Introduction - Our law firm has clients that come to us referencing some book they read about offshore banking or offshore corporations. We have read a lot of this material and though it was time to comment on it and the same for the offshore newsletters.

Offshore Guides and Books - The big problem is that the material written in these books is generally at least one year old, often longer than that. The laws have a habit of changing. Panama just changed the tourist visa laws for instance and now it will be out of date in numerous books. We have also read a lot of these books that have plain gross errors in addition to time related errors. The author is trying to sell books. Most of the guides cover 20 or 30 jurisdictions. It is a massive undertaking to get all the laws correct in each jurisdiction and most research other books and if the original author has an error then the errors carry through in all the books that used the erroneous one as a source text. Offshore Guides and Books are flawed by definition since they take so long to write, copyright, print, distribute and take to the marketplace in the form of inventory. Do not rely on the book. Remember the author of the book be he a lawyer or not is not going to represent you if trouble comes knocking on your door. You are still going to have to go out and find a lawyer to represent you. Be on guard with offshore books and guides.

Offshore Newsletters - We see these being offered all the time. Generally these are tied to the people holding offshore seminars on asset protection, retirement or real estate.

Often accountants, lawyers and other legitimate authorities author these newsletters. Problem is these authorities are not your lawyer or accountant and they will not represent you in the event of any problems following their advice. The other problem is these professionals are not in a straight up client relationship with you. They are working for the seminar company, not you. You are not their client. It is their job to see that you buy things from the company they work for. In the case of real estate the company is going to get a commission on anything you buy so it is not in their best interests to get you the best deal. The more you spend the more they make. The extra commissions they earn on your purchases can very well increase the cost you will pay for real estate. Generally speaking these so called experts have a conflict of interest between you the reader and the people they work for and their material is best taken with a large grain of salt. Remember the prices you see listed on their websites for real estate are going to be what we call "gringo Prices", inflated prices for the foreign purchaser.

Consumers are the life line of any successful business and you can learn a great deal of information from them. If you want to find out how good or bad your business is call the customers and ask them. They will give you straight answers and you can modify your approach if there are areas where you are failing to meet their needs.

They will appreciate the fact that you are interested in what they have to say, not just taking their money and then tossing them aside. Without really doing much of anything you have just made the bond between you and the customer stronger. Loyal customers will come back to make future purchases as well as refer others to you.

The fact that conducting customer phone surveys leads to retaining those relationships means that you aren’t going to have to work as hard in the future with marketing to have a successful business. It is harder to continually find new customers out there in the market so focus a great deal of your attention on those you already have. You want them to be repeat customers for life once they make an initial purchase from you.

Consumer trends never stay the same for very long so business owners are always trying to figure out what to offer them next. Some are leaders in this area and they control the biggest portion of the consumer market. Others simply follow along in their footsteps but they don’t reap the same volume of sales.

By talking to your customers on the phone you will be able to successfully forecast emerging trends. They will know better than any one else what direction they are moving in. With this information you can revamp your marketing strategies and offer them something new before your competition does.

You will find investing in a customer phone survey results in fewer customers that aren’t satisfied with what you have to offer. This will save your business a substantial amount of money. First, you won’t have to pay so much for customer service support because there won’t be as many issues. Second, those customers that are satisfied are less likely to return products and ask for a refund.

The data that is collected from customer phone surveys can help you determine if your business should expand. This could be to offer more of what you are already doing or to implement new products or services. Having such data available reduces the risk of jumping into such ventures and hoping the will be successful.

You will find phone surveys can be a very effective tool for your business. It doesn’t matter what types of goods or services you offer because consumers are going to dictate the success. Don’t let problems that you could have taken care of result in your business not being successful. It doesn’t take too much time or money to conduct phone surveys with your customers but the information is priceless.

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E-Commerce Update for Entrepreneurs

Trends in Ecommerce are important as billions of electronic dollars build upon themselves year after year - making numerous budding entrepreneurs more money than they ever dreamt they would see! Companies like Facebook, said to be valued at fourteen billion dollars only four years in operation. And yes, that is billion - with a B.

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Other companies, like YouTube - might only fetch a mere billion dollars. While many companies still go the traditional route of selling products and services online, and doing quite well judging from the massive increases in online sales, other companies sell nothing at all! They simply invite people to come and share some E-time with their site and collect advertising revenue in the process. Sites like Facebook have people willingly putting their demographic info into computer systems that allow advertisers to target a specific group of people. Want only women age 25-34 who are single Moms and work? How tough is it to hit that exact group with television advertising? But with online databases where people sign up so they can post and share their pictures, stories and even videos, the advertisers know exactly who they are reaching!

There are a million and one ways to make money on the Internet. And more and more would be entrepreneurs are discovering this and cashing in! Take a look at some figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce:

While total commerce went up less than nine percent from 2004 to 2005, E-Commerce, or those little electronic dollars went flying around cyberspace at almost twice that rate, or just under seventeen percent! The most notable number in Business to Business was the manufacturing sector. Up only 9.9% year over year as a whole, E-Commerce manufacturing was up a whopping 27.1%!

