Opposite attraction

Friday, 11 March 2011

Making Money Ebay

Founded in 2009 by Amanda Steinberg, DailyWorth is often a each day e-mail newsletter that features data on personal literacy and dollars management skewed in the direction of a female audience. DailyWorth’s subjects selection from easy methods to organize your finances to tax tricks to saving assistance. And DailyWorth has an impressive editorial staff to build subject matter. MP Dunleavey, previously a personalized finance columnist together with the Ny Occasions and now a contributor with Bucks magazine, is major DailyWorth’s editorial group.

Despite unions’ long hatred of Scott Walker, the new governor is moving to tackle each the signs or symptoms with the condition as well as condition itself-the public-sector union scheme that has molested Wisconsin’s taxpayers and their youngsters by gaming the model. Unions like Wisconsin’s teachers’ union [WEAC] (which was Wisconsin’s biggest-spending lobby in 2009) happen to be extraordinarily adept at correcting the strategy because of paying millions to elect politicians who, in turn, reward the unions on the expense of your taxpayers.

the Wisconsin battle, when compared to private-sector negotiations is about: one) the Scope of Bargaining, 2) Union “Income” Protection [Right-to-Work vs. Pressured Dues], 3) if Wisconsin ought to be the unions’ dues collection agency [payroll deduction of dues], and 4) whether public-sector unions should be ‘recertified’ by holding elections every 12 months.

place the photos on the internet to demonstrate our projects staff at msnbc.com, and photographer Jim Seida said, why really don't we just publish it being a slide show? I used to be skeptical at first - would that crimp the writing? - but in the end I was advocating undertaking it by doing this when the picture staff was skeptical. I imagined much more many people would examine through it this way, and it might be well worth an experiment.”

commercial fishing boats based mostly in Crescent Town place to sea very last night when the tsunami alert was to begin with broadcast. It truly is better to journey out big waves at sea than at the dock. Now a lot of these boats are working very low on fuel, but they are unable to return to port when the surges carry on, explained Chris Renner, operator of C. Renner Petroleum Co. in Crescent City, which serves the fleet

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Im Making Money

On Monday night time, I watched my very first, The Final Word host Lawrence O’Donnell.
Although O’Donnell laudably tried using to focus the audience’s awareness onand hopefully previous, Charlie Sheen trainwreck interview, courtesy of the tragic undertow that threatens to pull Sheen under for beneficial, I used to be overtaken, not by the pulling about the thread, in addition to the voracious audience he serves. It did not make me depressing, it developed me angry.

In the case of celebrities, we are able to be considered a heartless country, basking within their misfortunes like nude sunbathers at Schadenfreude Seashore. The impulse is understandable, to some diploma. It can be grating to pay attention to complaints from folks who love privileges that many of us can not even contemplate. When you can not muster up some compassion for Charlie Sheen, who tends to make much more money for a day’s get the job done than many of us will make inside a decade’s time, I guess I can’t blame you.

Using the rapid tempo of activities on the net plus the details revolution sparked through the The web, it is extremely simple and easy for your know-how sector to believe that it is exclusive: continually breaking new ground and doing important things that no one has actually accomplished before.

But there can be other sorts of internet business that have already undergone a few of the very same radical shifts, and also have just as wonderful a stake from the future.

Get healthcare, as an example.

We generally feel of it as being a large, lumbering beast, but in reality, medication has undergone a sequence of revolutions inside past 200 many years which can be no less than equal to those we see in technology and advice.

Less understandable, but even now inside the norms of human nature, would be the impulse to rubberneck, to slow down and take a look at the carnage of Charlie spectacle of Sheen’s unraveling, but from the blithe interviewer Sheen’s lifestyle as we pass it inside the suitable lane of our everyday lives. To become sincere, it may be challenging for people today to discern the distinction amongst a run-of-the-mill focus whore, and an honest-to-goodness, circling the drain tragedy-to-be. On its own merits, a quote like “I Am On a Drug. It is Called Charlie Sheen” is sheer genius, and we cannot all be anticipated to consider the total measure of someone’s everyday living any time we hear anything funny.

Quickly ahead to 2011 and I'm attempting to investigate usually means of being a bit more business-like about my hobbies (typically audio). Through the conclude of January I had manned up and started off to advertise my blogs. I had developed various numerous weblogs, which had been contributed to by buddies and colleagues. I promoted these routines by using Facebook and Twitter.

Second: the very little abomination that the Gang of 5 around the Supream Court gave us a year or so ago (Citizens Inebriated) basically comprises just a little bouncing betty of its individual that may incredibly perfectly go off while in the faces of Govs Wanker, Sacitch, Krysty, and J.O. Daniels. Seeing that this ruling prolonged the principle of “personhood” to both companies and unions, to experiment with to deny them any proper to operate within the legal framework that they have been organized beneath deprives these “persons” of the freedoms of speech, association and movement. Which suggests (once yet again, quoting law school skilled household) that both the courts really have to uphold these rights for that unions (as individual “persons” as assured from the Federal (and most state) constitutions, or they've to declare that these attempts at stripping or limiting union rights ought to use to big companies, also.

Gaye Gerard/Getty Images

I've been a fan of CM Punk since I first saw him win Money In The Bank at WrestleMania 24. He's got this certain aspect of his character that just makes you want to cheer for him or want to see him get hit with a chair...however I can't seem to want to see the latter though.

I never really followed him during his time on SmackDown (mainly because I don't watch SmackDown that often anymore), but since his arrival on Raw in October he has been one of the main reasons I tune into wrestling on Monday nights.

His mic skills remind me of a younger Chris Jericho, his in ring ability is unmatched by most wrestlers today and, quite frankly, every time I see him...I piss myself laughing.

This guy is hilarious...even when he doesn't mean to be.

I don't know, maybe I'm a psychopath but this guy just cracks me up, especially when he starts to do other peoples taunts (like screaming "Whatsup" during the Royal Rumble or doing Randy Orton's "smash ground thing" during the Elimination Chamber).

The guy just seems naturally funny and it's pretty hard to take a heel that makes you laugh seriously,

Judging from the crowd's reactions the last few weeks I'm starting to assume that I'm not the only one who feels this way, it seems like Punk is going to become the next "Anti-Hero" of WWE whether Vince Mcmahon wants to or not because the "CM Punk" chants are starting to overthrow the "CM Sucks" chants.

