Creating and amassing wealth is more than just a necessity. For centuries, the practice of climbing the ladder to richness has led to wars, influenced literature, and shaped cultures. Whether wealth comes in the form of money or food, all civilizations have pursued it.
The system of wealth creation is based on the current worldview, which in turn is based on the way science is studied and perceived. Most people will not be aware of existing paradigms of wealth creation. They will be too busy accumulating and creating wealth rather than being concerned with the process which they and their wealth underwent.
Existing paradigms in wealth creation drive economies, and any shortcomings in existing paradigms can lead to changes being made in the wealth creation background. A new science can pique the interest of people and shift investments in different directions. A shift in interest and investments can create new worldviews. With new science and worldviews, a new system of wealth creation can be developed. This paradigm shift can be sustained for as long as the system is relevant. Again, shortcomings will be found, and again, changes will be made. The process goes on.
Primitive humans were nomadic. They moved around and lived from day to day, saving little for stores and subsisting on what food they could come across. As soon as they settled down, and as soon as agriculture became a way of life, humans learned to keep provisions. Keeping provisions meant keeping wealth. Holding wealth gave humans the chance to hold sway over those who held much less wealth. The gap between those who had between those who had none grew and widened.
At this point, localized wealth creation was rampant, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the Medieval Age. Rich landowners employed poor farmers to work as slaves or fiefs. Wealth was amassed by force. Compensation came only if a harvest was successful, and if the fruits of the harvest could be sold. Only a few people had wealth, and they were not very charitable to begin with.
As human skills stretched beyond agriculture, the Industrial Age began, and centralized wealth creation became the paradigm. Slaves became employees who were compensated with wages and salaries. As payments were standardized, so were companies. Monopolies abounded, and competition was low.
Science, however, was on the upswing, and as more and more people were educated in science, more and more people began to understand industry and its workings. Slowly, competition rose, monopolies were broken, and jobs once given to a few people could already be held by many.
With the spread and abundance of industries came advances in science – and with these advances came discoveries that created more jobs. With vaccination came epidemiologists. With the discovery of DNA came molecular biologists. With the Internet came web designers, graphic artists, and database creators.
With the rise of the information age came mass privatization. The wealth creation paradigm consisted of communities without boundaries, where everyone could specialize in everything. A scientist could be a journalist but specialize in nuclear physics. An academician could be an economist consulting with the government on the feasibility of introducing new agricultural crops. As the World Wide Web crossed slowly through the world, careers crossed paths with each other and merged.
If the Medieval age brought power to the hands of the land-wealthy, and if the Industrial age bowed to those who were industry-wealthy, the Modern age shifts wealth to those who possess brains. The world's wealthiest man is Bill Gates, a nerd who is still laughing all the way to the bank.
The mass privatization of the modern age has seen companies helping each other move forward. If a food company wants progress, it must consult with scientists to conduct safety tests on its products, nutritionists to proclaim its products as superior, advertising agencies to market its product, and complete eBusiness solutions to move the mortar-and-brick office to the Internet.
The paradigm is all about teamwork – to create wealth, everyone must help each other succeed. No longer are the lesser indebted to make the greater richer. Everyone has to run the race, but everyone must hold hands to reach the finish line together.
Some researchers have called this the age of free intraprise, the age of mass decentralization of wealth creation. This is an age where anyone and everyone can be rich, and where anyone and everyone can do so without being answerable to a higher power. People not only receive salaries or wages – they can receive compensation based on their worth, or a percentage of what they have sold. They can make wealth and receive it in various ways.
With the Internet bringing people together, the world has become one large family. The potential to create and amass wealth is no longer with one person – it is given to many, and yet these many elements working apart must still work together in order to succeed individually.
For the moment, with knowledge readily available, and with intelligence prized, the current paradigm seems suitable. How long it will last, and what will happen next, however, is still beyond the predictive powers of today's brain-driven society.
Daegan Smith
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Monday, 16 November 2009
Autoresponder - The 24 Hour Business Builder
Why every successful marketer has this tool.
An autoresponder, also called a mailbot, is simply a computer program that answers e-mail automatically. It can be as simple as the setting in your e-mail that responds that you are away on vacation or more complex like the programs used by Network Marketers and large businesses to handle the volume of e-mail traffic they receive every day.
You have probably received several automatic e-mail messages and did not even realize it. When you sign up for something online or make a request to a company's website, the e-mail you receive as confirmation is often sent from an autoresponder. It's a simple way to automate your business.
One of the first things you need to do before setting up the tools you will be using to drive traffic to your web site is to set up your autoresponder. Having a welcome message and follow-up messages is imperative if you are serious about doing business online. The autoresponder allows you to send messages to those who opt in to your list automatically, at a set schedule.
Here's the scenario. Bob goes to your site and opts in to get more information. As soon as he hits the Submit button, the program sends out a welcome message. "Hi, Bob! Thanks for signing up for more info! Please click here to confirm." Once he confirms, he will receive your first real e-mail with the information he is looking for. Thereafter, Bob will receive periodic, pre-written e-mails on a schedule that you set up before he ever filled out the form on your landing page.
