owe for each debt. Put your extra money into the one with the lowest balance and pay minimum on everything else. Once that small one is paid off, take all the money that was going to that debt and put it to the next-lowest balance. By continuing this way over time you can pay off an incredible amount of debt in much less time than you think. Before you know it, the calls will stop, your stress level will drop, and you’ll have a much healthier financial life.

Tassie – Your dream Island

tassie countryTasmania is fondly referred to as “Tassie” because of its natural beauty. It is a land untouched by too much activity and you can drive past kilometres of pristine farmland or wilderness without any sign of anybody. In a nutshell you can have Tasmania all to yourself to rest your soul from your hectic lifestyle.

Tasmania is affected with a high unemployment rate in Australia. It is as well the land of a bitter divide between the grren movement and anybody else who dares to makes a living from the land – be it forestry, mining, farming and of course fishing… The local government subsidises the ferry service from Melbourne. It is a much needed link for the island for tourism but also the downfall of local industries decimated by competitors.

The capital Hobart has each weekend a thriving open market at Salamanca. Stallholders have to reserve a space way in advance and spread from the harbour all the way up the side of the Parliament House. It’s like Tasmanians have turned themselves into homecraft artisans producing all manner of goods from wooden products to knitting, jams, and jewellery.

Launceston and Hobart are unique cities – no traffic jams and no modern tall buildings. The municipalities have a good control on what style of architecture is permitted there. To the point – there are barely any new buildings especially in the central business district.

The local radio station is your best connection to the grapevine and an platform to the affairs the Tasmanian folks deal with. Farming is a wide sector. Instead of competing with large concerns producing wheat, small farmers specialise in niche markets like herbs or tulips. Plants used for medicinal purposes are also grown here. Unfortunately Tasmania lost its only export shipping service and now the Port of Melbourne slaps a high harbour fee on all goods in transit.

If you are touring the state to unwind and take stock on what to do with your life remember that young Tasmanians are migrating in the opposite direction to find prosperity in Victoria or New South Wales. As a visitor, be mindful of the unforgiving nature of the weather. Scores of tourists have to be rescued each year from Cradle Mountain or Lake St Clair – walking off with T shirt and light footwear in the sunny morning only to be trapped in a snow storm the very same day.

I was staying in a place called Poatina smack bang in the middle of the state. You can drive 2 hours and reach any location for a day outing.

Optimasation on and off the page

baklinks hubIn order to optimize your domain in the sight of search engines your focus will be two-fold:

On page optimisation

It is rather unnerving to face the fact that a machine – not a human being, is going to judge the quality of your website. The good news is that it is done with an algorithm which is the same for all so that at least we have no discrimination.

In order to evaluate what your domain is on about we rely on the concept of keywords. It is a phrase describing your activity. How it appears and how often will be the yardstick to gauge how precisely you are really part of that activity.

The crawler will massage that data to rank your web pages. You can get an idea of how good you are with the SEO utility

Optimisation off the page

How can a blind, ignorant computer find out how accurate is your call to fame for the keyword you have been using above? Simple – by just checking what others are saying about you in cyberspace. Amazing – because that is something I have absolutely no control over.

A backlink is any link out there pointing back to you. Just like you pass traffic to other commonly related sites there must be some information about what you do or say together with a link back to your domain.

How that happens is the dark art of web marketing and the search engines use the number and relevance of links pointing to you as an indicator to differentiate between you and your competitors.

It is not just the quantity of links out there which is being added to calculate your page ranking – it is also the anchor text. This gives the algorithm an insight about the keywords you really belong to as opposed to what you say about yourself on your website. If many pages out there fail to confirm your domain with a given keyword then your claim to that keyword on your own site takes a hit.

Another factor is the crowd your backlinks emanate from. If you are an investment consultant and your backlinks come from pages also pointing to stacks of massage parlours or gambling pages (in other words totally irrelevant activities) then the weight of those backlinks is discounted since it is obvious that they did not originate from wholesome promotional activity but from a blatant desire to stuff (or worse buy) links in a hurry.

How To Write A Unique Resume

outstanding resumeBeauty is in the mind of the beholder. Your resume has to be unique from the standpoint of the employer for that one vacancy you strive to get. Your CV is your sales brochure. Its sole purpose is to propel you in for an interview.

For a perfect match to take place you must go through the advertised position with meticulous care and ensure you have answered all the must-have features but also the nice-to-have ones.

