Let’s start with some review of what types of companies primarily drive the US economy. We know that there are about 16,000 publicly traded companies represented on the NASDAQ, NYSE and the AMEX. The key economic driver in the US is the 27 million small businesses. The Small Business Administration 2008 Presidential Report on The Small Business Economy clearly communicated “the economy generated 1.1 million net new jobs in 2007. In the first quarter of 2007, 74 percent of the net new jobs were in small firms with fewer than 500 employees and 22 percent were in firms with fewer than 20 employees.” Yet, the gross amount of attention in the media and the federal bureaucracy is around what is happening in the Markets. This is understandable with the volumes of dollars transitioning in this public environment. The economic recovery program is not addressing the core of the economy, small businesses. More than ever the public market environment is being questioned about corporate governance. The new legislation being considered for public companies has sections that may very well trickle down and require the small businesses to adhere to similar if not exact rules on Corporate Governance.A simple definition of Corporate Governance for the small business: Corporate governance simply refers to the set of internal policies, rules, and procedures that a company follows on a regular basis to ensure that it operates in a fair, equitable, and appropriate manner for the benefit of the company, its management and its shareholders. A corporation usually has a board of directors and a senior “C” level management team. Most small businesses do not have these organizational entities clearly defined and functional. For private companies that are registered as a corporation and have investors, the various states require these entities to have a governing board. Yet many small businesses incorporate for tax issues and do not necessarily pay attention to the concepts of corporate governance. How does Corporate Governance apply to small businesses? All businesses should look at their organizational structure and continually assess what will allow the company to perform in an optimal way. The simplest way to implement this is to have an advisory board. The advisory board is non-paid individuals that have business or industry specific backgrounds that can contribute ideas or mentor management. In more formal and traditional cases a small corporation has a board of directors comprised of the founders, a spouse, an employee and maybe – just maybe an outside director. The focal point of corporate governance within small businesses is that all businesses need to set company strategic goals, provide the leadership to put them into effect, supervise the management of the business, and if the company has stockholders, report to the stockholders on their stewardship. For those small businesses that do not have the hierarchical structure in place to implement formal corporate governance plans, it is recommended that regular self assessment of the company will be the starting place for accountability, to enhance performance, grow the company and be a greater contributing force in the economy. At the end of the day, if you follow some set of policies and procedures and are reporting your stewardship of the company to someone even if it is your dog, then you have accountability that is key to corporate governance practices.Will the government impose its will and definition of Corporate Governance from the public markets into the small business environment?This imposition of government from the public market companies to privately held companies is making its way through the halls of congress. One idea being tagged onto present legislation is to extend Sarbanes-Oxley down to privately held companies. Anyone that knows anything about SOX is aware of the high cost to implement the documentation processes and the reporting. Pushing this down to the small business environment would be cost prohibitive and stunt economic growth. The general politics of mandated corporate governance is to wait and see how new legislation will affect the small businesses driving the US economy.As a final note, every company, no matter what size it is, will see the positive effects of implementing the principles of corporate governance. The facts remain that there are 27 million plus small businesses in the US who are the job creators and the drivers of the economy. The greatness of US business is that it performs the best when individuals come together in a free market environment to meet the needs of the economy and society. In the end, best practices of corporate governance can be freely implemented to benefit the company or corporate governance can be instituted by the government, which can cost more in resources, planning and profit. Take the time to assess how your small business views corporate governance and how this will enhance your growth in the market place.
The Finer Points of Internet Auctions
WHAT IS A PENNY AUCTION?
Penny auctions have exploded in popularity with the massive growth of the internet. However, few people know the true origins of penny auctions.Beginnings actually stretch back to the Great Depression. Those were hard times for everyone, but even harder for farmers. Farmers struggled to bring in steady income because of droughts and crops not selling as well as they had previously. As a result, the banks would foreclose on the farmers who couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments.
The banks weren’t satisfied with just repossessing the house, they wanted to raise as much capital as possible, so they resorted to selling off the possessions of the owners of the repossessed houses. There was not much the farmers could do about it so they began bidding ridiculously low prices, pennies, on the items while threatening others who dared to bid higher than a few pennies.
The auctions of today hardly resemble their tremulous beginnings. Being part of a penny auction today is exhilarating, fun, and addictive. It combines the selling format of auctioning with a little bit of chance factored in.Auctions are a game of strategy but also a game of luck.
The premise behind penny auctions is giving people the chance to win an item at a drastically reduced price.Auctions make that possible by spreading out the cost of the product among multiple bidders. In order for a person to take part in an auction, they must pay a set price for each bid. For example, if a person wanted to bid on a fifty dollar Amazon gift card then he would spend a dollar for each time a bid placed. If he ended up winning the gift card, then he would only have spent a few dollars for a fifty dollar gift card. Usually penny auctions sell bids in packages.
