The funny thing is that even though he can already afford to purchase his own football team and then buy an island to train them on, he watches every penny. He may spend $120,000 on a car, but then he will haggle with the dealer over a $46 item on the invoice. And he always wins. I guess that’s why he is so rich.

Anyway . . . Bob and I hadn’t talked for a couple of months so I wasn’t really surprised to hear his voice on the other end of the phone, but I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. He just kept going on and on about some new business venture he was playing around with. All I could make out was, “You wouldn’t believe how much money I made today! You wouldn’t believe it! This should be illegal, but it’s not! It is legal! It’s legal! Get it?” (Nope, I didn’t get it. All I could think was that he’s still making money faster than he can spend it. What else is new?)

“I know this sounds impossible,” he continued, “but I stopped to get gas this afternoon and I made $1200 while I was at the gas station!” (Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . I know, Bob. You make money while you sleep. You make money while you pump gas . . . So Bob’s investments were doing well and he was making money without having to work at it. What else was new?

His next few words REALLY got my attention and they should get yours too: “Colleen, if you will write me a check for $40 tonight, I will show you how to turn it into One Million Dollars! You can join the Millionaire’s Club and take ME to the Caribbean next time! Okay, now he had my attention! But what on earth was he talking about?

PrePaid Legal. That’s what he was talking about. Bob had written a check for $40 (actually less than $40) and jhad oined a company called PrePaid Legal a few months ago just to help the guy get his business started. He had forgotten all about it and had put the envelope in the bottom of a desk drawer somewhere. He hadn’t given it another thought until commission checks started showing up in his mailbox and he hadn’t even done anything! He hadn’t sold anything! Why was he getting commission checks? When he called his buddy to ask what these checks were for, he learned that his buddy had been sponsoring people into PrePaid Legal and placing them underneath Bob. Those people had started sponsoring other people, and suddenly Bob was getting checks for $3,000 and $4,000 at a time.

You have probably heard that one of the biggest problems in America today is identify theft. Every time you leave mail in your mailbox for your carrier to collect, you are signalling thieves that you just put goodies in the mailbox for them to steal. As a matter of fact, our friends in the postal service call those red flags “steal me” flags! And it is so much easier for thieves to steal your identity than you would ever dream! From dumpster diving to mail theft, from the internet to that copy of the charge receipt that the pizza parlor threw in the trash instead of shredding. Thieves can gather enough information about you by digging through your trashcan and your mailbox to open up a new credit card in your name and have it approved. Then they change your address and order thousands of dollars worth of merchandise that you may never even find out about until you try to buy a house in a few years. Suddenly you go from having perfect credit to having no credit at all because you have so many unpaid charge accounts. Accounts you didn’t open.

I just talked to a guy last night who had been saving up for 15 years to buy his first home. He had paid off all of his charge cards and thought that he was in great financial shape and would be approved instantly. Instead, when he applied for a mortgage he was told that (according to his credit report), he already owned two homes that he didn’t even know about AND both houses were being foreclosed upon. His credit was totally destroyed and he didn’t even know anything about it!

Once your identity is stolen and someone gets your personal information, it will take you an average of three years to get everything corrected. It will also cost you an average of $1,800 and 3,000 hours away from work. With identity theft protection from Prepaid Legal ($9.95/month) it only takes one phone call. Period. Kroll Background America will take care of everything for you!

Now, for every person that you share the Identify Theft program with, Prepaid Legal will pay YOU $37.35. And they pay you within 72 hours. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s more!

When you sign up for Prepaid Legal, even if you sign up for the $16.95 plan, you will receive a FREE Will, FREE document review, FREE legal representation and FREE letters written on your behalf. Statistics show that in 9 times out of 10 cases, it only takes one letter from an attorney to resolve the problem. And you don’t have to pay the attorney at all! It’s covered under your plan! Ever had trouble collecting child support? Ever had a car repair bill that was not the amount you authorized? Ever had problems with an insurance claim? Ever been stuck with a bill that you knew was unfair? Ever had a speeding ticket? With PrePaid Legal, you will have an attorney available to help you with all of these problems and more for as low as $16.95/month. That is less than the cost of one bottle of water a day! Gee, that is less than the cost of half a bottle of water a day!