Sometimes the bar is so out of reach that you may wonder if they intend to hire anybody at all. So how do you get on top? Call the recruiter before you apply. That’s right. You would be surprised at how many people apply for jobs recklessly without any regard for the background of the firm involved. They have resigned themselves to look for employment simply to get by – not a career to blossom in the workplace – and that is exactly what they are getting…

If you are enthusiastic about your field of work and have an eager desire to find out all there is to know about it – it will come out of you! Companies are looking for people like that who are bright and can spread the right mindset around the office. A boss will snap someone who has done their homework about the company where they want to be and who is asking questions to qualify more about the role. Read this – your resume will stand out of the scores of people when the resumes start pouring in.

The plot thickens when you are no longer a graduate that people are willing to train on the job and pay entry-level wages. After having been on the circuit for a few years some shifts of focus will appear in your employment record. Your breadth of knowledge will be hard to leverage if people only focus on your last assignment and put tags on you.

The perfect applicant from an employer’s point of view is someone who has held exactly the same position and is willing to continue doing the same old thing for the next few years. Most companies are very risk-adverse. But fundamentally taking on a person who worked for a competitor may mean employing one who could be disloyal and nonchalant.

The solution is to re-focus your career history to show the most pertinent job first. It is a hefty task to re-write your resume for every position you go after. That’s why the clever folks use an online application to generate a ideal match CV for each role. See Resume Digest

Are you a number’s man?

accountingSome people think that accounting is best left alone to accountants. I disagree. Your financial position says a lot about where you are heading. It works likewise for an individual or a business. In fact clever, financially minded people treat their estate as a business.

Accounting on the go has an interesting report called “Source and Application of Funds”. It pinpoints from one financial year to the next where funds have been freed up and where money has been consumed.

The fine equilibrium in your resources between what you owe and what you own may not be changing day after day in a striking manner. Seeing it in the right scope nevertheless will reveal some changes you need to be aware of.

Financial issues have the trait of catching up on you in discreet ways. If you fail to pick up the trend early enough it can be quite daunting to correct the situation later.

You think you are doing nicely on your way to financial independence when unknown to you a hidden leak is nibbling away at your savings. There are scores of fallacious hidden costs lurking behind varied transactions which over time will rob you of your hard earned cash. Other times you are the culprit by pandering in items you could do without for the sake of convenience and impatience.

The only way you will be able to find out early enough is by keeping your accounting data up to date. Don’t delay until the end of the financial year to realise if you made a profit or a loss this year – you must figure that right now!

Community radio – a social experiment

Heart FMWhen you mix together the ingredients of not-for-profit, community and public relations you get an surprising dish: a local community radio!

Initiated in the mid 1990s, Heart FM community radio station still broadcasts in our time in the middle of Tassie.

The programming schedule of “easy listening” runs classic pop songs of the 1980s with linked up newscast, local weather and some interviews.

One unique segment is Mouldy Oldies by presenter Les McSweeney. Les has a remarkable collection of 78 rpm vinyls dating back to the 1930s. it is a pleasure to listen to those sounds from yesteryear together with Les commentary.

The broadcastingo license curtails drastically the geographical cover of the station yet a poll indicates some 2500 regular listeners enjoy the station. The local population is mostly an agricultural community in this northern central area of Tasmania. They indeed like to sing along those old hits while riding their tractor all day across the farmland.

Fusion is a Christian organisation using the village of Poatina as a rehabilitation centre for people fleeing addictions and abuse. The radio station originally located there has now a studio in local Longford – the nearest township, to muster local community interaction.

Sponsors are in scarce supply and are much needed to bring in the cashflow of a volunteer organisation.

Open air broadcast is a means to be seen and connect with the listeners. Events include the local butcher store grand opening (a station sponsor) and celebrations such as Australia Day or the local agricultural show. These are run along the principle of open crowd festivals innovated by Fusion International. The idea is to organise games and activities to get a local community interacting with each other. Suddenly people encounter their neighbours after dwelling in the area for a while but never getting the chance to participate into anything together.

It looks like in our advanced 21st century society people have to be taught again how to socialise with each other and be aware that not everybody is a religious fanatic or a paedophile.

The Heart FM community radio mandate fits nicely with the Fusion agenda of social welfare. In fact some Poatina residents serve as volunteers at the radio station and have their own late night program – Captain Midnight.

More recently the station indulged in an internet presence to provide Fusion supporters an idea of the programming by providing the download of specific podcasts.