Issue #2425
- WEALTHY: Where to go to build your fortune (Michael Masterson)
- HEALTHY: How to break the obesity cycle (Craig Ballantyne)
- WISE: Bob Hope on being in the right place at the right time
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- 5 words that can change the fate of your company (Suzanne Richardson)
- A good way to get on Google’s bad side (Alexis Siemon)
- It’s Good to Know… about oil by the barrel
- Add “cineaste” to your vocabulary
Should Making Money Online Be This Easy?
I hear stories of budding Internet entrepreneurs jumping through hoops to make a buck. And sure, many times building a solid, long term business does take real effort. But you can also quietly pocket some decent dough online for much less work.
In this case, you can copy the exact steps one man used to make $187,296 in one day. No, that’s not a misprint.
What’s stopping you from doing the same? The program is called Instant Internet Income and I guarantee it works exactly as it says. Take a look and see just how easy making money online can be.
“I’ve always been in the right place and time. Of course, I steered myself there.”
Bob Hope
Why You Should Invest in India Now
Yesterday, I was having high tea near Buckingham Palace with an English colleague. We were talking about the great world empires in history – how they rose up, peaked, and then fell.
All of them – the Hittites, the Greeks, the Romans, the Ottomans, the English and Spanish, and then, in the 20th century, the United States – enjoyed 100 or more years of rapid economic growth. This created huge, wealth-building opportunities for many.
When an economy is growing fast, opportunities are abundant. You don’t have to be a genius to make lots of money. You simply have to be at the right place at the right time.
That was true 2,000 years before Christ, and it’s equally true right now. Get on an economic tidal wave when it’s just a ripple, and before you know it you’re 100 feet above your peers, making millions and enjoying the ride.
One hundred years ago, the best place to be – by far – was the U.S. But today that may not be so. The U.S. economy is in big trouble. After surviving the collapse of the Internet bubble, we jumped right into a real estate bubble. That one collapsed too, and its ramifications are just now being felt. The falling dollar is making it much more expensive for Americans to pay for anything made abroad. And the rise in oil and gas prices (and other commodities) is putting the U.S. into a recession that will probably last a long time.
But that’s not the worst of it. The U.S. economy is old, and outdated in some respects – just as England’s economy was 100 years ago. The 20th century was America’s century. Thousands of people became enormously wealthy by getting into oil and gas and railroads and other industries back then.
But the world has totally changed. New technology and major advances in communications have permanently altered the way wealth is and will be created.
So the question my friend and I asked ourselves over tea and scones yesterday is this: If we were in our early twenties and our goal was to become billionaires (forget the measly millions!), where would we go to start our fortune?
For me, there was only one answer: I’d move to India.
Why India?
Because India is, in many ways, like the United States was in 1900… but bigger and better. It has a huge population – about a billion people, of which approximately 200 million are considered middle class. This is more than 10 times the size of the U.S. middle class at the start of the Industrial Revolution. The sheer size of the market is staggering.
A study I read in the International Herald Tribune recently said that there are a million families in India whose income is more than $100,000 a year. That’s a very substantial class of wealthy people. Many of these wealthy people are entrepreneurs and investors. And because of India’s laws (and lack of laws), they will have few artificial obstacles to keep them from increasing their wealth.
India’s positive investment climate and vast consumer markets has resulted in a decade of phenomenal growth. Since I’ve been tracking it, India has been growing at least twice as fast as the United States. And even today, with oil prices going up and productivity going down on a global scale, India is still growing at almost 7 percent a year. Again, more than twice the rate in the U.S.
China, too, has a huge, fast-growing economy. But I’d choose to move to India over China because of its more democratic government, more homogeneous population, and the prevalence of the English language.
And if I were going to set up shop in India, I’d start something in the communications or technology area. More specifically, I’d start an Internet publishing company there.
Why Internet publishing?
First and foremost, because it’s a business I know. And it’s always better to start a new business in a field you know.
I also like publishing because it’s a growing industry in India. According to that report in the International Herald Tribune, the country’s magazine business will increase 20 percent in 2008, up to $302 million.
In the past 12 months, all of the following magazines have been launched in India: Vogue, Rolling Stone, OK!, Maxim, FHM, Golf Digest, People, and Marie Claire. Most of them have been launched through licensing agreements with Indian companies. That’s what I’d try to do – get an equity position and put down my stakes in India. That’s how you make the big money, not just by passively investing from abroad.
If the publishing industry is doing well, the Internet is doing even better. The growth of the Internet-based side of the information industry in India is impossible to know with certainty because of how many new companies are involved and how fast they are moving. But most insiders I’ve spoken to estimate the growth at more than 100 percent a year.
