Passive income is the source of a money that flows into your bank account regardless of whether you go work or not.  It’s a stream of income that continues to pay you every day, whatever you’re doing.

Passive income is a support line.  It not only bolsters your working income, but it pays you when you’re sick and it pays you when you’re on holiday.  It also pays you if your working income source dries up for whatever reason.  Everybody needs passive income, but very few people actually do anything about getting it.

A pension is passive income, but unfortunately, you have to wait until you reach retirement age in order to benefit from that source!

If you rely on a single source of income, derived from either going out to work for someone else or within your own business, you could be setting yourself up for hardship or financial difficulties at some point.  Injury, sickness, family circumstances, job loss and market down-turn are just some of the reasons that your salary or main source of income could suffer or even come to an abrupt end.  Of course, you can buy insurance to cover such events, but there are always catches and clauses that must be met to get that insurance money.  Furthermore, you only receive that money if you experience a loss of income and in the meantime, you have to pay the insurance premiums!

A couple of people I spoke to recently about passive income, both said “I don’t have time for a second job”.  Passive income is NOT about having a second job!   Of course, there will be some time and effort and perhaps expense at the outset, but the idea is that you are rolling a ball down a gentle slope – once it starts moving it will continue on its own.  There are also countless people for whom the passive income has become so good, they’ve quit their day jobs and focused their attention on creating more passive streams.

Over a series of articles I am going to discuss some of the many options for creating passive income.  Some streams require time, some streams require more effort and others require more money to get them rolling.

As a very general rule, those that require the most money require the least effort.  Those that require very little in the way of capital investment will demand more of your time.

FOREX falls into the first category and I want to share with you the results of my studies and investment into this lucrative, but scary business.

For many years I steered well away from foreign currency trading or FOREX as it’s generally known.  I’ve  had deeply ingrained images of highly stressed individuals, with bulging eyes from too many double espressos, hunched over computer screens studying unintelligible symbols.  That notion came from somewhere a long time ago and it’s been sufficient to deter me from FOREX trading ….until one day I removed my beliefs and emotions from the concept of Forex and gave it some REAL thought.  This is how the banks and Hedge Funds and other financial institutions really make their money!  Not from charging their customers  interest.  That just fuels their trading habit.  Every dollar they extract from customers is being played on the markets.  That’s where the billions of dollars of profit comes from.

The bottom line – There must be a way to consistently make a profit from currency trading.

Lifting the lid off the FOREX can, I discovered the following fascinating information.

Forex can be ‘played’ in one of two ways: either manually or using Expert Advisors (EA’s) also known as Forex Robots.

Manual trading requires a great deal of training and experience to reach the level where you can consistently make a profit.  Once you achieve this standard however, the potential profits are astounding.  $10,000 can become millions within the space of 12 months.  Allow me to dampen your enthusiasm here though – Between 90% and 97% (depending on whose statistics you use) of people who start trading Forex lose their money and quit.  You have to be tough, emotionally detached and thoroughly disciplined to trade the markets manually.

Forex Robots on the other hand, are computer programmes that trade automatically, without any other human intervention.  They work the markets unemotionally, according to strict parameters and based upon years of market analysis.  They know the best times to enter a trade and they know when to exit a trade.  EA’s play the forex game on the side of caution.  Some days they may not trade at all, if the market does not fall within its trading parameters.  Profits are considerably smaller, but they can still be well above anything you could achieve from other types of investments.

There are of course good robots and bad robots.  They might all have started out as good robots, but they have to be continually updated and that’s where my research directed me to a small cluster of excellent EA’s.

I will talk in more detail about these EA’s in another article, but if you itching to have a closer look now, I list for you here the top three EA’s:

Forex Legend – A brand new robot with live streaming video showing actual trading.

FAP Turbo – A long running, highly respected EA, which is updated monthly.

Megadroid – A highly specialized EA focusing on the most consistent currency pair EUR/USD

All three have a great reputation with proven profitability.  They been designed by experienced trading groups and all are regularly updated.

The great thing about these robots is that you can test them out for yourself.  Broker accounts are free to open and they will give you unlimited monopoly money with which to trade on the live markets.

Have fun with them and I’ll cover more details in my next article.

I have just recovered from the biggest challenge I have faced with MS Office 2010 – an incompatibility issue between Excel 2003 and Excel 2010.

Creating analysis tables for a client with numerous columns and rows should have been a simple, but time consuming task (that’s precisely the kind of work we love at Bright Green Future), but it turned into a nightmare when using two different versions of Office Excel.

