Insightful Ideas, Inc

Insightful Investing Update August 2010

Joe — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 14:10:27 +0000

Financial markets around the world bounced back in July as International Stocks led the way after the bailout of Greece, gaining 9.3% last month. Large Cap Stocks gained 7.0% to recover almost all they lost in June. Mid Cap Stocks and Small Cap Stocks had similar returns for the month. The big winner in July was actually Real Estate as REITs picked up 9.7%.

Since investors were no longer chasing high quality US government bonds, domestic bonds only gained 1.0% in July. As investor appetite for risk increased, Emerging Market Bonds picked up 4.5% last month, while High Yield Bonds added 3.6%.

Continue reading the Insightful Investing Update August 2010 …

Insightful Investing Newsletter July 2010

admin — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:30:47 +0000

June was another difficult month for the stock market as a drop of -5.2% for Large Cap Stocks resulted in the SP 500 falling -11.4% in the second quarter this year. Small Cap Stocks had an even worse month, losing -7.8% in June, though they ‘ONLY’ lost -9.9% for the quarter. The pressure from the European financial crisis has started to subside, helping International Stocks fare considerably better this month, losing only -1.3%, but that still left them with a -12.5% drop for the quarter.

A ‘flight to quality’ proved to be the theme this quarter with high quality government and corporate bonds adding 3.5% for the quarter. TIPS were up slightly more, returning 3.8% over the last three months. REITs were not hurt as bad as other equities, dropping only -5.2% this quarter, lowering their gain for the first half of 2010 to a surprising 5.7%, even better than the 5.3% return for bonds so far this year.

Continue reading the Insightful Investing Newsletter July 2010 …

Insightful Investing Update June 2010

admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:25:55 +0000

The old adage ‘Sell in May and Go Away’ proved to be the right move this year as the SP 500 dropped 8% in May. Thanks once again to the financial crisis in Europe, International Stocks were hit with the double whammy of poor performance and a stronger dollar to end the month down 11%. The rapid rise in recent months finally caught up with Real Estate too, as those funds lost more than 5%.

The ‘flight to quality’ provided a real boost to US Government Bonds, with Intermediate Government Bonds up almost 2% and Long Term Bond funds jumping more than 6%. This did not help corporate bonds as investment grade debt did little more than break even, while High Yield paper lost almost 4%.

Continue reading the Insightful Investing June 2010 Update …

Insightful Investing Update May 2010

admin — Sun, 16 May 2010 14:10:02 +0000

It was a relatively quite April for the financial markets with Large Cap stocks up 1.6% and Bonds up 2.8%. Leading the pack once again was Real Estate, which gained 7% in the first month of the second quarter. The market favored Small Cap Value Equities this month with those stocks also picking up 7% for the month. Large Cap Growth stocks, on the other hand, only picked up 1.2% in April as the market once again that it is far less correlated in a bull phase than it is in a bear market.

The only category that was not on the plus side of the score board this month was International stocks which fell 1.7%, thanks mostly to financial crisis in Greece. European stocks were hit with the double whammy of poor performance and a stronger dollar.

Continue reading the Insightful Investing May 2010 Update …

Insightful Investing Newsletter April 2010

admin — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 10:10:32 +0000

A strong March turned what looked to be a market correction into the fourth positive quarter in a row for stocks, in spite of the possibility of financial collapse in Greece. Leading the charge was Real Estate and Small Cap Value funds, both picking up just over 10%. A gain of 7% for Value funds topped the 5% return for Growth funds mostly because they held up better back in January. Small Cap stocks with an 8.9% return were considerably stronger than Large Cap stocks which returned 5.4% for the quarter. Continue reading the Insightful Investing Newsletter April 2010 …

Web Site Building Resources

admin — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:10:32 +0000

When you are looking for a hosting service to build your Web Site, we have worked with several companies. Here’s the three vendors that we use now. AQHost and BlueHost are the best for experienced users, while Site Build-It is great for people that have never built a web site before:

Site Build-It.com (SBI!) – If you are looking for a comprehensive way to build a web site that will attract visitors, SBI! is just what you have been looking for. SBI! is the BEST all-in-one site-building, site-hosting, and site-marketing service available. You get all the tools you need to easily build a professional, popular, and profitable Web BUSINESS for one low price.

