How to Keep Your Business Writing Clear And Up To Date

How to Keep Your Business Writing Clear And Up To Date
by Mary Ann Gauthier

Most of us are busier than ever these days. We don’t have time to decipher the memos, e-mails, and other business messages we receive. We need to understand them the first time we read them. And we need to write them clearly so that our audience isn’t forced to labor over their meaning.Years ago, old fashioned business messages were often filled with redundancies and stilted wording, for example, “Upon procurement of the supplies, your request will be scrutinized and taken under consideration in a timely fashion.”Today, the most effective business messages are clear, concise, and easy to comprehend.We write pretty much the way we speak, in Plain English, which most eighth and ninth graders can readily understand.Here are eight things you can do to keep your business writing clear and up to date:

1.Use every day words you and your audience understand. You need to impress your audience with clarity, not with words they have to look up in the dictionary. Write “old,” rather than “antiquated”; “certain,” rather than “unequivocal,”; “read,” rather than “peruse.”

2.Omit, tighten or trim old-fashioned phrases. Rather than writing, “This is to inform you,” simply write your message. Use “because,” rather than “owing to the fact that”; write “I’ve just learned,” rather than, “It has come to my attention.”

3.Write the way you speak with the appropriate level of formality. Use a conversational but professional tone. Obviously, you wouldn’t write the too familiar, “Hey Dude, How’s it goin’?” as a greeting for a business e-mail. You might write the words, “Hi Chris,” “Hello Jane,” or “Dear Mr. Johnson,” depending on how well you know the recipient. As you compose the rest of your message, ask yourself if you would use the words you’re writing when you’re speaking to someone in polite conversation.

4.Avoid the passive voice--most of the time. The passive voice is indirect, wordy, and awkward. “The report was worked on by the team,” is written in the passive voice. Why not write, “The team worked on the report”? It’s stronger and to the point.A few words of caution--You might also use the passive voice when you want to be diplomatic and nonaccusatory: "The fax machine is broken," rather than, "You broke the fax machine."

5.Write concise sentences and paragraphs, but don’t overdo it. A string of short sentences may sound choppy, and paragraphs that are too short may lack substance. Keep your audience in mind as you write only the words you need to make your meaning clear and focused. Sprinkle in transitions, such as “therefore,” “also,” and “however,” to make your sentences flow smoothly.

6.Don’t use clichés. Clichés tell your audience that you didn’t make the effort to express yourself in your own unique way. Furthermore, if you’re writing for aninternational audience, clichés such as, “call the shots,” or “fall through thecracks,” may be meaningless.

7.Use jargon with care, only when it’s appropriate for your audience. Jargon islanguage used by members of a profession or followers of a hobby. “Brasstacks,” “gravy plane,” and “TPN” are examples of jargon used in the finance,av iation, and nursing professions, respectively. Jargon is like shop talk, so be sure to limit its use to the specific group you’re addressing.

8.Always proofread your messages. It’s tempting to press “send” on an e-mailwithout looking it over. Check all your messages for correct grammar and properpunctuation. Even a forgotten comma can cause confusion: “After typing thesecretary went home.” Did someone type the secretary? Or did the secretary gohome after she finished typing? Your audience shouldn’t have to ask either question.

Business Joint Ventures On The Net!

Business Joint Ventures On The Net!
By: Benjamin Scott

The term business joint ventures refer to two independent companies or more who agree to establish a new company. These companies legally commit themselves to contribute equity for the new company, as well as share their technology and skills. In return, they share both profits or losses and control over this organization. A joint venture can be executed for a limited period or a continuos period.

Business joint ventures have become the latest and most viable business model for many online companies because of the following reasons: Globalization has opened a world of possibilities, where different languages and cultures are no longer barriers. Today international travel has become the norm.

The other reason is the internet. The net has leveled the playing field. It has also made the use of technology have the winning business edge. These companies see business joint ventures as the next logical direction their organizations must take, if they are to remain competitive and profitable.

Do you own a profitable online business? Are you wondering what's next? Consider then, the many benefits a business joint venture can provide you.

- First, with a business joint venture, you'll gain access to other markets. This will then open additional or bigger streams of profits for you.

- Second - Think of the synergies you create in the business joint venture. All of the partners benefit from the exchanges of information, such as access to modern managerial practices and the brain power of your manpower.
However, you must be diligent in picking the right partners. It has to be a win-win situation for all of you. Choose partners who complement your strengths. Partners who'll share resources you do not have and can benefit from.

