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by Arnold Hernandez

In a recent case (November 2006), the California Court of Appeal held that an assessment of punitive damages against a general contractor is warranted for lying about insurance coverage to the detriment of the property owner.

In the case of Kelly v. Haag, San Diego County Superior Court Case No.GIC830629, the property owner employed his friend to do work on his condominium. The property owner asked the contractor if he had insurance, and the contractor said he did. During demolition work one of the workers broke a fire sprinkler head.

The fire sprinkler head leaked for 15 to 20 minutes, because the worker did not know where the water shut-off valve was. The condo as well as the condos underneath were damages. After the incident the contractor confessed that he was actually uninsured.

The condo owner filed a lawsuit and among other things alleged fraud. The court assessed $159,140.22 in compensatory damages against the contractor and a subcontractor. The court also assessed $75,000 in punitive damages against the contractor individually, finding he had a minimum net worth of $750,000.

The contractor appealed and the Court of Appeal reversed the punitive damages assessment. The court of appeal reiterated the purpose of punitive damages.

The court stated that an award of punitive damages hinges on three factors: the reprehensibility of the defendant's conduct; the reasonableness of the relationship between the award and the plaintiff's harm; and, in view of the defendant's financial condition, the amount necessary to punish him or her and discourage future wrongful conduct.

The court stated that it is obvious that the punishment must be severe enough to keep the contractor from engaging in that conduct, but the punishment must not be so excessive such that the defendant does not have the ability to pay. In determining the proper assessment of punitive damages the defendant's actual financial condition is
essential.

The assessment of punitive damages should be based on the defendant's net worth, but that other factors must also be considered such as income. The financial condition at the time of trial is what is relevant, not what the financial condition could be or was.

In this case the only evidenced presented was oral testimony from the plaintiff's sister. The plaintiff's sister worked for plaintiff's real estate development company and oversaw the condominium remodel. Even though the court did not address the relationship it clearly can be construed as biased opinion instead of admissible evidence.

She testified that the contractor purchased a large home and that he owned a home in San Diego for eight to 10 years. She had no knowledge of the equity or debt of the defendant.

In this case the contractor did not testify and the plaintiff's attorney failed to obtain information from the contractor through a process called discovery. So there was insufficient evidence to show what if any property the contractor owned and what if any debt was on the property. Basically the contractor's financial status was unknown.

The court of appeal dismissed the punitive damages assessment on the grounds that the condo owner failed to produce enough evidence as to the wealth of the general contractor, but the court essentially stated that the assessment would stand if the property owner had presented sufficient evidence to establish the financial position of the contractor.

The condo owner asked for a retrial on the issue of punitive damages, but the court denied the request. The court declined to allow the plaintiff to pursue a second trial on the issue of punitive damages, because the plaintiff had a full and fair opportunity to present the case and plaintiff failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove the wealth of the defendant.

In California punitive damages are usually assessed when there is fraud, oppression, or malice. Any type of deception is generally considered fraud. In this case punitive damages were approximately 10% of the net worth of the defendant. Punitive damages are capped based on the underlying claim. A multiplier of more than 5-7 times the underlying
claim is generally considered too excessive.

In this case the 75,000 assessment was less than a multiplier of one, so there was no problem as far as the amount of the award. If the contractor had a wealth in excess of $1.5 million the court would have been able to assess about $700,000 in punitive damages. How much is assessed depends on how bad the conduct is. Knowledge and intent of conduct usually results in greater punishment.

Contractors usually generate more complaints than any other industry and as a result have caused the California Legislature to enact very complicated rules and regulations pertaining to contractors and juries are less likely to look favorably to a contractor when deciding on punitive damages.

In this case the critical part was proving the net worth and general financial status of the contractor and there was no jury to decide punitive damages.

If punitive damages are assessed and paid, then they have be shared with the State of California. California law was changed to increase revenues to the State from windfalls to plaintiffs from punitive damages.

Authors Resource Box:
Arnold Hernandez, is an attorney in San Marcos, California. He represents small businesses and individuals primarily in employment law and in personal injury claims. More information at http://www.arnoldhernandez.com

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

by Arnold Hernandez

The Americans with Disabilities Act is broken into titles. Title II is what is presently a great problem for business. Under Title II of the ADA, a business has to comply with many requirements imposed by the ADA. These requirements are intended to make acilities accessible to persons with disabilities.

Virtually every business has failed to comply with some requirement or other. What this means is that any disabled person can file a lawsuit against almost any business. The most obvious, and usually triggering event, is the lack of a ramp or lack of parking space marked and set aside for persons with disabilities. These type of lawsuits are generally initiated by disabled person in the business of suing.

Some disabled persons have filed over a hundred cases. Some disabled persons make a very good living driving around and finding places to sue. It has become such a problem that even plaintiff's attorneys feel uncomfortable with the ADA. Too some extent
the ADA has been equated to extortion of small business operators.

The ADA covers not only the owner of the property, but also the lessee and the business operator and anyone that has an interest in the property. A business cannot escape liability, by claiming no ownership.

In California the Unruh Act and Disabilities Act provides for damages of $4,000 to the disable person filing the lawsuit. Any violation of the ADA is a violation of the Unruh Act. In addition to the $4,000 in damages the statute also provides for reasonable attorney fees and costs.

In California $250 per hour is generally considered a reasonable rate for attorney fees, but some attorneys charge as much as $500 per hour. The preparation of the lawsuit itself alone often costs over $1,000.00. Among other things on top of the original lawsuit there are court costs, expert fees, and service of process costs.

If the business owner decides to fight it, there are filing fees and his own attorney fees to pay. When a business owner has legal entity such as an LLC or a corporation multiple filing fees may be required. Once the lawsuit is answered the owner has to pay an attorney at an hourly rate of around $250 per hour and if the lawsuit is lost the attorney fees are about doubled, because a court will order payment of fees due to the disabled persons attorney and this is on addition to the $4,000.00 plus costs associated with the lawsuit.

Sometimes no lawsuit is not filed and a demand letter for money damages and repair to a facility is sent out to businesses. More often than not, the disabled person's attorney will not demand proof that the establishment complied with the modifications. If the business fails to comply, another lawsuit can result from another disabled person for the same exact violations. So, attorneys representing disabled persons don't want any facilities to become accessible, they have no incentive to insure business comply.

Some attorney offices have teams of disabled persons that meet regularly with the attorney where they receive training on what to look for. These disable persons are educated on what the ADA requires and then they go out and look for violations to file suits and earn income. Some of these firms provide booklets, pamphlets, seminars, and even pep talks to
educate and motivate disabled persons into finding non compliant businesses and filing suits.

Most lawsuits result in a settlement, but even if there is a settlement, it does not mean another disabled person cannot sue after the settlement. Another disabled person can file a lawsuit, even after the facility has been made accessible. These lawsuits arise from the violation of the ADA and the injury to disabled person.

What is relevant when determining if the disable person has a case is the time of when the disabled person visited. If the disabled person visited when the facility was not accessible, then the disable person has a claim. Virtually every single establishment can be held liable for failure to make the facility accessible.

One of the few exceptions to avoiding liability is the cost of modifications. If the cost of making the facility accessible is too high or if making the required modifications will have a severe impact on sales or profits, then no modifications are required. This does not mean the establishment will never be sued, it only means the establishment will have a good defense. The issue in this type of defense is what is too much to make modifications or what is too big a loss of business.

Congress provided some guidance in determining how much is too much to spend, it stated that the business should expect to make a profit from the new business coming in from disabled persons as a result of the modifications made to the business establishment.

Ultimately, how much is too much is really a question for a judge or jury, but finding out will be at great expense to a business. Therefore most businesses are forced to pay, rather than to litigate. There are clearly situations when it is inexcusable to make an establishment accessible, such as new construction, but for existing buildings the ADA has
been characterized as legal extortion.

Every small business should buy an inexpensive checklist or review the guidelines provided for by the justice department to insure they are in substantial compliance. Small business should petition the Federal Legislature if these practices are to end. Currently there is not opporunity to cure, a violation, regardless of whether it is innocent or not results in monetary damages to the business establishment violating the ADA.

Authors Resource Box:
Arnold Hernandez, is a practicing attorney in San Marcos, California and represents small businesses and individuals primarily on employment law and personal injury. More information at http://www.arnoldhernandez.com

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

by Lanard Perry

If you're looking for a passive source of income you ought to consider Adsense. After all, I can't think of a more passive source of way of generating income!