To me, India is a long-term play – an opportunity that will continue to get better over the long haul. There will be ups and downs and specific sectors that fail while others succeed. But, overall, the long-term trend is upward – toward the billions!
One of my biggest clients recently acquired a half-interest in an investment publishing business in Mumbai. That was a very smart move on their part. If things work out like I think they might, they will see a 100-to-1 return on their investment over the next five to 10 years… and a 1000s-to-one return over a longer period of time.
If setting up a business in India doesn’t appeal to you, Andrew Gordon has another recommendation.
“You could invest in India’s high-tech industry,” says Andrew. “In its generic drug sector… or its business support center companies. But the company I like best isn’t in any of those sectors. It’s an auto and truck maker called Tata Motors from Mumbai. Its ticker symbol is TTM, and it’s listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
“Tata had the nerve to challenge and then break long-held notions of auto manufacturing. Conventional wisdom argued you couldn’t make a quality car for less than $6,000 to $7,000. Perhaps with cheap labor and raw material and everything else going perfectly, you could get that down to $5,000.”
But Tata’s highly respected CEO – Ratan Tata – did not swallow a word of that, says Andrew. He took advantage of India’s top-notch but cheap design capabilities and low-cost labor pool to make a car that costs not $5,000… not $4,000… not $3,000… but $2,500.
Such audacity has its rewards. Tata is proceeding with plans to sell 1 million of these cars every year. Who will buy them? Not people who can already afford a car. But the millions of people in India, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and other countries who cannot.
“This car will never be confused with a Peugeot,” says Andrew. “But let me be clear. It’s no Yugo either. It doesn’t have power steering, a radio, or air conditioning. It has only one windshield wiper. The car has been stripped to its absolute essentials. But what hasn’t been stripped out is the quality. This car is getting good reviews, and should sell like hotcakes when commercial production begins this fall.”
Plus, Andrew adds, Tata bought Land Rover and Jaguar from Ford a few months ago. It’s attacking the Asian market at its highest and lowest end – where the market is growing the fastest.
“You haven’t heard of Tata Motors up until now? It’ll be a household name in a couple of years,” he says. “The trick is to get on board right now while Tata is still flying under the radar. Its shares are priced to buy, so this is the perfect time to invest.”
Investing in India – with Andrew’s Tata recommendation or by starting your own information publishing business – is one of the best ways to make a lot of money. This is the right time to profit. You just need to get into position to allow the money to come pouring in.
[Ed. Note: You can get a head start on creating your own fortune - in India, the U.S., or wherever else you please. Get a step-by-step guide to starting your own Internet business from ETR's team of business-building experts right here.
And for more of ETR Investment Director Andrew Gordon's insights into the safest and most profitable places you should stow your money, click here.]
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Persuasion Secrets from an Out-of-Print $10 Million Book
Many years ago, a reader of this book caught up with the author and told him that within a year of obtaining the book, his net worth had risen from $100,000 to $10 million. Sound outrageous? Perhaps.
But interviews with current marketing and advertising experts, multi-millionaires, and top executives all point to one book that launched their careers and made them independently wealthy.
But this book has been out of print for years… until now. If you hurry, you can get your own copy of this book, along with interviews and commentary from three of today’s top marketers and businessmen. These experts explore the book’s secrets of persuasion… techniques that stir desire and move the masses to your point of view… strategies for how to explode sales growth…
It’s all here. A vault full of persuasion and marketing knowledge that can launch your career in whatever field you choose. Click here to get all the exciting details.
ETR Insider Report: What You Think Doesn’t Matter
MaryEllen Tribby repeated the same five-word phrase at least three times last week. So I started to think that it must be really important. And it IS. The five words that she’s been trying to knock into the heads of the ETR team can help your company grow.
Here’s the story…
ETR’s editorial/marketing team had gathered in MaryEllen’s office for a Peer Review of two pieces of sales copy – both promoting the same product. The promos got equal ratings in the formal review, so we went on to an informal discussion about them.
The team was split. Some liked one promotion better. Some liked the other.
“This promotion is a little ordinary,” Jon Herring said about Promotion A. “I like the other one because it’s unconventional.”
“Sure, it’s contrarian and out of the box,” Marketing Manager Jessica Kurrle said about Promotion B. “But the other promotion really speaks to our audience.”
It was getting pretty heated.
That’s when MaryEllen stepped in.
“Listen up, guys,” she said. “What you think doesn’t matter.”
That shut us up pretty quickly.
“The only thing that matters is how this sales promotion performs when we mail it to our subscribers. So let’s test them both and see what happens.”
