Search engines

Why search engines are important

According to any market research study out there, you’ll find that about 90% of Internet surfers find sites for the first time through the search engines. Therefore, the first marketing strategy that you will want to focus on is the search engines.

However, in focusing on the search engines, you will not want to put aside all other marketing strategies. The search engines are important, but if you focus so much on your search engine rankings and forget about the other marketing strategies that you will be learning, you will be missing out on a lot of traffic and sales.

Different types of search engines

There are 4 main types of search engines out there:
Regular search engines
Directories
Hybrids
Pay-per-click search engines

In this article, we will focus on the first three types of search engines, and the pay-per-click search engines will be covered in the next marketing strategy. It is such an important marketing tactic that we’ve given it it’s own article.

Regular search engines
Search engines help people find information on the Internet. They maintain huge databases of web sites that users can find by typing in a keyword. These databases are compiled by programs are called "spiders." These programs "crawl" across the Internet or web by following links from site to site and then they index each site they visit. Search engines are tricky because each will use its own set of criteria to determine how they index the sites. For example, some search engines index each page in a website, while others index only the main page.

Also, the criteria each individual search engine uses to organize or rank web sites for its users vary. Some will list the results of a search according to which sites have the most links from other sites, called link popularity. Others concentrate more heavily on the summary information that is found in the Meta tags. There are actually quite a few other ways to do this and most search engines will use combination of criterion.

Directories
Directories are often confused with search engines, however they are much different in the way they work even though they appear to have similar results to Internet surfers. Instead of using spiders to crawl the web, directories, like Yahoo and Looksmart, have actual people review and determine the ranking of their sites. They have many more guidelines you must follow to be found in their directories as well. That is why directories' indexes tend to contain a smaller number of high-quality links.

Directory editors evaluate the quality of a site: its functionality, content, and design. Many directories will list sites in each category alphabetically, like the phone book. Therefore, having a company name that begins with a letter close to “A” will help with the directories.

Hybrids
Hybrid search engines are a combination of a directory and a search engine. This is a "best of both worlds" technique, done in an effort to provide users with the most complete set of results. Today the top ten search sites are hybrids. Yahoo! Actually started out as a directory, but now it supplements its manually compiled listings with search results from Google, which is a regular search engine.

What search engines look for

For the most part, search engines look at millions of variables in ranking a page. It would be impossible to know all of these, and the minute that you get close, they will all change, so it would be a waste of time. However, there are a few main variables that most of the search engines will look at that you will want to focus on. Most of these variables focus on keyword phrases, or words or phrases that Internet surfers would type in to find your website.

In dealing with keyword phrases, there are a few main words that you will want to keep in mind: relevance, prominence, proximity, and density.

Relevance
Keyword relevance means that the keyword phrases that you choose will want to be ones that people are actually typing in to find you. There is a great tool from Overture.com that will help you come up with relevant keyword phrases. This tool is called the Search Suggestion Tool and is found at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion. Go there and type in a word or phrase that relates to your business. Then this tool will tell you how many times that word or phrase was searched for in a previous month at Overture.com as well as give you a list of phrases that were search for that have that same word or phrase in it.

This tool will give you the demand for different products/services by telling you what people are actually searching for. Overture.com is one of the major search engines on the Internet, so it will give you a good idea as to what is being searched. However, Overture.com only covers about 2.7% of all searches done, so it gives you a fraction of what the entire Internet is doing. From here, you’ll want to pick out about 50 keyword phrases that best describe your site and then type them down somewhere. And then select 5 from that list that you will emphasize on the homepage of your website.

Prominence
Keywords demand the most prominent positions on your page. The top of the page is the single most important place to include your keywords. You will want to place your top five keyword phrases as close to the top of your page as you can. This will ensure a higher ranking on many search engines.

Proximity
Keyword proximity relates to how close your keywords are to one another within the text of your site. The closer your keywords are to each other, the higher you will rank in the search engines. For example, if you have the keywords scented and candles, you could use either of the following sentences:

We specialize in scented candles of all types.
We specialize in candles, which come in a variety of scents.

In this case, the first sentence would receive a higher ranking because the keywords are closer in proximity next too each other than they are in the second sentence.

Density
Keyword Density refers to how often you repeat your keyword in relation to the rest of the text. The optimum density is between 3 and 7 percent. In other words, for every 100 words of text you have on your homepage, you should use your keyword 3 to 7 times. The areas that you will want keyword phrases repeated are in the title, headline, body text, meta tags, hyperlinks, other tags (like alt tags that appear when you roll your mouse over an image), and in the first sentence of the homepage.

Methods of registering to the search engines

There are three main methods of registering to the search engines and directories that you will want to follow:
1. Initial launch using site submission tools
2. Register monthly to the top search engines individually
3. Register to Yahoo and the other directories

1. Initial launch using site submission tools
The initial launch consists of using site submission tools, or websites that will automatically register you site to many of the search engines. There are two main websites that we will use for this: www.inktomi.com and www.jimtools.com.

Inktomi.com is a great submission service that will continuously reregister your site to the top search engines on the Internet. It costs $39 a year to utilize their services, but it's well worth it. They will get you to the top of many of the main search engines. To register, go to www.positiontech.com and register there. Many of the major search engines get their results from Inktomi, so that is why it is such a great resource.

Jimtools.com is a free submission service that will submit your web site to 46 of the top search engines and also to over 100 directories. To register, go to www.jimtools.com and click on the Submit tab. Here you can register your web site to many of the top search engines and directories for free. Only submit to the Search Engine Submitter and Directory Submitter; don't submit to the FFA links or the WAP Directory (if you do, you'll get about 1,000 emails.

2. Register monthly to the top search engines individually
The third method of registering is to register monthly to the top search engines manually. The reason that you'll do this is because search engine rankings are like playing "king of the hill." One week you're at the top, and the next week you'll have fallen, so reregistering each month is important, and it's also important to register to each search engine individually. Inktomi and JimTools will register to the top search engines for you, but the ones that you're not ranking high on, you'll want to go to and manually register.

The best way to register to these is to go to www.searchengines.com and click on Submitting to the top search engines (this is under the How to submit your site area). This site has a listing of the top search engines and direct links to the place to register your site, as well as tips on registering, so it's very effective.

With this type of registering, you don't have much control as to where you get ranked on the list. One method of controlling your rankings on the search engines is to register to pay-per-click search engines, which is discussed in detail in the next marketing strategy.

3. Register to Yahoo and the other directories
Yahoo is the largest search portal on the Internet. They are a hybrid, so a combination of a search engine and directory. Yahoo has their own directory categories that you will want to register to, and their search results come from Google.com. Yahoo searches consist of about 30% of all searches done online, so being in here is important. However, Yahoo also knows this, so they will charge you a pretty penny to get listed. Right now it is at about $300 a year. Therefore, you may not register to Yahoo initially; however, once you start making some money on your website, Yahoo is the first place to go.

