Earn Extra Holiday Cash from eHow

Happy Holidays! Just want to pass on good money making opportunities to everyone. eHow is offering a special promotion and extra cash during this holiday season. If you'd like to learn more about eHow and online-publishing, read my post regarding how to make more profit from eHow, Squidoo, and HubPages.

Here is the detail from eHow:

The holidays are a time for giving-- not only is eHow extending the holiday promotion, but we are DOUBLING the money we are giving away!

We are extending our holiday promotion until 12/29/2008. Contribute your original articles now and have a chance to win $200 or more by being featured on the eHow homepage. Articles must be featured on any day from Monday to Friday and be in one of the following areas: Today's Top How To, Featured How Tos, or the eHow of the Day. You will receive $100 if your articles are featured on Today's Top How To and Featured How Tos, and $200 if your articles are featured on the eHow of the Day. We will deposit all winnings in PayPal accounts on December 31^st, 2008.

Want to start earning money for your articles, but aren't currently a member of the eHow Writer Compensation Program? It's easy, just click here to fill out your information and start earning more money today!

Press Release: Online Business Review

Hello World! To help online business starters speed up the development of their websites or web services, I've put together a new blog - Online Business Review. The blog aims to be the best and most comprehensive resource for online business starters who look for the best choice of products and services to support their business development. I hope you find Online Business Review useful and keep it as your business companion.

How Much Money Can You Make From Google AdSense?

[Updated: 12/18/08]

There are a lot of people on the Internet claiming that they have made a good fortune out of Google AdSense from their websites. Some of them go even further to show the checks they've received as a proof. Few people would remain untouched, after seeing those checks. They all want you to believe in their claims, so that they can continue on selling you their secrets for success. As an engineer, I am usually skeptical of those claims. I never believe in quick fortune, not because no one has done that - in fact, some have, but because I've also seen lot of "what comes fast goes fast."

Let's not let my personal beliefs stay in your path to success on the Internet. Let's look at only numbers and the facts to see what fortune one could possibly make out of Google AdSense. To keep it simple, I'll focus only on the contextual-targeted ads of Google AdSense which is Pay-Per-Click (PPC)-based advertising. That is, the ad publisher gets paid a portion of the advertising revenue, when the visitor clicks the ads. In this context, the key factors that directly determine how much revenue the publisher makes are the click-through rate (CTR) and the average cost per click (CPC).

What is Click-Through Rate (CTR)?
Before explaining how the CTR is calculated, we have to talk about page impressions. Briefly speaking, the term "page impression" refers to the number of times the visitor arrives at a page in which the ads are displayed. It is not related to how many ads are displayed. Behind the scene, there is a piece of JavaScript embedded in the web page that displays the ads provided by Google and redirects the visitor to the advertiser's website, when an ad is clicked. Google keeps track of both the number of times the script has requested to display the ads and the number of times when an ad is clicked. The CTR is then calculated by formula (1):

CTR = Number of Clicks on the Ads / Page Impressions (1)

What is Cost-per-click (CPC)?
CPC represents the cost that the AdWords advertiser pays for the keywords related to your websites or the clicks on the displayed ads. CPC varies primarily based on business competition among the advertisers. It can also be seasonal and related to the formats of the ad, such as, text, image, or video. In the context of this discussion, CPC refers to the portion of the advertising cost that Google passes on to the publisher, when the visitor clicks on the ad.

The revenue formula and examples
Given CTR and CPC, the ad revenue is calculated using the following formulas:

Revenue = CPC * Number of Clicks (2)
Revenue = CPC * CTR * Page Impressions (contextual) (3)

So, what's the average CPC and CTR? There are no clear references. Many sources have posted different numbers, which vastly depend on their sampling websites and the approach used. Most of the CTR numbers fall in between 1% and 5%. I'll use a couple of numbers for the average CPC just to get some sense about the kind of ad revenue we would expect. Keep in mind that you could equip your websites with multiple streams of advertising income, such as, placement-targeted ads or affiliate sales. Also, note that I did not qualify these data with a time frame.

Table 1: Ad Revenue Examples

CPC	CTR	Page Impressions	Revenue
$0.10	2%	1,000	$2
$0.10	5%	1,000	$5
$0.10	5%	10,000	$50
$0.25	2%	1,000	$5
$0.25	5%	1,000	$12.5
$0.25	5%	10,000	$125
$0.25	5%	1,000,000	$12,500

What do we learn from the above examples?
Looking at this table, you probably are not impressed by the amount of ad revenues you could make. The problem with those Internet marketers showing off their big checks is not that it can't be done, but that they make it sound so easy and quick. They tell you that you can build a content rich website with high paying keywords in ten minutes and start making money right away. (Watch out for plagiarism!) I have also seen many low-quality websites that simply pull the content from all over the places like article directories or some mail archives only to see if I happen to click one of those ads. Upon arriving at one of those sites, I typically say "Oops!" to myself, click on the Back button, and run away. Just for fun, you may notice that many of those sites don't even update their copyright notice at the bottom of the page. Or, they don't even have one.

I recall that I came across a personal blog site that had PageRank at 6/10."I didn't intend to make money, when I first started building this website. I focused on producing the right content and the services valuable to my visitors. The traffic just took off after two years." said the author. That's the attitude that creates a long running business and hence a sustainable income.

In any case, one thing is clear: We, the ad publisher, don't have much control over the CPC. But, we have some control over CTR and a lot to do about increasing page impressions. The most effective way to raise CTR is perhaps to make sure that the ads Google provides are relevant to what your visitors are looking for. This can be achieved by implementing domain focused and specific content for your websites or blogs are very domain specific.

I'm not talking about using key words or artificially repeating the key words all over the place in your web pages. The search engine has grown very sophisticated as to determine how relevant your content is relevant to a specific subject and how creditable your website is. Your content shall naturally incorporate the right key words or relevant phrases, if it is written about a specific topic and readable by human. Although I agree it's important to research the market using key words, I would not recommend you to build a website or start a blog with sole intention to focus on the high paying key words.

Rather, I'm talking about maintaining a clear theme to the content you published on a particular site. For example, it is better for you to create separate blogs to discuss dogs, investments, and your other favorite topics than all in one single blog. Mixed content makes it difficult for the search engine to determine which ads are best to display for the visitors to your website.

Obviously, the page impression or the site traffic is what we all should be working on. One can invest in marketing programs to promote his or her sites or in search engine optimization (SEO) to improve the page ranks. Without the credible content or service, though, it would be hard to have your visitors stay on or come back. Without the sense of trust, the visitors wouldn't even try to poke around your site and read your content, needless to say that many of them have gradually become "ad blind." So, spend time producing unique content, goods, or services, before investing in any serious marketing campaigns or SEO.

I've learned a lot from some of those books listed under On-line Advertising at your right; such as, Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing for Dummies, Google AdSense for Dummies, and Google AdWords for Dummies. You may want to check them out, too.

Boost Site Traffic via Article Marketing?

[Updated 12/12/08]

After spending lot of effort in producing content for your blogs or designing your web sites, you start wondering how to bring in visitors. There are many marketing mechanisms ranging from search engine advertising like Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing to off-line medias. One of the popular marketing approaches has been Article Marketing.

What is Article Marketing?
As the term has suggested, article marketing promotes a product, service, or web site via articles. Article marketing is really nothing new. Many companies have written up and give away so-called white papers to the prospects who want to do a bitof research of their own, before they initiate the conversation with any potential vendors about their business problems. The white paper typically starts with a discussion that demonstrates the company's understanding of the business problems, before presenting their product.

