Latest projections South Korean central bank is better than the previous forecast in late December and the 4.6 per cent. Projections are also more optimistic than the Finance Ministry forecast of five percent. Origin unknown, throughout the 2009 South Korean economic growth registered only 0.2 percent.

“Along with the global economic recovery that is faster than expectations, exports and domestic demand has been steadily improving. This prompted central banks to revise growth projections, “says Research Director Central Bank of South Korea Lee Sang-Woo, quoted from the AFP on Monday (12.4.2010).

According to Central Bank of Republic of Korea, the economic recovery of State Ginseng will be supported by increased exports up 11.9 percent this year, up from 9.3 percent previously forecast. While the company’s shopping sector is expected to increase four percent, better than the previous forecast of 3.6 percent.

Based on the sector, the increase in economic activity is expected in the field of construction with an additional investment of 2.5 percent, and capital spending rose 13.4 percent. While the inflation rate target within the range of 2.6 percent.

South Korean Central Bank also predicts exports will experience a surplus of USD10, 5 billion, down from USD17 billion due to high imports.

“The first quarter exports grew faster than expectations and strengthened the company inventory levels thereby encouraging growth. We expect the quarterly growth could reach 1.6 percent, “Lee said.

In order to support economic recovery, last week announced the Central Bank of Korea also maintained its benchmark interest rate at a record low two per cent. Those levels have survived for 14 months.

“The increase in interest rates would depend on private sector business climate that could survive and recover by itself,” said Central Bank Governor Kim Choong-Soo South Korea

The feast of famine business model merely refers to my personal perceptions of certain prevalent business models you or anyone else might likely find while searching for a business to join online.

Most often employed by many high cost or “high ticket” programs and products online, this model for business would most accurately be described as a recipe for disaster.

The underlying premise being, at say $1000 a sale, how many sales would you need to make a return on your investment, quit your job, buy a house, etc., etc. Feast or famine…

For those with a proven track record of success online, more often than not the case for them will be feast. For those with the skewed perception that any kind of success, be it success online or success in general, happens over night; I see famine in you future.

small business tips #1:

Operating your business on the firm belief that x amount of traffic will generate y amount of conversions without the market research to prove it will cause you nothing but grief.

The best way to avoid falling prey to a feast or famine type scenario is to do your homework, and make sure that the numbers support your efforts.

For PPC (pay per click) marketing, be sure to track, track, track, everything. By using tracking links in your ad campaigns you can determine your cost per lead as well as your cost per sale along with your cost per click/click thru percentages provided by you campaign provider.

small business tips #2:

Next, estimate the value of each sale. If the income is residual, what’s the retention rate of your program or down line? Once you can place a decent estimate on how much each sale is worth and you’ve calculated your cost per lead per sale, then and only then are you in business.

Flying blind with your marketing dollars in hopes that good fortune will smile upon you is far to fanciful a notion to actually be effective. Be sure to track all your marketing efforts so that you can be aware of what works and what doesn’t; as well as what could use improvement.

small business tips #3:

To some, the entire notion of feast or famine may seem a bit much like some savage struggle for survival set in the most unforgiving of landscapes. To those individuals, I would suggest that in the time it’s taken them to form said opinion, they have most likely dropped an additional notch or two on the food chain.

Business is extremely competitive by nature. The best strategy for success is to always try to ensure you happen to be among the biggest fish in the smallest pond I can find i.e. research and niche marketing.

small business tips #4:

In summary, I’d say that most endorsements of unrealistic and unfounded business practice work off the premise that people in general will always take the path of least resistance; forever hoping to not only get something for nothing but, attain great success with little effort on their part.

A very lovely notion, but so is the lottery; and your odds would probably be about the same.

Unfortunately, I’ve found out (the hard way), that internet business is not the financial freedom vending machine I was led to believe it was. For every few dollars I put in I have yet to find happiness wrapped in $100 bills (although I do remain hopeful).

Be sure to treat your business more like a business and less like a lottery and you are sure to do well.

Many businesses have scaled down their productions, cut down their marketing budgets and adopted strategies for reducing costs and wasteful expenditures.

A business which is based purely on the Internet for its operations is an online business,and an online business is considered to be a perfect example of a lean business model.

This is because an online business can be setup in a small room and does not need huge investments in facilities and buildings. The internet is obviously the de facto medium for advertising the online business.

However businesses advertising to assist business development and growth can become complex if the right strategies are not adopted in the initial stages.

Business management consultants and business consultancy firms provide the necessary guidelines in selecting the right advertising strategy that can be extremely helpful in increasing the market share of the business.

One of the main objectives of advertising is to increase the reach of the product, service and the brand to a larger audience and hence advertising the business on a single website may not deliver the desired results.

