What’s better than waking up on a Saturday Morning with your family after a good breakfast and heading down to the nearest Public Auto Auction?

Whether you are from California or California, you can find an Online or Online auction that is right for you.

Government Subsidized Auctions, that happen just about every single day nationwide in places like Online, offer ridiculous amounts of inventory, not specifically automobiles. These automobiles that have been confiscated or taken from burglars or felon car thieves during routine investigations. Information sometimes changes, so be sure to verify the location and times before going to the auction.

With any auto auction or auto auction enterprise, search for a money-back guarantee. Pick out a couple specific of services and measure them up against each other before choosing one, that way you can see the best and worst from one enterprise to another.

It is not always easy to locate a reliable Auction Business that will be in-line for you at this time. Whether you’re looking for an Online or Online style auction, make sure you get that almighty Money Back Guarantee. Unfortunately there are best and worst associated with each public auto auction enterprise out there today.

While some dealers prefer taking their automobiles to larger auctions, some pick those with less sparkle on them. For more details www.auction-words.com Most people say that deals will pop up anywhere at any time, so the farther you’re agreed to go sometimes can bring in the hottest deal.

For example, one from California preferred the auto auctions in the Midwest, and another only attended auctions by specific vendors. The same goes for an individual buyer who has the car knowledge and just happens to prefer purchasing cars from an auction rather than a traditional used car dealership.

There are several online sites that offer their opinions of the hottest auto auction sites in each state, from California to Chicago and beyond. Most give all of the important information needed to do your own labor on the auto auction locations you think fit what you’re looking for.

Beware of anyone who offers a ridiculously low starting price or total price, because there’s usually a catch involved. The hottest auto auctions, reviewers say, have friendly people, excellent venues, offer fast enterprise, and feature good values.

Some online auctions which can be found in excess throughout the Internet, have rave reviews from those who have used them. Individuals who tried for a while to sell their cars have turned to online car auction sites and immediately someone purchased their vehicle.

Several small car salesmen who have listed their stock on online websites have found excellent response as well. One reviewer found online websites clear and easy to understand, easy to use, and most importantly, cheap. For more details www.auction-professional.com Therefore, if you don’t want to mess with looking up locations in your city or state or other places nearby, just log onto your computer and start searching.

Bear the fact that your main objective is to analyze different websites so you can locate the best possible deals. And finally make sure these locations have qualified people running them.



E Law Blog

Determining fees is a difficult law practice management task for most attorneys when thinking through their law firm marketing plans. In determining fees for certain services, attorneys often fall short of what they should charge. Too many attorneys are afraid of even charging the competitive price for their services when making their law firm marketing plans. Further, they make the pricing decisions often with no data or conceptual framework. Additionally, instead of focusing their efforts on how they can justify getting top dollar for what they offer, they charge a fee that is often way too low and often actually can scare off potential clients who think there is something missing from a service that is “cheap”. Additionally many attorneys don’t realize that most purchasers in the marketplace by far are “value purchasers” and not looking for “cheap”.

So before you sit down and begin thinking through your law practice management pricing strategy you need some distinctions around pricing commonly used in law firm marketing planning. Then add your pricing strategy to your law firm marketing plans. You need to be sure that you are charging a sufficient fee on everything to guarantee you a good profit not just a good living. Do know a law practice management law firm marketing plan is not effective if you only attract people who want to pay the lowest fee for a service. These are not loyal clients. Instead, you want to focus your law practice management and law firm marketing plans on attracting clients who will become long term assets to the firm. Low price clients are not building your base of long term clients I can promise you that.

There are basically four ways of determining how much you should be charging for your services. Lets move right into those now.