- Third - Diversification, which means that by agreeing to a business joint venture, you'll be spreading the costs and risks thereby minimizing negative impacts.

- Fourth - By entering a business joint venture, you'll get better access to financial resources.

- Fifth - By establishing a business joint venture, the partners stave off competition from other companies, and strengthen their position in the industry. How are business joint ventures created? Typically, forging of joint ventures agreements are determined by the following factors. The nature and the size of the planned enterprise. The length of commitment - will it be for a specific period? Or have the life of a corporation? Another factor, concerns the identities of the participants and regions in which their business operates. Lastly, the commercial and financial goals of all the participants and the method in which this shall settled.

Are there any negatives in establishing a business joint venture? As long as all the terms and conditions of the venture are carefully set out, there is no reason for it to fail.

A business joint venture provides you all the benefits of joining forces with other companies. Yet, you retain full control over your company. The best of both worlds can be found in a business joint venture.

You CAN Make Money While You Sleep!

True or False: You CAN Make Money While You Sleep!
By: Diane Hughes
It's a crying shame really. So many people have tried to follow the Internet dream. They've heard the stories of others who quit their day jobs, wake up whenever they choose, take leisurely lunches with friends, shop for hours on end without one worry about how to pay for their purchases, buy new cars and pay cash for them, and make money hand over fist while they sleep. Naturally, these people would drool over the thought of being able to do the same for themselves.

However, as the landslide of people all across the globe began to flock to the 'Net much like they did to California in the gold-rush days, they find that making money while you sleep might be a myth. They wonder if they've just been led astray by wicked, evil people with nothing better to do than make fools out of innocent, hardworking folks.

What is the answer? Can you make money online? CAN you make money while you sleep? I don't mean an extra $200 a month to pay for groceries, but a real living. If so, how do you go about it?

It's True! I'm Doing It Myself!First of all, it's not a myth. I can honestly tell you that I am making a full-time living online. And yes, there have been many mornings where I've awakened, turned on my computer, and found notifications of sales that occurred during the night. I AM making money while I sleep, and you can, too.

Let me tell you what I think probably happened to generate this long-standing myth.
The early Internet pioneers discovered ways to make automated income. They realized this was a wonderful thing and began to spread the news to everyone they knew. Then, however, those unscrupulous types (you know... the jerks) saw this as an easy way to make a fast buck. They began preaching that making automated income online was as easy as pouring yourself a glass of water. In essence, they told half the story. As more and more people tried to make a living online and failed, the promise of making money while you sleep became fiction instead of fact.

So How Do You Do It?What's the real truth? How can you make a full-time living online just like me? There are several ways. Let me give you the unvarnished gospel when it comes to online business. You may not like what you hear, but it is fact, not fluff.

ACTION STEP 1Plan, Plan, Plan - It won't happen overnight. Nothing good ever does. In the beginning, you're going to create a plan then be ready to work that plan. You often hear about throwing up a website and making money while you sleep. Technically, yes, that's all there is to it. But... how does that site get up on the 'Net?

You have to create your site or have someone else create it. That means you have to take the time to learn professional website development (PLEASE, don't create some junky, homemade-looking site!), or you have to pay someone who already knows how to create websites. And what will you have on your site? Your own products? (Having your own e-products is highly recommended.) Someone else's products? You'll need to decide before your site is created.

How will people pay for the products they buy from your site? Do you have a merchant account? Will you become an affiliate for someone else so you don't need a payment system?
Will you go for high search engine rankings or rely on word-of-mouth, PPC ads, and other types of paid advertising? If you want good search engine optimization, you'll have to plan for that upfront. Again, you'll have to take time to learn how to do it or pay someone else who already knows how.

Before you take one more step toward launching your own Web business, find the answers to the questions above.

ACTION STEP 2Be Ready to Work - Once your site is ready to launch, how will people find you? How, exactly, will you drive qualified visitors to your site? Will you use organic (free) search engine listings? Will you use Pay-Per-Click search engine ads? Will you buy ezine ads? Do you have other means for getting customers to visit your site? People won't just come out of the blue, you'll have to bring them to your site somehow.
listings, you'll have about a 4-week to 4-month wait before seeing your new site listed. What will you do in the meantime to drum up business?

