Career Education

A competitive world motivates people to seek a higher education that can mold their future. Career education is a systematic program designed for students. It is a basic and increasingly relevant component of student and adult learning. It includes activities and experiences designed to increase knowledge of self, occupations, training paths, job searching skills and decision-making strategies.

Many schools and colleges provide courses as well as counseling on career education that helps in nurturing the “”whole person”". Career education programs are designed to enable students discover their potential. These programs focus primarily on three interconnected areas, learner, interpersonal and career development. Within these three areas, students acquire an understanding of their critical and analytical skills.

A comprehensive career education program enlightens students on the relevance of their school experience. It is designed to give students a jump-start in their career through exploration of a variety of career opportunities. It is also intended to ensure that each student receives a quality education to prepare for higher education and their first job in a competitive market.

The strategies of career education programs include career contextual learning, which emphasizes the application of academics in areas beyond the classroom.

The programs help students develop learning skills and strategies that they could use in the workplace. It makes them manage and become responsible for their own learning.

Online career education has grown in popularity. More and more people choose online classes over traditional education in the classroom. Universities and colleges are responding to this growing need by offering a wide variety of online programs, classes, and degrees.

Career education programs have proved to be very beneficial for students. They encompass educational plans that define their aptitudes, abilities and values. Students relate their abilities to specific careers and prepare a research project on an occupation, which matches their goals and abilities.

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Ideas For Making MLM Your Number 1 Home Based Business

Many of us are seeking what we might consider to be the Number 1 Home Based Business. Whether it be a nutritional product or some other type of program the truth is that if your opportunity is from a reputable, respected company, the biggest deciding factor will always be…you!

No matter what the product is or what the company stands for or how successful the person is who is trying to recruit you into their company you always have to go back to the basics-personally. If your mindset and goals are aligned properly and you are willing to roll up your sleeves and just Do The Work, virtually any well-financed, well run company with unique products and services can be the number 1 home based business for you.

Some considerations and questions you might want to ask yourself if you have decided that Network Marketing is the type of home based business you want to build:

Do You Like People?

Multi Level Marketing is, has been and always will be a “people” oriented business. It is very true that you do not have to be an amazing “in your face” salesperson to be successful in this business, but you do need to have an interest in others well-being, building relationships, being a great leader and sharing a great product or service. This is the reason that historically, schoolteacher’s have become Great Network Marketer’s once they realize that the money is not in becoming a great salesperson, but becoming a great leader, and a great teacher of the marketing method you decide on.

Does The Company Have a Vision?

To really build a long-term successful business in the Network Marketing arena, you need to realize early on that this really IS a business, and success usually does not come overnight. Therefore, you want to find a company that is not just famous for its products but also has a mission of some sort that is greater than the products, the lifestyle you can create for yourself, or the compensation plan that we all dream of conquering. find a company that has a vision of Philanthropy is a good rule of thumb to choose from. Companies such as Our World Network that not only has a fabulous life-changing nutritional product and a great compensation plan, but also has their own charity which last year donated over $1,000,000 to childhood leukemia research. Now that is something that makes a company stand out and gives you a “Cause” to support while you build your Number 1 Home Based Business.

Do You Truly Love Their Products & Services?

Do not go into a Network Marketing Business simply because you have a notion that it will be a great way to make money. If there is no product or service…I can guarantee you that it is a pyramid scam. If they are products that you feel are not really that unique and do not have aspects that make it stand head and shoulders above the competition, you will not develop the passion that you really need to promote it month after month and year after year. With a reputable company this is generally not the case as most products that find their way into the Multi Level Marketing distribution model, do so because they are so unique that they do not sell on store shelves very well.

Do You Have an Interest in Computers & The Internet?

Although I have stated above that the number 1 reason to enter this industry is because you are a “people” person, the Internet is really what makes Network Marketing the Number 1 Home Based Business today. The Internet is how you supercharge your efforts after building your business locally – the traditional way. Adding online marketing techniques to your business is what allows you to spread your wings and truly build a Global Business because of its inherent communication capabilities. We will be writing more articles about using the internet to enhance your growing Network Marketing business but you need to think of online marketing as a tool to enhance you already growing business.