Article promotion works the same way. An article typically consists of three parts: the title, the body, and the resource box. The article body is a short-form of a white paper that seeks to establish the author's credentials in the reader's mind. The resource box at the end of the article is the bio about the author, which is perhaps the whole reason why the article is written. The resource box briefly describes the author's expertise followed by a couple of links that help direct the article readers to the author's blogs or web sites.

How and where to distribute your articles?
Once you've written up a nice piece of article, how do you distribute it to people who may be of interest in the products or services you're trying sell? There are many so-called article directories happy to do the distribution job for you. Here is how it works: You register with an article directory as an author and submit your articles. Once accepted, the article directory will start distributing your articles to thousands of publishers through various means; for example, e-newsletters, e-zines, RSS subscriptions, or syndication. Or, your articles may be viewed or picked up by opt-in readers who visit the directory. The basic requirement for the publishers to freely reprint the articles is to retain the entire article and the resource box intact.

For your convenience, I have included a few article directories as follows:

• Ezine Articles (PageRank 6/10) is the industry leader that emphasizes on "quality" by accepting only articles that meets certain criteria.
• Search Warp (PageRank 4/10)
  
• Go Articles (PageRank 6/10)
• Other article directories include Article City, A1 Articles, iSnare, Idea Marketers, Free Article Zone, Article Bin, Article Marketer, Amazines, etc.

Most of these sites offer free services to the authors and the publishers. Some of them impose fees, when you submit more than a certain number of articles. You as an author may pay premiums to place your articles at the home page of the directory or the first page of a particular category to increase the exposure. Some directory sites offer proofreading service at a fee or even produce the article for you. Others sell you software that would "automatically" submit your articles over thousands publisher sites. I have no experience with any of those software. If you do, feel free to let me know how they are useful to you.

Does article marketing really work?
Submitting your articles to the directories should in general improve the ranking of your web sites or pages in the search results thanks to the increased number of back links. That statement is yet to be proven, though. The search engine determines the weight of each link based on various factors including the credibility of the publisher site that reprints your article. Unfortunately, many article publishers pulling content from the directories are those sites whose sole purpose is to make money from the ads all around your article.

On the other hand, read a few submitted articles in the directories and you'll find that most of them rush to direct you to their "single page web sites" that either promise you easy income or sell you secrets to make quick bucks. If you're somehow interested in any of those marketing schemes, I'd urge you to reconsider that decision and save that money for better uses. There are effective ways to start or grow your Internet business, but no shortcuts to success. To see for yourself, simply click on the links from whichever articles you stumble on that were published a while back. You'll find many of those pointed sites no longer exist, barely functional, or very out-dated. The sites that are still fully functional are those that run a serious business via hard work.

Still, article marketing could work for you. If you are able to produce a lot of high quality articles, chances are some of them may show up in reputable web sites. Not only do those articles improve your search result ranking, but will also help direct quality traffic to your web site. You have to be persistent and tenacious in both quality and quantity for article marketing to work. To tract the progress of article syndication, use the "intitle:" operator (case-sensitive) in the Google search box; for example:

• intitle:"The Title of My Syndicated Article" to look for all the articles with the given phrase in the their title. You should replace it with your own article title.
  
• intitle:"The Title of My Syndicated Article" +source +ezinearticles.com to look for the articles with the given phrase in their title and 'source' and 'ezinearticles.com' in the page. This assumes that you submitted your article to ezinearticles.com and its name is included as part of the article. You should replace it with the directory you use.
  

If you are determined to go that far, you should consider publishing your articles to reputable sites like eHow, HubPages, and Squidoo. They are very different from article syndication and are operated under different terms, though. Read my post about how to make money by publishing to eHow, HubPages, and Squidoo.

Find The Home For Your Blogs: Blogger v.s. WordPress

[Updated 12/5/08]

As discussed in my post regarding passive incomes over the Internet, one of the most popular platforms for publishing your informational content is blogging. Blogs are on-line journals or diaries of a topic of your choice. By default, blog posts are organized in the chronicle order upon their publication. They can also be grouped in categories or tagged for easier navigation or look-up.

Today, there are many hosted blog services that free you from hosting your own and form the communities with millions of bloggers. Among the popular ones are Blogger, WordPress, Yahoo! 360, Windows Live Spaces, and TypePad. Alternatively, you can post your blog entries at e-publishing sites like HubPages and Squidoo. Squidoo also provides its lensmasters a blog service, called SquidTop, via WorkPress. It's worth noticing that WordPress can also be downloaded and hosted by your own. Movable Type - an open source organization that brings blogs, web sites, and social networks under one software does not offer the hosting service.

To make it easier for you to find the home for your blogs, I have compared Blogger and WordPress feature-by-feature in the table below. While browsing through the table, you should start considering which features are critical for your blogs. For me, the primary factors are the following:

1. Fees: I think you would agree with me on opting for blog services that are free of charge with a reasonable sets of functionality and storage space. It is particularly important, when my adventure is still at the exploration phase. Consider a brand-name service from Blogger run by Google, Windows Live Spaces from Microsoft, and a few others, so your precious work wouldn't be lost due to malpractices or abrupt business turmoils.
   
2. Multiple blogs: Although your blog can cover all interesting subjects, I recommend that you create separate blogs for different topics. Not only would the separation improve the rankings of your posts in search results, but also help make searching engine advertising more efficient. By being focused, your blogs offer more relevant posts to your readers. In return, you'll find a better targeted group of readers. As such, the capability to have all my blogs (e.g. Project BKO and Fishtarian) under one user account makes my jobs much easier.
3. Customization or extension: Most of the blog services provide a rich set of features without any special customization or coding. It is, however, important to keep customization or extension as an option. The blog service should have public APIs available for developers to add new widgets or plug-ins. When necessary, I may need to customize the template or implement certain features (e.g. supporting excerpts).
   
4. Advertising: Internet advertising is a key element of the Internet business. Although not a primary reason, generating passive incomes is always a welcome gift.
5. Team contribution: This feature is important so that my kids can contribute to my blogs. It would become handy, when I later recruit some partners to join my adventure.
6. Openness: It is also important that I am able to move my posts to other blog services via export and import utilities and not get stuck with a service. You may want to perform your own backups occasionally.
   

