Most companies publish their annual reports for disclosure, but the details of how those ‘final’ calculations are derived, are closely guarded by many companies.

Business Financial Records are shared with four direct groups of people, but they might also be shared with various other outside interests:

• the people who manage a business
• the financial consultants and advisers*
• the external people who have a direct financial interest to a business
• the people and organizations that have an indirect effect on a business

The people, who make the decisions or recommendations concerning a company’s finances, make it based on three main categories: [This applies to non profit organizations as well]

*Are among both direct and indirect interests or effects

Management refers to the group of people who are in charge of operating a business and suggesting changes to improve the profitability and liquidity goals. If a business is extremely large, then the management will most often require more than one person or group of people.

Managers need to be able to answer important questions: Whether the company’s meeting its goals and projections, or whether there is need for adjustments. They must know if they have a profitable rate of return, whether the company has enough assets, which products bring in the most money, to name a few.  When making a decision, managers usually follow a systematic approach. Even though larger businesses require a more concrete analysis, they follow a similar pattern to small businesses.

External people with a direct interest are either Investors or Creditors.

Investors are the individuals that invest in a business and will keep a part of the ownership, also known as shareholders. They are concerned with the success and failure of the company, both past and present. They will also want to know the potential for earnings in the future, in addition to any risks involved. A concrete analysis of the financial statement will help prospective investors make those decisions.

Creditors are the companies that lend money to businesses for short or long term needs. Some examples of creditors are banks, mortgage companies, and insurance companies. Their main concern is whether a business will have the money to repay the loan, with interest. Some of the things they study before they make their decisions are a company’s liquidity, cash flow, and profitability.

External groups and organizations with an indirect interest are usually either industry related or governmental.

Industry

Some industry groups, such as labor unions analyze the financial statements of corporations to help negotiate a contact. The income of a company plays a major role in forming these contracts. The individuals who give advice to investors and creditors such as brokers and financial analysts have an indirect financial interest in a business. The amount of interest in the financial health of corporations has been growing by consumer groups such as customers and the public. They are also concerned about how the corporation will affect the social patterns of the environment and of the people that reside in that area.

Regulatory

Most companies generally have to report to one or more regulating agencies in the United States All corporations must answer to the Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC(To find out more information visit there website at http://www.sec.gov/). This is set up by the government to insure and protect the public by regulating the buying and selling of stocks. Companies that are listed on the Stock exchange must adhere to the rules and regulations.

Revenue

According to the rules and regulations of federal, state, or even local laws, individuals and companies are required to pay a variety of taxes. These include but are not limited to, sales tax, excise tax, social security tax, federal, state, payroll, and city income taxes. Each tax requires there own rules and regulations which can be very confusing at times. Reporting your taxes is a law and a very meticulous and tedious process. For example, The Internal Revenue Code contains over a thousand rules for delivering accounting information in federal income taxes.

Do you have leadership qualities? Maybe you have even asked yourself that question.

When you are at work, do you get frustrated because things don’t seem to be happening the way they’re supposed to be? You see people milling around but nothing gets accomplished. And in the daily hustle and bustle, do you feel that your goals remain just that – goals. Then maybe its time for you to stand up and do something about it.

Most people are content just to stand around listening for orders. And it isn’t unusual to adopt a follow-the-leader mentality. But maybe, somewhere inside of you, you feel the desire to make things happen – to be the head, not the tail. Then maybe leadership just suits you fine.

Some people believe that great leaders are made, not born. Yes, it may be true that some people are born with natural talents. However, without practice, without drive, without enthusiasm, and without experience, there can be no true development in leadership.

You must also remember that good leaders are continually working and studying to improve their natural skills. This takes a commitment to constantly improve in whatever endeavor a person chooses. To be a leader, one must be able to influence others to accomplish a goal, or an objective. A leader contributes to the organization and cohesion of a group.

Contrary to what most people believe, leadership is not about power. It is not about harassing people or driving them using fear. It is about encouraging others towards the goal of the organization. It is putting everyone on the same page and helping them see the big picture of the organization. You must be a leader, not just their boss.

People follow others when they see a clear sense of purpose. People will only follow you if they see that you know where you are going. Remember that bumper sticker? The one that says, don’t follow me, I’m lost too? The same holds true for leadership. If you, yourself, do not know where you’re headed, chances are people will not follow you at all.