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5 Website Rules For Home Based Business Owners

No matter the size of your business, you need to have a website- especially if you are a home-based business. Your website is your best marketing tool and it is the best way that you have to show your potential clients your level of professionalism and ability to provide your product or service.A website also greatly broadens your reach as a business. No longer will you be confined to only selling to people in your surrounding areas. Now you can sell to customers worldwide.Having said all of the above, you need to make sure that you set your website up correctly or it won’t work to its full effectiveness. The purpose of this article is to share with you 5 rules that you need to follow when designing your web presence.You need to remember your audience- The internet is always full of new fads and full of people promoting get rich quick schemes that talk about getting your site to the top of the search engines. Most of these schemes are useless and can end up doing you more harm than good. You need to remember that you are producing your website for people sitting in front of a computer. You are producing content for your customers.Your website needs to look professional- You need to make sure that your website looks professional. It doesn’t need to be high tech but you do need to make sure that it looks professional. It needs to look a it better than a word document.You need to account for search engine optimization- Search engine optimization is important for home-based business owners. If you don’t have customers visiting your site you won’t be making any money. If you don’t make any money you are going to struggle to feed your family. You need to make sure that you don’t let SEO overtake the fact that you are writing for real peopleYou need to make it easy for your readers to contact you- You need to make sure that you have a contact form on your website to make it easy for potential customers to contact you. Make sure it is easy to find and prospective customers know exactly what they need to do should they require further information.You need to capture user information- Every person that visits your website is a potential customer, even if they do not buy from you that day. You should offer visitors to your site a freebie to try and entice them to give over their email address. That way you can subscribe them to your newsletter so that they do not forget about your business and may buy from you in the future.This article contains the 5 golden rules of websites for home-based business owners. Make sure you follow the advice outlined above and you should see more success from your website almost immediately.

Deciding On The Best Home Based Businesses

Have you ever wondered about what it could be like to have a home based business? In today’s volatile economy you may have a job today and not have one tomorrow. If you’re like a lot of people and you’ve already lost your job, then your options are limitless. Now may be the time to consider a home based business. You may be wondering how to go about choosing the right opportunity. Before we begin, let’s take a take a look at the benefits of the best home based businesses. Here are just some of them:You can save cash on workplace apparel
You can save cash on transportation expense
You can save money on childcare
You can save time on travel
You can work at your own schedule
You can work in a stress-free environment
You can avoid office politicsFor the purpose of this write-up I am going to focus on locating the best home based businesses online. Online home based businesses have every thing that offline home based businesses have and then some. With an online home based business it’s possible to work from anywhere in the world with no more than a computer and an internet connection. At some point, you may also automate your business so that it works for you like a full time sales staff.The start-up costs are extremely low as all that you are going to need other than your personal computer and internet connection are an internet site plus your own domain name and hosting account. The only thing that is left is determining what you will be offering and determining the best way to drive visitors to your site. With affiliate marketing you promote items that other people develop and you get paid a commission if your prospects make a purchase or complete a necessary action. Here’s how you can choose an affiliate product for your home based business. Ask yourself:What do individuals want? Remember, they usually go online looking for information and not to purchase something.
What are their problems or passions?
Can you discover a product that applies to this?
How much competition will you have?
Would you appreciate writing about this certain niche?If you can locate a product or item for which there’s a major demand with out a great deal of competition, then that is the start of a winning strategy. The next step is making certain this particular niche lines up with your interests also. As soon as you have developed a website and you’re promoting a good offer, you just need to focus on driving plenty of visitors to your web site so that your offer may be seen by your selected audience.