Table 1: Comparing Blogger and WordPress

Features	Blogger	WordPress
Fees	Free.	Free WordPress.com blogs come with 3GB of space for storing uploaded files and images. Pay fees for very advanced features or more upload space.
Setup	Hosted.	Hosted or download the software and host your own blog.
# of blogs per user	Unlimited. This is very useful, if you plan to blogs on various topics.	Unlimited.
# of pages per blog	Only the home and the post pages.	Can create additional pages to the home and post pages. Pages are not meant for displaying posts (although possible via plug-ins) but to display static content (e.g. About, Copyrights, Policies) that is less time-sensitive like posts.
User name	Display name can be different from the email you use to login and can be changed later. You can also choose to show your real name.	Display name is the login user name and can not be changed.
Import	Import from AOL only or a Blogger XML file.	Support Blogger, Moveable Type, TypePad blogs, WordPress export file, or LiveJournal XML.
Export	Export to a Blogger XML file.	Export file in WordPress eXtended RSS or WXR format can be downloaded and saved as a backup.
Page design	Support additional page elements in header, body, side-bar, and footer areas. drag-and-drop positioning.	Spport additional widgets only in side-bar.
Themes	Choose from about a dozen of templates; preview with the pre-loaded image. Template CSS and HTML can be customized.	Choose from over 70 templates with a two- or three-column layout. Excellent preview with the real post content and the click-able links. Template CSS can be modified.
Post editor	Support rich text and HTML editing. Tables are supported by editing the HTML. Remove all line breaks between <table> and </table>.	Support rich text and HTML editing with support for excerpt, categories, and tags in the same editor page. Better support for audio, video, and polls. Tables are supported by HTML editing.
Post categorization	Assign tags to the post. Posts can be grouped and viewed by tags.	Assign categories and tags to the post. Posts can be grouped and viewed by categories or tags. Categories and tags are very similar and sometimes confusing. Categories generally don't change often, while tags usually change more dynamically with every post and can be shown in the "tag cloud".
Permalink	Automatically generated; can not be changed.	Automatically generated; can be changed.
Comments	Support anonymous comments and moderation.	Support anonymous comments and moderation.
Linkbacks to keep track other sites that have links to the posts.	Support backlinks.	Support trackbacks and pingbacks.
Advertising	Ads are allowed. AdSense ads are natively supported.	For performance reason, Adsense, Yahoo, Chitika, TextLinkAds, sponsored/paid posts including PayPerPost, ReviewMe and Smorty; affiliate/referral links to the following domains: usercash, clickbank, clickhop, cashrocks, payingcash; clicktrackers and any promotion of the “I made a million on the internet and so can you” type of advertising are not permitted to be added by users, unless you're one of those VIP blogs. AdSense ads may be added by WordPress, but can be avoided with a fee.
Custom domain	Supported.	Supported.
Traffic analysis	Supported via Google Analytics.	Supported navtively via Blog Stats.
Team blogging	Grant users admin or author roles.	Grant users admin, author, contributor, and editor roles.

Also, read this post at eHow and HubPages.

Monetize Your Web Site via Affiliate Marketing

One of the most popular ways to monetize your web site is to become an affiliate.

What is "affiliate?"
An advertiser is a merchant that initiates an ad campaign to promote its products or services. An ad publisher displays ads from an advertiser on its web site. An affiliate receives a commission, when the visitor to its web site takes a required action. An affiliate promotes the merchandise via articles or ads of various forms that are compliant with the terms agreed on with the advertiser. The two most common models on which the commission structure is based are:

• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) A visitor referred by the affiliate purchases products and services from the advertiser.
  
• Cost Per Lead (CPL) A visitor referred by the affiliate completes a form on the advertiser's web site.
  

Since an affiliate is paid based on the results it produces, affiliate marketing is often referred to as Pay-Per-Performance (PPP) or Pay-Per-Action (PPA) marketing. Many advertisers prefer the low-risk affiliate marketing in that they pay only for proven results. The pay structure is often multiple-tired to reward affiliates at various performance scales.

Become an affiliate
You can become an affiliate by signing up the affiliate programs directly with a merchant or indirectly via an affiliate network.

• Merchants: Well established advertisers may choose to deal with their affiliates directly. Not only would the direct association remove the mediation costs, but also retain the close relationships with the affiliates. Affiliate programs are available from brand names, such as, Amazon, AmericanExpress, Discover Card, eBay, and etc.
• Networks: Rather than direct dealing, the advertiser may choose to delegate its affiliation handling to a third-party company - an affiliate network that mediates between advertisers and publishers and facilitates the logistics from managing campaigns, generating links, tracking, to payouts. An affiliate network is particularly useful to a publisher, because the network enables a publisher to manage over hundreds of advertisers under one roof. Be aware that signing up an affiliate network does not automatically grant you permissions to promote all the participating advertisers. Upon expressing your interest, your application to promote a particular merchant is still subjective to a review and approval process. Some merchants or the affiliate networks impose certain requirements on the traffic to your web site as well as the content. Popular affiliate networks include Advertising.com, ClickBank, CommissionJunction, ClixGalore.com, Google, LinkShare, Yahoo (via Commissionjunction), and etc.

Note that Google Affiliate Network acquired from Performics DoubleClick in 2004 is operated separately from Google AdSense. Therefore, an AdSense publisher is required to submit a new application in order to become a Google affiliate publisher. Yahoo Affiliate Network is managed by CommissionJunction.

How to choose an affiliate network?
Before joining an affiliate network, consider the following factors:

1. Reputation: An affiliate network with a good reputation is typically more trustworthy in tracking the links and accounting practices. Working with a trusted network as your business partner typically results in less feuds that cost you valuable traffic and precious energy.
   
2. Advertisers: Have a look at the participating advertisers to get a feeling of the kind of products or services you'll be promoting. You should make sure those goods are aligned with the content of your web site and are something your customers or visitors would be comfortable with.
3. Features: Take your time to understand how easy or the tools provided to search for the products or services that you want, to generate and implement the ads or links, to track and generate reports, and to get paid.
4. Support: Spend some time understanding the support you'll get from the network. Browse through the community forums or blogs to find out what the participating advertisers and publishers are saying or complaining and how the issues are resolved.

Will Our Kids Approve The $25B Automaker Bailout?

Los Angeles Times, November 21st, 2008:

Congressional leaders agreed yesterday to give the Big Three automakers more time to make their case for a $25 billion emergency bailout, but they demanded that General Motors, Ford Motor, and Chrysler provide detailed plans for using the money to assure their long-term viability without more handouts.

Apparently, the CEOs of these three automakers flew in the Capitol Hill without a plan to explain what they would use the money for. Worse, all three of them flew in with their corporate or private jets instead of boarding commercials. When asked by a congressman, if the bailout was approved, would any of the CEOs sell their jets? No one raised his hand. In fact, Chrysler does not own a corporate jet, but the CEO released a private jet for the trip. For you information, it costs $60,000 for the three jets to fly just ONE trip.

What's wrong with this picture?
The story reminds me of a friend of mime who was starting his business at the time and was shopping for office furnitures. In order to get a bargain, he purposely left his luxury Mercedes-Benz car at home and drove his 12 year old wagon to the shop instead. The reason, he later explained to me, was not to give the shop owner a motivation to jack up the price, because he looked like a rich man. Some of you as small business owners scout the flea market for things that you may be able to sell on eBay or your online stores. Would you wear suits and ties or dress up like a big shot businessman and negotiate with the merchants at the flea market for a few dollars less?

Secondly, when asked how they would spend the bailout money to rescue their business, the Big Three CEOs showed no detailed plans but vague words. It was like saying: "Just give me the money, and I'll figure out how to spend it." Some of you may have experience with getting fund from venture capitalists for your startups, getting a credit line from a local bank for your business payrolls, or trying to convince a potential business partner to join your business venture. Would any of you show up at the meeting without a carefully crafted business plan or any documents that demonstrate all the homework you've done, the best judgments you'll exercise to spend that money, and the efforts you'll dedicate to assure the return of their money?

It just sounds to me the Big Three CEOs somehow lost grasp of commonsense and did not do what small business owners do to survive. Perhaps, they did not care anyway. Even though not interested in a big reward of the bailout package, we - tax payers at least do not want to look stupid in handing in $25 billion to people who do not appear serious about it.

Change the culture driven by the short-term interests
All of us know the Big Three have been losing market shares and revenues for a long time. They are blamed for producing cars that are not as competitive as their rivals. The most obvious problems include low quality and the lack of innovation. But, the root cause of their failure is that these companies have been operated under an atmosphere very much like politics in Washington, DC. Like politicians who only focus on short-term interests and getting re-elected for the next term, the CEOs of the Big Three have focused solely on their quarterly reports and how to pump up their stock prices. That is why you see GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner decided to terminate the EV1 electric car program and opted to produce gas-guzzling vehicles like Hummer. To assure their long-term viability, we must demand these automakers to change that culture from top-down and start focusing on addressing the long-term problems. If we want to see the investment of our hard-earned $25 billion bailout returned, we must demand the same kind of changes we've recently accomplished on the Capitol Hill.