Where do I sign up??? Wait — I’m not trying to sell you anything. I just wanted to show you how much we all need this legal “insurance” and how inexpensive it can be to join Prepaid Legal. Each time time you share this information with someone, they will be begging you to give them the application. And for every single person that you help sign up for PrePaid Legal, YOU RECEIVE A COMMISSION of $103.70. That is in addition to the $37.35! So if you sign someone up for the Identify Theft program AND the PrePaid Legal plan, you get a commission check for $141.05! And that’s just the beginning. That is just at the entry level! It gets better and better! You really have to check it out.

This business is so simple that it doesn’t matter if you are 18 or 80. It is easy to get started, easy to build your business and easy to make money. The total cost to get started is less than $40. There is NO inventory to stock, NO monthly fees, NO quotas to meet, NO hidden charges. The product sells itself. I know that every company says that, but this one really DOES! My friend, Bob, is living proof. The commission checks started pouring into his mailbox long before he even started telling people about the program. Once he saw how easy it is, he started telling EVERYONE! And now the commission checks are pouring in faster than he can spend the money. Here we go again . . .

In an effort to create a new business model AND to break away from the stigma of the Amway name and all the negativity that comes with being an Amway distributor, the DeVos family and the Andel family created a brand new business called Quixtar. If the Devos name and Andel name sound familiar to you, it’s because they ARE Amway!

Quixtar has only been around for about 5 years now, but it is one of the fastest growing companies in history. Unfortunately, that “secret society” mentality still prevails — probably because they know that the word Amway will turn you off before they can sell you on this program.

Here is how it works: You pay $100 to sign up and then you are officially an “Independent Business Owner”. The idea is that you start purchasing your everyday household products from Quixtar instead of getting them at the grocery store or discount store. And for everything you buy, you get a SMALL commission. Then you buy your office supplies from Quixtar instead of purchasing them at the office supply store and you get another SMALL commission on those purchases.

Next you tell 200 of your closest friends about this new business opportunity and you get each of them to sign up at the rate of $100 each. In turn, each of those 200 people gets their 200 closest friends to sign up and suddenly you have an entire network under you! And no one really has to sell anything at all. All 40,001 of you just buy your same daily household purchases through Quixtar and YOU get commission on everything the entire group purchases.

It sounds like a win-win situation, doesn’t it? It really sounds like you could actually become rich just by buying your toilet paper through Quixtar instead of Wal-Mart, doesn’t it? You won’t. The only people who will become rich are the Andels and the DeVos’.

Quixtar sells Amway products. It also has a generic-looking line of products which range from toilet paper, toothpaste, soap, makeup, cleaning products, energy products, cereals, teas and grocery items. Then they go a step further and offer Maytag, Bowflex, Sony, Nikon, and Calvin Klein. Lots of name-brand appliances, clothing, diamonds, jewelry, etc. And to take it even further, they have partnered with major corporations like OfficeMax, Disney and Barnes Noble to allow you to earn points from buying and selling their products.

They even have full-color catalogues that resemble Spiegel catalogues except that they have added Amway products, makeup and grocery items. They also have one of the most elaborate websites I have ever seen. You can make your purchases online, or from their catalog.

The biggest flaw in the program is that Quixtar’s prices (even after your commission) are so much more expensive that what you would pay at Target or Wal-Mart, or even the grocery store, that you would have to be crazy to pay that much. It may be more convenient, but you also have to pay shipping. How do you explain to peole that you want them to pay double the price for their toilet paper so you can get rich? Then you want them to convince everyone else to pay double the price for their toilet paper so they, in turn, can share in your wealth? You can’t. I couldn’t.

I am officially an “Independent Business Owner”. I have my own IBO number. And somewhere in the back of my mind I hear a little voice saying, “This can work. Somehow. Look how fast Quixtar is growing. Somebody is doing it! But why?”