Determine Your Commitment Level Before You Start a Home Based Business

Starting a Home Based Business in my opinion and from my experience is always the right decision. For me it is, but the question is, is it the right decision for you? No one can decide for you if it’s time to have your own home business opportunity, except you.What I will say is with the economic climate the way it is, this could be the perfect time to get started. Experts are predicting that it will be at least 5 years before unemployment is at 5% again. Why wait? Become gainfully employed in your own home based business today.Now back to where we left off the last time, and that is how to start a home based business. How you start is by being completely honest with yourself about your commitment level. We have covered the importance of knowing if we are committed to starting a home based business. We have also determined how important it is to know that the person who brings us into this business opportunity is committed to us having a successful home business. But does a successful home based business end there or is there more?Well, there is more, that is if your at home business is a legitimate home based business. You also need to know if you are going to have a profitable home based business, that without question the company you are about to start your business with is committed to their distributors. This is not just about a work from home business opportunity, it is about having the best home based business for you and your family.You have your own reasons for wanting to want to work from home but this is one more fact to consider. You can be committed and the person who brings you into the home based business industry can be committed but if the company is not committed to you and to your long term success, the rest is a mute point.If the company is not committed to the people who are working from home to build the business, in the long run, it will not work or last. You might be thinking, well of course the company is committed, but that is not necessarily so. There could be some things that the company has been advised to correct but instead of correcting them, they continue with business as usual. The business is growing and it looks good from where you stand, until one day you wake up and realize that the company is in trouble, because they never bothered or took the time to make the necessary adjustments and it came back to haunt them. It happens all too often in the home based industry. If the company is committed to the distributors this will not happen.If the foundation is not properly laid and the leadership of the company does not know how to take the company to the next level, it is just a matter of time until there is a collapse. It is not how you start, although that is important but it is how you proceed and how you finish. Everything can seem to be in place and going great but believe me if the foundation is cracked, and the owners or founders of the company have skipped a step or two it is just a matter of time. Something will happen to expose the crack in the foundation. If the leadership does not look at the big picture, there will be problems. What is the big picture? It is realizing that they need to pay the distributors all they can and not nickel and dime them over things. They realize that taking care of the people actually building the business is crucial. The company takes care of the distributors and the distributors in turn take care of the company. It is a two-way street, but with many companies it is a one way street.So as I try to close this post here is the important take away:
1. You have to know you are committed to your home based business long term.
2. You must know that the person bringing you into the home based business is committed to you and the company.
3. Last you have to know that the company is as committed to your success, as you are to building your work from home business.If you have all of this in place and your network marketing strategy, you are on your way to building a successful home based business. One that will produce a residual income, and over time will allow you to have the time and financial freedom we all dream of.

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Women Can Shine Very Well In Home-Based Businesses

If you are a woman and want to take charge of your life completely, you should have an income of your own. But, not every one can have an office job for earning. Some women may have their own constraints. But, in the heart of hearts, they may wish to do something and earn a regular income. For them, the best idea is to do a home-based job or a business.In fact, the number of women who have started their own business is increasing day by day. The idea of home-based business or job for women is not a new concept at all. Even a desultory peep into the history of mankind will show that women have been doing home-based jobs even during the periods of ancient civilizations. But, these women are now being called as “the empowered women”. This phrase itself is a misnomer because during ancient times, there were women who were wielding a great power. But, unfortunately, there came a slump and most of the women thought that they were better suited for the role of home-makers than being bread-winners.Now, times have changed and women have entered almost all the fields. These successful women are able to manage their families and at the same time, show their efficiency in whatever job they take up. There are women who come out with great inventions. Women are there into marketing and selling. They are into traditional jobs as well as in the most high-tech jobs. The number of women who are becoming entrepreneurs is also increasing at a rapid pace. Many women are now exploring ways to earn through home-based businesses and jobs.A survey shows that in the US alone, almost 53 per cent of businesses are home-based which is a significant 15% increase from the figures of the year 1995. As of now, in the US, there are about 14 million home-based businesses generating a total revenue of about $1 trillion every year. In the home-based business also, the sales that happen due to direct selling is a whopping $30 billion in the US and $100 billion throughout the world. Every year, about 175,000 people join direct selling in the US and in the entire world, about 300,000 join direct selling.Another interesting fact is that the percentage of women in home-based business is much more than that of men. Especially, women between 35 and 55 take up home-based businesses and succeed in them. Most of them work part-time and so, are enjoying flexible working hours.Regular corporate houses encourage these women by offering various business opportunities. These women are also working in their expert niches and are showing terrific efficiency in their endeavors. Since most of these women do not hesitate to acquire the required skills, they excel and most of the times, out-smart their male counterparts.So, home-based business is a viable and great option and if you have the required drive and enthusiasm, you can also achieve financial success by taking a plunge into this. But, before making a decision, you should do an honest analysis and ask yourself a few serious questions:- If you have made any invention that can be marketed and sold.- If you can commit to work at least for a few hours daily.- If you are opting to take up a sales-oriented business, if you are interested in meeting and talking to strangers. This is very important in sales because if you hesitate to talk to new people, you may not be able to expand your customer base and you can not have more sales. In fact, the first instruction you will get in your “sales and marketing” class is “Talk to strangers”.Once you have made a serious assessment of yourself and decided to take the plunge, you should not be over-ambitious and set unrealistic goals. You should never forget the old adage that “a thousand mile journey starts with taking a small step”. You should take small but firm steps. You should be ready to put forth your time, efforts and money to achieve the set targets. You should have complete knowledge of your products or services and also what you are doing. You should never lose your focus. Even though you have the liberty of flexible working hours, it is better you set aside fixed hours daily so that you can work in a disciplined manner.There may be obstacles but you should never lose heart. You must understand that from such obstacles, you can learn a lesson or two. You must avoid the mistakes that cause the obstacles and proceed on the right track to achieve success in your business. If you are focused, you are sure to reach your goal faster than you expect.

