Ray Dalio is one of my favorite business leaders.  He is the founder and president of Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world.  The funny thing is that most people have never even heard of Dalio or Bridgewater. Once Dalio’s firm started growing too large that he did not have personal contact with each individual employee each day, he wrote a 100 page document titled, “Principles,” where he outlines his keys for success in life and management.  At the core of his ideology, Dalio sees a successful business as a machine with moving parts.  Each part must be moving correctly, and in alignment with the other parts, in order for the machine to operate at peak performance.  The parts of your company are the separate business units, but the business units are managed by people, so at the end of the day, building a successful company becomes very much about properly managing people.

Management is much more art than science.  Your goal as a manager of people is to see each of your people achieve maximum performance and output.  This does not happen automatically.  It happens by tapping into the psyche and understanding how each of your people tick.  Let’s break down 4 types of employees.

The Leader

This employee is extremely self-motivated and tends to stand out in group conversation and team projects.  If you force this person into a subordinate role, they will most likely lose motivation and purpose.  This person has a remarkable ability to communicate big picture vision and motivate everyone else in the company to see and feel the vision.

The Bean Counter

This employee loves detail.  If you put this person in a cubicle with a detailed assignment, they will crush it.  This type of personality is typically predictable.  No major swing HI’s and LO’s.  They are dependable, but not “shoot for the moon dreamers.”  The best Bean Counters typically love working for dreamers and exciting people, since that is not their own personality.  They love to feel part of the team and they love to feel useful.

The Independent

There is a difference between being a leader and being independent.  Being independent is not exactly healthy in many organizations.  This person has a hard time taking orders and answering to authority.  At the same time, they are not great at strategic thinking and leading people.  This person must either learn to work in a group environment, be put on solo tasks that can be accomplished by one person, or let go from the company.  This also tends to be the employee that always believes he/she could go get a few small business loans and start up a new company and do just as well or better.

The High Ranking Follower

Successful companies are full of these folks.  This is the hardest employee to find, but the best to have.  A high ranking follower is someone who has incredible leadership characteristics and macro-thinking/planning abilities, but they love the concept of team and they love being responsible to another person at the end of the day.  These are the people who will most likely never go off, take out small business loans, and start another company that would compete with you, but at the same time they have enough entrepreneurial spirit and passion that they can help drive your business into significant growth.

If you can develop a team blend that has a clear leader, a few high ranking followers, and lots of bean counters, you can develop and extremely successful company.  Just watch out for those independents!  They can tend to be a ticking time bomb!

Online industry in 2011 has picked up in notches and miles in the virtual world, because of the increase in the usage of internet by individuals across the globe for e-commerce and various other purposes. Many social websites like Twitter and Facebook have seen success with millions of individuals logging in, thus making way for the business establishments all over the world to aggressively promote their products and services through online advertising. Through online advertising, the business establishments were able to reach out to quite a huge number of individuals and promote their brand.

Popularity of Online Advertising

The year 2011 is considered to be the year of internet advertising simply because; billions of dollars were spent on online advertisements by business establishments all over the world in 2011. The companies quickly took the advantage of the popularity of social media sites and other websites and aggressively promoted their products and services to the masses. This way they not only let their global presence felt, but also took competition to an entirely new level, and increased their revenue in the form of sales.

Why Online Advertising?

The Internet has now become one of the main media for purchasing goods and services as making online payments has become quite safer. Any business that wishes to grow has taken to advertising in the internet to get a world wide presence. Such a type of advertising in the internet has become common and is considered to boost the success rates of any business. However, it is to be noted that all business enterprises were not quite successful through online advertising in 2011, as they were not able to target the potential clients due to wrong advertising strategies and policies. By placing proper advertisements in the relevant sites, you can be sure to attract the right kind of people to your website and thus have greater online traffic and subsequently expect good revenue. Various types of advertisements were used in the internet in 2011, and different techniques were used to attract the potential clients across the globe.