Compatibility shouldn’t be an issue, the new version of a software programme should simply be an upgrade of previous versions.  In the case of Microsoft Office Excel, a work book can be saved either as a 2010 XLS file or as any one of a number of other formats including XML, PDF or Office version 97 – 2003.

To begin with the file was saved as straightforward xls 2010.  When the file was opened using Office 2003, the SUM values appeared as links to the computer that created the file.  When we tried to overwrite the links with the SUM values, the AUTOSUM feature wouldn’t work.

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Also, any data copied to other cells within the original sheet changed to #REF values from the original sheet and a number of other minor, but important errors just compounded the frustration.

I then had to return to the 2010 file and save it as Excel 97-2003 version.  This removed the link problem, but the SUM values were still not correct.  After ages spent fiddling around trying to get the data to match, the project had to be abandoned and started from scratch using Office 2003 to ensure absolute compatibility with the end users computer system.

This problem cost several hours of lost revenue, lost credibility and a great deal of frustration.  I have managed to overcome all of the software problems so far, but this one was too costly and I have decided to abandon Office 2010 and revert to Office 2007.

I sent a little ‘Frown’ to Microsoft, although my comments in the past have fallen into the pot with the millions of others I am sure they receive, so I don’t suppose they will reply now…..but it would be really nice if they did!  I would love to publish their response and if possible, I would like to publish the solution for anyone else having this issue.

It’s a shame, because the presentation of Office 2010 documents is excellent.  It’s so easy to create a really professional looking document in a nanosecond.  The toolbar and navigation systems are also far superior to the previous versions.

Are you having compatibility problems with 2010 Office?  Leave a comment.

Analyzing the Analyzers -  Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization. It’s one of those trendy phrases that’s tossed around the Internet, yet most people have no idea what it really means.  I thought I understood it and perhaps a couple of years ago I did, but the Internet changes with every breath you take and it would be more than a full time job to keep pace with it.

I originally studied SEO 6 years ago, but what I learned then, doesn’t necessarily apply now.

One thing that has remained the same though is the necessity to build a website around specific  keywords.   Keywords are the factors that make or break your website.  They define how, where and even whether your site will be searched and presented on the Internet.

Basic Stuff about Keyword Density

When you search for information on Google, for instance, the words you type in the little box on the Search Engine page are keywords.  Google, Yahoo, Bing or whatever ‘engine’ you decide to use scans billions of webpages looking for those words.  The closer the match between what you typed and what the search engine discovers is the major factor that decides which sites will be presented to you and in what order.  However, there are hundreds, if not thousands of other factors that are considered and the algorithm that carries out the search and decides what and what not to present remains a closely guarded secret.  One thing that we do know about it though is that keyword density is of utmost importance.  That means, the number of times the keyword or phrase that you are searching for appears, in context, on a relevant webpage.

If keyword density is so important, then it should be easy to check your website and find out how many times the keywords/keyword phrases, around which your website is constructed, actually appear to any search engine scanning it.  The search engine is not of course, looking at the website as you do, it’s looking at the source code and specific elements within it, which include, META tags, title tags, alt tags and other hidden labels that can all be used to increase keyword density and make your website more attractive.

Testing your website however, is whole different ballgame!  There are many different keyword density analyzers available and as I discovered recently, not all of keyword density analyzers are made equal.

Free Keyword Density Analyzers

I was given a keyword density tool to try out for free and was surprised by the strange figures it returned.  I tried another programme and once again, the keyword density was lower than I could count looking at the actual webpage.   So, I then filled up my entire browser tabs with different keyword analyzers and put them to the test.  Indeed they are not all created equal and you might be interested in the results:

I decided to put the home page of this website Bright Green Future to the test.   In some cases I only had to type http://brightgreenfuture.biz into the search box, in other case I also entered the 3 keyword phrases around which the page was built:

• virtual assistant
• virtual assistance
• virtual assistants

The results were most interesting and probably reflect the similar disparity amongst the criteria for each search engine.  Not all search engines use the same criteria by which to search, which is why your site could be ranked highly on one search engine and not get a look-in on others.

Sorry this is not an interactive Excel table. I have run out of time to go through the really long process of inserting it as a table!

Free Tools used in This Analysis:

Motoricerca

Textalyzer

ArticleUnderground

KeyWordDensity

GoRank

Webjectives

Ranks.nl

SEOBook

One of the free keyword density analyzer tools only found the phrase virtual assistant 4 times on the page, whereas another of the free keyword tools found  it 12 times.  On the actual webpage it can be seen  3 times in the text, twice in headings and once as a text link.  The phrase virtual assistant also appears in the META tags, title tags and alt tags and appears a total of 14 times in the source code.  Therefore, each program is using different page elements upon which to base its analysis, yet none of them found virtual assistant written 14 times.

