Bob Doruma Journal

Friday, December 19, 2008

How Document Destruction Can Help Against Identity Theft

It seems that every time you pick up a newspaper these days there's a scare story about identity theft.If someone isn't trying to hack into your online bank account from the other side of the world or clone your credit card whenever you use a hole in the wall then there's always some bright spark around to leave a laptop in the back of a taxi that contains yours, and millions of other people's, personal details.It's no wonder then that people are considering personal document destruction as a way to safeguard their identity and cut down the risk of them being the victim of the new type of crime.

The market that has grown around this worrying trend is now very profitable with companies offering services as wide ranging as computer hard drive back up, encrypting data and document destruction.It could be called paranoia but to many it is just a worthwhile and intelligent response to a very real threat.With examples of this new type of cyber crime on the increase it looks like the industry aiming to counteract and stop it is also likely to grow.

For an individual the threat of identity theft, or ghosting as it has become known, is very real.It's not just the elderly or vulnerable who are targeted, increasingly the stories we hear are of supposedly tech-savvy people being duped.People who think they'd spot a scam a mile off are now just as at risk as any other group.There are now several products on the market which can help to give a person piece of mind when they are using credit cards, computers or dealing with paperwork.

Data protection doesn't just relate to big business.We all have important personal data stored on our computer even if we're not aware of it.Computers store web pages we have visited, the pages it stores can contain personal data like addresses, telephone numbers, passwords and numerous other things that a cyber criminal might be able to use.Thankfully there are now some very good software packages that can help protect this data.Some is aimed at the single user home computers; some is aimed at larger companies.It all serves the same purpose which is to protect your data.

Used in conjunction with some simple measure that you can carry out yourself, installing software to protect your data when online, can be very effective.The advice is to have different passwords for different sites and different purposes.The thought being that if everything is the same then everything is at risk; think of it as damage limitation.It is also recommended you never give out your personal details online; in chat-rooms or social networking sites.No matter how trivial it may seem you'd be surprised how easy it is to be fooled into giving criminals enough information for you to be at risk.

Once you've taken precautions to protect yourself 'virtually' it's time to protect your printed documents.Document destruction has become popular on the back of lots of well publicized cases where people's identities have been stolen by people getting hold of old bills, bank statements and letters from bins.It's no longer enough to discard your old paperwork, you must now dispose of it in way that means it cannot be used to learn anything about you.On the back of this shredding and paper shredders have become a familiar sight in homes and offices around the world.

Shredders are now relatively inexpensive and provide piece of mind when it comes to identity theft.Many companies also offer a large scale document destruction services to big businesses whose employees are not only prone to identity theft but are prone to attack on a much larger scale; corporate crime on a large scale is now a very real threat.


About the Author

Dominic Donaldson is an expert in the security industry.


Find out more about document destruction and online security.

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Thursday, December 18, 2008

Top Ten Reasons to Manage Performance Year Round

Do you let your employees slack off during the holiday season?This article will provide you with the Top 10 reasons to manage performance year round so that you don't face the same management problems in the New Year.Whether you're an executive, a manager or a team leader, the following information will be beneficial to you.

Ahhh, the holidays.A time for family, parties, good food, football, gifts and oh, yes - work.It's not last by accident in this list; to the detriment of organizations everywhere, work often comes last this time of year.Not that I want to be Ebenezer and dampen anyone's holiday parade.I enjoy the holidays as much as the next person.But I've seen leaders let up on employee performance programs during this time of year only to face the same management problems in the New Year.With neglect, they may even worsen.

So a word to the wise men and women out there who are trying to do well by their employees: The right time to manage your employees is NOW, as well as the other 11 months of the year.You will do your best work if you keep employee performance on the front burner, where it belongs, all year long.

The wheels are turning now.Some of you are wondering why you cannot relax for these last few weeks of the year and even through part of January.After all, you and your workers have toiled so hard.The answer is that you will toil even harder later if you put off important tasks today.With a doff of my stocking cap to all HR professionals out there, here are my Top Ten Reasons to Manage Performance Year Round:

1.