Was Online Advertising Popular in 2011?

It is not enough to just have a good, well designed and developed website for attracting customers. You need to target your potential customers and place advertisements accordingly, keeping in mind the demographics of a region. Advertisements when tailored have definitely brought in better results than expected and the business establishments have seen a rapid growth in its volume of business and revenue generation through online advertisements in 2011. Another reason for the increase of popularity of online advertising is that the traditional methods of advertisement are costly and also limited to a specific region. However, the internet being a free world where people are not limited to boundaries, the advertisements placed online tend to play a major role in getting success for the business. It is also quite cost effective to place numerous advertisements on the internet. Furthermore, various innovative ways of advertising were used on the internet in 2011, to lure the potential clients. Thus, the online industry has seen tremendous and rapid growth through online advertising in 2011.

BuySellAds.com is a great platform for advertisers to reach and improve brand recognition and sales. In simple terms, we can refer BuySellAds.com to be an online network for advertising, which tends to bring the online advertisers and publishers together, thus making it easy for the advertisers in finding blogs and websites that suit their needs and budgets.

How does BSA work?

It is very simple to be a part of BuySellAds.com and all you have to do is to register yourself for a free account. Once your account is created, the necessary information can be entered in the form provided. Their website provides the user with the required HTML code which needs to be inserted into the blog’s template for the ads to be displayed on the blog, after the ad space is purchased by the advertisers.

Ease of Use

Once the blog is submitted to BuySellAds.com, it tends to appear in the publisher’s directory and help the advertiser to search the sites where they would like to place their ads. Once an advertiser finds an interesting listing, this website shows them the available data regarding the blog’s complete rank, Alexa rank, Google page ranking, RSS subscriber number and many other parameters of interest. Basically, an advertiser can gauge the website well in advance before investing.

Payment Section Directly Handled by the Website

As an advertiser, you can easily purchase ad space on your blog directly from BuySellAds.com and thus, you can be relieved of having to be a part of the deal. BSA will broker the deal smoothly between you and a publisher. And in case of any complication, the money you spent will be transferred back to you promptly.

Benefits for Advertisers Using BuySellAds.com

All you need to do is to open an account with them and add advertising money. You can browse their premium listings of websites. BSA has a very stringent system of approving publisher websites. Advertisers can save a lot of time which is invested in screening potential blogs/websites, since the job is already done and you are given a dynamic blog data to study. This website offers flexibility in regards to the amount and type of advertising space that you would like to offer to potential publishers.

A point that advertisers can really be happy about is that BSA charges their commission amount from the publisher and not the advertiser. So you have an advantage of being the king as an advertiser as you just have to pay the flat rate and not worry about the extra commission as the publisher pays for it.

A definite thumbs-up for BSA, it is really an useful service.

Do you use Buysellads?

This post will help you in understanding on how to gain press attention for your start up. Establishing a name for oneself and one’s fresh new business has surely become a job in itself nowadays. Public exposure is the key to success, but no one gets publicity that easy anymore. However, when it comes to approaching the mass media for showcasing one’s business, some basic rules never go out of fashion.

Ways to Make the Press Spread the Word of One’s Start-up

The common strategies for making one’s networking click are:

Fearless Showcasing

Underestimating you own self is the biggest mistake of any start up aspirer. If one is confident that he/she can provide interesting and valuable services then he/she has nothing to fear from. Targeting the correct type of writers is of prime importance. Generally people who write about other note-taking applications, personal productivity applications or some beta-stage startups are the main audience in such situations. Helping a reporter out by answering the different queries they post online may also prove to be effective in this struggle. Other than that, having personalized pages in Facebook and Twitter are also vital avenues to let one’s network grow. This also helps one to keep in touch with his/her customers.