Logic tells us that if 50 million people are buying products through Quixtar, then surely I can find 200 suckers to start doing it too. But I can’t. I’m sorry, but I would feel dishonest. And the part that really gets me is that I first heard about Quixtar from my dentist. He shared the Quixtar business opportunity with me while he had both hands in my mouth, looking at my teeth. Talk about having a captive audience. He told me that he had a whole group of friends who were doctors and dentists and that they were all signing up and making thousands of dollars. These are not high school drop-outs we’re talking about. These are college grads. Medical school and dental school grads. And they are all joining Quixtar. What am I missing? I don’t get it. Even my own mother was too smart to fall for the sales pitch. So why are all these intelligent people signing up?

So here’s what I want you to do instead. Go ahead and buy your toilet paper at Target and just mail me a check for $2.00. Then each time you buy more toilet paper, mail me another check for $2.00. And then I would like you to convince 200 of your closest firends to mail me a check for $2.00 every time they buy toilet paper. Then they will have those friends find 200 people each to mail YOU a check for $2.00 every time they buy toilet paper. We will all get rich together and we won’t have to pay shipping. Just kidding. But this does seem to be the way Quixtar works.

Like every other MLM, beauty consultants with Mary Kay have 2 sources of income: 1) Direct sales and 2) recruiting. Eventually you will make money from reorders too, but you have to find the customers and get them to try the product first.

The primary source of sales will come from conducting skin care classes in people’s homes. In order to book these skin care classes, you have to go around begging friends, family members and strangers to allow you to give them a free facial. Once you have the free facial scheduled, you then begin to push them to invite 6 friends over to join them and the facial becomes a party, or skin care class. Once you have them at the skin care class, you’re supposed to talk them into signing up with Mary Kay and becoming beauty consultants just like you did! The main problem with that plan is that everyone I came into contact with had already been a Mary Kay consultant at some point or other and no one was even remotely interested.

Sometimes the classes cancel at the last minute. Sometimes you arrive at the hostess’ home only to find that no one is home. And sometimes the hostess is home, but none of her invited guests show up. Of course you won’t know that until you arrive, so you still have to pack and haul your entire “store” with you.

People demand instant gratification and if you don’t have the exact product that your customer wants to purchase, then you probably lose the sale completely. You are expected to stock and take enough inventory with you to each of these skin care classes for each and every person present to buy one of everything. If you book 4 classes a week, then you have to stock at least 24 of EVERY product on your shelf. If you hold 10 classes a week, you will need at least 60 of EVERY product. Do the math — it will scare you to death!

You have to invest a HUGE amount of your own money in inventory. In fact, you basically have to purchase and maintain as much or more inventory than your favorite cosmetics counter at any major department store.

I opened my “store” with an inventory of $4,600. I charged it all on my charge card, just like my Mary Kay Director instructed me to do. That sounds like a lot of stuff and it does take up a lot of space in your home. But that’s nothing! Wait until you try to pack it all into your car and haul it out with you 12 times a week!

And guess what happens when you need one more tube of Antique Pink lipstick? You have to reorder. But you can’t just reorder ONE extra lipstick because the minimum order is around $400 for EVERY ORDER so each time that you need $60 worth of product to fill orders, you have to order $340 worth of products that you don’t need, just to meet the minimum. In a few short months, my inventory was up to $7,600 — all on my charge cards. The only way to move that kind of inventory is to book even more skin care classes and spend that much more time away from home. And isn’t that why I started this business in the first place? So I could spend more time at home with my children? Now I was spending every day on the phone trying to book skin care classes, confirming classes, coaching the hostesses and rescheduling classes. Then I spent every evening loading up the car, going to the skin care class, and then lugging it all back home again. And no matter how much product I ordered, I always seemed to run out of something — one product at a time. It’s a vicious cycle and I just kept getting deeper and deeper in debt.

And here’s another big secret they won’t tell you about when they are trying to recruit you. Every couple of years, Mary Kay changes formulas and packaging. That means that your inventory is suddenly outdated and you have to stock a full inventory of all the NEW formulas. That happened to me over and over again.

And guess what happens when Mary Kay decides to discontinue 24 shades of lipstick all at once and introduce all new shades? You just lost $750-$1500 on lipsticks that you are NOT allowed to sell at garage sales or flea markets. AND it’s going to cost you another $1,000 – $2,000 to stock all the new shades of lipstick. It really is a vicious cycle.

