I did a little bookmark scrub this morning and thought I would share the remaining content of my "Online Money" folder. To warn you, there are certain things that I don't like and never bookmark so:
What's NOT included: Taking Surveys, Get Paid to Surf the Internet, MLM, Programs with a ton of negative user experiences (based on researching forums, Googling them, etc.), Contest Sites, "Buy my DVD, CD, Audiobook", etc.
What IS included: Things you can use to legitimately make money online - Everything from Getting Paid to review software to good ole' Adsense.
Anyway, here you go. The second batch is is available here.
* Adbrite - Sell space on your site for text ads
* Amazon Affiliate Program - Easily create a store or shopping section on your site instead of sending your visitors to Amazon. Amazon handles the shopping cart and fulfillment.
* Amazon Seller - Sell your stuff on Amazon
* Associated Content - If you write a story, how-to, rant, etc. you can submit it to them and they will pay you $3-$20 per article if they like it
* Azoogleads - Another ad program. They do have some decent companies lined up as advertisers. You provide space, they'll provide an ad.
* BidVertiser - PPC (pay per click) program with a low $10 payout amount.
* Bravenet - These guys offer a ton of services for webmasters and blog owners. Although I feel like I was spammed for a while, it has ceased and they'll pay you $1 for each person you send over
* Blog - Start a blog and consistently write excellent content. With good ad placement, you may make some money.
* Business Opportunities Blog - I am adding this because I am a subscriber to their site and I see ideas everyday that could result in making money. A lot of the ideas pertain to online businesses. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, it's a good reference.
* Cafepress - You provide a design, they'll toss it on a T-Shirt, Hat, etc. No upfront costs. Get a free online shop and promote your products on your website.
* Chitika - Their eMiniMalls service has shown great results for many Bloggers and site owners. You choose a keyword and they show relevant products on your site using a pretty unique interface.
* Clickbank - Another Affiliate Program site with 10,000+ products to advertise
* ClicknWork - Get paid $5-$150 per hour for basically doing freelance work on a per-assignment basis. You have to pass a pretty tough test to get in.
* Clicksor - These are the guys that generate contextual ads on sites that show up when you hover over a double-underlined word.
* Commission Junction - If you have a site, you can join Commission Junction. Once enrolled for free, you can choose companies whose ads are pertinent to your site. Companies have the ultimate say on working with you. There are easily over 1,000 companies to choose from here.
* CreamAid - For blogs only, advertisers provide you with a topic and you write about it on your site. To do this, you have to install a flash widget into your blog post. The more people you bring into the conversation through the widget, the more you get paid. It's difficult to explain.
* eefoof - Think of it as YouTube + Flickr + Music. You add original content and they pay you based on the visitors you attract.
* Ether - If you are an expert on something, Ether provides a way for people to pay you to talk about it in a one-on-one setting. If you want to charge $250/hr, that's fine. You have to do all the advertising so you should have a blog or site already established.
* eBay - Come on, you know what this is. Gather your junk and sell it!
* eBay Stores - If you have a real store and want to sell your stuff online, this is a decent option to get you started.
* ELance - Name gives it away. Programmers, Codes, Web Designers, Writers, Editors, can look for freelance opportunities.
* Feedvertising - This is an arm of Text Link Ads and is currently only good for Wordpress 2.0 Users. This does me no good currently, but as you can guess, they place ads in your feed(s).
* Feedburner - Not only are they the best place to house your feeds, they will also add ads to your feed and website. You get paid per impression.
* Google Adsense - Come on, you don't need an explanation. These ads are all over the place. Google displays relevant ads based on your site's content
* Google Adwords - Create simple text ads and choose keywords that determine when they are displayed. This is where the Adsense Content comes from. You do not need a site for this.
* SHUT DOWN Google Answers - If you are good, Google will pay you to answer questions in your specialty. Questions all come from normal people like you and me. You can get paid $2.50+ per answer you provide.
* H3.com - Get paid to fill jobs. Commissions range from $50-$5,000. It all depends on how tough the job is to fill and how desperate the hiring company is. This is another one that's tough to explain.
* Indeed.com - Add their job board to your site. They then post jobs based on the geographic location of visitors and the position types you pre-select. I tried it and I they continually report that I sent 0 visitors and I know that's not right. Nevertheless, I may have an isolated problem so they make the list.
* InnerSell - If you have a customer that wants to buy something you cannot sell, you can sell the lead here.
* Jellyfish - This is a shopping site that pays you a percentage of the purchases made by people you refer. They are not part of a wider affiliate program so you do it direct.
* Jigsaw - It's a pretty flaky model but if you have a Rolodex full of good contacts, you can sell them here. I can't make sense of it but it looks like you get $0.10 per profile.
* KarmaOne - They are basically a recruiting website. If you fill one of their jobs by finding a good candidate, you'll get paid anywhere from $50-$12,000. It all depends on how desperate the hiring company is.
* LinkShare.com - If you have a site, you can join Linkshare. Once enrolled for free, you can choose companies whose ads are pertinent to your site. Companies have the ultimate say on working with you. Like Commission Junction, there are a ton of companies waiting to evaluate your site.
* Microsoft Adcenter - Bid on keywords and Microsoft places your created ads then they are searched for. This is similar to Google Adwords. You do not need a site for this.
* Overstock.com - Sell your stuff on Overstock.com
* Pageflakes - This is a company that developed a user-defined Ajax homepage to show feeds, flickr photos, and a ton of other things. Think of it as a replacement for your Google Homepage. Anyway - they'll pay you $1 per referral that you send over. They are not part of a wider affiliate program so you do it direct. This one is pretty simple.
* Pay Per Post - I don't agree with this model entirely but they have advertisers that will pay you to write about their products on your blog.
* Pheedo - If you have an RSS feed, run it through Pheedo. Like Feedburner, they can include ads into your feed and if you really become large, advertisers will pay a premium for you to show their ads.
* Shareasale.com - I've never really worked with them but I do have an account. They are similar to Commission Junction and Linkshare however they seem to have lower tiered companies with advertising offers.
* Shoemoney - This is a blog that can teach you a ton on making money online. I've spent hours reading his old stuff.
* Software Judge - They will pay you up to $50 to review software.
* Text Link Ads - I have never made a dime here but I know people that have. You can earn by sending advertisers to them or by selling spots on your site. You must have a real site or blog to do this - nothing on a shared domain (i.e. /blogspot).
* Vibrant Media - Don't bother unless your site has 500,000 page views of text based content a month. If you have that readership, these are the guys that display bubble box ads to underlined words on your site.
* West Work At Home Agent - Not entirely online but this is worth a mention because it's won awards and is very legitimate. If you are an at-home Mom or free-lancer without work, you should check this out.
* Yahoo Publisher Network- This is the Yahoo version of Google Adsense.
Monday, March 24, 2008
How To Get Traffic To Your Blog And Make Money With It
Everyone wants to make money with their own blog today. It usually starts with creating your own blog on Blogger and putting up some Adsense ads.
The real problem is that not everyone knows how to drive traffic to their blog to make it profitable.
I would like to give you some tips and tricks on how you can drive traffic to your blog and get it into search engines
Once you create your blog using Blogger.com you should edit the template you selected for your theme. You will need to add description and keywords meta tags first.
To accomplish that simply click on your template tab in your main Blogger account and add the meta tags right below your title tag.
If you don't know how to generate meta tags please visit: addme
Next, I would suggest you to get an account at feedburner.com to create your feed. Go to feedburner
Optimize your feed at feedburner so it only displays about first 150 characters of each post. I do this to minimize the risk of duplicate content. So each time you make a post only a part of that post will be displayed on your feedburner page.
Next, link to your feedburner page from your blog to make it visible to search engine spiders and get it indexed. This will give you backlinks to each new post you make.
Now you should add some feed subscription buttons on your blog, so people can bookmark it and add it to their feed readers.
I found a great feed subscription button maker at Twister MC
Simply fill out their form and generate the html code to place in your blog template code. I would insert it into your sidebar section of your blog.
Next, add your own blog to your personalized Google home page, My Yahoo, and My MSN. This will get the search engine spiders to revisit.
Create an account at Technorati and add your blog to your favorites.
You will now need a lot of backlinks which can be easily done by writing a few articles and tagging all your blog posts. Write an article that is relevant to your blog niche and submit it to major article directories for distribution. I would suggest using isnare.com
You could also write a press release using prwebdirect.com and use the paid option to get some decent exposure and lots of backlinks.
Make sure your blog is somehow optimized for search engine rankings. Add your main keywords in your blog title and description. If you decide to exchange links with other webmasters make sure to use anchor text in your links.
Now simply keep up with updating your blog frequently and you should start seeing some great results as far as traffic.
The real power of this process is in duplication. If you can duplicate this process many times over you could earn a substantial amount of money every month.
It would require you to hire people to post in your blogs which falls into another topic called outsourcing.
The real problem is that not everyone knows how to drive traffic to their blog to make it profitable.
I would like to give you some tips and tricks on how you can drive traffic to your blog and get it into search engines
Once you create your blog using Blogger.com you should edit the template you selected for your theme. You will need to add description and keywords meta tags first.
To accomplish that simply click on your template tab in your main Blogger account and add the meta tags right below your title tag.
If you don't know how to generate meta tags please visit: addme
Next, I would suggest you to get an account at feedburner.com to create your feed. Go to feedburner
Optimize your feed at feedburner so it only displays about first 150 characters of each post. I do this to minimize the risk of duplicate content. So each time you make a post only a part of that post will be displayed on your feedburner page.
Next, link to your feedburner page from your blog to make it visible to search engine spiders and get it indexed. This will give you backlinks to each new post you make.
Now you should add some feed subscription buttons on your blog, so people can bookmark it and add it to their feed readers.
I found a great feed subscription button maker at Twister MC
Simply fill out their form and generate the html code to place in your blog template code. I would insert it into your sidebar section of your blog.
Next, add your own blog to your personalized Google home page, My Yahoo, and My MSN. This will get the search engine spiders to revisit.
Create an account at Technorati and add your blog to your favorites.
You will now need a lot of backlinks which can be easily done by writing a few articles and tagging all your blog posts. Write an article that is relevant to your blog niche and submit it to major article directories for distribution. I would suggest using isnare.com
You could also write a press release using prwebdirect.com and use the paid option to get some decent exposure and lots of backlinks.
Make sure your blog is somehow optimized for search engine rankings. Add your main keywords in your blog title and description. If you decide to exchange links with other webmasters make sure to use anchor text in your links.
Now simply keep up with updating your blog frequently and you should start seeing some great results as far as traffic.
The real power of this process is in duplication. If you can duplicate this process many times over you could earn a substantial amount of money every month.
It would require you to hire people to post in your blogs which falls into another topic called outsourcing.
How To Make Money With Blogs
If you're a newbie with a burning desire of learning more about making money with your blog, pay close attention.
NOTE: believe it or not, making money with your blog is free. Yes, making money with your blog does not require you to buy domain names nor order web hosting to host web sites.
While making money with your blog is not easy, it's free and requires you take into consideration some suggestions and apply a few quick tips.
This article reveals little-known secrets about making money with your blog, secrets that just a few people know.
Want to join the elite of top blog earners?
Here are the nitty-gritty tips on how to make money with blogs.
First of all, you need to visit Blogger and set-up your free account. The steps are easy:
1. You create a blogger account
2. You name your blog
3. You chose a blog template
Secondly, you are going to decide on how you want to monetize your blog. If you don't have your own product (I highly recommend you create one as soon as possible), you should go about picking one, two or three top affiliate products (or services).