If he does turn into a face or tweener however this could serve as a new starting point for the "New Nexus."

That stable has started to show signs of wear and tear over the last few months and even with a new leader it hasn't improved much.

If they follow CM Punk in the new possible direction it could open up the opportunity for different feuds with new people such as The Miz and Ted Dibiase (if he ever gets a push again) while also continuing to battle with John Cena and Randy Orton.

It could also work for the Nexus vs. Corre feud seeing as how right now. The Corre seem to be the big bad guys on SmackDown.

If the fans keep cheering for CM Punk sooner than later Vince McMahon is going to take notice and either have him do something that makes him the most hated man in wrestling or possibly the most cheered man in wrestling.

Am I wrong? What do you guys think? Let the debating...begin!

Meet Buddy Roemer, who hasn’t won an election since the 1980s and lost to America’s most famous neo-Nazi. McKay Coppins talks to the ex-Louisiana governor about his White House dreams.

Buddy Roemer is the kind of politician who likes to use your first name in conversation—a lot.

“That’s a good question, McKay!” he exclaims when I ask him why he decided to become a Republican halfway through his first and only term as governor of Louisiana. “You gotta stop asking these questions!”

Previous LA Gov. Buddy Roemer is considering running for President. Credit: Ethan Miller / Getty Images

Unfortunately for him, that will be one of the easier queries he faces in the coming months, as he tests the waters in a long-shot bid for the Republican nomination in 2012. Roemer hasn’t won an election since 1987. As governor, he became something of a state joke when he entrusted his emotional well-being to a new-age guru who instructed him and his staff to ward off negative thoughts by snapping a rubber band on their wrists and saying, “Cancel. Cancel.” And his only real claim to national fame is losing his bid for re-election to the statehouse in a primary to a veritable neo-Nazi. But today, none of that is preventing him from exploring a White House run.

“Thursday, I’m announcing an exploratory committee,” he says in a cheerful New Orleans accent, making him only the second Republican candidate so far to officially declare his intentions. (The other is pizza magnate Herman Cain.) “And then I will proceed to explore, to think through, to listen to people—I call them plain people—throughout America.”

It’s easy at first to dismiss Roemer as a kook—or, worse, a cynical opportunist looking to cash in a brief, buzzy presidential run for a future book deal or a cushy cable gig. But while his stated campaign strategy is hugely untenable—more on that below—he insists his intentions are sincere. And, well, maybe he’s telling the truth.

“Many will say that ‘he doesn’t have a chance,’ that ‘he’s not to be taken seriously,'” he says, pausing for emphasis and then lowering his voice. “Watch me, McKay.”

So far, Roemer’s platform is thin. He doesn’t have a lot to say about entitlement reforms or Middle East engagement. Instead, Roemer, who served seven years in the U.S. House, appears to be putting all his eggs in one basket, and betting that the message will resonate among populists in both parties. His target: something he calls “the money monster.”

“People are asking, ‘Why are you coming back?’ And I say it’s because there’s a need here. I am unimpressed and frightened by the money culture in Washington…

“Many Congressmen are auctioning themselves off for retirement. You have a health-care bill without any tort reform. I wonder how that happened. You have a financial-regulation bill that doesn’t require major banks to follow the same rules as every other company. Gee, I wonder how that happened.”

His bid to free Washington from the grips of the money monster will start with his own campaign. Roemer says he will refuse to accept donations from corporations, PACs, or special-interest groups, and that he will limit personal donations to $100 per individual. Slate’s Dave Weigel has already pointed out that such an approach to fundraising will make it all but impossible to raise enough cash to launch a credible campaign—but Roemer is ignoring the naysayers.

“I will declare my independence from the ‘all I want is access’ money,” he says proudly, insisting that this is more than just campaign window garnish. Indeed, he says, “I happen to think this is key to fixing most of the problems that are ailing America.” It’s a bold claim, and I press him to outline specific policy proposals that will solve the problem. At first he demurs—“That’s for future times,” he says—but then, as though the thought is just occurring to him, he offers, “When Congress sees the success I have with my own campaign, they will turn and say, ‘How did you do that?’ and ‘How does that work, and how does the Internet work?’ I’m not going to dictate to them.”

Robert Mann, a professor of mass communications at Louisiana State University, and a one-time reporter who covered Roemer when he was in Congress, says the politician has always relished being perceived as a "maverick." As a conservative Democrat, he was one of the first members of the House of Representatives to cross party lines and work with Ronald Reagan. And, later, as a governor hoping for re-election he switched parties because, Mann speculates, "he saw that the state's politics were trending conservative, and he thought it would be easier to be re-elected." (Roemer, on the other hand, insists he switched parties to add partisan variety to the Democrat-dominated state. He points to Gov. Bobby Jindal's election as a success made possible, in part, by his own political trailblazing.)

Of course, this independence comes with some baggage that may not smell so rosy to GOP primary voters. As governor, Roemer vetoed an anti-abortion bill because, he says, it "didn't do enough to protect the life of the mother." And he has a record of supporting environmental regulations that will surely be viewed with suspicion by the party's more adamant climate skeptics.

But while Roemer's maverick persona has a mixed track record of electoral success, Mann says he still has the intuition of a good candidate. "If there's a politician that could talk a bird out of a tree, it would be Buddy Roemer," says Mann. "There's a refreshing quality to his rhetoric, and a freedom that comes with not being beholden to any party."

There may or may not be more to Buddy Roemer than an entertaining 20-minute interview. But even if rhetoric's all he's got, he'll still have an important place in the 2012 primary. Namely: on the stage, drawing attention to every other candidate's dance with the "money monster."

McKay Coppins reports on politics and culture for Newsweek.

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Saturday, 5 March 2011

foreclosure help

We are two months into the new year and foreclosures are still a hot news subject. So let’s take a look at how and where we are.

According to Lender Processing Services (LPS) their data indicates about 6.92 million residential mortgages are past due or currently in foreclosure as of the end of January. That is a slight increase from December of 6.87 million. Most likely we are seeing the increase of homes going into foreclosure due to the fact many lenders held off foreclosure through the end of the year because of the foreclosure fraud investigation.

LPS also says the number of loans have risen 8 percent higher from where we were last year. Out of the 6.92 million mortgages not being paid on in the US, about 2.20 million are already in the process of being foreclosed on. About 4.72 million are more than one month past due, while 2.16 million of these homes are about 90 days past due.