In registering to Yahoo, you will want to read through their submission guidelines. These can be found by going to www.yahoo.com and clicking on How to Suggest a Site. You will want to read these carefully because if you do not follow their guidelines, they will take your $300 and not get you registered.

Once you’ve done that, you will want to pick a category to be listed in within the directory. To do this, type in main keyword phrases that you think people will type in to find you. Then look at the categories that are listed. You will want to be found within the category that comes up most often when your keyword phrases are typed in. You can also choose a category by looking at your competition to see where they are listed.

Once you’ve picked the category, then you’ll all set to register. So go to the category of your choice, and click on Suggest a Site. Then follow the registering steps.

General Yahoo tips
§ If you sell any types of goods or services on your website, you will need to go through the Business and Economy category from the Yahoo homepage. Then you must also go through either the Business to Business or Shopping and Services categories.
§ Make sure your title is the actual name of your website or company.
§ Keep the description short. They say up to 25 words long, but they like it better if it’s 10-15 words in length.
§ Pick a category that would be found if people type in the main keyword phrases for your website. These are the categories most often looked at.

Other Directories
There are other directories to be listed in as well, other than Yahoo. One is the Open Directory found at www.dmoz.org. Dmoz is another very popular directory that supplies listing to many of the major search engines as well, including AOL, which is another of the major search portals people use. To register there, go to www.dmoz.org and find the category that would be best for your website (following the same method as you did with Yahoo). Then click on Add URL. Then follow the steps to register.

Another directory is Looksmart. They are another hybrid search engine and are a good one to be listed with because MSN get their search results from Looksmart’s listings. And MSN is another one of the major search portals on the Internet. Looksmart currently has a pay-per-click feature for small businesses. This means that it will cost you a certain amount of money each time your website is clicked on. The current cost is $.15 per click. To register, go to www.looksmart.com and click on Submit a Site and just follow the steps.

Online websites and resources

§ www.searchengines.com
§ www.searchenginewatch.com
§ www.searchengineforums.com
§ www.spider-food.com

Search engines

Why search engines are important
According to any market research study out there, you’ll find that about 90% of Internet surfers find sites for the first time through the search engines. Therefore, the first marketing strategy that you will want to focus on is the search engines.

However, in focusing on the search engines, you will not want to put aside all other marketing strategies. The search engines are important, but if you focus so much on your search engine rankings and forget about the other marketing strategies that you will be learning, you will be missing out on a lot of traffic and sales.

Different types of search engines

There are 4 main types of search engines out there:
Regular search engines
Directories
Hybrids
Pay-per-click search engines

In this article, we will focus on the first three types of search engines, and the pay-per-click search engines will be covered in the next marketing strategy. It is such an important marketing tactic that we’ve given it it’s own article.

Regular search engines
Search engines help people find information on the Internet. They maintain huge databases of web sites that users can find by typing in a keyword. These databases are compiled by programs are called "spiders." These programs "crawl" across the Internet or web by following links from site to site and then they index each site they visit. Search engines are tricky because each will use its own set of criteria to determine how they index the sites. For example, some search engines index each page in a website, while others index only the main page.

Also, the criteria each individual search engine uses to organize or rank web sites for its users vary. Some will list the results of a search according to which sites have the most links from other sites, called link popularity. Others concentrate more heavily on the summary information that is found in the Meta tags. There are actually quite a few other ways to do this and most search engines will use combination of criterion.

Directories
Directories are often confused with search engines, however they are much different in the way they work even though they appear to have similar results to Internet surfers. Instead of using spiders to crawl the web, directories, like Yahoo and Looksmart, have actual people review and determine the ranking of their sites. They have many more guidelines you must follow to be found in their directories as well. That is why directories' indexes tend to contain a smaller number of high-quality links.

Directory editors evaluate the quality of a site: its functionality, content, and design. Many directories will list sites in each category alphabetically, like the phone book. Therefore, having a company name that begins with a letter close to “A” will help with the directories.

Hybrids
Hybrid search engines are a combination of a directory and a search engine. This is a "best of both worlds" technique, done in an effort to provide users with the most complete set of results. Today the top ten search sites are hybrids. Yahoo! Actually started out as a directory, but now it supplements its manually compiled listings with search results from Google, which is a regular search engine.

What search engines look for

For the most part, search engines look at millions of variables in ranking a page. It would be impossible to know all of these, and the minute that you get close, they will all change, so it would be a waste of time. However, there are a few main variables that most of the search engines will look at that you will want to focus on. Most of these variables focus on keyword phrases, or words or phrases that Internet surfers would type in to find your website.

In dealing with keyword phrases, there are a few main words that you will want to keep in mind: relevance, prominence, proximity, and density.

Relevance
Keyword relevance means that the keyword phrases that you choose will want to be ones that people are actually typing in to find you. There is a great tool from Overture.com that will help you come up with relevant keyword phrases. This tool is called the Search Suggestion Tool and is found at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion. Go there and type in a word or phrase that relates to your business. Then this tool will tell you how many times that word or phrase was searched for in a previous month at Overture.com as well as give you a list of phrases that were search for that have that same word or phrase in it.

This tool will give you the demand for different products/services by telling you what people are actually searching for. Overture.com is one of the major search engines on the Internet, so it will give you a good idea as to what is being searched. However, Overture.com only covers about 2.7% of all searches done, so it gives you a fraction of what the entire Internet is doing. From here, you’ll want to pick out about 50 keyword phrases that best describe your site and then type them down somewhere. And then select 5 from that list that you will emphasize on the homepage of your website.

Prominence
Keywords demand the most prominent positions on your page. The top of the page is the single most important place to include your keywords. You will want to place your top five keyword phrases as close to the top of your page as you can. This will ensure a higher ranking on many search engines.

Proximity
Keyword proximity relates to how close your keywords are to one another within the text of your site. The closer your keywords are to each other, the higher you will rank in the search engines. For example, if you have the keywords scented and candles, you could use either of the following sentences:

We specialize in scented candles of all types.
We specialize in candles, which come in a variety of scents.

In this case, the first sentence would receive a higher ranking because the keywords are closer in proximity next too each other than they are in the second sentence.

Density
Keyword Density refers to how often you repeat your keyword in relation to the rest of the text. The optimum density is between 3 and 7 percent. In other words, for every 100 words of text you have on your homepage, you should use your keyword 3 to 7 times. The areas that you will want keyword phrases repeated are in the title, headline, body text, meta tags, hyperlinks, other tags (like alt tags that appear when you roll your mouse over an image), and in the first sentence of the homepage.

Methods of registering to the search engines

There are three main methods of registering to the search engines and directories that you will want to follow:
1. Initial launch using site submission tools
2. Register monthly to the top search engines individually
3. Register to Yahoo and the other directories

1. Initial launch using site submission tools
The initial launch consists of using site submission tools, or websites that will automatically register you site to many of the search engines. There are two main websites that we will use for this: www.inktomi.com and www.jimtools.com.