At the peak of my Mark Kay career, my sales covered the charge card payments, but there was never any money left to pay myself. At the lowest point in my Mary Kay career, my sales didn’t even cover the costs of the charge payments and I still needed to reorder.

I was gone ALL the time, I never had any time to spend with my children, and little pink boxes of skin care products and makeup were overtaking my entire house. I learned a lot about skin care and I have beautiful skin now, but it would have been cheaper to buy my own pink Cadillac and go to a dermatologist to get great skin. It took me several years to pay off that charge card, plus 18% interest. And I can never regain all that time spent away from my kids.

Hopefully you will notice that I have not said anything bad at all about the company or the products. Mary Kay’s customers service is the best you will find anywhere. And the products are wonderful!

If you are pushy and don’t have a husband or family that you want to spend time with, then this business might work for you. But before you sign up, ask around and see how many people you find who USED to be Mary Kay consultants. Then ask them why they quit. Remember, if it were only HALF as easy to get that free Cadillac as it sounds, we would both be sitting around in a pink traffic jam right now.

The Melaleuca Company manufactures an entire line of products containing oil from the tropical Melaleuca plant. Most people know it as “tea tree oil”. The oil is supposed to be an antibacterial and antifungal agent, which also happens to be a miracle cleaning agent and a disinfectant. Almost sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Their usual sales pitch is that if your child were to drink an entire bottle of Melaleuca laundry detergent, he wouldn’t get sick — just really clean.

Melaleuca products include laundry detergents, household cleaning products, shampoos, soaps, lotions, vitamins, even tooth paste. Sounds a lot like Amway and Shaklee so far, doesn’t it?

Where the Melaleuca company seems to differ is that their representatives don’t actually sell products and don’t stock anything. Instead, they try to sign everyone up as “members” and have you place your orders directly with the manufacturer. The object of the game is to sign up as many members as you can. The cost to become a member is $125.

Melaleuca distributors buy leads and then spend most of their time calling the lists of purchased names and trying to convince them to listen to a 20-minute pre-recorded sales pitch. They then guide you to the computer and “help” you place your first order. They generally work in “teams” and each team has its own name and its own marketing system. They have very elaborate, very expensive-looking websites but the websites almost never mention the name of the product. Just the name of the team. So when you are looking at one of their websites and it raves about the Mommy Team or the Work At Home In Your Pajamas Team or the Stay Together Family Team, you really can’t tell that they are all selling Melaleuca. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It’s kind of like a new twist on the Amway/Shaklee groups.

My daughter has tested the Melaleuca products and assures me they are excellent. But this website isn’t about critiquing products — it’s about home business opportunities. The whole purpose of this website is to share my experiences testing different home business opportunities so that you can use this information to make your own decision. It’s also about protecting you from being scammed and blowing the whistle on the creeps that are trying to rip you off.

So, can you actually make money getting people to sign up with Melaleuca? I don’t know. I don’t personally know anyone who has made any money by selling Melaleuca and this one is difficult for me to test because I’m just not into buying leads and calling thousands of people on the phone to try and get them to listen to a pre-recorded message. I also hate sales and there are just some things I am not willing to do in order to find out whether or not the program works.

I was first introduced to Achievers about 14 years ago when I attended a small fair. A petite young lady had a booth set up and was selling little yellow bottles which I later learned contained a product known as Tri-Chromaleane. Her flyers promised that Tri-Chromaleane would make you burn fat. build muscles, decrease your appetite and increase your energy level. She gave me a flyer and told me that she was selling her products faster than she could order them. She showed me her “before” picture and told me that she had lost more than 40 pounds on the product. She also said that she was making so much money selling these little magic pills that she was getting ready to quit her full-time job as a paralegal so she could run her “Tri-C” business full-time. For a mere $10, I could become a distributor too. How could I resist???

It didn’t work out quite that well for me. The products were great, but selling them was a lot harder than it sounded. First of all, you can’t sell what you don’t have, so you have to invest your own money to have products to sell to customers. I spent around $350 to start out with. Then I found out that the exciting flyers which were generating so much business for the young lady had not been approved by the company and Achievers strictly prohibited their use. Naturally, the company produced its own marketing materials which you could purchase directly from them, but their materials were really weak and boring and didn’t help me to sell the products at all. That made it a whole lot more difficult.