Top 10 Marketing Books for Small Business Owners

Unlike big business owners, small business owners have the burden of taking care of every single aspect of their business – recruitment, marketing, finance, accounts, managing employees to managing vendors, and so forth. But here we focused only on books that can help you gain marketing knowledge and skills. Here are the top 10 books on marketing which we believe are helpful for new as well as established small business owners.Book # 1: The New Rules of Marketing & PR – David Meerman ScottIn the new marketing scenario, the methods such as ad copy, etc. do not bring results for your business. With the popularity of smartphones and other devices and proliferation of the Internet, new methods, rules, etc. of marketing have evolved. This book discusses the importance and benefits of using such techniques.David M Scott provides fresh examples of success from various industries and businesses across the world. He highlights the new tools and techniques that marketers should use to communicate with their buyers directly – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. In short, this book is a guide that offers actionable strategies and insider tips that can be implemented immediately.Book # 2: Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking – Andy SernovitzThis book by Andy Sernovitz emphasizes the use of word of mouth marketing for businesses. The book elaborates purpose of blogs, social media, viral emails, etc. – when to use them and how to make them work.Word of mouth is an effective tool to share information quickly and easily to promote businesses. It is an effective tool that can promote your business via your customers, friends and relations.Book # 3: Guerrilla Marketing: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business – Jay Conrad LevinsonThis book furnishes strategies for Internet marketing, tips on using technology like pod-casting and automated marketing, programs for targeting prospects, cultivating repeat, referral business, management lessons in the age of telecommuting and freelance employees, etc. – exclusively for small businesses.Book # 4: Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide – John JantschJohn Jantsch is a well-known expert in small business marketing. In the book, he discusses all the proven tools and tactics together in a step-by-step marketing system. This road map helps small business owners in knowing what they need to do to market their businesses.Book # 5: Smarter, Faster, Cheaper: Non-Boring, Fluff-Free Strategies for Marketing and Promoting Your Business – David Siteman GarlandThis book provides strategies for building, marketing and promoting businesses. These techniques are smarter, faster, cheaper and therefore save your time and money. The book is equally helpful for start-ups as well as those who are already in the market for sometime.Book # 6: Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed: Leverage Resources, Establish Online Credibility and Crush Your Competition – Patrick SchwerdtfegerThis book provides effective practical strategies and tactics – a complete tool kit to use resources sensibly, to establish online credibility. If you apply these strategies, you can get good results for your business within a brief span of time.Book # 7: Ultimate Small Business Marketing Guide – James StephensonThis book is an essential guide for every business owner. James Stephenson presents in this book 1500 great marketing ideas that are sure to boost your sales revenue, profits and customer loyalty and also to help you stay ahead of your competitors.Book # 8: Web Marketing for Small Businesses: 7 Steps to Explosive Business Growth – Stephanie DiamondMarketing for small businesses was difficult in the past. But today, it is not the case. Web marketing enables small businesses to take advantage of marketing opportunities and win new customers.The book ‘Web Marketing for Small Businesses: 7 Steps to Explosive Business Growth’ focuses on different ways of marketing with a detailed strategy to put them into action. The main content of the book comprises checklists – niche, brand, story, search, content, social media tactics, traditional tactics and results. This book helps you implement web marketing strategies.Book # 9: Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook – Dave KerpenThis book is a key to unlock the door to new opportunities. It tells you about how to build brand awareness by engaging customers in social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and other social media networking sites.Book # 10: 500 Social Media Marketing Tips: Essential Advice, Hints and Strategy for Business: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and More! – Andrew MacarthyThis book is a guide to small businesses. It provides 500 social media marketing tips covering all the web’s biggest players like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube and others. These tips will help you build brand awareness in social media networks, attract and engage your customers and ultimately help you increase sales.

