Some thing about the United States

The United States has reached a deal with the European Union, Japan and Canada to keep its Internet gambling market closed to foreign companies, but is continuing talks with India, Antigua and Barbuda, Macau and Costa Rica, U.S. trade officials said on Monday."We are pleased to confirm that the United States has reached agreement ... with Canada, the EU and Japan," Gretchen Hamel, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative's office, said in a statement several hours after the EU had announced details of the deal it had reached with Washington.
The decision is a disappointment for European online gambling companies who hoped a case brought by Antigua several years ago at the World Trade Organization gave them a foothold to get back in the U.S. market after being kicked out by Congress last year.In an April 2005 victory for Antigua, the WTO said a U.S. law allowing only domestic companies to provide horse-race gambling services discriminated against foreign firms.But rather than open up the U.S. online horse-race gambling market, Congress tightened restrictions on other forms of Internet gambling last year by making it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to online gambling sites.The Bush administration also announced in May that it was retroactively excluding gambling and betting services from market-opening commitments it made as part of the 1994 world trade agreement, saying that U.S. trade negotiators had made a mistake by not expressly excluding them at the time.
That opened the door for the European Union and other trading partners to seek compensation from the United States in the form of increased access to another U.S. service market.Hamel said the deal reached with the EU, Japan and Canada "involves commitments to maintain our liberalized markets for warehousing services, technical testing services, research and development services and postal services relating to outbound international letters."European gambling companies had argued the EU was entitled to as much as $100 billion in compensation for being denied access to the U.S. market. But EU officials never publicly embraced that amount and U.S. official called it an exaggerated figure.Hamel declined to say on Monday how much the deal was worth. "We're not going to get into that," she said.

Internet and Business

4 Things To Watch Out For From A Home Internet Based Business Opportunity
There are so many opportunities on the internet offering to set people up in their own home based internet business that it can be difficult to separate the real, legitimate opportunities from the ones that only want your money. Knowing what to look for hidden within the offers can mean the difference between finding a legitimate business to operate and ending up helping someone else make money while losing your own. With most fraudulent offers for in internet business there are four red flags that need to be thoroughly investigated before signing up to work for the website. Understand that not all of the companies that make these claims are out to take your money, but these are four things that many less than honest companies have in common:
1. Large upfront investment
2. The chance to make big money with little work
3. Do not clearly state what you will be selling
4. Lack of available contact information
While it is not uncommon for business to want a fee to become a representative for their business, you have to consider the amount demanded from you before you can start selling their product or service. You should also have a clear picture of what you will get in return for your investment. It is common for the term training to be listed, but many times the training consists of links to other sites where you are expected to learn about the company’s business model. The training may also focus on how to recruit others into the business, offering to pay a “bounty” for bringing in new people. A company that focuses on bringing in more people instead of selling the product may be on the border of being illegal. Anyone who has ever been involved in a business knows it takes work. One of the most common pitches is the promise of a big payday without having to work more than an hour or two a day…or even a week. There is no such thing as a free lunch and those who try to convince you otherwise and not being totally honest. That disclaimer about income may not a representative of the potential earnings, should beg the question about why even bother to list it. If you have been reading an online based business opportunity for several minutes and have no idea about the product or service you are being asked to sell, it could be an indication of a scam. Many keep it a secret until you have spent your money and find out there is no way you can sell this to others with a clear conscious. Know what the product is, and how much it will cost, before considering the offer any further. Look for contact information. If the only means of contacting the company is through an email address, it could be they don’t plan to be around long enough to answer any questions or complaints. Money back guarantees are also only about as good as the contact information. Email addresses and post office boxes are not good contacts.

How To Get Business From Your Email Enquiries?

Does your business get a lot of email inquiries?
You know the type I mean - where all the information you have of the enquirer is their email address. Isn't it frustrating when you reply to the email and hear nothing back?
Then you send a follow up email and still nothing! Finally in desperation you send a third email with your best price and nothing… nada… nil response! You finally give up out of sheer frustration.
So how is it possible to turn this type of inquiry into a sale? Don't give up hope yet as I have some possible solutions. Instead of responding with a sales pitch straight why not ask some questions first?
Possible questions include:
How did you find our company details?
When do you need delivery?
What number can I reach you on?
Who do you currently buy from?
Why are you thinking of changing suppliers?
How often do you place an order?
What are your views on X, Y & Z?
Your aim surely has to be to elicit a response and if possible further contact details like a phone number. By responding with a question, you can gauge the level of interest and avoid wasting precious time on "tyre kickers." Try to ask some questions that can not be answered with a straight yes or no. Instead ask leading questions that must get the enquirer thinking.
If your standard response is not working why not try the above approach?
To get business from an email inquiry you must get the client communicating and if possible talking as soon as possible.
This is the only way you are going to achieve results. You also need to build rapport with your potential clients, and instill confidence.
They need to be persuaded they are making the right decision.
By asking leading questions you are demonstrating that you treat their inquiry with respect. Why not prepare a standard questionnaire to send out to all initial inquiries?
If somebody can not be bothered answering some basic questions then it does not make sense wasting any more time on them. Another great idea is to hold a weekly conference call for initial inquiries.
Some potential clients might not be ready for a one on one chat but would happily attend a tele-seminar without feeling threatened. Personally I do not like the idea of giving a price based on an email inquiry. If the price is all the buyer is interested in then chances are that you will lose this customer pretty quickly even if you do manage to get their business. If you do give a price by email and it gets rejected then reply "If price is the only issue then why don't you give me a call? We have some great deals but I would rather we talk first before I send you a quote." Have you had an email inquiry recently? How much more successful would you be if you could double your conversion rate? Let the games begin!