You must know the vision of the organization. Having a clear sense of hierarchy, knowing who the bosses are, who to talk to, the organization’s goals and objectives; and how the organization works is the only way to show others you know what you are doing.

Being a leader is not about what you make others do. It’s about who you are, what you know, and what you do. You are a reflection of what you’re subordinates must be.

Good leadership instills trust and confidence in your subordinates. If they trust you they will go through hell and high water for you and for the organization. That trust and confidence is built on good relationships, trustworthiness, and high ethics.

The way you deal with your people and the relationships you build, will lay the foundation for the strength of your group. Once you earn their trust and confidence, you may proceed to communicate the goals and objectives your group must undertake.

Communication is a very important key to good leadership. Without this you can not be a good leader. The knowledge and technical expertise you have must be clearly conveyed to other people.

Every great leader also has good judgment. You must be able to assess situations, weigh the pros and cons of any decision, and actively seek the most sound solution. It is this judgment that your subordinates will come to rely upon. Therefore, good decision-making is vital to the success of your organization.

Leaders are not do-it-all heroes. They should not claim to know everything, nor should their subordinates rely upon the team leaders’ skills alone. Good leaders recognize, and take advantage of, the skills and talents of their subordinates. Only when you come to this realization will you be able to work as one cohesive unit.

If you possess leadership qualities, then you must ask yourself: Do you have the drive and the desire required of leaders?

It is no secret that those in public relations sectors who have control over or manage information, automatically acquire a degree of power. Max Weber said it best when he stated publicly, to the House of Representatives, “a bureaucracy, through sure power instinct, fights every attempt of the parliament to obtain knowledge.”

How true these words ring in our ears. Because of these words, as well as other aspects of these facts, the world is revolving rapidly into the field of knowledge to improve public relations.

Despite that, it is a proven fact that knowledge is strength. Many public relation officers believe that being in office is power. Contrary to their notion, without knowledge, administrative officers are sure to fail as the system weakens overtime.

It was noted that relationships amid complex organizations in public relations, where politicians hold office, there appears to be more power. In the public relations educational sector, superintendents on school boards tend to have more power than educational officials in larger cities. Suburban superintendents seem to have less control.

In the same token, managers in larger cities tend to have more power over the managers in smaller areas. There is no mistake that “knowledge is power.”

In fact, we see this power brought out in some of the famous people that spoke publicly, which include
Martin Luther King Jr. and President Bill Clinton. These men made a difference by showing their power of knowledge.

Woodrow Wilson also made a difference. President Wilson created the foundation for the early public relations of our time. In one publication, Wilson pointed out that building resources could expand and strengthen the public relations.

For all these reasons and more, public relations can make or break a business. Responsible conveyance of information can build your reputation as well as the ‘bottom’ line. Provide knowledge and information according to the needs of your customer base. Use public relations as a means of fulfilling their needs, not your own and watch the prosperity of everyone soar.

Each need fulfilled will create new opportunities via word of mouth. Word of mouth is the best advertising in many ways. With all the hype this day in age, people are seeking out friends, co-workers and family for references on tried and true services/products. You can’t buy this type of loyalty for any amount of money.

Keep your claims of service or products within the boundaries of what you can supply 100% and you can’t lose. Now go deliver and then some. Show your clients/customers, there’s no hype - only valuable information, services or products; then watch your business soar.

Trying to find no cost, quality software is not that difficult - if you know where to find it. Did you know there are software programs out there that compare to most well known software programs - that won’t cost you anything, nada, not one red cent! Why pay $100’s for well known software programs, if you can get comparable software without the advertising costs attached to mainstream software?

Most people looking for alternatives to the more costly software programs, mistakenly search for “freeware” or shareware only. While these are good alternatives to many programs, there is another option you should seriously consider: Open Source Software.

Unlike the shareware or freeware software programs, which may have limited capabilities (demos, trial periods) or require paying a registration fee to unlock certain features, Open Source software is full feature software programs that do not expire or limit usage, but actually give you access to the raw source code.

Firefox is a good example of open source software. Open Office Suite is the most popular open source alternative to Microsoft’s Office Suite. I personally use Open Office and have used it for several years now - I love it! Below you will find a few links to some popular Open Source Software programs, but before you start clicking links and moving on - remember this simple trick for the next time you need a software program: When searching for your software, use the following search term (including the quote symbols) “Open Source followed by the type of software. EXAMPLE: “open source accounting software” AND always follow this with a search for the website’s domain name with complaints “www.thedomainname.com + complaints” and if a particular website has provided unsafe software in the past, (spyware, malware, etc) you should find a list of returns on your search.