Inktomi.com is a great submission service that will continuously reregister your site to the top search engines on the Internet. It costs $39 a year to utilize their services, but it's well worth it. They will get you to the top of many of the main search engines. To register, go to www.positiontech.com and register there. Many of the major search engines get their results from Inktomi, so that is why it is such a great resource.

Jimtools.com is a free submission service that will submit your web site to 46 of the top search engines and also to over 100 directories. To register, go to www.jimtools.com and click on the Submit tab. Here you can register your web site to many of the top search engines and directories for free. Only submit to the Search Engine Submitter and Directory Submitter; don't submit to the FFA links or the WAP Directory (if you do, you'll get about 1,000 emails.

2. Register monthly to the top search engines individually
The third method of registering is to register monthly to the top search engines manually. The reason that you'll do this is because search engine rankings are like playing "king of the hill." One week you're at the top, and the next week you'll have fallen, so reregistering each month is important, and it's also important to register to each search engine individually. Inktomi and JimTools will register to the top search engines for you, but the ones that you're not ranking high on, you'll want to go to and manually register.

The best way to register to these is to go to www.searchengines.com and click on Submitting to the top search engines (this is under the How to submit your site area). This site has a listing of the top search engines and direct links to the place to register your site, as well as tips on registering, so it's very effective.

With this type of registering, you don't have much control as to where you get ranked on the list. One method of controlling your rankings on the search engines is to register to pay-per-click search engines, which is discussed in detail in the next marketing strategy.

3. Register to Yahoo and the other directories
Yahoo is the largest search portal on the Internet. They are a hybrid, so a combination of a search engine and directory. Yahoo has their own directory categories that you will want to register to, and their search results come from Google.com. Yahoo searches consist of about 30% of all searches done online, so being in here is important. However, Yahoo also knows this, so they will charge you a pretty penny to get listed. Right now it is at about $300 a year. Therefore, you may not register to Yahoo initially; however, once you start making some money on your website, Yahoo is the first place to go.

In registering to Yahoo, you will want to read through their submission guidelines. These can be found by going to www.yahoo.com and clicking on How to Suggest a Site. You will want to read these carefully because if you do not follow their guidelines, they will take your $300 and not get you registered.

Once you’ve done that, you will want to pick a category to be listed in within the directory. To do this, type in main keyword phrases that you think people will type in to find you. Then look at the categories that are listed. You will want to be found within the category that comes up most often when your keyword phrases are typed in. You can also choose a category by looking at your competition to see where they are listed.

Once you’ve picked the category, then you’ll all set to register. So go to the category of your choice, and click on Suggest a Site. Then follow the registering steps.

General Yahoo tips
§ If you sell any types of goods or services on your website, you will need to go through the Business and Economy category from the Yahoo homepage. Then you must also go through either the Business to Business or Shopping and Services categories.
§ Make sure your title is the actual name of your website or company.
§ Keep the description short. They say up to 25 words long, but they like it better if it’s 10-15 words in length.
§ Pick a category that would be found if people type in the main keyword phrases for your website. These are the categories most often looked at.

Other Directories
There are other directories to be listed in as well, other than Yahoo. One is the Open Directory found at www.dmoz.org. Dmoz is another very popular directory that supplies listing to many of the major search engines as well, including AOL, which is another of the major search portals people use. To register there, go to www.dmoz.org and find the category that would be best for your website (following the same method as you did with Yahoo). Then click on Add URL. Then follow the steps to register.

Another directory is Looksmart. They are another hybrid search engine and are a good one to be listed with because MSN get their search results from Looksmart’s listings. And MSN is another one of the major search portals on the Internet. Looksmart currently has a pay-per-click feature for small businesses. This means that it will cost you a certain amount of money each time your website is clicked on. The current cost is $.15 per click. To register, go to www.looksmart.com and click on Submit a Site and just follow the steps.

Online websites and resources

§ www.searchengines.com
§ www.searchenginewatch.com
§ www.searchengineforums.com
§ www.spider-food.com

The evolution of the Nation-State in pre-historic times brought with it some attributes, which was designed by early thinkers to make it easier for the State authorities to carry on its assigned roles in society. As the citizens of the Nation-State subdued their individual rights to that of organised civil society where they agreed to be governed by uniform rules and regulations of human conduct, and also confer on the State some rights to sanction deviant behaviour, the modern day society as we know it today gradually evolved from the “Hobbestian state of nature”, where life was nasty, brutish and short, and might was right.

One of the mechanisms through which the State, not being itself engaged in any income generating ventures, was expected to generate resources with which to provide for the common good of all, was to take a little of that income which accrued to individuals, and create a pool of funds from which common amenities like security, roads, utilities, schools, healthcare, etc., could be provided. Thus evolved the concept of taxation, as we know it today. From humble beginnings when taxation was no more than 5% of average income of individuals, the appetite of the State to more funds grew as the needs of society became more complex. Different taxes and levies started being imposed on individuals and corporate organisations, and what initially started as a voluntary contribution to the State gradually assumed a compulsive nature, such that laws were made to punish evasion of taxes by different governments.

To date, the average direct tax rate the world over is 30% of earned income, with variations from country to country. Tax relief became a tool of manipulation and political campaigns at election times. The governments which promised the most tax relief were more favoured by the citizenry, who often paid taxes under duress, obviously having better things to do with their incomes than handing it over to a bogus apparatus called the State, as they were not always able to tell the direct benefits they obtained from the government for payment of those taxes.

The level of resistance to taxation in different places differs in degree and complexity. Whereas citizens of most underdeveloped and developing countries rely on the non availability of population and income data in the hands of the taxing authorities to evade taxes, thereby leaving the burden of taxation to be borne by a few in regular employment, in the more advanced and sophisticated economies, people rely on the services of tax planners and other experts to cleverly avoid tax through lawfully recognised means. One common feature in resistance to taxation is however the perception of the populace towards their governments in the area of effectiveness in meeting their common needs. In areas where the governments are perceived to be up and doing, and people can visibly assess the impact of government on their daily lives, governments have been more able to rely on taxes as a major chunk of their national income than other places where governments are perceived as non-performing.

It must however be borne in mind that the basic justification of the state in collection of taxes remains the need to raise funds to provide amenities for the common good. Where those amenities are either lacking completely, or where they exist, are largely provided by the citizens themselves without any input from government, then the moral or legal right of the State to impose such taxes becomes suspect.

This paper attempts to examine the various facets of life in Nigeria from the point of view of the respective obligations of the citizens to pay their taxes, and the duty of the State to provide amenities, and comes to the inevitable conclusion that nowhere in the world is there a better justification for evasion of taxes than in Nigeria, as the governments here have done little or nothing to deserve any form of contribution from the citizens by way of taxes. That being so, the paper advocates a well articulated and structured resistance to taxation, especially by workers in the oil and gas industry in the country, who are undoubtedly the most unjustly taxed sector of the Nigerian economy.

