Archive for August, 2010

Pros and Cons of Owning a Work Based From Home Business

A work based from home business is one that you can do entirely from the comforts of your own home. As the owner of a work based from home business, you are responsible for all aspects of the business. For some, the thought of being in complete control of the work based from home business is exhilarating and a dream come true. For others, a work based from home business may seem daunting and frightening. Therefore, it is a good idea to know the pros and cons of owning a work based from home business in order to determine if it is right for you.

#1 Pro to Owning a Work based from home business: Independence

One of the pros of having a work based from home business is the freedom it grants you. As the owner of a work based from home business, you get to make all of the decisions for the business. You no longer have to sit idly by and feel frustrated as the company you work for makes decisions you feel are poor. In addition, you call the shots. You decide how much or little work you wish to do.

#1 Con to Owning a Work based from home business: Added Responsibility

Some people enjoy having added responsibility. For others, the thought of being completely responsible for the success or failure of the work based from home business can be overwhelming. After all, one wrong move or decision and your work based from home business can experience serious setbacks. If you do not trust in yourself and your ability to make decisions, starting a work based from homebusiness may not be right for you.

#2 Pro to Owning a Work based from home business: Complete Knowledge

When you work for someone else, you do not know everything that is going on behind the scenes. In fact, thousands of people throughout the country have, unfortunately, experienced the shock of having their employer close its doors unexpectedly. For these employees who were left in the dark, it comes as quite a shock to think their job is sturdy and strong one day, only to find they no longer have a job the next.

With your own work based from home business, you are always fully aware of how the business is doing. If things are not going as you had hoped, you generally have enough heads up to know that you need to look for alternative sources of income. With a work based from home business, you are in complete control of your financial future.

#2 Con to Owning a Work based from home business: Time

To successfully start a work from home careers work based from home business, it takes a great deal of time. During the first several months or even years, you might need to put in twelve-hour days or longer getting your business started. Even after it has become successful, you may find that you are putting more hours into your work based from home business than you were putting in at your previous nine to five job. Putting time into your business is particularly important if you wish to stay ahead in the industry you have selected and to gain new customers while retaining old ones.

Shannon Kietzman is a Work Based from Home expert. Her views and ideas are published regularly on http://www.employment911.com

Indio Employment Lawyer Arsenal for Damages, Severance Pay and Employment in Indio for Job Discrimination or Retaliation

Never have there been so many tools for Indio employment lawyers to help people recently fired to win damages for discrimination, to seek a better severance package, including not only a longer period of pay benefits, but also other items, most important of which can be a longer period of health insurance benefits following the termination, or even to save the employee’s job.

If you’ve been fired from your job as a result of discrimination or retaliation, been harassed or the victim of a hostile work environment, or paid less than a person of the opposite sex for the same work for no other valid reason, visit our website at http://www.CaliforniaAttorneysLawyers.com and call us at any of the numbers easily found on our website.

In Indio and throughout California where private employers and government offices have laid off people in the hundreds and thousands, sometimes on a weekly basis there is substantial fear among those who have recently been terminated and those who are in fear that they could be next to be let go. In areas such as the Indio area where unemployment and foreclosures are at their highest in the state, many employees who have been discriminated against or fired in retaliation for complaints of harassment and who previously feared making any complaint, now feel they have nothing to lose.

Some employees are filing class action lawsuits based on everything from age and sex discrimination to discrimination against veterans. Individual claims are being made for overtime pay that the employees never received and retaliation for whistle blowing or reporting harassment.

One of the best tools for Indio employment lawyers is often the employee’s company manual and other memos of the company which often lay out glowing descriptions of how fair the company will be in their employment practices. Such manuals often describe all of the types of actions which the company claims they will not tolerate including the various forms of harassment and how the company will never take a retaliatory action against anyone blowing the whistle on harassment at the company.

Such manuals provide a powerful tool to the employee and the employment lawyer to show the company exactly how they violated not only the law, but also the company’s own employment guidelines. Faced with such violations of the principles the company itself laid down and promised to their employees, it is difficult for such companies to argue that they didn’t realize how they were supposed to respond to an employee’s reports of harassment or that they didn’t know they couldn’t fire someone for making such reports.

Employees must keep in mind that under California law, complaints alleging discrimination or retaliation must be filed with the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement in California within six months of the alleged discriminatory or retaliatory action by an employer, except in certain circumstances.