Will our kids approve the $25 billion bailout?
Let's not forget that the $25 billion bailout which is part of the $700 billion rescue package has to be paid for by all of us, our children, and our grand children. Shouldn't we at least ask our children whether they would approve the bailout of the automakers in this picture?

Read this post on eHow, HubPages, and Squidoo.

Understanding Trademarks and Copyrights

[Updated 2/11/09]

Whether you write the articles for eHow, publishing posts on your blogs, or selling your art designs on CafePress, you want to make sure your hard work is properly protected. If you have not study how intellectual properties are protected and have done nothing, are your works currently protected at all? The short answer to that question is "Yes." But, you need to know more than that, if you plan to make a career out of the Internet.

What is a trademark?
According to United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a trademark protects any word, name, symbol, or design, or any combination used, or intended to be used, in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer or seller from goods manufactured or sold by others, and to indicate the source of the goods. A trademark is a type of intellectual property, and typically a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image, or a combination of these elements. The primary purpose of a trademark is make a brand name.

A trademark is identified by the symbols ™ and ®. You don't have to register your work to be protected. By putting the sign next to your work and use it consistently, your work is considered trademarked. Registering your trademark, however, serves as a notice to the public that you own the work and help facilitate the legal processes to stop others from using it. You can register your trademarks at Trademark Electronic Business Center. Once registered, a trademark can be renewed forever or as long as it is being used in commerce. More information can also be found at the USPTO web site for small business.

What is copyright?
According to United States Copyright Office, copyright is a form of protection provided to the authors of “original works of authorship” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works, both published and unpublished. The 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to reproduce the copyrighted work, to prepare derivative works, to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work, to perform the copyrighted work publicly, or to display the copyrighted work publicly.

You don't have to file for copyright protection to claim your work as your own. Copyright protection is automatically granted upon creation of your work. Filing for copyright protection , however, facilitates the legal processes to enforce the copyright laws. You can file for your copyright protection at the Electronic Copyright Office of The Library of Congress for a small fee of $45 dollars. Once approved, such copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.

One common question often raised by bloggers is whether the images found on the web sites, such as, Google, can be used or copied freely. The answer is "no." Many of those images are copyright protected and you must read the terms of use prior to using them in any form. Instead, you should look for your images on the following web sites that host the images under the less restrictive terms that promote ease of sharing.

• Open Photo
• Flickr: Creative Commons
• Creative Commons Search

Lastly, be aware that there is no such thing as an "international copyright" that will automatically protect your work throughout the entire world. Each country has its own national laws for copyrights and how the laws are enforced.

Read my post about the copyright lawsuit of the Obama Hope image and understand the Fair Use exceptions.

Choices Of Business Setup

[Updated 11/23/08 with more info about LLC]

A reader has asked me how the business of Project BKO is set up. Good question. There are obviously several choices here in terms of business setup. Which one best suits Project BKO? Let's understand what each form of organization means:

Sole proprietarship
This is the most simplest and easiest form of a business, because the business is operated by one person - the business owner. Generally speaking, everyone can be qualified as a sole proprietor and start his or her own business immediately. The owner can choose to register the business under a different name, but many of sole proprietor simply has the business operated under his or her exact legal name. The owner is responsible for paying tax of the business, which can be done in Schedule C of his or her personal tax filing. The owner pays self-employment taxes (Schedule SE) including Social Security and Medicare taxes.

Although convenient, the downside of sole proprietorship is that the owner is legally bound to and held liable for his or her business. There is no legal protection of the business owner against the potential lawsuits against the business in this form of business organization.

Partnership
This form of business organization extends sole proprietorship to include business partners. Since business partners are independent legal entities, their roles and responsibilities should be written down and agreed upon. In addition, the structure of business ownership and financial responsibility must also be discussed and agreed upon to avoid future disputes. For tax purpose, each partner reports his or her profits or losses from the partnership in the personal tax return. The distribution of profits and losses can be flexibly determined and agreed upon by partners.

Limited Liability Company (LLC)
LLC allows you to bring in the investors as your business partners. There is no limit on the number of partners. Tax wise, LLC is very much the same as partnership. More importantly, LLC provides the business owner and partners legal protection of a corporation. That is, they are not personally liable to the actions taken by the corporation.

Incorporation
Incorporation is the most complex corporation structure that I have not done enough research at the moment.

Project BKO as a sole proprietorship
I choose sole proprietorship for its simplicity, since Project BKO is still at its infancy. I'm also not considering hiring any employees other than my two kids for the time being, so I don't have to worry about payroll taxes (e.g. social security and medicare taxes). In fact, hiring your kids of 18 years old and younger as employees has some tax benefits, because they are at a much lower tax bracket. On the other hand, I'm very interested in LLC for the benefits of legal protection, if the project goes well and my businesses grow. In any case, a business is not stuck with its initial form, and can evolve into a different form according to its needs.

There are companies that provide online filing services for registering your business with state and local government, if you decide to do it yourself. Read the hub written by Glass Visage for comparison of some popular products and services.

As a disclaimer, this post serves as my personal understanding. You should definitely discuss with your business consultant or tax adviser for your business.

Kontera: In-Text Ads

[Updated 1/5/2009]

Although the most popular, Google AdSense is not the only player in the pay-per-click advertising marketplace. Kontera entered this market in 2003 with its flagship product ContentLink that places ads right in the published content. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and backed by famous VC's including Sequoia Capital.

Kontera uses its proprietary patent-pending technology to analyze the published content in real-time in order to find the best matched ads. Once found, the ads are placed at the highlighted key words or phrases, called ContentLinks. When placing the mouse over a ContentLink, the reader sees an ad appearing in a small talk-bubble window. Clicking on the ad takes the reader to the advertiser's site.

I have included an excerpt below from Kontera that explains how the contextual analysis engine works:

• Extraction: A typical analysis process begins by extracting all the relevant page content and attributes, including: text, HTML properties, location on page, URL, Title, Meta tags, custom Meta tags, etc. Every such attribute conveys a specific weight to the algorithms that analyzes the data.
• Discovery: The extracted data is then scanned through the discovery process in relationship to the proprietary taxonomy and via a dynamic part-of-speech analysis to identify keyword relationships and significance.
• Classification: The page and its best matching keywords are classified with their best matching topics, and both keywords and topics are scored for relevancy.
• Ranking: The resulting output of keywords and topics are then ranked, based not only on keyword and topic relevancy but on other parameters as well. These parameters include: topic and keyword conversion rate and click-through rate, advertisement CTR, advertisement conversion and revenue potential.
• Self-Learning Optimization: The self-learning and tuning module automatically performs yield management and optimization. This process is based on real-time analysis of user reactions to specific keywords, topics, and ads as they relate to specific web pages and topics. In Text Ad impressions are then re-distributed in order to assign more impressions to the keywords that are performing better. This self-learning stage completes the cycle of Kontera´s contextual advertising technology granting it its unique competitive edge.

Kontera believes that the so-called "in-line advertising" performs better than ads by Google which are placed in confined areas of the page predetermined by publisher. Kontera ContentLink works along side with Google AdSense, so is an additional income stream to me. How it would effect my AdSense revenue is unknown at this moment. Some surfers report that in-text ads are intrusive and annoying in terms of readers' experience. If you feel that way, please leave me a comment.