These affiliate products or services need to be 100% related to your blog theme (niche audience) if you want to get maximum results from your promotions.
HINT: you get to generate more affiliate sales if the affiliate product you recommend is highly targeted to a specific audience. In fact, the success rate of closing the sale depends on how precise you can target your market.
One of the best affiliate program directories can be found at Associate Programs
Here you get free access to thousands of pages of affiliate programs, useful tips, money-making articles, researched recommendations, and a helpful affiliate forum.
Besides affiliate programs you can also monetize your blog by applying for Google AdSense Program.
You can get full info about this service here:
Google AdSense
The beauty of this program is that you get paid a percentage every time someone clicks on an AdSense ad from your blog.
Making money with affiliate programs require you to actively promote the affiliate product and you only get paid when you generate a real sale, and not just a click.
AdSense is the lazy way to making money with your blog.
After you decide which income stream you want to go after (I suggest you go with both affiliate products and Google AdSense) you need to take into consideration this...
Final tip - regardless your blog theme, if you want to make real money with blogs, you should copycat top blog experts into your field.
You need to spy on your competitors and find out how and why they are successful.
Try to contact them and ask them to share with you some tips about building a successful money-making blog. Most will gladly help you with some quick tips.
You'll never know when that secret tip will make you a top blog earner and well known expert into your field.
It's not that hard to find blog expert or spy on your competition. In fact, here's how you can quickly and easily find blog competitors:
1. go to Google
2. type into the search bar "your niche topic" + "blog"
e.g. "dog training" + "blog" or "acne treatment" + "blog"
I'm sure you get the picture. Once you find some listings go and browse the related Web Sites that fits your blog theme.
Make a list with top 10 blogs that you'd want to model.
3. Contact each owner of those 10 blogs and ask for help.
You don't have to be shy. Ask any question that comes into your mind. Ask your most burning questions. I highly suggest that you do not ask more than 3 quick questions.
Most people don't have time to write long e-mails. You'd want to keep your first e-mail quick and to the point.
In conclusion, if you put these quick blog money-making tips into practice, you too can become a top blog earner. That's the only way to do it. Take action now!
NOTE: believe it or not, making money with your blog is free. Yes, making money with your blog does not require you to buy domain names nor order web hosting to host web sites.
While making money with your blog is not easy, it's free and requires you take into consideration some suggestions and apply a few quick tips.
This article reveals little-known secrets about making money with your blog, secrets that just a few people know.
Want to join the elite of top blog earners?
Here are the nitty-gritty tips on how to make money with blogs.
First of all, you need to visit Blogger and set-up your free account. The steps are easy:
1. You create a blogger account
2. You name your blog
3. You chose a blog template
Secondly, you are going to decide on how you want to monetize your blog. If you don't have your own product (I highly recommend you create one as soon as possible), you should go about picking one, two or three top affiliate products (or services).
These affiliate products or services need to be 100% related to your blog theme (niche audience) if you want to get maximum results from your promotions.
HINT: you get to generate more affiliate sales if the affiliate product you recommend is highly targeted to a specific audience. In fact, the success rate of closing the sale depends on how precise you can target your market.
One of the best affiliate program directories can be found at Associate Programs
Here you get free access to thousands of pages of affiliate programs, useful tips, money-making articles, researched recommendations, and a helpful affiliate forum.
Besides affiliate programs you can also monetize your blog by applying for Google AdSense Program.
You can get full info about this service here:
Google AdSense
The beauty of this program is that you get paid a percentage every time someone clicks on an AdSense ad from your blog.
Making money with affiliate programs require you to actively promote the affiliate product and you only get paid when you generate a real sale, and not just a click.
AdSense is the lazy way to making money with your blog.
After you decide which income stream you want to go after (I suggest you go with both affiliate products and Google AdSense) you need to take into consideration this...
Final tip - regardless your blog theme, if you want to make real money with blogs, you should copycat top blog experts into your field.
You need to spy on your competitors and find out how and why they are successful.
Try to contact them and ask them to share with you some tips about building a successful money-making blog. Most will gladly help you with some quick tips.
You'll never know when that secret tip will make you a top blog earner and well known expert into your field.
It's not that hard to find blog expert or spy on your competition. In fact, here's how you can quickly and easily find blog competitors:
1. go to Google
2. type into the search bar "your niche topic" + "blog"
e.g. "dog training" + "blog" or "acne treatment" + "blog"
I'm sure you get the picture. Once you find some listings go and browse the related Web Sites that fits your blog theme.
Make a list with top 10 blogs that you'd want to model.
3. Contact each owner of those 10 blogs and ask for help.
You don't have to be shy. Ask any question that comes into your mind. Ask your most burning questions. I highly suggest that you do not ask more than 3 quick questions.
Most people don't have time to write long e-mails. You'd want to keep your first e-mail quick and to the point.
In conclusion, if you put these quick blog money-making tips into practice, you too can become a top blog earner. That's the only way to do it. Take action now!
5 Tips To Use Search Keywords Of Internet Business Ideas In Headline And Among 100 First Words
Despite of the fact that SEO is important for the efficiency of your internet business ideas, the article must always be written to the reader. It is an art to include the search keywords into the copy in the natural way. You can bookmark this page, press Ctrl+D .
1. Do The Search Keywords Research For The Internet Business Ideas With Care The internet is an information highway. People are searching things from search engines by using search keywords. The more specific or niche the search keywords are, the more relevant are the search results. This is important for the internet business ideas web site and makes it look more special.
The search keywords are the tools to find new markets from the internet and the number of good relevant keywords is practically limitless.
An article needs from 2 to 3 relevant search keywords, which can be picked by some the most respected tool online.
2.Do Not Slaughter The Innocent Copy. You sell the business ideas to the web site visitor, not to the search engines. The most important job of the copy is that the reader gets the feeling that this is for me, this is what I searched. So the search keywords must be included naturally and that requires that a writer has picked them before he has started to write.
On the other hand, the search keywords are important, because those are exactly what the reader has used in his search and they make the reader convinced that the copy is exactly from the topic.
3.Target The Long Tail Search Keywords. The long tail keywords are phrases, which are built with from 3 to 4 words. With the long tail search keywords the article of the business ideas can be targeted to the very narrow and relevant target audience, actually to many, because one keyphrase will include several keywords or -phrases.
According to the many researches, the long-tail search keywords will convert better and rank better in the search engines.
4.Add Some Useful Hyperlinks. The role of hyperlinks in the internet business ideas article is not to sell but to offer more information or, for instance, a practical tool related to the topic.
5.Distribute The Articles Widely And Measure The Results. The marketing of internet business ideas is a numbers game and the wider is the distribution, the better are the results. The simple and affordable method is to use ArticleMarketer, which distributes articles to the widest distribution list online.
It is very interesting and useful to measure the number of hits and visitors of each internet business ideas article. This happens by adding a small code from some of the free tracking services on each article.
1. Do The Search Keywords Research For The Internet Business Ideas With Care The internet is an information highway. People are searching things from search engines by using search keywords. The more specific or niche the search keywords are, the more relevant are the search results. This is important for the internet business ideas web site and makes it look more special.
The search keywords are the tools to find new markets from the internet and the number of good relevant keywords is practically limitless.
An article needs from 2 to 3 relevant search keywords, which can be picked by some the most respected tool online.
2.Do Not Slaughter The Innocent Copy. You sell the business ideas to the web site visitor, not to the search engines. The most important job of the copy is that the reader gets the feeling that this is for me, this is what I searched. So the search keywords must be included naturally and that requires that a writer has picked them before he has started to write.
On the other hand, the search keywords are important, because those are exactly what the reader has used in his search and they make the reader convinced that the copy is exactly from the topic.
3.Target The Long Tail Search Keywords. The long tail keywords are phrases, which are built with from 3 to 4 words. With the long tail search keywords the article of the business ideas can be targeted to the very narrow and relevant target audience, actually to many, because one keyphrase will include several keywords or -phrases.
According to the many researches, the long-tail search keywords will convert better and rank better in the search engines.
4.Add Some Useful Hyperlinks. The role of hyperlinks in the internet business ideas article is not to sell but to offer more information or, for instance, a practical tool related to the topic.
5.Distribute The Articles Widely And Measure The Results. The marketing of internet business ideas is a numbers game and the wider is the distribution, the better are the results. The simple and affordable method is to use ArticleMarketer, which distributes articles to the widest distribution list online.
It is very interesting and useful to measure the number of hits and visitors of each internet business ideas article. This happens by adding a small code from some of the free tracking services on each article.
George Pluss' 3 Methods of Earning Without a Website
Are you interested in learning 3 methods for earning m.oney online which are open to you even if you do NOT have your own website or list?
I just bought a great little package from George Pluss for UNDER $1!!!!!
Here's what I found in it:
$700 in 7 - How to make $700 in 7 days (not brilliant but could be useful)
Effectively Promote With Articles - a GREAT 7 page report by Josh Spaulding who is a Seargent in the U.S. army. He does marketing through article writing after 6:00 pm and makes nice income doing it. The report is excellent and is worth purchasing the entire package for!
Yahoo Cash - The author describes how she made a few hundred dollars in 30 days using only Yahoo! Answers. If you are interested in learning techniques (including black hat) for doing this - grab this report.
Zero to Fifty in 30 Days - Peter Tremayne wrote an unremarkable but solid and comprehensive guide for the newbie about how to make $50 a day in internet marketing. This book does involve the "standard" methods including product, squeeze page and autoresponder.
All in all, this package is worth WAY MORE than the 20 cents (can you believe it?) that I paid for it.
I must say in all honesty that I LOVE the packages that George Pluss puts together. He charges super ridiculous prices for good stuff.
So, if you are interested in learning some methods which do NOT require you to have your own website or list run over and grab this package while the price is still under a dollar (and even if it's above a dollar it's worth it, in my opinion!)
I just bought a great little package from George Pluss for UNDER $1!!!!!
Here's what I found in it:
$700 in 7 - How to make $700 in 7 days (not brilliant but could be useful)
Effectively Promote With Articles - a GREAT 7 page report by Josh Spaulding who is a Seargent in the U.S. army. He does marketing through article writing after 6:00 pm and makes nice income doing it. The report is excellent and is worth purchasing the entire package for!
Yahoo Cash - The author describes how she made a few hundred dollars in 30 days using only Yahoo! Answers. If you are interested in learning techniques (including black hat) for doing this - grab this report.
Zero to Fifty in 30 Days - Peter Tremayne wrote an unremarkable but solid and comprehensive guide for the newbie about how to make $50 a day in internet marketing. This book does involve the "standard" methods including product, squeeze page and autoresponder.
All in all, this package is worth WAY MORE than the 20 cents (can you believe it?) that I paid for it.
I must say in all honesty that I LOVE the packages that George Pluss puts together. He charges super ridiculous prices for good stuff.
So, if you are interested in learning some methods which do NOT require you to have your own website or list run over and grab this package while the price is still under a dollar (and even if it's above a dollar it's worth it, in my opinion!)
SMARTS, Mass Control and $50 a Day
Stompernet's SMARTS, Frank Kern's Mass Control - hooeeeee. We're talking big money launches! One thing they both have in common is that they both made sure to release a bunch of really good quality, FREE videos (a la Eben Pagan) which provided tons of valuable information before they launched.
