A simple comparison between Online and Offline Selling:

• Offline Stores (Traditional retail stores) compete for location. Shops at crowded areas, with a lot of foot traffic perform generally better. Real estate value is dependent on where the dense population is.

• Online Stores also compete for location – the top of search engine results. People go around the web to look for information. Online real estate value is dependent on who provides the most relevant and important content.

Consider this simple reality and now find out how you can leverage on it.

This simple reality can be an eye-opener. In the real world, people walk around… They go to school, or the office, or some other place. The path they take can determine the relative success of any shop. This is one of the reasons why it is taught in basic business school to target corner locations. There is thought to be more foot traffic at a corner location than in the middle of a street.

Let’s look at convenience stores. There is always a chance that somebody passing by it would go inside it, look around, and buy something. There is actually a statistic behind it – it is estimated that 3 percent of foot traffic go inside convenience stores. Naturally, the more foot traffic, the better!

Online, there is really no foot traffic. I think I would call it more like EYE-TRAFFIC. People essentially LOOK FOR/AT information online. I’ve read somewhere that a big percentage of what people do online is either to search, or read email. Just think about it, what do you do most of the time when you are online?

Knowing this tidbit, the online world becomes a totally different experience for anyone who would sells. How would a traditional retailer make money in an online world?

Some of my suggestions would be:

• Cater to the needs of an information-seeker. For example, a person in a retail store would look, taste, feel, smell and listen to items being sold. He/she can?t do that online, so she seeks for information about products instead. What could an online seller give her/him? Product reviews, specifications and item summaries.

• Become a resource of information for your customers. One way of doing this is providing How-To instructional materials. Are you selling fish? Why not provide a website that details instructions on how to take care of pet fishes?

• Give a visitor a reason to comeback by providing updated info or news tidbits. Your website becomes something like a newsmagazine. Just think about it, if people drool over Gadgets, wouldn’t they want to buy it as well?

• If real estate value online is the top of the search results, then your website should be there. Fortunately, not too many people have digested this in their minds yet. If you get ahead of your competition on this, then that’s already a big advantage.

• Use popular keywords with little competition to get to the top of the Search Engines. One technique I’ve seen being done online is to use tools like NicheBot or Wordtracker to find keywords related to your business. The businesses then reserve the website’s domain name to match exactly these keywords. For example, if the keywords “juggling while sitting” is popular, with no competition, and you happen to sell juggling paraphernalia, then you could create a website like juggling-while-sitting.com. It sounds a bit weird, but it seems to work. It also helps that the website be rich with text content.

Knowing and addressing this fundamental difference can mean success to your online business!

A friend recently introduced me to the stock market. She told me that anybody make money from it by understanding how to use a technical analysis of stocks. Technical Analysis is defined as:

…a method of evaluating future stock prices and market directions based on statistical analysis of variables such as trading volume, price changes, etc., to identify patterns.

Basically you need to know math and pattern recognition. There is another way of looking at stocks called the fundamental analysis, which is:

Research and examination of a corporation’s financial statements and balance sheets to predict the future price movements of their securities. Among other indicators, fundamental analysts study past records of assets, earnings, sales, products, management and markets to predict future trends.

My friend, however, likes math and prefers to use the technical analysis. She gave me a brief lecture on how it worked.

Essentially, she told me to look at patterns like these:

She explained that I can get these charts by gathering data from the stock market. Each company has a public listing and all information about its shares of stocks are listed there. When I subscribe to a stock broker system (various websites exist), I could download this information and use computer software to plot out the data.

Each individual equity, market and index listed on a public exchange has a chart that illustrates this movement of price over time. This is what’s called the stock chart.

Individual data plots for charts can be made using the CLOSING price for each day. The plots are connected together in a single line, creating the graph. Also, a combination of the OPENING, CLOSING, HIGH and/or LOW prices for that market session can be used for the data plots. This second type of data is called a PRICE BAR. Individual price bars are then overlaid onto the graph, creating a dense visual display of stock movement.

