When asked to deliver a professional presentation many of us can come up with a collection of thoughts we want to share with the audience. However, these often feel like a string of sentences that don’t necessarily produce a cohesive whole. And certainly don’t captivate. So how do you turn your ideas in an effective presentation?

Public speaking is an art and may take years to master at the level of a professional orator. However, all of us can incorporate a few key concepts and make our presentations more effective and captivating. There are four major characteristics of an effective professional presentation: it is informative, engaging, well-timed, and contains two or three captivating, memorable sentences.

1. An effective presentation needs to be informative. It delivers information, data, graphs, techniques, and other components which are of interest to the target audience and have the potential to inform, improve, or even transform professional practices. Make sure the information comes in a variety of formats, such as statistics, applications, examples, and does not overwhelm the audience with excessive volume.
2. Successful presentations are engaging to the audience and maintain their interest. In some situations it may be appropriate to solicit audience questions or participation. If you are looking for an interactive effect it is preferable to ask open ended questions, such as “would someone like to provide an example of this?” rather than yes/ no questions, such as “have you ever encountered this?”. At other times the presenter may role-play or otherwise practice a tool with the audience to reinforce the message and break down any barriers to application such as unstated doubt about effectiveness or difficulty imagining how to actually apply the concept.
3. A skillful presentation should be well-timed. This means two separate things. On one hand, it is important to monitor the length of the presentation to ensure that its duration is not so short that it leaves the audience with a lot of questions or a sense of incomplete coverage of the topic. At the same time, the presentation should not be so long that it bores, becomes diluted or circular, or introduces too many subjects at once. An additional aspect of good timing has to do with the choice of the subject itself. It is crucial for a presenter to have good awareness of the types of experiences, attitudes, levels of knowledge, etc. the audience may share in order to ensure that the topic (good as it may be) does not address an outdated issue or jumps ahead of the current interest of the audience.
4. In the long run, good presentations are remembers as a set of captivating, memorable sentences. The audience will quickly forget the majority of the content of any presentation and will likely not review most of the notes taken. However, when a skillful public speaker populates the presentation with two or three fascinating, humorous, insightful sentences, those stand an excellent chance of being remembered. Cautiously choose which sentences to emphasize – they need to be the most important or most innovative part of your presentation. Make sure the sentences you pick are short, flow well, and don’t use jargon. Incorporate each sentence in two or three parts of the presentation. These should come up as a natural summary of the concept rather than purposeful repetition.

Short presentations are becoming an integral way of communicating information to today’s busy professionals. Even if public speaking never becomes your favorite with a little effort and attention to the four components above, any presentation you deliver can be taken from mediocre to captivating and effective.

At a time of great economic uncertainty and daily financial headaches, we all need some comic relief. With great appreciation for the unknown authors of the enclosed tale, here is our light-hearted (or realistic?) interpretation of what has been taking place on the stock market. This truly gives a new meaning to calling Wall Street a jungle!…

Here is how the stock market really works.

Once upon a time a man appeared in a village and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. He further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. “Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.”

The villagers rounded up with all their savings and bought all the monkeys.

Then they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!

Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works.

Source: Unknown,image:believekevin.

Have you ever wondered what clients get out of a website? Do they simply see a site as a listing of information the company wants to share with them? Or does the Web convey a deeper message about the firm? A recent study in the European Journal of Information Systems focused on scientifically examining the impressions that people form after having viewed a company website. The results were fascinating.

Creating a website is about impression management. This concept has been turned into a virtual science by marketing experts, psychologists, and technical specialists. The strategy of both multinational corporations as well as small companies can be greatly enhanced by a well-developed website. The study found that after viewing a website people constructed a detailed image of the organization including assumptions about the experience, innovation, competence, and customer-orientation of the company. These impressions stemmed from features such as the site’s content, graphics, layout, external links, fonts, and use of advanced technology.

An important insight gleaned for psychology is that users tend to approach a website with a certain generic image in mind, called schema, which serves to shape expectations. As long as the site meets the general expectation of the clients, people’s minds will fill in the missing information to match what would be found in comparable sites. This has two implications for the company creating a website:

1. Make sure that your overall site design is consistent with other companies in your industry so that viewing it activates a desirable image (schema) in your viewer’s mind.
2. For business characteristics that are very important to you, do not leave room for the viewer’s mind to fill in the gaps but provide the information yourself. For example, if you want to create an impression of customer-orientation, create a publish feedback/ contact link and explicitly state your commitment to customer service.

Creating a website for your business can be a daunting task. However, with some help from the latest research any company can dress up its site and achieve the image that would best serve its business purposes.

Regardless of all your advertising and efforts to bring new customers to your online business, your success will depend on your ability to attract the attention of new viewers. The marketplace today is replete with new businesses trying to get noticed. Clearly, this is a tougher task than some may think as about 50% of all new businesses will fail by the end of their first year and the number will be close to 90% after 5 years.