The Market Method In Law Practice Management Pricing

This is one good way of determining pricing. Get your assistant to support you in this law practice management task and spend some time discovering what the range of pricing is in the community. Have her do a “mystery shopper” study by calling around as if he/she were a potential client and find out what your competitors say on the phone to her around pricing. She may need to call from her home phone to avoid caller ID. As another option you could have him/her call other assistants or paralegals at your competitors and offer to exchange your fees for their fees or you could do that with other lawyers yourself in your market. If you really want to get into it and have maximum data you can write maybe a few dozen competitors in your marketplace and say you are doing a fee survey and if they would send you their fee list you will create a composite list that does not identify those responding and send them a copy of the results. To keep it simple for them include a stamped, self-addressed envelope with a list of the most common services offered in your practice area. Now you will see what people are charging for services similar to those you offer. You should be able to come up with a range of prices. Use this range to set prices for your own services. My recommendation in law firm marketing planning is to charge at the 75% level of the list. So you should be at or in the top 25% of the fees.

Remember that in general it is not a good law practice management strategy to compete on price. Most potential clients will see pricing that is too low as a signal that there is something missing either from the service, the provider, or the firm. And people who are looking for a low price will follow that low price wherever they can find it rather than becoming long-term clients. So be sure that your price covers your costs and a reasonable profit margin.

The Cost Method in Law Practice Management Pricing

This law practice management pricing method is very straightforward really. One simply determines what the costs are to deliver products or services and adds on a reasonable profit, somewhere between fifteen percent at the least and maybe thirty three percent at the most. The most common mistake in law practice management using this method is to neglect to include some form of your expense. Solo and small firm attorneys tend to not include their own salary!

OK, let me say it again. In law practice management often you count yourself out of the expenses and you should include yourself in the expenses. Why? Often you are doing at least some of the technical work. Yes? Often you are doing at least some of the management work. Yes? As the owner of the business you are due a reasonable profit. Yes? If you are all three of these in one, you should consider one salary as due you for your time and expertise as the technician and manager as well as a profit of fifteen to thirty percent due you as the owner. So be sure to include a reasonable cost for your technical and managerial work in the expenses part of this formula.

Fixed Rate Method in Law Practice Management Pricing

This is the method used by many auto mechanics (it is called “the flat rate book”) and other service providers. This method is where you determine a fixed rate for various jobs and charge that rate no matter what. If the mechanic spends less time than allotted for the job, he makes more. If he spends more time than allotted, he makes less. But in the end, it all evens out (well, usually to the mechanics’ favor if you ask me). Another example using this method is how managed health care has used this system with hospitals and doctors. Lawyers can use this system if they desire.

The “Rule of Three” in Law Practice Management Pricing

This “rule of thumb” called the “rule of three” used in law practice management is not what your CPA might tell you and it does not fail you either. Ask your CPA what they think about it and they will like it. To begin we are going to be thinking in thirds. For the first third we will take the total amount of salaries/bonuses (not benefits just salaries – benefits go into the second third coming next) for the revenue generators and/or timekeepers (this includes you if you are generating revenue) and call that our first third. So add up the salaries of the lawyers, paralegals, and legal secretaries who generate revenue or are timekeepers and call this your first third (lets just say that number was $100,000 to keep it simple). Whatever that number is take that number again and it is your second third which we will call your “overhead” (thus that second third is $100,000 and don’t forget you if you are doing some managing partner type duties since that part of your time goes here in overhead). Then take that same number and we will call that your last third, which we will call gross profits (another $100,000). What you need to do is take the total amount (in this example $300,000) and now figure out how much you must charge per billable hour, per fixed rate or how many contingency fee cases won to be sure you hit the target we must hit given our first third number times three (in this example $300,000).

This method shows you how much per hour you need to charge. Since you know how many billable hours each revenue generator can do per month, simply divide that into your total of all thirds ($300,000) to see what you need to charge per billable hour to make your numbers come out correctly. As long as you hit your targets you will be assured of a 15% to 30% net profit from your operations. After all if you are the owner of the practice you deserve a fair profit as well don’t you agree? This method is known as the Rule of Three. If this method is a bit too confusing do feel free to contact me and I will help you sort it out in a few minutes on the phone.

It is a good idea to think through all of these pricing methods in determining your law practice management pricing strategy before setting a price and moving ahead with a law firm marketing plan to ensure you are thoroughly exploring all options. Remember the tendency for most lawyers is to price too low. Don’t do that! In another article I will tell you how to speak to potential clients so you never have a problem getting the fee you deserve.