The same scenario occurred with the keyword phrases virtual assistants and virtual assistance.

All of the 8 tools that I tested had their merits.  Some provided useful page analytics, others offered information on how to optimize (from their own point of view) and some even gave a ranking for relevancy.   My favourite of the free keyword density tools was provided byArticle Underground.  It gives so much useful information about the webpage (see screen shots) I even considered it worth adding to my bookmarks.

If you’re really serious about building your own website and making it to the top of the search engine rankings, you really need to spend a few dollars (they really are worth the small investment), one of the more sophisticated keyword and SEO packages.  You can’t go wrong with any these 3 tools.  They all come with a complete money back satisfaction guarantee.

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Top Tip

How many times should I use a keyword on my webpage?

This is one of the most commonly asked and most often disputed questions in the webbuilders fraternity.  The answer however, is incredibly simple.  Search Goolge.com for that keyword and then analyze the keyword density for the top 3 to 5 sites from page one of the results.  That’s how many times you have to use your keyword to compete!  Of course, you also have to score points for links and relevancy, but that’s a story for another day!

What is a VA?

Virtual Assistants are independent or self-employed business people who perform a wide range of business and administrative services from their own offices.  Using the most up to date technology and communication systems, Virtual Assistants (also known as virtual associates) can perform almost any administrative task remotely.

Many VA’s are highly skilled professionals and entrepreneurs who provide office and business support services using their own office space and equipment.  They can be hired ‘as required’ which is the main reason so many businesses now choose to outsource their work to VA’s.

Some virtual assistants provide specialized skills, so shop around for the service you require or seek a recommendation.  VAnetworking is great place to start.

As in all areas of business, you will find some people offering their services at incredibly low prices.  $3/hour looks attractive and your instant thought is how much money you can save by paying so little!  Most professional VA’s throughout North America and Europe charge between $35 and $60/hour.  If you value the work you are outsourcing, then choose your VA carefully.

Some companies find they only require these services on an ad hoc basis, others have learned that they can make huge savings by contracting a VA to work a fixed number of hours each week.

Why does almost every single major business and financial institution in the developed world outsource  administration work and customer support?                   To save money!

What about security?

This is one very good reason to ensure you hire a professional VA.  Check for membership of professional organizations such as VAnetwork, CASPAA, CVAN & IVAA.  As already stated, many virtual assistants are professional people who have decided to start their own business, providing the skills they have learned after many years in employment.  They are in business and are keen to build professional working relationships with their clients.  Although not a recognized definition, virtual associates are professional assistants who choose to develop long term business relationships with their clients.

Bright Green Future has been working remotely, since 2005, for one of the largest Management Consultancy’s in the world.  Together they have developed a highly efficient working relationship that enables prompt response and work turnaround regardless of the time-zone.  You will usually find that VA’s are prepared to work unusual hours and in the case of Bright Green Future, much of their work is done between 4am and 11am and 4pm and 10pm.  Contact BGF for further information or visit http://brightgreenfuture.biz

Why would you want to use a VA?

Who recruits the competent staff?   We do

Who pays for the training?       We do

Who provides the equipment?    We do

Who pays the wages, taxes & benefits?   We do

Who handles the staff shortages?  We do

Who pays for the office space?  We do

We take care of all these things and more

Furthermore ….If you don’t need us – don’t hire us!

This Blog is brought to you through Bright Green Future.  Blog creation, management, social media integration, event interest generation, CRM database management, data cleansing, target customer research and even ghost writing are just some of the tasks that Bright Green Future carry’s out on a daily basis.

BGFvirtual  on Twitter and Facebook

Have you ever received the notification ‘Sharing Violation’ when saving a Microsoft Excel workbook?  You, me and countless other people!

I’ve searched around and found lengthy discussions and intricate solutions and options for this problem, yet the answer is really quite easy and doesn’t require any technical stuff.

MS Office 2010 comes complete with its own ‘one-click’ diagnostic tool.  After ten minutes of frustration trying to save a workbook and receiving the ‘sharing violation warning’ that prevents saving of the spreadsheet, I opened the repair tool and it quickly located and fixed the error (in this case an errant, self-induced printer setting).