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Researching An Internet Home Based Business Opportunity

If you are a looking for more ways to earn more, consider an internet home based business. When choosing the right internet home based business, it is important to choose the opportunity that matches the skills you have, in a field that you enjoy. Shifting through the different advertisements and flyers, you will find that there are lots of internet home based business opportunities being promoted, and it might be hard finding the right one. There is also the problem of finding a home based business opportunity, which is legitimate. There are a number of people looking to sell you an “opportunity” which is really a scam. Therefore, all these things must be considered when starting to look for the right internet home based business opportunity.

To choose the right internet home based business, start with the field that you already know something about. For example, if you have experience in the healthcare field, look for opportunities to work from home in the healthcare field. This is actually one of the most important factors for any job – finding something you like and putting all your energy into making it work.

After you have determined the area or field you want to look for your new internet home based business in, the next step would be to actually research the different opportunities available to you as a home worker. Home based business opportunities can be found almost everywhere we look. You can search for your new business opportunity in the newspaper, magazine ad, Internet, posters in your neighborhood, or on the Internet. The Internet is one of the best places to look for home based business opportunities, as it is not limited to your local area, but will have information about opportunities occurring worldwide.

When a list of internet home based business opportunities has been compiled in an area or field you feel comfortable in, spending time comparing and contrasting the advantages and disadvantages of each business opportunity. It is important to really consider every aspect of an internet home based business, before taking the plunge into it. Things to compare and contrast about your different internet home based business opportunities would be criteria such as the amount of time needed to set it up, the amount of money involved in running it, the amount of support given from the parent company, and the length of time estimated before you start achieving a profit.

After all the different advantages and disadvantages have been considered in regards to your internet home based business opportunity, it should be more clear to you, which opportunity will cost the least of your time and money, and be right for your to promote. But it should be cautioned to not rush into any opportunity before carefully considering all the disadvantages attached to it. The worse scenario to occur would be for you to decide midway into your internet home based business, that you are ill-suited for it, after investing so many hours into your new business.

In the end, when researching internet home based business opportunities it cannot be stressed enough how important it is to choose the create opportunity for you. A new internet home based business opportunity can be something that comes “prepackaged”. In these types of opportunities, you are more likely to have the support of the company’s more senior members. However, some people opt to choose a business opportunity that they have heard about from somewhere else and perfected themselves. In this scenario, less or almost no support is available. Regardless, of which of these options you choose, the bottom line is find an internet home based business opportunity you can enjoy!

Top 5 Resources For Small Businesses

When running a small business, resources to help you plan, maintain and succeed in your business are pretty plentiful. Yet, like many other things in life, some are better than others. Knowing which ones work, or offer the most useful information, can often be like looking for a needle in a haystack. So here, in no particular order, are my Top 5 resources for small businesses.

Small Business Administration

Although primarily for the North American market, the Small Business Administration, or SBA, continues to offer one of the best support networks for small businesses everywhere. Now over 50 years old, the SBA promotes free competitive enterprise so that even the smallest business can succeed. They offer numerous invaluable services, including sourcing financing for your project, expert advice from successful small business owners themselves, SBA programs on employment and business laws, special interest business groups and much, much more. If you are serious about starting or running a small business in America, this should be one of your first ports of call.

Inc.com

Almost every small business starts off as an entrepreneurial idea. Sure, it may turn into a large multi-national conglomerate (just look at Richard Branson and his Virgin empire), but 8 times out of 10 any small business starts as a one-man band. So the information to be found at Inc.com is well worth your time. Offering you the opportunity to sign up for free and advertise your business via IncBizNet, Inc.com is designed exclusively for small businesses to find like-minded business people and network. The site also allows you to host a blog, post free press releases and much more. For any small business owner it is an excellent starting point.