How to apply?
To apply for your Kontera publisher account, fill up its application form. To qualify, the publisher used to be asked to have more than 500,000 page impressions per month. The bar was set so high that I am afraid most of the sites would not be able to meet. Luckily, they have adjusted their requirements. I am thrilled to announce that Project BKO at its early stage at the moment is accepted as a Kontera publisher.

How to set up?
Setting up Kontera ContentLink is as simple as copying the JavaScript text from your Kontera account and pasting it in your web pages. To get the JavaScript text, login your account and click on the Get Tag link or the ContentLink Setup tab. You can customize the ContentLink color to match your blog page. If you use Blogger, WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal for hosting your content, it would take just a couple of clicks. Kontera handles the rest for you. Happy earning!

Other in-text ad media companies
In addition to Kontera, there are other companies in the ad media industry. I have not tried any of them. If you have, please share your experience with me.

Vibrant Media
Vibrant Media is the leader of in-text advertising and a premier provider of contextual video advertising, giving marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted, user-initiated advertisements within the text of Web content. The company works closely with advertisers, agencies and Web publishers to plan, buy, deliver and optimize in-text advertising campaigns. Utilizing superior technology and international distribution, Vibrant Media reaches more than 70 million unique users per month in ten different languages, managing more than four billion words per month for top advertisers such as Sony, Intel, New Line Cinema, Microsoft and Toyota. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in New York, London, San Francisco, Paris and Hamburg with more than 150 employees. The company's rapid, profitable growth has been recognized by both the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 lists.

AdBrite
AdBrite was founded by Philip Kaplan and Gidon Wise in 2002, is headquartered in San Francisco, California and backed by venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures, and Mitsui Ventures. For more information, read my post about online advertising with AdBrite.

Get Extra Income From Google AdSense

[Updated 12/21/08]

You may have already noticed that there are ads now appearing in my blog. This is part of my effort to explore Internet advertising. According to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC), Internet advertising revenues reached almost $5.9 billion for the third quarter of 2008, representing an 11 percent increase over the same period in 2007. While double-digit annual growth continues, the quarter-to-quarter curve remains relatively flat compared to recent past performance.

Generally speaking, there are primarily two types of ad revenue: searching marketing and affiliate. I'd like to discuss search marketing or pay-per-click ads in this post, what they are, and how they work for you as an ad publisher.

What is pay-per-click?
An ad publisher is a web site that displays ads initially paid by advertisers. There is typically an agency between publishers and advertisers that mediates ad distribution. Here is how pay-by-click works at the 5,000 feet:

1. The advertiser sends in the ads to the agency for distribution.
2. The agency distributes the ads to the publisher to display in the web pages.
3. The visitor comes to the publishing web site, sees the ads, and clicks on the ad, which leads the visitor to the advertiser's web site.
4. The advertiser pay to the agency for the click.
5. The agency shares the revenue with the publisher.

Although the most popular agency in the pay-by-click advertising or searching marketing is Google, it is Yahoo who owns the patent. In 2004, Google agreed to give Yahoo 2.7 million shares of its stock to settle patent infringement and other legal claims with regards to pay-per-click technology. In 2005, Online marketer Miva of FindWhat.com agreed to pay Yahoo $8 million and ongoing royalties to settle a patent infringement lawsuit over pay-per-click technology used in search result ads.

Google has two programs: AdWords for advertiser and AdSense for the publisher. AdWords allows advertiser to bid on key words, place ads and manage ad campaigns, while AdSense identifies and provides tools for qualified publishers. You must have already seen ads labeled with "Ads by Google" in many web sites similar to the three boxes in this blog. There are reasons why Google beats Yahoo in display ads revenue and becomes a formidable force in the advertising industry. Google protects its advertisers by emphasizing "quality" of ad display, which is in turned by imposing "relevance" between what the visitor is looking for and what the ad is truly about. The end result of this strategy is better user experience, better satisfaction, and higher click-through-rate (CTR), which is a win-win situation for all parties involved. How is this accomplished?

1. Google ensures the high relevance between the key words used by the advertiser and the provided ad content. The higher relevance between the two, the higher chances is the add displayed.
2. Google analyzes the content of the publishing site and displays only ads that are highly related.
3. There is a strict policy in place for the publisher to help retain integrity of this system. For obvious, a publisher is prohibited to clicked on its own ads served by AdSense.
   

How to apply and set up?
To apply for your AdSense account, go to Google AdSense. You must have already had your site up and running with certain amount of content prior to submitting your application. My application was rejected twice due to the change of the Project BKO site URL after the submission of the application. Obviously, they can't approve a site that is not accessible - a lesson learned. As far as qualification is concerned, the appropriateness of the content on your web site is far more important than the traffic requirement. Google reviews the content site of every application for AdSense. Once approved, you simply copy the JavaScript text from AdSense and paste it in your web pages. If you are using Blogger, this is as easy as adding and configuring an AdSense widget.

In addition to Google, there are also other players in the pay-by-click advertising industry.

Vibrant Media
Vibrant Media is the leader of in-text advertising and a premier provider of contextual video advertising, giving marketers the opportunity to deliver highly targeted, user-initiated advertisements within the text of Web content. The company works closely with advertisers, agencies and Web publishers to plan, buy, deliver and optimize in-text advertising campaigns. Utilizing superior technology and international distribution, Vibrant Media reaches more than 70 million unique users per month in ten different languages, managing more than four billion words per month for top advertisers such as Sony, Intel, New Line Cinema, Microsoft and Toyota. The company was founded in 2000 and has offices in New York, London, San Francisco, Paris and Hamburg with more than 150 employees. The company's rapid, profitable growth has been recognized by both the Inc. 500 and Deloitte Fast 50 lists.

AdBrite
AdBrite was founded by Philip Kaplan and Gidon Wise in 2002, is headquartered in San Francisco, California and backed by venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures, and Mitsui Ventures. In addition to in-text ads, AdBrite offers banner and full page ads which I founf intrusive. The banner ads includes pay-per-click (PPC) and placements. The company had a layoff of 40% of its staff in October, 2008 to adjust for the economy downturn. I heard there are places banning sites that use AdBrite due to their full page ads. It is reported that AdBrite is also listed on SpywareBlaster's blacklist. If you use SpywareBlaster, you will have to manually disable the blocking of AdBrite cookies.

Adsonar
Adsonar is part of Platform-A - a company that has incorporated several best-in-class solutions that leverage AOL's premier consumer brands (AIM, Moviefone, MapQuest, TMZ, AOL.com and more), Advertising.com's networks — display, video, affiliate and search marketing — with Third Screen Media's mobile network, Quigo's sponsored listings, TACODA's behavioral targeting, and ADTECH's ad serving, providing advertisers with the ultimate one-stop shop for online advertising. If you have a nice site, you can try to get into Adsonar.com. It's one of the highest paying ad sites on the market. It's one of the ones the Alexa top 1000 sites use.

Canep Media
Founded in 2006, Canep Media is a young network pursuing to provide top of the line advertising services to publishers and advertisers. Canep Media's mission is to connect advertisers and publishers in a manner ensuring both of their success. Advertisers are exposed to an audience that they wish to target while publishers capitalize on their inventory. Canep Media offers publishers and advertisers something that most of today’s large networks cannot, attention. Friendly and effective account managers and customer support representatives combined with industry leading technology makes Canep Media an effective solution to both sides of the advertising equation. What differentiates Canep Media from the rest of the pack is that very single impression served through Canep Media is an auction. The auction-based ad network insures that the ad inventory is sold to the highest bidder, which maximizes the publisher's revenue. With advertisers competing for your traffic, you know your getting the best deal that you can get! It appears to pay as well or better than AdBrite and offers more flexibility.

