http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/business/small-business/you-think-like-an-ebay-powerseller.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/small-business/you-think-like-an-ebay-powerseller.html Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500 How to People Get the Right to Call Themselves PowerSellers?
eBay gets to decide who can be a PowerSeller and who can’t, and they have strict requirements. To get in at the minimum PowerSeller level, you must have a feedback rating of at least 100 (minimum 98% positive) and sell at least $1,000 worth of items every month for three months in a row. There are different levels of PowerSeller membership as you sell items of greater value: $1,000 total is bronze, $3,000 is silver, $10,000 is gold, $25,000 is platinum and $125,000 is titanium.
If PowerSellers ever fail to meet the required amount of sales, or their feedback falls below 98% positive, then they lose their PowerSeller status. In short, the only people who get to be PowerSellers on eBay are the people who have been successful for a good while, and are on track to stay that way.
The Shop and the Marketplace.
This is the most important part of understanding how PowerSellers think. They don’t see what they’re doing as being some random bazaar or a hobby – instead, they see themselves as a business.
Put it like this. If you run a stall in a marketplace, the chances are that you have a general area of business, but you mostly just sell whatever you can get your hands on that week. If your dodgy buddy got his hands of a job lot of something at a discount, then that’s what you’ll be selling. This might be fun – and when you have a good week, you’ll have a really good week – but it’s no way to run a real business in the long-term.
PowerSellers think far more like shops. They sell the same things again and again, every week – regular stock for regular customers. They do ‘boring’ business things like keep inventories and budgets. They know what they’re going to be selling, how much they buy it for and how much they expect to sell for. Just like a real shop, there can be hard times sometimes, but their income is stable and their business can grow slowly.
The best advice I can give you on thinking like a PowerSeller is this: don’t take long-term risks for short-term gain. Look after your reputation, manage your selling properly, provide good customer service and the rewards will come to you in due course. And you’ll get a little badge next to your name that makes people trust you more!
One possibility that you might have realized so far is what eBay can do for any other businesses you might have. Remember, millions of people visit eBay every day – why keep everything separate when you’re starting to tap into that kind of power? The next email will show you a few ways you can use eBay to grow your other businesses.


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Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/small-business/you-can-increase-your-ebay-response.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/small-business/you-can-increase-your-ebay-response.html Tue, 27 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Improve your picture: In all that description writing, you might have missed the vital importance of your item’s picture. A picture with bad lighting or an intrusive background looks amateurish and won’t make anyone want to buy from you.
Add an About Me page: You’ll be surprised how much you can reassure bidders just by creating an About Me page and putting a little bit about yourself on your business on there. You can also have a few special offers there for people who bother to look at the page, and let people subscribe to your mailing list so that you can email them updates.
Use Square Trade: Signing up at Square Trade and displaying their logo on your auctions shows that you are committed to have them resolve any disputes that arise. You always see this on PowerSellers auctions – it makes you look more professional.
Write terms and conditions: Have the ‘small print’ clearly visible on all your auctions, giving details of things like shipping times and prices, your refund policy, and any other business practices you might have. This helps build confidence with buyers.
Show off your feedback: Copy and paste a selection of the feedback comments you’re most proud of to each item’s description page, instead of making bidders go and look for it. If you have 100% positive feedback, be sure to write that on every auction too.
Add NR to your titles: If you have extra space in a title, put ‘NR’ (no reserve) on the end. Bidders prefer auctions that don’t have a reserve price, and doing this lets them see that yours don’t.
Benefits not features: Make sure your description focuses on the benefits that your item can give to the customer, not just its features. This is a classic sales technique. If you have trouble with this, remember: ‘cheap’ is a feature, ‘save money’ is a benefit.
List more items: If you want more people to respond to your items, then list more items! You might find you have better like listing items at the same time, instead of one-by-one. There’s no need to use a Dutch auction – you can just keep two or three auctions going at once for an item you have more than one of in stock.
Accept unusual payment methods: To reach those last few buyers, accept payment methods that many sellers don’t, like cheques.
Buy some upgrades: The best upgrade is the most expensive one, which makes your item appear first in search results. In crowded categories, you might find that this is worth the money.
Once you’ve got some buyers, you want to keep them coming back to you. The next email will show you how to turn one-time buyers into long-term customers.