So which states still have the highest non-current loans? Florida, Nevada, Mississippi, Georgia and New Jersey still have high foreclosure rates. However, these states are the fewest foreclosure rates Montana, Wyoming, Arkansas, South Dakota, and North Dakota.

According to MBA every state but two saw a drop in the 90 day past due delinquency, North Dakota and Arkansas were the only two states in which 90 day delinquencies did not decline. Total US mortgages that are past due are estimated to be around 8.22 percent, these not including mortgage that are already in foreclosure. MBA numbers for homes that are already in foreclosure averages about 4.63 percent. However according to MBA reports about 13.56 percent are at least one month behind.

Jobs are still slowly on the rise, commodities like gas, oil and food costs are pushing the average American’s budget to the verge of popping and it is only a matter of time before we start seeing foreclosures slowly creep up again.

Question is how the government’s assistance program, HAMP and other loan modification programs continue to help struggling homeowners. Increase discussion about the revamping of the mortgage, lending services and other government agencies will certainly play a role into how our real estate market starts to recover and how soon. As government officials continue to discuss making changes, we can only sit back and see how the next year begins to unfold.

It’s warming up, in advance of a two-day springtime interlude Thursday and Friday. On Wednesday, a high of 46, sun and light wind gusts.

Bernard L. Madoff has long insisted that he was the only one involved in the Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors out of $65 billion and landed him 150 years in federal prison. But in his first interview with the press, Mr. Madoff claims banks and hedge funds ignored signs of his illegitimacy and were actually “complicit” in the scheme.

“They had to know,” Mr. Madoff said. “But the attitude was sort of, ‘If you’re doing something wrong, we don’t want to know.’ ”

Elsewhere in the interview, conducted over two hours in a North Carolina prison visitor room and via e-mail, Mr. Madoff said he was helping Irving H. Picard, the trustee looking to restore lost funds to Mr. Madoff’s clients, including JPMorgan Chase and the Wilpon family, who own the New York Mets. Mr. Madoff also contends that he did not attend the funeral of his son Mark, who committed suicide in December, because it would have created a media circus, disputing reports he refused to attend. [NYT]

Crime & Public Safety

At the funeral for Anna and Yelena Bulchenko, the mother and daughter killed during a stabbing spree over the weekend by, the authorities say, Maksim Gelman, a high-ranking Brooklyn assistant police chief made a rare appearance to offer condolences to the victims’ family. He also offered an apology: ““I’ll always regret that we weren’t able to stop him sooner,” said Assistant Chief Joseph Fox, who led the manhunt resulting in Mr. Gelman’s arrest on Saturday. About 1,000 people attended the funeral in Brooklyn. [NYT] (Also see The New York Post, The Daily News and The Wall Street Journal.)

In an interview from the Bellevue psychiatric ward, Mr. Gelman continued his claims that his arrest was a result of a police “setup.” [New York Post]

In a wrongful death suit against United Airlines, the family of a 9/11 victim successfully pushed a Manhattan federal judge to allow the questioning of a United Airlines employee who they claim made a cellphone call to Mohamed Atta, the leader of the hijackings. [Daily News]

Government & Politics

By the end of the year, all New York homeowners facing foreclosure could be offered legal representation, according to procedures released Tuesday by state court officials. In more than half of the 80,000 active foreclosure cases, the defendants do not have lawyers. [NYT]

Once a prosecutor, always a prosecutor. In his first budget, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is pushing provisions that would allow the executive branch, through a new Department of Financial Regulation, the power to issue subpoenas and seek testimony in financial fraud cases. Opponents call the move a “power grab,” claiming it gives the executive branch greater authority than the attorney general’s office. [NYT]

Unfazed by his recent censure by a House of Representatives ethics committee, Representative Charles B. Rangel will run for a 22nd Congressional term, filing papers this week. [New York Post] (Also see The Wall Street Journal.)

Naral Pro-Choice New York, the state’s leading abortion-rights group, is investigating its former president’s use of her expense account. The president, Kelli Conlin, left her post last month. [NYT] (Also see The Daily News.)

Schools

A national conference to bring together school officials and teachers’ union representatives was held Tuesday without New York’s highest-ranking school official or teachers’ union representatives. The schools chancellor, Cathleen P. Black, and the United Federation of Teachers president, Michael Mulgrew, had planned to attend the Denver conference, which drew 150 school districts, but declined after tensions rose over Ms. Black’s recent criticism of the first-in-last-out teacher layoff system. [NYT] At the conference, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan did not mention the seniority policy, but earlier versions of his speech criticized last-in-first-out. [New York Post]

Pooches

Hickory, a Scottish deerhound from Flint Hill, Va., won Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on Tuesday. She had been named the top-ranked Scottish deerhound for the past three years before winning the big one. So, the opposite of the New York Jets. [NYT] (Also see The New York Post, The Daily News and The Wall Street Journal]

Housing & Economy

The Pratt Institute is supporting a major redevelopment of Myrtle Avenue, a once-dangerous strip through Brooklyn and Queens known as “Murder Avenue.” In January, Pratt opened the flashy, $54 million Myrtle Hall, credited with improving the neighborhood. [NYT]

Donald J. Trump, a Queens native, is interested in buying the Mets. He recently called the current owner, Fred Wilpon, to inquire about a possible sale. [NYT] (Also see The New York Post.)

People & Neighborhoods

Some of the city’s public-housing residents are working New York Fashion Week. [Wall Street Journal]

Eight Coney Island Boardwalk businesses facing closing may be offered stays of execution to remain open for the summer. Alas, Shoot the Freak received no such offer. [The Daily News]

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AOL Bolsters Local News Investment With Acquisition of Outside.in ...

AOL has acquired local news aggregator Outside.in, according to multiple reports.

Florida's Teacher Union Fight: the Next Wisconsin? - FoxNews.com

Florida is becoming a potential new battleground for union rights. New Republican Governor Rick Scott is proposing that teachers in his state contribute five percent to their pensions. Florida teachers rank 47th in the country in salary ...

Robert Reich: The Real News on Jobs

On our current trajectory, the unemployment rate will continue to decline. But so will the pay and benefits of most Americans. The real story isn't about jobs, it's about the ever decreasing standard of living for the middle class.

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AOL Bolsters Local News Investment With Acquisition of Outside.in ...