HOW PENNY AUCTIONS WORK!
The main foundation of penny auctions is the pay-per-bid format. It is the key that allows bidders to win items at the fraction of their retail value and allows the auction owners to keep their site profitable. Most y auction sites run on the same premise: people pay a set amount for each bid, whenever a person places a bid within the closing seconds of the auction time will be added, the last person left with a unique bid after the clocks runs out will win the item. There are a large variety of items that can be won, but they tend to be popular electronics or gift cards to popular stores.
There are two types of auctions: lowest unique bid auction and highest unique bid auction. Lowest unique auction sounds confusing but it is actually quite simple. A unique bid is when only one person has a bid at a certain price. Bids usually start at one penny, a bidder can then place a bid at two pennies. Until another bidder places a higher bid, the most recent bidder will be the lowest unique bid because that was the only bid at two cents and nobody bid higher. However, penny auctions generally don’t stop at one penny. It is not uncommon to find auctions that end up at a couple hundred dollars based on the popularity of the item being auctioned. However, the same principles apply for those auctions. Highest unique bid auctions follow the more traditional auction format such as eBay. The person with the highest bid at the end of the auction wins the item.
Auction site owners turn a profit by selling bids. Say twenty people are bidding on a ten dollar gift card at one dollar per bid, at the end of the auction if there were twenty bids placed in total then the site owner would have made twenty dollars with a ten dollar profit.Auctions do seem like a win-win situation:The site owner makes money while the bidder gets an item for dirt cheap. However, not everyone wins in penny auctions. The people who paid one dollar each bid but left with nothing to show for their investments will not be so happy.
HOW TO WIN!
Penny auction has a lot of chance mixed into it, but one can incorporate strategy that will help raise the chances of winning. Playing smart can make all the difference between gambling and auctioning.
The first crucial tip to winning penny auctions is to know how to manage your bids. Your goal should be to win as much as possible without spending a ton of money buying bids. Managing your bids means that you should already know how much you are willing to risk in order to win an item. The amount of capital you are willing to risk will determine how many bids you can use. Once you know how many bids you have to spend on an item, then you will be better able to manage how and when you place a bid. That will keep you from blowing away all of your bids in the first few seconds of the auction.
The next tip is to practice time management. When fighting in the trenches of penny auctions, you have two enemies: other bidders and time. Knowing when to bid is a must if you want to have success. Placing a bid when there is a lot of time left on the clock is never a good idea. You have to remember that the key to winning a penny auction is being the last one standing when the clock runs out and that each bid increases the amount of time left. It would be a good practice to wait until the last few minutes of the auction before you begin to bid.
The final tip for successful auctioning is to keep your emotions under control.Auctions have a lot of similarities to gambling, and just like gambling, your spending can get out of control. If you keep your emotions level, it will keep you from making rash decisions and blowing loads of cash. Keep your mind clear so that you can gage the behavior of the other bidders and outsmart them.
HOW TO AVOID SCAM SITES!
Penny auctions are a great addition to the web whether you want to win an item that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to afford or if you simply enjoy the thrill that comes with bidding in auctions. Unfortunately, scam sites have tarnished the reputation of the legitimate penny auction sites. However, there are ways that you can protect yourself from scamers and enjoy your auctioning without having to worry about losing your money due to dishonesty.
Checking the reputation of the auction site before you start spending your hard earned money is always a good idea. Chances are other people have tried the site before you and some of them have left reviews. The reviews are your way to gage whether a auction site is trustworthy or not. If a site is getting overwhelmingly negative reviews, then that is a clear indication that you should steer your business elsewhere.
Another tool you can use to protect yourself is checking the Alexia ranks of the auction sites. Alexia rank will give a solid view of how much traffic the auction is getting. If you see a huge difference in the amount of traffic Alexia is projecting and the amount of active bidders on the site, then warning signals should be ringing in your head. Some auction sites have been known to set up robots that automatically bid on projects in order to keep the auction going and inflate the price. That is known as shill bidding. You can sniff out those sites by comparing the traffic the site should be getting to the amount of users using this site.
CONCLUSION!
New legislation may come out later down the road that will officially make penny auctions gambling, but until then, it is a fun, exciting auction that allows one to win the item they’ve always wanted but couldn’t afford.Auctions are also quite lucrative for the site owners because of the pay-per-bid strategy they’ve incorporated. Penny auctions had humble beginnings with farmers who just wanted to get back at the banks who kicked them out of their house. More recently, auctions have enjoyed an explosion in popularity with the rise of the internet.
There are two main formats fora auctions, lowest and highest unique auction, however they both run on the same premise where the last unique bid wins the item. Winning a penny auction will require a certain amount of mental tactic and a bit of luck. However, you can increase your odds of winning by practicing certain techniques such as managing your bids wisely, learning how to work with the time, and keeping a level head and your emotions under control. When you combine those three strategies to your bidding plan, you will find that you win a lot more often.