Some of the laws enforced by the Labor Commissioner in the State of California which prohibit discrimination and retaliation include discrimination or retaliation for threatening to file a complaint with the Labor Commissioner, for taking time off to serve as a juror, be a witness in court or to attend judicial proceedings related to being a victim of a crime or related to a victim, for discharging victims of domestic violence, for taking time off to seek medical or psychological treatment related to domestic violence or a sexual assault, for taking time off to go to a child’s school at the request of a teacher, for disclosing his or her wages, for engaging in political activity, for being a whistle blower (not the real whistles), for being paid less than employees of a different sex for the same work unless based on a bona fide factor other than sex, or for complaining about safety or health conditions.

For Indio Employment Lawyers such as myself who are also Women’s Rights Lawyers, when President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 in late January, he remedied a great injustice and provided employment and women’s rights attorneys with yet another tool in our arsenal to fight for employee’s and women’s rights.

Now women in California and the rest of the nation have a law that gives them the ability to redress the wrong suffered upon them by society in allowing men to receive more money for the same work from an employer and limiting the rights of women to bring a claim for pay discrimination.

In the past, women were required to file suit within 180 days after first being paid unfairly, even if the discrimination of being paid less than male workers in the same jobs continued. And if a woman failed to discover that male workers were being paid more for the same work, a woman still could not hold her employer accountable if she didn’t learn of the unfairness and take action within 180 days of first being paid the lesser rate.

Under the Fair Pay Act of 2009 signed into law by President Obama, the statute of limitations of 180 days starts with each discriminatory paycheck, rather than when the employer starts to discriminate. So long as a woman in CA files her claim within 180 days of receiving any discriminatory paycheck, not just the first one, she is considered timely in bringing her claim.

An important aspect of the Act is that the effective date of the Act is retroactively set at May 28, 2007, which will allow it to apply to all compensation discrimination claims that have been filed on or after that date.

Women can sue for back pay awards for up to two years before she files her employment discrimination claim under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Fair Pay Act of 2009 does not change the two-year back pay limit.

Under the Act, an unlawful practice occurs when a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice is adopted, when a person becomes subject to the decision or practice, or when a person is affected by the decision or practice, including each time wages, benefits or other compensation is paid.

California also has it’s own version of the Federal WARN Act which in certain circumstances requires 60 days warning before laying off workers. Under the 2003 California version of the Act, the requirement of 60 days warning applies to establishments with 75 or more employees who have been employed for at least 6 of the previous 12 months, who layoff or relocated 50 or more employees within a 30-day period. There are also various exceptions to the rule.

For the elderly employee laid off, an important ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court has given added protection to older workers. Elderly persons who file employment discrimination lawsuits no longer need to prove that an employer acted intentionally. It is enough that the employee can prove that the layoffs had a disparate effect on the elderly workers.

Layoffs of caregivers providing care to sick family members may also violate federal law.

And all of these tools are still in addition to the tools Indio employment lawyers have against employers who practice discrimination based on sex, religion, race, age, or sexual orientation, or who subject their workers to a workplace that constitutes a hostile environment.

Visit our website at http://www.CaliforniaAttorneysLawyers.com and call us if you have been discriminated against or are the victim of retaliation by an employer in Indio or if you have been receiving less pay than a person of the opposite sex for the same work by your employer for no other valid reason.

It is thus imperative that an employee being laid off who is provided with a separation agreement and release of all claims against his employer consult with an employment attorney to determine if there weren’t violations of any of these laws and others that can assist the employee and his or her attorney to negotiate a larger severance package.

If you have recently been fired, are in fear of losing your job or if you have been presented with a separation agreement or severance package and have been discriminated against, harassed or are the victim of retaliation in Indio by your employer, we invite you to call our office.

Visit our website at http://www.CaliforniaAttorneysLawyers.com if you are the victim of employment discrimination, retaliation or of discriminatory compensation in California. We have the knowledge and resources to be your Indio Employment Lawyer and Indio Employment Attorney anywhere in Southern California from Indio to Orange County, and Santa Barbara to Palm Springs and all points in between, including Irvine, Huntington Beach, Anaheim, Ventura, Newport Beach, San Luis Obispo, San Diego, Santa Ana, Riverside, Ontario and Carlsbad.

Email Marketing Solutions Assist Convenience Stores, Save Time and Money

If email marketing solutions are so inexpensive and simple to use, why is it that you never see convenience stores using them?


As a convenience store owner, you don’t have the time or money to spend on costly print ads, and definitely not enough of a profit margin to justify using ads in TV. But that doesn’t mean you cannot advertise to increase sales. Email marketing solutions are a cost effective way to bring your clients to your store more often. Compared to other forms of advertising, email marketing solutions cost a fraction of the cost. Print ads can run you anywhere from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands. Obviously, this isn’t an option for your store. Email marketing solution platforms can cost as little as $10 for one thousand emails.