Wallpaper Union

If you are considering setting up a company in the People’s Republic of China (the “PRC”) you should be aware that Chinese law is more protective of employees than the laws of many western nations, particularly the United States. The current PRC Labor Law was enacted in 1994; however, a new PRC Labor Contract Law, intended to supplement the Labor Law, is expected to come into force at the end of 2006. This new law contains both bad news and good news from the point of view of the foreign investor; however, in general it further strengthens the protection of employees.

The Bad News:

Severance Pay

Because it is difficult under the PRC Labor Law to terminate open-term labor contracts, employers usually prefer fixed terms. The Labor Contract Law will address this issue by requiring employers to pay severance compensation to employees on fixed term labor contracts if these contracts are not renewed at the end of the contract term. The proposed compensation is at least one month’s salary for each year of service.

Company Rules/Employee Handbooks

No provision in the employee handbook or other rules affecting the employee’s “personal interest” may be put into force absent consultation with the labor union or other employee representative body (under Chinese law, virtually all employees are required to be unionized).

A Shorter Probationary Period

Currently, the probationary period may be agreed between the employer and employee in the labor contract, but the maximum probation may not exceed 6 months. The Labor Contract Law shortens this period to one month for non-technical work and two months for most technical work (the six-month maximum is still retained for “senior technical work”, probably because these highly skilled employees are seen as less vulnerable in the employment market. This is significant because it easier to fire an employee during the probationary period than afterwards.

Non-Competition Clauses

Foreign invested companies in particular have tended to insert post-employment non-competition clauses into labor contracts in order to protect their intellectual property rights in China’s “wild west” business atmosphere. Although the Labor Contract Law allows post-employment non-competition restrictions, it will limit their enforceability to two years and restrict the geographical area of applicability to areas where actual competition is likely to occur. In this respect the reform will render Chinese law more similar to US law, since the current Labor Law does not impose any geographic restrictions at all (but does permits a maximum duration of up to three years). The Labor Contract Law goes even further, however, by requiring the employer “buy” a non-competition clause by paying a minimum compensation equal to the employee’s annual salary upon termination of the labor contract. It is still unclear what, if any compensation will be due the employee if the period of restriction is less than a year.

Contract Interpretation

Any ambiguous term in a labor contract will be construed in favor of the employee. This rule does little more that codify what has long been the prevailing practice in PRC courts.

Representative Offices

The current Labor Law requires Representative Offices to go through designated agencies such as FESCO (similar to Manpower in the United States) in order to hire employees. The new Labor Contract Law offers Representative Offices greater flexibility by allowing them to directly contract with employees for their first year of employment.

In summary, the new Labor Law will restrict foreign investor’s flexibility and make it more expensive for them to operate. The only good news is that Representative Offices will find it somewhat easier to operate. Typically, the new Labor Contract Law does not bother to define terms like “technical”, “senior technical”; and “personal interest” However, foreign investors have long been used to waiting months and even years for ambiguous terms in Chinese law to be defined through the further issuance of “implementing regulations” to supplement the main law; meanwhile the government’s actual implementation of the law in particular cases will be closely watched.



Wallpapers 5

Online marketers and people trying to make a buck off the internet are always taking advantage of easy-to-market affiliate programs, especially those being offered by Clickbank. Clickbank is a place to find easy-to-sell digital products allowing you to turn a profit without having to own a website.. If you send a buying customer to one of their pages through an “affiliate link” and a sale is made, your hyperlink makes the connection and you just pulled in usually 50% or more of the profit. Digital products, such as ebooks and software, offer their affiliates such a high profit margin because they have no overhead. They are transmitted digitally over the internet from the sales page to the buyer’s computer so there are no shipping costs. The product itself is digital and can hardly be considered tangible, so there are no associated production costs either. The high profit margin is the reason why these products sell so well. Plenty of webmasters and entrepreneurs are willing to sell them for an extra source of revenue. There are even products sold on Clickbank which teach people how to market and sell Clickbank products!