Complacency is a disease that plagues business.And guess what?It's contagious.The people in one department see their colleagues in another department slacking off right before or right after the company party, and they decide to do the same.Someone meets his goal for November and decides he can tread water in December.His counterpart takes the cue, whether she met her goals last month or not.Believe me, this illness spreads -- and quickly!-- once it gets started.The only known cure is to wash your hands of it from the start to keep it out of your organization.

2.Procrastination is complacency's cousin.The Big P sets in once people are already infected with complacency.Its symptoms include putting off the most difficult tasks from day to day, doing the easy things first, and busying yourself throughout the day with ONLY the easy things.Soon we forget the difficult tasks altogether.The cure?Control The Big C.If you keep that infection out of the workplace, The Big P is easier to manage too.

3.Habits are hard to break.That's why we want only good ones in the workplace.But if you let bad ones grab a toehold, even for a little while, they might just gain a foothold.Soon they have hoisted themselves all the way into your business, and the veteran hard worker who started coming late one Monday now makes a habit of it then and on Fridays too.Or the manager who "forgot" to use a key recruiting assessment tool once or twice now overlooks it all the time.One study suggests that given time, bad habits become learned behaviors, and we lapse back into them when we're under stress.Since stress is a normal part of the work environment, maintaining good work habits is a discipline we need to observe daily.

4.Set a good example for new workers.Bringing in new staff is a regular event at many places, even during the holidays.Put yourself in the new hire's shoes: How will she view the office partying the last half of November and all of December?How do you want her to see YOU?

5.Set an example for everyone.Closely related to showing the new person how work is done in your office is showing everyone else - your colleagues, your boss, your direct reports.Adopt a professional demeanor and it's likely to be viral - in a good way.

6.Manage performance while other business is less "busy." Perhaps some of the companies you work with have slowed down production a bit.Turn this external hiatus into internal productivity.While you have the time, review the things you and your staff need to improve, then put in place a plan to do so.

7.Control the things you can.This is closely related to items 5 and 6.You might not be able to do anything about another department's departure from the day-to-day routine, but you don't have to join them or beat them.Control your own space by managing well.Maybe it will rub off on the other guys.

8.Your competitors are not snoozing, especially if you are in first place and they are in second or third.If you are not in first place, this could be a good time to redouble your efforts and get there.If you are in first place, remember that old adage, 'The bigger they are!

9.Find ways to celebrate all year long.Really.Successful companies should reward their employees year-round, not just once a year.Yes, the end-of-year holidays are a special time for families and friends.But if you take the time to praise and recognize your workforce regularly, your business will reap the benefits year-round and expectations for unending special holiday treatment will lessen.

10.It's a kindness to your organization and to all of your employees to show off a well-managed workforce all of the time.Consider it a beautifully wrapped gift to everyone, including you.

Happy holidays!
About the Author

Jim Sirbasku is co-founder and CEO of Profiles International, a leading provider of human resource management solutions and employment assessments for businesses worldwide.

For more information about performance management, visit our website.

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Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Basic Home Business Startup Costs

The advantage of working from home is that you liberate yourself from the daily routine of a 9 to 5 job.You save commute time and cost, you set your own schedule, and you work for yourself.The flipside, however, is that the entire burden of paying the new business expenses will fall on your shoulders.However, after weighing the pros and cons, you will discover that working from home is far more profitable in the long run.

Generally, you cannot start an online home business for free but you can minimize your start-up costs.Once the business is up and running and you are producing sales, you want to invest more money into it by paying for advertising, updating your website, or purchasing a new computer program.But with careful planning, starting up a home business can lead to great success rather than immediate loss of income.

Here are some basic startup costs that should be considered when starting a home based business:


1.

Office space and supplies - running a home based business allows you to set up an office in any corner of your home without having to pay additional rent or utilities.This one aspect makes running a home based business much cheaper than working outside the home.But you may need to spend some money on organizational items to make your business run smoothly.

