What Happens Online Stays Online
Issue #2466
- WEALTHY: The low-risk investment that wasn’t (Christian Hill)
- HEALTHY: You could be drinking 46 pounds a year of this danger to your health (James LaValle)
- WISE: Michael Iapoce on reputation
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- The dark side of the Internet (Suzanne Richardson)
- My answer to a reader’s question about a common language dilemma (Don Hauptman)
- It’s Good to Know… about an old-fashioned, low-tech way to conserve water
- Add “palimpsest” to your vocabulary
== Highly Recommended ==
The Easy Way to Internet Profits for Lazy Entrepreneurs
If you can push a button, you can make money online. Yes, there’s more to it than that, but not too much. Just 3 simple steps. This new online business opportunity is for truly lazy entrepreneurs who still want to make a very nice online income.
I’m still shaking my head at how shockingly simple and easy this is. And this business has been purposely kept “low-key” to keep others from discovering and using it. Not anymore, because one of the Internet’s elite has just spilled the beans…
Click here to get all the inside details…
Mutual Funds Don’t Necessarily Mean Low Risk
Mutual funds traditionally get high marks for being a “low-risk” investment. But if you think about them that way, you could be putting your money at risk.
A Forbes article on mutual funds broke down the winners and losers during a recent market downturn. One fund - the Putnam Investments Growth and Income Fund - has underperformed its peers for the last nine years. Plus, over the last year, it has dropped 23 percent.
The cause? Most likely its large holdings in Bear Stearns, Countrywide Financial, Bank of America, and Citigroup while the financial sector collapsed. To make up for that, the fund then loaded up on ExxonMobil just before the recent decline in the energy sector.
The lesson any mutual fund investor can learn from this is to closely examine the largest holdings in a fund prior to investing in it. If the fund is too heavily weighted in a certain sector, you are left exposed should that sector run into problems. And once you buy into a fund, you should be constantly monitoring its allocation. The holdings can change at the fund manager’s discretion, and the balance can become drastically different over time.
The composition of most funds can be found online, so doing your initial homework and then checking up on the ones you buy is relatively easy. In the long run, you will be happy you took an active role in managing your risk exposure.
[Ed. Note: While you're researching the best mutual funds for your dollar, check out one of the greatest investment opportunities of the 21st century: the massive bull market in oil and gas. Now that doesn't mean you should buy most oil and gas companies. In fact, you should AVOID them. Find out how doing so can make you money...]
“Reputation is character minus what you’ve been caught doing.”
Michael Iapoce
What Happens Online Stays Online
You finish a fantastic book, and post a review of it on Amazon…
Your favorite blogger posts a blog entry that you disagree with, so you write a rebuttal in the comments section…
You send in a glowing note of thanks for a product you bought, and the company (with your permission) publishes it in their online newsletter…
You get terrible service at a new restaurant downtown, so you add a scathing description of the snooty waiters and bland food to CitySearch…
Your old college roommate hosts a huge birthday bash, and you rave about how drunk you got on your MySpace page…
There’s practically no end to the ways you can publish your opinions online.
And that’s great. It means that you can start a blog or an e-newsletter, and quickly position yourself as an expert in anything… from marketing to tropical fish to grammar and more.
But before you fire up the Internet and start posting away… take a second to reconsider.
The thing you have to remember is this: The Internet may be a palimpsest of conversation, information, advice, and junk. It may be protean and malleable. But it is also pretty permanent.
When you put things on the Internet, they’re there for good. And if you don’t think through what you’re posting, it might turn up years - even decades - later to haunt you. Plus, the Internet makes it easy for users to search through its billions of Web pages. (Some estimates, according to SitePro News, say that there were already 200 billion Web pages in 2006.)
Face it, you’re not as anonymous online as you think!
That means you can post some sexy pictures of yourself online for your long-distance college boyfriend… and find your employees giggling over them in the break room 10 years later.
Or you could get really fired up about the upcoming election and lambaste some of your opponents in a forum… and a potential boss could decide you’re too much of a loose cannon to work in her company.
MaryEllen Tribby, ETR’s Publisher and CEO, regularly performs Google searches on all her prospective employees. She checks MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, and the other social networking sites. And she carefully monitors what other people in the world are saying about people she works with.
