Paying Online – Pros and ConsWritten by Lisa Hood
Paying Online – Pros and ConsI’ve been seduced by convenience of online shopping! I’ve bought movies, clothes, stamps, groceries, prescriptions, books and jewelry online. During Christmas Holidays, I wait with peppermint breath for Saint UPS Driver Guy and his bag of goodies. While others fight mobs of angry shoppers, I browse through product descriptions at my leisure. I feel relatively safe providing my credit card information despite horror stories of fraud and theft. I only buy from reputable merchants, those that are well known and publicized. That’s not to say I couldn’t be fooled. It’s nearly impossible to tell whose who on Internet. Sure, a professional site may be one indicator, but anyone can hire a web designer. Recent research estimates that number of households shopping online grew to over 18 million in 2001. Here are some tips to help you decide if you’re dealing with a trustworthy merchant: Use a secure browser - software that encrypts or scrambles purchase information you send over Internet - to help guard security of your information as it is transmitted to a website. Secure websites will have URL address HTTPS (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure) rather than HTTP. Check site's privacy policy, before you provide any personal financial information to a website. While these statements contain lots of small print, it’s important you understand if and when your information will be used or shared with others. Also check site's statements about their security policies.
| | Andrea J. LeeWritten by Should You Get A Blog?
A blog is a type of website. It allows website owner to easily write messages that get posted to site automatically, often in a journal or diary-like style. A particularly appealing thing about blogs is that your readers can comment back to your posts fairly easily, and a continuous stream of fresh conversations result. (This is a good thing.)Here are three reasons to consider getting a blog: 1.To Replace Your Ezine If you currently publish an ezine, you may wish to consider replacing it with a regularly published blog. This means using your blog to publish journal entries, and then when it comes time to communicate with your subscriber list, you excerpt some items from your blog, and send those out as your ezine. This saves you from creating special articles only for your ezine. In many cases it becomes easier for you to write in blog format (short and sweet) so you save time. Readers enjoy practical, "reporter-like" nature of blogs instead of ezines, and gradually come to feel that they are in conversation with you on a daily basis. You become part of their everyday circle of friends and associates, which leads to you becoming their natural resource on topic of your expertise. 2. To Create a Quick and Dirty Learning Environment or e-Campus For those who offer TeleClasses or other programs that want to have a web page of learning resources, links, class notes and audio, etc., a blog can be a great way to bring together an e-Campus. If you offer a workshop, coaching/consulting, or even a software solution, and you want to instantly add value to your clients, create a "client/student resource page" using a blog. This becomes an environment that students can play in, study more, and soak up your materials. Your clients continue to benefit from your expertise even though you're not physically there; they do it at their pace, and at little cost to you.
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