As recent as ten years ago starting a business, any business, cost a lot of money. Cash outlay was thousands of dollars and there was no way to get around that. The barrier to entry into the world of small business was set high enough that not everyone could jump in. Times have changed. Now, with just a couple hundred dollars you can start your own business online.Besides business rent and equipment, usually a business owner’s biggest expense is marketing. Traditional marketing by mail or in person is expensive and has been largely replaced by online marketing tactics. Online you can reach hundreds or thousands of people quickly and without breaking the bank. Pay for finding visitors to your website using Pay Per Click (PPC) services, direct email marketing, banner ads, or through commissions to affiliates marketing your products for you. There are many ways to market online, nearly all of them better than traditional marketing practices.Ways to Save Cash as You Start Your Business1. Work at Home – Forget an office building for as long as you can. Online businesses, even the top bloggers in the world like Darren Rowse, still work out of their home offices. Think about the delicious tax deductions for working out of your home too.2. Rent Equipment – If you live in or near a major city you can likely rent out computer equipment you need for your business. Rented equipment is deductible on taxes and you are not responsible for it when it breaks on its own. You can have the latest made electronics at a great rate without spending the entire amount outright as you would buying it in a store.3. Learn the Basics about everything you have to do. Graphics, SEO, marketing, copyrighting, lead generation and growing your business are all things you should get up to speed on as fast as possible. If you are not already competent with the basics of these topics it would pay you over time to do so. Even if you are going to outsource work in these areas you still need to be able to talk intelligently about them. Start reading or watching video tutorials online.4. Work in the Cloud. Google Apps are a suite of applications that mimic Microsoft Office, and yet there is one major distinction. They are free. They are in the internet cloud and accessible from anywhere you can login. There is no need to take files with you on memory stick or send files via email – just login to your Google account and find them from where ever you are.5. Pay Per Click – Search engines, FaceBook, and other companies offer you a chance to pay for each click on an ad you run with the company. When someone clicks your ad they are taken to your website or landing page that talks about your product or service. Cost can be as little as 1 cent per click, or, if competition is high – a couple of dollars per click. Pay Per Click is an area of marketing every business should become educated about.6. Email Leads – Start collecting email addresses from visitors at your website from day one. Using Aweber.com or a similar service, start collecting visitors email addresses with an opt-in form so you can email them in the future with a permission-based email marketing program.7. Partnerships – find parallel businesses that offer something you do not and work with them in partnership to sell some of their products or services as they sell yours. Think about trading services business to business to help you save money. Online you can trade banners with another site so neither of you have to spend cash outright.Starting a business need not involve a lot of expenses that traditional business owners spend for granted. Spend time now to learn as many pieces of the puzzle as possible because it will save you a lot of money long-term. There are things you can do yourself, and things you have to outsource. Better if you do not have to outsource everything and can do some on your own. Educating yourself now will save you considerable cash as your business matures.
Bridging the Gap Between Search Engine Spiders and Humans
Search engine spiders are – in a way – the lifeblood of the internet. Without them, we wouldn’t have search engines. Without search engines, nobody could find your website, nor could you locate 99%+ of the internet either.
And yet, these little spiders – however necessary they are – don’t by any means paint the full picture of the business behind the website it’s spidering. All a spider can do is read the content of your site via the HTML you provide it. Therefore, we’re told to develop “search engine friendly” websites – ones with a good structure of headline tags, and using keywords that explicitly state what our website is about.
Of course, links play a part too. Authoritative links pointing to your site act as “votes” that search engines count in your favor. This helps them build a reasonable picture of the quality of your content. However, it’s often the case that there’s a massive gap between how search engines see your website, and the quality of service or product you provide. Let’s look at this gap a little closer, and see how it can be filled.
The Gap
Let’s imagine a business that established itself 25 years ago, and has provided a consistently high quality of drainage services in all of that time. They have repeat customers who don’t think twice about booking their services every year. To all intents and purposes, they are highly trusted, successful business. And yet, they are ranked very low in Google for all their main keywords. What’s gone wrong here? This “gap” in perception is because the website this business owns has very few (or even zero) authoritative links, poor on-page optimization, and poor content. Search engine spiders can’t see past these metrics. No business has a “right” to ranking well just because they provide an excellent “in real life” product or service.
How to Bridge This Gap?
There is a symbiotic relationship between website owners and search engines. Both need each other. This is why Google Search Console exists. It’s a means to allow the website owner to help Google better understand their website, and help bridge this gap.
That’s only the first step though. Having your site audited by an on-page optimization expert can help you fine-tune your website page structure, your URLs, your navigation, your titles, your content.
Where search engine spiders fail to see signals of trust like how well established your business is (even if the website is 6 months old), a human reviewer CAN. Third party services like human-review directories and customer review services can REALLY help close the gap.
Human-review directories
A high-quality human-review niche directory will look for signals of trust found on your website. These are often too subtle for a search engine spider to “join the dots” – but a discerning human can. For example, if a website claims to be a member of a particular association, it’s possible to search for the company name on the association’s website. The same can be done for company registration numbers too. If a company has been established for many years, and they show this on a company history page, a human reviewer can build up a picture of the company’s progress through the years. Moreover, it’s the aggregation of all of these things that help a human reviewer build a solid picture of the business. A search engine spider will not be able to see the nuances a human can.