Below are 4 easy steps to generating Adsense income!

1. Choose one topic per page. It is best to write a content for your page with just a few targeted phrases. The search engine will then serve ads that are most relevant to your content, which will then result in higher clickthoughs.

2. Use white space around your ads. This can make your ad stand out from the rest of your page so that visitors can spot them more easily. Also, expeiment with the colors provided by Googe, so as to harmonize the color of your ad with the web page color.

3. Test your ad placement. It is recommended to use the vertical format that runs down the side of the web page to get more positive results. You can also try both horizontal and vertical formats for a certain period of time to see which one will give you better results. Googe provides a more comprhensive explanation of this on their site than I do here.

4. Add more content-based pages to your web site. Widen the theme of your website by creating pages that focus more on your keyword phrases. This will optimize the pages for the search engines, result in increased traffic and serve up more relevant Adsense Ads to be displayed.

Direct Deposit Your Earnings
Google adsense offers various payment options for publishers. Electronic Funds Transfer (ETF) is offered in 16 countries whereby your payments are deposited directly into your bank account in your local currency. Check Google Adsense support to see which countries participate in this option.

You will need to sign up for this option after your application is approved by signing into your account. You then click the edit link adjacent to the payment header. After you fill out the bank information, Google Adsense will make a small test deposit into your account. This is for security purposes to assure the account is really your own.

Watch your account for the test deposit to post, usually within just a few days. After you have received the deposit from Google, log back in to your account and in the Payment Details section, click Verify Account.

You then will need to enter the amount of the test deposit. If you do not complete this step, your payments will be on hold. Once you enter the test deposit amount correctly, your bank will be approved and selected as your form of payment.

Preview Tool.
The Google Adsense Preview Tool allows you to preview the ads that may show on any web page, thereby letting you make an educated decision on whether to add Google Adsense to your existing pages.

You can also view sample ad formats and colors which will allow you to see how the colors and formats you want to appear in your ads will look before they actually launch on your pages.

You can also view borders, backgrounds and text colors from the preview tool and by clicking preview you can see how these will look with actual ads.

You can also see geo-targeted location ads meaning you can see what ads users in Canada can see even if you live in Japan.

The Preview Tool is available in all active Adsense languages and is easy to install. For specific installation instructions, you'll need to go to the Google Adsense Support site. Follow the instructions and click on the link provided and you'll be a previewing genius in no time!

URL Channels and How to Organize Them
URL Channels allow you to view detailed information about the performance of your Adsense for Content pages.

Suppose you have a blog at writingup.com and you also have a blog at bloggerparty.com. It might be interesting and profitable to track which one is getting more clicks.

Log in to your Adsense account and click on Adsense for Content. Scroll down until you see Channels and click on manage channels. You may need to scroll up when the next page loads. Under Manage URL Channels you would type writingup.com and click on Create New Channel.

You will immediately see writingup.com in the Active URL Channels dialogue box. Now type in bloggerparty.com in the same channel text box and again click on Create New Channel. You now have two channels and you will be able to track your progress on each channel.

You can view channel reports from the Advanced Report page under the Reports tab. Choose Adsense for Content, choose the date range and then select the Channels Data radio button. Choose any number of active channels by holding down the CTRL key.

Next click on Display Report. It's as easy as that.

Summarily, AdSense makes it possible for almost anyone with a web site or blog to earn some revenue from advertising, without having to employ sales people or spend precious time searching for advertisers.

Authors Resource Box:
Lanard Perry shows Realtors how to Average 1 or More Listings a Week. Find out how at Farming Expired Listings and Real Estate Marketing Talk.

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

by Julian Hall

While no one can predict accidents and definitely no one can avoid them, there are ways to lessen the chances of being involved in an accident. Here goes:

1. Follow traffic rules-This tip can be the simplest rule in the book but it has often been disregarded by drivers and pedestrians, thus causing more road traffic accidents. I dont know why some people find it very hard to follow simple rules when it could not hurt them to just comply.

2. Buckle up!- Wearing seatbelts can be annoying for some people but wait until you hear all about the number of accidents that could have been prevented if only the driver or the passenger was wearing seatbelts. Wearing seatbelts can also lessen the impact of any road traffic accidents and it can save your life.

3. Practise defensive driving-Every driver should have defensive driving in mind whenever he sits behind the wheel. You may be a careful driver but you never know when you are going to encounter a reckless driver. Always being on the defensive can help you avoid road traffic accidents because you are one step ahead of the other drivers and you will always have the luxury of having more time to avoid accidents.

4. Always be courteous-This may seem like a lesson in good conduct and proper manners but being courteous is a virtue not possessed by most people particularly drivers. Being courteous means you do not race against another vehicle driver or you do not increase your speed at a sleeping policeman.

5. You can drink but never drive-Drunk driving has been responsible for thousands of death on the road. Road traffic accidents are most often caused by drunk drivers who can no longer identify the right from the left lane. Some people argue about the exact amount of alcohol one can drink before being tagged as drunk. To be on the safe side, why not refrain from drinking any alcoholic beverage at all while you are in control of a vehicle?

6.It is ok to use your cell phone but not when you are driving-Some countries have enacted laws prohibiting and penalizing drivers who use their cell phones while driving. It takes a lot of concentration to drive safely and you do not need a distraction to that concentration. It will only take a few minutes to stop the vehicle and make your call. Compare that with the delay you will be facing if you meet an accident just because you were too busy to pull over to make that phone call.

7. Avoid changing compact disks or radio stations while driving-This is too common for drivers they no longer think of it as a driving sin. You never know what can happen in just a blink of an eye. Taking off your eyes from the road for just a few seconds to change a compact disc can result to an accident that can cause your life.

8. Always keep some distance from the next car-Never kiss the rear of the car ahead of you. You may be in a rush and planning to overtake the other car but always keep some distance between your car and the car ahead of you. You never know when the other car may experience problems with his break or when the driver would lose control of his vehicle. It is advisable to be on the safe side and drive at least a vehicle away from the first car.

9. Always respect a foul weather-Always give respect to a rainy or a snowy day because you cannot beat a bad weather. Lessen your speed when driving in a wet pavement because water and snow will always make the road slippery. Increasing you speed when the road is in this condition will only increase your chances of meeting an accident.

10. Always check you car condition before driving-It is always ideal to check your car for possible petrol leakage or some other maintenance requirements before using it. Most road traffic accidents are caused by busted tires that have not been checked by the drivers.

Road traffic accidents will always be an annoying possibility for every person on the road. However, a little care and observance of traffic rules will always contribute to prevent possible road traffic accidents.

Authors Resource Box:
Julian Hall of Claims
Master Group. Personal
injury Claim

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

by Ross Laguzza

Even before the perilous days of post-Enron corporate bashing, defense lawyers and their clients spent considerable amounts of time developing strategies for softening a company's image, personalizing a company, and/or acquainting jurors with the benevolent motivations of a corporation and its people. I will never forget one client that made it a condition of retention that the trial lawyers mention early and often the company's annual gift of American flags to the Boy Scouts. The basic assumption underlying these efforts is quite simple: If the jury can be persuaded to humanize the corporation, it will be more receptive to its themes, evidence and witnesses, and hopefully less punitive.

Sometimes clients engage in a fair amount of debate about who should represent the company at trial. There often is a great deal of emphasis placed on getting a person with the right "look," the right position, and of course the patience and commitment needed to sit through a lengthy trial. Again, the idea is that a positive image will increase the chances of a favorable verdict. Reality, especially when it comes in the form of juror decision-making, can be quite complex, but often more predictable when understood. Indeed, real jurors find against companies they think highly of all the time while companies with less than desirable images prevail. How can this be?

The Risk of Being a Good Guy

As it turns out, the effect of corporate image--whether it be positive, negative, or neutral, on juror decision-making--is influenced by other key factors which must be assessed to truly understand case risk. A company with a positive image may be at higher risk than a company with a neutral image and, in some cases, than one with a negative image. A company's image does not operate in isolation of other key factors. Indeed, in some cases, it doesn't even figure into jurors' decision to punish.