For the purpose of this paper, the amenities legitimately expected from Government can be classified into Personal Security, Roads, Public Utilities, Schools, Social Security, Medicare, Housing, and a general enabling environment for economic and social activities to thrive, as would be expected of any civilised human setting. These different aspects will be discussed in turn, to establish that in all these areas, successive Nigerian governments have failed woefully in its social contract with the citizenry, and that any form of taxation in Nigeria is unjustified and amounts to blatant stealing by government.

Managing a real estate property

At every stage in life, you’ve got to take another step. If you really, want to make money in real estates, you’ve got to take a step from single-family home level with proper finances, if you own about ten-unit apartment building or strip mal, you may be able to have good positive cash flow from the onset. How could hire someone to manage the property so you don’t have to constantly be undertaking to be collecting the rents, fixing the house, etc.
On the other hand, its not as rosy as it may sound, there is also a great potential for loss. Assuming you had just one single- family, home, you need just one need a large number of tenants.
In tough times, you may not be able to rent out the lot hence resulting in a serious negative cash flow therefore when going big, you should bear in mind that there are lots of risk to undertake. It is always good to aim at an object and not the image similarly, in investment, you’re got to know where the profits are coming from.
With single – family homes, prices go up as overall residential market value increases. If you buy with lets say 20% down and the value of the property goes up by 10%, you’ve made a profit of 50% (forgetting the costs of transaction temporarily). A house may cost twenty five million Naira and then you deposit five million naira. The value of that house goes up by 10%. The value of that house is now N27, 500,000 your equity is now N7.5million one and a half time
49
what you started with for a fifty percent profit. On the other hand, considering an apartment building, prices are mainly tied to rental income. If you increase your rents, you will have significant profits in a short while rental rates of apartment building does not move the same way with single family homes. Suppose you have an apartment building lets say a 15 unit building where each unit is rented for N1,000,000 annually. The value of the property is based on that rental rate. If you decide to increase the rental rate to let’s say N1, 600,000 annually. The value of the property is a product of number of units and the new rental rate which equals N24, 000,000. this can happen without the prices of single family houses moving. If you paid N15, 000,000 for that building initially, by lifting the rents 60%, you have raised the value of the house 60%. If you kept 20% as deposit, i.e. N3, 000,000 on your apartment building, forgetting temporarily of your mortgage your profit is now 300% which is N9,000,000.
Commercial buildings operate in a similar way to apartment buildings. Their value is also directly determined by their rental income. The greater the rental income, the greater the value. If you buy a building at one level of rental income and increase the rents, you can sell at a higher price. The rent for commercial properties is determined by the front foot. Access to the public is essential for businesses to survive, the more exposure, the more valuable the location. Therefore, a tenant will pay defending on the number of people that will directly flow into their location or how many feet is directly accessible to the public. A commercial tenant on the second floor of a commercial building is most likely to pay a reduced rent than a commercial tenant on the first floor of the building.
On the otherhand, office buildings does not hold access to the public as a valuable factor rather the major factor is the total amount of floor space. Therefore, such buildings are rented out on the basis of square footage. This is the reason why most office buildings are very high as is observable in Marina, the official hob of Lagos. here the higher the building and the larger the office room, the higher the rent.
50
Another vital area in real estates is investing in bare land and developing properties. The basis of all property value is the land. In most cases price appreciation is attributable entirely to land. The structure never goes up in value, it is the land. Land is immobile, it is a natural resource, it is a store of value. Working on a bareland could be very complicated or simplified. Those who specialize in bare land are called speculators. Land speculation entails buying plots of land and developing them for a resell. This is mostly common in rural areas. You could also buy a large plot of land and split it before reselling thereby making substantial profit. You could buy and Acre of a for N9, 000,000 and resell it in halves for N6, 000,000 each and make a profit of N3, 000,000. You could also buy a piece of land and change the land use to suit what you are willing to do with it e.g. you could buy an arable land for a lot low price and change the land use to industrial purposes and later resell the land for a lot of profit on capital. Although this usually involves a lot of expenses but at the end it will be worth the expenses. You could also buy broken-down buildings scrape off the serap and construct new structures on the land. You could also buy poor buildings located on a profitable land, scrape off the building and construct a new building that matches the quality of land. This is usually carried out on old houses which are obsolete but which the land underneath is a very good investment sometimes, you see that a small building stands on a massive acre of land. If such buildings are put up for sale, I will advise that you take up the opportunity immediately.
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Real estate