2.Computer - even if you work in direct sales, having a computer is a necessity to keep track of your orders and keep in touch with your clients.If your desktop has older software, consider updating the software or investing in a laptop that will only house your business records instead of the kids' computer games.

3.Internet connection - it's virtually impossible to run a successful home business with a dial up connection, so investigate the cost of getting a DSL or cable based internet connection.

4.marketing materials - even online businesses need marketing materials such as business cards, a website, and a professional logo.Invest in these staple materials and you can always expand or improve them as your sales and income increase.

5.Miscellaneous costs - clothing, gas, catalogs, and postage costs are most often found when working in direct sales or with selling at auctions.These sometimes little charges can add up very quickly if you don't plan for them.

Cost is a major consideration in any business enterprise.It is common for people to get into a venture and start spending before the business has actually taken off.Although there are basic items you need to purchase, track these expenditures right from the start.

The most important thing while starting a home business is to make a financial plan of costs and expenditures.It is very important to prioritize your expenditures.Figure out where money should be invested first and act accordingly.If you are not well informed and cautious regarding your income and expenses then the business could lead to loss.

Be careful with the expenditure but also allow space for your business to grow steadily.Business costs can be reduced by using articles and appliances that are already present in your home.Your current computer, printer and fax machine can become your key business equipment until you are in a position to buy new ones.Try to be innovative instead of hasty and careless and you will find yourself saving a lot of money.

Starting a home based business is very easy with all the resources available online.But it still takes careful planning and organization to make your home based business a success.


About the Author

Chris Simpson is dedicated to helping people find honest and legitimate work from home opportunities and home based business ideas.

Find legitimate work at home jobs and other great opportunities to make money at home today at: www.HomeNetPro.com


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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

What Office Furniture Can Do For Your Business

Furniture is often at the bottom of the list for a growing business.The types of desk and chairs that are bought are often the cheapest or most functional of items.Rarely do business managers take the time to research and find furniture.

This is unsurprising when one looks at the range of different furniture that is available on the internet.There is such a vast range of furniture available on the market that often bemused office managers will make a quick choice before considering the implications of buying the first thing that they see.

Furniture can do so much more for a company than simply provide somewhere to sit and work.Good furniture can increase the morale of your team, improve the comfort and productivity of your workers and furthermore improve the image of your company.With this in mind it is surprising that furniture is so frequently treated like an afterthought.

After all it supports the spine of your business.So whether you are looking for office chairs, desks, meeting room furniture, reception desks or partition screens be sure to make a decision based on the following guidelines.

Image


Whatever the company or business a good image is the single most important aspect that will enable continued success.

A good image is developed over time and results from a number of different factors.

One of the factors that may not immediately spring to mind is the furniture that the company uses.A company that values quality furniture will develop an image of a company that values quality in general.A great example of this is a solicitors office.It would reflect badly if you were presented with a cheap ikea chair to sit on or they rummaged through a flimsy filing cabinet.One would feel much more confident with a solicitor that could afford tasteful, solid, antique wooden furniture.

Furniture can also be a key component for companies in the IT industry.These fast paced business places need to provide support and comfort for their employees and at the same time they need present a fresh and vibrant image for their clients.Again, these issues can be addressed with the right choice of furniture.

Comfortable chairs for the workforce is a must and this type of business will often benefit from a less formal and more colourful style of furniture.For example the leading company in the IT industry, google, invest a great deal of time and money onto their furniture as it helps provide a relaxed atmosphere that is conducive to hard work in what can be a stressful and fast paced type of business.The right furniture must be priority for any business to ensure that it gives out the right image for both its own employees and also its clients.

Function


Once you have chosen furniture that delivers the right image for your company you need to ensure that it is functional and succeeds in fulfilling its expectations.

There is no use purchasing furniture that looks great but is not comfortable or suitable to the work that needs to be completed.

Chairs are the most important type of furniture that needs to be comfortable.This is especially important for companies that work at a computer all day.If your staff sit down for the whole day it is imperative that they are comfortable.In this case function must come above image.Uncomfortable seats will reduce morale and productivity.So be sure to invest time and money into your office furniture.After all furniture is what supports the spine of your business.