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Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/small-business/sourcing-for-gadget-shops-how-to-use-rss-feeds.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/small-business/sourcing-for-gadget-shops-how-to-use-rss-feeds.html Sat, 24 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
RSS may be the solution you are looking for. A web 2.0 format that keeps netizens up to date with recent developments on the internet and helps webmasters everywhere develop an online community that is more loyal than has ever been possible.

It didn't seem so long ago that keeping up to date with the latest new electronic gadgets and cool spy gadgets was no problem at all. There were only a handful of gadget sites out there and, with even fewer blogs to monitor; keeping up to date with gadget and new inventions news was easy.

Keeping customers loyal was also not a problem as there was a good chance there were only a handful of similar sites on the internet offering similar products making it very easy to differentiate yourself from your competitors. There were probably even only a handful of gadget shops selling is gadgets for men.

Unfortunately those days have changed.

As of May 2008 there were 3000 gadget blogs alone registered on popular blog aggregate Technorati with the website announcing it had indexed 100 million blogs in December 2007.

So what does that mean for you the gadget shop owner or eBay gadget reseller? What it means is that there's more to sort through to get product ideas and more competitors for your customers' attentions and disposable incomes.

This is where RSS will be invaluable for your business.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format which webmasters and content creators use to create bulletin-like 'feeds' which are sent out to subscribers when the webmaster's site is updated or a new story is added.

This means you don't need to go to the website to find out if they've added a new product or news story... instead the website essentially comes to you and tells you what has been added. It is also a useful way of keeping your customers informed about all the latest news on your site and getting customers to come back.

Setting up a RSS feed for your site and getting RSS feeds from a gadget shop or blog on the cool gadgets, strange gadgets or high tech spy gadgets to buy couldn't be easier with popular blog aggregator, Icerocket.com, offering a free RSS creation service.

Once you have set up the service it is important to remember that RSS feeds are short by nature and only contain text, or hyperlink text. So it is important to include an enticing title and make sure your first two or three sentences are something that will make people want to visit the page.

Receiving RSS feeds is also a relatively easy task to accomplish with a wide number of RSS feed readers being available. In fact all that needs to be done is to set up a RSS reader and subscribe to the RSS feeds you are interested in.

Some of the more free web-based readers are Google Reader, My Yahoo, Bloglines and Newsgator. They all are extremely easy to sign up to and mostly look and operate much like email accounts like Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail.

The next step is to subscribe to feeds from gadget shops and blogs on gadget gifts that are guaranteed to keep you ahead of your competitors with stock.

This can be done any number of ways depending on which feed reader and which internet browser you are using.
You can search on the readers themselves for relevant feeds. However this is likely to leave you with a large number of unusual cool gadgets and spy gadgets blogs to keep checking up on.

If the new electronic gadgets website has a RSS subscription button on its news page designed for your chosen reader then you won't have any problem subscribing. All you need to do is to click on the button and follow the steps.
You could also click on the RSS button and copy the URL from the page of code that opens (the URL will probably contain the code XML or feed). You should then paste it into the 'add feed' dialog box in your RSS reader.

Flock or Firefox browsers make adding RSS feeds extremely easy. All you need to do is to click on the RSS link at the top of the page beside the URL bar and another window will open, letting you set up a feed directly in your browser.

So why don't you strengthen your connection to the web. Set up a RSS reader and subscriptions and set up your own RSS feed to help make your gadget shop a stronger, stickier site with more cool new gadgets and hot gadget gifts than your competitors.


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Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/small-business/7-tips-to-make-money-from-adsense-using-free-tools.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/small-business/7-tips-to-make-money-from-adsense-using-free-tools.html Thu, 22 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500 There is really no doubting that there are amazing incomes currently being made on Google Adsense and the really interesting thing is that even relatively small sites and blogs are finding new ways to make money from their Adsense sites every day.