Years of empirical research on jury decision-making shows the path jurors are likely to travel when deciding to punish a corporation. We'll explore those pathways, with reference to the following terms:

- *Allegation* refers to the claims made against a corporation in a given case. This is a critical filter through which jurors evaluate everything else.
- *Image* refers to the image a company has going into trial and can be located along a continuum from negative to positive. (This factor, along with the others can change over the course of a trial.)
- *Responsibility* relates to jurors' typical interest in whether or not the company has acted irresponsibly in terms of policies, procedures, conduct, supervision, enforcement, testing, and the like.
- *Safety* refers to jurors' concerns about whether the company is committed to safety in everything that it does. This construct includes physical and emotional safety and applies to all cases.
- *Knowledge and Control* refers to the algorithm jurors use in all cases to make attributions of fault. The more knowledge of and control over the circumstances that produced the allegation a company has (relative to the plaintiff), the more blame will be assigned to the company.
- *Desire to punish* is selected as the key outcome variable since it is typically at the center of any risk assessment.

The Path to Hell is Paved with Good Corporate Image

The specific allegation, (e.g., sexual harassment, toxic tort, breach of contract, personal injury) activates a set of juror expectations and beliefs which will influence how the corporation and case facts are perceived by the jury. From that point, jurors can travel initially in one of three directions.

- Pathway 1 (allegation/image/knowledge and control/desire to punish): Some jurors will consider the company's image and see if it fits the allegation. In the case of a company with a positive image, the model suggests that jurors will still look at the facts to determine whether the company had more knowledge and control than the plaintiff over the factors that produced the dispute. If they determine that the company has much more knowledge and control, jurors still will be motivated to punish. The typical juror justification for punishing a company with a positive image is, "They know better than to treat people that way.

I am really surprised that they would act that way given that they have the power to do whatever they want and usually make the right choices. They need to be sent a message that they must live up to their high standards 100% of the time." Holding companies with positive reputations to unrealistically high standards is quite common and explained by this model. A simple way to think about this is when the celebrated sports hero is caught dealing drugs. It is seen as a fall from grace and people feel betrayed. So, in this situation, efforts to enhance the company's reputation actually make matters worse.

- Pathway 2 (allegation/responsibility/knowledge and control/desire to punish): Some jurors will move from the allegation to the question of whether or not the company acted responsibly. If they feel the company failed to meet their expectations--especially if the company is perceived to have significant amounts of knowledge and control--jurors will be motivated to punish. As can be seen, jurors following this pathway need not consider the company's image at all. In reality, this is quite common and many efforts at trial to "put a face on the company" are in vain.

- Pathway 3 (allegation/safety/knowledge and control/desire to punish): Some jurors will move from the allegations to the question of whether or not the company is committed to safety. Jurors try to determine a pattern of conduct consistent with a safety motive. Even in cases in which jurors believe the company acted unsafely in a specific instance, they still want to know if the conduct was an isolated incident or the product of an unsafe corporate culture. Again, the safety construct applies to all cases, even those which don't involve physical consequences. For example, a company that permits discrimination is unsafe in a broader sense, even if no one is physically harmed. Knowledge and control plays the same role as in the other pathways.

- Complex Pathways: Of course, during the course of a trial, jurors may evaluate other issues along other pathways, one of these being corporate image. The company at the highest risk for punitive damages is the one which jurors individually or collectively conclude acted irresponsibly and unsafely, even though it had adequate knowledge and control over the circumstances, but otherwise has a positive reputation. The inconsistency between what jurors expect and what they observe is a powerful motivator for punitive damages (e.g., "I always thought they were such a good company. This conduct is really beneath them").

On the other hand, a company with a negative image may escape punishment because jurors believe that, in the context of the specific allegations, it acted responsibly and safely. This is especially true when jurors believe that the plaintiff had enough knowledge and control over the circumstances and was not a victim (e.g., "I don't like this insurance company, but I do believe they had the plaintiff's best interest in mind, and besides, the plaintiff should have complained sooner if he felt he was being cheated").

It seems complicated; can't we just go back to "personalizing" the corporation?

Defending a company is complicated. Focusing on corporate image alone is risky. The other key factors represented in the model are vitally important in jurors' decision to punish (or find against the defendant). Ignoring any of the issue areas when evaluating and preparing a case is perilous. The model also suggests that the best way to motivate jurors to think favorably of a company is to show how the company is responsible and safe in the context of the allegations made against it and not merely in general terms (i.e., is a charitable company that is a good citizen in the community).

In fact, jurors report resenting attempts to build the image of a company at trial by focusing on irrelevant deeds. The flag-giving company mentioned earlier was routinely trounced by juries who reported resenting the mere mention of the company's pro-scouting contributions. Knowledge and control is the critical junction for all pathways. Most effective trial strategy starts with an analysis how to increase juror perceptions of plaintiff's knowledge and control. The fallout from Enron has made the game harder to play, but it is the same game and can be won if you know the rules.

Authors Resource Box:
Ross Laguzza, PhD is a founder of and principal in R&D Strategic Solutions, trial consultants and jury consultants specializing in jury selection, jury consulting, and trial consulting.

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

by Ross Laguzza

Upon arriving in hell, a gentleman--we shall call him Mr. Marklin--discovers that his new environs are something less than tolerable and, indeed, a good bit unpleasant. Being a modern man of the 21st century, he quickly formulates a plan: "I'll sue!" He has no trouble finding a plaintiff's lawyer who files a lawsuit against God, the creator.

The lawyer's theory is simple, yet profound: God created an unreasonably dangerous and ultra-hazardous condition (temptation) and failed to adequately monitor and warn the plaintiff of the inherent risks of being a human male. God assigns the case to in-house counsel who sets to work on filing the typical responses and motions.

After a slow start, the case quickly progresses to trial in Mississippi. While there initially was some difficulty seating an impartial jury (a surprising number of prospective jurors hold strong biases toward heaven and hell), the trial commences.

Naturally, every good lawyer understands the need to tell a good story. The plaintiff lawyer settles on the following case themes:

- Life is filled with temptation and want: ask me how I know.

- God failed to adequately and clearly warn of the risks, even though God knew or should have known about these risks.

- Even a cursory examination of God's record shows a pattern and practice of deceptive and unreasonably dangerous behavior.

- Hell, like McDonald's coffee, is too hot.

- The plaintiff has endured physical and emotional suffering and deserves compensation.

- The jury needs to send a message that this sort of behavior will not be tolerated by the good (and bad) citizens of this community.

In support of his case, the plaintiff marshals an impressive group of witnesses:

Lucifer: "Hell violates every freakin' OSHA standard in the book!"
University of Southern Mississippi Economist: Calculates value of the loss of eternal bliss.
Mississippi State Professor of Ethics: "Eternal damnation is morally questionable at best."
Plaintiff Marklin: "Hell, yes, I'm a victim!"

In-house counsel, no slouch himself, orchestrates his defense around the following core messages:

- Live and learn.
- Plaintiff Marklin knew the risks of sin since he was a young boy attending an oppressive religious school.
- The Ten Commandments are well publicized.
- Nothing matters; it's all predestined anyway.
- This is an attorney-driven lawsuit with no real merit.
- Should you decide to find for the plaintiff, the most he is entitled to is purgatory.

The defense presents the testimony of these fine witnesses:

St. Peter: "I calls 'em as I sees 'em."
Expert on Moral Reasoning from Harvard: "The paradoxical implication of moral integrity in the context of infinite time is that good is bad and bad is good."
Berkeley Economist: "Plaintiff's economist failed to standardize the beta weights in his multiple regression equation."
Moses: "You call that suffering?"
Groucho Marx: "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member."
Professor of Metaphysics from MIT: "Everywhere you go, there you are."

Following rousing closing arguments, the case goes to the jury. They deliberate for 46 minutes before returning a verdict. The verdict is announced to a hushed courtroom: "We, the jury, find in favor of the plaintiff and award him the keys to the kingdom of heaven."

A consultant is retained by the defense to determine what went wrong. During the post-trial interviews, the jurors indicate that they weren't mad but thought that God could have done more to warn about the risks or, better yet, to remove the risks altogether. Most felt the warning should have been clearer, in larger type, and in brighter colors.

They also felt that some sort of automatic system should be developed to prevent people from making choices that might threaten their eternal splendor. One juror, a retired engineer, proposed a device that would beep (or vibrate if the person was in the theater) whenever a person was at risk of going to hell in a hand-basket or other conveyance. The foreperson apparently led the jury with the idea that life should be 100% consequence-free and "this personal responsibility thing has gotten way out of hand."