The main thing to remember is that your messages should not be a sales ad. Do that, and people will disengage faster than they signed on! Your purpose is to provide value, building trust as the reader gets to know more about you and your product, service or opportunity.
Your messages should be informative, exciting, and compelling. People want to read useful information, or their attention fades. If you do not sound excited (words have a tone, too!) how can you expect THEM to get excited about what you are telling them? There should be a call to action, causing them to make a decision, even if it is not right away. If you have done your job right with these e-mail messages, they will be making an Informed Decision in your favor.
There are four reasons why you need to utilize an autoresponder when building your home based business
*It is crucial to building your LIST, which is the lifeblood of your success.
*It helps keep your name, product, or service in the front of your list members. You want them to remember you, your product, or your service even if they think they have no need for you right now. By reminding your market periodically, they will remember you, like a radio jingle you cannot get out of your head!
*It serves as a reminder as to WHY they opted in to your message and/or bought your product/service in the first place. People have short-term memory, thanks to the bombardment of advertising they face every day. Remind them of what makes YOU different.
*It is like an assistant that helps close the sale. The longer they stay on your list, the more chances you have to sell either your products, business opportunity, or at the very least, the tools you use to run your business.
The long and short of autoresponders is this: If you are not frequently in touch, the interest of your prospect turns cold, and you lose money.
Bernadette Cooper
An autoresponder, also called a mailbot, is simply a computer program that answers e-mail automatically. It can be as simple as the setting in your e-mail that responds that you are away on vacation or more complex like the programs used by Network Marketers and large businesses to handle the volume of e-mail traffic they receive every day.
You have probably received several automatic e-mail messages and did not even realize it. When you sign up for something online or make a request to a company's website, the e-mail you receive as confirmation is often sent from an autoresponder. It's a simple way to automate your business.
One of the first things you need to do before setting up the tools you will be using to drive traffic to your web site is to set up your autoresponder. Having a welcome message and follow-up messages is imperative if you are serious about doing business online. The autoresponder allows you to send messages to those who opt in to your list automatically, at a set schedule.
Here's the scenario. Bob goes to your site and opts in to get more information. As soon as he hits the Submit button, the program sends out a welcome message. "Hi, Bob! Thanks for signing up for more info! Please click here to confirm." Once he confirms, he will receive your first real e-mail with the information he is looking for. Thereafter, Bob will receive periodic, pre-written e-mails on a schedule that you set up before he ever filled out the form on your landing page.
The main thing to remember is that your messages should not be a sales ad. Do that, and people will disengage faster than they signed on! Your purpose is to provide value, building trust as the reader gets to know more about you and your product, service or opportunity.
Your messages should be informative, exciting, and compelling. People want to read useful information, or their attention fades. If you do not sound excited (words have a tone, too!) how can you expect THEM to get excited about what you are telling them? There should be a call to action, causing them to make a decision, even if it is not right away. If you have done your job right with these e-mail messages, they will be making an Informed Decision in your favor.
There are four reasons why you need to utilize an autoresponder when building your home based business
*It is crucial to building your LIST, which is the lifeblood of your success.
*It helps keep your name, product, or service in the front of your list members. You want them to remember you, your product, or your service even if they think they have no need for you right now. By reminding your market periodically, they will remember you, like a radio jingle you cannot get out of your head!
*It serves as a reminder as to WHY they opted in to your message and/or bought your product/service in the first place. People have short-term memory, thanks to the bombardment of advertising they face every day. Remind them of what makes YOU different.
*It is like an assistant that helps close the sale. The longer they stay on your list, the more chances you have to sell either your products, business opportunity, or at the very least, the tools you use to run your business.
The long and short of autoresponders is this: If you are not frequently in touch, the interest of your prospect turns cold, and you lose money.
Bernadette Cooper
How to Find Products For Your eBay Business
If you are looking for a business opportunity why not consider an eBay store. You get a ready made shop front and all your advertising for only a few percent of your turnover. All you have to do is find something to sell. Seems like an ideal business to start. Finding a few products to sell on eBay is easy. Finding lots of products to keep selling over and over again is much more difficult. At the start, I hunted through my house and garage for items to sell and I am sure you have done the same. Then you will have listed them on eBay to make a bit of money. It is great fun and watching the end of an auction can be exciting. However, we are hoping to set up more than just a hobby business. It might only ever amount to a part time income or it may replace your day job. Either way, you are going to have to source a reliable ongoing supplier of whatever products you want to sell. So deciding what you want to sell is the first and biggest challenge.
Firstly I wanted to see if I could find items that could be processed easily for sending out by mail. I did not want to pack and cart bulky items to the post office in the next town several times a week, fighting with cardboard and tape. I wanted to slip the item into a small envelope, apply a pre-determined postage stamp and address sticker and pop them in the post box at the end of the road. Then I worked out if I could get say fifteen to twenty sales every day bringing a gross profit of about $10 each, I would make $50,000 every year. What could I sell that was small, neat, obtainable and was capable of generating $10 every sale? You can see how difficult it is! I tried a number of different products. First I looked at comics and graphic novels. They can be conveniently packed, and carrying a pile of twenty or so every day down to the post would be quick and easy. If I could find a regular source of rare comics I could get the level of profits, otherwise buying from a dealer would give too low a margin. So I looked at stamps and then coins. Again I met the same difficulty, rare items command substantial prices, but buying supplies at the right price is a problem for somebody without detailed knowledge of the product.