For several months I worked my butt off passing out flyers, running classified ads, and telling everyone I knew about the products. But I only sold 1 or 2 bottles that way. Then I started renting booth space at local fairs, flea markets, home shows, etc., and eventually branched out to fairs in other states. Anywhere that I could get a booth for less than $500. Anywhere there were overweight people. I arranged for my parents to babysit my children (I only had 2 at the time) and I spent every weekend setting up booths and displaying my little yellow bottles.

Sure, I sold a lot of Tri-C. After all, isn’t everyone looking for a magic pill that will make them lose weight without having to diet or exercise? THe problem was that by the time I added up the cost of the booth rental, the hotel and the travel costs involved, I just barely broke even. And as a single mother, I couldn’t keep asking Grandma to watch the kids every weekend while I tried to make money selling the products.

Fortunately, I had maintained a mailing list of all the people who had ever purchased Tri-C from me. I continued to market to them and eventually I developed a small but regular group of clients who continued to buy Tri-C from me on a steady basis and I quit spinning my wheels trying to work the fairs and home shows. I continued promoting the produce with flyers and brochures, but I never made more than a couple hundred dollars a month. Other companies started trying to imitate Tri-Chromaleane and the competition became fierce. Then the roof caved in on my business.

About 2 years ago, the FDA started regulating products containing ephedra and a mass panic began within the industry. I didn’t know much about ephedra when I first started selling Tri-C, but I got a really fast education when Achievers announced that they were pulling Tri-C off the market because of all the negative publicity surrounding ephedra. They even tried making a substitute produce called Tri-Chromaleane-Free without ephedra but my customers didn’t like it. Tri-C Free just didn’t work the same without the ephedra. Within 30 days (as soon as my product supply ran out) my business came to a screeching halt. Needless to say, I gave up and went in search of a REAL Home Business that would provide me with REAL income.

While there is a high return rate on direct mail marketing, perhaps enough to cover the expenses (of a copywriter, publication, and mailing costs) there is far more sense in utilizing a direct mail marketing strategy that won’t be tossed into the junk mail bin.

Corporate thank you cards offer everything that direct mail marketing offers, with more “oomph.”

Modern technology provides faster, and less personal, communication. So individuals love to get mail, as long as it is not junk mail or bills. If you send out corporate thank you cards, your mailings will automatically be placed at the top of the pile and prioritized by all who receive it.

The Benefits of Corporate Thank You Cards

The most effective way to secure customer loyalty is through a personal message. Even if that message is as simple as “Dear (Name)…thank you for doing business with us…(Signed)” it is still the single most powerful way to make each customer feel appreciated.

You can time the mailing of corporate thank you cards to fit a purpose, such as alert former customers of a special offer, or just to say thank you and give customers more satisfaction with your business.

Improving customer satisfaction through friendly corporate thank you cards leads to another benefit-word-of-mouth referrals. Attraction marketing is the approach of going above and beyond, so each customer will willingly recommend you to friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, and anybody who will listen. What better way to reach out than by extending a warm and friendly gesture in a corporate thank you card?

Corporate thank you cards are a cost effective alternative to standard direct mail marketing strategies that fall short of their potential. In fact, corporate greeting cards are the most powerful approach there is to securing customer loyalty.

However, corporate thank you cards can also be used to improve customer service. In the unfortunate scenario that a customer has a bad experience, it’s a good idea to do everything possible to make it up and appeal to their complaints. Follow through with any sacrifices you have made to an unhappy customer with a personal thank you card that expresses concern for their satisfaction.

Equally important are the productivity benefits that corporate thank you cards can deliver if sent to a different mailing list… your employees!!!

Why wait until a holiday or special occasion to send out a personal notice to each employee who plays an important role in the productivity of your company? Corporate thank you cards are designed to provide an uplifting message, in an unexpected greeting card. Employees respond well to appreciation for their efforts, and nothing could be more powerful and effective than an unexpected thank you card from the boss.

Consider corporate greeting cards as a cost effective strategy for boosting satisfaction and confidence in your company by both customers and employees.