 Constant Follow-up

Beginners get disheartened if they do not get any response back from the bloggers/reporters that they tried to contact. They just simply presume that they are not that interested. This is not always true. The reporters get numerous mails from various people from all over and it’s not possible for them to go through all of them each day. Weekly follow ups are advised, decreasing the interval durations between these follow ups as the due date approaches nearer. It can really be frustrating at times but one needs to bear with this turmoil patiently in order to make it happen.

24/7 Availability

A start up entrepreneur needs to prove that he is more than capable of meeting deadlines set by reporters. All reporters are not the kindest creatures alive on earth which would mean that personal crisis, no matter how serious, would be nothing more than “petty excuses” for them. In order to provide one’s company with the break needed, reporters need screenshots, so unless and until the business owner in concern cares to line them up for them, they could care less.

Too much Focus Ruins D-Day 

Overvaluing the day of the event may make one look like a fool. It does not make a difference if one decides to save some uniquely exclusive information to be revealed on that very day in order to make it extra-special, it does not usually make any big difference to the reporters because at the end of the day they chose to write a report on someone because they found it to be more interesting compared to others.

Being One’s True Self

Maintaining one’s humility instead of acting like a celebrity, just because one managed to bag some big media outlet is nothing short of idiocy. It just builds up a fake image in their eyes which would eventually attract negativity towards one’s company and make one seem like a wannabe.

What are your ideas to gain exposure from press?

This is a sponsored post by Zenni Optical.  They are the number 1 online eyeglasses store offering high-quality prescription eyeglasses. Prescription eyeglasses are a necessary health item that need to be brought from reliable brands. Apart from the regular features and safety of a presecription glasses, Zenni Optical aims at providing a lot of additional features that will make your life easier.

These eyeglasses are coated with  new generation features such as oleophobic coating (which means it is fingerprint resistant), AR and hydro-phobic coating. Together the user can have a hassle free use of his/her eye wear, where they do not have to worry constantly about keeping their lenses crystal clear. For most users the biggest issue is the oil from fingers and fingerprints, that simply would not go away.

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They have a great pricing which starts from $6.95 prescription eyeglasses. This means they provide high quality glasses at incredible pricing.  83k fans on Facebook is testimony to their popularity and reliability among their loyal customers.

Passing years scare me. And with good reason. I have never been a fan of growing up. I am just 22 but I can tell you I have seen most things that many never will and felt things that many people would not ever want to feel about themselves.

Credit: peter-loza.deviantart.com

I am very attached to my folks back home. But back when I was 18, the naive teen in me was excited about leaving home and being all independent. I am talking about leaving for college after school. Now its 5 years since I have had a stay at home. In the last 5 years I have never had the peace of mind to stay with my mom and dad for extended periods. All my trips have always been a touch and go. Always giving me an incomplete feeling when I leave. And I cant help but think that maybe I should have stayed back and went to a college closer to home.

Because when everything is said and done, we will all see our share of misfortune and experiences with time. But the time that you get to spend with your parents is only limited.

Year 1995

I yearn for the Christmas when I was younger. When I was younger, the 25th morning were always insanely exciting for me. It was the morning when Santa would have left me a present on my study table. My eyes would pop open with a sudden jolt on Christmas morning and before anything would set upon the study table. And there it would be, the gleaming box of present. It was there every year for the next 5 years. Until I realized.

Let me tell you one thing, when a boy understands that Santa is not real. There is only one feeling. Pain.

If it wasn’t for my general realization of this fact, my mother would not mind placing gifts at my desk for every Christmas till I am 100. Trust me, she hated herself when my bubble burst about Santa’s existence. I think that is Love. I really do think of it as something divine.

Year 2011

Christmas in 2011. I wake up in my empty rented room. There is no gift. No mom with her radiant smile to make me feel all  Christmas-y. There is an ash tray that needs emptying. I barely feel like getting out of bed. After all it is just one Sunday I get off from work. I check my cell – I don’t even have the balance to call her up. It hurts.