If you wanted to work for ETR and you had a MySpace profile full of provocative pictures… lewd conversation… and tales of your drunken escapades… you can be pretty sure that MaryEllen would put your resume in the circular file.
Maybe you’re not concerned about your online reputation. If that’s the case, you’re not alone. A 2007 PEW/Internet and American Life Project survey found that 60 percent of Internet users aren’t worried about how much of their personal information is available online. And 61 percent of adult Internet users don’t feel the need to limit the amount of personal information that others can find about them online.
So you might think that I’m being overcautious. “Hey Suzanne, there’s a delete key on my computer,” you might say. “I can put whatever I want online. I can always erase it later.”
But it’s not as easy as that.
Take, for instance, a good-intentioned ETR reader who sent us a thoughtful e-mail about one of our products. We asked for permission to print her e-mail - with her full name - in an issue of Early to Rise. She graciously gave it.
A few weeks later, she sent us a frustrated e-mail. When she Googled her name, it was coming up in the search results next to the title of another article in that ETR issue. And the title referenced something that this woman was avidly against. The way the search results showed up, there was an implied link between her and the subject matter she opposed.
We understood her frustration. And so we changed her name in the article archived on our site to eliminate that implied link. A few weeks later, Google had re-indexed our site, and her real name no longer appeared in conjunction with the title of the offending article.
But even though we can make small changes to the articles in our archives, we can’t change anything about the ETR issues we’ve e-mailed out to our nearly 400,000 subscribers. So on hundreds of thousands of e-mails, her name is indelibly linked to the subject matter she wants nothing to do with.
And, of course, her words - if not her name - are still online in our archives… and they’re not going anywhere. (By the way, we encourage readers to submit their comments. And we are always happy to use a pseudonym if you’d prefer that your remarks remain anonymous.)
Deleting your profiles from online networking sites isn’t foolproof either. According to The New York Times, “Facebook servers keep copies of the information in those accounts indefinitely.” It took one man about two months to finally get his information removed from Facebook. But even after it was deleted, a reporter was able to access his empty profile and send him an e-mail.
The real key to maintaining your image online is to think about what you post BEFORE you post it.
I’m not saying that you should never post anything online. But keep in mind that just because it’s easy to post something doesn’t mean it’s easy to remove it.
Your reputation is at stake.
And when you go to work for a company… or own your own business… your reputation becomes inextricably connected to that of the business. Which means the reputation of the business is at stake too.
So whenever you’re tempted to submit a comment anywhere online, ask yourself these five questions first:
1. “Would I be okay with my grandmother/little brother/boss reading this?”
2. “Will I feel the same way about this a week from now? A month from now? A year from now?”
3. “Would I be proud to repeat this comment out loud to my friends, family, and coworkers?”
4. “Could this detract from my future credibility in any way?”
5. “Would my company’s customers be offended/miffed/revolted by this?”
If you do end up making an offensive comment on your blog… or starring in an embarrassing YouTube video… or posting something that reflects badly on your business, own up to it. Being forthright and honest about your mistakes will go a long way toward healing any wounds you’ve inflicted on your reputation.
You can also keep track of your online reputation by doing what your boss, potential employers, or customers may be doing: Googling your name regularly. If unflattering results pop up, take steps to remove them (as best you can) from the Web.
[Ed. Note: The Internet is a massive entity. And there are some things about it that we're just beginning to understand. Maintaining your online reputation is one thing you need to keep in mind.
But something else you'll want to think about is how the Internet can make you money. It's teeming with opportunities to profit. And ETR can help you tap into the raging river of potential cash. Learn how here.]
You Can Keep Your Current Job While You Quickly Transition Into Your New Business
How in the world do these money-making programs expect you to work tons of hours building up a new business while holding down your current job? Many just aren’t practical. But I’ve found a new program that is loaded with methods to get you into a new business while you are working at another job.
You can put in as little as 2 to 3 hours a week in your new business, and still bring in nice profits fairly quickly – often in just a week or two. And once your business is bringing in enough income, you can quit your current job and focus full-time on your new business. You get to choose which business to get into (there are 20 to choose from), there’s no limit on what you can make, and it is easier than ever to get started.