So how do you go about helping your online business stand out? Here are five tips to help your endeavor:

1.    Keep some tried and true basics. An unfortunate number of ‘new age’ professionals have started neglecting the foundation principles of good presentation. When dressing up your website, follow a consistent layout, keep the colors neutral enough that they are easy to read, don’t experiment too much with font styles, and don’t try to cram too much information into a front page. Readers’ brains respond better to a presentation that follows familiar patterns. If the information is easy to physiologically process after a quick scan, it is much more likely to catch a client’s attention than if special effort is needed to adjust to colors, text wrapping, etc.
2.    Find your edge. Keeping the traditional basics lays the foundation to get you noticed. Your unique edge will help you stand out. It is relatively easy to let your imagination roam free when working on a site. Find a graphic that truly captures the spirit of your business, use a (short) catch phrase, or give the viewer a taste of your unique ideas. However, remember this is a first impression only. There is such a thing as too much edge and it can hurt you.
3.    Invest time in research. Give your customers a sense that you have noticed them, together with their interests and preferences, and they will notice you. The hurried way in which many new ventures are started today leave a lot of consumers at least mildly dissatisfied with how not unique they are. A little time put into research early on will spare you a lot of time in follow up investigations and attempts to salvage a loss.
4.    Practice customer service. Customer service is an art, it’s a skill, it’s a must. If you don’t provide a superior experience to your customers, be sure that your competitors will. So create your website in a way that is user-friendly and provides easy links to help navigate the site and communicate with you. Respond to inquiries as soon as possible or post clear timelines for the frequency with which inquiries are addressed. You never know which email inquiry comes from a potential investor who is feeling you out before making a business proposition.
5.    Reserve a couple of tricks. This is the test of true creativity. The challenge is to keep your audience interested after having caught their initial attention. For your online business this may mean setting up a feature that activates a particularly appealing graphic for any user which has lingered 20 seconds on your front page.  If you have banner ads, you may want to adjust the ad sequence and duration to first show those of the most reputable or relevant advertisers you have. This may indirectly increase the time the viewer spends on your site. Your initial presentation has already been noticed, the final touch you add will make it actually stand out.

First impressions and the moments immediately following those are crucial for the success of your online business. It is often in that period that your customers will be making a (not completely conscious) decision whether to give you a further chance. Take a creative but moderate stance to get yourself noticed and you will have a larger audience to dazzle with your unique ideas.

There is a large amount of people year after year who start up their own businesses so they can enjoy the benefits to be had in working for themselves. Are you an individual who would also like to kiss your 40-hour a week job goodbye? You don’t have to feel alone; there are thousands of individuals who are just like you, who would like to be in the position to do that very thing!

Taking hold of the opportunity, and starting an exciting business venture of your very own may not be near as hard as you may think. You just might be surprised at the information you will be able to find, right in the comfort and privacy of your own home. There is a plethora of information that is available on the informational highway of the World Wide Web that is very detailed with helpful information and great ideas of ways that you can start up your own business. There are also a large amount of different support groups, blogs, and online chats that are available, where you will have the opportunity to talk to other like-minded individuals. This can be extremely helpful in learning a variety of tips and ideas for starting your own home based business.

There is also a large amount of opportunities available where you can work online owning your own web-based business. Websites that are already ready to go with existing clientele and products, so that you do not have to worry with all of the technical aspects of setting your site up. The possibilities are literally endless on the types of businesses you can run from your very own website.

People today have so many more possibilities than individuals just a few short years ago. The sky is the limit when it comes to starting your own business.

The almost endless personal and business world that Myspace offers individuals today, has quickly grown into an area on the web that is very popular and well known by almost everyone that drives their interest onto the cyberspace highway, that is known more commonly as the Internet.

If you will take a little extra time that is necessary for making use of the huge opportunity that is available by the promotion of your exciting services and products, it can many times bring you an audience of thousands of new prospective clients.

Have you noticed the numerous amounts of individuals that are linked to their friends who also belong to Myspace, who in turn are linked to their friends, as well as being linked to various businesses all over the world, who are also linked to their friends…and so on? This endless circle of friends that includes each member’s important personal and business information can prospectively put your products and the services that you offer, in the view of millions of people. To make this even more beneficial, as new people join Myspace, that will be that many more prospective clients that can come your way.

Creating a Myspace account for the services or business products that you offer can be an extreme advantage in the amount of new customers that you can bring your way. Posting a bulletin and starting a blog about what you have to offer, are also fantastic tools that are available for you to use on your Myspace account.

As you can see, Myspace has grown into a fabulous network of friends, as well as a great network between clients and various businesses. The ability of being able to promote your products and services on Myspace is widely becoming one of the most popular means of putting your products in the eye of many prospective customers.

Market research is something that is extremely important if you are an individual who is contemplating the idea of trying to succeed in making money online. It does not matter what type of business a person might decide to start, you must have a good and solid foundation for the business to be a success. This fact also holds true for individuals that would like to try their hand at making money online. It is very important to take the necessary steps that are involved in doing the proper market research, so that you have a good solid foundation to build upon. This will be the key to your successful future in being able to make money online.

Below you will find a few very helpful tips that will help you in doing market research.