SBI! handles all the behind-the-scenes technology which frees you up to focus on what you do best, your BUSINESS. The easy step-by-step process guarantees online business building success…in a tenth of the time … at a tenth of price. SBI! is great choice for small businesses, service businesses, web marketing and development professionals, anyone selling products or information (e-books, newsletters, and photos) online, people who want to sell other people’s products through affiliate programs, or even those businesses with e-commerce sites that need more targeted traffic. Click here for additional information.

AQHost - Do you need hosting for multiple domain hosting at an affordable rate? We host most of our websites with one AQHost Plan that covers most of our domain names. AQHost is our vendor of choice for people that are familiar with building web sites. Webmasters looking for a service to host their clients will find these guys have a great Reseller program that also let’s you add income as an affiliate. And believe it or not, they answer the phone…Amazing for a company that offers so many tools for such a low price.

Some of the features of these hosting plans:

First class technical support
Control Panel
Email Accounts, Mailing Lists, Autoresponders
Web Statistics from AWStats and Webalizer are the best we have seen for small businesses.
Fantastico, Discussion Boards, Blogs, E-Commerce, Portals, Customer Support Tools, Scripting
30 Day Money Back Guarantee – And Much More!

BlueHost – Do you have multiple Domain Names? Are you paying for hosting on each one? You don’t have to with BlueHost. Includes Free Web Site builder, Email, Blog, Forum, Shopping Cart, E-Commerce, Web Site Promotion, Unlimited Domain Names, Web Statistics, and much more to get your business off the ground and on the Internet. They also have an affiliate program that pays well.

Insightful Investing Update March 2010

admin — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:10:37 +0000

On a monthly basis, it has been a year since the bottom of the financial market crisis. The one year performance numbers for stocks look incredibly good, just the opposite of how horribly bad they looked one year ago. It only too one year for the financial markets to demonstrate the pendulum effect of market cycles. That being said, your portfolio should be close to its asset allocation targets at this time. Stocks bounced back in February to bring most categories back to or slightly better than break even for the year. Leading the pack was Real Estate, which gained just about all it lost last month by picking up 5.5%. US stocks benefited this month by a flight to quality that lifted the dollar. This action helped push up domestic stock funds, with a 5% gain by Mid Cap Stocks leading the pack for equities. Continue reading the Insightful Investing Newsletter March 2010 Update …

Search Engine Submission

admin — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 10:10:13 +0000

In order for people to find your Web Site, you must get listed in the Search Engines. There is a lot more to doing business on the Internet than just building your web site. Although you can still get listed in some Search Engines for Free, you will have to pay with either dollars or time to get a high search engine ranking. The term Search Engine Listing is often used to include Crawlers, Directories, and Pay-Per-Click Advertising. Here is what we will be covering in the next few pages:

Free Search Engine Submission

Using Pay-Per-Click Listings

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Submission Resources

Search Engines crawl the Internet with robots and use sophisticated algorithms to add and rank web sites to their listings. Getting a high ranking in this case requires Search Engine Optimization. This means ensuring that your web pages are accessible to search engines and focused in ways that help improve the chances they will be found. There are now only three real players in this space; Google, Yahoo, and Live Search. All of the other Search Engines use one of these three for the source of their data, so if you get listed in these you will show up in the others.

Directories use people to review the web sites being added to the directory listings. Many of these now charge a fee to get your web site listed. You can still get added to some of them free, but you are likely to be ranked lower if you haven’t paid to be listed. Getting listed in the Open Directory Project is a multi-step process, but well worth your time as many search engines get results from these pages. You should first read the Instructions on how to add your site. Then look at the categories in the directory to decide which one you would like your site to be listed in. To add your site use the Add URL link on the directory page you would like your site to be included in.