ACTION STEP 3How Will You Keep It Going? - Prosperous businesses are continually growing to keep up with customer demands. How will you keep your online business moving forward? Will you do research into what consumers want? Will you guess? Will you just follow the crowd?
You'll want to have some method for gauging customer responses so you can know what your site visitors want and how to provide it for them.

One such way is to use Survey Monkey (www.surveymonkey.com). You can create online surveys in order to keep up with the needs/wants of your site visitors.
ACTION STEP 4Service Is Key! - In order to make it in the long run, you simply must provide exceptional customer service to your clients. Those who lie, steal, cheat, or hide are destined to fail.

Understand this: Your success depends on your customers' success. If they aren't happy, you won't be in business long. Make every effort to treat them as the kings and queens they are.
See? The people who turned the "make money while you sleep" fact into fiction did so because they skipped all the important information. Now that you know what to expect, you can see that it is most definitely possible to make a full-time living online. It is even possible to make money while you sleep. However, you must have a plan, be ready to work, look for ways to keep your business growing, and treat your customers as true V.I.P.s.

When you do, you'll have all the tools you need to develop a long-standing business that - with time - will produce for you.

Adsense - The Powerful Passive Income Generator!

Adsense - The Powerful Passive Income Generator!
By: Matt Bacak

Webmasters have a revolutionary new method of collecting income from their websites.
Whereas in the past advertising revenue was reserved for those sites with large a coming and going of visitors, now even teenagers are making a quick buck with their online hobby blogs. People place adsense on their online family photo albums, their blogs and their business sites. The minimum you would get, even with a small amount of traffic, is for adsense to pay for your hosting costs.

Adsense revolutionized the world of paid advertising; banner advertising is based on the number of visitors you attract to your site, so the number of "banner impressions" dictate the revenue you receive. Google Adsense is quite different; it is the number of visitors that actually click on the advertising that determine how much you earn.

There is also a great disparity between payouts; because advertisers bid up the price for certain keywords, some ads pay more than others. As such, a site with few visitors but expensive keywords in their google ads can potentially still pull in a hefty payout.

Google really has taken the web by storm; attracted to passive income, more and more people are seriously capitalizing on their Google adsense advertising. Some of the highest earners manage to attract enough visitors to make a four figure monthly income, just from using adsense alone! This is not one of those get-rich-quick schemes and Google's adsense success is largely thanks to the fact that Google already enjoyed a fantastic reputation before introducing the program. They are a publicly traded company with physical headquarters. This, and the fact that anyone can apply to use adsense for free, has caused millions of people to sign up. For google it was a smart move, because now they extend their presence to countless websites and generate millions of dollars in advertising revenue. People were never reluctant to sign up, because the program is free. Google benefits by more people using adsense, so offering it for free was the best thing they could do.

One of the driving forced behind the program are its relevance to each and every page on a website; the program picks up keywords appearing in the website copy and automatically displays relevant ads. This increases the chances of people clicking through, and the webmaster collecting more revenue.

People are leveraging their income by operating several websites and attempting to attract as many targeted visitors as possible; in many instances we can observe that people work hard at a site, then once it is established they can largely leave it alone, yet still collect significant checks.
A major concern for entrepreneurs was the danger of a competitors ads showing up on their site; thanks to the adsense feature where it only displays relevant advertising. However this problem was solved by offering webmasters the option of filtering out unwanted ads. They can submit the URL of the competing site in their account, and any ads from the website will be blocked.
Google recently came out with a new feature: small targeted keywords based on the site's content are displayed; then as people click on those, a page opens showing a variety of pay-per-click ads based on that keyword. This gives webmasters the chance of displaying more advertising in less space.

Adsense also adds creditability to your website; the more focused the content, the better the ads will be and this encourages people to built high quality websites. These make the net a better place and generally provide a free service; site owners can afford to share their expertise or passions because they can receive indirect revenue's. The visitor does not pay for the information; instead the advertisers do, making the website's existence possible in the first place.

It is no surprise Google adsense is the most widely used form of advertising; they have created a program that is beneficial to both advertisers and users with their "no click no pay" mechanism, or more popularly called "pay-per-click". Advertisers do not pay for ads that are not drawing visitors, and website owners are paid more for each click than they would if the system were based on the number of people viewing the ads, instead of clicking on them.
All in all Google adsense has developed itself into a powerful tool, used by large corporations and the kid next door. They have truly revolutionized how the web thinks about advertising and made the process more profitable for site owners, while less costly for advertisers.