As a matter of fact, although Mass Control sold out already, I received a mail today saying that they will be re-opening on Sunday for a short time in case anyone still wants in (at about $2,000...)
Even if you can't afford to get it, you have to go on over to Frank Kern's blog, Mass Control Site and watch the free videos. They're perfect for newbies and are very informative. Frank has a very friendly and unpretentious style that appeals to me. Worth watching.
Now over to something completely different.
I got my hands on a book called 50 Bucks a Day by Daniel McGonagle. Usually I don't even open up all my mails on a Saturday night because my inbox is so full. I usually just delete everything. But, Daniel usually sends out high quality stuff and he doesn't bombard my inbox. So, I purchased it from him for $7 and I must say I learned something that I would not have thought of. It's a short report which teaches you in 14 pages (10, actually), how to make about $50 a day online without using Affiliate marketing, Adwords or Surveys. I haven't tried it yet but I can see how it would work. You do have to put work into it but, hey, we all know there is no such thing as a free lunch! Have a look at the under-one-minute video about it here.
As a matter of fact, although Mass Control sold out already, I received a mail today saying that they will be re-opening on Sunday for a short time in case anyone still wants in (at about $2,000...)
Even if you can't afford to get it, you have to go on over to Frank Kern's blog, Mass Control Site and watch the free videos. They're perfect for newbies and are very informative. Frank has a very friendly and unpretentious style that appeals to me. Worth watching.
Now over to something completely different.
I got my hands on a book called 50 Bucks a Day by Daniel McGonagle. Usually I don't even open up all my mails on a Saturday night because my inbox is so full. I usually just delete everything. But, Daniel usually sends out high quality stuff and he doesn't bombard my inbox. So, I purchased it from him for $7 and I must say I learned something that I would not have thought of. It's a short report which teaches you in 14 pages (10, actually), how to make about $50 a day online without using Affiliate marketing, Adwords or Surveys. I haven't tried it yet but I can see how it would work. You do have to put work into it but, hey, we all know there is no such thing as a free lunch! Have a look at the under-one-minute video about it here.
20 Ways to $100 a Day - Product Review
By now you have probably heard about the new 247 page report, 20 Ways To $100 A Day. I was fortunate enough to get a copy of this as soon as it came out. What I am going to do is review it for you so that you don't have to wonder if it's any good or not. I will say right off the top, there is both good and bad to this report. You will need to decide if the good outweighs the bad. I can't make that decision for you. I can only give you the facts and my opinion.
Okay, here are the facts as briefly as possible, which is hard to do when you're dealing with a 247 page report.
The report is not written by one person, so you don't have to worry that this is from the biased viewpoint of a single individual. The report has been put together by a number of people, some of them just regular folks like you and me, not big name marketers. Each person tells, in detail, how they go about making $100 per day minimum and in many cases a lot more.
Some of the people in this book, like Dr Mani, I know personally. So I can vouch for their integrity. Some of the people, I do not know, however know their methods and can vouch for the methods themselves. The person who put this book together (Willie Crawford) is also a very respected marketer, so I can vouch for his character.
Okay, let me get to the pros and cons of this book.
Pros -
Each method is laid out step by step. Some of the steps aren't as detailed, which is understandable when you're trying to include so much info. Any more detail in this book and 247 pages would have been 1247 pages. Nobody would read it.
There are many types of plans as far as time frame. There are plans for immediate cash, which will appeal to many folks, and there are plans that are more long range where you will make your $100 a day, but it will take some time to get there. But most of these plans will actually yield much more money.
There is something in this book for everybody. It covers both software creation and sales, info product sales, Ebay, greeting cards and things I would never have thought of. If you can't find something in this book that strikes a chord then you're just not trying.
Cons -
There is no focus on what may be the most important part of all of this, and that's advertising methods. Now, the good news is that if you have Steven Wagenheim's Honest Income Program (reviewed on this blog here), then you have info on advertising methods, which is quite extensive. So just apply them to these money making efforts and you'll be fine. Just don't expect any great advertising tips in here. That's not what this book is about. It's about ways to make $100 a day, fairly easily, and there are 20 of them.
Finally, there is no push button method in this book. Additionally, all of these methods take a lot of work. So if you're looking for easy money where you don't have to do a thing, then this book is going to disappoint you. There is no easy way to make money online. It takes work, and this book is no exception.
Overall
On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best, I give this book an 8.
It's not a "Bible" for an absolute beginner because it leaves stuff out. On the other hand, it does a really good job of giving you the "big picture" and presenting you with different ideas about how to go about making money on the net. Once you choose a method you will probably have to read up more on this method in order to fully implement it. If you've been in IM for a while this book is a great supplement. And for $27 it's a joke not to buy it.
Check it out. 20 Ways to $100 a Day.
Okay, here are the facts as briefly as possible, which is hard to do when you're dealing with a 247 page report.
The report is not written by one person, so you don't have to worry that this is from the biased viewpoint of a single individual. The report has been put together by a number of people, some of them just regular folks like you and me, not big name marketers. Each person tells, in detail, how they go about making $100 per day minimum and in many cases a lot more.
Some of the people in this book, like Dr Mani, I know personally. So I can vouch for their integrity. Some of the people, I do not know, however know their methods and can vouch for the methods themselves. The person who put this book together (Willie Crawford) is also a very respected marketer, so I can vouch for his character.
Okay, let me get to the pros and cons of this book.
Pros -
Each method is laid out step by step. Some of the steps aren't as detailed, which is understandable when you're trying to include so much info. Any more detail in this book and 247 pages would have been 1247 pages. Nobody would read it.
There are many types of plans as far as time frame. There are plans for immediate cash, which will appeal to many folks, and there are plans that are more long range where you will make your $100 a day, but it will take some time to get there. But most of these plans will actually yield much more money.
There is something in this book for everybody. It covers both software creation and sales, info product sales, Ebay, greeting cards and things I would never have thought of. If you can't find something in this book that strikes a chord then you're just not trying.
Cons -
There is no focus on what may be the most important part of all of this, and that's advertising methods. Now, the good news is that if you have Steven Wagenheim's Honest Income Program (reviewed on this blog here), then you have info on advertising methods, which is quite extensive. So just apply them to these money making efforts and you'll be fine. Just don't expect any great advertising tips in here. That's not what this book is about. It's about ways to make $100 a day, fairly easily, and there are 20 of them.
Finally, there is no push button method in this book. Additionally, all of these methods take a lot of work. So if you're looking for easy money where you don't have to do a thing, then this book is going to disappoint you. There is no easy way to make money online. It takes work, and this book is no exception.
Overall
On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best, I give this book an 8.
It's not a "Bible" for an absolute beginner because it leaves stuff out. On the other hand, it does a really good job of giving you the "big picture" and presenting you with different ideas about how to go about making money on the net. Once you choose a method you will probably have to read up more on this method in order to fully implement it. If you've been in IM for a while this book is a great supplement. And for $27 it's a joke not to buy it.
Check it out. 20 Ways to $100 a Day.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Foreign Exchange Markets
The main participants of a foreign exchange market are:
* Commercial banks
* Exchange markets
* Central banks
* Firms that conduct foreign trade transactions
* Investment funds
* Broker companies
* Private persons
Commercial banks conduct the main volume of exchange transactions. Other participants of the market have their accounts at the banks, conducting necessary conversion transactions. Banks accumulate (through transactions with the clients) the combined needs of the market in exchange conversions as well as in calling and distributing money, breaking with it into new banks. Besides satisfying clients' requests, banks can operate independently, using their own assets. In the end, a foreign exchange market is a market of interbank dealings, and when speaking about the exchange rates movement, one should bear in mind the existence of an interbank foreign exchange market. In international foreign exchange markets, international banks with the daily volume of transactions of billions dollars have the biggest influence. These are Barclays Bank, Citibank, Chase Manhatten Bank, Deutsche Bank, Swiss Bank Corporation, Union Bank of Switzerland, etc.
Exchange markets Contrary to stock markets and markets for terminal exchange dealings, exchange markets do not work in a definite building and they do not have definite business hours. Thanks to the development of telecommunications most of the leading financial institutions of the world use services of exchange markets directly and via mediators 24 hours a day. The biggest international exchange markets are the London, New York and Tokyo exchange markets. In some countries with transitional economies there are exchange markets for currency exchange by juristic persons and for forming a market exchange rate. The state usually regulates the exchange rate in an active manner, using the compactness of the exchange market.
Central banks control currency reserves, realize interventions that influence the exchange rate, and regulate the interest investment rate in the national currency. The central bank of the United States, the US Federal Reserve Bank, or "FED", has the greatest influence in the international exchange markets. It is followed by the central banks of Germany, (the Deutsche Bundesbank or BUBA) and of Great Britain (the Bank of England, nicknamed the "Old Lady").
Firms that conduct foreign trade transactions. Companies participating in international trade have a stable demand for foreign currency (importers) and supply (exporters). As a rule, these organizations do not have direct access to exchange markets, and they conduct their conversion and deposit transactions via commercial banks.
Investment funds. These companies, represented by various international investment, pension,and mutual funds, insurance companies, and trusts, realize the policy of diversified management of portfolio of assets by placing there money in securities of the governments and corporations of different countries. The world-know fund, Quantum, is owned by George Soros, and it executes successful exchange speculations. Big international corporations as Xerox, Nestle, General Motors a.o. that make foreign industrial investments (creating branches, joint ventures etc.), also are firms of this kind.
Broker companies bring together a buyer and a seller of foreign currency and conduct a conversion dealing between them. Broker companies take a broker's fee. As a rule, in the FOREX market there is no fee as a per cent from the sum of a transaction, or as a sum agreed in advance. Usually the dealers of broker companies quote currency with a spread, that includes their fee. A broker company, having the information about the asked rates, is a place where the real exchange rate is formed according to closed deals. Commersial banks get their information about the current exchange rate from broker companies. The biggest international broker companies are Lasser Marshall, Harlow Butler, Tullett and Tokio, Coutts, and Tradition.
Private persons. Natural persons realize a wide range of non-commercial transactions in the sphere of foreign tourism, transfers of salaries, pensions, royalties, buying and selling foreign currency. This is also the biggest group that realizes speculative exchange transactions.
The working hours of the markets
Exchange markets work all the time. Their work in the calendar twenty-four-hour period is started in the Far East, in New Zealand (Wellington), passing the time zones in Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Moscow, Frankfurt-on-Main, London, then finishing the day in New York and Los Angeles. The count of time zones begins from the zero meridian in Greenwich near London, and the time itself is called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Depending on the season (summer or winter), the time in different financial centers of the globe will differ from the GMT.
The working day of exchange brokers of Western commercial banks starts, as a rule, at 7:30 am by local time. At 8:00 am the dealers are already closing deals. The morning hours are usually devoted to short analyses of events on the international exchange markets at the moment. The dealers use economic and technical analyses of the situation in the market, read analytical articles in newspapers, then exchange points of view and the latest rumors with each other and with dealers from other commercial banks. On the basis of various data, a picture of possible behavior of the exchange rate on the coming day is put together, with variants of all sorts of possible events.
By 8:00 am the market, consisting of individual dealers, will have worked out the tactics of its behavior, and it enters the operations of the international exchange market, giving a new and powerful impulse to the movement of the exchange rate. Various territorial markets can be given the following characteristics of an average typical activity during a 24 hour day.