Suggested article: Human-reviewed, Established Niche Directories
Review services
Your customer base is your ultimate cheerleaders (or perhaps, whistle-blowers!). They trusted your product or service, and they can write about their experiences via review services like Trustpilot. These help people get some idea of the quality of product or service you provide.
Suggested article: The Purpose of b2blistings.org
Online Reputation
Both human-review directories and review services can be used to give some proof as to the reputation you deserve online. When someone does a search for your brand name, and you’re listed in human-review directories and under review services, these signals of trust can be found in the search – helping prospective new customers gain some trust in your business. Search engines will also be visiting these directories and review services too, so it helps them get a better picture of your business as well.
Suggested article: Other Website Review Services We Run
Conclusion
It doesn’t matter how good your product or service is in “the real world”. Online, you start from zero and work your way up. It doesn’t mean that having a great product or service doesn’t help you. It does – very much. It’s just you have to jump through the same hoops as every other website owner to get yourself established. Once you are established and easily found, you’ll find your old friend (word-of-mouth marketing) was online this whole time. You’ll discover that your online presence will take on a life of its own as people start recommending you on social media and their own websites. It just takes time and effort to get to that point.
SPDN: An Inexpensive Way To Profit When The S&P 500 Falls
Summary
SPDN is not the largest or oldest way to short the S&P 500, but it’s a solid choice.
This ETF uses a variety of financial instruments to target a return opposite that of the S&P 500 Index.
SPDN’s 0.49% Expense Ratio is nearly half that of the larger, longer-tenured -1x Inverse S&P 500 ETF.
Details aside, the potential continuation of the equity bear market makes single-inverse ETFs an investment segment investor should be familiar with.
We rate SPDN a Strong Buy because we believe the risks of a continued bear market greatly outweigh the possibility of a quick return to a bull market.
Put a gear stick into R position, (Reverse).
Birdlkportfolio
By Rob Isbitts
Summary
The S&P 500 is in a bear market, and we don’t see a quick-fix. Many investors assume the only way to navigate a potentially long-term bear market is to hide in cash, day-trade or “just hang in there” while the bear takes their retirement nest egg.
The Direxion Daily S&P 500® Bear 1X ETF (NYSEARCA:SPDN) is one of a class of single-inverse ETFs that allow investors to profit from down moves in the stock market.
SPDN is an unleveraged, liquid, low-cost way to either try to hedge an equity portfolio, profit from a decline in the S&P 500, or both. We rate it a Strong Buy, given our concern about the intermediate-term outlook for the global equity market.
Strategy
SPDN keeps it simple. If the S&P 500 goes up by X%, it should go down by X%. The opposite is also expected.
Proprietary ETF Grades
Offense/Defense: Defense
Segment: Inverse Equity
Sub-Segment: Inverse S&P 500
Correlation (vs. S&P 500): Very High (inverse)
Expected Volatility (vs. S&P 500): Similar (but opposite)
Holding Analysis
SPDN does not rely on shorting individual stocks in the S&P 500. Instead, the managers typically use a combination of futures, swaps and other derivative instruments to create a portfolio that consistently aims to deliver the opposite of what the S&P 500 does.
Strengths
SPDN is a fairly “no-frills” way to do what many investors probably wished they could do during the first 9 months of 2022 and in past bear markets: find something that goes up when the “market” goes down. After all, bonds are not the answer they used to be, commodities like gold have, shall we say, lost their luster. And moving to cash creates the issue of making two correct timing decisions, when to get in and when to get out. SPDN and its single-inverse ETF brethren offer a liquid tool to use in a variety of ways, depending on what a particular investor wants to achieve.
Weaknesses
The weakness of any inverse ETF is that it does the opposite of what the market does, when the market goes up. So, even in bear markets when the broader market trend is down, sharp bear market rallies (or any rallies for that matter) in the S&P 500 will cause SPDN to drop as much as the market goes up.
Opportunities
While inverse ETFs have a reputation in some circles as nothing more than day-trading vehicles, our own experience with them is, pardon the pun, exactly the opposite! We encourage investors to try to better-understand single inverse ETFs like SPDN. While traders tend to gravitate to leveraged inverse ETFs (which actually are day-trading tools), we believe that in an extended bear market, SPDN and its ilk could be a game-saver for many portfolios.
Threats
SPDN and most other single inverse ETFs are vulnerable to a sustained rise in the price of the index it aims to deliver the inverse of. But that threat of loss in a rising market means that when an investor considers SPDN, they should also have a game plan for how and when they will deploy this unique portfolio weapon.
Proprietary Technical Ratings
Short-Term Rating (next 3 months): Strong Buy
Long-Term Rating (next 12 months): Buy
Conclusions
ETF Quality Opinion
SPDN does what it aims to do, and has done so for over 6 years now. For a while, it was largely-ignored, given the existence of a similar ETF that has been around much longer. But the more tenured SPDN has become, the more attractive it looks as an alternative.
ETF Investment Opinion
SPDN is rated Strong Buy because the S&P 500 continues to look as vulnerable to further decline. And, while the market bottomed in mid-June, rallied, then waffled since that time, our proprietary macro market indicators all point to much greater risk of a major decline from this level than a fast return to bull market glory. Thus, SPDN is at best a way to exploit and attack the bear, and at worst a hedge on an otherwise equity-laden portfolio.