I regret where I brought my life. I regret not being with mom more. Because now its too late.

The .XXX TLD is by far the most ineffective attempt to filter porn by ICANN, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. This extension was launched by them to help parents keep a check and prohibit their child from accessing any site ending with .xxx. At the same time, adult websites can still operate their content on .com and other extensions. This makes .xxx an ineffective tool. But like all extensions, the .xxx does offer some investment opportunities.

Should you invest in .xxx domain name?

To answer that question, let me tell you what is the current demand state of .xxx. The company that is in charge of managing the .xxx extension is the ICM registry. They are a Florida based company. The sale of .xxx domain names went live on December 6th. And what has happened is non-sexual and respectable universities/organizations are scrambling to grab .xxx domain names for their brand. Surprised? Here is why: a spokesman for the University of Michigan said, “This is viewed as a rational and practical step to protecting our image.” It’s true—the school certainly doesn’t want some porn company launching a GirlsOfMichiganUniversity.xxx website.

But what is the investment opportunity for internet entrepreneurs here?

It could be a wise option not to invest in a .xxx domain name. Your investment could take a long time to yield returns.

Some reasons why you should not invest in a .xxx

• Most porn companies are still operating on .com and are not really switching to .xxx. If anything, they are only purchasing .xxx related to their brand.
• The amount of complications and possible legal actions are not worth the investment. Some adult companies are giving legal threats against ICANN to colleges that have booked .xxx combinations to protect their good image.
• History has shown that no other TLD other than .com has really caught on. The .xxx sure looks like it is going down the drain as well.

Some reason why you should invest in a .xxx domain name

The above mentioned points are some of the cons of investing in .xxx. However, there is a tendency that when .xxx investments give returns, they might pay back in a very big way. It could be a wise investment if you are ready to sit with it for a long time.

A quick tip, unethical though it may be. You can invest in .xxx extensions for brands that are non-adult, they will usually come scrambling for buying that domain from you considering the potential image risk they will carry.

So, it completely boils down to you for making a call to invest. It may not be a definitive returns market but it might be worth a shot at.  The .xxx domain names will also be heavier on your pockets. They cost $70 which is almost 7 times the regular price of a .com extension and such.

Namecheap has started sale of .xxx domain extension at a special introductory discount. You can buy a .xxx domain name from Namecheap.

I have been a BuySellAds publisher almost since they started off their service a couple of years back. And I have earned decent amount of money through them, which is what makes me a big fan of Buysellads. In between, I deactivated all my BSA ad zones and focused on my Google Adsense revenue program. Now I have completed my minimum threshold of $100 on Google Adsense and do not plan to use their advertisements ever again on any of my websites. They pay peanuts.

So I moved back faithfully to my BuySellAds direct ad program, thinking that I will at least be paid flat rates every month. So in my three months hiatus from BSA, I noticed hundreds of new publishers in the same niche as mine. And I also noticed that BSA started adding new niches of websites into their inventory for advertisers. No complains there. It helps a wider range of publishers get accepted into the BuySellAds program and at the same time, advertisers from varied industries now have better and competitive options.

But, there was no denying the fact that Buysellads had got more competitive and difficult to make money from as compared to earlier days of their service.

I quickly set up my ad zones – at least there were fewer changes in that area.

Changes in BuySellAds

So the major changes that Buysellads has made are:

• It has increased the number of parameters that advertisers can see in your directory listing. At the same time, now BSA gives an option to publishers for selecting/de-select parameters they do not want to share in their directory listing. Its a good option for publishers since now we can show the best parameters of one’s blog. For example, my blog does not have a decent Google Pagerank so I hold it from public view to advertisers.
• Introduction of new categories for different blog niches. They now have categories dedicated humor, automotive and entertainment. They started off as ad brokers for only technology blogs.  Now they have around 10 categories for different kinds of blogs. This is good because it helps in easing the number of blogs in a single category and prevents overcrowding.
• It has become easier to get accepted into BSA. And the most simple trick to get accepted into BSA is just to have a blog that looks good. They have literally stopped caring about the traffic that your website might be getting. There was a time when 100,000 views were the criteria for them to take you into their program. I have seen blogs as old as 3 months being accepted.