These arguments made sense to the other jurors. The two jurors who were hardest to persuade believed that the plaintiff was negligent, but couldn't deny that hell seemed a bit extreme. They were hoping the damages could be placed in a community repository for future generations, but upon learning that this was impossible, resignedly went along with the others.

The jurors were in agreement in their round dislike for the plaintiff Marklin as an individual, but felt their verdict was making the world a bit safer for everyone. One side note: Several jurors felt God's failure to appear at the trial was a sign of arrogance and few accepted the defense argument that "God is everywhere and besides he is really busy." The case is on appeal.

Authors Resource Box:
Ross Laguzza, PhD is a founder of and principal in R&D Strategic Solutions, trial consultants and jury consultants specializing in trial strategy, trial tactics, and jury research.

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

by Ross Laguzza

Imagine a typical courtroom with a judge, jury, court reporter, bailiff, assorted spectators and oh yes, a gorilla. Would anyone notice the primate? More significantly, would your jurors notice? Recent research suggests that under the right conditions they just might not.

Lawyers often lament about jurors' failure to attend to, remember, and use key evidence and testimony in their deliberations. Jury interviews have revealed that some jurors claim no memory of certain witnesses. Attorneys and their clients frequently attribute this failure to a lack of motivation or intelligence. How else could an otherwise competent person miss something so central to the case? Over the years, efforts have been made to experiment with procedural interventions designed to increase juror comprehension. Research on perception suggests an explanation other than motivational or intellectual; instead the culprit may be a kind of "cognitive blindness".

My own experience may be illustrative: I once was invited to lecture at a bar association meeting in the mid-west. The program coordinator had planned to have someone meet me at my gate (this was when one could still do that) and take me to my hotel, but at the last minute called to say that no one was available; I would have to get myself to the hotel. I arrived on time and navigated through the crowd at the gate, found a taxi and went to the hotel. Three hours later I received a call by an exasperated person who, with very little introduction asked, "where were you?"

It turns out that while I was en route, someone was dispatched to collect me at the airport after all. He even went to the trouble of making a large sign with my name on it which he showed to each person who disembarked. He became frantic thinking he had missed me and would get in trouble. The poor guy; I never saw him or his sign even though it displayed something as personally salient as my name. I was blind to his best efforts to capture my attention simply because I did not expect anyone to be there.

The Gorilla Study

Why do people fail to notice things that are right in front of them? An interesting study conducted by university researchers at Harvard and the University of Illinois attempted to answer that question. In the research, participants were asked to keep a silent count of the number of times five persons passed a basketball to each other. The persons passed the ball in a fixed order but kept moving around the room randomly. At a predetermined point, a person dressed in a full gorilla costume walked through the scene and in one condition even stopped in front and beat its chest in stereotypical fashion. The study participants were then asked among other things whether they noticed anything unusual or unexpected during the exercise.

The average result across all conditions was that nearly 50% of the participants did not notice the unexpected event. In one condition, as many as 58% failed to notice the gorilla. The investigators attributed this failure to a type of "blindness" which occurs when people are focused on a task and something outside their expectations occurs. This phenomenon explains why for example motorists hit bicyclists they report they never saw even though they were alertly monitoring for other cars, or theater goers fail to notice old friends as they search for a seat.

Unnoticed Gorillas in the Courtroom

While this study dealt strictly with perception, the parallels to information processing in the courtroom are worth considering. Jurors tend to focus on the trial narrative that is personally relevant. Facts and testimony outside that narrow range of expectations can be classified as "unexpected" and is subject to being missed due to jurors' temporary "blindness". Indeed, the typical case is replete with metaphorical "gorillas". For example, many corporations go to great length to let the jury know what a good corporate citizen it is. However, since many jurors believe that corporations are motivated by greed, the selected examples of corporate beneficence go unnoticed as they fall outside jurors' expectations.

In science cases (e.g., pharmaceutical product liability cases) we often see that jurors fail to attend to the causation evidence and deliberate as if they never heard any testimony on the subject. Indeed, some of these jurors act surprised that causation is even a contended issue. This is different than pointing out that some jurors are biased against corporations and hear but refuse to accept pro-corporate messages. Instead, the point here is that some jurors never hear the message in the first place. Indeed, underestimating the power of juror expectations is one of the fundamental errors committed by experienced trial counsel.

In the gorilla study participants were permitted to see a video of the scene they had just watched but this time with the goal of looking for something unexpected; many could not believe that they missed the gorilla. In hindsight, the presence of a gorilla seems so obvious. Similarly, lawyers, working on a case for months or years can't remember what it was like not to see the gorillas in their case. They present their cases as if key facts and evidence are obvious to all and as a result become the unwitting victims of juror blindness.

Helping Blind Jurors See

We know of two principle approaches to reducing juror blindness. The first and simplest to implement is repetition of key information. To use the perception researchers' paradigm, if you leave the gorilla in the room long enough, eventually someone will notice it. Yet, most trial evidence is not as prominent as a living, breathing, chest beating gorilla. In fact, two decades of practical experience tells us that repetition alone is often insufficient to achieve increased attention and often falls woefully short of affecting juror attitudes. The more challenging yet often more successful approach is to integrate important evidence so that it is consistent with juror expectations.

If the goal is to convince jurors that the company is a good corporate citizen in the context of a toxic tort case, listing charitable donations and community involvement often go unnoticed because they are not part of jurors' expectations and focus. And even if jurors should notice this information, it is often discarded as irrelevant. In such a case, jurors are focused on whether or not the company acted irresponsibly in managing potentially hazardous materials. This issue is personally relevant because jurors want to live in a safe world. Evidence of safe corporate policies and practices in the context of what was known at the time is more likely to be noticed as this is what jurors are focused on and expect to see and hear.

In the causation example, most jurors expect that the cause of death will be listed on an autopsy report. When jurors learn an autopsy was not performed (as is often the case in a product liability case) they then decide that causation matters but not because the defense has been hammering on the scientific evidence. In deciding causation it is unlikely that they will use the scientific evidence at all. An autopsy fits jurors' expectations about how cause of death is established. The lack of an autopsy is personally relevant in a way that the science evidence can never be.

Motivating jurors to notice key evidence requires the trial attorney to first determine the nature of jurors' case-specific expectations. This is difficult and challenging but will help jurors see the case, gorillas and all, perhaps for the first time.

References

O'Keefe, D., Persuasion: Theory and Research Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002.

Simons, D. and Chabris, F. Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Events. Perception, 1999, 28, 1059-1074.

Authors Resource Box:
Ross Laguzza, PhD is a founder of and principal in R&D Strategic Solutions, trial consultants and jury consultants specializing in jury selection, jury consulting, and trial consulting.

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

by John Pawlett

Until recently lawyers for victims of credit damage had little possibility to collect for damages beyond medical treatment, lost wages and property loss.

Insurance companies threw up their hands in sympathy, claiming victims can only be compensated for what can be measured tangible goods and services. But, what happens when the victim has lost considerable time from work, the family bank is broke and monthly payments on mortgages, car loans and credit cards payments are missed? Regardless of the haggling between lawyers and insurance companies, it's the credit victim who ends up having to live with a bad credit rating.

Today, there are legally accepted means for measuring loss of credit through the procedure of Credit Damage Measurement (CDM). CDM is fast becoming a potent tool for recoverable credit damage awards when the damage is not self-inflicted. Previously, both judge and jury, and especially the insurance companies, refused to acknowledge CDM claiming it was speculative because they could not define it as tangible damage. However, in case after case, victims of credit damage who use the CDM method are getting compensation for credit loss. Many factors are changing the old mindset including credit bureau technology improvements, the application of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), risk scoring sophistication, and the development of CDM as an objective, repeatable method that measures out-of-pocket damage reliably.

Credit Ratings and Recovery. The impact of a bad credit rating is much more significant than most people think. Consider what poorly rated consumers face when they want to lease or buy vehicles, obtain credit cards, buy or lease or refinance their residence. In most cases, it's an easy decision for the creditor: the credit application is simply turned down or the borrower is charged a much higher down payment maybe thousands of dollars more with monthly payments that are typically several hundred dollars more.

A person with bad credit is viewed with suspicion and is charged significantly more for future extension of credit because the lender feels the need to protect against a greater risk or default says Tom Key, a civil litigator practicing in Tustin, CA.

Over the years I have heard reports of financial damages from clients who have been wrongfully terminated, defrauded, injured in an accident or suffered losses from breach of contract, Key says. These victims were especially distraught over the fact that their prime credit reputation, carefully nurtured for years, is destroyed overnight. It seemed to me that there must be a way to compensate victims for that type of loss.