Far East. Here the most active deals in the market are conversion transactions with the dollar to the Japanese yen, the dollar to Euro, Euro to yen, and the dollar to the Australian dollar. Very often fluctuations of exchange rates at that time are insignificant, but there are days when currencies, especially the dollar against the yen, make breath-taking flights. Especially so when the central bank of Japan makes an intervention. In Moscow its night and morning at that time, so till noon one can work with Tokyo, till mid-day with Singapore.
Western Europe. At 10:00 am Moscow time the market in the European financial centers of Zurich, Frankfurt-on-Main, Paris, Luxembourg are open. However, the really powerful movement of the exchange rate against the main currencies starts after 11:00 am Moscow time, when the London market is opened. This continues, as a rule, for 2 to 3 hours, after that the dealers of the European banks go to have lunch, and the activity of the market falls down a bit.
North America. The situation livens up with the opening of the New York market at 4:00 pm Moscow time, when dealers of American banks start working, and when European dealers come back from their lunch. Powers of European and American banks are about equal, that is why fluctuations of the rate do not go out of the limits of usual European fluctuations. Nevertheless, exchange dealers look forward to the opening of the New York market in order to receive fresh data about a possible movement of the rate (the more so if the European market has been sluggish). But when the European market is closed about 7p m or 8pm Moscow time, aggressive American banks, left alone on the "thin" market, are able to cause a sharp change of the exchange rate of the dollar against other currencies.
What is a FX speculator?
In modern conditions practically all financial transactions in the market are speculative by their nature, and there's nothing abnormal or criminal in it. One of the most vivid indices of markets' globalization is their daily volume of exchange transactions. Only in 10 major financial centers it increased from 206 billion dollars in 1986 to 967 billion dollars in 1992. According to the IMF, on the whole the volume is over 1 trillion dollars a day, and on some days it reaches 3 trillions. It is enough to say that the volume of gold and foreign exchange reserves of all developed countries was only 555.2 billion dollars in 1992, which is two times less than a daily volume of market transactions. According to some calculations, the volume of exchange transactions is 40 times bigger that the daily volume of foreign trade transactions. Therefore, most of the deals are caused not by a commercial necessity, but by financial reasons. And a financial transaction is always caused by the fact that money is looking for some profitable usage.
The international exchange system functioning in the world at the moment develops among people dealing with exchange and financial transactions: the so-called speculative psychology. In the world where exchange rates fluctuate for some per cent every week, where currencies, that are considered to be stable can lose 20 to 30 per cent of their cost during a few months, it's absolutely clear that the manager of a fund, trying to compensate for inevitable losses, has to use speculative operations. For example, a reasonable owner of dollars has to get rid of them very quickly and exchange them for Euro every time the expected fall of the dollar against Euro surpasses the difference between the profit from American notes and the profit from the respective German notes. For instance, if in the coming months the dollar is expected to fall against the Euro by 6%, and the profit from American notes is 6 per cent bigger than the profit from German notes, a speculator will probably decide to keep dollars. If the gap in the interest rates is less than the expected fall of the rate, the "running away from the dollar" begins.
Who are these speculators? An analysis shows that the main speculators acting in the market are institutional investors. Among them one can single out, first of all, official state institutions, and, secondly, private financial and other institutions. Thus according to the report of the "Group of Ten", state investors in Europe and Japan keep about 20 per cent of their assets in the form of foreign securities (in the USA only 7.5 per cent). However, the main feature of the 1980s was the growing international activity of private financial institutions: pension funds, insurance companies, and mutual funds. The Globalization of international financial markets is an objective process, reflecting the growing degree of economic relations in the world. It promotes a more effective distribution of financial resources.
Major world exchange markets:
AMEX - American Stock Exchange
BOVESPA - Sao Paulo Stock Exchange
CBOT - Chicago Board of Trade
CHX - Chicago Stock Exchange
CME - Chicago Mercantile Exchange
Commodities on the Web - List of the commodities
LIFFE - London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange
London Stock Exchange -London Stock Exchange
Nasdaq
NYMEX - New York Mercantile Exchange
NYSE - New York Stock Exchange
SBF - la Bourse de Paris
SES - Singapore Exchange
SET - Stock Exchange of Thailand
TSE - Tokyo Stock Exchange
TSE - Toronto Stock Exchange
LSEX - London Stock Exchange
CBOE - Chicago Board Options Exchange CBOE
PHLX - Philadelphia Stock Exchange
* Commercial banks
* Exchange markets
* Central banks
* Firms that conduct foreign trade transactions
* Investment funds
* Broker companies
* Private persons
Commercial banks conduct the main volume of exchange transactions. Other participants of the market have their accounts at the banks, conducting necessary conversion transactions. Banks accumulate (through transactions with the clients) the combined needs of the market in exchange conversions as well as in calling and distributing money, breaking with it into new banks. Besides satisfying clients' requests, banks can operate independently, using their own assets. In the end, a foreign exchange market is a market of interbank dealings, and when speaking about the exchange rates movement, one should bear in mind the existence of an interbank foreign exchange market. In international foreign exchange markets, international banks with the daily volume of transactions of billions dollars have the biggest influence. These are Barclays Bank, Citibank, Chase Manhatten Bank, Deutsche Bank, Swiss Bank Corporation, Union Bank of Switzerland, etc.
Exchange markets Contrary to stock markets and markets for terminal exchange dealings, exchange markets do not work in a definite building and they do not have definite business hours. Thanks to the development of telecommunications most of the leading financial institutions of the world use services of exchange markets directly and via mediators 24 hours a day. The biggest international exchange markets are the London, New York and Tokyo exchange markets. In some countries with transitional economies there are exchange markets for currency exchange by juristic persons and for forming a market exchange rate. The state usually regulates the exchange rate in an active manner, using the compactness of the exchange market.
Central banks control currency reserves, realize interventions that influence the exchange rate, and regulate the interest investment rate in the national currency. The central bank of the United States, the US Federal Reserve Bank, or "FED", has the greatest influence in the international exchange markets. It is followed by the central banks of Germany, (the Deutsche Bundesbank or BUBA) and of Great Britain (the Bank of England, nicknamed the "Old Lady").
Firms that conduct foreign trade transactions. Companies participating in international trade have a stable demand for foreign currency (importers) and supply (exporters). As a rule, these organizations do not have direct access to exchange markets, and they conduct their conversion and deposit transactions via commercial banks.
Investment funds. These companies, represented by various international investment, pension,and mutual funds, insurance companies, and trusts, realize the policy of diversified management of portfolio of assets by placing there money in securities of the governments and corporations of different countries. The world-know fund, Quantum, is owned by George Soros, and it executes successful exchange speculations. Big international corporations as Xerox, Nestle, General Motors a.o. that make foreign industrial investments (creating branches, joint ventures etc.), also are firms of this kind.
Broker companies bring together a buyer and a seller of foreign currency and conduct a conversion dealing between them. Broker companies take a broker's fee. As a rule, in the FOREX market there is no fee as a per cent from the sum of a transaction, or as a sum agreed in advance. Usually the dealers of broker companies quote currency with a spread, that includes their fee. A broker company, having the information about the asked rates, is a place where the real exchange rate is formed according to closed deals. Commersial banks get their information about the current exchange rate from broker companies. The biggest international broker companies are Lasser Marshall, Harlow Butler, Tullett and Tokio, Coutts, and Tradition.
Private persons. Natural persons realize a wide range of non-commercial transactions in the sphere of foreign tourism, transfers of salaries, pensions, royalties, buying and selling foreign currency. This is also the biggest group that realizes speculative exchange transactions.
The working hours of the markets
Exchange markets work all the time. Their work in the calendar twenty-four-hour period is started in the Far East, in New Zealand (Wellington), passing the time zones in Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Moscow, Frankfurt-on-Main, London, then finishing the day in New York and Los Angeles. The count of time zones begins from the zero meridian in Greenwich near London, and the time itself is called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Depending on the season (summer or winter), the time in different financial centers of the globe will differ from the GMT.
The working day of exchange brokers of Western commercial banks starts, as a rule, at 7:30 am by local time. At 8:00 am the dealers are already closing deals. The morning hours are usually devoted to short analyses of events on the international exchange markets at the moment. The dealers use economic and technical analyses of the situation in the market, read analytical articles in newspapers, then exchange points of view and the latest rumors with each other and with dealers from other commercial banks. On the basis of various data, a picture of possible behavior of the exchange rate on the coming day is put together, with variants of all sorts of possible events.
By 8:00 am the market, consisting of individual dealers, will have worked out the tactics of its behavior, and it enters the operations of the international exchange market, giving a new and powerful impulse to the movement of the exchange rate. Various territorial markets can be given the following characteristics of an average typical activity during a 24 hour day.
Far East. Here the most active deals in the market are conversion transactions with the dollar to the Japanese yen, the dollar to Euro, Euro to yen, and the dollar to the Australian dollar. Very often fluctuations of exchange rates at that time are insignificant, but there are days when currencies, especially the dollar against the yen, make breath-taking flights. Especially so when the central bank of Japan makes an intervention. In Moscow its night and morning at that time, so till noon one can work with Tokyo, till mid-day with Singapore.
Western Europe. At 10:00 am Moscow time the market in the European financial centers of Zurich, Frankfurt-on-Main, Paris, Luxembourg are open. However, the really powerful movement of the exchange rate against the main currencies starts after 11:00 am Moscow time, when the London market is opened. This continues, as a rule, for 2 to 3 hours, after that the dealers of the European banks go to have lunch, and the activity of the market falls down a bit.
North America. The situation livens up with the opening of the New York market at 4:00 pm Moscow time, when dealers of American banks start working, and when European dealers come back from their lunch. Powers of European and American banks are about equal, that is why fluctuations of the rate do not go out of the limits of usual European fluctuations. Nevertheless, exchange dealers look forward to the opening of the New York market in order to receive fresh data about a possible movement of the rate (the more so if the European market has been sluggish). But when the European market is closed about 7p m or 8pm Moscow time, aggressive American banks, left alone on the "thin" market, are able to cause a sharp change of the exchange rate of the dollar against other currencies.
What is a FX speculator?
In modern conditions practically all financial transactions in the market are speculative by their nature, and there's nothing abnormal or criminal in it. One of the most vivid indices of markets' globalization is their daily volume of exchange transactions. Only in 10 major financial centers it increased from 206 billion dollars in 1986 to 967 billion dollars in 1992. According to the IMF, on the whole the volume is over 1 trillion dollars a day, and on some days it reaches 3 trillions. It is enough to say that the volume of gold and foreign exchange reserves of all developed countries was only 555.2 billion dollars in 1992, which is two times less than a daily volume of market transactions. According to some calculations, the volume of exchange transactions is 40 times bigger that the daily volume of foreign trade transactions. Therefore, most of the deals are caused not by a commercial necessity, but by financial reasons. And a financial transaction is always caused by the fact that money is looking for some profitable usage.
The international exchange system functioning in the world at the moment develops among people dealing with exchange and financial transactions: the so-called speculative psychology. In the world where exchange rates fluctuate for some per cent every week, where currencies, that are considered to be stable can lose 20 to 30 per cent of their cost during a few months, it's absolutely clear that the manager of a fund, trying to compensate for inevitable losses, has to use speculative operations. For example, a reasonable owner of dollars has to get rid of them very quickly and exchange them for Euro every time the expected fall of the dollar against Euro surpasses the difference between the profit from American notes and the profit from the respective German notes. For instance, if in the coming months the dollar is expected to fall against the Euro by 6%, and the profit from American notes is 6 per cent bigger than the profit from German notes, a speculator will probably decide to keep dollars. If the gap in the interest rates is less than the expected fall of the rate, the "running away from the dollar" begins.