 BuySellAds Gets Competitive

All this has resulted in

Buysellads has successfully managed to cut ad rates for their advertisers. At least the price for medium traffic blogs have come down drastically due to the high volume of them in the BSA directory. For example, the category where I am listed in “Business and Marketing”- there are about 1700 other websites listed. This is just one single category I talk about. So it becomes very difficult to stand out and get advertisers to put money into your ad space.

Even on Collegefallout, the ad space from BSA is priced dirt cheap. It is only then that I have managed to sell two spots of the three spots I offer.

All in all, it has become very competitive for a blogger to make huge revenue of BSA unless his traffic stats exceed 100,000.

An issue I noticed was that publishers are erratically listing their blog in any category they desire rather than the one which is most suitable. Something which is irritating to advertisers and bothersome to other publishers. This is something the BSA team should take care of.

What are your views on the Buysell ads advertisement program getting competitive?

A motivating workspace is important. And to create it is a challenge in itself. When self motivation is an integral part of a job it’s important to take a look around and assess the state of the workspace. The reason is that the type of environment we immerse ourselves in for hours on end each day can greatly contribute to our success, or lack of it.

So ask yourself: Does your office make you feel confined, stifling creativity? Are you breathing easy enough to think quickly and make decisions? Is the space healthy enough to protect you from sicknesses that can hinder your ability to fulfill your goals?

If even one of these raised an eyebrow, it may be time to take the initiative and make some changes that will inspire you and ensure better productivity.

Here are a 5 tips to create a motivating workspace:

1. De-clutter: We all have clutter but at the very least keep it to a minimum and if necessary place a small bin on the floor for depositing papers, mail, and other loose items so they don’t overwhelm your desk. That way there will be less scattered disorder. As the bin reaches the halfway mark make that a warning sign to file away important documents and toss everything else. Containing clutter will help prevent it from collecting dust and alleviate some of the symptoms that come with allergies. Alternatively, it will lessen stress when having to search for things in a hurry which can sometimes create even greater havoc in the process.

2. A comfortable chair: Sometimes while deeply involved in a job we aren’t monitoring our posture yet it’s very clear that the way we sit has an immense impact on how well we work. Investing a little extra in a good chair will go a long way towards contributing to your health and a more dynamic workspace.

3. Good lighting: Natural light is ideal so utilize windows whenever possible. Otherwise soft lighting as opposed to harsh fluorescence is the key to keeping the eyes relaxed. Harsh fluorescence can be tough on the eyes, not to mention create a dreary atmosphere. It’s also a good idea to keep the computer screen clean since dirt on the monitor can also force us to strain more than necessary when trying to work.

4. Clean air: Let’s face it; if the air you are breathing isn’t clean the result can only be damaging, especially if you are breathing it in all day. That’s why wiping down air vents and changing heating and air conditioning filters regularly is important. Alternatively, air may be free of toxins or other particles but the fact it’s stagnant can be oppressive. When central air is unavailable a simple fan can be the solution to a stuffy room.

5. A healthy body & mind: A great deal of liability comes with being an entrepreneur so it’s important to be on top of things. That’s why keeping in shape and eating well is essential if you are going to stay focused on business all day (and sometimes all night). Try and exercise at least twice a week and stay away from processed foods, especially those with a lot of sugar. This may not appear to have anything to do with the office but over time you’ll begin to notice how a healthy body and mind will help keep everything else in order and that it’s a special catalyst towards better self motivation.

This post is written by Jakob Barry. Jakob Barry writes for Networx.com. He covers various home improvement topics including  electrical estimates  and air conditioner repair.