- WEALTHY: Give stocks a "beta test" before you buy (Charles Delvalle)
- HEALTHY: Grandma strikes again! (Dr. Al Sears)
- WISE: Doug Horton on change
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Why Charlie wouldn’t run my articles in ETR (David Cross)
- Plagiarism in the news (Michael Masterson)
- Add "zygote" to your vocabulary
The Early to Rise 2006 End-of-Year Blowout Sale
What are your resolutions for 2007?
To increase your salary by $15,000? To finally start your own profitable online side-business? To locate an incredible real estate deal?
Whatever your dreams, hopes and aspirations may be… ETR is here to help!
As 2006 comes to a close, we’ve compiled a dozen of our best success programs into a year-end blowout sale with our lowest prices ever… so there’s no better time for you to start making your dreams come true in 2007 than right now.
This offer ends when the New Year begins, so don’t put it off and risk paying more a few days from now. Act today and you’ll get the best deal we’ve ever offered, guaranteed.
Stop by our ETR 2006 End-of-Year Blowout Sale now.
- MaryEllen Tribby
An Investment Risk You Can Easily Avoid
By Charles Delvalle
A volatile stock could fluctuate up or down 10 to 20 percent within a week. That could mean big gains. But it could also mean significant losses … not something you want to risk if your primary investment goal is to put your money in stable, dividend-paying companies.
So how do you avoid investing in volatile stocks that could suck away your portfolio’s earnings? You take a look at the stock’s "beta ranking."
The beta ranking measures a stock’s volatility in relation to the market. If a stock has a beta of 1, it will generally move with the market. If its beta is above 1, it will be more volatile than the market. And if the beta ranking is under 1, it has very little volatility.
Investing for stability (and dividend payments) requires a stock with a beta no higher than 1.25.
Finding a stock’s beta ranking is easy. Just go to Yahoo’s finance link. After you enter the stock’s ticker symbol, click on "Key Statistics" on the left side of your screen. The beta ranking will be listed under the stock’s price history.
[Ed Note: Charles Delvalle is a regular contributor to INCOME, ETR's new investment service. INCOME provides a slew of low-beta, high-dividend-paying companies, with the goal of providing you with a total return (dividends plus capital gains) of at least 14 percent per year.]
"Change occurs in direct proportion to dissatisfaction."
Doug Horton
ETR Insider Report: A New Look for the New Year
By David Cross
After a string of e-mails, I was beginning to think Charlie Byrne, ETR’s Editorial Director, didn’t like me. I kept on getting these rejection messages …
"I’m sorry David, but I don’t think we can run this essay."
"David, this might not work for us."
"Sorry again David, but we need to do something else."
You see, I’d begun sending over a series of articles for Early to Rise on how entrepreneurs and businesses can improve the effectiveness of their websites. But those articles created a bit of a dilemma for Charlie.
As he explained it to me: "We have a ‘Do We Actually Do This Ourselves?’ test for all the advice we print in ETR. We don’t hand out advice we’ve heard elsewhere. And so it hurts our credibility for you to tell our readers that, for example, they should have a printer-friendly website … when our own site isn’t printer friendly. We’re working on getting that fixed … but until then, your article would raise our readers’ eyebrows. And with good reason."
Charlie was right. Since my articles revealed a number of gaping holes in ETR’s own site, there’s no way he could publish them in ETR … until now.
Coming soon, all those articles I wrote on creating a better, more usable, search-engine optimized, printer-friendly website will appear in ETR.
Why?
Because come January 1, 2007, ETR will have a brand spanking new website that incorporates all of the principles of good website design.
Over the next few weeks, Charlie and I will be telling you about some of the features of the new ETR website. We’ll explain how we believe it improves on what ETR had before, explain why we changed it the way we did, and show you how you can adapt and apply our own learning process to your online business.
Some of these changes include:
- A crisper, cleaner, more professional design, with a more cohesive look and feel
- A less-cluttered on-screen layout that allows more "breathing space" for the content
- A new in-site search engine – to facilitate searching through the 6,000+ articles in the ETR archives
- A simpler sign-up for the ETR e-letter
- Improved and simpler on-screen navigation – so you can jump straight to the main sections of the website
- A simpler-to-use system for content writers and editors
- Optimized content for better search-engine marketing
- "Printer-friendly" pages
- Content syndication ("RSS") – as an additional way to read website content and for the search-engine optimization benefits it brings
The first change I want to tell you about is the one that generated the most discussion during the development of the new website. In fact, it has been the most contentious and controversial issue for every website project I’ve worked on in the last decade.
I’m talking about the website’s design.
We had to consider everything we’ve learned after years of absorbing and testing ideas from experts and expert companies like Jakob Nielsen, Edward Tufte, Future Now, and Jeffrey Zeldman (to name a few). Plus, we had to acknowledge the fact that most designers we work with have a strong print and branding bias, hence a heavy lean toward graphically intensive magazine-style designs. Then there are the Web analytics, which tell us that half our website visitors probably still use a slow, dial-up modem. Plus the fact that not everyone who enjoys reading ETR does so with full visual faculties.
And even after considering all that – and after coming up with an almost-agreed-upon design and working out the details to get it to look perfect … someone walks in and tells us that, on their brother’s old Apple Mac, it looks like a dog’s dinner.
What it boils down to is this: The most important thing for us at ETR is for the design to enhance the content we publish. It should be attractive but not distracting, and allow you to read the copy without being bombarded by garish and unnecessary embellishments.