Actually there are a lot of increasingly creative ways to make money and maximize on Adsense earnings that are being discovered and also being put to use every day. And what’s even more fascinating is the fact that most of these tools being used don’t cost anything. They are actually free. Here are 7 of the most effective currently being used.

a) Ways to make money from Adsense by Distributing articles through ezine and article announcement lists

Some of the most effective methods ways to make money from Adsense clicks involve the simple step of just increasing the volume of targeted traffic to a site. One of the ways of doing this is by distributing interesting content to ezine lists and article announcement lists. It is not too difficult to quickly build a list that reaches a million or so email boxes and can thus give a lot of visibility and drive tons of highly targetd traffic to your Adsense site or sites. Probably the most popular place for doing this is at Yahoo groups, but there are a few others that you can find easily by using your favorite search engine.

Success here depends on three main factors. Firstly you should be careful to join article announcement lists and ezine lists that are as relevant as possible to your subject matter and offering. Secondly your headline has to be a killer headline that will grab readers by the scruffs of their necks and force them to open your email message amongst the dozens or even hundreds of others they receive daily. It goes without saying that the content must meet the promise of your sensational headline. Anything less will cause annoyance and leave all those potential visitors to your Adsense site feeling cheated. And believe me, you don’t want to cause this sort of reaction because it is definitely not one of the ways o make money from Adsense or any other program for that matter. Thirdly, you will need the sort of resource box in all your articles that will leave most of your readers with no option but to visit your Adsense site.

Within a very short of consistently applying this technique, my daily Adsense earnings increased seven-fold.

b) Ways to make money from Adsense by Distributing free articles to high traffic article sites Some people find the recent trends that have seen an increase in article sites surprising. I don’t. The net is primarily an information-seeking tool. Anything that will help improve the search and quality of information will greatly benefit the people making that effort.

Some of the older article directories receive very high traffic, mainly from web masters and site owners seeking quality free content for their sites. So apart from the immediate exposure these sites also guarantee plenty of future targeted traffic to your site, when folks find your articles useful enough to re-post at their sites.

The more new articles you release to these sites every week, the more targeted traffic your Adsense sites will receive. This is in fact one of the most effective ways of making money consistently from Adsense clicks. One of the reasons for this is that targeted traffic will tend to spend more time at your site or sites, and the more time they spend, the higher the chances that they will click one one of the Adsense ads posted there.

c) Ways to make money from Adsense by Using Articles And A Viral Marketing Website

Any online marketing technique that involves the use of referral marketing or viral marketing automatically has a huge chance of being a success. The net is ideal for viral marketing and in fact gives any viral marketer huge leverage. Viral marketing or referral marketing is one of the most effective ways to make money online. Just ask Bill Gates.

When Gates was trying to play catch up on the Internet after an earlier mistake of underestimating the future importance of the net, he launched his Hotmail free email service when rivals like Yahoo already had millions of users. He decided to use a simple referral marketing technique. Every Hotmail message that went out had a brief signature at the end requesting the recipient to sign up for their free Hotmail account. Within a few short months, Hotmail had millions of users. And there are many other amazing stories which viral marketing boasts of on the net.

There is one of the very simple ways to make money from Adsense by going viral. Sign up at a leading viral marketing site. You will automatically get your own viral site. You can then use some of your articles to point people to your viral site. The way these sites work is that anybody who signs up at your site will have to visit your Adsense site if you register it at the site. So within a very short time you will be driving thousands of visitors to your Adsense site.

Find more details on this at my blog whose address you'll find in the resource box below.

Admittedly this traffic is less targeted. Still the huge potential and possible numbers you are able to receive using this free tool more than makes up for this.

d) Ways to make money from Adsense With Your Email signature

People greatly underestimate the power and potential effectiveness of a simple email signature as one of the ways to make money online. Actually this is a viral marketing method because emails get forwarded all the time and are even copied to several other people sometimes.

Do not waste another minute. Go to all your email accounts right now and create a signature that points to your Adsense site or sites.