Depending upon the target audience, the business should choose a mix of websites and portals to advertise itself. In addition to this, strategies such a PPC or Pay Per Click and registering the business website with search engines with high rankings is also necessary.

It is also necessary to use other tools like blogs and SEO techniques to increase the visibility of the business.

Many business management consultants highlight the need for online businesses to reinvent their marketing and advertising strategies to widen their reach in a cost effective manner.

Businesses have also realized the need for change in business development strategies and many online businesses are increasingly asking their mangers to undergo business training courses which precisely address the needs of online businesses.

The breath taking leap in business trade online has led to a phenomenal amount of online research queries for information tips.

Businesses Advertising Top 5 Online Business Tips aims to assist all business management consultants & business owners running an online business. It also seeks to assist every new and aspiring business development entrepreneur & online professional seeking online business tips. For all businesses advertising online.

Every savvy online business marketeer knows that the greatest single benefit to be gained from having a business web site online is to establish fantastic links from other highly page ranked business web sites ideally from the same industry as yours.

For this reason I have omitted link building from my top online tips list.

For any business to understand the power of free online advertising and the tangible benefits to be gained from targeting a new fee paying customer audience it is wise to understand the top 5 online business tips.

Businesses Advertising Top 5 Online Business Tips #1

Search Engine Optimisation SEO

Business management consultants are advising all their business development managers that SEO is experiencing a massive growth in keeping with the ferocity of which the internet is developing for business owners.

Many business consultancy firms now provide SEO business training courses to assist the company online professional in running an online business. Subsequently SEO consultancy is booming.

Businesses Advertising Top 5 Online Business Tips #2

Pay Per Click PPC

PPC is an advertising campaign generally managed by a company online professional which forms part of running an online business.

Although PPC is implemented and paid to the major search engines many business consultancy firms and a number of individual business management consultants advise and run PPC business training courses.

Every business development manager should be advised that running a PPC campaign is like walking blindfold through a minefield. It is best left to your online professional or PPC consultancy advisor, unless you have of course graduated from several professional PPC business training courses.

Businesses Advertising Top 5 Online Business Tips #3

Pay Per Results PPR

Very few business consultancy firms or business management consultants actively promote PPR as part of running an online business and the main reason for this is that very few consultancy managers and business development directors know of its existence.

As such I have yet to come across any PPR business training courses. However speak to any smart online professional and he or she will inform you that PPR is one of the best and most cost effective marketing strategies for running an online business.

Businesses Advertising Top 5 Online Business Tips #4

Writing Online Articles WOA

It is completely ineffective to be running an online business without writing dynamic key word and key phrase rich articles relevant to your business.

Just about all business consultancy firms and most online professional business management consultants promote WOA as a key stage in business development.

Given the speed with which one can post an online article to a global audience in cyberspace it is not coincidence that a number of online professional consultancy executives are running their own WOA business training courses.

Businesses Advertising Top 5 Online Business Tips #5

Article Submission Sites ASS

When advising business development directors and assisting them in running an online business many business consultancy firms and individual business management consultants prefer to keep article submission sites as one of their own closely guarded secrets.

However every online professional writing online articles knows the power and speed of getting your business article out to multiple readers and multiple likeminded business web sites lies in ASS. Submitting your articles to article submission sites also brings the added value of other web sites providing a valuable link back to your business web site.

There are one or two online consultancy agencies providing online article submission sites business training courses.

Fixed Odds betting has some big advantages over financial Spread Betting especially for those starting with smaller accounts. With Spread Betting you’re paid by the number of points you are correct by, with Fixed Odds you can make a large return with the market moving just a few points in your favour. Another massive advantage of Fixed Odds over Spread Bets is that you don’t need to worry about using Stops.

Apart from One Touch bets, with Fixed Odds you are buying time, similar to an option, so your bet could be wrong for days or weeks yet by the time expiration comes you can still end up in the money and win. Many traders have the right view on the market but their timing tends to be out and they are stopped out when using a spread bet, only to see their trade move in their predicted direction. By using a Fixed Odd bet this takes away the worries of day to day price spikes.

Here are 8 Top Tips for Fixed Odds Trading

1.  You can make money from Up, Down or Sideways movements

With fixed odds you can make money from markets moving up, moving down or staying in a sideways range, a concept that even professional traders find hard to grasp. Even after big falls in the markets in 2008 most traders are still conditioned to want to buy low and sell high.

Remember that markets fall faster than they rise so down bets can make quick profits. With fixed odds you can back currencies, shares and indices to fall all with limited risk and the most you can lose is your stake which can be as low as £10.