Here are those links I promised:

Open Source Software for Windows Users - Some popular programs for Windows platform users. Popular programs like Mozilla Firefox, RSSOwl, Juice, Open Office, Gimp, Filezilla. (Gimp has a learning curve, but is well worth learning if you are into creation your own graphics)

Open Source Software for Mac Users - Some popular programs for Mac Users.

W3C Open Source Software - An international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.

Remember, always keep your anti-virus software running and scan the downloaded file before extracting or installing. Always select the option “save to” as opposed to “run” option for safety’s sake. Now go find some great open source software for yourself.

The above links are in no way all inclusive, so if you have a great [open source or free] site you would like mentioned here. Leave your comment below and once I have confirmed the link/site, the comment will be approved so that all might benefit. Thanks.

Someone recently asked me about Public Relations and where it began. In one way or another, Public Relations has been around since the beginning of time. But, who actually set the standards?

President Wilson actually set the foundation for public relations, by addressing issues and bringing out the point that building resources could strengthen the system. This later led people to see that knowledge held the power that officials needed to produce a strong public relations and orderly system.

In-spite of these facts however, many high-nosed officials think that being in office creates the power. This is why we see so much distortion, confusion, swindles and downright corrupt actions that cause the people harm.

Public relations is about serving the people, supplying the knowledge they seek. Yet many companies [and most especially, Governments] forget this basic concept, using public relations as a means to boost their own needs.

Good public relations therefore, must start with and focus on your audience’s needs, not those of your business. In the end, your business needs ARE what your audience is focused on and seeks to accomplish. The greatest value of your business is your audience, without them it would not exist.

• Learn your audience’s needs
• Serve the needs of your audience
• Empower your audience with knowledge
• Address individual issues with facts
• Earn their trust through earnest effort
• Recommend, Suggest, Offer Advice
• Present choices with proven methods
• Give them the latitude to make their own decisions
• Include THEIR needs when making your own decisions
• Remember their needs are YOUR needs

Even with the popularity there are still many in the internet community that really don’t know what affiliate marketing is. Plus those that do know of affiliate marketing often times do not fully understand it or know the basics.

My first bit of advice would be to find a mentor. My second piece of advice would be to find a mentor. Get the picture?

The Internet industry has had affiliate marketing or affiliate programs for awhile now. It is a very popular business model for generating income online. It allows you to get products together quickly for your new online business and cheaply.

Success with affiliate marketing is not easy and just does not happen overnight. It is like most online activities, it takes persistence and variety. You will need to develop and try different strategies to find those that work. It may take signing up for several different affiliate programs before finding one that performs well for you. Every one will take time and effort on your part.

Often expectations are high when starting out.

Most think to make more money, they need to place affiliate banners all over their site. But this usually does not work the way they think it will. Too many banners will make a website look like a link farm with little value to visitors. Most visitors will not be interested, will not click on your banners and will leave quickly.

Mentors have been there and have the ability to guide you in order to increase your sales. Their experience and knowledge will help you generate more income.

To promote affiliate products on your website they need to match the theme of your website. You need products that match the niche of your website so your visitors will have interest in them. Banners that you do place on your website should blend in well with the design.

Experienced affiliate marketers understand how the business works and can speed up your path to success by passing on some hard learned truths of the business.

Affiliate marketing requires a proficiency in several things including link exchanging, developing newsletter marketing, forum advertising, search engine optimization and a mentor can ease the learning curve. They can assist you in getting a clearer picture of what it takes.

Any affiliate marketing mentor should have already achieved success in the business and they can pass on their experiences to improve your chances for success.

To achieve success in affiliate marketing become effective, efficient and have a mentor there to help you along the way. Most that are new to affiliate marketing just assume that they are going create big bucks in just a short amount of time, but they are wrong. There are always new and very important things for you to learn when it comes to any affiliate program, so keep your eyes open for any new things surfacing that you should be aware of.

Anyone out there can achieve their dreams as long as they remain focused and in control at all times, knowing exactly what needs to be completed to reach all of the goals. Just go for it, stop letting time pass you by being unhappy with your career. Find out more about what an affiliate program can do for you.