Another form of residual income is real estate. Real estate is investment in landed properties. This requires a lot of work and concentration unlike investment in stocks. It is a profitable venture which one can easily take his profit because properties have a high tendency to appreciate over the years no matter its location or size.
Atimes, you may want to serve your hard earned Naira from depreciating, them you should try offshore property investment. But before we cover offshore property investment, lets consider real estates in Nigeria. Having your own home is the largest and preferential investment you’ll ever make. In buying a home, there should be several qualities a home must possess before you take ownership of it because if you do not watch out for those qualities, that house may form out to be the worst nightmare you’ve ever had. Such qualities
- Good Neighbourhood schools. This contributes a lot to the value of homes, the better the schools, the faster and higher home prices appreciate an vice versa.
- Pride of ownership. A clean Neighbourhood free from pollution with a serene environment is better. Buying a home in such is such places would yield high dividends in time to come.
- Low crime Rate: Imagine living in a neighbouhood where crime is the order of the day. It is a bitter experience that no one ever dares to face. No one ever desires to live in a battlefield neither does one ever appreciate living in places that cannot be distinguished from a jungle. You naturally love to live in areas with low crime rates. Therefore to make your home a rewarding
42
investment for you, always make sure to know the crime rates of places before buying any home.
- House Size: The size of the house is very essential to enable you make a good investment on your home. Not so many people love large houses except they’re got 80 many children. Nevertheless, depending on the area of real estate you want to undertake large houses may be unavoidably advantageous.
For beginners, it’s a lot more effort investing in real estates as fulltime jobs. Basically, the best way to invest in properties is usually on a part-time basis. It’s important to note that initially, it is unlikely for your properties to yield enough income for you to live on. After a few years when the properties values and rental rates have gone up, it is a different ball game entirely. But for the first ten years, it’s better to think in terms of reinvesting rather than withdrawing income. Like stocks, real estate is planned for the long run (the more properties you own, the greater your wealth overtime). It takes a great deal of patience to make money out of your real estate. Probably 10-20 years with positive cash flow due to rise in rental rates (because of reasons like inflation and national housing shortages in many areas – rural and urban), just as prices always bound to be a degree of risk in everything an individual carries out. In real estates there could be hitches such as a bad year with a loss of job etc but nevertheless, you’ll still have the homes you own to fall back on.
There are several ways of finding good investment properties thus
- Agents: Agents with trusted experience, who is honest and has the interest of his client at heart should be picked. Tell your agent exactly what you want in a house both as a home and an investment. Agents who are hasty in the procession of real estates should be simply avoided. Work with an agent who dedicates his time to the service of his client
- Properties sold by owners. These are properties that are not usually listed but are sold directly by their owners. Buying directly from the owner is a risky business, therefore an agent is needed to handle the paper works for you. there is less risk in single family home investments than there is with
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other types of real estates investments. Never homes are better than older homes because of lower cost of maintenance.
Sometimes properties are bought to boost the age of their buyers, so depending on your financial strength and prevailing on your market conditions make your selection of high priced or cheaper properties. Before going ahead to purchase a property you should ensure that you carry out a thorough inspection of the property Never rely on the seller’s disclosures.
Another important aspect of real estate is investing in offshore property. Now, I know some people would be wondering if it is good to invest outside his country and why answer is a scintillating "yes" The growth of offshore property market has been showing positive results over the years. Such is applicable in the United Kingdom where the population and how mortality rate has led to an undersupply of homes. Offshore property investment is a good way of preserving the value of your money from depreciation. Offshore property investment is advantages because of the system in obtaining mortgage for repayment over a 25 year pen. When planning to invest in offshore property the most vital thing to do is to budget about thirty percent for the deposit and buying cost.
When buying a home, you need a mortgage except if you have the money readily available. To obtain this, you get a long-term loan from a bank or building society the terms which are set out in a legally – binding mortgage deed or agreement. The home is usually put up as security for the loan which may be for a period of 25 years.
Nevertheless, the term could be more than or shorter than the twenty five years I’ve stated. A mortgage consists of borrowed capital with an added interest paid over it.
Note: The longer the repayment term, the smaller the monthly installments but the greater the interest paid on such loans.
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The mortgage company would need an assurance on the credibility of the borrower and also whether the value of such homes covers the value of the loan should there be any default in payment conversely, the borrowers also have to consider the type of loan they want from the mortgage company. Should it be a repayment or interest-only mortgage type? The repayment mortgage type is such that part of the borrower’s monthly repayment plays off the capital while the other part pays off the interest monthly installments change as interest rate rise or fall. An interest only mortgage on the other hand requires interest to be paid on the full loan each month. The capital is repaid at the end of the term most of the mortgages cover interest loans.
Once you have determined what repayment method you want to stick with, you’ll need the services of a mortgage broker in order to determine the most suitable type of mortgage. Some terminologies associated with mortgages rates include.
- Standard variable: This moves up and down in accordance with the Central Bank of base rate instance
- Fixed rate: The interest rate to be paid is set for a given period.
- Capped: This is a variation on the fixed rate with the guarantee of an upper limit on monthly repayments within the given period. Beneath this ‘cap’, the rate moves up and down with henders standard variable.
- Discovated: offers a discount on standard variable for a defined period
- Base rate tracker: tracks the apex banks base rate
- Flexible: this allows borrowers to have a greater control on the installment payment. Here there is no cap and atimes, the borrower could take a payment holiday.
- Cash back: Offers a tax free lump sum once the mortgage is set but may be restrictive
When planning to obtain a mortgage you should arrange a meeting with a mortgage broker. Discuss how much you want to borrow know what you can afford. Be familiar with the fact that you have to cover other expenses such as deposits,
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surveys, legal fees stamp duty, council tax, utility bills, phone bill etc before venturing into owning a home. You also need furniture. The best way to succeed in mortgages is to have the mortgage agreed in principle. Failing to do this may entail your losing the desired property to a third party. The more organized you are the better off your chances by acquiring your desired property.
Once you’re found a property that matches your criteria, make an offer. If the offer is accepted, you should consider the legal and financial process in buying a home. You’ll need to find a solicitor to vet all legal aspects of the sale and carryout a local authority search, which looks for planning proposals such as developments in the vicinity which might affect your chosen property. If the survey results show good results and all legal arrangements have been undertaken, you are now ready to exchange contracts. Once this is done, you and the seller will fix a date for the exchange of keys from the previous owner to the current owner. If for any reason you opt out of the deal, you lose everything you deposited and also the seller cannot accept any higher offer for the property on the completion date, the seller’s solicitor mandates the agents to release the keys.
When buying a home, you should be very careful to follow the following
- Buy at a reasonable price. The more you overpay for a property, the lower your profit is likely to be and the longer you will have to hold unto the property before you can breakeven. You can always acquire properties at reasonable prices because of circumstances the seller may find himself at a given time.
- Don’t over borrow the fatter the deposit you are able to make on a property, the thinner your monthly repayment. This is advantageous because you could repay the monthly repayments without having to rely on tenants.
- Factor in Interest Rate increases while lower interest rates are good news for buyers, it is advisable for you to stress test" your budget before taking the plunge. You need to ensure that you do not over commit yourself
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financially while interest is low, and that you will be able to take the heat when interest rates bounce back up
- Diversify take some of the profits you realize from your real estates and spread your investment risk by investing in equities and other assets.
Now let’s look at how an individual can realize more money to cover the expenses. If your rents aren’t enough, can you increase them? In real estates, you are engaged in a competition and if you try to offset prices to suit you sarcastically, you may eventually lose tenants. Nevertheless, you could still increase rents depending on the difference between the price you want to change currently and what your competitors are charging and the quality of the property you are renting out at that price and the quality of other properties in the area.
Assuming you’ve done all you can to increase your rental income, you may want to break even on a property you already own quickly. Let’s see if you can cut down expenses. There are basically two types of expenses in owning and maintenance of a house thus:
- Fixed Expenses
- Variable Expenses
Fixed expenses include tax
- Taxes: You cannot cut your property takes except you want the erase tax. This you must pay.
- Insurance: Insurance is fixed the only way of reducing insurance expenses is by shopping around for a cheaper policy which may not be very good. How may need liability insurance in case a tenant gets hurt on the property and takes you to court.
- Maintenance: This covers all routine expenses such as water bills etc. you cannot cut this figures below what is given in the bill.
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- Repays: You may need to lay aside a particular sum of money monthly incase of repairs that may be carried out in the house. Depending on the age of the house, you could be able to reduce this sum.
Variable expense includes
- Mortgages: the mortgage payment can be reduced in a number of ways such as buying less expensive home. You could also reduce mortgage by getting a lower interest rate as I have stated before. You can plan ahead so that if interest rates are high, you can go for an adjustable rate loan. This savings can be huge. This type of loans often begin with teasers" rates that is below market. However, these teasers rates disappear rather quickly. Often within a year or two, you interest rate on the adjustable loan will rise to market or even above. At this point, you’ve got to refinance, it possible to a lower-rate mortgage.
On the other hand, if interest rates happen to be low when you buy, get a fixed-rate-30-year loan. This will lock your mortgage into the low rate so that with increased interest rates, your monthly expenses remains stagnant. Always go for the longest-term mortgage you can get to reduce your monthly expenses. It’s also very good to know the relationship between your monthly expenses and how much you put into the property.
The less you put of your own money, the greater your leverage and ultimately the greater your profits. However, you will have a greater monthly expenses because you’ll have a bigger mortgage. On the otherhand, if you put more of your money into a property, the lower your mortgage payments and the difficulty you’ll have in covering them with rental income. Put more money down and you’ll have lower mortgage payments.
Summarily, if you can find a property that offers high rent with low expenses and with proper finances, you can get by putting in little or no cash of your own. Conversely, if you buy a property with lower rental income, you’ll have to put in your own money to offset the mortgage amount to where the monthly payments
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are balanced by rental income. Some people buy properties for a resale and not for rental so you overlook buying close to breakeven and instead buy a property which the rental income is far lower than the expenses. Here putting in a lot of cash to keep the mortgage payments low is advantageous.