Sideways markets can be backed using Barrier Range bets. Until Betonmarkets.com introduced these it was very complicated to make money from range bound markets and you would have had to use options strategies such as selling options. Now you can do it with a simple bet and with strictly limited risk.

You would be surprised how often a currency, share or index actually stays in a range – until recently you could not profit from ranges.

2.  Learn to love volatility

With fixed odds, bookmakers such as betonmarkets.com you can place an UP/Down bet which basically means “I don’t know what the market is going to do but I think it’s going to move.”

As long as the market moves Up or Down and breaks above or below your predicted barrier you will be paid out. This bet is ideal after a market has been going sideways in a narrow range for awhile as the odds of a breakout becomes more probable. Those that follow charts can look for contracting triangle formations. As the price squeezes you know at some stage it will breakout normally with a big move. With Up/Down bets you don’t have to predict the direction of the breakout as long as it does breakout within your predetermined time.

Tip: Buy a bit of extra time. We all want our bets to payout as quickly as possible for the highest payout but I suggest taking a slightly lower payout and buying a few extra days of time. So let’s say your offer is 40% for the NASDAQ touching 1550 in 14 days, try going for 18 days, the extra few days have saved me on many of my trades.

3.  Use One Touch bets

Markets tend to be like lightening, they look for the path of least resistance.  When a market breaks above a resistance (ceiling) level you will tend to find the market will carry on in the same direction for at least a few more days. Just as a market breaks down through a Support (floor) the market carries on falling until its next support.

Using a One Touch bet traders can back these events, remember you’re saying the market just needs to touch the given level and that would be enough to payout.

So let’s use a recent Gold example. Gold started to build up momentum and broke over the $830 an oz level, looking at the chart I could see $850 was the next potential target, so I placed a ONE TOUCH bet that Gold would touch $850 within the next 14 days. Gold went on to hit $870 within a few days, so the bet paid out. Of course, if Gold did not touch $850 during the 14 days then my bet would have expired worthless.

If I do see the bet going against me and time is running out I can sell the bet back and look to salvage some of the stake.

A quick tip – markets have a tendency to move to round numbers both on the upside and downside, you often see this happen in currencies, indices and individual shares. Look for possible moves to next levels, especially on falling markets, if you look at the way the Dow Jones fell from 9,000 to 8,000 in a matter of days back in October 08 this demonstrates the point.

4. Balance Risk and Reward

Everyone likes the big payouts; however, you have to remember there is a reason why you’re being offered a 300% return, that’s because there is a fairly slim chance that the bet will not payout. On the opposite end a 1% return is hardly going to make you rich and should the bet go wrong you would lose a large stake.  

The simple answer is to look for a balance and mix and match trades. In my own trading I am looking for returns between 40% to 100%.

Tip: Look to tweak your bets. Before you accept the bet you will be shown the odds and asked to confirm whether you’re happy or not. You can adjust the levels and dates and see how this affects your payout.

5. Be a disciplined trader not a reckless gambler

After a good run many become over confident and start taking stupid risks. After a poor run many try to play catch up and want to make their losses back fast, both actions are the easiest way to lose your trading capital. Many books have been written on Money Management with complicated formulas. The key should be that no one trade should ever cause you so much damage financially or emotionally. How every sure you are the XYZ is going to rocket, only a percentage of your trading bank should be risked.

6. Run two bets together, trading a pair

Another strategy is to trade two different markets that have a negative correlation. For example, Gold and the US Dollar. Gold is priced in US$ so if the dollar weakens then Gold tends to rise. Gold is also used as a hedge against falling currency values. So you could look to have a Bear bet on the US$/Euro and a Bull Bet on Gold.

The Japanese Yen and the US stock markets is another pair that can be traded. You may have heard of the Carry Trade, where the Yen is sold as money is borrowed in Yen and then the Yen are converted and invested in higher yielding currencies such as the New Zealand Dollar.

If you look at the Euro/Yen and say the S&P500 you will see that as the Euro/Yen weakens (so money is flowing back to the Yen  which is the funding currency)) as does the S&P500. If you see a funding currency strengthen such as the Yen it means traders are taking less risk which is not good for equity markets.

7.Seasonality – History does repeat itself in many markets

My trading style uses technical analysis with seasonality. Most know what technical analysis is however seasonality is not as well understood. Seasonality is using the calendar and past results to forecast the likelihood of the same happening again. For example, Gold tends to be strong in September where as stock markets tend to be weak. Periods around market holidays such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, Independence Day and the first few days of the month tend to be stronger. The well known saying, “Sell in May and go away,” whilst not perfect, has worked as a good base to a trading system which I used to make large profits in 2008. You will also find seasonality in commodities and some currencies. Watch the Yen strengthen around March time as large Japanese companies close their financial books and tend to put Yen back on their balance sheet.