Pay-Per-Click is when search engines allow you to bid for keywords or search terms in order to obtain a high search engine ranking. When you out bid your competition, you will receive the top search engine ranking. Many of these paid advertisements are included prominently in other search engines. Keywords or Search Terms are the phrases that a person types into a search engine when they are searching for web sites. Your goal is to get your web site a high search engine ranking when a particular keyword phrase is searched on. Search Engine Optimization is the process of setting up your web site so that it ranks high for your keywords in the Search Engines (especially the crawler-based search engines).

Search Engine Ranking, Search Engine Positioning, and Search Engine Placement all refer to how well a web site is listed for particular keywords and search terms on each Search Engine. The ultimate goal for many people is to get a “top ten” ranking for a particular keyword or search terms.

Search Engine Marketing and Promotion is the process of managing your search engine ranking and should be a part of your overall web site marketing plan and includes all of the topics discussed on this web page. We will cover the different aspects of search engine submission on the pages of this web site, including some tools and additional resources you can use to improve your search engine ranking.

You should prepare for submitting your web site to any directory, crawler-based search engine, or pay-per-click search engine by writing a description that is 25 words or less than can be used by the search engines to display to people what your web site is about. Before doing this, determine what commonly searched-upon words people use to find your product, service, or information in the search engines. Since there is too much competition for single word “keywords”, select “keyword phrases” that are two or three words in length. Use the results you get from working with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and WordTracker to compile a list of about a dozen keyword phrases to use when creating content for your web site and be sure to use the two or three most important ones in your description.

Now let’s look at what you need to do to submit your web site to the Big 3 search engines.

Search Engine Optimization

admin — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 10:10:54 +0000

Search engine optimization means improving the chances that your web pages will be found by the search engines. The term “search engine” is often used generically to describe both crawler-based search engines and human-powered directories. These two types of search engines gather their listings in different ways. Crawler-Based Search Engines Crawler-based search engines, such as Google, create their listings with ”robot” programs that “crawl” or “spider” the web. The pages that are displayed on a search are based on what the “robots” find. If you change your web pages, crawler-based search engines eventually find these changes, and this can effect how your web site is listed. Page titles, meta tags, body copy and other page elements all impact your page ranking. People-Powered Directories A human-powered directory, such as Yahoo, depends on people for its listings. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions you submit. Changing your web pages has no effect on your listing. Hybrid Search Results It is now common for a search engine to present both human-powered listings and crawler-based results. Usually mixed search results favor one type of listings over another. For example, Yahoo first presents its human-powered listings, but it also presents crawler-based results from Google. Search Relevancy Crawler-based search engines determine page relevancy by following a set of rules, known as an algorithm. Although exactly how a particular search engine’s algorithm works is a closely-kept trade secret all major search engines follow these general criteria. Keywords – Location and Frequency One of the the main criteria in a page ranking algorithm involves the location and frequency of keywords on a web page. Pages with the search terms appearing in the HTML title tag are considered more relevant to a search than other pages. Search engines also consider web pages with keywords near the top of the page, such as in the headline or the first few paragraphs of text, to be more relevant to the search topic. In addition to location of keywords, frequency is the other major factor in how search engines determine relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages. HOWEVER, we must point out that having too high a frequency will offend both your reader and the search engines. This is considered “spamming” a search engine and will actually lower your page ranking. Search engines, and people scanning your web page, want to quickly find the specific information they are looking for on that page. The information they are looking for are the “keyword phrases” you compiled when writing your web site description. These key phrases play an important role in obtaining a high search engine ranking, and getting the reader to stay on your web site. The page title tag is the most important location for your keyword phrases. Not only does this count for a lot in the search engine rankings, its the first line people see displayed in the listings. This tag has the double duty of catching the attention of the search engines and influencing a person to click on your listing. These 8 to 10 words must include your target keywords, starting with the most important. Your page headline should include your most important key phrases and encourage your reader to read your web page. Work your list of key phrases into the first few paragraphs in a way that makes the page relevant to the search engines while being easy for your reader to follow. Meta Tags Meta tags are not as important as they used to be for search engine ranking because many of the search engines don’t use them as part of their ranking criteria. Even so, its good to its still good to have a short list of your important keywords in the keyword tag. The description tag may actually be more important as some of the engines still use this under the title to describe your site in their listings. Since you need a short description when you submit your web site to directories, it only takes a couple minutes to add this tag to your web site. Description tag – provides a description of the search engine to show with your listing. Keywords tag – provides keywords for the search engine to associate with your page. Popularity and Click-Through Some search engines, Google in particular, consider how “popular” a web page is by analyzing how many pages link to that page to determine how “important” it is. More popular pages will get a ranking boost. Another way some search engines adjust ranking is with click-through measurement. In short, this means that a search engine may watch what results someone selects for a particular search, then eventually drop high-ranking pages that aren’t attracting clicks, while promoting lower-ranking pages that do pull in visitors. Now that you understand a little about how the search engines work, lets check out some tools you can use to make this process easier.