* If at all possible, try to select an area of market that you have at least some basic knowledge in. You will have a much greater chance at being successful if you have a general knowledge in the area of market you decide upon.
* Take the time to do necessary research in determining if your market of choice is one that is known to be profitable.
* Choose an area of market that is something that you can enjoy.
* Whenever possible, try to choose an area of market that is the least competitive.
* Pay close attention to the likes and dislikes of the consumers you plan to target.

If you will put a little extra effort into the market research for your business venture, you might be pleasantly surprised with the rewards you can enjoy for the extra amount of effort that is involved.

Forming a good solid foundation in gaining knowledgeable information in conducting your market research can be very beneficial.

The question often arises as to whether or not all the e-books on moneymaking ideas are worth buying and reading. The most truthful answer to that question is sometimes yes and sometimes no. The secret to finding worthwhile moneymaking e-books is in the subject matter.

Some of these e-books are written to teach you the principles behind Internet marketing. E-books such as Brad Callen’s “Search Engine Optimization Made Easy” is a virtual treasure trove of vital information on how to develop your website for the best possible search engine results to bring potential customers to you.

Another great addition to your library of useful moneymaking e-books is Jill Brennan’s “Kickstart Your Article Writing”. Here you will learn the basics of writing the articles you will use to successfully direct more traffic and potential customers to your site. These informational e-books are usually well worth the price of admission as they deal with the basics of moneymaking businesses whether online, by mail or a local brick and mortar store.

You will often find e-books that offer advice on specific niche topics. They will range in subject matter from making money selling beenie babies to amassing a fortune selling real estate. Often they are informational and even helpful. Provided they are not priced very high, you can probably pick up a few new ideas from them. Remember though that you can probably find most of the information they offer online for free if you spend some time utilizing your search engine.

The moneymaking e-books that you should avoid are the one’s who advertise a “system” by which you can make money hand over fist with hardly any effort. Making money at a business requires work, dedication and time. There really are no shortcuts. Anyone telling you they have made millions of dollars with their “system” is not really going to share that system with you. If they are making millions, then it is through selling you their e-book for an inflated price.

Today web development is no more an issue because of the web hosting sites. You can hire webmasters to make websites for you and to make the complete web design. However, ranking of website top in a search engine is also a major issue which requires application of tools of search engine optimization.

There are ways to make money online even if you do not have your own product or service and if you do not have the budget to stock your own inventory. A very popular form of Internet business is the “Affiliate” program. Basically an affiliate program is where you sign up to offer a larger company’s products on your website or advertising venues for a commission on any sales generated through your links.

Firstly you should use only a few related affiliate accounts. This way your efforts are not spread so thinly that you will be forever reaching a payout level with your account. If you wish top sell different types of products you should create a new website for each niche. No one looking for a sportswear site will be interested in advertising for housewares.

Beware of too many banner advertisements. The billboard look will turn off many potential customers. Use one or two banners if you must, but intersperse text links as well. Working the text link into the copy on your web page can increase interest and click-throughs by virtue of being placed in appropriate areas of interest.

While you might think it is a good thing to link to the affiliate’s homepage in hopes of the potential customer finding something of interest, it is better to feature select items to link to. Once they are there the customer will have the option to look for different items if they so choose.

Unless it is strictly forbidden in your contract with the company, make sure to code the ads and links to open in a different browser window. In this manner, once they have decided whether or not to buy and close out of the store, you will still have your web page up for them to come back to rather than surf off to some other site.

Finally you do need to cloak your affiliate links. Regrettably there are thieves in the world and one of the types of trojan malware that can infect computers will search for these affiliate links and replace them on clickthrough with the affiliate code of the perpetrator. While you may know how to keep your computer system free of this software bandit there is no guarantee that your potential customer does. Cloaking the links will greatly increase the odds that you will be credited for your efforts and not some unidentifiable thief.

The answer to this question is a resounding yes! With a bit of effort and continued care a blog on a popular topic can garner more income than many passive websites. There are a few very important reasons for this.

To begin with, not only the search engines but users as well, are in constant search of new material. Taking a few minutes a day to add fresh posts to your blog will maintain th interest of all concerned. If you allow user comments to your blog posts, then you have even more fresh content expanding the value of your site. Offering RSS feeds of new posts on your blog will help alert regular readers quickly and thus keep their interest and possible word of mouth recommendations bringing in more traffic for you.

Once you have people reading your blog, the money can come from several sources. By far the easiest form of revenue will be from pay per click advertising such as Google AdSense or Clicksor. By applying the pre-coded advertisements to your blog, you can expect revenue not only from any click-through made by your user, but often a commission on any resultant sale.

Your blog is also a perfect place to advertise affiliate accounts. Regardless of your specific niche, you can find companies that offer a related product and, once more, reap commission payments from sales. Creating and offering your own unique product on your blog will assure that people must come to you to obtain a desired item.

Finally, with care and discretion, you can add a few dollars more by selling backlinks to related websites and blogs in your blogroll. While some companies like Google frown on link sales, it is a customary and traditional practice and, so long as you link to a website of a similar niche, there is no way to tell the link was purchased.

Making use of the many article and link directories on the web to link back to your blog will help maintain a steady flow of new users and potential customers to give you a long term growing accumulation of financial reward from your ever increasing web log.