8.  Combine Spread Bets and Fixed Odds

Let’s say you have a core view that the FTSE100 is going down and you have placed a spread bet to back this idea. After a week or so the FTSE100 starts going up or sideways, you could of course close your spread bet or you could leave it open and look to place a fixed odds bet to run along side it, maybe a barrier range, so whilst the market is going sideways your spread bet will not be making money but at least your fixed odds will make a profit.

Are you missing out?

Many using Financial Spread Bets or CFD’s have a tendency to look at fixed odds as a poor mans options market or haven’t treated it as a serious trading platform. 

Fixed Odds financials are now over 10 years old and have come along way and offer both small and not so small clients a way to back markets in unique ways. I have personally used Betonmarkets.com since 1999 and have traded a good few million pounds worth of bets during the last few years. I can assure you that it’s a serious trading vehicle that can compliment both spread betting and other forms of investing and its popularity will continue to grow. You can open a fixed odds account within minutes and start trading with as little as £25.

Vince Stanzione has been trading markets for over 23 years. He now trades his own accounts as well as teaching others and is the author of “Making Money from Financial Trading.” For more information go to www.fintrader.net

Financial forecasting reminds me of the weather – you make your forecast at a moment in time based upon the information currently available. You draw a conclusion and state your financial forecast.  But then, the information changes, now it’s raining, and you’re caught without your umbrella!

Financial forecasting, unlike the weather, isn’t a science but it’s not pure guess work either.  It is a combination of:

• knowing your business;
• understanding your marketplace;
• setting goals; and
• using common sense.

As a business coach, I know that every small business needs to make reliable financial projections at one time or another.  Forecasting is critical during the following stages of a company’s life span:

• when seeking financing
• gauging the profitability of a new product or service
• determining the impact of staff expansion or cutback
• assessing other business decisions

The many components of forecasting boil down to the following five bookkeeping business tips that for years I’ve shared with business coaching clients:

Bookkeeping Business Tip #1: Review Actual Year-To-Date Results

Start by looking at where you’ve been.  If you use an accounting program like QuickBooks you can print out a Profit & Loss statement showing year-to-date results.  Check the statement for all financial transactions that occurred up to the date of the report. Reconcile the report to your bank statements.  (If you don’t use an accounting program or bookkeeping service, then take the difference of the total year-to-date cash receipts and total expenditures.  This should equal your profit or loss.) Examine each line item to make sure that it makes sense – is your year-to-date revenue figure where you anticipated, or has it fallen short?  Are expenses higher than expected?

Bookkeeping Business Tip #2: Establish Goals and Incorporate into Your Forecast

What do you wish to accomplish by year’s end?  Do you want to introduce a new product or service, increase revenue on existing products or services, decrease spending, hire a new employee, outsource a bookkeeping service, or launch a marketing campaign that will position the company for the beginning of next year?

Write out your objectives and then choose three to five which are the most important to accomplish by the end of the year. Determine the needed steps to achieve the objectives. Which Profit & Loss line items will be impacted? Adjust your forecast accordingly.  For example, your goal may be to increase revenue 10% by year’s end or to launch a marketing campaign now so its benefits will be felt in the first quarter of 2009.

Bookkeeping Business Tip #3: Forecast Variable Costs

Variable costs are costs that change in step with revenue change.  For example, you are selling more widgets; therefore, your labor costs and materials costs will increase in relation to the revenue increase. 

Using the concept that Forecast = Projections + Predictions, combined with the knowledge that variable costs change in step with revenues, forecast each month’s variable costs.  Forecast each line item separately. Look for opportunities to reduce costs, and be aware of likely future influences on each cost.

Bookkeeping Business Tip #4: Forecast Fixed Expenses

Fixed costs are relatively stable costs that recur every month.  Examples of fixed costs are rent, telephone and bookkeeping service fees. Forecast the month’s fixed expenses by using the same concept used to forecast variable costs (Forecast = Projections + Predictions) and the knowledge that fixed expenses tend to be relatively stable and do not change in step with revenues.  Again, forecast each line item separately, looking for opportunities to reduce costs, while keeping in mind any likely future influences.

Bookkeeping Business Tip #5: Forecast Net Profit

The final step is to evaluate your forecast for net profit.  Is the profit forecast is reasonable and acceptable?  If not, re-evaluate each line item including revenues and make appropriate adjustments.  Also, anticipate non-operating income and expense items, and include them in your forecast.

Your financial projections may not be perfect at first, but we didn’t learn to walk without falling down.  As a business coach I’ve seen others get a few bumps along the way. But I guarantee that if you follow these bookkeeping business tips, set your financial projections on paper and revisit them frequently, you will achieve your goals faster.