Promotional Products for Marketing Your Business

admin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 14:10:17 +0000

‘Promoting your business is an ongoing process that keeps your business visible to prospects and clients. While you should use promotional products to market your business throughout the year, there will be times when you should use them for a specific marketing campaign. Either way, successful promotional product campaigns require a plan that includes goals and a way to measure your results. Promotional products are useful articles of merchandise imprinted with a company name or message and usually distributed free to a target audience. Most promotional items are inexpensive and designed to be seen over and over again. Popular items range from caps, coffee mugs, and computer accessories to shirts, sports items, and stress relievers. Imprinted products are most effective when they are actively distributed as marketing tools to meet specific goals. There are many ways you can use these promotional items to market your business. Let’s take a look at some ways to use them. 1. Determine the purpose of the promotional campaign. Are you interested in getting additional business from your current customers, or are you trying to reach prospect new clients? Develop a theme with a message that helps to solidify your company’s name, service or products in your target customer’s mind. 2. Set Your Goals. Set some goals for the type of response you expect to get from your promotional products, especially if you are using them for a specific campaign, like the introduction of a new product or service. Make sure you can measure your results by asking new customers where they found out about your company. 3. Selecting the right promotional items. Many businesses hand out promotional pens or refrigerator magnets, but there’s something to be said for not being one of the crowd. Choose a promotional product that ties into your line of business or the theme of your promotional campaign. While computer related businesses might hand out items like a mouse pad, a unique idea used by a marketing company we know is handing out light bulb shaped stress relievers with the tag line ‘Bright Ideas for Marketing Your Business.’ Another way to generate ideas is to think about situations in which you might encounter prospects. For example, if you golf often, consider imprinting your company web site and phone number on some golf tees. Examples of using promotional products. Promoting your company’s Web Site. Every item you choose to promote your business should include your web site address. This includes everything from pens, to magnets, to those jackets you give to your best customers. Giving something small away is also a good way to persuade visitors to your web site to register with you. While you can give away a special report in exchange for an email address, if you give them something you have to send out, they will also have to give you their mailing address. You might even consider a monthly drawing for a company cap or T-shirt to the lucky winner who registers with your web site. And don’t forget to post the monthly winners on your web site. Building Trade Show Traffic Participating at a trade shows is one thing, getting people to your booth is quite another. This is a situation to choose a unique item that your visitors will not only hang onto, but others will see and say “Where did you get that? I want one of those!” You probably still have some items in your office that you chased down at the last trade show you attended. Premiums We’ve all seen the ads on TV that magazines use to entice new subscribers with the offer of a free gift. You can do the same thing by offering a promotional item to anyone that places an order over a certain amount. This is certainly worth the dollar or two you have to pay for the item, and it just goes in the box when you ship your product to your customer, so there’s no additional postage. Increasing Customer Loyalty. Do you want to thank customers who have been with you for many years, given you referrals, or made a substantial purchase at your business? Giving them a more substantial promotional item, like a golf shirt with your company logo, would be a great way to thank them for helping your business to grow! Don’t forget to use some of your advertising budget for promotional products. They will remind your customers to give you a call the next time that they need your product or service.