It is important that you do your due diligence to protect yourself when participating in auctions. Not every auction is run by honest and trustworthy people. There are people out there who just want to take your money. You can protect yourself by ensuring that you only bid on sites that already have a very positive reputation from real users.
Why Start A Home Based Business Online
Is it a passing fad or is it a growing trend? Is it just a want, or is it a need? In these days, more and more people seems to be getting that bug of wanting to start their own online business. Maybe they’ve finally all heard that today, the internet is where the money is, and it’s easy money at that!The one thing I know for sure and what’s a driving factor in my life is that I can not, and will not let someone else tell me what I’m worth ever again. Either it’s by the hour or in life as a whole, I will take control and determine my own income and wealth. The days of a regular 9-to-5 are long gone for me.I had to be Independent! And you know the great thing about being financially independent? It’s that, you can do anything that you want. You can do it whenever you want, how you want, for as long as you want, and pretty much with whom ever you wanted to do it with. All because you’ll have the money to do it with.They say that starting an online home base business is all about finding your niche. In other words you have to utilize your skills and/or find something that you are pretty knowledgeable about and turn that knowledge into a home based business. Hey everybody’s good at something right! Even if you are a Kung-Fu Master, you could use that knowledge that you possess and post it across the internet and make a killing! No, No, No, not like in the Kung-Fu sense, but as in a bag full of money sense. Because people want to know what you know and guess what, they are willing to pay for it!There could be a lot of road blocks when first starting out with your own home based business so look out! First there could be that old learning curve of never-ending pitfalls that’s waiting for you to step into them, and then there is always the money factor. Come on you’ve heard it before., it takes money to make money. This seems to be the one thing that holds you back when looking to start working online with a new home based business.If you’ve been told like I’ve been told that in order to start a business of any sort, you’re going to need a lot of Ducks to do it with! For most of us the reason for seeking to start the home base business online, is because we don’t have any money in the first place so we are in need of an economical way of doing it or in other words, to start-up for free.Our whole goal and objective is to START making money online. Some would say it can’t be done without a lot of money. Now in most cases this statement would be true, but now today with so much technology, there are many home based business opportunities that you can start-up for free. Just think about it for a sec, you don’t have to spend a lot of money on start-up costs if you know what to do and how to do it. The key here is that you would be doing it online.Keep in mind that online is a digital realm that can produce digital and physical products or services. Believe it or not, you’re likely have all that you need to start-up online right in front of you right now! A computer and access to the internet! This can be a powerful combination when used properly.If you don’t have anything in mind to sale for a product or service, you can always do what you do best and search the internet. Sooner or later you will find something that will catch your attention and then you’ll say to yourself, hey, I can sell this, or hey, I can make money with that. But always be very careful when choosing your niche market.It is your duty as a business person to be diligent in your review of the products or services that you are going to be selling online or anywhere for that matter. You do this to ensure that the product or service you are selling is of good quality.If you are tending to become an affiliate of online sales, beware of affiliate program sites that promise you the world for nothing at all. Even thought it is the internet and strange and lucrative things happen here, you do have to put some work into it to make anything happen! That why it’s called work online, you have to be willing to do some work!Most site that promise a whole lot of something for a whole lot of nothing are simply scams and they are meant to trick the money right out of your pocket. More often that not, these scams usually ruin it for other legitimate online business people with great opportunities for you obtain. So be cautious when searching online for a free home based business opportunity.Now don’t get me wrong here, because one of the best opportunities available for online work is affiliate marketing. Just be careful when signing up and make sure you do your homework to find out how the program works and how you get paid. It’s a great way for you to start out and learn the ropes of how things work online and most affiliate programs will allow you to begin with no start-up costs at all.If you start out this way you will have a lot of access to learn all about driving traffic to your site, their site, or anybody’s site for that matter, which could prove to be the most valuable knowledge and information that you could have online. After you start to make money, you need to start putting money back into your business to make it become to be more successful, so make plans to reinvest some of your gain right away. There are a lot free home based business opportunities out there. You just have to find the right one for you to take advantage of.Affiliate Marketing is legitimate, but just be aware of the scams when you see them. I personally don’t fool around with a lot of survey site as I need more money for my time and I need it faster.I would suggest searching the web for the most reputable of them and then choose to work with the ones that pay the most.You can always look for review sites for online survey companies to determine which of these would be best to work for.Some other good places to check out when looking for fast easy and no cost ways to start an online home base business is eBay and Amazon. They have many tools to get you started in the right direction. When it comes to buying and selling online these are some of the best places to be online. So go and check them out!Buying and selling and making money online is easier than you think and starting up for free is not impossible. If you want to be successful, remember to reinvest into your business and avoid the scam artists and hijackers out to steal your time and your money.