Our business is publishing – disseminating and monetizing information. Our content inspires action and gives you the opportunity to sign up for our newsletters or reports or to buy our publications, products, and seminars. Therefore, our design must make it simpler for you to find information and guide you to elements like e-mail signup forms on the screen.
And that is exactly what we believe we have finally accomplished with ETR’s new site.
I salute the entire ETR team. They’ve done an incredible job of pulling together all the seemingly opposing ideas we had to work with … and the result is excellent.
Keep in mind that a good website is not a static "brochure" but an organic, evolving dialogue. And that dialogue involves … YOU! So, come January 1, 2007, visit EarlyToRise.com and tell us what you think. Go to Speak Out, ETR’s readers’ forum, and tell us what you love, hate, miss, want to see more of, or how you would like to improve our website even further.
[Ed. Note: David Cross is Senior Internet Consultant for Agora Publishing in Baltimore.]
Get the Top Stock Picks of 2007 from Three of America’s Leading Investment Experts
Now is the time to take a close look at your investments. It’s time to weed out the laggards and set your sails for the year ahead. But before you do, you will definitely want to hear what three of America’s leading investment experts are predicting for 2007.
On an exclusive teleconference presentation, Andrew Gordon, Rick Pendergraft and Chris Johnson of Investor’s Daily Edge will reveal their very best ideas for growing your money in 2007. You’ll learn which markets and sectors hold the greatest potential for appreciation. And better yet, each expert will reveal his top stock recommendation for 2007!
You will not want to enter the New Year without this vital intelligence. Click here to learn how easily you can participate.
Beat the Flu
By Al Sears, MD
When I was a child, I was taught that if you felt a cold or flu coming on, the way to prevent it from blossoming into a full-blown illness was to go outside and soak up the sun – a bit of wisdom that had been passed down from my grandmother. Her theory was that a lack of "fresh air" and sun caused the infection.
This theory appeared arcane when scientists discovered that a virus causes the flu – but new research has found merit in it. And if you’re exposed to the flu this winter, it may serve you better than drug therapy.
Researchers at Harvard University concluded that a lack of sun during the winter months prevents your body from making the one thing it needs to ward off the flu: vitamin D. Which may explain why some people catch the flu, while others don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever had it, yet I am repeatedly exposed to heavy viral loads while examining infected patients.
Fact is, vitamin D deficiency is rampant in non-tropical latitudes … like here in the U.S. And during the winter, it gets worse – raising your risk of catching a cold or the flu.
When you can’t spend time in the sun, cod liver oil is the most effective and reliable source of vitamin D. I recommend it for my patients, especially during the winter. In fact, I use it so much that I have begun importing my own cod liver oil from the cold waters of Norway. It’s completely free of mercury. Get yours HERE ].
[Ed. Note: For more on the health benefits of sunshine, keep reading ETR. We'll be giving you news about a book that Dr. Sears and ETR's Jon Herring have been working on together.]
Notes From Michael Masterson’s Blog: How Much Can You Legally "Borrow"?
Several years ago, Natasha Alden, a research student at Oxford, noticed similarities between an autobiography she was studying and a popular novel she had just read.
The memoir was No Time for Romance, written by Lucilla Andrews, a best-selling romance novelist. The novel was Ian McEwan’s best-selling 2001 novel Atonement .
Now that Atonement the movie is about to come out, these similarities are in the news. Two prominent British newspapers, The Mail on Sunday and The Times of London, have published stories with excerpts of the questionable texts.
In response to the uproar, McEwan wrote a lengthy article in The Guardian, admitting he used No Time for Romance for details of nursing and hospital conditions in Britain at the time his story was set. "I have openly acknowledged my debt to her in the author’s note at the end of Atonement and ever since on public platforms, where questions on research are almost as frequent as ‘where do you get your ideas from?’"
In a phone interview with a New York Times reporter, McEwan vigorously denied that he copied any of Andrews’ language. Yet the published excerpts show close similarities. For example …
From Atonement: "In the way of medical treatments, she had already dabbed gentian violet on ringworm, aquaflavine emulsion on a cut, and painted lead lotion on a bruise."
From No Time for Romance: "Our ‘nursing’ seldom involved more than dabbing gentian violent on ringworm, aquaflavine emulsion on cuts and scratches, lead lotion on bruises and sprains."
What are we to think of this? What do the professionals say?
I’m going to ask Matt Turner, Agora’s in-house counsel, to write something up about this for tomorrow’s issue of ETR. Meanwhile, here’s what I’ve got …
[Ed. Note: Read the rest of this article on Michael Masterson's blog.]
- Michael Masterson
Do You Need To Start Out Small?
If you don’t have an Internet business yet, or if your company is smaller than $1 million then you need something different… something that lets you start off small.
One man I know turned $10 into over $500,000. How’s that for starting small!
Let me show you how to get a similar Internet income stream running for almost nothing.
- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Zygote
A "zygote" (ZAY-gote) is a fertilized egg in its early stage of development – the single cell that results from the fertilization of an ovum by a sperm. The word is derived from the Greek for "to yoke."
This is one of those words that you would never expect to be able to work into a conversation. But here’s how Alexis Siemon, ETR’s Search Engine Marketing Specialist, knocked Michael Masterson’s socks off with it in a recent staff meeting. She said: "I have the zygote of an idea."
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2006
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