Mastering Microsoft Excel – Click For More Details

If you are running MS Office 2010then here’s how:

(Office 2007 also suffers from this same ‘sharing violation’ error.  The 2007 onboard diagnostics   apparently does the same job – I don’t know the actual process though, having converted directly from Office 2003 to 2010)

Microsoft Office 2010 Users

Select ‘File’ from the Main Menu

Select ‘Info’ from the Sidebar

Click on the 2^nd box down ‘Check for Issues’ and select the first option ‘Inspect Document’

Make sure all the boxes are checked then click ‘inspect’

If it finds an issue, it will ‘Flag’ it for you and give you the option to ‘fix’ the issue.

It worked for me in a nanosecond and re-inspecting the document found no further problems.

The document could then be saved and no more annoying ‘sharing violation’ pop-up!

Was this post useful? 

The fact that MS Office 2010 is officially on the store shelves, doesn’t mean that all the bugs have been cleaned out.  At this stage, although 2010 Office has some really cool features and a pleasing layout, I wouldn’t recommend anyone to rush out and buy it.

Outlook especially, has a few issues.  I had presumed that my satellite Internet connection was to blame for some of the glitches, but having just moved to a new premises, with DSL Internet, Outlook is still causing me some grief.

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We all waste huge amounts of time doing simple things the slow way, usually because we haven’t invested just a little bit extra in essential training.

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Having been away from the computer for a few days during the BIG move, the inevitable backlog of emails had to be dealt with on my return.  This is not usually a problem.  Delete an email and the next email is automatically highlighted ..yes?  Not always so with Outlook 2010.  Deleting an email older than a few days doesn’t always highlight the next email.  Instead, the cursor returns to the top of the inbox and I have to scroll down the inbox to the place where I was working.  I haven’t yet worked out why it does it most of the time, but not all of the time.

It also takes an inordinately long time to delete the email.  Try to rush it by clicking on another email and the screen hazes over and the most likely result is a crash and restore.

The BETA version of Office comes equipped with a ‘Send a Smile’ and ‘Send a Frown’ instant messaging feature, allowing bugs and likes to be sent directly to Microsoft, but this is one-way traffic and help and advice only comes from sources outside of Microsoft.

I’ll keep plugging away at this version of Office for a while, but the bugs outweigh the new features at this stage.

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In a great article on one of my favourite websites, Treehugger passes on the disturbing information that Beijing Zoo is encouraging visitors to try out unusual meaty bits in its on-site restaurant.   Deer penis, webbed Hippopotamus toes, Ant soup, Crocodiles and Kangaroo tail are just a few of the delicacies on offer in the restaurant.

'Please don't eat my toes!'

The zoo is under pressure to change its menu after considerable media coverage.  Headlines such as ‘Don’t Feed The Animals – Eat Them Instead’ have reached the printers in many countries and within China, numerous activist groups have petitioned to outlaw the practice of eating animals that are supposedly being protected within zoos and wildlife parks.

Pretending to protect animals from extinction and then serving them up on a plate stretches the limits of acceptance of even the biggest consumers of animal flesh on the planet!

An American scoffs on average, over 222lbs of meat (boneless weight) in a year.   The Aussies rank in at a whopping 242lbs per year EACH!!  That’s an average and doesn’t take into consideration the fact that 15% or more of the population are vegetarian!

Strangely,  Canadians are quite low down on the list of carnivores, even though I know of many homes with three or even more large chest freezers full of animal bits.

However, zoos are a different kettle of fish, so to speak.  They have the designated purpose of preserving animal life and encouraging other people to care for the welfare of animals, both large and small.

'No! Take my toes, my tail, anything but that!'

If we don’t like something, then we have to say so, otherwise it becomes a part of accepted culture that nothing short of a revolution can change.

Phew!  Now that I’ve got that off my chest, what do you think about eating exotic animals?  Perhaps you don’t see any difference between eating the exotic and farmed animals.  Perhaps you don’t agree with eating any animal.  Let’s have it out here!

Sources:

The Guardian

Treehugger

Following last weeks upset at Facebook, when several prominent Facebook users threatened to close their accounts at the end of May due to new privacy rules, Mark Zuckerburg, founder of the company that literally changed the face of social media, announces today an amended privacy plan.

Mark Zuckerburg admitted that the company had ‘missed the mark’ with their plans to make more information public unless users delved into the complicated profile controls to conceal it from all but their friends or friends of friends.

A wave of criticism has washed over Facebook after Canadian Privacy Commissioner demanded changes, followed by numerous petitions to the Federal Trade Commission in the United States.

I haven’t actually counted them, but according to one source, Facebook users have to select from 170 privacy related options within 50 different and often confusing settings.   The privacy statement is also longer than the US Constitution.

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Mark Zuckerburg said that the company wanted to change the nature of the Internet to one of ‘social default’.  Presumably, this means they want everyone to know about everyone else.  No more secrets, no more hidden identities.  Eventually, we will all be so integrated we will no longer have autonomy.