Key has witnessed the reactions of many jurors who failed to award a victim of credit damage their rightful compensation simply because they could not quantify the damages. Jurors want a specific loss that they can count, hold and see, says Key. Their reasoning is that they need to know that it is genuine. They have a tough time awarding damages based on sympathy. In order for them to confirm authenticity of a claim, they want to see its quantification.

Measuring Loss of Creditworthiness

Assuring authenticity has been a sticky situation when it concerns measuring out-of-pocket loss for victims of credit damage until now. Attorneys who represent victims of credit damage are now utilizing the Credit Damage Measurement method to recover out-of-pocket losses for their clients. CDM measures the actual out-of-pocket dollars reasonably expected from loss of creditworthiness, which includes higher down payments, higher points and costs on loans, higher interest rates, higher monthly payments, or outright denial of credit, says Key.

In addition, the CDM method also calculates the rates, costs and other terms applicable to the resulting credit rating by lenders and projects the results over the relevant number of years for the types of loans the client is likely to seek.

Key continues, For example, if a clients credit was near perfect before a triggering event, and is subsequently damaged by the event, the CDM procedure can illustrate before and after analyses, calculating the cost of the same loans with the two different credit reports, Pre- injury credit compared to Post-injury credit. In many cases, CDM clients have already realized significant compensation. In one such case CDM was instrumental in recovering $56,000 for damaged credit reputation. That calculation is the difference between what refinancing a $140,000 loan would have cost my client with their prior rating, and what it will cost them out-of-pocket with their damaged credit rating measured over a seven-year period.

Isolated Compensation vs. Repeatable Compensation
The CDM method of measuring intangible credit loss is increasingly becoming the basis of recovery for victims of credit damage. Its changing the way judges and juries measure recoverable out-of-pocket loss, and then can compensate for loss of credit expectancy. Certainly there are still some skeptics, mostly defendants. Technically, credit damage measurement is intangible. However, CDM has proven an objective and practical procedure to calculate out-of-pocket damage for companies or families to compensate for their credit damage.

To have this kind of measurement is an exciting complexity in our society, says Key. CDM is very understandable and a rather simple way to come to a conclusion of loss for the victim. If you understand the math and are an expert at reading credit reports, the calculations and recovery are undeniable. It's a method of turning isolated compensation into repeatable compensation. It's changing the way jurors rule on these damaging cases. Because of this method, victims of credit damage can be more fairly and more completely compensated for out-of-pocket damage.

Authors Resource Box:
Attorney listing is an informative website that looks into all aspects of ocmpensaion from business firms throught to banks.
To find out more visit Attorney's

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

by David Dutch

Do not be misled though by false prophets promising adsense secrets... these people are not building like your average website builder does.

They have systems in place that create sites for them... people who build sites for them... they have outsourced and automated many of the tedious tasks such as posting to blogs and searching for keywords.

In a nutshell, you want to make sure the page you create offers great value to people interested in the topic you have researched, ideally high demand with low supply.

When you provide excellent information on a specific topic, your visitors will benefit and will be more likely to click through to your relevant Google Adsense Adverts.

Keep your sites easy to navigate and forget the fancy graphics that distract your visitors attention. Unless you are just building AdSense sites for the fun of it and not as a serious business... the purpose of having the site is to have people click on one of the ads.

Keep the site layout simple... dump the scrolling banners, dancing chickens and coloured scroll bars... they are distractions.

Here are 4 Required Steps you can implement today to copy their success and start making money.

1) Starting today... treat your AdSense business like it is a REAL business and track what you do.

Begin tracking what you are doing that works... as well as what you are doing that does not work. This will keep you from making the same mistakes over and over, and you can repeat the steps that have worked in the past. As simple as this step seems... most people do not know the reason for their success or failure.

2) Utilize the latest tools and software available to find good adsense keywords.

The Super AdSense earners are not any smarter than your average person. I know many people think they are... but for the most part, they are regular non techie people.

They are smarter in one respect though... they use the latest tools available to them to automate most of the tasks involved when researching and creating sites. They use the latest adsense keyword, site creation and search engine optimization tools available. The tools they use are their adsense secret weapons.

3) Quit chasing the High Paying keywords.

You cannot compete with the search engine experts who create sites for the $50 payout keywords. You may get lucky every now and then... but in the long run, you are better off building sites for the low to mid range payout keywords. The competition is less, and your chance of success is much higher over the long term.

4) Start with a broad niche and break it down.

Choose a broad subject as your main theme (lets use history of Jaguar cars as an example). From there... break it down into as many sub niches as possible.

You could build sub niches/sites like XK120 type from 1948 to 1954, XK 120 Roadster, XK120 Fixed Head Coupe, etc, etc. You could literally build hundreds of sites around one major theme and stay totally focus

It's to your financial advantage to put the Adsense coding near the top of your page on the right. Make sure there is enough "breathing room" -- i.e. white space around the ads -- so that they will easily attract your visitors.

Plus, Google has some of the smartest engineers around, and they are very good at detecting this kind of fraud. And really, for an extra $1, is it worth getting kicked out of a money-maker like AdSense? I think not.

Place your adsense advertising instrategic places, for example place adsense links at the top just under your header and use blocks not skyscraper ads (these look like google ads and are invrably ignored by the viewer).

Adsense is still a very worthwhile business to get your Internet marketing business off the ground. But it must be treated as a real business and care must be taken when selecting the theme of your site to ensure there is enough demand to create a market of visitors.

If you build a site just for Adsense it will soon meet with the wrath of the search engines and all your work will be for nothing. Build good sites of quality content and the adsense ads will reflect the quality of your site. You will attract traffic and because your content is good they will be more than willing to click on your Adsense ads.

This is not short term millionaire fodder, you have to be in it for the long term, but by building quality sites your traffic and earnings will start small but will grow over the months and years with very little further intervention on your part.

Authors Resource Box:
David Dutch involved with Personal Development for over 20 years developed training programmes for Internet Marketing he has earned a great deal from Adsense easily developing a business from zero. Please visit one of his sites to illustrate how easy this can be done follow this link-Discover How to Make Real Money Today! or contact him at his personal email address at

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

by John Pawlett

Overture or now known as Yahoo because of Yahoos takeover, was the original inventor of the use of the P4P or Pay for Performance. Overture saw that the internet was fast becoming the easiest and most convenient way to shop, and advertising was going to hit at an all time high because of the many businesses in the arena.

To get a person to go to a site than others, it needs to be very visible. Providing ads that could direct potential consumers and costumers to their site would allow them to have an increase in traffic as well as sales. Yahoo provides a service that can put a site or companys ad in their sites that can be shown when certain keywords are inputted.

Yahoo offers a chance for any company to increase their traffic by using their services. With more people being aware of your site, there would be more traffic and visitors to your site given the chance to view your pages as well as your products. With even a small percentage of successful sales, with a high traffic volume this could still be a substantial figure for your company.

Getting a consistent substantial flow of website visitors is every companys goal. Many methods are devised and utilized to ensure that there would be more people to boost the sales and to be aware of the existence of such a product or service. Website visitors are potentially the life blood of your internet based business.

Yahoo/Overture utilizes the same principle as Googles Adwords. In fact, they are very similar to each other that they use keyword and keyword phrase searches and to determine which ads to show per search. When a person types in a keyword or keyword phrase to search for anything, the search engines gives out the results in a page. Then at the right side of the page, you will see selected ads that have paid for their ads to be viewed with certain keywords and keyword phrases searched.

For example, Lets say you run a car parts retail/wholesale site. You choose keywords that can prompt or trigger your ads to be shown in the page when a keyword is searched. When a search engine user types in Honda Accord, your ad may come up if you have designated that as one of your keywords. You dont need to fully optimize your site with Search Engine Optimization methods and techniques.

While some labor so hard to make their site one of the high ranking sites per keyword search, you get the chance to be on the top of the list or at least in the first page of a search result increasing your chance to be clicked on. With that, you drive traffic and website visitors to your site a lot faster.

You will have to pony up some cash when using this service though. There are different ways Yahoo/Overture will charge you. It may be in the number of Keywords or Keyword phrases your ad uses or in the many times your ad is clicked on. Others offer many other services like having your ad show up not only in the search engine pages but also with some third party sites.