Writing effective email signatures is a skill that you will have to develop, but I have found that using famous quotes is more effective than a straight advertising message. Always remember that people hate to be advertised to online.

e) Ways to make money from Adsense By Asking Questions At Discussion groups

I recently had an interesting conversation with a young Internet and computer techie. He asked me whether there were quick ways to make money online by answering technical questions and helping people to solve their computer and web-related problems. My answer was that there were many discussion groups where participants would get these answers for free. I advised him that he had a better chance of making money by making use of this free advice available online rather than by trying to sell his own advice.

There are tons of online discussion groups where leading world experts will answer your questions and give you valuable insight for free. It is amazing why most people do not think of using these online forums to learn as much as they can about the most effective ways of making money from Adsense.

These forums can easily be found through you favorite search engine.

f) Ways to make money from Adsense By Bartering your online skills for valuable Adsense keywords

In the old days, before the invention of money, if somebody needed something, the first question they asked themselves was; “What is it that I already have that I can exchange for what I need? Barter trade seems to have been forgotten but it is a very powerful method of trading. More so online where people have plenty of skills but are slow to trust others enough to send them money for an item they need.

You can barter whatever it is you have, your skills, products or services, and exchange them for genuine valuable Adsense keywords. Valuable Adsense keywords are the most effective way for a small site with low traffic to earn big cash from Adsense. And you can do this barter trade on an ongoing basis so that you always have a constant supply of valuable Adsense keywords which you can use at your site or blog as one of the ways to make more money from Adsense.

g) Ways to make money from Adsense By Sending Teaser Emails

To Everybody In Your Inbox And Also To Your Opt-in Email List Most of us receive tons of email in our inbox every day. You’ll be surprised at the huge number of people you know by simply going through your email inbox. No matter how good your spam filters are, you are also bound to be receiving more than your fare share of SPAM or unsolicited email. All this is “gold” lying in your email inbox and there are ways to make money using these emails. All you need to do to process the emails into pure gold is to send out “teaser emails about the most interesting aspects of content at your site. The whole objective of teaser emails is to get people to visit your site. For instance if I were to send out teaser email on this content here is how I would construct it;



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Did you find this article useful? For more useful tips & hints, Points to ponder and keep in mind, techniques & insights pertaining to Google Adsense, Do please browse for more information at our website :-
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Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/affiliate-programs/some-popular-methods-to-make-money-online.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/affiliate-programs/some-popular-methods-to-make-money-online.html Thu, 22 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
Affiliate marketing is probably the most popular way to make money online where you become a commission only salesperson for a company which can easily have thousands of sales people (affiliates) working for them. Affiliates don't have to endure the stresses and strains of running that company but still have the opportunity to earn a cut of it. What must be done is to find a company that is serious about their affiliate program so it isn't cancelled after you have put effort into building a site and traffic etc. Some sites only pay a small percentage as commission for each sale which can be sliding but commissions of 70 percent plus are not uncommon and well worth trying for. This is of course the best of every world because making money online as an affiliate means that you do not have the worry of promoting products that you have invested in.

Google's adsense program is the other major method of making money online where they place adverts on websites they hope will attract people to click on. Adsense accounts are free and the person with the adverts gets paid a very small amount each time one is clicked by a visitor. Not everyone wants to use this system though and many try other methods because huge numbers of visitors to the site are needed to get a certain percentage to click on a link for an income to build. Any one may become partner with Google's Adsense program to work towards a common goal but Google has a whole list of terms and conditions that must be adhered to.

While Google may not restrict who joins their program, they do make plenty of restrictions regarding the placing of adverts so keep abreast of their terms and conditions. There are many reasons why people desire to make money online; it maybe for earning extra income or just to making a living from working at home. Right from the start you need to learn how to get people to visit your site, called traffic so it is worthwhile doing some research on how this is done. While I could supply many online places to go, your first port of call is joining the www.warriorforum.com and get yourself known to the other members; this place is full of every type of information used by internet marketers. You do not need to be a computer expert to be able to make money online, nor do you even need a website or have a product of your own to sell, although this is a good idea at some point.