AOL has acquired local news aggregator Outside.in, according to multiple reports.

Florida's Teacher Union Fight: the Next Wisconsin? - FoxNews.com

Robert Reich: The Real News on Jobs

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AOL Bolsters Local News Investment With Acquisition of Outside.in ...

AOL has acquired local news aggregator Outside.in, according to multiple reports.

Florida's Teacher Union Fight: the Next Wisconsin? - FoxNews.com

Robert Reich: The Real News on Jobs

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AOL Bolsters Local News Investment With Acquisition of Outside.in ...

AOL has acquired local news aggregator Outside.in, according to multiple reports.

Florida's Teacher Union Fight: the Next Wisconsin? - FoxNews.com

Robert Reich: The Real News on Jobs

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AOL Bolsters Local News Investment With Acquisition of Outside.in ...

AOL has acquired local news aggregator Outside.in, according to multiple reports.

Florida's Teacher Union Fight: the Next Wisconsin? - FoxNews.com

Robert Reich: The Real News on Jobs

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AOL Bolsters Local News Investment With Acquisition of Outside.in ...

AOL has acquired local news aggregator Outside.in, according to multiple reports.

Florida's Teacher Union Fight: the Next Wisconsin? - FoxNews.com

Robert Reich: The Real News on Jobs

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AOL Bolsters Local News Investment With Acquisition of Outside.in ...

AOL has acquired local news aggregator Outside.in, according to multiple reports.

Florida's Teacher Union Fight: the Next Wisconsin? - FoxNews.com

Robert Reich: The Real News on Jobs

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AOL Bolsters Local News Investment With Acquisition of Outside.in ...

AOL has acquired local news aggregator Outside.in, according to multiple reports.

Florida's Teacher Union Fight: the Next Wisconsin? - FoxNews.com

Robert Reich: The Real News on Jobs

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AOL Bolsters Local News Investment With Acquisition of Outside.in ...

AOL has acquired local news aggregator Outside.in, according to multiple reports.

Florida's Teacher Union Fight: the Next Wisconsin? - FoxNews.com

Robert Reich: The Real News on Jobs

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AOL Bolsters Local News Investment With Acquisition of Outside.in ...

AOL has acquired local news aggregator Outside.in, according to multiple reports.

Florida's Teacher Union Fight: the Next Wisconsin? - FoxNews.com

Robert Reich: The Real News on Jobs

Monday, 21 February 2011

personal finance programs

Last night in the State of the Union address, President Obama stated that “the only way to tackle our deficit is to cut excessive spending wherever we find it—in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes. This means further reducing health care costs, including programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which are the single biggest contributor to our long-term deficit. Health insurance reform will slow these rising costs.”

Is it possible that the President has already forgotten that the health care law included a massive expansion of the broken Medicaid entitlement? According to projected national health expenditures from the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Medicaid spending in 2019 will be $896.2 billion. Without the health care law, CMS projects that the amount would have been $802.4 billion.

This means that the President’s health care law will increase Medicaid spending by 12 percent or about $100 billion annually. The extra spending comes from the additional 18 million or so individuals—mostly non-disabled and non-elderly adults without children—who will now have taxpayers paying their health care bills through the Medicaid program.

Two central components of the law expand eligibility to the government-run Medicaid program and offer costly subsidies to an estimated 20 million individuals to purchase health insurance. With an increasing amount of health care subsidization, taxes will increase, but so will the demand for health care services. This problem is exacerbated because there is very limited out-of-pocket payment for Medicaid. The subsidies and the increased third-party payment will cause health spending to grow, not slow.

Medicaid is a broken program for many reasons. First, national spending on Medicaid has more than quintupled over the past two decades, and about 16 percent of the population is currently enrolled. A primary reason state budgets are out of whack is this explosive Medicaid growth and states’ responsibility to finance a portion of its programs costs.

Despite the massive increase in spending, many physicians fail to participate in the program because of low payment rates and a frustrating amount of paperwork. This causes many Medicaid beneficiaries to receive basic care services in the emergency room.

There is evidence that Medicaid provides beneficiaries with a low quality of care. A recent study from the University of Virginia found that Medicaid patients have worse surgical outcomes than individuals without insurance, even controlling for a multitude of personal characteristics.

Instead of doubling down on Medicaid and its existing structure, Washington should consider major structural reform for this troubled program. To start, the open-ended federal reimbursement of state Medicaid spending, which creates perverse incentives for states to grow their programs unsustainably, must be reformed. Then, taxpayer-financed assistance should be targeted to truly deserving individuals using market-based principles that better align incentives of providers, recipients, states, and taxpayers. This is the path to put Medicaid spending on a more sustainable course.

The President should re-read his law if he believes its passage either improved Medicaid for those on it or reduced Medicaid spending growth.

By Douglas K. Smith, Member, Board of Directors, SeaChange Capital Partners

Social impact bonds, a useful experiment underway in England, is gaining attention on this side of the pond, including from the Obama administration. We are glad to see this at SeaChange (a non-profit group seeking innovative ways to bring capital to the non-profit sector). What is deeply concerning, though, is how some elites are packaging and promoting social impact bonds as yet one more example of everything the market does is good while everything government does is bad. Moreover, these same elites betray a stunningly superficial grasp about how markets actually work.

This is lamentable. Think for a moment about a common method among athletic coaches. Whether its tennis, golf, baseball, or any other sport, coaches know that athletes might get the right or wrong results by doing things the right or wrong way. You might win a tennis match with a sloppy forehand – and, ultimately, if you’re to improve your game, you need to win matches hitting forehands correctly. My skepticism, then, is less about using and learning from social impact bonds than about the ‘right result, wrong way’ advocacy that links them to ideological ‘givens’ about always good markets and always bad government. Moreover, this same overly simplistic positioning threatens to create ‘wrong result, wrong way’ outcomes by too easily producing misuses of social impact bonds in ways that cause them to fail.

For those who’ve not heard of them, let’s answer the Times’ David Leonhardt’s question, “What are social impact bonds?”

The short answer: a vehicle offering investors bond-like returns for taking equity-like risks on investing in potential solutions to socio-economic challenges. The key to success lies in the performance results achieved by the social service providers. If yes, investors gain bond-like returns sourced from cash linked to that performance. If the providers fall short, however, investors suffer equity-like losses. A group called Social Finance is experimenting with social impact bonds aimed at reducing recidivism among inmates in a UK prison. If they lower the recidivism rate by 10% greater than comparable prisons, investors gain between 7.5% to 13.5% returns. If the social service providers fail to do this, investors lose their money.