Who are these speculators? An analysis shows that the main speculators acting in the market are institutional investors. Among them one can single out, first of all, official state institutions, and, secondly, private financial and other institutions. Thus according to the report of the "Group of Ten", state investors in Europe and Japan keep about 20 per cent of their assets in the form of foreign securities (in the USA only 7.5 per cent). However, the main feature of the 1980s was the growing international activity of private financial institutions: pension funds, insurance companies, and mutual funds. The Globalization of international financial markets is an objective process, reflecting the growing degree of economic relations in the world. It promotes a more effective distribution of financial resources.
Major world exchange markets:
AMEX - American Stock Exchange
BOVESPA - Sao Paulo Stock Exchange
CBOT - Chicago Board of Trade
CHX - Chicago Stock Exchange
CME - Chicago Mercantile Exchange
Commodities on the Web - List of the commodities
LIFFE - London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange
London Stock Exchange -London Stock Exchange
Nasdaq
NYMEX - New York Mercantile Exchange
NYSE - New York Stock Exchange
SBF - la Bourse de Paris
SES - Singapore Exchange
SET - Stock Exchange of Thailand
TSE - Tokyo Stock Exchange
TSE - Toronto Stock Exchange
LSEX - London Stock Exchange
CBOE - Chicago Board Options Exchange CBOE
PHLX - Philadelphia Stock Exchange
The Main Principles of Trading
In contrast to exchange transactions with real supply or real currency the participants of FOREX use trading with a margin deposit; i.e. marginal or leverage trading. In marginal trading, each transaction has two obligatory stages (they can be divided by period of time, which can be as long as you like): buying (selling) of currency at one price, and then selling (buying) it at another (or at the same) price. The first transaction is called opening the position, the second one, closing the position.
Opening a position, a trader furnishes a deposit sum from 0.5 to 4 per cent of the credit line, granted for the transaction. So, in order to buy or sell 100,000 US dollars for Japanese yens, you will not need the whole sum, but only from 500 to 2000 US dollars depending on your policy of controlling risks. When the position is closed, the deposit sum returns, and calculation of profits or losses is done. All the profit or losses caused by the change of currency rates is credited on your account.
Let's take a concrete example of getting a profit from the changing the rate of the Euro, from 0,9162 to 0,9292. If you have anticipated this change by using technical or fundamental analysis, you can buy the Euro cheaper for dollars, and then sell it back at a higher price. For example, if you choose leverage 1:100, then 99,000 dollars of the credit line, granted by the Internet broker, is added to 1000 dollars, and you buy the Euro at the price of 0.9162. As a result of this transaction we get: $ 100,000 / 0.9162 = Euro 109.146, 47.
When the rate changes (an average daily change of Euro is about 70 to 100 pips), you close the position and sell the Euro for dollars, but at the rate of 0.9292. You get 109,146. 47*0.9292 =101,418.89 dollars. Your profit is $ 1,418.89. The same transaction with leverage 1:200 would give you $2, 837.78 of profit, with leverage 1:50 the profit would be 709.45, with leverage 1:25 - 354.72.
We'd like to remind you that the higher the credit leverage, the higher is your profit if the fluctuation of the currency rate was anticipated correctly. However, if your anticipation was wrong, your losses will be bigger.
One cannot feel confident in the FOREX market without a thorough knowledge of the terms used there.
Foreign exchange quotes are a relation between currencies.
* USDCHF - the cost of $1 in Swiss Francs.
* USDJPY - the cost of $1 in Japanese yens.
* EURUSD - the cost of Euro 1 in US dollars.
* GBPUSD - the cost of 1 GBP in US dollars.
That is, quotes are expressed in the units of the second currency for a unit of the first one. For example, quote USDJPY 108,91 shows that $1 costs 108,91 Japanese yens. Quote EURUSD 0.9561 shows that 1 Euro costs 0.9561 US dollars.
The last figure in the quote is called "pip". The cost of the pip is different for every currency, and depends on the leverage and current quote.
The formula for calculating 1 pip is:
100,000/current quote without commas * K
where К=1 at leverage 1:100,
К=2 at leverage 1:200,
К=0,5 at leverage 1:50,
K=0,25 at leverage 1:25.
Examples:
USDJPY = 108.91 leverage 1:100
100.000 / 10891 х 1 = 9,18 USD
EURUSD = 0.9561 leverage1:200
100.000 / 9561 х 2 =20,92 USD
GBPUSD and EURUSD are direct quotes, i.e. when the chart goes up, GBP and EUR become more expensive, and when it goes down, the currencies become cheaper. USDCHF and USDJPY are backward quotes, and when the chart grows, prices on CHF and JPY fall, and when the chart goes down, the prices grow.
On direct quotes you buy according to ASK and sell according to BID. With backward quotes, you buy according to BID and sell according to ASK .
Trading in the FOREX market is realized in lots. When you open a position, you can choose the number of lots you want from 1 to 10. One lot equals $ 100,000. The deposit sum for one lot will vary from $500 to $2000, depending on the credit leverage you choose. Leverage is a financial mechanism that allows crediting speculative transactions with a small deposit. We give you an opportunity to choose a credit leverage in the range of 1:200 to 1:25.
In the course of trading you can fix your profit or cut off your losses according to the commands LIMIT and STOP that have been set up.
LIMIT is set up higher than the current meaning of the price.
STOP is set up lower than the current meaning of the price.
With these commands the positions is closed without additional orders when the price reaches the agreed level.
In the process of trading you can create pending positions, that will be activated when the price reaches the agreed level (open price). When creating and closing orders, a temporary delay occurs, and lasts for about 30 to 40 seconds. When you make an inquiry, you are given a real market price, which is the current price at the moment of proposal, not at the moment of inquiry.
The main terms that characterize the account:
* Deal, realization of 2 trade transactions, when currency is bought (sold), and then the reverse conversion is realized.
* Balance, the sum on the account of a client after the last transaction is conducted.
* Floating Profit, the current profit on open positions.
* Floating storage, fee for postponement of an opened position over midnight GMT.
* Equity = Balance + Floating + Floating storage.
* Margin requirement, a necessary deposit sum calculated according to the formula
* 100,000 / K + 100,000 / K,
* where K = leverage, and the number of items equals the number of open positions.
* Percentage, index of an account.
* Percentage = Equity / Margin Requirement. At Percentage lower than 50 % it's impossible to open new positions.
* Margin call, condition of an account when all opened positions are closed by the Internet broker according to current quotes. It occurs at a Percentage lower than 10%.
Please note that contrary to the majority of other companies, in PRO-FOREX.com price levels of client's orders may differ from the current price only by 5 pips. However, very rarely are orders executed worse than requests, because of the high market volatility.
Opening a position, a trader furnishes a deposit sum from 0.5 to 4 per cent of the credit line, granted for the transaction. So, in order to buy or sell 100,000 US dollars for Japanese yens, you will not need the whole sum, but only from 500 to 2000 US dollars depending on your policy of controlling risks. When the position is closed, the deposit sum returns, and calculation of profits or losses is done. All the profit or losses caused by the change of currency rates is credited on your account.
Let's take a concrete example of getting a profit from the changing the rate of the Euro, from 0,9162 to 0,9292. If you have anticipated this change by using technical or fundamental analysis, you can buy the Euro cheaper for dollars, and then sell it back at a higher price. For example, if you choose leverage 1:100, then 99,000 dollars of the credit line, granted by the Internet broker, is added to 1000 dollars, and you buy the Euro at the price of 0.9162. As a result of this transaction we get: $ 100,000 / 0.9162 = Euro 109.146, 47.
When the rate changes (an average daily change of Euro is about 70 to 100 pips), you close the position and sell the Euro for dollars, but at the rate of 0.9292. You get 109,146. 47*0.9292 =101,418.89 dollars. Your profit is $ 1,418.89. The same transaction with leverage 1:200 would give you $2, 837.78 of profit, with leverage 1:50 the profit would be 709.45, with leverage 1:25 - 354.72.
We'd like to remind you that the higher the credit leverage, the higher is your profit if the fluctuation of the currency rate was anticipated correctly. However, if your anticipation was wrong, your losses will be bigger.
One cannot feel confident in the FOREX market without a thorough knowledge of the terms used there.
Foreign exchange quotes are a relation between currencies.
* USDCHF - the cost of $1 in Swiss Francs.
* USDJPY - the cost of $1 in Japanese yens.
* EURUSD - the cost of Euro 1 in US dollars.
* GBPUSD - the cost of 1 GBP in US dollars.
That is, quotes are expressed in the units of the second currency for a unit of the first one. For example, quote USDJPY 108,91 shows that $1 costs 108,91 Japanese yens. Quote EURUSD 0.9561 shows that 1 Euro costs 0.9561 US dollars.
The last figure in the quote is called "pip". The cost of the pip is different for every currency, and depends on the leverage and current quote.
The formula for calculating 1 pip is:
100,000/current quote without commas * K
where К=1 at leverage 1:100,
К=2 at leverage 1:200,
К=0,5 at leverage 1:50,
K=0,25 at leverage 1:25.
Examples:
USDJPY = 108.91 leverage 1:100
100.000 / 10891 х 1 = 9,18 USD
EURUSD = 0.9561 leverage1:200
100.000 / 9561 х 2 =20,92 USD
GBPUSD and EURUSD are direct quotes, i.e. when the chart goes up, GBP and EUR become more expensive, and when it goes down, the currencies become cheaper. USDCHF and USDJPY are backward quotes, and when the chart grows, prices on CHF and JPY fall, and when the chart goes down, the prices grow.
On direct quotes you buy according to ASK and sell according to BID. With backward quotes, you buy according to BID and sell according to ASK .
Trading in the FOREX market is realized in lots. When you open a position, you can choose the number of lots you want from 1 to 10. One lot equals $ 100,000. The deposit sum for one lot will vary from $500 to $2000, depending on the credit leverage you choose. Leverage is a financial mechanism that allows crediting speculative transactions with a small deposit. We give you an opportunity to choose a credit leverage in the range of 1:200 to 1:25.
In the course of trading you can fix your profit or cut off your losses according to the commands LIMIT and STOP that have been set up.
LIMIT is set up higher than the current meaning of the price.
STOP is set up lower than the current meaning of the price.
With these commands the positions is closed without additional orders when the price reaches the agreed level.
In the process of trading you can create pending positions, that will be activated when the price reaches the agreed level (open price). When creating and closing orders, a temporary delay occurs, and lasts for about 30 to 40 seconds. When you make an inquiry, you are given a real market price, which is the current price at the moment of proposal, not at the moment of inquiry.
The main terms that characterize the account:
* Deal, realization of 2 trade transactions, when currency is bought (sold), and then the reverse conversion is realized.
* Balance, the sum on the account of a client after the last transaction is conducted.
* Floating Profit, the current profit on open positions.
* Floating storage, fee for postponement of an opened position over midnight GMT.
* Equity = Balance + Floating + Floating storage.
* Margin requirement, a necessary deposit sum calculated according to the formula
* 100,000 / K + 100,000 / K,
* where K = leverage, and the number of items equals the number of open positions.
* Percentage, index of an account.
* Percentage = Equity / Margin Requirement. At Percentage lower than 50 % it's impossible to open new positions.
* Margin call, condition of an account when all opened positions are closed by the Internet broker according to current quotes. It occurs at a Percentage lower than 10%.