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Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/email-laws-that-could-bring-you-to-jail.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/email-laws-that-could-bring-you-to-jail.html Thu, 15 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
OK, so what're these email laws?

They're the Child Protection Registry laws that have been taken into effect in the State of Michigan and Utah.

These laws established "Do Not Email" registries into which individuals or institutions that primarily serve minors can enter minors' email addresses or any email address to which minors may have access. Institutions or entities that primarily serve minors can also register their entire domain names.

People are prohibited by these laws from sending email to the addresses that have been in the registries for 30 days or more if the email contains material or link to material that is illegal for minors. And it doesn't matter whether the email is solicited or unsolicited, you still can't send such email.

You might think that the materials must be something obvious such as pornography, gambling, alcohol, etc. Yes, but they're only part of the materials.

The other part consists of less obvious stuff, namely stuff that looks fine, but might be illegal for minors because minors are prohibited by law from viewing, receiving, participating, possessing, or purchasing this stuff. This includes automotive sales, etc.

And according to the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy, these laws apply to almost all people in the United States and even those outside the United States who have a physical presence in the United States. So, imagine you have some email addresses in your list that happen to be already in the "do not email" registry for 30 days, but you're not aware of them. And one day, you send an email that contains a link to a webpage that has some Adsense ads that advertise some automotive sales, guess what may happen to you?

Well, your action may be considered as a computer crime and you might face civil suit and fines or/and you might even face criminal suit and penalty.

So far, there are two things that you can do to prevent you from getting trouble with these laws.

First, make sure that you never send email that contains material or link to material which is illegal for minors. This is so obvious, right?

Second, if you think that you can't comply with the first option, then you can purge your list by matching it against the registries in a regular basis. But there are fees for this.

Don't panic about these laws. Instead, find more information about it. You can start learning more about these laws by visiting the references below:




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Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/finance/real-estate/popular-subjects-the-people-will-pay-for.html http://www.articletrader.com/finance/real-estate/popular-subjects-the-people-will-pay-for.html Mon, 12 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
Start a list and add all your favorites to it.

Here's a list of some of the most popular subjects people are paying for...

• Dating, Seduction, Sex Advice, Relationships

• Losing weight, gaining muscle, looking more attractive

• Health & fitness, cures/relief’s from specific diseases & ailments

• Spying, online privacy and security

• Safety, personal security, and protection of self and loved ones (self defense, home security, scam prevention, etc.)

• How to use computers and the Internet

• Mental influence, persuasion, and dominance

• General self-help, self improvement, personal development, and success

• Hobbies and special interests: cooking, magic, UFO's, metaphysics, becoming more competitive in sports, activities, etc.

• Making money, aside from marketing information: investing, stock market, futures trading, real estate tips, and other related financial information

• And of course, having more control and freedom in their lives!

People are always looking to improve themselves or some area of their lives. They are always trying to find solutions to problems.

There are sites catering to some of the above categories that are already generating thousands of dollars every month. I have personally sold products on some of the above categories and done very well.

Yet, we haven't even begun to tap the true profit potential in these areas yet because there's very little competition in most of these areas, especially when compared to the "how-to marketing" area! The potential to make money from the above special-interest categories is huge - and it's wide open!

Moreover, as more and more people get accustomed to buying digital products, you can easily imagine making insane amounts of money through these topics well into the future.

You could pick any one of the above subjects that you personally have an interest in and run with it.




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Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/technology/what-is-the-best-uses-to-hidden-video-cameras.html http://www.articletrader.com/technology/what-is-the-best-uses-to-hidden-video-cameras.html Sat, 10 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
Here are several compelling reasons to buy hidden video cameras installed at your home or office.

Hidden video cameras are your “eyes and ears” in the premises. They record perfectly and don’t play favorites, what you see is what happened. By installing security video cameras, you’ll be able to monitor the activities at home or your business while you’re gone. If you want to, you can even arrange for a hook up, so that the motion detector will alert you through your email or pager, if there is a commotion.