Third party sites support ads that have the same theme or niche as them. With more areas your ad is shown, you increase the chances of people knowing about your site or product. With more website visitors you increase the sales of your site which makes your investment with your ads a wise one.

With so many competitions in the internet based businesses, it is necessary to take a huge leap forward from the pack by advertising. Yahoo/Overture will be a great place to start. Many have utilized their services and have reaped the rewards of this decision. Its a marketing strategy that will increase your website visitors as well as increase your sales resulting to profit.

It takes money to make money, while there are some methods that are basically low cost or free, using a marketing service such as what Yahoo/Overture offers will provide results faster and on a larger scale. Many businesses have learned this the hard way, dont be counted with them.

Authors Resource Box:
Buying Traffic is an informative Web Traffic site that looks into all aspects of Web Traffic from SEO to The Site Itself.
To find out more visit Domain Traffic

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

by MARC GRIMA

Whichever you are, for as long as you are a webmaster or a web publisher and you need cash, affiliate marketing may work well for you. With affiliate marketing, you may get a lot of cash pouring into your bank account easily. And if your website is rich in great contents and you want to earn more profit, why not get into the Google Adsense program as well?

Why Affiliate Marketing?

Well, simply because affiliate marketing is the easiest and probably the best way to earn profits online, unless otherwise you are a businessman and would rather sell your own products online than advertise other businessman's products on your site. But even online retailers can benefit from affiliate marketing programs, because affiliate marketing actually works for merchants as well as it works for the affiliates.

Affiliate marketing, simply said, is a relationship or agreement made between two websites, with one site being the merchant's website and the other being the affiliate's site. In the relationship, the affiliate agrees to let the merchant advertise his products on the affiliate's site. The merchant, on the other hand, would agree to pay the affiliate in whatever method they have agreed into. This would generally mean easy income for the affiliate, as he would do nothing but place the retailer's ad on his site. This would also be very beneficial for the merchant, as getting affiliates to advertise their products would be a lot more affordable than hiring an advertising firm to promote their products.

There are a variety of methods on how the merchant would compensate the affiliate for his services, and for the webmaster, these methods simply translates to the method by which he would earn easy cash. Among the more common methods of compensation are the pay-per-click method, the pay-per-lead method, and the pay-per-sale method. The pay-per-click method is the method most preferred by affiliates, for their site's visitor would only have to visit the advertiser's site for them to gain money. The other two methods, on the other hand, are better preferred by merchants, as they would only have to compensate you if your visitor becomes one of their registrants or if the visitor would actually buy their products.

Getting much profit on affiliate marketing programs, however, does not depend so much on the compensation method is it does on the traffic generated by your site. A website that can attract more visitors would generally have the greater chance of profiting in affiliate marketing programs.

What about Google Adsense?

Google Adsense is actually some sort of an affiliate marketing program. In Google Adsense, Google act as the intermediary between the affiliates and the merchants. The merchant, or the advertiser, would simply sign up with Google and provide the latter with text ads pertaining to their products. These ads, which is actually a link to the advertiser's website, would then appear on Google searches as well as on the websites owned by the affiliates, or by those webmasters who have signed up with the Google Adsense program.

While one can find a lot of similarities between Google Adsense and other affiliate marketing programs, you can also see a lot of differences. In Google Adsense, all the webmaster has to do is place a code on his website and Google takes care of the rest. The ads that Google would place on your site would generally be relevant to the content of your site. This would be advantageous both for you and for the advertiser, as the visitors of your site would more or less be actually interested with the products being advertised.

The Google Adsense program compensates the affiliate in a pay-per-click basis. The advertisers would pay Google a certain amount each time their ad on your site is clicked and Google would then forward this amount to you through checks, although only after Google have deducted their share of the amount. Google Adsense checks are usually delivered monthly. Also, the Google Adsense program provides webmasters with a tracking tool that allows you to monitor the earnings you actually get from a certain ad.

So, where do all of these lead us to?

Where else but to profits, profits and even more profits! Affiliate marketing programs and the Google Adsense program simply work, whether you are the merchant or the affiliate. For the merchant's side, a lot of money can be saved if advertising effort is concentrated on affiliate marketing rather than on dealing with advertising firms. For the webmaster, you can easily gain a lot of profits just by doing what you do best, and that is by creating websites. And if you combine all your profits from both the Google Adsense program and other affiliate marketing programs, it would surely convert to a large amount of cash.

Authors Resource Box:
Shop at Marc Grima's CbMall marketplace to find unique products and services on the web visit: http://www.cbmall.jollygoodfind.com

You can find more information articles on a range of subjects by visiting http://www.jollygoodfind.com

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

by Ba Kiwanuka

If you didn't attend the funeral of Google Adsense despair not, because you are not alone. Though much has been written about the untimely death of Adsense, the truth of the matter is that Google Adsense is alive and very well.

If you are new to the whole Google-Adsense-Is-Dead brouhaha let's tread back in time a little to get you up to speed. Cutting a somewhat long story short, what you need to be aware of is that in the waning months of 2005 Google made a few select tweaks to its Adsense algorithm that effectively pulled the plug on Adsense Joy riders (Adsense scammers).

The Adsense Joy riders were the folks who were pulling in huge Adsense revenues by directing tons of irrelevant traffic to their Adsense-template sites (Adsense-specific optimized sites). So how were the Adsense joy riders able to corral such tremendous amounts of traffic? Simple! Just pay for thousands of visitors to their sites for a nominal fee; e.g., they could get 100,000 visitors directed to their sites for about $100 bucks!

For the Adsense joy rider it mattered little whether those visitors constituted relevant traffic or not; or to put it another way, it was immaterial whether the visitor to the site was actually interested or actively looking for the subject matter of the site.

The only thing that mattered to the Adsense joy rider was that the traffic came from different IP addresses such that when the Adsense ads on their sites were clicked, each click registered as originating from a different IP address. This was necessary in order to avoid accusations of click fraud (click fraud is said to have occurred when multiple clicks are registered from the same IP address. Click fraud is a really old school technique (that was quickly nullified by Google) to boost one's own Adsense revenue.

The other hurdle the Adsense joy riders had to over come was how to get traffic unconcerned about the topic of their Adsense (template) website to click on their ads. This was achieved quite easily. By having pretty much nothing else on such a webpage, the Adsense joy rider dramatically boosted the click through rate of their Adsense ads; after all, what else could the hapless visitor do other than click on a Google Adsense ad or click their back button...

Most people actually tended to reflexively click on an Adsense ad with the result, ka-ching Adsense guru just got paid...and paid a lot!

Anyway the advertisers started complaining to Google that their advertising money was being wasted, Google listened and tweaked a little bit more and effectively slowed the Adsense joy ride to a dead halt. It was about this time that the Adsense joy riders (Adsense sneakmeisters) began selling their products...and selling them hard!

They had ample proof that there was money to be made from Google Adsense and they certainly weren't shy about sharing that proof.

But what the poor Adsense-wannabe millionaires who bought those overpriced products did not know was that the techniques outlined in those courses were defunct. They just didn't work anymore...Google had seen to that and this was the reason the Adsense gurus were very kindly letting the rest of the world into their Adsense mega-revenue generating systems!

Is Google Adsense Truly Dead!

Adsense is alive and thriving well. Heck Adsense is doing more than thriving...Adsense is kicking butt for plenty of marketers! But who are these mysterious people who are still making good money from Adsense? Do they actually exist? Sure they do, they are the folks who have legit sites that are strategically placed on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

You see Google doesn't place the same Adsense ads on each and every website. The advertisers shelling out the most coin for a given keyword get their adverts displayed on high-traffic, topically relevant sites that are very well placed on the search engines...specifically on Google.

The rationale behind this is that if your website is all-the-way-up-there on Google, it means that Google views your website as legit and well-qualified to host the highest paying Adsense ads targeting a particular keyword; if such a website was not up to scratch, it wouldn't be so highly placed on Google.

Adsense Revenue Accelerant Topics

Ever noticed that once people become knowledgeable about Google Adsense, from then onwards they avoid clicking on Adsense ads as if they were plague bombs?

And who are these Adsense-savvy folks who shy away from Adsense ads? How about people just like you and me...in other words marketers and people active in ecommerce!

The great news though is that there are plenty of people out there who are unaware idea that those ads they are clicking on are called Google Adsense ads; and that when they click on such an ad they are making someone money while at the same time costing another person money.