Let’s first look at the ‘right result, wrong way’ chorus on how social impact bonds derive from the wonderfulness of markets. Leonhardt does this. So does Harvard Professor Jeffrey Liebman in a Center for American Progress white paper on the subject.

Both are enthusiastic about how social impact bonds can bring much needed to capital to serious social ills. Terrific! Maybe we’ll get the ‘right result’. But why must each slide into the all-too-predictable ‘either/or-ism’ that bedevils our search for creative solutions to real problems. Not only do they premise support for social impact bonds on the monotonously dumb meme of ‘markets good/government bad’; but, they do so in ways that threaten to add the phrase ‘market discipline’ to ‘free markets’ and ‘shareholder value’ as yet one more entry in the mindless lexicon of the status quo.

Discipline is not a phenomenon uniquely linked only to markets – a point ignored by Liebman and Leonhardt. We can and do speak just as much about organizational disciplines, network disciplines and personal disciplines. What ‘market’, e.g., explains the discipline used by weekend tennis players to hit forehands correctly? Organizations, too, choose the disciplines used to achieve their purposes. Yes, sometimes those choices are influenced by markets – but not always and certainly not always in ways so ideologically implied by Liebman and Leonhardt.

Liebman notes that too many government programs have disciplines that focus more on defining activities than results. But it does not follow logically or empirically that ‘market discipline’ is the only cure when such an activity-focus has ill effects. (I say “when” because, while there are ill effects to address, Liebman’s ‘either/or-ism’ ignores the good effects of an activity-focus in governmental contexts; namely, the means and ends demanded by notions of fairness and due process inherent in some versions of the rule of law.) Most private sector organizations, by the way, also have various forms of activity-driven disciplines that arise from the operations of their hierarchies, management processes and shared values – patterns that emerge notwithstanding the effects of the disciplines imposed by the markets in which they compete. Consider only the long, sad history of American automakers over much of the last three to four decades. For them, activity-driven organizational disciplines trumped ‘market discipline’.

But the flip side is also in evidence. That is, in addition to observable private sector activity disciplines trumping market discipline, we also see plenty of examples of organizational performance disciplines instead of activity disciplines in the absence of any market. Over the past few years, for example, a range of Georgia state government leaders with whom I’ve worked have shifted their agencies toward performance disciplines for services ranging from driver’s license renewals to job preparedness to prison reform to education to highway maintenance and more. Millions of dollars have been put to more productive use, and dozens of innovations plus much better customer service and new capabilities have been spawned – and all in the absence of any discipline derived from any market.

Both/and. Not either/or. The bottom line: markets might impose performance disciplines on organizations. But, contrary to the ‘markets good/governments bad’ trope, there’s neither any guarantee that the existence of a market equates with a disciplined focus on performance nor the inevitability that the absence of a market prevents as much. Why then is there this deep-felt need by elites to hew their conversations to the ideological line of ‘markets good/governments bad’?

The absence of ‘market discipline’, then, does not prevent any agency at any level of government from a shift to performance: it’s a question of leadership and will. Might social impact bonds help? Yes. But it’s not the kind of sine qua non requirement suggested by Liebman’s and Leonhardt’s all-or-nothing use of a phrase like ‘market discipline’.

Next, the ideological use of ‘market discipline’ clothed in ‘market good/government bad’ rhetoric is, well, unreal. Liebman and Leonhardt are smart and accomplished individuals. They’ve been around. So, why the thundering silence about ‘market discipline’ and, ahem, you know, events of the past decade? How did this ideologically pure ‘market discipline’ work out in financial, residential and commercial real estate, health care, and other markets? Leonhardt points to the wasting of ‘billions of dollars’ in government programs. How about the trillions of dollars of value destruction in these arenas subject to ‘market discipline’?

The concept that market discipline guarantees efficiency and effectiveness is fallacious. Nearly four years ago, for example, it was clear that the performance disciplines used by the best non-profit housing groups far outstripped the performance disciplines used by the private sector in terms of delinquencies and foreclosures. Yet, the private sector got all the capital. So much for ‘market discipline’. What happened there? Was there no market discipline? Was there no link between capital markets and competitive performance?

No. Actually, the reverse. Capital market discipline combined with organizational and managerial disciplines to promote a peculiar kind of performance on private sector players. We all know the nice sounding words that were (and are) used for this: earnings, returns, ‘shareholder value’. It’s just that these melodious sounds became ever more narrowly and loudly linked to unsustainable and even criminal greed through the precincts of the shorter-term, the quicker buck, the larger bonus, and the faster, more untraceable shifting of risk to others. Yes, ‘market discipline’ focused all of the various players on performance – banks, mortgage brokers, real estate brokers, hedge funds, ratings agencies, lawyers, accountants and more. But instead of efficiency and effectiveness that maniacal performance focus gave us control fraud, speculation, looting and managerial–and-casino capitalism.

Does that make ‘market discipline’ evil and bad? No. Remember: both/and, not either/or. Liebman and Leonhardt would recoil at anyone who condemned ‘market discipline’ to be banished from human experience based on these gargantuan failures of the past decade. Why, then, do they crow so loudly in favor of market discipline as a panacea for government and social sector ills? Again, why only a reference to the billions wasted by (some) government efforts and not the trillions destroyed by (some) markets?

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Thursday, 17 February 2011

web site promotion internet marketing

When I went into marketing/communications in the 80’s, things were simpler. I spoke 5 languages, which pushed me into this field. What else could I do, be a translator? Not on your life. Not when I could be creative, come up with quantitative studies and research why / how people buy.

It seemed simple, right? You have a product and you have to figure out a way to sell said product. You had magazine ad space, TV commercials, newspapers… every day, everywhere you looked, you’d see some form of advertisement. Eventually, we became desensitized to print and TV marketing – the traditional ways.

The Internet wasn’t used as it is today (although it still had some traction). The World Wide Web was the Wild Wild West. It was a “small” little marketplace, with a minor audience for client product promotion.

And Then Internet Entered the Scene… Fast Forward in Time

Advertising is more sophisticated now… but then, so are consumers. Way back when, we could survey the consumer, create charts, crunch numbers… it was all about data. Anymore, however, you have to understand consumer psychology.