But if you think that is something, take a look at the Business to Consumer Retail figure! As a whole retail eeked out a less than six and a half percent gain. But E-Commerce retail was up 22.2 percent! While total retail sales struggled compared to most other sectors, E-Commerce went through the roof!

These figures seem to make it clear that people have become quite content to shop online. But surely there is a preliminary report that would show us how we fare in 2007? Indeed there is, and the numbers continue to amaze:

We can again see that while the total retail sales may only be sloughing along at three to six percent as we compare current quarters to the year ago quarters (last two columns) we see that the E-Commerce retail figures continue well into the double digits, with most of the listed quarters reporting gains of more than twenty percent!

The United States, indeed the world is now embracing all forms of E-Commerce and there doesn't appear to be any indication of that trend reversing anytime soon. For people thinking about becoming an online Entrepreneur the challenges are certainly present. But one would be hard pressed to name a better time to face these challenges!

Want to know when this article is updated? (The third quarter E-Commerce report will be released on November 19th) Submit your email and we will let you know!

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Information in this report was obtained from the United States Department of Commerce - Census Bureau. Some figures may be preliminary figures. The data is believed to be accurate but is not guaranteed. Readers are encouraged to visit the Department of Commerce - CB and read the reports in their entirety. Any projections made in this report are only an opinion.

http://www.datachoices.com/public/Ecommerce2007.html

Online surveys have been proven to be the best method for companies to gather research as its quick, simply and cost effective. They offer people the chance to fill out a survey and get cash on completion – told you its simple! These forms can range anything from five minutes to thirty minutes and the price you receive depends on that factor. In today's world its said more then 50% of consumer research is carried out via online surveys as there proven to be the most effective and efficient rather then carrying out on site surveys which takes more staff, time to prepare, more effort, etc.

Companies have been using surveys to do their research and find out consumer needs based on a product or to find out peoples buying habits since the very beginning as the only way to find out what people think is to ask them! By inventing paid surveys or giving incentives to complete them will benefit everyone as people like us get paid for lending a few minutes of our time and the company gets its cheap easy research so they can improve the product to make it more desirable – therefore boosting sales and revenue.

There is definitely money to be made by taking on paid surveys; you can do this full or part time to suit yourself. The main beneficial concept would be that you work as much as you want because you are your own boss and you have the capability to earn as much or as little as you want to.

Paid surveys aren't for everyone however, some people find them boring and mundane but in a way they can be exciting and interesting for some people as your involved in new products and get to put your opinion to use and make a difference. On some you will actually get a product to test physically before it's even introduced to the public and then simply give initial comments on it so that can be quite cool.

When taking these surveys you're not discriminated in any way as everyone's opinion counts. It doesn't matter on your experience or education; you're a consumer so you're eligible to take part. The hardest thing to do with this method of money making is to find the legit companies out their, they can be found by looking at user reviews and usually if someone gets scammed they will report and comment so you know to stay away from them. There is also a comprehensive database full of legitimate paid survey companies available so if you have the motivation to find it, it shows that you will be successful in this money making chance of a lifetime. Failing that you can just ask around as someone you know may have the database or maybe you already know people in the paid survey industry.

You can read up on articles about the scamming companies and what to look out for, having a quick five minute read can save you loads of time and money so its well worth doing before you start – you'll thank us later.

Call me a homemaker. Call me a domestic engineer. At the core of it all, I'm a stay-at-home mom. Some say that stay-at-home moms have the hardest job in the world. This may or may not be true, but one thing is: the job doesn't pay (at least in a financial sense). That's why I decided that, once all of my kids were old enough to go to school, I would go from a homemaker to a home worker.

Once I made the decision to become a home based worker, it was time to find the right home based business opportunity. It wasn't as though someone was standing on a street corner with a sign that said, "Money for Moms." And I wasn't going to go around with a sign that said, "Mom Need Money." Instead, I booted up my computer and went online in search of the right home based business.

I was surprised by what I found in the way of business opportunities for a home worker. There seemed to be something for everyone, but I had a hard time figuring out which were legitimate and which were scams. Luckily, I found a website that had done much of the groundwork for me and provided a number of pre-screened opportunities for the home worker. With those resources, I was able to get started.

At first, I started small. I wanted to make my own hours and be there for my kids when they got home from school. So, I decided to start taking online surveys from home. I signed up with a company and began to make between five and seventy-five dollars per survey. Each survey took between five minutes and a half hour to complete, and the money would show up in my PayPal account between two and six weeks after I completed a survey.

Once I dangled my toes in the water, I wanted to add to my income, so I decided to learn how to write Google AdWords ads. Google AdWords are those little text ads that you see on the right side of search results pages and on some websites. I discovered that I had a knack for it, and started to make decent money.

Before long, it dawned on me that in order to ensure I had a steady income stream, I had to diversify my sources of revenue. So, while I continued to take surveys and write AdWords ads, I also launched my own websites so I could do affiliate marketing and sell products. I know this sounds hard - especially for the home worker who doesn't know the first thing about building a website - but it was actually quite easy. I found that, if you hook up with the right companies, they will actually build and host your websites for you. They will even train you and give you marketing tips in order to drive traffic to your websites.

Today, I feel like I have the best of both worlds. As a home worker, I can choose my own hours and be there for my kids, but I can also earn a good income to help support my family.