About the Author

Shaun Parker is a leading business expert with many years of experience in the office image arena.

Find out more about consolidation loans at http://www.planscapeuk.com


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Monday, December 15, 2008

Should You Buy a Wholesale Merchandise Business or Start from Scratch?

You are absolutely tired of working for others and not putting your creativity and intelligence into full potential.You want to make a change and feel even more important have been tired of working for others.You finally said to yourself it is business success or it is so long to the Vida Loca!

You want to build a business and you are not sure whether to build it by yourself from a scratch or buy an existing business.Entrepreneurship is often more profitable than working for others and the best thing about it is that you do not have to follow somebody else dictating you what you need to do.It is great to be an adult I must confirm!

Wholesale merchandise like discounted electronics, wholesale video games, DVDs are among the chosen of many of us that love entertainment and cannot keep thinking about the latest releases of Hollywood and the gaming geeks!What do you like?That is the question to ask if you really want to start an ecommerce business online.

One of the first questions that should come to mind is why e-commerce has become so profitable these days.Statistical reports suggest that an e-commerce website properly designed can boost your sales to more than 200%.It can globalise your business with people from more than a hundred countries who have access to online shopping.

There is thus no limit to your potential customers.A wholesale merchandise e-commerce business is different when it comes to online as once you have established enough traffic you do not have to chase a sale, they just come to you the way every successful starting home based business should run in reasonable time without begging for a sale.

Both the options of either buying an e-commerce business or building it from scratch has advantages and disadvantages.One of the first questions is why is anyone willing to sell off his business if it is generating profits.If it is not generating profits, how do you know that you can transform it into a profit-making business?

The reality is that there might be many answers to such an extensive edifying point.selling wholesale video games requires prices to be updated once a week, stocks to be updated once or twice a week according to the merchandise demand of your business and you should also consider keeping updated on the developments that are taking place in this industry.So you might also consider maintaining a team who will be doing all these regular activities.

There are numerous ways to present your product or service online so that you can maximise your sales.You would have to experiment with several different formats.You do not want to invest the major part of your money in designing your website.

You can start with a simple template and lower cost design and adjust as cash flow starts running in.It would depend on the size of your business.Most importantly you would like to invest more of your time in selling your goods than continuously being preoccupied with maintaining the administrative receivables of your website.It will all depend on your budget of course.

So be it from scratch or buying an ecommerce website, consulting experts will be a major advantage.The majority of the great companies in the US have been built with brains, not by raising capital or million dollar budgets.

Between electronics, wholesale video games or anything related wholesale merchandise you have many options to maximize your profits.Get a clear mind, schedule it in daily priority and execute immediately.It usually works!


About the Author

Finding Wholesale Merchandise is one of the business components Joaquin serves as reference source, e-commerce coach and certified author.

His focus today is assisting people receive extra income through the acquirement of an in-demand Wholesale Video Games


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Sunday, December 14, 2008

Teleseminars - How to Time Your Special Offer Or Promotion For Optimum Monetization

The way a teleseminar progresses can be likened to a bell-shaped curve and so there are strategic times during which it is best to introduce your special offer or promotion for optimum monetization.

There are some participants who arrive early but typically during the first 10 minutes there is a steady stream of people arriving on the bridgeline which slows down to a trickle.It's not always the fault of an attendee that they arrive late.Particularly if a teleseminar has a lot of participants some people may have difficulty connecting to the bridgeline.So it's best to keep the first part of the call to building camaraderie, allowing attendees to briefly promote themselves and their business, making introductions and generally setting the scene for the call.

Then, of course, you get into the content of the call but participants may leave before the end of the call.So if you leave your special offer to the end of the call, which some hosts do, some of your participants will not hear it.True you can follow-up the call with an email to let people know what they missed but you want to capitalise and hopefully monetize your teleseminar there and then.

It takes a lot of effort to get people to attend a teleseminar.They have so many demands on their time and so many choices when it comes to choosing a teleseminar to attend.Therefore, once you have a 'captive' audience make the most of the occasion.To achieve this you also should promote during the middle of the call.