All Business

Just like the name says, All Business is a fantastic website that has pretty much everything and anything you need to help you start, run and expand your small business. The site is very well laid out and shares expert advice on franchising, labor laws, marketing and advertising and how to complete legal forms, as well as offering tutorial videos from experts in your industry. It even has a Business Purchase Free Quote Center, enabling you get a free, no-obligation quote from vendors that sell the products you need.

Microsoft Small Business

Okay, so it might seem strange to recommend a behemoth like Microsoft – yet as much as he is often a figure of fun for many, Bill Gates is one of the key proponents of helping small businesses get off the ground. Whether it is making anonymous donations to thousands of small businesses with great ideas, or providing excellent small business tools with his various software solutions, his Microsoft Small Business Center is an extremely useful stopover for any small business owner. One of the prime reasons for this is that it is truly international – simply select your country from the menu, and you will be taken to a hub that is full of the business information you need. With articles, tips and software all leading to your success, the Microsoft Small Business Center should be added to your bookmarks today.

Smart Biz

With the Internet playing such a large role in allowing more small businesses the chance to start up in the first place, the Smart Biz website is a well of information for online resources. This includes useful information on how to choose an e-commerce partner (very important if you are selling anything from your website), what software is best to run your back office, what telecom networks are best for your business, what advertising or PR agency [http://www.pressreleasepr.com/] to use and much more. Although you can certainly take some of the advice on display here and transfer it to your offline business, Smart Biz is perfect for the online entrepreneur or small business owner.

While there are literally thousands of small business resources, I have found that these offer the best choice and knowledge, particularly for free resources. Of course, if you find they are not for you, a quick search on Google will soon get you where you need to go. But for anyone looking for online resources to help you get started whether your small business is online or bricks-and-mortar, the companies listed here are some of the best.

The Finer Points of Internet Auctions

WHAT IS A PENNY AUCTION?

Penny auctions have exploded in popularity with the massive growth of the internet. However, few people know the true origins of penny auctions.Beginnings actually stretch back to the Great Depression. Those were hard times for everyone, but even harder for farmers. Farmers struggled to bring in steady income because of droughts and crops not selling as well as they had previously. As a result, the banks would foreclose on the farmers who couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments.

The banks weren’t satisfied with just repossessing the house, they wanted to raise as much capital as possible, so they resorted to selling off the possessions of the owners of the repossessed houses. There was not much the farmers could do about it so they began bidding ridiculously low prices, pennies, on the items while threatening others who dared to bid higher than a few pennies.

The auctions of today hardly resemble their tremulous beginnings. Being part of a penny auction today is exhilarating, fun, and addictive. It combines the selling format of auctioning with a little bit of chance factored in.Auctions are a game of strategy but also a game of luck.

The premise behind penny auctions is giving people the chance to win an item at a drastically reduced price.Auctions make that possible by spreading out the cost of the product among multiple bidders. In order for a person to take part in an auction, they must pay a set price for each bid. For example, if a person wanted to bid on a fifty dollar Amazon gift card then he would spend a dollar for each time a bid placed. If he ended up winning the gift card, then he would only have spent a few dollars for a fifty dollar gift card. Usually penny auctions sell bids in packages.

HOW PENNY AUCTIONS WORK!

The main foundation of penny auctions is the pay-per-bid format. It is the key that allows bidders to win items at the fraction of their retail value and allows the auction owners to keep their site profitable. Most y auction sites run on the same premise: people pay a set amount for each bid, whenever a person places a bid within the closing seconds of the auction time will be added, the last person left with a unique bid after the clocks runs out will win the item. There are a large variety of items that can be won, but they tend to be popular electronics or gift cards to popular stores.

There are two types of auctions: lowest unique bid auction and highest unique bid auction. Lowest unique auction sounds confusing but it is actually quite simple. A unique bid is when only one person has a bid at a certain price. Bids usually start at one penny, a bidder can then place a bid at two pennies. Until another bidder places a higher bid, the most recent bidder will be the lowest unique bid because that was the only bid at two cents and nobody bid higher. However, penny auctions generally don’t stop at one penny. It is not uncommon to find auctions that end up at a couple hundred dollars based on the popularity of the item being auctioned. However, the same principles apply for those auctions. Highest unique bid auctions follow the more traditional auction format such as eBay. The person with the highest bid at the end of the auction wins the item.