To safeguard and monitor you’re most precious investment – your children. Use the hidden video cameras to monitor the activities of your children and their care taker. The reasons why buying security cameras are on the rise is because they work! They let the parents know the real story. The shaken head/fractured neck baby syndrome is real. So are incidents on child abuse and using hidden video cameras call help you find out what’s the real score at home. At the very least, the recordings will help the parents find out what caused the injuries, so that the medical help given is accurate.

For use to uncover thievery, vandalism and other forms illegal activities in your office. You can use the hidden video camera to record the activities of your staff as they go about their daily activities and when for the night crew. Not only do hidden video cameras uncover more illegal activities, if the potential miscreant knows there are security cameras, they’ll exploit its’ blind spots. Or vandalism may occur, or someone could destroy the video camera. The best way to combat vandalism is to keep video cameras hidden and to have equipment around your office. . You should however take the time to consult your lawyer on the laws regarding the use of hidden video cameras in your state.

Now that you know what the possible uses, the hidden video cameras can be put to. But how do you pick one?

Here are two features your hidden video cameras should have.

Pick a hidden video camera that will work on the VCR you own, and one that has adapter plugs that work with any VCR. VCRs that are standard home issued, commercial grade or time lapse VCRS, which allow recording and viewing without a need for TV.

Easy to install – most of these hidden video cameras take all of five minutes to install, especially the wireless systems. There is no need for you to drill holes into the walls or to hide the cords. Our wireless systems, just hook up the receiver to the TV or VCR you already own, and turn on the camera. In five minutes, you’re done.

Whatever hidden video camera system you pick from the innumerable choices out in the market today, you can be assured that you’ll end up knowing what’s happening. Even if you aren’t around when it does.


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Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/online-business/don-t-blame-the-internet-identity-theft.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/online-business/don-t-blame-the-internet-identity-theft.html Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
In the UK identity theft is increasing at the rate of 500% each year and, according to Which Magazine, 25% of the population have either suffered from identity theft or know someone who has.

In the USA, a report issued by the Better Business Bureau revealed that, in 2004, over 9 million Americans became victims of identity theft with the total sum defrauded being estimated at $52.6 billion.

With figures like this, it’s no surprise that there is a certain amount of concern regarding computer and internet security. After all, the internet is basically a mechanism for exchanging information and the possibility that some of the information exchanged may be more than intended is never far from many internet users’ minds.

It’s easy to imagine criminal masterminds worldwide using the internet to hack into computers in order to gain access to information with which to advance their devilishly cunning schemes. However, as revealed in the report, the facts of the matter are a little more down to earth and the internet, far from making you more at risk to identity theft, can help to significantly cut your losses if you do fall victim this form of fraud.

According to the Better Business Bureau’s research the main methods by which criminals gain access to information used for identity theft fraud are as below:

Lost or stolen wallet, chequebook or credit card. 28.8%

Accessed as part of a transaction. 12.9%*

Accessed by friend, acquaintance or relative. 11.4%

don’t know, refused, no answer. 11.1%

Information accessed by corrupt employee. 8.7%

Stolen paper mail or fraudulent change of address. 8.0%

obtained some other way. 7.4%

Computer spyware. 5.2%

Information stolen from garbage. 2.6%

Computer viruses and/or hackers. 2.2%

Emails sent by criminals posing as legitimate business. 1.7%

* 12.9% due to transactions – 10.4% offline transactions, 2.5% online transactions.

In total, when the instances where information was accessed during transactions are subdivided into online and offline transactions, only 11.6% of the information used to carry out identity theft fraud was obtained from computers.

Of this more than half was obtained by the use of spyware, viruses or hacking – the risk of which can be greatly reduced by installing the appropriate protection software and ensuring that this is kept up to date.

Not only did the survey reveal that the internet was not a major source of illegally obtained personal information, but it was also found that those fraud victims who checked their financial records using the internet, ATM machines or other electronic methods suffered financial losses which were, on average, 8 times lower than those of victims who used traditional paper statements to monitor their accounts. This very significant reduction was attributed to the rapid discovery of the fraud due to “real time” monitoring.