Google adsense payment via western union

I bumped into this information today and decided to share it with you guys,especially adsensers from Nigeria.This is good news as the days of having to wait for your cheque to be sent to nigeria is over.Google now pays through western Union money transfer.Below are the details as copied from google adsense website.If you would like to receive your earnings by Western Union Quick Cash, please complete the following steps. Please note that at this time, this payment option is only available to individual publishers.Sign in to your account at www.google.com/adsense.Visit the My Account tab.Click the 'edit' link adjacent to the 'Payment Details' header.Select the Western Union Quick Cash radio button.Click 'Continue'.Click 'Save Changes' to save your payment type.Please make sure that the name on your account exactly matches that on the government issued ID card that you will bring to pick up your Western Union Quick Cash payments. If you need to update your payee name in your account, please let us know and we will be happy to help you to do so.Also, please note that we are unable to guarantee payment for the next payment cycle in this form if your selection was made after the 15th of the month. For example, to ensure payment by Western Union Quick Cash for your March earnings, please complete the steps above before April 15th

Obama

This is one that very few people have had the oppurtunity of seeing. Even the President-elect before he had his day saw a reason to commit things to the father. My greatest worry now is why are they only black people praying for him. Maybe they saw it as a battle between blacks and whites. Anyway it is good

motivation

A little boy once asked his mother: “if work is such a fun, how come rich people don’t do it?” His mother replied that rich people do not only work but do much harder work. What the little boy’s mom did not tell him is that Bill Gate who was at one time the richest man in the world(now the third) did not make his money by laying video games. He was motivated by the desire to be rich, hence he put all his time and energy to work. Every normal person is motivated to perform. So whether you are a clergy, a businessman, a sportsman, an employee or a salesman, you are motivated to do what you are doing.

What is motivation?
Motivation is a set of reasons that compels one to engage in a particular behaviour. The term is generally used for human motivation but theoretically can be used to describe the causes for animal behaviour as well. Here the focus is on human motivation which is the force within or external of a person that arouses the enthusiasm and persistence to pursue a particular course of action.
According to motivation theories, motivation may be rooted in the basic need to minimise physical pain and maximise pleasure, or it may include specific needs such as eating and resting or a desired object; hobby, goal, state of being, ideal; or it may be attributed to less-apparent reasons such as altruism, morality or overcoming mortality.
According to psychologists, employee motivation affects productivity. Therefore, part of the duties of the manager is to channel motivation toward the accomplishment of organizational goals.

Do you motivate employees?
So how do you treat your workers? Do you treat them such that they do not feel a sense of belonging? Or do you treat them as sacks of potatoes? Do you give priority to other factors of production than you give to your employees? Do you consider your employees when you take decisions that affect them? Are you too busy that you cannot attend to the needs of an employee even though they are part of your responsibilities? Do you lie to them? Do you fulfil your promises to them as well due? Do you meet your financial obligations to them? Do you at all bother that workers can be motivated and find out what motivates them? How do you motivate them
Work can be fun if people are motivated to work; that is if managers make efforts to motivate them. Happy workers lead to happy customers and happy customers lead to a successful business. On the other hand, unhappy worker leads to unhappy customers which is very disastrous for the business. When employees are unhappy, they are likely to leave the business and when they do , the organization bears the cost of replacements and the cost of waiting for them to acquire the necessary skills while learning on the job. Added to this are the loss of intellectual capital, decreased moral, increased employee stress and negative reputation. Another form of cost that arises from this is sabotage. Frustrated workers are likely to sabotage the organization and at the end it is the organization that bears the brunt. It is therefore the duty of the manager to motivate employees towards common organisational goals.

Incentive theory
Motivation is all about reward. According to psychologists, a reward, tangible or intangible is presented after the occurrence of an action i.e. behaviour with the intent to cause the behaviour to occur again. Associating positive meaning to the behaviour does this. Studies show that if the person receives the reward immediately, the effect would be greater and duration lengthens. Repetitive action rewarding combination can cause the action to become a habit. Motivation comes from two things: you and other people. There is extrinsic motivation which comes from others and intrinsic motivation which comes from within you.
What can be gleaned from the preceding argument is that there are two types of reward namely intrinsic and extrinsic. An intrinsic reward means satisfaction a person gets in the process of performing a particular action. The belief that one is making contributions to the progress of an organization or society is a form of intrinsic reward. An extrinsic reward is something given to one by another, in this case the manager in recognition of good works. Typically, it comes in the form of pay increase, promotions and gifts

Brief Analysis of Motivation theories
At lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, such a s physiological needs, money is a motivator, however it tends to have a motivating effect on staff that lasts only for a short period ( in accordance with Herzberg’s two factor model of motivation). At the higher level, praise respect, recognition, empowerment and a sense of belonging are far more powerful motivators than money, as both Abraham Maslow’s theory of motivation and Douglas McGregor’s theory X and theory y( pertaining to the theory of leadership) demonstrate.
Maslow has money at the lowest level of the hierarchy and shows other needs are better motivator to staff. McGregor places money in his theory X category and feels it is a poor motivator. Praise and recognition are placed in the theory Y category and are considered stronger motivators than money.
- Motivated employees always seek better ways to do a job
- Motivated employees are more quality oriented
- Motivated workers are more productive
The average workplace is about midway between the extremes of high treat and high opportunity.

Motivating your employees

A little boy once asked his mother: “if work is such a fun, how come rich people don’t do it?” His mother replied that rich people do not only work but do much harder work. What the little boy’s mom did not tell him is that Bill Gate who was at one time the richest man in the world(now the third) did not make his money by laying video games. He was motivated by the desire to be rich, hence he put all his time and energy to work. Every normal person is motivated to perform. So whether you are a clergy, a businessman, a sportsman, an employee or a salesman, you are motivated to do what you are doing.

What is motivation?
Motivation is a set of reasons that compels one to engage in a particular behaviour. The term is generally used for human motivation but theoretically can be used to describe the causes for animal behaviour as well. Here the focus is on human motivation which is the force within or external of a person that arouses the enthusiasm and persistence to pursue a particular course of action.
According to motivation theories, motivation may be rooted in the basic need to minimise physical pain and maximise pleasure, or it may include specific needs such as eating and resting or a desired object; hobby, goal, state of being, ideal; or it may be attributed to less-apparent reasons such as altruism, morality or overcoming mortality.
According to psychologists, employee motivation affects productivity. Therefore, part of the duties of the manager is to channel motivation toward the accomplishment of organizational goals.