This is the nature of the World Wide Web.  It has the power to share information.  It has the power to make changes globally and adjust the way humans think en masse.  Certainly this can be advantageous and perhaps it even has something to do with a global shift in human consciousness and awakening.  It also has the potential to change the very essence of mankind and before we allow that to happen, we need to consider it VERY carefully.  What might seem like a good idea now, can easily become a loose canon in years to come

‘I have nothing to hide’.  A common retort by the good citizens of this world, but, isn’t this kind of revolution similar to Red China under Mao ZeDong?   Jospeh Stalin tried to remove the greater part of individuality through communism as did countless other dictators.  Demanding that everybody dresses the same way, eats the same way, lives the same way and ultimately thinks the same way, manifests automatons, not individuals.  It is our freedom and individuality that encourage creativity and diversity.  Social media is rapidly becoming one of the most powerful thought control tools on the planet and before we give it free rein we need to apply our deepest consideration.  It could easily become a global dictator via the back door.

As virtual assistants we give considerable thought to privacy when setting up social media accounts, especially for our clients. There is a fine line between welcome publicity and unwelcome privacy breaches.   Having said my piece, I just have to post this on my blog, Tweet it, Hoot it, post it on Facebook, Buzz it, Stumble it, Reddit, Digg it …….    Me?  I’m not a social media geek!

What is it about Microsoft Office Outlook 2010 that makes it run so slowly?

Ten years ago I decided to boost Microsoft’s expansive coffers and handed over a pile of money for MS Office Professional 2000.  It was meant to be the Bees Knees of office softwar.

…….a minor digression here   -   I tried explaining ‘Bees Knees’ to a man in a bike shop in France as I was about to buy a top notch mountain bike – “C’est genoux des abeilles”  I said, grinning from ear to ear and pointing to the bike.  The Frenchman wrinkled his brow, cocked his head and gave me a ‘try me again’ look.   I repeated my Anglocism:   “C’est les genoux des abeilles” and gave a thumbs up sign with an even bigger smile.  He looked down at the bike, looked at his knees, screwed his face up tightly to enhance the wrinkles and studied an imaginary bee.   He suddenly strode off with a light bulb dimly glowing above his head.  He returned shining slightly brighter and held aloft a pair of bikers knee pads.  Oh dear.   Foolishly, I had involved the poor chap in an incomprehensible outburst of my own pleasure and I tried in vain to explain that it was an English expression that meant it was ‘magnifique’!  Alas, Jean Pierre had latched on to the knee aspect and wasn’t going to let me off lightly.  He tried everything in his power to make me make him understand what I was talking about and eventually turned away shaking his head and emitting the kind of noises and gesticulations that alert you to the fact, you’re talking to a Frenchman.  He never did get it.

….back on topic again  – Having forked out for Microsoft’s Office invasion system, there was no turning back.  The 2003 version of Office was a good move with lots of improvements and new features.  I skipped 2007 as it really didn’t seem to warrant the upgrade – I was happy where I was. Then along came MS Office 2010.

MS Office 2010

My wife-cum-business partner and I had been lagging behind the market and media scene (it’s really easy to do these days), so a software upgrade to go with our immersion into the social media world seemed like a good idea.  Two year old computers should be able to make the grade, I thought.  I checked that weird computer system performance element in the control panel called Computer Performance Base Score.  Average Base Score of 3.0.  It gave me the option to check for software that is compatible with the score.  So why is it that when I clicked on that link and headed to Microsoft online, that’s the last I heard of the Base Score?  It’s just a sales pitch!

Everything in Office works sublimely, except for Outlook, which has a new feature that I call the ‘Grump’.  Click a button and nothing happens.  Click it again and Outlook will let you know what it thinks of impatience.  At least ‘Clippy’ and his finger wagging have left the scene!

Crash and restart.  Most days.

Slow email downloading and a refusal to obey commands instantly.  Perhaps Outlook has become too big for its boots.

My system:

RAM  - 2 Gb

ROM – 120Gb

AMD Athlon 64 x 2 dual core processor T57 1.90Ghz

Windows Vista with 32 bit operating system

System Requirements according to Microsoft

(The new paste feature for tables is a hoot! I love it!)

Apparently, if you run Office 2007 you should be able to run Office 2010.

As far as the technical mumbo jumbo is concerned, my system is compatible.  I will persevere though and perhaps have a breakthrough in comprehension or patience.  However,  it would appear that something’s got to change.  Me, The Computer or MS Outlook?  That is the question.