How to Make Money on a Garage Sale

In this day and age, everyone seemingly knows how to put together and hold a garage sale.Yet if this is so, why is it that some people are lucky to gross $150 while others consistently make $1,500 or more from their garage sales.

Pick almost any city or town in the country; drive through any middle class neighbourhood or residential area on any weekend.You're sure to spot at least half dozen garage sales.And what's being sold at these garage sales?The accumulated "junk" that a lot of people no longer use or want taking up space in or around their homes.

Is it hard to hold a profitable garage sale?Not in the least!All it really takes is some of your time, and an awareness of a few merchandising tactics.But to be really proof it able, you must know how, and exercise careful planning.

First, let's look at some of the background.Everyone accumulates items that other people are searching for, and are willing to buy.These items range from discarded or outgrown items of clothing to furniture, tools, knick-knacks, books, pictures and toys.

Start by taking an inventory of all the things you have "just taking up space" around your home.Decide which items you'd be better off getting rid of, and make a list of these things.These are the things you are going to put up for sale.And if you are honest about what you really want and need, the pile will grow if you look over your house hold a second and third time!Remember that many garage sale offerings are items of merchandise purchased on impulse, and later found to be no t what the buyer wanted.

It is the human condition: We discover too late that we don't like or have used for things purchased; we "outgrow" in size or taste articles that once fit, or pleased us.You'll find that many items offered at garage sales are gifts that have been given to the seller, but not really suited to the recipient.In other words, it will be to your benefit, before you stage your first garage sale, to take a week or so to browse through all the garage sales you can find.

The problem is, most people just don't have the time or energy to gather up all the items taking up space around their homes and staging a garage sale to get rid of them.Believe it or not, many people really don't know how to stage a garage sale; and a lot of people feel that putting on a garage sale is just too much bother and work.

This is where you enter the picture.Your enterprise will be an ongoing garage sale of items donated and collected from those people who lack the initiative to put on garage sales of their own.In other words, you can become a "liquidator of people's junk," via super garage sales that you promote.

We've already suggested that you spend a few weeks visiting the garage sales, swap meets and flea markets in your area.Your purpose will be to see what is being offered for sale; what the people in your area are buying, and how the merchandise is being sold.One of the things to notice is how the merchandise is displayed.You'll also want to notice how the sellers handle customer browsing, and the prices they charge for the merchandise offered.You'll find most items tagged with a price sticker, but generally the seller is open to either price negotiation or a reasonable offer made by the customer.

About the Author

Uchenna Ani-Okoye is an internet marketing advisor and co founder of Top Affiliate Programs

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SCADA--Where Are The Liabilities?

The regulatory environment is placing increased demands on SCADA systems, driving data capture and retention, documentation, training, security, policy, and reporting requirements.As a result, operators and vendors are taking steps to incorporate the impact of regulatory and legal issues (sometimes referred to collectively as "compliance" issues) into the design and use of the systems.

Legal requirements and trends have placed new emphasis on maintaining compliance, because compliance issues are subject to increasingly aggressive enforcement.Compliance is of great significance in any incident where SCADA systems may be a core component of an investigation, lawsuit, or regulatory enforcement action.Compliance failures have resulted in large fines, jail time, injunctive relief and bad press.

Threats to operators also include the potential for misinterpretation and misuse of data.Knowledge of the data, and the obligation to understand what it means or implies, will be imputed to operators and management.This means responsibility and punishment will reach into the highest levels of management.Operators and management are now facing the potential of charges of negligence being changed to allegations of willful misconduct.In addition, they are confronted with the possibility of criminal liability and increased civil exposure.

Businesses with any form of SCADA-controlled operations must be aware of potential liabilities and take prompt and appropriate actions to minimize them.Personnel with the responsibility and expertise to manage SCADA for and in these businesses are the first line of defense against charges of noncompliance violations and lawsuits.They should be able to recognize the various exposures faced by the company if the SCADA system (or an operation controlled by SCADA) fails operationally, suffers a security breach, or is in violation of compliance issues.