You don’t have time for this! Your store is open early and late in order to accommodate your clients. Plus, you need your free time to spend with the family. You won’t be able to get around to this also, right?


Wrong!


Email marketing solutions only takes a few moments to set up, and what you get are professionally crafted advertising campaigns sent directly to your clients.


So here’s how you start. This first thing you have to do is collect a list of emails. There are a number of ways to do this. One effective method is to collect business cards: At the cash register, you can place a bowl (or some other form of bin). Add a sign telling clients that if they drop off their business cards, they can receive discounts on in-store purchases through your email marketing solutions campaigns. What clients will do is put their business cards in the bowl with an email to contact them. Just like that, you have the first few contacts for you email campaign.


Now, you need to sign up for an email marketing solutions account, create your first campaign and send it out to the people on your list. Signing up is simple, as email marketing solutions are user-friendly.


Creating your campaign is a simple process also. Email marketing solutions provide you with simple-to-use templates. All you have to do is input your written information (or copy and paste it), and add your own images from your computer.


Once your email marketing campaign is created and sent out, you will be able to track which of your clients were clicking on your promotions. Also, by adding a ‘forward to friend’ button, you can also expand your mailing list, and increase your potential to gain more clients.


Here are some things to keep in mind when filling in your email marketing solutions template: Do not use excessive bolding, italics, and capital lettering in the body or the subject line of your email. Plus, try not to put too many product images without adding content to support the images. Bolding, italics, capitalization, and a high image to text ratio are all criteria that the spam filters look for. If you overuse them, your email will not go into your subscribers’ inbox, but rather into their spam/junk box.


By using email marketing solutions, your convenience store will have a greater customer return rate, which will drive up your sales. Email marketing solutions can provide you with this added business in a very reasonable and time-sensitive manner. It can maximize your store’s potential, save your money, and provide you the opportunity to spend quality time with your family. Now that sounds like a sweet deal!

Robert Burko is the President of Elite Email, the complete email marketing solutions package used by small, medium and large organizations around the world. You can deploy comprehensive email marketing solutions for your convenience store with a no-risk free trial. Start harnessing the power of email marketing today!

Online Marketing Consultants

Internet is an important medium of communication employed by businesses and organizations. Companies use it to convey their message to their target customers. It is a very effective as well as cost effective medium to reach your customer anywhere in the world. Internet or online marketing is a mix of internet related activities that target the customer directly or indirectly. These activities include web casts, opt-in email campaigns, portal site media and newsletter sponsorships along with search engine optimization and marketing.

If you have an online business then adopting online marketing is not a matter of choice but a necessity. You then have to choose an online marketing company that provides efficient online marketing services. Select a company that is well versed with the nuances of online marketing concepts and is proficient in using them and has established its credentials as online marketing consultants.

Mosaic ITES services is one of the best online marketing consultants in India. This Online Marketing Company India offers many internet marketing services such as;

• Search Engine Marketing

With the help of Search engine marketing the company works at improving the search engine rankings of the client company. By improving the search engine rankings the company helps to boost your sales.

• Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is an integral part of search engine marketing. It is a cost effective tool that helps in inviting targeted traffic to the client’s website which indirectly & directly helps in increasing sales and generating business for the client company.

• Email Marketing

Email marketing is a powerful internet marketing tool that is very cost effective and can be used by small as well as big businesses. The response rate is around 3-15 % and is certainly a safe bet for businesses.

• Pay Per Click campaign

Pay per click campaigns are a very effective tool. In this type of campaign you have to bid on search terms and you are ranked according to bid price. You are charged when a customer clicks on your ad or listing.

Mosaic services, has emerged as an important player in the online marketing field and is counted amongst the best in the search engine optimization field. This online marketing agency has a diverse portfolio of web services. It also offers web design and development services, advertising and outsourcing services besides online marketing consultancy services.

We work towards achieving client objectives and client satisfaction is our credo. We offer a comprehensive package of services that include SEO, design & development, link building and PPC campaigns, so that you have the advantage of finding all the services at one place. Visit the site www.mosaic-service.com to know more about the various services offered by the site.

Vikas Malhotra is a successful Internet marketing consultant, having helped over 900 businesses to increase their visibility and sales online. He is a web branding expert with experience in online media planning, buying, and search engine marketing. To know more about him, visit http://www.mosaic-service.com.