By plotting the data this way, trends can be identified. By looking at upward and downward trends, people can decide when to buy.

I was told that if I see the upward pattern emerge, I should consider buying the stock. A stock in an uptrend will continue to rise until some change in value or conditions occurs. Declining stocks will continue to fall until some change in value or conditions occurs.

Chart readers try to locate TOPS and BOTTOMS on the chart, which are those points where a rally or a decline ends. Taking a position near a top or a bottom can be very profitable.

My friend says that Technical Stock Analysis is great because the same general principles can be applied to different markets – including bonds and even foreign currency exchange.

Being a math enthusiast, I found my friend’s explanation quite interesting. This got me so interested that I’m planning to attend a short seminar on technical stock analysis.

If you have some extra money, you might want to consider looking at this too.

Guess what people are doing these days – they are actually making money through the Internet. People augment their income with online jobs or even perform full time work online. The jobs that people do online include:

• Web Design – Those with creative talent and know how to use Photoshop or Macromedia software are in demand. Design projects go from a minimum of $200 per web site and up. Those with training in fine arts or with a natural eye for beauty can pretty much get easy work online.
• Copywriting Services – There is also a solid demand for copy writers. Copywriters are responsible for writing advertising copy and generating creative concepts, often in collaboration with an art director or creative director. This can either be a regular writing engagement or a per-article setup. Copywriting work can go $10-$20 per article.
• Problogging – Some people like to share their thoughts, opinions and emotions. They sometimes strongly feel about issues around them and write freely. Fortunately, there are now blog networks that would hire people to write blog content.
• Home-based Employees – companies are now more open to individuals who work from home. Some tech companies going international sometimes prefer to hire just one person to serve as a consul. That person initially works from home. There are also some US based tech operations who actively search for programmers and SEO experts. They accept work from home terms but require a tracking software be installed on a employee’s computer. This allows them to track the hours of actual work done.
• Domaining – this is a broad term referring to the purchase of domain names and ‘parking’ it on  money-making websites like SEDO.com. Look at trends on TV, movies and even games and figure out what domain names would be valuable. Recently, a software company named Blizzard announced that they would release a new game called StarCraft 2. An entrepreneur bought domain names related to ‘starcraft 2’ with the hopes of reselling it online. This is an perfect example of domaining.

If you are interested in making your own money online, consider the options above. There are materials available around the net. There are also networks you could start connecting with to learn more about online money-making ventures.  Start making money online.

A mutual fund is simply a financial intermediary that allows a group of investors to pool their money together with a predetermined investment objective. It is a collection of stocks and/or bonds controlled by a mutual fund manager. The manager is sometimes called the “trigger man” because he triggers the sale and purchase of the stocks and bonds.

On the whole, the average mutual fund returns are comparatively less per year than stocks. Managed mutual fund shareholders as a group can expect to see any return reduced by the approximate costs imposed by the funds.

What are the Advantages of Mutual Funds

Buying a mutual fund provides instant holdings of several different companies and thus diversifies one’s portfolio. Investors don’t put all their eggs in one basket, so to say.

Mutual funds are also quite liquid. A mutual fund investment can be converted into cash upon your request.

What are the Disadvantages of Mutual Funds?

Mutual fund investors have no control over what to invest in. Unlike picking your own individual stocks, a mutual fund puts you at the mercy of the manager.

Mutual funds generally have only small holdings of so many different stocks. When a fund’s top holdings jump to high numbers, this doesn’t make much of a difference in a mutual fund’s total performance. There is really just small gain realized from even top the top performing stocks. This is caused by overdiversification.

Funds will typically have a range of different fees that reduce the overall payout. Often, these fees are not well explained to investors.

So should you invest in Mutual Funds?

I’d personally recommend that you try it out. Just make sure to understand all the costs involved. The investment required is pretty small yet can still gain some significant passive income. Mutual fund investments are even, at times, better than putting your money in a Bank Savings Account. When you are ready to try out managing your own stock portfolio, just cash your mutual fund for investment capital.