The following scenario illustrates the types of issues that can flow from a failure in an operation, especially a failure where an incident occurs.

If an operation fails in any way that is significant outside of the company, then it usually follows that agencies and other outsiders will become involved."Significant outside of the company" can mean an adverse economic impact on a third party ("the pipeline went down because of a leak, resulting in gasoline supply disruption"), injury or damage to the environment, or injury or death of any person (including an employee).

The outsiders will look at the failure and the company, either because they have the public charter to do so (the FTC at supply disruption, DOT at pipeline safety issues, OSHA at injuries or deaths of employees, law enforcement or injury or death of third parties, the EPA at environmental issues, etc.), or because they see an opportunity to make money (plaintiff lawyers).The outsiders will look at operations with 20/20 hindsight and, depending on the incident, may look deep into records, security, policies and procedures and the decisions of the company.

Although a failure may be SCADA related, the cause of the problem is usually external to the SCADA system.Provided the SCADA system is integrated correctly (incorporating the Holistic model consisting of operations, security, and compliance), it can actually help supply the answer to what caused the problem.

The SCADA records likely will have a critical place in the midst of the scrutiny.The first hurdle facing the company is ensuring that the records can be produced.There are certain requirements in regulatory schemes for records retention (for example, see 49 CFR 195.404 regarding liquid pipelines in the United States).Failure to produce the required records may not only be a violation, but may also raise a presumption that the company destroyed the data because it has something to hide.If a civil lawsuit is filed, rules regarding evidence preservation may come into play, along with issues regarding records that are part of common law requirements as well as regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley in the United States.

Assuming the records and data are available, they will be dissected to find any "problems" in operations.The scope of the investigations will not end there.Regulators and plaintiff lawyers will look at compliance, training given to operator personnel, the manuals and policies underlying training, the age of the system, physical security of the system, the ergonomics of the SCADA control room and system, and many other factors to find fault with the company.Even if the incident resulted from a security breach caused by a criminal act of a third party, the company will be held responsible on the theory that its security, because it was breached, was obviously insufficient.

Vendor exposures are also multi-faceted.During the course of an investigation, vendors will be subject to subpoena and discovery by regulators and plaintiff lawyers seeking information about the activities of the vendor on behalf of an operator.Vendors will need to have maintained their working files in accordance with the requirements of the operator's contract.Although contracts normally require the vendor to provide prompt access to its records and files, such access is predicated on auditing by the operator of the vendor's work, rather than seeking to preserve records that may become important during an investigation or litigation.

In the best of circumstances, vendors can plan on having their business disrupted if their client has a problem.In worse cases, the vendor can plan on being a defendant itself.In this scenario, the vendor may face the choice between accepting some liability or blaming its customer for the failure.The latter action may result in the vendor crippling its business prospects with not only the customer involved, but other operators in the industry.

About the Author

Click on the links provided for more information on scada, scada security and risk management.

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How to Go About Creating an Online Business

There are loads of different internet businesses that you may start and in this article we will be looking at a couple of different types that can be started.This article concentrates on starting internet businesses and the different kinds that you can start.

The first type of business that you can make when thinking about starting an internet business is a website that provides for a specific niche in the market.Lots of people have started business this way and it is often done by attempting to look for an underserved niche, then creating a website, and finally profiting by advertising to this small but profitable match.

A good resource to look for more information on this specific topic would be 'findhotniches' or 'insightempire'.Here the author has made a site that looks for underserved niches that you can possibly make a website around.When you are making a site, you should be finding inexpensive keywords that you may use to aid you in building a business together with having good content.

By making the content and then making them link between yourself and other sites, this will be setting you up to get a high page rank from Google.By utilising AdWords to get traffic to your site and at the same time increasing your natural search engine traffic by building up your site; this will help you build for yourself a more solid business.This is just one method of starting an internet business.