Such Adsense-ignorant folk are the people who typically click on an ad unconsciously because they found the topic of the ad interesting; simply put, these are the people who advertisers and Google love...they constitute relevant traffic.

Bottom line: If your site is not well ranked on Google and the other search engines yet you wish to make significant revenue from Adsense, you best ensure that the topic of your website is not one that boasts a large Adsense-savvy population...i.e., think niche markets, or article directories (which partly explains the explosion of article directories).

Authors Resource Box:
Adsense Revenue Tips

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

by Tuks Engineer

Creating website pages that are optimized for maximum Adsense clicks are just part of the story. You can have the best website in niches that are simply perfect for Adsense, but without a steady stream of targeted traffic they wont yield much income. In this section we'll look at some of the ways of attracting free or zero cost traffic to your website:

Article Submission

Submitting articles to directories and ezines remains one of the best ways of attracting free, quality traffic to your sites. Simply leave a link to your Adsense site in the resource box at the end of the article and over time your site can receive hundreds or even thousands of free visitors.

Write A Press Release

You can create a free press release about your website and submit it to http://www.prweb.com and other press release services. A well written press release can result in masses of free, targeted traffic.

Create & Distribute A Viral eBook

Similar to free articles, viral eBooks are a great way of generating targeted traffic on a shoe-string budget. The eBooks can be given away so that over time they reach their desired audience through various distribution channels (ebook directories, ezine owners, link-sharing etc).

Notify Your Email Lists

If you have email lists that would be interested in your site then write a newsletter edition that ends in the reader going to the Adsense site. This way, as additional posts are made on the site the newsletter readers can keep returning and income will continue to be earned from this source alone.

Post On Forums

Forums are hotbeds of interested prospects. Many forums allow you to leave a signature and thus link to your site. Depending on the niche and individual forum some may not allow you to do this so research before you start posting. It's worth noting that some heavy-hitting forums may have hundreds or even thousands of readers looking at just one thread so this strategy when used correctly is a great way of inducing traffic & ultimate Adsense clicks.

Build Related Niche Sites

Existing traffic from one niche website can skillfully be diverted into other niche websites. For example, if you have a website that is about the stock market and investment, and you set-up another website that shows people how to buy and sell land for profits, the two are very complimentary. Traffic can be easily diverted onto the new site for immediate Adsense income. While it's good to have sites in different niches there are also many benefits in creating additional sub-niche sites in the same general market.

There are also many other ways of getting traffic to your Adsense website, such as Blog & Ping and search engine optimization. Entire books have been written about all of these subjects and how to benefit from them.

Buy Expired Domains With Existing Traffic Streams

Thousands of expired domain names expire everyday in a wide variety of niches. Many of these domain names have an existing stream of traffic attached to them. By obtaining an expired domain that has targeted traffic flowing to it you can significantly boost your Adsense income from day one. The free article below shows you how to do this:

http://www.digital-resale-rights.com/lcexpireddomains.htm

You can also pick up the Expired Domain Fortunes eBook as a
Building Your Adsense Empire

With an internet business there are many different potential business models that can be put into place. Adsense can be used as a primary income generator or as part of a wider income model that incorporates other revenue streams (such as affiliate & in-house products).

Contrary to popular belief it is not necessary to build hundreds of Adsense sites in order to create a vibrant source of income from Adsense. For instance, in his Adsense Video Tutorials, Michael Chaney shows how he earns over $19,000 per month in Adsense revenue from just ten sites.

Research & Pick Good Niches That Are Compatible With Adsense

Here's something that many people just don't get – the niches you choose to enter will make a huge impact on the ultimate Adsense income your business brings in. When choosing a potentially suitable niche you ought to be on the lookout for the following:

A suitably high interest in the niche market from end-users (the people that will finally click your adverts). Typically you will want to see at least 25,000 searches a month for related keywords. You can get an idea of the popularity of various keywords by searching Overtures database:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

(Note – Google search results will be far higher than Overture)
You will also want to ensure that the per-click bids from advertisers are healthy. Some markets such as real estate & finance can yield far higher per-click bids than other less potent niches. For example, the term "property investment" is searched approximately 300,000 per month and the maximum bid value is $3.

Similarly, "land investment" has a maximum bid value of $3.85 and is searched over 33,000 times each month.

Finally, "online stockbroker" gets a top bid per click of $4.99 and the general term "stockbroker" is searched for over 280,000 per month in Google alone. You can research these Adsense compatible niches below if you would like to learn more:

Setting Up Real Estate Content Sites For Adsense
http://www.digital-resale-rights.com/propertyprospecialoffer.htm

Setting Up Land Investment Content Sites For Adsense
http://www.digital-resale-rights.com/landspecial.htm

Setting Up StockBroker Sites For Adsense
http://www.digital-resale-rights.com/stockbrokerwso.htm

If you target niches like the above that combine high volumes of interested prospects and high bid values, your Adsense income can be very powerful from just a handful of sites.

Number Of Adverts That Each Visitor Is Likely To Click On Your Site

In some niches, prospects are more likely to click over a higher number of advert displays. A keen example of this can be found via highly targeted holiday and travel sites. There's a major shift in the way holidays and travel are being researched and purchased – from offline to online. When someone is researching a specific holiday (for example to the Maldives) they automatically look for the best deals available. A targeted prospect is likely to click over many Adsense adverts on a content website that contains suitable Maldives holiday packages. Here's an article that will show you how to set-up a simple content website for maximum Adsense income in the travel niche:

http://www.digital-resale-rights.com/travel/lctravelniche.htm

This is another simple example of how choosing the right niche to enter can significantly boost your ultimate Adsense income.

Quality Website Content

It's absolutely imperative that, whatever niche you penetrate, your website has quality content. Even the most potent niches and the cleverest of site & ad layout will not help a site that has poor content. If the visitor begins to read and is simply appalled by the poor standard of information they wont hang around to look at your ads.

On the topic of content there has been much debate in recent times as to the benefits and drawbacks of using private label rights content or other "duplicate" content from article directories.

So should you be using private label rights to build your Adsense based websites?

Private label rights are fantastic profit & productivity tools. Quality PLR content can give you a basic blueprint for an online business. The content is ready-made and (if you buy from the right places) professionally written. However, the debate centres around the fact that most PLR material is duplicated content which search engines are wary of.

So does that mean you should not use PLR content? Only if you want to leave a lot of profits on the bedside table. The best thing to do is merge your PLR content with your own unique material so that you have a truly unique site that's bulging with quality content. It does not take a lot of effort to tweak PLR material, or to add your own unique content to the basic PLR content. Add pictures and video. Make small changes that bring big results.

What about those articles you see posted on various directories? Personally I would never use them for my own sites unless I absolutely had to. That's because with these free articles you are obligated to leave the authors signature link to their own website product at the end of the article. If you use your own content, or quality private label rights, then you can insert your own affiliate/product link and this yields even more income for your site.

Here's a free resource that shows you how to extract huge profits from simple private label rights products:

http://www.digital-resale-rights.com/lcplr.htm

Draw Targeted Traffic To Your Adsense Sites/Blogs

You will need to put in place strategies that will attract traffic to your Adsense sites. We've gone over several free ways in getting a steady stream of traffic above.

Build Additional Sites Within Your Existing Niches & Recycle Traffic

Entering into a new niche market takes hard work. You need to create a good quality site that's fundamentally profitable, drive traffic to the site, establish joint venture relationships, try and get listed in multiple search engines and build opt in lists. One common mistake many budding Adsense entrepreneurs make is setting up several Adsense sites in completely unrelated niches.

It's good to have a certain level of diversity – but when you enter a new niche, all that work of establishing the site needs to be redone. When you build additional, related sites in the same broad niche you have a huge advantage – you can recycle the traffic (site visitors & opt in subscribers) to the new site for instant income.

Optimize Your Site With Appropriate Keywords

It's important to carefully place targeted keywords over your website & the title of each page on your site. Try not to have one generic title for all the pages on your website. This will ensure that appropriate adverts are served on each website page.

Track Your Results

Testing & tracking are fundamental in any business, online or offline. Adsense offers some tracking functions that you should make use of to see which URLs are bringing in the majority of your clicks. This will help you shape your future Adsense campaigns by highlighting the formats, niches etc that have yielded the best results.

How To Start With Google Adsense If You Don't Have The Ability To Set-Up A Website Or Even The Smallest Budget

If you would like to start earning some Adsense income but you do not have the funds or technological know-how to set-up your own website then you can still start for free – by setting up a simple blog.