Of course, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t exercise caution when using the internet or take care to protect the personal information which you may have stored on your PC. However, as long as you install suitable virus, firewall and spyware protection, and keep this continually updated the internet can should be more of a help than a hindrance when it comes to avoiding identity fraud


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Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/computers/some-tips-how-to-find-what-you-want-with-google.html http://www.articletrader.com/computers/some-tips-how-to-find-what-you-want-with-google.html Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 -0500
Do you fall into this category? If so, are you taking advantage of everything Google offers?

If an internet search means you go to www.google.com and simply type 2 or 3 words into the search box, hoping to find what you're looking for, you aren't even scratching the surface.

How Can You Get Better Results?

Google is the number one search engine for good reason - their results are generally the most accurate. Even so, there are ways to pinpoint what you're looking for even more effectively.

You have two options when it comes to fine-tuning your searches - you can use the Google Advanced Search screen or you can use "modifiers" in the main Google search.

Option 1: Google Advanced Search

when you go to www.google.com, there is a little "Advanced Search" link to the right of the main search box. If you click on that, you'll get the much more detailed Google search, where you can make very specific requests.

The first four sections, highlighted in blue, are some of the most important. Here you can specify any of the following:

1. All of the words - this will give you results with all of your search words, but not in any particular order. They can also be anywhere on the page.

2. The exact phrase - this will give you results with exactly the phrase you enter. The phrase must appear on the page exactly the way you enter it.

3. At least one of the words - this will show results with any one or more of your search words on the page.

4. Without the words - this will give you results that don't include your search terms at all.

These four sections can be used independently or combined to work together.

For example, you could search for the exact phrase 'free virus software' without the words 'trial' or 'tryout' if you're looking for free virus software but don't want trial versions that will expire after a short time.

As another example, you could use option #3 (at least one of the words) if you're looking for something but don't know exactly how to spell it. Put a few possible spellings in and it will find pages with any one or more of those spellings.

The rest of the sections on the Advanced Search page are pretty self-explanatory. One that I will point out is the Domain option. You can specify a website and either search for something only on that site, or anywhere but that site.

If you've found an interesting website that doesn't have a search function of its own, you can use this to limit Google to searching that site for whatever you're looking for. In fact, the Google search is often better even if the site does have its own search function.

You can also use it to find other references to something you might have read on a particular website. If you search for it and exclude the site you saw it on, you'll find other references to it that you can cross-check.

Option 2: Using Modifiers

Modifiers will let you use all the advanced features without having to go to the Advanced Search page every time. These modifiers can just be entered in the standard Google search box to get the same results as the advanced options.

There are quite a few different modifiers that can be used, but some of the most useful are as follows:

Putting "" around a phrase will search for the exact phrase. Searching for free antivirus software will show you pages with those three words anywhere on the page. Searching for "free antivirus software" shows you pages that contain that exact phrase.

Putting a - before a word is the same as the advanced option "without the words." So, to use the example used earlier, searching for "free virus software" -trial -tryout will show pages with that exact phrase, not including the other two words.

Using site: followed by the domain name of the website you want to search will only return results from that particular website. For example, searching for "virus protection" site: computer-help-squad.com will only return results from the www.computer-help-squad.com website.

Again, these can be combined so -site: will return results from any site except the one you specify.

How to Figure out the Modifiers

The easiest way to see how to use modifiers in your searches is to try some searches with the Advanced Search page and see how Google formats them.

Using our example again, if you enter 'free antivirus software' in the "with the exact phrase" box and the words 'trial' and 'tryout' in the "without the words" box, the search that Google runs looks like this:

"free virus software" -trial -tryout

If you play around a bit with the advanced searches, you'll see how Google formats them for you. Next time, you can just enter them yourself in the standard search box instead of going to the Advanced Search page.

Once you get the hang of these options in Google, you'll find that your searches get even more accurate because you can filter out the stuff you don't want.





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