Do you motivate employees?
So how do you treat your workers? Do you treat them such that they do not feel a sense of belonging? Or do you treat them as sacks of potatoes? Do you give priority to other factors of production than you give to your employees? Do you consider your employees when you take decisions that affect them? Are you too busy that you cannot attend to the needs of an employee even though they are part of your responsibilities? Do you lie to them? Do you fulfil your promises to them as well due? Do you meet your financial obligations to them? Do you at all bother that workers can be motivated and find out what motivates them? How do you motivate them
Work can be fun if people are motivated to work; that is if managers make efforts to motivate them. Happy workers lead to happy customers and happy customers lead to a successful business. On the other hand, unhappy worker leads to unhappy customers which is very disastrous for the business. When employees are unhappy, they are likely to leave the business and when they do , the organization bears the cost of replacements and the cost of waiting for them to acquire the necessary skills while learning on the job. Added to this are the loss of intellectual capital, decreased moral, increased employee stress and negative reputation. Another form of cost that arises from this is sabotage. Frustrated workers are likely to sabotage the organization and at the end it is the organization that bears the brunt. It is therefore the duty of the manager to motivate employees towards common organisational goals.

Incentive theory
Motivation is all about reward. According to psychologists, a reward, tangible or intangible is presented after the occurrence of an action i.e. behaviour with the intent to cause the behaviour to occur again. Associating positive meaning to the behaviour does this. Studies show that if the person receives the reward immediately, the effect would be greater and duration lengthens. Repetitive action rewarding combination can cause the action to become a habit. Motivation comes from two things: you and other people. There is extrinsic motivation which comes from others and intrinsic motivation which comes from within you.
What can be gleaned from the preceding argument is that there are two types of reward namely intrinsic and extrinsic. An intrinsic reward means satisfaction a person gets in the process of performing a particular action. The belief that one is making contributions to the progress of an organization or society is a form of intrinsic reward. An extrinsic reward is something given to one by another, in this case the manager in recognition of good works. Typically, it comes in the form of pay increase, promotions and gifts

Brief Analysis of Motivation theories
At lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, such a s physiological needs, money is a motivator, however it tends to have a motivating effect on staff that lasts only for a short period ( in accordance with Herzberg’s two factor model of motivation). At the higher level, praise respect, recognition, empowerment and a sense of belonging are far more powerful motivators than money, as both Abraham Maslow’s theory of motivation and Douglas McGregor’s theory X and theory y( pertaining to the theory of leadership) demonstrate.
Maslow has money at the lowest level of the hierarchy and shows other needs are better motivator to staff. McGregor places money in his theory X category and feels it is a poor motivator. Praise and recognition are placed in the theory Y category and are considered stronger motivators than money.
- Motivated employees always seek better ways to do a job
- Motivated employees are more quality oriented
- Motivated workers are more productive
The average workplace is about midway between the extremes of high treat and high opportunity.

Is Yaradua confused

I don't think Mr. President has any vivid reason for being president other than just playing to OBJ's gallery. He does not have any concrete agenda for his administration. At the beginning of his administration, he came up with his seven point agenda. Although I cannot remember any of the seven but definitely, I can remember that Health was nowhere to be found in his so called seven point agenda. The only thing I hear about this administration is "due process" but they do not follow this same due process. More recently, Ribadu, a man that was able to stem down the rot in the nigerian political system, a man that gave hope to the governed about the governors was manhandled by security operatives in Kuru, Jos before the very eyes of the so called excellency goodluck Jonathan. He gave a blind eye to the situation. When the outcry of the public was so much, the same Federal Government that has Goodluck Jonathan as the second in command came out to deny Knowledge of the situation. The Question now is "When he realised that the candidates for the NIPSS awards were incomplete, why didn't he ask questions", "Why was Ribadu not thrown out of the institution before the Awards day". We are really tired of a man masquerading himself as the president of this great country when he is unable to have clear goals for the people. People have been condemning the previous administration of Olusegun Obasnajo but suffice it to say that it was during that administrationthat we recorded the most economic growth in the histtory of this great country. This man Yaradua is almost spending two years in the helms of affirs of the country but has not achieved any remarkable feat. The man is not accountable to the people if not why does he continually use the security operatives to intimidate innocent Nigerians. The same crazy man came up to enforce the stamp duties. I can't imagine why a man as poor as I am would buy a commodity and pay stamp duties on it when I have already paid value added tax. This is the worst period in the history of this country.

School

After four months of stress at school(UNIPORT), I am now free atleast for the next two months. The exams were cheap exams from sources you never expected the funny lecturers to come up with questions from. I don't know how my vacation would be like but I'm sure it would sure be fun

Military democracy

These military personnels it seems no longer know how to behave in a democratic setting otherwise how do you explain that the Naval ratings attached to a Rear admiral that would tomorrow want to become the chief of Naval staff would beat up and strip a lady half naked and have no coutesy of coming out with an apology. This event is one that goes on in this country without anyone raising a brow. It only takes an astute citizen that knows his rights to fight these malicious and inhumanistic elements in the military. The memory of the cyclist tht was shot dead by a rear admiral some two years back is one that wouls still linger for a long while cos the damn admiral has gone free. I wonder why those security operatives did not allow angry mobs to lynch him to death? At least that would have shown all these big boys tne public disgust of their excesses.

Stay hungry stay foolish

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.

Stay hungry stay foolish

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.

Phentermine

Taking phentermine together with other diet medications such as fenfluramine (Phen-Fen) or dexfenfluramine (Redux) can cause a rare fatal lung disorder called pulmonary hypertension. Do not take phentermine with any other diet medications without your doctor's advice.


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Phentermine can cause side effects that may impair your thinking or reactions. Be careful if you drive or do anything that requires you to be awake and alert.
Avoid drinking alcohol. It can increase some of the side effects of phentermine.
Phentermine may be habit-forming and should be used only by the person it was prescribed for. Keep track of how many pills have been used from each new bottle of this medicine. Phentermine is a drug of abuse and you should be aware if any person in the household is using this medicine improperly or without a prescription.

You may have withdrawal symptoms, such as depression and extreme tiredness, when you stop using phentermine after using it over a long period of time. Do not stop using phentermine suddenly without first talking to your doctor. You may need to use less and less before you stop the medication completely.

What is phentermine?
Phentermine is a stimulant that is similar to an amphetamine. Phentermine is an appetite suppressant that affects the central nervous system.

Phentermine is used togther with diet and exercise to treat obesity (overweight) in people with risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes.

Phentermine may also be used for purposes other than those listed in this medication guide.

Who should not take phentermine?
Do not take phentermine if you have used an MAO inhibitor such as isocarboxazid (Marplan), phenelzine (Nardil), rasagiline (Azilect), selegiline (Eldepryl, Emsam), or tranylcypromine (Parnate) within the past 14 days. Serious, life-threatening side effects can occur if you take phentermine before the MAO inhibitor has cleared from your body.