Please note that contrary to the majority of other companies, in PRO-FOREX.com price levels of client's orders may differ from the current price only by 5 pips. However, very rarely are orders executed worse than requests, because of the high market volatility.
What is FOREX?
FOREX (FOReign EXchange market) is an international foreign exchange market, where money is sold and bought freely. In its present condition FOREX was launched in the 1970s, when free exchange rates were introduced, and only the participants of the market determine the price of one currency against the other proceeding from supply and demand.
As far as the freedom from any external control and free competition are concerned, FOREX is a perfect market. It is also the biggest liquid financial market. According to various assessments, money masses in the market constitute from 1 to 1.5 trillion US dollars a day. (It is impossible to determine an absolutely exact number because trading is not centralized on an exchange.) Transactions are conducted all over the world via telecommunications 24 hours a day from 00:00 GMT on Monday to 10:00 pm GMT on Friday. Practically in every time zone (that is, in Frankfurt-on-Main, London, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc.) there are dealers who will quote currencies.
FOREX is a more objective market, because if some of its participants would like to change prices, for some manipulative purpose, they would have to operate with tens of billions dollars. That is why any influence by a single participants in the market is practically out of the question. The superior liquidity allows the traders to open and/or close positions within a few seconds. The time of keeping a position is arbitrary and has no limits: from several seconds to many years. It depends only on your trading strategies. Although the daily fluctuations of currencies are rather insignificant, you may use the credit lines, that are accessible even to currency speculators with small capitals ($ 1,000 - 5,000), where the profit may be impressive. (You can learn more about it in the section: The main principles of trading.)
The idea of marginal trading stems from the fact that in FOREX speculative interests can be satisfied without a real money supply. This decreases overhead expenses for transferring money and gives an opportunity to open positions with a small account in US dollars, buying and selling a lot of other currencies. That is, on can conduct transactions very quickly, getting a big profit, when the exchange rates go up or down. Many speculative transactions in the international financial markets are made on the principles of marginal trading.
Margin trading is trading with a borrowed capital. Marginal trading in an exchange market uses lots. 1 lot equals approximately $100,000, but to open it it is necessary to have only from 0.5% to 4% of the sum.
For example, you have analyzed the situation in the market and come to the conclusion that the pound will go up against the dollar. You open 1 lot for buying the pound (GBP) with the margin 1% (1:1000 leverage) at the price of 1.49889 and wait for the exchange rate to go up. Some time later your expectations become true. You close the position at 1.5050 and earn 61 pips (about $ 405). For the calculation of 1 pip click here.
Everyday fluctuations of currencies constitute about 100 to 150 pips, giving FX traders an opportunity to make money on these changes.
In FOREX, it's not obligatory to buy some currency first in order to sell it later. It's possible to open positions for buying and selling any currency without actually having it. Usually Internet-brokers establish the minimum deposit such as $ 2000, for working in the FOREX market, and grant a leverage of 1:100. That is, opening the position at $100,000, a trader invests $1,000 and receives $99.000 as a credit. The major currencies traded in FOREX, are Euro (EUR), Japanese yen (JPY), British Pound (GBP), and Swiss Franc (CHF). All of them are traded against the US dollar (USD).
In order to assess the situation in the market a trader has to be able to use fundamental and/or technical analysis, as well as to make decisions in the constantly changing current of information about political and economic character. Most small and medium players in financial markets use technical analysis. Technical analysis presupposes that all the information about the market and its further fluctuations is contained in the price chain. Any factor, that has some influence on the price, be it economic, political or psychological, has already been considered by the market and included in the price. The initial data for a technical analysis are prices: the highest and the lowest prices, the price of opening and closing within a certain period of time, and the volume of transactions.
A technical analysis is founded on three suppositions:
* Movement of the market considers everything;
* Movement of prices is purposeful;
* History repeats itself.
That is, technical analysis is a statistical and mathematical analysis of previous quotes and a prognosis of coming prices.
A number of technical indicators have been installed into the PRO-CHARTS trading system. Analyzing the indicators one can come to the conclusion about further movements of the quoted currencies. For a more detailed description of the indicators, analyzing price charts and volumes of trading, click here.
Fundamental analysis is an analysis of current situations in the country of the currency, such as its economy, political events, and rumors. The country's economy depends on the rate of inflation and unemployment, on the interest rate of its Central Bank, and on tax policy. Political stability also influences the exchange rate. Policy of the Central Bank has a special role, as concentrated interventions or refusal from them greatly influence the exchange rate.
At the same time one should not consider fundamental analysis just as an analysis of the economic situation in the country itself. A far bigger role in the FOREX market belongs to the expectations of the market participants and their assessment of these expectations. Various prognoses and bulletins, issued by the participants, have a strong influence on the expectations. Very often an effect of the so-called self-filfilling prophecy occurs when market players raise or lower the exchange rates according to the prognosis. But a deep and thorough fundamental analysis is available only for big banks with a staff of professional analysts and constant access to a wide field of information.
In spite of these different approaches, both forms of analyses complement one another. Traders who act on the basis of a fundamental analysis, have to consider some technical characteristics of the market (the main rates of support, such as resistance and resale), and supporters of the technical approach to the market must track the main news (interest rates, important political events).
The main merits of the FOREX market are:
* The biggest number of participants and the largest volumes of transactions;
* Superior liquidity and speed of the market: transactions are conducted within a few seconds according to online quotes;
* The market works 24 hours a day, every working days;
* A trader can open a position for any period of time he wants;
* No fees, except for the difference between buying and selling prices;
* An opportunity to get a bigger profit that the invested sum;
* Qualified work in the FOREX market can become your main professional activity;
* You can make deals any time you like.
As far as the freedom from any external control and free competition are concerned, FOREX is a perfect market. It is also the biggest liquid financial market. According to various assessments, money masses in the market constitute from 1 to 1.5 trillion US dollars a day. (It is impossible to determine an absolutely exact number because trading is not centralized on an exchange.) Transactions are conducted all over the world via telecommunications 24 hours a day from 00:00 GMT on Monday to 10:00 pm GMT on Friday. Practically in every time zone (that is, in Frankfurt-on-Main, London, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc.) there are dealers who will quote currencies.
FOREX is a more objective market, because if some of its participants would like to change prices, for some manipulative purpose, they would have to operate with tens of billions dollars. That is why any influence by a single participants in the market is practically out of the question. The superior liquidity allows the traders to open and/or close positions within a few seconds. The time of keeping a position is arbitrary and has no limits: from several seconds to many years. It depends only on your trading strategies. Although the daily fluctuations of currencies are rather insignificant, you may use the credit lines, that are accessible even to currency speculators with small capitals ($ 1,000 - 5,000), where the profit may be impressive. (You can learn more about it in the section: The main principles of trading.)
The idea of marginal trading stems from the fact that in FOREX speculative interests can be satisfied without a real money supply. This decreases overhead expenses for transferring money and gives an opportunity to open positions with a small account in US dollars, buying and selling a lot of other currencies. That is, on can conduct transactions very quickly, getting a big profit, when the exchange rates go up or down. Many speculative transactions in the international financial markets are made on the principles of marginal trading.
Margin trading is trading with a borrowed capital. Marginal trading in an exchange market uses lots. 1 lot equals approximately $100,000, but to open it it is necessary to have only from 0.5% to 4% of the sum.
For example, you have analyzed the situation in the market and come to the conclusion that the pound will go up against the dollar. You open 1 lot for buying the pound (GBP) with the margin 1% (1:1000 leverage) at the price of 1.49889 and wait for the exchange rate to go up. Some time later your expectations become true. You close the position at 1.5050 and earn 61 pips (about $ 405). For the calculation of 1 pip click here.
Everyday fluctuations of currencies constitute about 100 to 150 pips, giving FX traders an opportunity to make money on these changes.
In FOREX, it's not obligatory to buy some currency first in order to sell it later. It's possible to open positions for buying and selling any currency without actually having it. Usually Internet-brokers establish the minimum deposit such as $ 2000, for working in the FOREX market, and grant a leverage of 1:100. That is, opening the position at $100,000, a trader invests $1,000 and receives $99.000 as a credit. The major currencies traded in FOREX, are Euro (EUR), Japanese yen (JPY), British Pound (GBP), and Swiss Franc (CHF). All of them are traded against the US dollar (USD).
In order to assess the situation in the market a trader has to be able to use fundamental and/or technical analysis, as well as to make decisions in the constantly changing current of information about political and economic character. Most small and medium players in financial markets use technical analysis. Technical analysis presupposes that all the information about the market and its further fluctuations is contained in the price chain. Any factor, that has some influence on the price, be it economic, political or psychological, has already been considered by the market and included in the price. The initial data for a technical analysis are prices: the highest and the lowest prices, the price of opening and closing within a certain period of time, and the volume of transactions.
A technical analysis is founded on three suppositions:
* Movement of the market considers everything;
* Movement of prices is purposeful;
* History repeats itself.
That is, technical analysis is a statistical and mathematical analysis of previous quotes and a prognosis of coming prices.
A number of technical indicators have been installed into the PRO-CHARTS trading system. Analyzing the indicators one can come to the conclusion about further movements of the quoted currencies. For a more detailed description of the indicators, analyzing price charts and volumes of trading, click here.
Fundamental analysis is an analysis of current situations in the country of the currency, such as its economy, political events, and rumors. The country's economy depends on the rate of inflation and unemployment, on the interest rate of its Central Bank, and on tax policy. Political stability also influences the exchange rate. Policy of the Central Bank has a special role, as concentrated interventions or refusal from them greatly influence the exchange rate.
At the same time one should not consider fundamental analysis just as an analysis of the economic situation in the country itself. A far bigger role in the FOREX market belongs to the expectations of the market participants and their assessment of these expectations. Various prognoses and bulletins, issued by the participants, have a strong influence on the expectations. Very often an effect of the so-called self-filfilling prophecy occurs when market players raise or lower the exchange rates according to the prognosis. But a deep and thorough fundamental analysis is available only for big banks with a staff of professional analysts and constant access to a wide field of information.
In spite of these different approaches, both forms of analyses complement one another. Traders who act on the basis of a fundamental analysis, have to consider some technical characteristics of the market (the main rates of support, such as resistance and resale), and supporters of the technical approach to the market must track the main news (interest rates, important political events).
The main merits of the FOREX market are:
* The biggest number of participants and the largest volumes of transactions;
* Superior liquidity and speed of the market: transactions are conducted within a few seconds according to online quotes;
* The market works 24 hours a day, every working days;
* A trader can open a position for any period of time he wants;
* No fees, except for the difference between buying and selling prices;
* An opportunity to get a bigger profit that the invested sum;
* Qualified work in the FOREX market can become your main professional activity;
* You can make deals any time you like.
PayPal
PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. It serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as cheques and money orders. PayPal performs payment processing for online vendors, auction sites, and other corporate users, for which it charges a fee. On October 3, 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay. Its corporate headquarters are in San Jose, California, United States at eBay's North First Street satellite office campus. The company also has significant operations in Omaha, Nebraska, Scottsdale, Arizona and Austin, Texas in the U.S.; India, Dublin, Ireland; and Berlin, Germany.
History
Beginnings
PayPal is the result of a March 2000 merger between Confinity and X.com. Confinity was founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek, initially as a Palm Pilot payments and cryptography company. Both Confinity and X.com launched their websites in late 1999. X.com was founded by Elon Musk in March 1999, initially as an Internet financial services company. Both companies were located on University Avenue in Palo Alto. Confinity's website was initially focused on reconciling beamed payments from Palm Pilots with email payments as a feature and X.com's website initially included financial services with email payments as a feature.