You can love a sales promotion or a marketing campaign or a product. You can think you’ve got the best thing since the iPhone. But until you test it to your market, what you think doesn’t matter.
Repeat this phrase every time you think you can read your market’s mind: What you think doesn’t matter.
Then get out there and test.
[Ed. Note: Testing may be one of the most important things you can do for your company. You can learn more about the best ways to market your product in MaryEllen Tribby's and Michael Masterson's upcoming book, Changing the Channel: 12 Easy Ways to Make Millions for Your Business. We'll let you know as soon as it's released.]
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SEO Don’t: Cloaking
This week, a story came to my attention that I don’t hear too often. It seems there’s some buzz around the real estate industry that a fairly well-known website is participating in cloaking.
If this news is true, it could mean two things: They did it on purpose, in which case Papa Google will swiftly ban the real estate site from its index. Or they did it unknowingly, meaning they have a very naive SEO specialist working for them and will still have to answer to Papa Google.
So what, exactly, is cloaking – and why does it irritate Google so much?
Cloaking is the practice of serving a different version of your website to the search engines than you do to the end user. When the practice first started, there was a much larger gap between what looked good to the end user and what looked good to the search engines. So cloaking seemed like the perfect solution – not to mention, mighty tempting. But it was quickly, and rightly, deemed a black hat and spammy practice. Google specifies in its webmaster guidelines that if they suspect you of cloaking, they will remove your site from their index.
To hear that a prominent website could be cloaking is surprising. An experienced SEO specialist knows that it is a deceptive, outlawed, and, frankly, lazy technique. There are so many legitimate ways you can optimize your site for both search engine and visitor usability these days. I hope for this real estate site’s sake that the allegations are false. But if they’re true, they should start shopping for a new SEO guy.
[Ed. Note: Staying on Google's good side can mean more traffic, more customers... and more money in your pocket. Of course, building a successful business involves a few other details. Learn how you can get insider advice from expert business builders right here.]
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The Sore Knee Catch-22
Being overweight causes you to have sore knees. Having sore knees makes you avoid exercise. Avoiding exercise causes you to gain weight. Being overweight…
You see where I’m going?
Australian researchers studied 297 adults aged 50-79 for over 2 years. During that time, they found that patella (knee-bone) cartilage volume was lost at an annual rate of 1.8 percent. Being overweight or having a high body fat percentage increased the rate of knee cartilage breakdown.
I see the “sore knee catch 22″ in a lot of clients. They come to me needing to lose weight, but complain that they can’t exercise because it hurts their knees.
Sure, you will need to avoid certain types of exercise at first (squats, lunges, running, jumping). But there are lots of other exercises that you can do to build the muscles around your knees – for support and to burn calories. Plus, you can always improve your diet – the number one way to kick-start a weight-loss program.
To burn calories, you can do interval training on “cross-trainer” or “elliptical” machines. These are low-impact exercises, and still allow you to work at a relatively high intensity. Swimming is another good interval-training option.
To strengthen the muscles around your knees, lie on the floor and do hip extensions, 1-leg hip extensions, and stability ball leg curls. Any personal trainer will be able to show you those basic exercises.
Eventually, as you lose weight and gain strength, you can progress to bodyweight squats, and then try a variety of single-leg exercises. So while your knees may be sore now, they can get stronger with less pain as you lose weight and strengthen the supporting muscles.
[Ed. Note: If you're too overweight to exercise, you need to target your diet right away. Get easy-to-follow tips on how to eat healthfully - plus get exercise techniques and plenty of motivation - with ETR's natural health e-letter. Sign up here.
To lose weight, you need a proven exercise system that can help you burn fat and build muscle. Get the details on fitness expert Craig Ballantyne's program right here.]
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It’s Good to Know: Oil by the Barrel
Oil, or petroleum, hasn’t been stored in barrels for more than a hundred years. So why is it still measured in barrels? Tradition. The original oilmen of the mid-1800s used 42-gallon whisky barrels to store their oil. That measurement is still used today, although the oil is now stored in large tankers and trucks.
(Source: Mental Floss)
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Turn Your Business Ideas (Maybe Even the Zany Ones) Into Quick Income
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What can this man do for your business profits? Click here to find out now.
Word to the Wise: Cineaste
A “cineaste” (SIN-ee-ast) – from the French – is someone associated with filmmaking, either as a professional or as an aficionado.
Example (as used by Andrew Sarris in a New York Times review of Cecil B. DeMille: A Life in Art): “[Cecil B. DeMille] remains something of a joke among sophisticated cineastes, largely because of his tin ear for dialogue.”