What is Affiliate Marketing? And just as important is how you can profit from it.

The idea of an affiliate program is a very simple marketing strategy. In part it is an outgrowth of the Internet and free email services. Imagine that you are standing in the middle of a crowd of hundreds of millions of people with money in their pockets, and a desire to spend it.

If you had a product to sell, it would seem that you are in Heaven, wouldn’t it? If you are planning to engage in Affiliate Business Internet Marketing Online in an active role, you either need to start getting people who visit your site to subscribe to your newsletter, or you need to buy lists of addresses from people who gather lists of “double opt-in” subscribers.

A double opt-in has to agree to accept email from one site, and also has to agree to accept emails from unspecified “others” who may be affiliated with the site you subscribed to.

Now imagine that you have the ability to send each of them a piece of mail every day. No need to imagine; you can do it. What’s the catch? The catch is that you need their exact address, and their permission to send them the mail.

How do you get this permission? New laws in the U.S. governing Spam, require that you acquire this permission from the addressee, and that the addressee has the right to cancel that permission at any time.

Whether or not you are in an Affiliate Marketing Program, you are continually being offered the option to join some marketer’s “list.” Whatever you are interested in; whatever you read on the Internet, you surely have seen an invitation to receive a “newsletter” from that site. If you “subscribe” to the newsletter, you are a captured address with a “single opt-in.”

With you being a “single opt-in” the owner of the newsletter has certain rights with regard to sending you emails. These rights include, but may not be limited to sending you “offers” directly from the owner of the newsletter. Before you subscribe to any newsletter, READ the “terms and conditions” and the “privacy policy” of that site, (you know, those two little boxes you check without reading just to get your newsletter).

The affiliate program or programs are challenging to figure out in the beginning, just stick to your guns and you will have it worked out quickly.

Remember, targeted marketing, research and websites that convert into sales are key to the affiliate program marketing business. Buy a book from an authority in the business, understand what it’s all about, and then jump in and start promoting! This is definitely a business anyone can enjoy and profit from!

An affiliate program can definitely make your profits increase over a short period of time.

This article is to give you a broad overview into affiliate marketing - an introduction to the what, why, who and more.

What should you look for when joining an affiliate program? One of the most important things to look for is the conversion of the publisher. You don’t want to sign up for an affiliate program if the publisher is not converting well as you will not be able to make any money that way.

The other thing to do is to do some research on the publisher see what they are selling, maybe even try the product if not too expensive, and always check the Alexa rating. These things will arm you with good information to determine if this is a good program to get involved with.

Want to make big time money on the internet even if you don’t have a product to sell? Well, tap into the power of affiliate marketing..

Basically, affiliate marketing is a method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor/sale to a publisher’s site according to Wikipedia. The benefits of Affiliate Marketing are two fold - the affiliate makes money from advertising the publisher’s products, and the publisher generates more traffic and money based on the amount of affiliates he has.

What do I do after I join an affiliate program? The first thing to do is decide how you want to market your affiliate program. Sometimes you will run across affiliate programs just in your random browsing of the internet. The best way to get information on affiliate programs is to check with a company that deals with affiliate programs on the regular. These types of sites are better because most of them provide you with the linking code, banners, text links, etc… to aid in your marketing.

The most important task in internet marketing is search engine optimization and submission. There are some quality directories and search engines where you can submit your website. By submitting your website to the quality directories, search engines will be able to find your website.

Another way to bring visitors to your site if you do not want to wait for your search engine rankings to improve is with pay-per-click. Using this method will attract visitors right away. With pay-per-click you bid for ad position near the top of search engine results and pay for each visitor that click through to your site.  But, a word of warning here - Webmasters can spend a lot of money using this method and only make a few sales.

Be careful to avoid services promising to submit your website to 75,000 search engines. They often submit your website in such a manner that may result in your website getting permanently banned from search engines.

Only do business with services that submit your website to quality web directories and major search engines. Many internet companies can have thousands of affiliates generating sales or even get all their business in this manner. It costs you nothing up front, all you need to do is recruit affiliates by submitting the program to directories or websites that list affiliate programs.

Places like forums, message boards or other places that are visited by webmasters that may be looking for extra revenue. Many internet companies can have thousands of affiliates generating sales or even get all their business in this manner. It costs you nothing up front, all you need to do is recruit affiliates by submitting the affiliate program to directories or websites that list affiliate programs.