I've learned a lot from some of those books listed under On-line Advertising at your right; such as, Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing for Dummies, Google AdSense for Dummies, and Google AdWords for Dummies. You may want to check them out, too.


[Read this post on eHow, Squidoo, and HubPages.]

What Do You See Yourself 10 Years From Now?

A reader of Project BKO has noticed my newly posted avatar and asked why I appears to be at a beach in a Hawaii shirt.

Good question! I have had this picture in my head for a long time - someday I'll be retiring in Hawaii, laying on the beach with palm trees, watching the blue ocean and sky, and maybe still be blogging, since it has become a habit and part of my life. Isn't that the "American Dream" everyone has been talking about? Or, is that too much to ask? There are probably not enough islands for all of us. I probably can't afford an apartment over there, because "Rich Dad" has been and is still doing his real estate business over there.

In any case, that is the "10-years-from-now picture" I have painted in my head and is what I am shooting for with Project BKO. Regardless of your age, job, and condition today, we all should start painting a picture in our head. You don't need a crystal ball to see it 10 years from now. Rather, put down whatever you are doing now and close your eyes for just a few minutes. When you do, you'll start seeing many things or concerns coming into the picture. You have to start sorting out and navigating through those issues, before you can clearly see yourself 10 years later. You see, the problem with people living in a modern world is that everyone is rushing to get ahead of someone else and to get somewhere. They don't even have time to stop and say hello to people passing by. You'll be amazed by how fast 10 years can go by. How often do we stop and ask ourselves:

"Am I at the place I wanted to be 10 years ago? Am I going along towards the direction I want for myself 10 years later?"

It is so easy to get lost in a world where everyone seems to be so busy in doing what they are doing, especially during this economic condition. But, maybe it is the perfect storm that slows you down a bit to catch breath and start painting that picture.

Read this post on HubPages and Squidoo.

Write For More Profit: eHow, Squidoo, and HubPages

[Updated 11/25/08]

Recently, I have posted several "hubs" on HubPages to have some first hand experience with how it's different from eHow and Squidoo. Based on my previous post, I'll compare all three of them in this new post, so you can decide which suits you better.

As I discussed informational content in my previous post regarding producing passive income over the Internet, three of the most popular sites in the on-line publishing market came out: eHow, Squidoo, and HubPages. All three sites provide a free platform that inspires people to write down their insightful knowledge or know-how, and rewards them for doing so. eHow focuses on how-to or do-it-yourself (DIY) types of information, while Squidoo and HubPages are wide open for all kinds of subjects.

You do not have to be a professional writer to start making your share of contribution. All you need is a topic and a passion for sharing with others. Of course, your success in the on-line publishing marketplace depends on quantity, quality, and the value of the information you publish. And, more success usually translates to better rewards. The rewards primarily coming from ads and affiliate programs depend on the site traffic. All these sites have worked with major search engines to make sure their content properly included in the research results, invested in marketing to attract traffic, and formed on-line communities to entice writers. My personal experience shows that eHow appears to have most traffic at the moment.

That said, let's get straight into comparing how they work.

#1 eHow
The difficult part of writing an eHow article is finding out what you want to demonstrate and doing the preparation work for the article. When it comes to what to demonstrate, the good news is that there are virtually unlimited categories you can consider. The bad news is that you should really know your subject. It does not mean that you must be an expert in that area, though. My advice to you is that you should at least try out the instructions you are going to write and make sure they work. Getting your hands dirty actually has several benefits. For one, you know whether the instructions or tools are correct and/or complete. During that exercise, you may find out additional tips to avoid potential failures. Secondly, you can take pictures along the way to illustrate how things are done. Remember - a picture is worth a thousand words. Here is a good example posted by my daughter.

Once you have done the preparation work, it is time to just enter the information on eHow. The tool they provide focuses only on the article itself and is very simple and straightforward. eHow then takes care of the ads and the affiliated content. For most cases, that appears to be good enough. I have seen others customize the page layout to make the article more appealing and effective, though. Even though eHow accepts articles of any subject now, you still author articles using the same editor for composing a 'how-to' article.

#2 Squidoo
As I mentioned before, Squidoo is not focused on how-to or DIY. You can write about anything you want including on-going events, as long as you believe there is value in your article. An article at Squidoo is called a lens, and the author of a lens is called lensmaster. Squidoo has a ranking system, LensRank, that inspires the lensmaster to do better and more for their lenses. Your new lenses at Squidoo are likely to start out as work-in-progress and at a low rank. Squidoo offers some advices in the health report to make your lens more polished. As you revise your lenses with more useful information and improve them with more interesting modules, their ranks improve. At one point, they will become featured lenses that Squidoo starts to promote and include in search results. So, it is important that you keep on working and revising your lenses, even long after you have created them.

A lens consists of a number of modules. There is a wide variety of modules including the most commonly used - introduction, text/write, and comments modules. The text/write module needs improvement, even though it accepts some basic HTML tags, such as for hyperlinks. The most interesting modules, however, are those related to merchants like Amazon, CafePress, and eBay. For example, the Amazon modules allow you to place Amazon products in your lens and bring in income as a result of affiliate sales. You can configure the Amazon modules to either let Amazon recommend the related products to your subject, or you pick the products best suited for your readers. You can also customize the product presentation.

Squidoo splits the profit of a lens evenly with the lensmaster, after excluding the operation costs.

#3 HubPages
HubPages works in a much similar way to Squidoo. An article is called a hub, while HubPages users are called hubbers. HubPages ask each individual author to sign up affiliate programs with their sponsored merchants (e.g. Amazon and eBay). HubPages states that the author gets 60% of the ad revenue from the hubs.

Although with a slightly different look, the HubPage editor works similarly to Squidoo's. Instead of modules, HubPages calls them "content capsules". At the moment, HubPages only has a small number of capsules available. The text capsule is the best among all three, which offers various fonts and formating capabilities. The support of rich text in the text capsule makes authoring much more productive compared to the others. I find the Amazon and eBay capsules a bit hard to use. For one, the search capability seems to be inflexible and very limited. I have had a hard time getting the list of the products I feel comfortable with. Although I am allowed to hand pick my favorite products, the capsules do not provide adequate look-up functionality.

HubPages assigns HubScore (1 - 100) to each hub upon publication based on a verity of factors. Among the three sites, HubPages sets out many rules to ensure high quality of the hubs. Violation of those rules results in either penalty to the HubScore or removal of the hub. Hubs with HubScore lower than 40 would have lower ranking by the search engine and other negative implications. In addition, HubPages also assign a score for every hub author. You should get yourself familiar with those rules collected in this hub, before joining HubPages. Below are perhaps the two most common violations many hubs have been flagged about:

1. Overly promotional: A hub is considered overly promotional, when including more than two links in the same domain. Exceptions are made, if those links are not "commercial", such as Wikipedia or news sites of good reputation. The hub is also considered overly promotional and may be subjective to removal, if its content is copied from the other original site (e.g. your blog or web site) and the hub contains links to those sites.
2. Duplicated: Copyright violation is definitely prohibited. Even if you have the rights of the content, a hub may still be considered duplicated, if its content is copied from the other original site and found at many other sites.
   

HubPages seems to have got the concept of "group" just right. Groups are used to organize hub pages. In contrast, Squidoo seems to have some struggles with their groups and I haven't had a grasp of how useful they are practically.