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2008
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Mind you, India is one tsunami and/or one civil unrest away from shutting down your investment/company/technical support. They’re not especially helpful or polite when you have to talk to them on the phone, either.
World’s two fastest growing economies China and India will continue to witness boom in the real estate segments in smaller cities as both countries are expected to record strong growth in residential demand in the coming years, says a report. Further, investments volume in the two neighboring nations is projected to go up in the next few years. According to a report prepared by the research group of Germany’s Deutsche Bank, the long-term growth prospects for both countries “remain very good.” An important growth driver for the real estate market would be the increasing urban population in both countries. According to the report, another growth driver for both countries would be the rising population of working age. The working age population in India is projected to be on the upward curve in the coming years and would be above 65 per cent by 2050. Globalisation has helped the emerging economic giants to post double digit growth in recent years. Both countries have immensely benefited from increased trade and capital imports.For more view- realtydigest.blogspot.com
I completely agree with the comments by #2. The fact that India and China are the fastest growing economies… and still have the potential to grow further in future… they are definitely the hot spots for investments.
I think it is interesting that after you whet one’s apetite to know more-at $99./month ,the signup is for three months at $200+.Doesn’t sound too ethical to me!
There are some great investment plays in emerging markets outside of Asia which too often go overlooked. The last emerging real estate market in the Caribbean not only has the lowest prices in the area, but also the most coastline of any country on the Carib. The coast is unspoiled and much of it is still today the way Columbus first viewed it. Whatever your price range, you’ll find more bang for your buck. The country is Venenezuela and is also foreign investment friendly in most all other sectors. Foreigners have the same rights to ownership and free hold title as Venezuelan citizens. It is an opportuntiy not to be missed. Visit DreamCaribbeanRealEstate.com to read about this outstanding opportunity and write me through our contact page.
Idon;t and won’t invest in other country’s, due to the fact that we(USA)are planning to wipe out these country’s very soon you will read of the collapse of these country’s , not by war , but by other mean’s .It takes money to make money.So, by seizing there banks you have full control of any country that you wish to control.
thanks i need it
Interesting debate but it would be excellent idea to remember the human compatibility issues. Getting beyond the stereotype images, serious lack of cultural differences, then finding partners to form mutually trustworthy and profitable alliances appears to be a bit more than a small business owner can do.
The publishers you mentioned had billion dollar budgets before they went to China or India. I’ve worked with companies that have outsourced departments to these countries.
During the knowledge transfer stage – it was quite obvious that many citizens from these countries are getting their idea of Americans from Youtube or hip-hop videos.
it is great to hypothesize about investing in India and China while having high tea at Buckingham palace. I would be more impressed if you had actually spent time in either place assessing the realities of investing there. I have spent time in both countries and I think china will far surpass India. Tata is ubiquitous in India for sure and many of the larger corporations are focused on giving something back to their country, but they have a LONG way to go to provide good infrastructure, including clean water, for their people, when compared to China.
As one of my friends from India says – “that is the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship”.
For a small business owner, the logistics of working with India or China is difficult unless you know the language and have connections there. BTW, China has mandated English to be taught in the schools, whereas English is spoken in India, but so are 1000 other languages. China has only 1 other language that is legal – that is Mandarin.
If the average person wants to invest in India or China, the best way to do it is to purchase stock in national companies – or in large US based corporations doing business there. The lack of regulations, the high risk of instability, and differences in language and culture make it very difficult to start up a successful business if you aren’t going to live there or have LOTS of money to spend getting the right people in place so you don’t have to live there.
I am impress that people are thinking same way as well India is an incredible discovery 10 yrs back nobody would have thought of them.their info tech and real estate will be stongest sector of investment.
Hi
About 4 years ago I started to invest in online India as a ‘hot’ market with great potential. I don’t live in India and all my business dealings happen via email/online. In my experience I have found that online india doesn’t like/expect to buy online, more than any other country i’ve sold in. Hiring people has also been difficult and though the confidence of applicants has been high i’ve found the quality poor. I find marketing is mostly offline with poor adoption of online opportunities. I’ve also delt with various Indian government agencies and this has been a bureaucratic nightmare.
Obviously India is a country with lots of potential,great at R&D with an educated workforce, it would be silly to ignore a country of its population. I have found that its better to have a local intermediary to act on your behalf which is always advisable if doing business outside of your country and culture I guess.
4 years ago I expcted India online to be further along by now so I think i’ve lost a bit of my optimism in terms of its potential as a place to make money online, I would be interested in hearing other experiences from anyone making money online in India.
Have a good day.
Nic