There is, however, a limit on how many people I am sharing this with. You’ll learn why when checking out all the exciting details here
Fruit Juice - Bad for Your Heart?
If you’re worried about the effects of fat and dietary cholesterol on your heart, stop. Trans-fats are the only ones conclusively proven to be detrimental. In the meantime, there’s something just as serious to watch out for. Fructose.
The average American is getting more fructose than ever before. A study in the July 9 Medscape Journal of Medicine found that, on average, our intake of fructose increased from about 35 grams (a little over 1 ounce) per day in the late 1970s to about 55 grams (almost 2 ounces) per day now. That may not sound like much, but 2 ounces of fructose per day is almost 46 pounds a year!
That’s serious news, because fructose has a rap sheet about a mile long:
1. It increases the risk of high LDL cholesterol - which increases the risk of heart attack threefold.
2. It increases triglycerides in the blood, a strong predictor of heart disease.
3. It increases uric acid in the blood, which causes gout and increases blood pressure.
4. It stimulates appetite by affecting leptin (a hunger-suppressing hormone) and ghrelin (a hunger-stimulating hormone.)
5. It decreases adiponectin, a hormone that improves insulin sensitivity in cells.
Where are we getting all that fructose? Well, it occurs naturally in fruits and other foods, like table sugar and honey. But the popular processed sweetener high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is the main culprit.
So check the labels. And avoid foods with HFCS. These include soft drinks, fruit juice drinks, fruit rolls/fruit chew-type snacks, sweetened teas, fruit smoothies, and ketchup. And limit your intake of anything with high amounts of natural fructose - like fruit juices - as well.
[Ed. Note: It truly is possible to improve your health just by making a few simple changes to your diet and lifestyle. James B. LaValle, RPh, ND, CCN - founder of the LaValle Metabolic Institute and a nationally recognized expert on natural therapies - can give you easy-to-understand directions for living the healthy life you've always wanted. Learn how to feel better and live longer right here.]
The Language Perfectionist: What’s Your Preposition?
By Don Hauptman
A reader of this column writes:
“I appreciate how Early to Rise expands my vocabulary and answers grammar questions. I heard recently that it is not proper to end a sentence with a preposition. For example, ‘Please let me know if there is anything else you need help with’ or ‘This is what I was thinking of.’”
In The Careful Writer, Theodore M. Bernstein notes that the rule commanding us never to end a sentence with a preposition is groundless. Indeed, doing so is often natural and idiomatic: “Bob can be counted on.” “What are you talking about?”
Another excellent guide, Garner’s Modern American Usage, calls the rule “spurious” and “a superstition.”
But wait. Another factor applies here, one that’s often overlooked. We communicate in different contexts and at different levels. We speak in both informal and formal settings, and writing is also either colloquial or more polished, depending on circumstances.
Thus, our reader’s “Please let me know if there is anything else you need help with” is acceptable in informal speech and writing. But “Please let me know if there is anything else with which you need help” would be appropriate, and perhaps preferable, in edited writing or while conversing at, say, a diplomatic ball.
Conventions should sometimes be respected, even if permissivists denounce them as “superstitions.” In other than casual situations, it makes sense to take the more cautious and traditional route, unless the result sounds awkward or pretentious.
[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book recently published by AWAI that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into speaking, consulting, training, and critiquing.]
It’s Good to Know: An Old-Fashioned, Low-Tech Way to Conserve Water
Years ago, people collected excess rainwater in “rain barrels,” and then used it to water their gardens, flush their toilets, wash their clothes, and so on. The practice is becoming popular once again in places that have a rainy season - like the southeastern U.S. The water is usually harvested from gutter runoff and stored in underground tanks.
Worth doing? You be the judge: One inch of rain on a 1,000-square-foot roof over a 24-hour period of time can yield more than 600 gallons of water.
(Source: Wikipedia.com)
== Highly Recommended==
The Greatest Medical Discovery of the Century
Scientists have discovered a remarkable substance that has the power to prevent diabetes, stop heart disease before it starts, and kill cancer cells on contact. In fact, this substance has been shown to prevent and treat more than 20 major diseases in all!
However, more than 85% of the population is deficient in this disease-killer at least part of the year. And believe it or not, medical professionals and health authorities actually advise people to avoid the single greatest source of this vital substance.