A few final words: set a realistic expectation
You may have heard people claim that they have made a significant income off these online publishing sites, which may have motivated you to jump right in. I would remind you that there are no quick bucks or short-cuts to success here. Treat it like a career, if you may. Your success requires both quantity and quality in your writing. Make writing a habit and learning a part of your life, if you wish.

Read this post on eHow (part 1, 2, and 3), HubPages, and Squidoo.

My New Blog - Fishtarian

I just want to give you a quick heads-up on my new blog, Fishtarian - a brainchild of Project BKO. At Fishtarian, I discuss all subjects related to our health. More specifically, I discuss the following topics:

1. A heart-healthy diet that includes or is cooked with fish and vegetables: I discuss nutrition facts of fish and vegetables and how to use them to come up with delicious dishes.
   
2. An active and healthy lifestyle for our wellness: Combined with a healthy diet, regular fitness and an optimistic mindset play a crucial role in bringing us a long lasting and healthy life. I plan to discuss fitness in details and how you can set up your own fitness programs at your own pace. In the end, this is a change in lifestyle.
   
3. Medical studies related to our common health problems, such as, heart attack: New studies are conducted and published everyday. Even today, we do not know all the truths or root causes of lots of health problems we're facing. I plan to keep you posted, as they are released.
   

I refer to people who follow these principals in their daily life as "fishtarian" - combination of fish and vegetarian. I have been a long time fishtarian myself who has received lots of health benefits from those principles. I hope you will benefit from them as well. I look forward to meeting you at Fishtarian!

What Is Mash-up?

If you are familiar with web site development and do not mind getting your hands dirty, there are new tools for you - content mash-up. Mash-up is a technology that allows you to quickly blend existing contents together. The contents blended may come from different sources or your own. The content can be in various forms from raw data, presentational graphics, to pictures. Some of the mash-up tools are sold as traditional packaged software that has to be installed on your computer; others are on-demand and run within your web browser without manual installation. The first and most popular content used for mash-up is perhaps Google Maps. In addition to traditional development tool kits, Google has introduced Mash-up Editor (beta) that does not require much of programming skills. I expect more vendors to follow this trend.

One can use mash-up to target any specific audience or niche market. Real-estate sites, such as, Trulia, mash up Google Maps with lots of valuable features that allow users to quickly locate and view summarized information of a property marked on the map. The other example is Yelp, which is a yellow page that allows users to comment on all kinds of businesses (e.g. restaurants, doctors, and so on). It mashes up both Google Map and directory data together. Clearly, it takes some thought and effort to provide additional value to their customers and make profits either via the incurred transactions or advertisement.

Mash-up can also strengthen your existing sites and bring in traffic at your door step. Do not forget that the site you build has value in itself. If your site attracts lot of traffic, someone may be interested in a partnership or some sort of affiliation, or even purchase the entire site from you. So, the key here is what values you can provide to drive up the traffic.

Do not worry about how you would put together computers and host your web site. There are many companies out there who have done this for their own business and are now eager to share with you the infrastructure they have built. They are willing to do so to improve utilization of their facilities, which in turn brings in a new revenue. This is commonly referred to as cloud. The leaders in this emerging industry include Amazon and Google. They will do all the dirty work for you at a reasonable price. Despite different pricing methodologies, be aware that each of them may impose certain technology limitation. You have to really know what you need and do some serious research, because, once the decision is made, you are likely stuck with it for a long time.

Read this post on HubPages.

How To Shop For Your New PC

[Updated 11/25/08]

I recently purchased a Dell Studio Slim Desktop for only $749 after $195 instant savings for my internet business adventure, and thought it may be worth it to share some ideas with you. After all, a PC is an important asset that you would likely own for at least a couple of years. Hopefully, these ideas will help you choose the PC that fits your needs and save some serious dollars.

1. Understand what you need. You should start this process by asking yourself: What will you do with this PC? What kind of software will you run? Is the software CPU intensive? For example, I plan to use my new PC to work on my art projects that tend to be image and graphics intensive. So, a system with high power for computation and graphics would be desirable. Specifically, Adobe Illustrator runs the best with the graphic card that supports OpenGL 2.0. If you plan to play 3D video games on this PC, you need even more powerful CPUs and a better graphics card. In contrast, if you simply use it for Internet-surfing and writing emails, you may be fine with an entry-level system.
   
2. Desktop or laptop? For the same price, you typically get a more powerful desktop than a laptop. So, do you need to trade power for portability? Also, the desktop tends to have more room for expansion than the laptop, if you ever want to add another disk for storage or even more memory.
   
3. Survey the market. Once you know what you need, you may start looking to see what's available in the current market. I typically start with CNet.com for this exercise, thanks to its well designed filtering capability. You can easily filter down all the PCs to a small number of systems based on price, manufacturer, model, CPU type, and so on. Best of all, you can read comments or recommendations from those who have already used the system.
   
4. Consider a local store. There are pros and cons, when you make your purchase at a local store or on the Internet. Purchasing the PC at a local store allow you to put your hands on the new PC without waiting for the shipment. If possible, I encourage you to go to a nearby store or a discount warehouse and personally try out the system available at the store. You also have the opportunity to ask the staff any questions you have in mind before settling down on a specific model. Lastly, this option helps the local economy.
5. Purchase over the Internet. There are many comparison shopping sites that show you the products of various price offerings from different stores. They do not appear to work well, when it comes to purchasing a PC. I prefer to go to sites such as Deals2Buy or DealUnion and look for best available deals. You may want to follow these sites for a few days to get familiar with those deals, before you decide to jump in. Consider Dell and HP, if you prefer to customize your new PC for specific needs. In fact, I found my PC under the Desktop Deals at Dell's site. Warning: Avoid adding services, software, or hardware to your package, unless you truly need them. Lastly, do not forget to check out what is available on eBay. You may be able to get a great deal, if the specific model of your PC is right on the auction block.
   
6. Timing matters. There tends to be more and better deals as it approaches the holiday season. Black Friday is an excellent opportunity for extra discounts, if you can wait.
   

I hope these ideas are useful. I would not be surprised if there are some new ideas that I am not aware of. Feel free to leave any comments and also, happy shopping to you all.

P.S. For your reference, here is the configuration of my new Dell Studio Slim Desktop for only $749 after $195 instant savings. Note: The basic configuration starts only at $699.

• Intel® Core™ 2 Quad processor Q6600 (8MB L2, 2.4GHz, 1066FSB)
• Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit
• 1Yr Ltd Hardware Warranty, InHome Service after Remote Diagnosis
• 20 inch E207WFP Widescreen Digital Flat Panel – Now Save $50
• 6GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz - 4DIMMs
• 640GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
• 16X DVD+/-RW Drive
• Integrated Intel® GMA X4500HD Graphics
• Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
• Dell Multimedia Keyboard and Premium Optical USB Mouse
• No Modem Option
• My Software & Accessories
• WildTangent Games
• No Speaker Option
• McAfee SecurityCenter with anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, 30-Days
• Microsoft Works 9.0
• My Service - Receive an E-mail for your Dell Remote Access
• Mouse included with Keyboard purchase
• Integrated 10/1000 Ethernet
• Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 9.0 Multi-Language

Read this post on eHow, HubPages, and Squidoo.

Two Weeks Into Project BKO

[Updated 11/15/08]

Today is a day that is worth celebrating. Two weeks into Project BKO, I made my first 42 cents out of my articles at eHow. 42 cents obviously sounds very little, but it means a lot to me.