Marketing has gone holistic. Yes, quantitative and qualitative data is still important, but we’re not looking at real numbers anymore. We’re looking at the consumers themselves.

What makes buyers buy? Is it the way a site looks? Does having the sidebar on the left gain a greater response than having the sidebar on the right? Are blue links more “clickable” then, say, green ones? Is “buy” more active than “act”?

What Are the Click Triggers?

With all the Google changes lately, you really have to pay more attention to your site. Of course, if you’re a regular reader, you know I push site attention anyway, no matter what Google’s doing. However, with all the vertical marketing possibilities, you want to make sure you get all the bang for your buck you can from any top listing you get.

So you study the click triggers – those beautiful little differences that cause people to click through: through to your website, through to your buy page, through to your “thank you”. It’s a step-by-step process, and you have to guide them every step of the way.

Ask yourself:

Is my content sticky? Does it have good information worth reading?

Are my headlines well written? Do they grab readers’ attentions?

Do I let others (those who will tell me the truth) read my content before I put it up? Do they like it? Do I listen when they offer suggestions?

Is it easy to navigate through my site? Does my site create a pleasant user experience?

Are You Ignoring the Individual?

This is the most serious question, and you need to really give it some thought. If your content completely targets consumers (i.e. all product/service focused) rather than having helpful bits of information, you could be losing out.

You can’t appeal to everyone; not everyone is your target market. You don’t want to get so busy trying to reach everyone that you miss those who might convert. Build your site, images, writing, etc within the context of your specific target, and then experiment.

Experiment….?

Yes, experiment. Human behavior and relevance is a beautiful thing. Being able to associate one with the other will have half your online battle won. However, you can’t just pull knowledge out of the air. You have to be willing to experiment – to test. Plenty of tools are readily available for just this purpose, such as…

Google Website Optimizer

A/B testing is in; guessing is out. If you think you might know why a page isn’t converting, that’s all well and good. However, there’s a difference between thinking you know, and really knowing. With a little A/B testing, you can find out what areas really are the problem and fix them.

Usabilla

Take a screen shot of your page and put it up on Usabilla. Let people know what questions you want them to answer and then send out the link. This little goodie can give you some very valuable insights in terms of layout and design.

4QSurvey

Very nice, very short survey. You can find out why people came to your site, whether they found what they wanted (giving you visitor satisfaction ratings) and get suggestions from them, all in the same program. Again, this is a very useful goodie.

The three above are just a few. There are, literally, tons of usability testing tools out there. Many are free; some cost, but are worth it.

You’re not going to get through today’s marketing world by guessing. You’re not going to make it with traditional marketing tools. You have to be willing to use everything at your disposal; you have to be willing to expand.

What changes have you made to keep up with online marketing and technology?

Post image via BDoughertyAmSchool

SEO in the niche of web hosting and domain name registration

In this article we`ll try to generalize our practices in promotion of companies that provide web hosting and domain registration services.

We will talk about such questions:

Analysis of hosting / domain name registration market and finding potentially advantageous promotion directions;

Features of keywords selection in the conditions of SEO-pressure

Definition of promotion strategy

Methods of getting links

Features of different queries groups conversion depending on geography

Typical problems that interfere sites conversion and ways of their solution

Market analysis and competitive researches. Finding potentially advantageous promotion directions

First of all, it is necessary to note that a large traffic in the niche of web hosting is deceptive. If you look at Google AdWords Keyword Tool data you will find out the following picture:

In fact, there are about 400-500 visits from the 8th– 9th place for a query “hosting” per month. It`s necessary to consider this and other points while planning hosting project promotion, because information about a large amount of queries in the Google AdWords Keyword Tool is “stuffed” with endless positions checks. As the market of hosting projects and domain name registrars is extremely competitive, you have a great chance to invest money, work and time in promotion of such queries that are stuffed and do not bring traffic and sales, and after all you can incur losses and even remain disappointed in the search promotion at all. The same can be said about domain name registration.

In fact, there are about 500-600 visits from the 5th – 6th place for a query “domain” per month.

That`s why, in our opinion, it`s better to begin promotion of hosting project or domain name registrar with finding active competitors in the search marketing niche and define their strategies. For this purpose we can recommend a wonderful tool – SemRush.

So, we need to find competitor sites in our niche, which are actively engaged in the Internet marketing. We just type highly competitive query corresponding to the topic in SemRush and find sites that are ranked well for it:

Now we need to make cleaning, i.e., remove irrelevant sites from the list. In this case, obviously, Wikipedia must be removed from the list. After checking a few queries important for you in the same way, we will receive a “crossed” list of sites. Sites from this list have good rankings for many queries in this subject, so they should be examined primarily.

Lets take a site hostgator.com as an example:

The example shows that, firstly, the number of search queries for which the site “hostgator” is shown has an explicit trend to growth. It reflects the efforts made by the owners of this project to increase its visibility in search engines.

After selection of queries that bring maximum traffic to the project according to SemRush, we get an approximate keywords list which can be used to start promotion.

Making the list of necessary keywords, let’s see whether it is a good idea for us to «meddle into a fight» for these keywords. You should consider such factor, as SEO-pressure, for this purpose.

Features of keywords selection in the conditions of SEO-pressure

You can use different tools to estimate a competition for the selected query. A plug-in for FireFox called SeoQuake is one of convenient free instruments.

Let’s type a relevant query interesting for us, e.g., business hosting:

You can see that some strong sites are present in SERP, and some of them have got from several hundreds thousand to millions of backlinks and even more. The competition in SERPs is about to be really strong, so I would like to repeat: you should select a semantic core very carefully. Moreover, there are sometimes artifacts in SERPs, and learning them is possible only from experience. Let’s take the query “ecommerce hosting”. This query is high frequency in subtopic «hosting for ecommerce sites», it has about 12 thousand searches per month in exact match worldwide:

We can see that the trends of search don’t show any sudden jumps or drops.

The target audience for these queries is in the U.S. and UK – the most creditworthy regions in general. However, traffic for such query from the American Google Top5 – Top6 is about 1-3 persons a day, with natural drops on weekends; it gives us about 40 people a month. A conversion rate for these queries is extremely low. Of course, promotion for this queries is acceptable only with the purposes of improving positioning and brand awareness, but as for sales it isn`t effective.