Word to the Wise: Palimpsest
A “palimpsest” (PAL-imp-sest) - from the Greek for “scraped again” - is a manuscript (usually parchment) that has been erased and written on more than once, with the original writing often partly legible. The word is also used for an object, place, or area that reflects its history.
Example (as used by Suzanne today): “The Internet may be a palimpsest of conversation, information, advice, and junk. It may be protean and malleable. But it is also pretty permanent.”
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Are you telling me that the 8 ounces of freshly squeezed orange juice that I have with flax meal every morning is injurious to my health?
And that having 100% cranberry juice is also a bad thing?
This is a very good article and something I try to tell everybody who comes for entrepreneurial advice to our professional association.
It is not only true online, though - one day, as I was riding my racing cycle, a car almost spiked me on his right-side mirror. I made an very crass gesture for him to see, but later I was thinking, what if you meet this guy again and he is your next prospect? I could only hope that he would not recognize me without the helmet and the sunglasses. The same applies for getting drunk in front of other people, for wearing a see-through dress on saturday morning in a cafe, and so on, and so on - you never know how things will be spread around and to whom!
Same applies for e-mail, too. Some sentences are like the corpse “Harry” in the Hitchcock movie, the way they always return. In a company I was working with several years ago one of the sales staff got annoyed with a customer who was maybe making unreasonable requests. In one e-mail he wrote that this man was an idiot. The way e-mails get quoted and quoted and grow as long as tapeworm, inevitably the so-called “idiot” came to read about himself. So we decided never to put into writing which was not meant for everybody’s eyes.
the headline for risk management was a bit misleading. i was under the impression i was going to learn about a risk mitigating techique. instead i get check up on fund allocation. checking how a fund allocates its money doesn’t tell me how to lower risk. tell me what the pros do and how i can apply it to my situation.
Thanks for the comments, Claudia.
You’re absolutely right - you’ve got to keep an eye on your reputation in the offline world as well. But as you point out, the Internet makes it so easy to pass bad information and mistakes around… And that’s especially true of email.
I’ve written about the dangers of email before. You might be interested to read the articles:
* http://www.earlytorise.com/2008/09/09/the-evils-of-e-mail-forwarding.html
* http://www.earlytorise.com/2008/03/25/getting-e-mails-by-mistake.html
* http://www.earlytorise.com/2008/04/05/5-easy-ways-to-protect-your-credibility.html
V. Richards - I posed your question to Dr. James LaValle. Here’s the response he sent me:
Dear V. Richards,
Several experts in fructose research are very concerned about the effects that excessive consumption of fructose is having on Americans.
The results of the research seem pretty clear, fructose is playing a role in the epidemics we are seeing of hypertension, obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cardiovascular disease,
and even kidney disease.
You will notice that I didn’t say to eliminate fruit juice, I said to “limit” it. Certainly many fruit juices contain healthy nutrients like vitamin C and some like pomegranite juice contain very high levels of antioxidants. The problem is the “excessive” amounts Americans are getting. The biggest culprit contributing to excessive intake of fructose is high fructose corn syrup sweetened foods and beverages. However, in reviewing the information on fructose, I was surprised to learn that fruit juice can also be a culprit, if too much is consumed. In consuming fruit juice it is easy to consume excessive amounts. For instance, one 4 oz. glass of orange juice is the equivalent of eating 4 to 6 oranges, depending on the size and ripeness.
Tolerance of fruit juice would also be individualized according to other factors, like other sources of fructose one might be taking in, the overall quality of diet, exercise and general state of health. Since you add flaxseed meal to your OJ, it sounds like you are pretty health conscious. So I doubt you are seeing any problems from your 8 oz of fresh orange juice per day or any other fruit juice you are taking in. However, if you have any problems with your weight, your blood sugar or cholesterol or triglyceride levels, you should reduce your intake of fructose.
For more information you could look up two great articles: one by Johnson et al. in the October, 2007 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and another article by Basciano, et al. in the Feb, 21 20005 issue of Nutrition and Metabolism. These articles discuss how intake of fructose has increased over the years and discuss the effects of fructose on increasing appetite, obesity, insulin resistance, and its negative effects on cholesterol and triglyceride levels.