First of all, it is always encouraging to see the feedback or responses to what I have done. Blogging is a lonely job initially. Hopefully, what I write makes sense and starts getting interactions with my readers.

Secondly, these articles continue to have their long lifespan out there and to produce income over time. I can not predict how much my blogging and writing will produce. (We are going to find out, won't we?) But, I know they are like seeds; you work hard to put them out in the field, take good care of them, and then watch them grow. I think farmers would agree that farming takes love, tenacity, and patience. This is a precious culture with which we want our kids to grow up with, rather than a culture of making quick bucks followed by reckless spending.

Lastly, Project BKO is now an official AdSense publisher to provide you with useful and related sponsored content in addition to my posts.

How To Tell Your Kids About The Financial Crisis

[Updated 11/18/08]

The whole world is suffering the greatest financial crisis in decades, if not centuries. We have seen tumbles in the stock market, foreclosed homes, and increasing job losses in the recent months. The consumer confidence level is at its all-time low. There is no sign as to whether the economy has reached its bottom, even though the government has announced the biggest rescue plan in history, which will cost taxpayers $700 billion.

Who is going to pay for the $700 billion?
Everyone of us is. So are your kids ... and their next generation. As parents, we have the responsibility to explain to our kids what happens and how it happens, so they do not grow up just to find that their "American Dream" is a bunch of empty promises.

Where to start, though?
It is hard to figure out where to start to explain a mess of this magnitude. Looking at my two kids, I started with sharing some of my observations of their behaviors at home. For example, my 11 year old daughter insisted that she must have the same amount of ice cream as my 14 year old son to be fair. But, when it came to meals, she wanted less. That's fair according to her, because she is younger and shorter compared to her brother.

OK. Let me go back to the original subject and look at what seems to be the tipping point of this domino effect - sub-prime mortgages. In the simplified story of sub-prime mortgage, two groups of people are directly involved: the banks who make loans for profit and the sub-prime borrowers who need money, but do not have good credit scores. Both of my kids have no difficulty understanding that a bank would prefer to lend money to borrowers with good credit, because it is less risky. So, why would the banks want to sell many sub-prime mortgages to people who do not have good credit?

First of all, the banks, in order to make even more money, have to look for customers beyond the normal caliber - people with good credit scores. Secondly, the banks calculated that, even if the house ended up foreclosed, they could still sell the house for profit - assuming that the housing prices kept going up as they had been.

On the other hand, sub-prime borrowers fell into the traps of low initial interest rates of sub-prime mortgages and were under the illusion that they could afford the homes even with no money down. They also calculated that they could sell their house and still make a profit, should they have difficulty to pay the mortgage years later - again assuming that the housing prices kept going up as they had been.

Well ... The housing market started turning sour during the course of 2006. Both the banks and the sub-prime borrowers are suffering now, because they made the wrong bets.

Greed - everyone's worst enemy
When asked what is common and shared between the two scenarios, both of my kids slowly replied: "Greed?" They re right on the target. It is greed that makes my younger daughter to ask for more of what she likes and less of what she dislikes. It is greed that makes banks to lend more than what they are supposed to and sub-prime borrowers to borrow more than what they can pay off. It is greed that makes not only banks and sub-prime borrowers take irresponsible actions, but also many others including the speculators in the oil and commodity markets. All these end up causing the worst financial crisis in history.

The hard lesson
Our kids and future generations are innocent. But, they do not have a choice but to accept the $700 billion rescue package that is supposed to clean up the financial mess we have created. Hopefully, we all learn a painful lesson: All of us have to manage our greed and be more responsible ... to be fair to our kids and our future generations.

Read this post on eHow, HubPages, and Squidoo.

Teaching Your Kids Family Values

[Updated 11/23/08]

Family values describe the principles members of a family practice and live by. Values vary in each family, depending on its cultural roots and background. As young members arrive and grow in a family, their concept formation and behaviors are naturally influenced by their parents as well as one's family values. Even so, it is necessary to constantly remind your young children of the principles and the values you believe in. How would you do that? I'll share with you some of the mechanisms my wife and I used and still use in raising our two kids, now at 11 and 14.

#1 Spending time alone with each of your kids
Many kids do not care about what their parents tell them to do or not to do. They have totally different thoughts - something their parents do not understand, either. I have found that communication with kids is perhaps the basic foundation of parenting and that communication must be conducted at personal level. I have personally spent lot of my time with each of my kids privately. We talk about all kinds of things from what they did at school that day to why the world has become "flat." I also take opportunities to discuss articles I find interesting in the newspaper or magazines. The more time you spend with your kid(s), the stronger bond you will have with him or her. To me, this is the most important practice, that I want to show my love of my children through connection and understanding.

#2 Set clear expectations
It is very common that new students make more mistakes or violate more rules in class. It is not because they are not as good as the other students who have been around, but because they do not know the expectations of their teacher. That is why experienced teachers spend the first day of school telling their students about the effort and behavior expected in class. In elementary schools, the most common way the teacher does this to write down the class rules and maintain a behavior chart for tracking purposes. In my family, all four of us have agreed on a set of rules that we would like every family member to follow. We call these rules our "Family Laws" that reflect our family values. In making our family laws, we discuss and explain to our kids the concerns as well as reasons. The rules will be more effective if we have buy in from our kids. While practicing our family laws, we maintain a chart on our refrigerator that shows the accumulated points rewarded by following the rules. Of course, there are penalties stated in our laws when the rules are broken. We also review our rules every quarter to address the needs.

#3 Reward points or celebrations instead of cash
Many kids do not have a good understanding of money. Needless to say, they do not know how to manage it. My wife and I prefer not to give our kids money, until they have a better grasp on the concept. We taught them the concepts of liabilities vs. assets and saving vs. spending. We discussed why Americans are perceived as reckless spenders with a personal savings rate of 0.7% of their income (as of October 2008 in contrast to 25% in China.) That is why we choose points over cash for rewarding good behaviors or accomplishments. (It is the opposite of the rewards that you expect from your credit cards, though.) We also celebrate almost every week about anything, such as, being a good helper, being a good citizen according to our family laws, or getting a complimentary comment from the teacher. We prefer to recognize a good effort they make, even if it is tiny, rather than having a huge birthday party.

#4 Be a good role model
Our family laws are for all members in our family, not only for the kids. Parents earn respect from their kids by following and not violating the same rules. Kids not only inherit genes from their parents, but also mimic their behaviors. If you do not want your kids to smoke, quit smoking yourself.

#5 Play by rules not emotions
One purpose of our family laws is to teach our kids to handle things by law, not by emotion. Many parents get upset by nature, when their kids make a mistake or conduct bad behaviors. The problem with that is sometimes kids get too many penalties or too little depending on how upset their parents are at the time. That is both unfair and confusing to the kids. That is not the way our society works, either. Both prosecutors and judges must abide by the law regardless of their personal feelings towards the defendant or the case being handled.

#6 Start early
It is much easier to correct a behavior before it becomes a habit. Whatever principles you want to follow in teaching your kids, it is always more effective to start earlier than later. All of the ideas I have discussed in this post can be practiced in many different ways according to the maturity of your kids. Even though babies are not able to speak, you will be surprised that they do sense or feel differences from various responses of their parents.

Summary
There is no end when it comes to educating our kids. There is always room to learn more and improve. I hope you found these ideas useful. Before you try any of them, keep in mind that every kid is unique. You may have to apply the ideas to accommodate uniqueness of your kids. Lastly, do not forget your love with your kids is the foundation of all these ideas.

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