Ethnography in the Middle East is complicated. It is the scientific study of human social phenomena and communities, through means such as fieldwork. It is considered a branch of cultural anthropology, the branch of anthropology which focuses on the study of human societies. Some people use “ethnography” and “cultural anthropology” interchangeably, although cultural anthropology includes more research techniques than just ethnography. The practice of ethnography usually involves fieldwork in which the ethnographer lives among the population being studied. While trying to retain objectivity, the ethnographer lives an ordinary life among the people, working with informants who are particularly knowledgeable or well placed to collect information. This fieldwork may last for extended period of time; usually over a year, and sometimes much longer. At the conclusion of a period of fieldwork, the ethnographer writes about his or her experiences. This writing includes a catalog of daily life, along with a discussion of rituals, phenomena, and an assortment of other events. Many people who work in the field of ethnography integrate multiple disciplines; using biology, for example, to analyze available food supplies, or geology to study the terrain and environment. While many people visualize ethnography as a field of study on “other” people such as obscure native tribes in the South Pacific, ethnographers also work in environments which may quite familiar. Someone may choose to live among gangsters in the inner city, for example, or an ethnographer may follow a nudist colony in the wilds of Northern California. Ethnography is about studying the entirety of the human experience, from nomadic tribes in Asia to wealthy mothers from Park Slope. The field of ethnography is a very important part of cultural anthropology, since many anthropologists use other people’s fieldwork in their research. It may also provide clues to trends in human society, and ethnographers can be found in some surprising places. Many advertising agencies, for example, use ethnography in their work, to ensure that ads are effectively targeted at a desirable population.

People who are interested in pursuing ethnography as a career should start by studying cultural anthropology. If possible, they should take fieldwork opportunities when they arise in school, to see whether or not ethnography is something that they enjoy doing. A good ethnographer is able to calculate statistics, rapidly pick up new languages, and instantly assess a range of situations. Above all, ethnography is about observation and cataloging, and written communication skills are a strong asset for someone interested in this academic field. In the field or market research it usually involves home visits, accompanied shopping and product preparation viewing In Saudi Arabia doing market research is complicated and hence finding the best agency is critical for good fieldwork Even while doing Market research surveys in UAE or Iran or Sudan, the cultural nuances have to be kept in place

Sleepy Hollow Promotions is an all exclusive advertising and promotional company that is here to get people where they need to put them on the map to success. SleepyHollow promotions advertising started with the love of promotions. Now if you’re looking for an official promotional company to network and plan your major events, look no further because Sleepy Hollow Promotions is the promotional company to really put you out there to help you gain exposure with their airtight promotional skills and advertisements.

Sleepy Hollow promotions is also affiliated with The Amarante Gold Boyz form Queens, New York who presents a liquor called The One Night Stand whom are always looking for models to promote this hot new drink for their up and coming parties every month. Sleepy Hollow Promotions is also a promotional company that markets small businesses to large companies and our promotional company is sure to bring your business clients, and our objectives in promoting is to select which media that proves to be the best at our promotions. We provide e-mail blasts and newsletters, because this medium can offer the opportunity to effectively segment the internet market as well because we provide commercial shoots for your business along with editing to help maximize your company advertisements.

We also offer promotional packages and since we are a promotional company, we also offer special party packages and sponsorship. Sleepy Hollow Promotions have been in the marketing, and promotional industry for six years and we have been successful at promoting models, events, and businesses, etc. because we know the industry as well as the market and are ready to help you get your market share. Sleepy also known as Sleepy Hollow Promotions is a real go-getter and a jack of all trades who is also an entrepreneur and a newcomer with many skills. He’s also an event planner and yes a networker that deals with politics and really gets people where they need to be to put you out there and is also the hottest party promoter out there right now. He’s also a public relations specialist and an outgoing self-motivated individual from Queens, New York. He’s also a photogrpher that builds up portfolios for others and is into fashion and style. Although, Sleepy Hollow pomotions isaffiliated with Digipleq’s media and Supreme Regime Entertainment and has a lot of models in his industry that does a lot of freelancing for his company Sleepy Hollow Promotions and he does a lot of promotional parties, fashion shows along with showcasing parties, fashion shows along with the night life and those special events to keep those party goers satisfied.

There’s no telling what would be next for Sleepy Hollow Promotions.