At Confinity, many of the initial recruits were alumni of The Stanford Review, also founded by Peter Thiel, and most early engineers hailed from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recruited by Max Levchin. On the X.com side, Elon Musk recruited a wide range of technical and business personnel, including many that were critical to the combined company's success, such as Amy Klement, Sal Giambanco, Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital, Sanjay Bhargava and Jeremy Stoppelman.
To block potentially fraudulent access by automated systems, PayPal devised a system (see CAPTCHA) of making the user enter numbers from a blurry picture, which they coined the Gausebeck-Levchin test. According to Eric M. Jackson, author of the book The PayPal Wars, PayPal invented this system now in common use; however, there is evidence AltaVista used a CAPTCHA as early as 1997, before PayPal existed.[citation needed] The neutrality of The PayPal Wars, which was self-published by Eric Jackson through his company World Ahead Publishing, funded in part by Peter Thiel, is disputed.
eBay watched the rise in volume of online payments and realized its fit with online auctions. eBay purchased Billpoint in May 1999, prior to the existence of PayPal. eBay made Billpoint the official payment system of eBay, dubbing it "eBay Payments", but cut the functionality of Billpoint by narrowing it to only payments made for eBay auctions.
For this reason, PayPal was listed in several times as many auctions as Billpoint. In February of 2000, there were approximately an average of 200,000 daily auctions advertising the PayPal service while Billpoint (in beta) had only 4,000 auctions. By April of 2000 there were more than 1,000,000 auctions promoting the PayPal service. PayPal was able to turn the corner and become the first dot-com to IPO after the September 11 attacks.
Acquisition by eBay
In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion. PayPal had previously been the payment method of choice by more than fifty percent of eBay users, and the service competed with eBay’s subsidiary Billpoint. eBay has since phased out its Billpoint service in favor of retaining the PayPal brand. Most of PayPal’s major competitors have shut down or have been sold; Citibank’s c2it service closed in late 2003, and Yahoo!'s PayDirect service closed in late 2004. Western Union announced the December 2005 shut down of their BidPay service but subsequently sold it in 2006 to CyberSource Corporation. BidPay announced it will cease all operations on December 31st, 2007. Some competitors which offer some of PayPal’s services, such as Wirecard, Moneybookers, 2Checkout, CCNow and Kagi, remain in business.
PayPal’s total payment volume, the total value of transactions in Q4 2006, was US$11 billion, up 36% year over year. The company continues to focus on international growth and growth of its Merchant Services division, providing online payments for retailers off eBay.
Business today
As of the end of Q4 2006, PayPal operates in 103 markets, and it manages over 155 million accounts. PayPal allows customers to send, receive, and hold funds in 17 currencies worldwide. These currencies are the U.S. dollar, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, Euro, Pound sterling, Japanese yen, Chinese renminbi, Czech Koruna, Danish krone, Hong Kong dollar, Hungarian forint, New Zealand dollar, Norwegian krone, Polish zloty, Singapore dollar, Swedish krona, and Swiss franc. PayPal operates locally in 13 countries.
Residents in 48 new markets can now use PayPal in their local markets to send money online. These new markets include Peru, Indonesia, the Philippines, Croatia, Fiji, Vietnam and Jordan. A complete list can be viewed at PayPal's website.
In China PayPal offers two kinds of accounts:
* PayPal.com accounts, for sending and receiving money to/from other PayPal.com accounts. All non-Chinese accounts are PayPal.com accounts, so these accounts may be used to send money internationally.
* PayPal.cn accounts, for sending and receiving money to and from other PayPal.cn accounts.
It is impossible to send money between PayPal.cn accounts and PayPal.com accounts, so PayPal.cn accounts are effectively unable to make international payments. For PayPal.cn, the only supported currency is the renminbi.
Although PayPal's corporate headquarters are located in San Jose, PayPal’s operations center is located near Omaha, Nebraska, where the company employs more than 2,000 people as of 2007. PayPal’s international headquarters is located in Dublin, Ireland. The company also recently opened a technology center in Scottsdale, Arizona.
PayPal's headquarters in San Jose were hit by a small bomb on the evening of Halloween 2006 which shattered a window but caused no injuries.
Bank status
In the United States, PayPal is licensed as a money transmitter on a state-by-state basis.[citation needed] Although PayPal is not a bank, the company is still subject to many of the rules and regulations governing the financial industry including Regulation E consumer protections and the USA PATRIOT Act.[citation needed] However, on May 15, 2007, PayPal announced that it would move its European operations from the UK to Luxembourg, commencing July 2, 2007 as PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. & Cie, S.C.A.[citation needed] This would be as a Luxembourg entity regulated as a bank by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), the Luxembourg equivalent of the FSA.[citation needed] PayPal Luxembourg will then provide the PayPal service throughout the European Union (EU).
Safety and protection policies
The PayPal Buyer Protection Policy states that customers may file a buyer complaint within 45 days if they did not receive an item or if the item they purchased was significantly not as described. If the buyer used a credit card, they might get a refund via charge back from their credit card company.
According to PayPal, it protects sellers in a limited fashion via the Seller Protection Policy. In general the Seller Protection Policy is intended to protect the seller from certain kinds of chargebacks or complaints if seller meets certain conditions including proof of delivery to the buyer. PayPal states the Seller Protection Policy is "designed to protect sellers against claims by buyers of unauthorized payments and against claims of non-receipt of any merchandise". Note that this contrasts with the consumer protection they claim to offer. This policy should be read carefully before assuming protection. In particular the Seller Protection Policy includes a list of "Exclusions" which itself includes "Intangible goods", "Claims for receipt of goods 'not as described'" and "Total reversals over the annual limit". There are also other restrictions in terms of the sale itself, the payment method and the destination country the item is shipped to (simply having a tracking mechanism is not sufficient to guarantee the Seller Protection Policy is in effect).
Security
Security key
In early 2007, PayPal introduced an optional security key to its users. This adds an additional layer of protection when logging into a PayPal or eBay account. Once a user enters their login ID and password, they are prompted to press a button on the small security key, then enter the six-digit number to complete the login process. There is a one-time US$5 charge for this device, with no ongoing fees; however, business accounts get them free of charge.
Phishing
PayPal has developed substantial anti-Phishing resources, for identifying and reporting phishing, and offers its US customers free credit monitoring.
Entrepreneurship by former employees
A number of companies have been started and funded by former PayPal employees. This trend prompted The New York Times to publish a story entitled "It Pays to Have Pals in Silicon Valley" that analyzes the connections between several PayPal employees who went on to become influential.
* LinkedIn was founded by Reid Hoffman, a former VP at PayPal.
* Facebook received its first angel investment from Peter Thiel.
* Clarium Capital Management is a hedge fund run by Peter Thiel. Principal partners at Clarium include Ken Howery and Luke Nosek, both of whom were among the earliest employees at PayPal.
* Palantir Technologies was founded by Nathan Gettings, who developed PayPal's anti-fraud models. Palantir received funding from Peter Thiel.
* Slide was founded by Max Levchin, Jared Kopf, and former PayPal board member Scott Banister.
* Yelp was founded by Jeremy Stoppelmann, former VP of Engineering at PayPal, and Russ Simmons, one of the first employees at PayPal. Yelp is funded by Max Levchin.
* YouTube (now owned by Google) was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, all of whom were early employees at PayPal. YouTube is funded by Sequoia Capital. Roelof Botha, the former CFO of PayPal, is a partner of Sequoia Capital who sits on YouTube's board of directors.
* Room 9 Entertainment, which produced the movie Thank You for Smoking, was founded by David O. Sacks, who founded PayPal's Product Group and later served as Chief Operating Officer (COO).
* Geni.com was also founded by David O. Sacks.
* SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk, who founded X.com and served as the CEO following its merger with PayPal.
* Fraudwall Technologies is run by Ken Miller, who was VP of Risk Management at PayPal and the architect of PayPal's anti-fraud system.
* Tesla Motors' principal owner and Chairman of the Board is Elon Musk.
Criticism
In September 2005, the owner of the website Something Awful, Richard Kyanka, set up an account to collect donations for Hurricane Katrina, to be given to the Red Cross. Due to the high rate at which donations were made, the account was automatically frozen, and Kyanka criticized the time and difficulty involved in getting PayPal's customer service to unfreeze the account. In response to the concerns of Something Awful members over the charity used by Paypal, United Way, Kyanka finally opted to have the money refunded to the donors so that they could donate directly to their charities of choice.
Litigation
In March 2002, two PayPal account holders separately sued the company for alleged violations of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) and California law. Most of the allegations concerned PayPal's dispute resolution procedures. The two lawsuits were merged into one class action lawsuit (In re PayPal litigation). An informal settlement was reached in November 2003, and a formal settlement was signed on June 11, 2004. The settlement requires that PayPal change its business practices (including changing its dispute resolution procedures to make them EFTA-compliant), as well as making a US$9.25 million payment to members of the class. PayPal denied any wrongdoing.
In August 2002, Craig Comb and others filed a class action against PayPal in Craig Comb, et al. v. PayPal, Inc.. They sued for alleged mishandling of customer accounts and customer services, with regards to PayPal's user agreement. Allegations included restricting deposited funds for up to 180 days until disputes are resolved, forcing customers to arbitrate their disputes under the American Arbitration Association's guidelines (a costly procedure), and requiring users to file claims individually, restricting class action suits. The court stated that "the User Agreement and arbitration clause are substantively unconscionable under California law" and ruled in favor of Comb.
PayPal has also been involved in a number of other lawsuits.
History
Beginnings
PayPal is the result of a March 2000 merger between Confinity and X.com. Confinity was founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek, initially as a Palm Pilot payments and cryptography company. Both Confinity and X.com launched their websites in late 1999. X.com was founded by Elon Musk in March 1999, initially as an Internet financial services company. Both companies were located on University Avenue in Palo Alto. Confinity's website was initially focused on reconciling beamed payments from Palm Pilots with email payments as a feature and X.com's website initially included financial services with email payments as a feature.
At Confinity, many of the initial recruits were alumni of The Stanford Review, also founded by Peter Thiel, and most early engineers hailed from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recruited by Max Levchin. On the X.com side, Elon Musk recruited a wide range of technical and business personnel, including many that were critical to the combined company's success, such as Amy Klement, Sal Giambanco, Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital, Sanjay Bhargava and Jeremy Stoppelman.
To block potentially fraudulent access by automated systems, PayPal devised a system (see CAPTCHA) of making the user enter numbers from a blurry picture, which they coined the Gausebeck-Levchin test. According to Eric M. Jackson, author of the book The PayPal Wars, PayPal invented this system now in common use; however, there is evidence AltaVista used a CAPTCHA as early as 1997, before PayPal existed.[citation needed] The neutrality of The PayPal Wars, which was self-published by Eric Jackson through his company World Ahead Publishing, funded in part by Peter Thiel, is disputed.
eBay watched the rise in volume of online payments and realized its fit with online auctions. eBay purchased Billpoint in May 1999, prior to the existence of PayPal. eBay made Billpoint the official payment system of eBay, dubbing it "eBay Payments", but cut the functionality of Billpoint by narrowing it to only payments made for eBay auctions.