However, bear in mind that you don't want to do all your promoting at once.A skilled presenter will weave their offer into the call in such a manner that you don't feel that you're being sold to.

Another reason why you don't want to all your promoting to the end of a presentation whether it be an online or offline presentation is that it often comes across as rushed.As a result listeners may not take you up on your offer simply because they do not get to fully hear, understand and appreciate the value of what you're offering and so they do not purchase your product or service.

To help keep interest and attention high during the call it is a good idea to have some form of bonus or gift that you offer at the end of the call.This will encourage listeners to stay on the call until the end.

One technique that is quite effective is to announce that you will be giving away a bonus gift at specific times during the call.Attendees will carefully listen out for those times when the next bonus gift is announced.

Loral Langemeier did something clever for her "cash Machine Reading Room" teleseminar series.She had a code word at the end of each call and you had to know all the words to be eligible for a special competition that she held at the end of the series where she was offering a number of really fabulous prizes.Obviously, you had to listen to the entire call to find out what the special word was.

This is a common offline tactic so look out for other successful offline tactics that you can incorporate into your teleseminars and so maximise the amount of money you earn from teleseminars.


About the Author

To learn more expert teleseminar tips get VIP discount to listen to 2+ hour preview call for just $20 instead of $99 saving $79 visit Teleseminar Preview VIP Discount Code.

FREE Study Guide plus a bonus FREE report worth $97 is included.

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Optimizing Your Wholesale Video Games Script: Answered!

You have your business idea, you have your wholesale video games business plan ready, and you want to start selling video game related merchandise to the world-wide-web, how do you do it correctly?The reality as far as an answer goes is that you have few options to start with.

You can build a website from scratch and invest more money.This will in turn need outside pocket income or current cash flow from any other of your businesses.That is surely a great option if you want to start from scratch.You then have the simpler yet greater option of buying up an established business.

In layman terms, buying an established business should mean that you could keep it successful and make it more profitable.If you have the capital for negotiating a deal, go for it as long you understand what are the repercussions and the responsibilities when you have invested your money.

Once you have decided in any of the options, be it buying a business or starting from scratch know that you will have to initially work harder than ever in order to make your online business succeed in the majority of the cases.One of the first things you will have to understand and know is to optimize your website.Sooner or later you will have to learn to do it yourself if you are serious about business.

It does not matter whether you are starting a wholesale video games store or anything relating to e-commerce business, you will need to become literate in basic HTML.Personally, I never liked HTML or anything related to code, however, most of the material you need to comprehend is basic and can be understood with minimal investment of your time.With that said, most of us just end up learning HTML either way even if we hated it.

Putting it in even better terms, having to learn HTML may be catalogued as boring for some of you, but if you are going to build success businesses online and you do not carry substantial capital to outsource everything at the beginning, why not start in early stages?Once you get over the facts, learn to optimize your website from top to bottom.

Even if you have a sophisticated script which you put all your products up for live offering, you still can optimize your site in order to rank higher on the search engines.There is always a way!Know that when someone refers to optimization it refers to structuring your website in order to rank better in the search engines.As you know if it comes to the best quality and it happens to be free, nobody should be able beat it.

So know that search engine traffic is among the top 3 choices of best traffic and also know that there are scripts that you can legally download for free if you are starting from scratch.But how do you optimize your ecommerce script?

Start by optimizing your title tags.Your title should be at the very beginning top area of your HTML code.Second, your description Meta tags.Optimize them with a short description with the most valuable facts about your online business.

Finally, you have to put relevant keywords that involve your wholesale video games business or ecommerce site.There is surely a lot more to learn about wholesale games and the electronic discount business, this is just a basic start.Just make sure you get the best advice when it comes to internet business when you search online, your precious resource called time is at stake all the time.
About the Author

Finding Wholesale List Suppliers online are one of the business components Joaquin serves as reference source, e-commerce coach and certified author.

His focus today is assisting people receive extra income through the acquirement of a Wholesale List


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