Let`s take a query “reseller web hosting” which has next data from Google KeyWord Tool worldwide, for comparison:

The query brings twice more traffic from the 4th-5th places having twice smaller amount of searches in exact match according to Google KeyWord Tool! Conversion rate of this query is also quite high. At that, Google Insights give the following data:

At the same time the great part of traffic and transactions comes from the U.S. and UK users despite of the fact that the site holds comparable positions also in Google.co.in.

All of these patterns are also true for domain name registrars.

It’s impossible to know this information without experience in promoting a site for such queries or without trying PPC advertising in exact match. There are a lot of keywords like these, so you should constantly monitor all queries in the aggregate estimating of the effectiveness of each one.

You can also “pull out” perspective keywords making the analysis of the backlinks text anchor to sites of competitors who are actively engaged in search marketing. You can use special tools, for example, CS Yazzle or SEO SpyGlass by LinkAssistant, either manually using Yahoo! Site Explorer.

To estimate a real traffic on a query you may also try PPC in exact match.

The following method can be used to estimate keywords efficiency. The initial necessary data is:

Position for a keyword;

Traffic on it;

Estimated number of searches from Google Keyword Tool in the exact and phrase match for the world and top regions;

Quantity of page views;

Time spent on a site;

Bounce rate;

Conversion rate.

Microsoft Excel counts a parity of all these factors with the help of formulas and allows realizing efficiency/inefficiency of each keyword visually.

Perspective traffic, quantity of searches per month (data of Google AdwordsKeywordTool) and conversion data for each query are marked with green color. Indicators exceeded the average indicators for the site to the worse are marked with red (bounce rate, number of pages reviews).The percent of conversion which vastly differs to better from the average indicator for the site is marked with yellow color in the last column (Conversion rate).

Using this technique allows tracking the most convertible requests and receiving greater outcome from a client’s site.

Selection of promotion strategy

Based on our experience in promotion of projects in the niche of hosting and domain names registration we can say that the most high-frequency, convertible and competitive queries are in these topics exactly.

Shared vs VPS vs Dedicated

If to compare an earning power of dedicated servers sale (VPS) and earning power of shared hosting sale you will come to the conclusion that in general virtual (Shared) hosting sale is more profitable: one dedicated server sale brings around 200$ of income, at the same time sale of the same server “cutted” on virtual (Shared) hosting allows to earn much more (~100×5$), even with the consideration of the increasing load on a support.

However, traffic in Shared hosting subtopic is much less than in dedicated server subtopic. People interested in such things, according to our observations, come by queries like “cheap hosting”, “cheap web hosting”, and the quantity of such searches is very small because Godaddy and Hostgator take away the lion’s share of these customers, mainly due to type-in traffic.

In this case, it seems to be a good decision to perform promotion in the VPS and Dedicated sector.

Many companies, apparently, have come to the same conclusion: promotion for queries of “shared” group is much easier, than for queries related to dedicated servers.

Specialized kinds of hosting

As we have noted above, low-frequency traffic brings rather small part in general traffic and conversion; therefore, in our opinion, it`s better to begin promotion for high-frequency keywords with addition low – and mid-frequency keywords, which give a great bulk of sales and target traffic on a site. However, if your hosting site sells “exotic ” types of hosting, such as hosting with support of Zen Cart or Django, then such low-frequency, long-tail keywords can justify themself at the initial stages of promotion.

A cost of their promotion to the Top-10 is small, and similar “exotic hosting” is usually searched by people who understand the subject well and thus type long queries in search bars.

Eventually, when the site starts to rank well for competitive queries, it makes sense to “collect” low-frequency “long tail” of queries in subjects, not to miss this small piece of the market.

Also I would like to notice that promotion for keywords like “hosting” and “web hosting” is extremely difficult process due to high competition (though these keywords begin to “sell” beginning from top-20!)

Methods of getting links

The basis of search optimization are at the moment:

keyword research;

texts and meta tags optimization according to the keywords;

adding backlinks with correct “anchors” (with right reference texts).

As we have already noted, hosting sites have a large number of backlinks. How do they receive so many backlinks? This is obvious, that reviews and comments at forums will never help to collect tens thousands of links. Four main methods used in this theme should be picked out. Some of them are typical for other niches and some of them have unusual “boom” exactly in hosting and domain subjects.

Link exchange (the proper way)

Links buying (the smart way)

Getting links through its own affiliate program.

Conversion of search traffic

Let’s look at the comparative analysis of search traffic conversion in various regions (sample of more than 90.000 sales for “domain names” and more than 2000 sales for the “hosting” market):

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Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

Yahoo! Marketing, Tech and Management in the News | Yahoo ...

A trio of stories from across the globe shows Yahoo!'s leadership.

Small Business News: SMBs and the Economy

Recently businesses have expressed concern over excessive regulations that have made conducting business ever more expensive, often with limited justification.

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Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

Yahoo! Marketing, Tech and Management in the News | Yahoo ...

A trio of stories from across the globe shows Yahoo!'s leadership.

Small Business News: SMBs and the Economy

Recently businesses have expressed concern over excessive regulations that have made conducting business ever more expensive, often with limited justification.

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Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

Yahoo! Marketing, Tech and Management in the News | Yahoo ...

A trio of stories from across the globe shows Yahoo!'s leadership.

Small Business News: SMBs and the Economy

Recently businesses have expressed concern over excessive regulations that have made conducting business ever more expensive, often with limited justification.

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Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

Yahoo! Marketing, Tech and Management in the News | Yahoo ...

A trio of stories from across the globe shows Yahoo!'s leadership.

Small Business News: SMBs and the Economy

Recently businesses have expressed concern over excessive regulations that have made conducting business ever more expensive, often with limited justification.

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Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

Yahoo! Marketing, Tech and Management in the News | Yahoo ...

A trio of stories from across the globe shows Yahoo!'s leadership.

Small Business News: SMBs and the Economy

Recently businesses have expressed concern over excessive regulations that have made conducting business ever more expensive, often with limited justification.

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Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

Yahoo! Marketing, Tech and Management in the News | Yahoo ...

A trio of stories from across the globe shows Yahoo!'s leadership.

Small Business News: SMBs and the Economy

Recently businesses have expressed concern over excessive regulations that have made conducting business ever more expensive, often with limited justification.

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Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

Yahoo! Marketing, Tech and Management in the News | Yahoo ...

A trio of stories from across the globe shows Yahoo!'s leadership.