In fact you can see that with all three of these items it would be necessary to be an expert in the product and you would have to understand their values in order to obtain them from suppliers at the right price. If you have an expertise as a collector of something, then sourcing eBay supplies in your chosen field is a very good option. The next course of action might be to consider sourcing goods from a foreign supplier. If you import directly from manufacturing countries such as India or China it is possible to buy goods that you can mark up three, four, five or even more times.
This is achieved by buying in bulk direct from the manufacturer. Consider a widget that you buy for $3 at your local hardware store. It may only have cost 10 cents or so to manufacture, but the importer will have purchased in bulk and made a significant margin on the price before distributing it to the shop. But I did not want to import a container full of goods. 200,000 widgets would cost $20,000 and there was not enough room in my garage, spare bedroom and study combined to store them! So I tried fishing flies from Africa. I found a supplier that would send 500 dozen per shipment at $2 per dozen. Good quality artificial fishing flies go for around a dollar a piece, more for special patterns. This seemed like a good idea until the realization sunk in that I needed to spend hours every evening sorting and labeling hundreds of tiny items sometimes worth only a few cents each. It was not the route to riches. If you are successful in finding a good source of items to sell on eBay, your competitors will take note very quickly. As soon as they see you selling a lot they will try to copy you. As a result your sales numbers or selling price will soon drop resulting in lower revenue. Therefore, you must be continually adapting your merchandise for change, coming up with new ideas and sourcing new products.
I have an eBay shop that I operate under a pseudonym. I do not want to tell you exactly what I am selling, but it does fit the bill for a sustainable eBay business:
- It is small, light and packs easily
- It is sufficiently valuable to make each trade worth while
- There are lots of different versions (e.g. sizes, shapes and colors) to attract new customers
- I get a good price from the supplier (even if I do have to buy a lot)
- This product will be affected by competition but is such that I can keep adding to the range
Mark Jenner
Firstly I wanted to see if I could find items that could be processed easily for sending out by mail. I did not want to pack and cart bulky items to the post office in the next town several times a week, fighting with cardboard and tape. I wanted to slip the item into a small envelope, apply a pre-determined postage stamp and address sticker and pop them in the post box at the end of the road. Then I worked out if I could get say fifteen to twenty sales every day bringing a gross profit of about $10 each, I would make $50,000 every year. What could I sell that was small, neat, obtainable and was capable of generating $10 every sale? You can see how difficult it is! I tried a number of different products. First I looked at comics and graphic novels. They can be conveniently packed, and carrying a pile of twenty or so every day down to the post would be quick and easy. If I could find a regular source of rare comics I could get the level of profits, otherwise buying from a dealer would give too low a margin. So I looked at stamps and then coins. Again I met the same difficulty, rare items command substantial prices, but buying supplies at the right price is a problem for somebody without detailed knowledge of the product.
In fact you can see that with all three of these items it would be necessary to be an expert in the product and you would have to understand their values in order to obtain them from suppliers at the right price. If you have an expertise as a collector of something, then sourcing eBay supplies in your chosen field is a very good option. The next course of action might be to consider sourcing goods from a foreign supplier. If you import directly from manufacturing countries such as India or China it is possible to buy goods that you can mark up three, four, five or even more times.
This is achieved by buying in bulk direct from the manufacturer. Consider a widget that you buy for $3 at your local hardware store. It may only have cost 10 cents or so to manufacture, but the importer will have purchased in bulk and made a significant margin on the price before distributing it to the shop. But I did not want to import a container full of goods. 200,000 widgets would cost $20,000 and there was not enough room in my garage, spare bedroom and study combined to store them! So I tried fishing flies from Africa. I found a supplier that would send 500 dozen per shipment at $2 per dozen. Good quality artificial fishing flies go for around a dollar a piece, more for special patterns. This seemed like a good idea until the realization sunk in that I needed to spend hours every evening sorting and labeling hundreds of tiny items sometimes worth only a few cents each. It was not the route to riches. If you are successful in finding a good source of items to sell on eBay, your competitors will take note very quickly. As soon as they see you selling a lot they will try to copy you. As a result your sales numbers or selling price will soon drop resulting in lower revenue. Therefore, you must be continually adapting your merchandise for change, coming up with new ideas and sourcing new products.
I have an eBay shop that I operate under a pseudonym. I do not want to tell you exactly what I am selling, but it does fit the bill for a sustainable eBay business:
- It is small, light and packs easily
- It is sufficiently valuable to make each trade worth while
- There are lots of different versions (e.g. sizes, shapes and colors) to attract new customers
- I get a good price from the supplier (even if I do have to buy a lot)
- This product will be affected by competition but is such that I can keep adding to the range
Mark Jenner
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