Another method for building and making an online business is by using eBay.This is an area that was specifically hot some years ago and it is still remaining a solid business start-up.Loads of people have been able to begin making a full-time income on eBay.You will have to look for a wholesaler that you can buy products at a reduced price from so you can sell them on eBay.

The basic concept when deciding to sell on eBay is to locate a drop shipper.To define what is meant by a drop shipper; it is basically a wholesaler that sells products and that will also ship those products to your customer.You will purchase the product at its wholesale price after which you should make money on the difference between what you bought the product for and what you sell the product for using eBay.Using a wholesaler lets just concentrate on promoting and selling the products with no worrying about have to store the products.

You will not have to think about any type of shipping or on your part, although you should be making certain that all the things ordered are sent out.If you find there are problems with shipments, the customers will be contacting you and not contacting the wholesaler so that is probably the only downside.

Here are two of the different methods that can be used for starting an online business.There are a number of methods to make money on the Internet and these are two working methods.With these methods you wont have to spend a lot of cash up front to start these specific online business prospects and they are proven business models that will bring a great deal of success if utilised properly.

About the Author

Uchenna Ani-Okoye is an internet marketing advisor and co founder of Free Affiliate Programs

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Explaning the Benefits of Overnight Shipping

One of the greatest inventions in the shipping industry was overnight shipping.This is because an individual can order something one day and it be at their door the next day.This is great in urgent situations, such as Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, and other special occasions.

Nevertheless, overnight shipping can simply satisfy someone's impatience to have the items in their hands the next day.Since many individuals can simply go to the store to buy what they need, overnight shipping can be an attractive option because it doesn't involve leaving the house and using the fuel to get to the store.A lot of energy is saved.

There are benefits for the sender, the shipping company, and the receiver when it comes to overnight shipping.Those benefits are:

The recipient is able to receive the item very quickly.

If it is a gift, then overnight shipping can be lifesaver.Then again, there may be a business issue that requires an item to be received quickly.Overnight shipping allows for this.Virtually any situation that requires an item to be delivered quickly can be solved with overnight shipping.

If a business needs merchandise quickly, they can arrange for overnight shipping of the items so that they can be on the store shelves fairly quickly.This means the business is not going to have to keep telling people that the item is out of stock and that they are going to have to wait for the item to be back in stock.The item can be back in stock the next day if overnight shipping is possible for that item.

The shipping company does benefit because they can make a little more money off of the shipping, but it is important to know that overnight shipping utilizes every method of transportation from planes and trains to trucks.It is amazing how many times the overnighted items change hands.However, this makes the process very efficient.Many people have jobs because of this.

The sender benefits because this does a lot for their business.When they can offer overnight shipping on their items, they will find that they can do more business this way.When someone needs an item fast, they are more likely to buy from the company offering them overnight shipping than the company that is not offering overnight shipping.This is especially true when the item is needed the next day.

The main benefit of overnight shipping is the fact that all worries about having the items are diminished.Many people fret and worry that they are not going to be able to get a specific item in a reasonable amount of time.With overnight shipping, those worries can be completely eradicated.

These are some of the basic benefits of overnight shipping.The important thing is that the item reaches its destination overnight just like the recipient has paid for.The benefits can be many.It simply depends on the needs and the wants of the individual needing the fast shipping.If they are in an emergency situation, the emergency situation is solved.If they are simply impatient and they need the item right now, then their impatience can be alleviated.Getting an overnighted item delivered is like being a child on Christmas, opening gifts and having a great time.

So know that overnight shipping has a lot of benefits for you.It may cost more, but you can alleviate any emergency situation if the item has overnight shipping available for it.Nowadays, many items do.Warehouses keep them in stock and ready to go so that you can have what you want by this time tomorrow.

About the Author

Purolator Overnight Shipping offering courier delivery service domestic and international.

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