Small Business News: SMBs and the Economy

Recently businesses have expressed concern over excessive regulations that have made conducting business ever more expensive, often with limited justification.

bench craft company scam

Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

Yahoo! Marketing, Tech and Management in the News | Yahoo ...

A trio of stories from across the globe shows Yahoo!'s leadership.

Small Business News: SMBs and the Economy

Recently businesses have expressed concern over excessive regulations that have made conducting business ever more expensive, often with limited justification.

bench craft company scam

Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

Yahoo! Marketing, Tech and Management in the News | Yahoo ...

A trio of stories from across the globe shows Yahoo!'s leadership.

Small Business News: SMBs and the Economy

Recently businesses have expressed concern over excessive regulations that have made conducting business ever more expensive, often with limited justification.

Tuesday, 15 February 2011

People Making Money Online

What is not to love about this story? The levers of power in the world of popular culture are mostly held by the very few elite Watchmen who control the bottle neck of distribution. They are The Man and politically they are mostly not on America’s side or ours. Take that power away and they are nothing. I’d tell you to look at the music business as an example but no one can find it.

Here you have a young woman who used all the tools the Digital Revolution has to offer and created her very own success. You mix in some hard work with a genuine talent and no one can stop you. It’s like Twitter, this amazing digital forum that allows us to have a conversation amongst ourselves, to exchange ideas and information, without the malicious filter of the mainstream media telling us what is and isn’t important, proper, or worthy. Power to the People used to be a slogan shouted by socialists who meant just the opposite, but now it’s something coming truer every day in this amazing age we’re privileged to live in.

Fed up with attempts to find a traditional publisher for her young-adult paranormal novels, Hocking self-published last March and began selling her novels on online bookstores like Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com.

By May she was selling hundreds; by June, thousands. She sold 164,000 books in 2010. Most were low-priced (99 cents to $2.99) digital downloads.

More astounding: This January she sold more than 450,000 copies of her nine titles. More than 99% were e-books. …

In fact, Hocking is selling so well that on Thursday, the three titles in her Trylle Trilogy (Switched, Torn and Ascend, the latest) will make their debuts in the top 50 of USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list.

A recent survey shows 20 million people read e-books last year, and more self-published authors are taking advantage of the trend.

(Self-publishing is done without the involvement or vetting of an established publisher and uses a publishing system such as Lulu, Smashwords, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing or Barnes & Noble’s PubIt! Many traditional media outlets do not review self-published books.) …

Hocking credits her success to aggressive self-promotion on her blog, Facebook and Twitter, word of mouth and writing in a popular genre — her books star trolls, vampires and zombies.

And she’s making money.

Stories like this, Twitter, Netflix Streaming, blogs – this stuff terrorizes our Pop Culture and Media Overlords. And for my money, you just can’t stick it to The Man enough.

Silicon Prairie News gives its start-up community a voice

You’ve heard of Silicon Valley, and likely Silicon Alley, but have you heard of Silicon Prairie?

Silicon Prairie is geographically hard to define but it’s there– somewhere between Chicago and Colorado, Dallas and the Dakotas–and it’s getting noticed because of one local news source The Silicon Prairie News.

And the Prairie’s entrepreneurs can thank one man, a native Nebraskan named Jeff Slobotski, who decided he wanted to write about the tech sector. After a few days of writing about California’s burgeoning scene, he decided to refocus his efforts on his own community. Recalling the words of my college professor, if you’re going to be a writer, write about what you know.

Slobotski decided to give his community a voice and that voice goes by the name of Silicon Prairie News. He called on the skills of his then friend, now CTO and co-founder Dusty Davidson, who runs BrightMix, a small, local software company. In July 2008, Slobotski started blogging as a hobby, interviewing local entrepreneurs on his lunch breaks and publishing stories at night.

In June 2009, Slobotski took on Danny Schreiber full time as SPN’s Managing Editor. Schreiber’s favorite players in the SP scene? Dwolla, a mobile payments service that is giving PayPal a run for its money and RockDex, a start up that is capturing the social metrics of plays on YouTube, LastFM and MySpace for musicians.

The boys had a lot to write about, they just needed people to listen. Slobotski, Davidson and Schreiber decided to throw an event to grab the world’s attention; they called it Big Omaha.

Last year’s Big Omaha was a success with over 550 people from 20 states including Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley, Charity: Water‘s Scott Harrison and Zappo’s Tony Hsieh. SPN was suddenly profitable, making money off of sponsorships and ticket sales from the event. Soon they had local businesses and Omaha’s Chamber of Commerce knocking on their door, asking if they could advertise on SPN. The readers came.

SPN currently has 4 full-time employees, 12 freelance writers and 3600 RSS feed email subscribers. At the end of November, the site averaged 25,000 unique visitors, 45,000 page views, and was growing at 10% a month.

“If it weren’t for Silicon Prairie News, there wouldn’t be a start-up scene in the mid-west. They are our voice. Their existence reinforces our culture.” says Ben Milne, the CEO of Dwolla.

Monday through Friday, expect fresh, daily content focusing on Silicon Prairie entrepreneurs like Dwolla and Hudl, an online coaching application, recently named by Inc. magazine’s 30 under 30. On the weekends, to keep traffic flowing, they’ll repurpose TED Talks or big interviews from other more well-known tech blogs.

“Our first goal is to highlight the story, the angel investors and the entrepreneurs. Our second goal is to tighten, build and connect the community and ecosystem here,” says Slobotski. “There’s value in what we’re doing by reporting on it but our events build communities that get people talking and brainstorming ideas together.”

The overall scene in Silicon Prairie is comprised of a lot of consumer related tech starts up. With the large amount of capital potentially available (read: Berkshire Hathaway and everyone else who is connected to Warren Buffet by one string or another), the scene could be well funded with the right connections.

This coming week, they will launch Silicon Prairie News’ Kansas City bureau, of which Kansan Royce Haynes will be involved. Haynes, like many SPN readers found the site through hearing about Big Omaha on Twitter. “I didn’t expect something of this caliber to take place in Omaha, Nebraska,” he says, “It’s going to be great to now be a part of it and to able to highlight all of the entrepreneurial activity going on in Kansas City.”

Interested in getting in on the Silicon Prairie fun? Save the date for a sweet SPN party Sunday night at SXSWi in March and a Big Omaha style event in Des Moines, Iowa this fall.

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