Taking phentermine together with other diet medications such as fenfluramine (Phen-Fen) or dexfenfluramine (Redux) can cause a rare fatal lung disorder called pulmonary hypertension. Do not take phentermine with any other diet medications without your doctor's advice.

Do not take this medication if you are allergic to phentermine or other stimulants, or if you have:

heart disease or high blood pressure;
arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries);
an overactive thyroid;
glaucoma;
if you are in an agitated state; or
if you have a history of drug or alcohol abuse.
Before taking phentermine, tell your doctor if you are allergic to any drugs, or if you have:

problems with your thyroid,
an anxiety disorder,
epilepsy or another seizure disorder, or
diabetes.
If you have any of these conditions, you may not be able to use phentermine, or you may need a dosage adjustment or special tests during treatment.

It is not known whether phentermine will harm an unborn baby. Do not take phentermine without first talking to your doctor if you are pregnant.
It is also not known whether phentermine passes into breast milk or if it could harm a nursing baby. Do not take phentermine without first talking to your doctor if you are breast-feeding a baby.
Do not give this medication to anyone younger than 16 years old without the advice of a doctor.


How should I take phentermine?
Take this medication exactly as it was prescribed for you. Do not take the medication in larger amounts, or take it for longer than recommended by your doctor. Follow the directions on your prescription label.

Taking high doses of phentermine over long periods of time can cause severe skin problems, sleep problems (insomnia), personality changes, and feeling hyperactive or irritable.
Take this medicine with a full glass of water.
It is best to take phentermine on an empty stomach before breakfast, or at least 10 to 14 hours before bedtime.

Phentermine should be taken only for a short time, such as a few weeks.

Do not crush, chew, break, or open an extended-release capsule. Swallow the pill whole. It is specially made to release medicine slowly in the body. Breaking or opening the pill would cause too much of the drug to be released at one time.

You may have withdrawal symptoms when you stop using phentermine after using it over a long period of time. Do not stop using this medication suddenly without first talking to your doctor. You may need to use less and less before you stop the medication completely.

Do not take phentermine in the evening because it may cause sleep problems (insomnia).

Stop taking phentermine if you have increased hunger or if you otherwise think the medication is not working properly. Do not take more phentermine for an increased effect. Taking too much of this medication can cause serious, life-threatening side effects.

Phentermine may be habit-forming and should be used only by the person it was prescribed for. Keep track of how many pills have been used from each new bottle of this medicine. Phentermine is a drug of abuse and you should be aware if any person in the household is using this medicine improperly or without a prescription.
Store phentermine at room temperature away from moisture and heat.

What happens if I miss a dose?
Take the missed dose as soon as you remember. If it is almost time for your next dose, skip the missed dose and take the medicine at your next regularly scheduled time. Do not take extra medicine to make up the missed dose.

What happens if I overdose?
Seek emergency medical attention if you think you have used too much of this medication. An overdose of phentermine can be fatal.

Symptoms of a phentermine overdose may include confusion, hallucinations, feeling restless or aggressive, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, irregular heartbeat, tremors, rapid breathing, confusion, hallucinations, feeling light-headed, fainting, or seizure (convulsions).


What should I avoid while taking phentermine?
Avoid drinking alcohol. It can increase some of the side effects of phentermine.
Phentermine can cause side effects that may impair your thinking or reactions. Be careful if you drive or do anything that requires you to be awake and alert.

What are the possible side effects of phentermine?
Get emergency medical help if you have any of these signs of an allergic reaction: hives; difficulty breathing; swelling of your face, lips, tongue, or throat.
Stop using phentermine and call your doctor at once if you have any of these serious side effects:

chest pain, swelling in your ankles or feet, feeling light-headed, fainting, or feeling short of breath, even with mild exertion;
fast or uneven heartbeat;
unusual thoughts or behavior, feeling restless or confused; or
increased blood pressure (severe headache, blurred vision, trouble concentrating, chest pain, numbness, seizure).
Less serious side effects may be more likely to occur, such as:

feeling nervous or anxious;
headache, dizziness, tremors;
trouble sleeping (insomnia);
dry mouth or an unpleasant taste in your mouth;
diarrhea or constipation; or
itching.
Side effects other than those listed here may also occur. Talk to your doctor about any side effect that seems unusual or that is especially bothersome.

What other drugs will affect phentermine?
Before taking phentermine, tell your doctor if you are using any of the following drugs:


medicines to treat high blood pressure;
insulin or diabetes medication you take by mouth;
guanadrel (Hylorel), guanethidine (Ismelin);
antidepressants such as citalopram (Celexa), escitalopram (Lexapro), fluoxetine (Prozac, Sarafem), fluvoxamine (Luvox), paroxetine (Paxil), or sertraline (Zoloft); or
antidepressants such as amitriptyline (Elavil, Etrafon), amoxapine (Ascendin), clomipramine (Anafranil), desipramine (Norpramin), doxepin (Sinequan), imipramine (Janimine, Tofranil), nortriptyline (Pamelor), protriptyline (Vivactil), or trimipramine (Surmontil).
If you are using any of these drugs, you may not be able to use phentermine, or you may need dosage adjustments or special tests during treatment.

There may be other drugs not listed that can affect phentermine. Tell your doctor about all the prescription and over-the-counter medications you use. This includes vitamins, minerals, herbal products, and drugs prescribed by other doctors. Do not start using a new medication without telling your doctor.

Where can I get more information?
Your pharmacist has information about phentermine written for health professionals that you may read.

What does my medication look like?
Phentermine is available with a prescription under the brand names Adipex and Fastin. Other brand or generic formulations may also be available. Ask your pharmacist any questions you have about this medication, especially if it is new to you.

Adipex-P 37.5 mg--white, oblong, scored tablets with blue speckles
Adipex-P 37.5 mg--light-blue-and-white capsules with two blue bands
Fastin 30 mg--blue-and-clear capsules with blue and white beads

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remember, keep this and all other medicines out of the reach of children, never share your medicines with others, and use this medication only for the indication prescribed

Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided by Cerner Multum, Inc. ('Multum') is accurate, up-to-date, and complete, but no guarantee is made to that effect. Drug information contained herein may be time sensitive. Multum information has been compiled for use by healthcare practitioners and consumers in the United States and therefore Multum does not warrant that uses outside of the United States are appropriate, unless specifically indicated otherwise. Multum's drug information does not endorse drugs, diagnose patients or recommend therapy. Multum's drug information is an informational resource designed to assist licensed healthcare practitioners in caring for their patients and/or to serve consumers viewing this service as a supplement to, and not a substitute for, the expertise, skill, knowledge and judgment of healthcare practitioners. The absence of a warning for a given drug or drug combination in no way should be construed to indicate that the drug or drug combination is safe, effective or appropriate for any given patient. Multum does not assume any responsibility for any aspect of healthcare administered with the aid of information Multum provides. The information contained herein is not intended to cover all possible uses, directions, precautions, warnings, drug interactions, allergic reactions, or adverse effects. If you have questions about the drugs you are taking, check with your doctor, nurse or pharmacist.

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