Business Plans- What Consultants Don’t tell You!

Do you have a Business Plan? Congratulations, but you are in a small minority. And if you have a plan, is it integral to your business, and instrumental to its growth? If the answer to this question is yes, then you need to read no further. However, most business owners who actually go to the trouble to write a business plan have left it languishing on their bottom shelf, gathering dust! This is the dirty little secret of business consultants.
Most business consultants are only interested in selling their time or their ‘Business Plan in a Box’ but know that for a business plan to be useful, it has to be part of a Business Management System. But this is a much harder proposition for the consultant to sell, particularly to small business owners who are just looking for a quick fix. So most consultants just sell a quick fix solution- a business plan that they know will, within months, end up on the bottom shelf. Once owners have prepared their “fill in the blanks” plan, they expect it to transform their business overnight just by its mere existence. And because this does not happen, they never look at it again. Business Plans do work, but you have to make them work. It is not a one-off exercise. If you buy a ‘Business Plan in a Box’, you need to understand that you are responsible for maintaining the plan. You also need to satisfy yourself that the product you buy is not just a fill in the blanks product. These plans always end up on the bottom shelf. They don’t show you how to do your strategic analysis (which is never a fill in the blanks exercise- no matter what someone tells you). Business Planning is a real soul searching exercise for the business owner. You have to be brutally honest with yourself. Even if you prepare your plan yourself (without a coach), get someone else involved to keep you honest! Looking at examples of what others have done can help, but your business will have different strengths and weaknesses and will operate in a different marketplace. And lastly, make sure any off-the-shelf product you choose will show you how to implement your plan into your business.When you use a consultant, insist that they show you how the plan should be implemented into your business process. And have the consultant give you at least one review of your performance against your plan six months after the plan has been delivered. While this will cost you extra, this will ensure that your plan does not end up on the bottom shelf- because you know you will be held to account!Business Planning is not an easy process. It takes time and commitment. You don’t just do it once. This is not what business owners want to hear, and what most consultants won’t tell you, because it might cost them a sale. But the rewards from a well implemented business plan are worth many times your investment.

Rapid Knowledge Development for Businesses

When there is little time to go to the local public library or shop around for a good business book, e-books on the Internet may be the best solution. If you are looking for specialized information, e-books may be the "only" solution. E-books are viable and cost-effective. They can be quickly located using a search engine. Bought and downloaded anytime and anywhere. The "critical path" towards knowledge acquisition is fast and effective. You can rapidly develop your business knowledge base on several subjects like leadership, management, planning, promotion, finance and more. Imagine that you suddenly realize you have to prepare for an important business meeting tomorrow and give a presentation on change management. You can quickly log on to the Internet and find some very good e-books on the topic. You can download the e-book immediately and start reading. E-books are usually much less expensive than traditional books on business. This means that you don't have to go through bureaucratic procedures to get an approval on a book for your office because the book is expensive. There are e-book programs that allow corporations to become members. Employees can login through the corporate account and access any number of e-books they like. This is a revolution in terms learning. With the same amount of money to buy physical books, corporations can now offer their employees unlimited choices. There are many such examples that prove how e-books can be a tool to gain knowledge faster than traditional methods. It all depends how we can make the best use of e-Books in our business lives.

Why Free Internet Advertising Can Work For Your Business?

When you first start your own business at home you are faced with the obstacle of how to promote it. If you don't have one you're going to need a website and you're going to need traffic coming to it. If money is an obstacle then you are going to need to find ways to promote your business for free. In this article we want to talk about free Internet advertising, and how you can do that to get traffic for your new business website.The first thing to understand about marketing on the Internet is that if you do not have to have money to drive traffic to your website you're going to have to make up for that by investing time. This is one of the great things about the Internet, however. Anybody regardless of their present income status can start their own business at home and make it profitable by doing just a few different types of free advertising methods.When we talk about getting traffic to a website we're talking about a visitor and a potential paying customer. Once they are on your site they can make a purchase therefore earning you a commission on that sale. So it only stands to reason that the more visitors that you have coming to your site the more opportunities you have to make a sale.One effective method that has worked over the years and is continuing to work is known as article marketing. When you do article marketing you target a primary keyword and write your article around it. You then submit those articles to article directories where they are published online for other people to view.The way that this can benefit you is when you write a quality article, at the end of the article you're allowed to create a bio box. This resource box is a short classified ad promoting yourself, your website and your new business. You're allowed to list your website address, and when people click on that they are taken to your website.For article marketing to work you need to write a lot of articles and get those submitted to as many quality article directories as possible. If you don't have money to pay to use a submission service then you're going to have to manually enter those articles 1 at a time. This brings us back to what we talked about earlier, in terms of investing more time you do not have to have money to spend promoting.Your goal with article marketing is to get your website address on as many potential pages as possible. This is known as getting a link back to your website or a back link. A back link is another free Internet marketing method. You need to get as many back links pointing back to your website is possible.You can do this through free classified ads, forum marketing, blogging, social networking, and anything you can think of that allows you to get your website address on somebody else's website.This summarizes free Internet advertising. You are going to have to be creative and you're going to be ambitious, but the more backlinks pointing to your site the more potential traffic you will have. The good news is when you start your own business at home the internet can help you promote it inexpensively.