You might ask yourself why testimonials are important to your website or blog - both giving and receiving. But in fact, both are extremely important and bring benefits, not only to the website or blog owner, but to every visitor that comes to either site.

By providing honest testimonials about a given product or service, you are in essence providing research services to the general public. People appreciate and depend on these testimonials to know in advance whether a product or service is of quality.

So maybe now you are asking yourself how this helps you?

By providing honest testimonials, you build your reputation, in addition to branding; and then there’s the added perk - traffic. Yes traffic!

Anytime you provide a testimonial, that testimonial will include your name or website, along with your site’s URL. When you provide something of worth, others are more likely to click a link/URL to learn more about you or who you are. Thus, increasing your site traffic.

When you provide something of worth to others, you provide an invaluable service that is not soon forgotten. The old saying “the more you give, the more you get” is absolutely 100% accurate. So, the more value to give willingly, the more others will come back and they usually bring friends, family, co-workers with them. Those friends, family and co-workers will also bring others - creating a snowball effect.

And the best part of all these benefits? It’s didn’t cost you a dime in advertising or traffic generation, while you are building your brand.

This is just one of numerous ways to tackle - traffic generation, reputation, branding, advertising, and much more without a large budget. Watch for my next posting on ‘no cost’ ways to generate traffic, build branding, advertising and marketing.

Many web site owners may not know what “WhoIs” means or what it is used for. The WhoIs site is a great resource to obtain information/find out who the owners and/or contact information about who a website is registered by - basically anything you want to know about a particular domain can be found on www.whois.com.  This is also a great way to verify the information about your own domains is accurate.

Free domain registration information is easily retrievable and should be reviewed by every website owner who is unfamiliar with the term “WhoIs”.

Websites disappear everyday for a variety of reasons, and small business owners are particularly susceptible to this problem; because they are too busy running a business, to learn about risks involved with a www domain or hosting. Many owners simply forget to renew their registration.

Here is an outline of some basic causes why websites might disappear, to become something totally different:

1. Inactive Administrative Contact Email Address

2. Hidden Registrar and Incorrect Registrant

3. Expired Credit Card for Hosting

4. Hijacked Domain and Identity Theft

5. An Example of an ISP Shown as the Registrant

Learn from the mistakes that others have made, and in a few easy steps you can prevent this unfortunate surprise.  Advice includes a cast of characters that may not be familiar.  Let’s introduce them first so you understand the difference between registry, registrar, and registrant.

Registry - the worldwide authority that controls issuing of www domains to avoid duplicates.

Registrar - a service company authorized to register or renew domains with the registry.

Registrant - the entity, person or company, who owns the license for a particular www domain.

* Note: No one owns a domain.  Registering is an exclusive license for a set period of time.

Most web site owners acquire a www domain for personal or business use through a registrar who acts on your behalf and applies for your domain with the registry.  Approval is usually received within 24 hours. Your registration information is then kept on file with the registry.  This is long forgotten until a problem occurs, usually by surprise!

The solution: Using any major search engine, do a search on “whois” and follow the links to access a whois database.  Most have a search box for entering your www domain name, and once you hit enter or the go button the report is retrieved in a matter of seconds.

Reports may vary in format. However, all should display key information including registrar, registrant, administrative contact, technical contact, and perhaps billing contact.  Confirm the accuracy of each. However, if any ONE piece of data is critical it is the administrative contact. It should be you, and it should list a current active email address. If either is untrue, it needs to be corrected.  Next, let’s explore the importance of the administrative contact.

The only recognized authority for controlling your domain, including changes, is the administrative contact, but wait.  Changes can only be made by email correspondence, therefore your name as the registrant (or admin contact) does not make you the authorized person for changes.  It is whoever answers the email listed under administrative contact, so an old or invalid email address will not work.  The admin email address needs to be yours, and it needs to be kept current.

Review your registration information.  Problems?  Begin with your internet service provider to learn how to have entries corrected.  You may need to contact your registrar, also.

Another equally important reason to visit the WhoIs website is to verify the information pertaining to any domain name. Knowing who you are really dealing with before doing any business with a domain, can save you a lot of trouble later. Once you have obtained the domain information, you can cross reference with various business directories to verify that business is a legitimate business, in addition to how long that business has been around.

So, remember to put this site to good use for both reasons: Protect your domains, as well as verify those who you might be doing business with.