Auction site owners turn a profit by selling bids. Say twenty people are bidding on a ten dollar gift card at one dollar per bid, at the end of the auction if there were twenty bids placed in total then the site owner would have made twenty dollars with a ten dollar profit.Auctions do seem like a win-win situation:The site owner makes money while the bidder gets an item for dirt cheap. However, not everyone wins in penny auctions. The people who paid one dollar each bid but left with nothing to show for their investments will not be so happy.

HOW TO WIN!

Penny auction has a lot of chance mixed into it, but one can incorporate strategy that will help raise the chances of winning. Playing smart can make all the difference between gambling and auctioning.

The first crucial tip to winning penny auctions is to know how to manage your bids. Your goal should be to win as much as possible without spending a ton of money buying bids. Managing your bids means that you should already know how much you are willing to risk in order to win an item. The amount of capital you are willing to risk will determine how many bids you can use. Once you know how many bids you have to spend on an item, then you will be better able to manage how and when you place a bid. That will keep you from blowing away all of your bids in the first few seconds of the auction.

The next tip is to practice time management. When fighting in the trenches of penny auctions, you have two enemies: other bidders and time. Knowing when to bid is a must if you want to have success. Placing a bid when there is a lot of time left on the clock is never a good idea. You have to remember that the key to winning a penny auction is being the last one standing when the clock runs out and that each bid increases the amount of time left. It would be a good practice to wait until the last few minutes of the auction before you begin to bid.

The final tip for successful auctioning is to keep your emotions under control.Auctions have a lot of similarities to gambling, and just like gambling, your spending can get out of control. If you keep your emotions level, it will keep you from making rash decisions and blowing loads of cash. Keep your mind clear so that you can gage the behavior of the other bidders and outsmart them.

HOW TO AVOID SCAM SITES!

Penny auctions are a great addition to the web whether you want to win an item that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to afford or if you simply enjoy the thrill that comes with bidding in auctions. Unfortunately, scam sites have tarnished the reputation of the legitimate penny auction sites. However, there are ways that you can protect yourself from scamers and enjoy your auctioning without having to worry about losing your money due to dishonesty.

Checking the reputation of the auction site before you start spending your hard earned money is always a good idea. Chances are other people have tried the site before you and some of them have left reviews. The reviews are your way to gage whether a auction site is trustworthy or not. If a site is getting overwhelmingly negative reviews, then that is a clear indication that you should steer your business elsewhere.

Another tool you can use to protect yourself is checking the Alexia ranks of the auction sites. Alexia rank will give a solid view of how much traffic the auction is getting. If you see a huge difference in the amount of traffic Alexia is projecting and the amount of active bidders on the site, then warning signals should be ringing in your head. Some auction sites have been known to set up robots that automatically bid on projects in order to keep the auction going and inflate the price. That is known as shill bidding. You can sniff out those sites by comparing the traffic the site should be getting to the amount of users using this site.

CONCLUSION!

New legislation may come out later down the road that will officially make penny auctions gambling, but until then, it is a fun, exciting auction that allows one to win the item they’ve always wanted but couldn’t afford.Auctions are also quite lucrative for the site owners because of the pay-per-bid strategy they’ve incorporated. Penny auctions had humble beginnings with farmers who just wanted to get back at the banks who kicked them out of their house. More recently, auctions have enjoyed an explosion in popularity with the rise of the internet.

There are two main formats fora auctions, lowest and highest unique auction, however they both run on the same premise where the last unique bid wins the item. Winning a penny auction will require a certain amount of mental tactic and a bit of luck. However, you can increase your odds of winning by practicing certain techniques such as managing your bids wisely, learning how to work with the time, and keeping a level head and your emotions under control. When you combine those three strategies to your bidding plan, you will find that you win a lot more often.

It is important that you do your due diligence to protect yourself when participating in auctions. Not every auction is run by honest and trustworthy people. There are people out there who just want to take your money. You can protect yourself by ensuring that you only bid on sites that already have a very positive reputation from real users.

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