You can create a free blog at http://www.blogger.com. Once you choose a topic and set-up your blog you can simply paste in your Adsense code in the Templates tab in your blog account. Within minutes your blog will be able to serve up targeted ads closely matched to your content.

Blogs are also great if you're new to getting online traffic – http://blogger.com have an in built RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed which is helpful for traffic generation. To get a flow of traffic to your blog started submit the blog to the many blog directories available online.

Many people inexperienced with setting up online sites or earning a living online are making residual incomes by creating simple blogs and putting Adsense on them.

Authors Resource Box:
FREE - Uncover The Insider Information That *Will* Sky-rocket Your Adsense Income. Controversial Site Reveals The Tactics That Others Have Been Charging Hundreds For: Stealth Adsense Wealth Tactics

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

by Tuks Engineer

Google Adsense is a highly popular method of "contextual advertising". With Adsense, website owners can display text or image ads that are closely targeted to their site content. The site owner gets paid each time a visitor clicks on any Adsense advert displayed on the website. The amount that is paid per click depends on what the advertiser is willing to pay per click (minus Google's commission). The Adsense publishers commission can be just a few cents or several dollars per click. There are certain keywords available where advertisers pay over $100 for a single click.

This matching of content to ads is done automatically by Google, so for example, a website that has content about travel to the Maldives will bring up adverts about holidays in the Maldives – such as flights, resorts and other travel/holiday advert displays. The website owner benefits because they do not need to do anything aside from insert some simple code onto their site.

Google Adsense is closely related to Adwords. If you have searched through the Google search engine you have probably seen the sponsored ads that are found on the top and to the right of every page. Google Adsense just takes this concept a step further by allowing ads from the same advertisers to be displayed across billions of web pages & blogs. It's a simple yet highly powerful concept that has revolutionized online advertising. It allows grandma to make some residual income while sharing her apple pie recipes. It allows sports enthusiasts to set-up a blog following their favorite football/cricket/basketball team and make some money in the process. And it allows serious website content owners to make a significant stream of income by displaying adverts on their website network. Everyone has something to gain by using Adsense.

While some people rely mainly on Google Adsense for their website income, others use it to supplement their main income. The very top earners from Adsense are able to yield incomes of several thousand dollars each month just from Adsense, but equally many struggle to collect just a few dollars daily from their Adsense sites. We'll look at how you can get into the former category shortly but first let's investigate some of the advantages & drawbacks of the Google Adsense system.

Make Sure You Understand The Google Policies Before Starting

While Adsense is a fantastic way of creating an online income stream, it's important to keep in line with its terms and conditions. Before you can set-up a Google account, it will check out your website to make sure you are eligible to participate in the Adsense program. Here are the Google policies that you should familiarize yourself with before and during your time with Adsense:

https://www.google.com/adsense/policies

Having quality content to offer is one of the biggest assets your website/blog will possess in order to qualify for the Adsense program. Having multiple informative articles on the general subject of your website niche will greatly improve your chances of being accepted into the Adsense program.

Advantages Of Using Google Adsense As An Income Generator

- It's easy to use and simple to set-up. For those who have content it's possible to start displaying Adsense adverts in minutes. It's one of the most accessible sources of online income available.

- Many people dislike "selling" online. If you fall into this category and the idea of having to write specialized sales letters does not appeal to you then Adsense could be a good income generation system for you. The website owner can focus on publishing good content & driving traffic to the site – the ads are automatically displayed and will sell themselves to the website visitor.

- Equally, many people dislike the customer service aspect of owning an online business. Having to deal with customer queries can be tedious and stressful. With Adsense, the site owner is paid each time someone clicks on one of the displayed ads, and that's all there is to it.

- In the right conditions, Adsense can be a significant source of income. Some website owners have proven to yield as much as $19,000 & more a month from Adsense income alone. Of course this type of income is very difficult to achieve when you first start up (unless you have a huge site network with massive traffic streams).

- Google has an incredibly large number of advertisers so however specialized your niche there's a high possibility of being able to participate in the Adsense program.

- Adsense offers a high degree of customization – the look and feel of the adsense displays can be changed to closely match your site. This ultimately results in higher click-through ratios.

- Just about anyone can make a start with Adsense. The program itself is free and even those who do not have the funds or technical expertise to set-up their own site can set-up a free blog.

- Google allows you to block out adverts that you do not want displayed on your pages (for example those of direct competitors).

Drawbacks With Google Adsense – Some Points To Consider If Operating This Model

- You need to have solid content to succeed with Adsense. For those with a lack of time to write their own content some investment may be required to hire a ghost-writer to create content for them, or to acquire private label rights content.

- As soon as the user clicks on the Adsense ad they are taken away from your site and onto the advertisers site (ie the ad does not open in a new window). This can lead to lost revenue for the website owner.

- Google takes a hefty chunk out of the amount that the advertiser pays to display his message on your website. This may be countered in the future as more "big players" enter the contextual ad market – the competition could mean a greater portion of the ad revenue will be retained by the website owner.

Authors Resource Box:
FREE - Uncover The Insider Information That *Will* Sky-rocket Your Adsense Income. Controversial Site Reveals The Tactics That Others Have Been Charging Hundreds For: Stealth Adsense Profit Tactics - FREE

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com

by Barry Fenning

Google Adsense has provided website owners a simple way to make money online. Just copy and paste a simple piece of code into your website and you can be making money within 5 minutes. No wages for salespersons, no dealing with advertisers, no hassles. However, there is a big difference between making a couple of cents per day and retiring on your own private yacht in the Caribbean . There is more to do than simply plugging your advertisements into any section of your website, sitting back, and hoping the cheques will start pouring through the door.

If you are looking for a way to increase your earnings with Google Adsense with you Blog or Website then the following tips should help:

1. Blend you Adsense Advertisements with the rest of your page.
This is a very simple but not always used tip. Countless studies have shown that users are more likely to click on your Adsense advertisements if they have the same link and font colours as the rest of your page. Google makes sure that the advertisement relevancy matches the content of your web page so by blending the Adsense advertisements it will provide a consistent look to your page with relevant content as well.

2. Putting Adsense Above or Below the fold?
The "fold" is simply known as the bottom of the page. If you have to scroll down to see more information on a page, this section is known as "below the fold". Test your Adsense placement by analyzing the CTR (click through rate) that you get for advertisements that are above the fold, take them out and then put them below the fold, you'll get a better picture to see which has greater success. There is no hard-and-fast rule to what suits better but remember that success has a lot to do with location, location, location. So get testing.

3. Take the clutter out of your Website.
Like a good spring cleaning exercise look at your webpages and analyze what your visitors find useful and what gets very little clicks. This is not only good practice towards creating a more user-friendly website but it also allows you to test Adsense ads in different areas of your pages and see identify improvements on advertisement CTRs.

4. Help the Adsense robot.
A picture says a thousand words but to a robot/spider that is crawling your pages a picture says very little about what the content is about. If your site contains a lot of pictures then do yourself, your visitor, and the Adsense bot a favour and add some text to let everyone know what the image is about. This way the Adsense advertisements will be more targeted to what your site/page is all about and the user won't see unrelated advertisements within your website.

5. Increase your website traffic.
Seems like another obvious one, but so many good websites exist that aren't reaching their potential target market. By optimising your website to gain better search engine rankings, participating in forums that are related to your website, submitting your website to industry related directories, and getting the word out there in any way that you can think of will help drive targeted visitors to your website. Remember that the internet is an amazingly powerful medium to facilitate word-of-mouth. The effort you put into promoting your site will be rewarded by satisfied visitors/customers spreading the word about your website throughout the World Wide Web. However, make sure that you have a quality website/product/service or the opposite can happen just as quick.

In conclusion
By incorporating the above tips you should improve your Adsense earnings. I'm not telling you that by using the above that you'll be retiring on your yacht with your Pina Colada in hand… so don't quit your day-job. If you follow the advice above it will get you on your way to improving your CTRs, your website design, and the experience for your user. Probably the most important thing that these tips help you with is to encourage you to test and experiment with Adsense and not just assume that whatever the style you use and wherever you put it is the right place.

Authors Resource Box:
Barry Fenning is the owner of http://www.betteririshwebsites.com A SEO Articles website that is aimed at people new to the area of search engine optimization and online marketing. Please include this bio for permission to reproduce this article.

View Original Article Source at Altrana.com