You can find these products promoted on legitimate websites owned by internet gurus as additional revenue streams. It is a great way to make an extra dollar. If a person leaves a website and doesn’t buy anything, the savvy website owner might as well give them another chance to visit an affiliate website and gain more potential for making money. But unfortunately, most people are using keyword advertising, specifically with Google Adwords, to spam the internet with affiliate product advertisements. It has become so prevalent that is has actually become a nuisance. Google supposedly puts in measures to prevent spam on their search engines results with specific algorithms, but they are allowing people to take over their paid search results and market the same products over and over and over with these affiliate product advertisements on their Adwords program. The only benefit seems to be for Google. They are making a killing. Take the top selling 20 products on Clickbank. You can find about 100 different ads for the same product on Google Adwords with certain key term searches.

First of all, the customer should be given a choice. But because these key terms are so popular, they are pushing the price of Google Adwords up and only the keyword elite can afford them. Smaller business owners are no longer able to afford the same key terms for their own legitimate products or websites on Google Adwords. The prices for small ads on Adwords has now reached a ridiculous rate for popular search terms and the conversion rates compared to cost is now at a point where they are ineffective and worthless.

There is another problem and a big one. Many of these digital products aren’t worth one pixel used to create them, despite their incredible claims on their sales’ pages. Smart customers try to find reviews before they purchase by typing in the product name and the word “review” in search engines. This simple search used to work. However, the guru keyword advertisers have found ways to make money on these searches as well. You are now unable to find one legitimate review on any digital product. All of the major search engines, especially Google, is spammed with fake affiliate product reviews.

Some of these ads will state the name of the product and the word “Review” next to it, while the description promises a real review. But the link only takes you to the product page via an affiliate hyperlink! Another tactic is to promise real reviews, but the click is only led to a splash page which states how great the product is. These pages contain fabricated reviews! Fraudulent reviews are intended to get you to think the product is great and entice you to buy. Listed on these bogus review pages are affiliate links to the product itself. It is obvious that they are fake. Real human reviews would not contain so much marketing language and who on earth would pay to have Google Adwords display their reviews unless they only had one intention? To make money. These splash pages are often created by the product owner and copies can be found on their affiliate pages specifically for keyword advertisers and for the purpose of forged review advertising.

The worst tactic I have seen so far, and which probably work the best, are the ads which promise a real review of the product while touting the word “SCAM” somewhere in the title. Anyone looking for an honest review is apt to click on this ad. Little does the average surfer know that every single one of these ads is a scam itself. They just lead you to another fake review telling you how great the product is. No one in their right mind, anyhow, would pay for a Google ad to tell you NOT to buy this product. This is just another sad method to get you to click on their ad above others and potentially buy the product through their specific affiliate link. These product reviews are the scams!!!

What the web needs is an authentic digital product review website where visitors can log in and leave honest reviews. But they also need to be able TO FIND a place such as this. Http://www.downloadreviews.org is a new website where living and breathing people can read and leave human reviews for digital products such as ebooks and software. Users can also submit items for review in case they can’t find the product they are looking for. Membership is free and is only needed to prevent product owners from leaving multiple and invented reviews on their own products. Of course Http://www.downloadreviews.org contains affiliate links of their own, but this is the only method of revenue it will be receiving. Besides, most products will surely get horrible reviews and this website will never make a penny off of them. It is a brand new website, so it needs user reviews and lots of them.

The problem still resides with Google Adwords and keyword advertising. Fake product reviews are something which should be banned. They are misleading and false. And it makes it all the more difficult for consumers to find the real product reviews. We can’t stress it enough…Google…get rid of the FAKE PRODUCT REVIEW SPAM! These fake reviews aren’t just found on search engine ads, but they are also posted on message boards and websites allowing people to leave any kind of message they want with specific meta tags as well. People utilize these website to infest the web with these fake reviews and spam a little more. It seems like there is no escaping the cloud of falsified information now found on Google. We sincerely hope Google and Yahoo! will be able to fix this problem as well as lead people to genuinely helpful review sites such as Http://www.downloadreviews.org .



E Law Blog