For this reason, PayPal was listed in several times as many auctions as Billpoint. In February of 2000, there were approximately an average of 200,000 daily auctions advertising the PayPal service while Billpoint (in beta) had only 4,000 auctions. By April of 2000 there were more than 1,000,000 auctions promoting the PayPal service. PayPal was able to turn the corner and become the first dot-com to IPO after the September 11 attacks.
Acquisition by eBay
In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion. PayPal had previously been the payment method of choice by more than fifty percent of eBay users, and the service competed with eBay’s subsidiary Billpoint. eBay has since phased out its Billpoint service in favor of retaining the PayPal brand. Most of PayPal’s major competitors have shut down or have been sold; Citibank’s c2it service closed in late 2003, and Yahoo!'s PayDirect service closed in late 2004. Western Union announced the December 2005 shut down of their BidPay service but subsequently sold it in 2006 to CyberSource Corporation. BidPay announced it will cease all operations on December 31st, 2007. Some competitors which offer some of PayPal’s services, such as Wirecard, Moneybookers, 2Checkout, CCNow and Kagi, remain in business.
PayPal’s total payment volume, the total value of transactions in Q4 2006, was US$11 billion, up 36% year over year. The company continues to focus on international growth and growth of its Merchant Services division, providing online payments for retailers off eBay.
Business today
As of the end of Q4 2006, PayPal operates in 103 markets, and it manages over 155 million accounts. PayPal allows customers to send, receive, and hold funds in 17 currencies worldwide. These currencies are the U.S. dollar, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, Euro, Pound sterling, Japanese yen, Chinese renminbi, Czech Koruna, Danish krone, Hong Kong dollar, Hungarian forint, New Zealand dollar, Norwegian krone, Polish zloty, Singapore dollar, Swedish krona, and Swiss franc. PayPal operates locally in 13 countries.
Residents in 48 new markets can now use PayPal in their local markets to send money online. These new markets include Peru, Indonesia, the Philippines, Croatia, Fiji, Vietnam and Jordan. A complete list can be viewed at PayPal's website.
In China PayPal offers two kinds of accounts:
* PayPal.com accounts, for sending and receiving money to/from other PayPal.com accounts. All non-Chinese accounts are PayPal.com accounts, so these accounts may be used to send money internationally.
* PayPal.cn accounts, for sending and receiving money to and from other PayPal.cn accounts.
It is impossible to send money between PayPal.cn accounts and PayPal.com accounts, so PayPal.cn accounts are effectively unable to make international payments. For PayPal.cn, the only supported currency is the renminbi.
Although PayPal's corporate headquarters are located in San Jose, PayPal’s operations center is located near Omaha, Nebraska, where the company employs more than 2,000 people as of 2007. PayPal’s international headquarters is located in Dublin, Ireland. The company also recently opened a technology center in Scottsdale, Arizona.
PayPal's headquarters in San Jose were hit by a small bomb on the evening of Halloween 2006 which shattered a window but caused no injuries.
Bank status
In the United States, PayPal is licensed as a money transmitter on a state-by-state basis.[citation needed] Although PayPal is not a bank, the company is still subject to many of the rules and regulations governing the financial industry including Regulation E consumer protections and the USA PATRIOT Act.[citation needed] However, on May 15, 2007, PayPal announced that it would move its European operations from the UK to Luxembourg, commencing July 2, 2007 as PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. & Cie, S.C.A.[citation needed] This would be as a Luxembourg entity regulated as a bank by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), the Luxembourg equivalent of the FSA.[citation needed] PayPal Luxembourg will then provide the PayPal service throughout the European Union (EU).
Safety and protection policies
The PayPal Buyer Protection Policy states that customers may file a buyer complaint within 45 days if they did not receive an item or if the item they purchased was significantly not as described. If the buyer used a credit card, they might get a refund via charge back from their credit card company.
According to PayPal, it protects sellers in a limited fashion via the Seller Protection Policy. In general the Seller Protection Policy is intended to protect the seller from certain kinds of chargebacks or complaints if seller meets certain conditions including proof of delivery to the buyer. PayPal states the Seller Protection Policy is "designed to protect sellers against claims by buyers of unauthorized payments and against claims of non-receipt of any merchandise". Note that this contrasts with the consumer protection they claim to offer. This policy should be read carefully before assuming protection. In particular the Seller Protection Policy includes a list of "Exclusions" which itself includes "Intangible goods", "Claims for receipt of goods 'not as described'" and "Total reversals over the annual limit". There are also other restrictions in terms of the sale itself, the payment method and the destination country the item is shipped to (simply having a tracking mechanism is not sufficient to guarantee the Seller Protection Policy is in effect).
Security
Security key
In early 2007, PayPal introduced an optional security key to its users. This adds an additional layer of protection when logging into a PayPal or eBay account. Once a user enters their login ID and password, they are prompted to press a button on the small security key, then enter the six-digit number to complete the login process. There is a one-time US$5 charge for this device, with no ongoing fees; however, business accounts get them free of charge.
Phishing
PayPal has developed substantial anti-Phishing resources, for identifying and reporting phishing, and offers its US customers free credit monitoring.
Entrepreneurship by former employees
A number of companies have been started and funded by former PayPal employees. This trend prompted The New York Times to publish a story entitled "It Pays to Have Pals in Silicon Valley" that analyzes the connections between several PayPal employees who went on to become influential.
* LinkedIn was founded by Reid Hoffman, a former VP at PayPal.
* Facebook received its first angel investment from Peter Thiel.
* Clarium Capital Management is a hedge fund run by Peter Thiel. Principal partners at Clarium include Ken Howery and Luke Nosek, both of whom were among the earliest employees at PayPal.
* Palantir Technologies was founded by Nathan Gettings, who developed PayPal's anti-fraud models. Palantir received funding from Peter Thiel.
* Slide was founded by Max Levchin, Jared Kopf, and former PayPal board member Scott Banister.
* Yelp was founded by Jeremy Stoppelmann, former VP of Engineering at PayPal, and Russ Simmons, one of the first employees at PayPal. Yelp is funded by Max Levchin.
* YouTube (now owned by Google) was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, all of whom were early employees at PayPal. YouTube is funded by Sequoia Capital. Roelof Botha, the former CFO of PayPal, is a partner of Sequoia Capital who sits on YouTube's board of directors.
* Room 9 Entertainment, which produced the movie Thank You for Smoking, was founded by David O. Sacks, who founded PayPal's Product Group and later served as Chief Operating Officer (COO).
* Geni.com was also founded by David O. Sacks.
* SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk, who founded X.com and served as the CEO following its merger with PayPal.
* Fraudwall Technologies is run by Ken Miller, who was VP of Risk Management at PayPal and the architect of PayPal's anti-fraud system.
* Tesla Motors' principal owner and Chairman of the Board is Elon Musk.
Criticism
In September 2005, the owner of the website Something Awful, Richard Kyanka, set up an account to collect donations for Hurricane Katrina, to be given to the Red Cross. Due to the high rate at which donations were made, the account was automatically frozen, and Kyanka criticized the time and difficulty involved in getting PayPal's customer service to unfreeze the account. In response to the concerns of Something Awful members over the charity used by Paypal, United Way, Kyanka finally opted to have the money refunded to the donors so that they could donate directly to their charities of choice.
Litigation
In March 2002, two PayPal account holders separately sued the company for alleged violations of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) and California law. Most of the allegations concerned PayPal's dispute resolution procedures. The two lawsuits were merged into one class action lawsuit (In re PayPal litigation). An informal settlement was reached in November 2003, and a formal settlement was signed on June 11, 2004. The settlement requires that PayPal change its business practices (including changing its dispute resolution procedures to make them EFTA-compliant), as well as making a US$9.25 million payment to members of the class. PayPal denied any wrongdoing.
In August 2002, Craig Comb and others filed a class action against PayPal in Craig Comb, et al. v. PayPal, Inc.. They sued for alleged mishandling of customer accounts and customer services, with regards to PayPal's user agreement. Allegations included restricting deposited funds for up to 180 days until disputes are resolved, forcing customers to arbitrate their disputes under the American Arbitration Association's guidelines (a costly procedure), and requiring users to file claims individually, restricting class action suits. The court stated that "the User Agreement and arbitration clause are substantively unconscionable under California law" and ruled in favor of Comb.
PayPal has also been involved in a number of other lawsuits.
Here's How To Reach The Top
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to succeed as an affiliate.
That is, until Affiliate Marketing Success, Vol. I
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The Problem...
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Web 2.0: The Face Of Change
Web 2.0 was a term coined by O'Reilly Media way back in
2004. It refers to the new generation of online
methodologies that are focused on online collaboration
and sharing between Internet users. In Tim O'Reilly's
own words:
"Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer
industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform,
and an attempt to understand the rules for success on
that new platform. Chief among those rules is this:
Build applications that harness network effects to get
better the more people use them. (This is what I've
elsewhere called 'harnessing collective intelligence.').”
As an affiliate marketer you need to know what this means
to you. That's why there's a volume II of the widely
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Here's the LINK
through affiliate marketing.
It's a simple fact. But not everyone knows about it.
And for those who do try to succeed with affiliate
marketing, a great majority of them realize that what
is quick and sure does not necessarily mean that it's
easy. The truth is, affiliate marketing is a field
that requires skills.
The First Step Has Been Taken...
And skills are developed by acquiring the right
knowledge, first and foremost.
The problem with the resources available online is
that they assume too much.
They assume that the readers (who are students in
this case) know what those alleged tomes of information
are talking about.
They teach you PPC advertising under the impression
that you know what PPC stands for. They teach you about
follow-up systems without explaining the need for
following up. They teach you how easy it is to create
web pages on the fly without taking into consideration
your proficiency when it comes to web authoring.
This sad state of affairs has made it difficult for
novice Internet marketers to make it big in the world
of affiliate marketing. There simply isn't any perfect
entry-level compendium of the right information needed
to succeed as an affiliate.
That is, until Affiliate Marketing Success, Vol. I
was released.
Affiliate Marketing Success, Vol. I carried the subtitle
"The Basics Of The Fastest Moneymaking Opportunity In The
Digital World." It was an appropriate tag.
The Problem...
But Affiliate Marketing Success, Vol. I is only made up
of so many pages. Even if it included all the proven
techniques that would transform its readers into instant
affiliate marketing superstars, it failed in one
department...
It only discussed the strategies of the present...
... the strategies of the NOW.
Sure, with the tactics that Affiliate Marketing Success,
Vol. I has efficiently delineated, you can leave your
competition behind and make them eat your dust.
But for how long will you stay ahead?
What if they ride the waves caused by a new generation
of affiliate marketing strategies before you do?
Nothing stays the same forever. The tactics that serve
us well today may very well become obsolete tomorrow.
The winds of change are perpetually upon us.
The question is this...
Are we ready for them?
Get ready for Affiliate Marketing Success, Vol. II
Web 2.0: The Face Of Change
Web 2.0 was a term coined by O'Reilly Media way back in
2004. It refers to the new generation of online
methodologies that are focused on online collaboration
and sharing between Internet users. In Tim O'Reilly's
own words:
"Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer
industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform,
and an attempt to understand the rules for success on
that new platform. Chief among those rules is this:
Build applications that harness network effects to get
better the more people use them. (This is what I've
elsewhere called 'harnessing collective intelligence.').”
As an affiliate marketer you need to know what this means
to you. That's why there's a volume II of the widely
successfull Affiliate Marketing Success Vol I.
Here's the LINK
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