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Today’s marketplace offers lots of choices in terms of retirement planning vehicles. The 401(k) (or 403(b) for the nonprofit sector) and Individual Retirement Account (IRA) are two of the most common. While they share some similarities, the differences are more important for the impact they could have on the growth of your retirement funds. However, though the differences are clear, the question of which type of account is better does not have a clear answer. As you will see below, some features of the accounts may be perceived by some as advantages and as disadvantages by others. Investment preferences and retirement are personal matters, so you should weigh the options carefully before you choose an account that makes the most sense for you. In fact, if you can afford to contribute to both types of accounts, you should do so to round out your investment portfolio.

Tax advantages

The most obvious and impressive similarity between a 401(k) and IRA is the tax benefit. Money placed in both types of accounts is tax free until you withdraw and use it. More accurately, it is tax deferred. You defer the tax until you use the money. The same is true for money earned by these accounts—until you take it out, you don’t have to pay income tax on the earnings. Recent tax law changes also allow tax credits for certain types of IRAs under specific conditions. Check with your tax professional to see if opening an IRA to take advantage of such credits would be beneficial for you.

The tax benefits of an IRA are income-dependent. If you make more than an allowed amount in a given year, your contributions to your IRA may not bring any tax advantage at all. Furthermore, IRA contributions may not be fully deductible if you contribute to a 401(k) in addition to your IRA. Once again, it is smart to check with a tax professional so that you can plan your retirement contributions to maximize your tax benefits.

There is also a down side to these tax benefits. If you withdraw money from your IRA or 401(k) before you reach age 59 (and one half!), you will not only have to pay tax on the amount you withdraw, but will most likely be stuck with an early withdrawal penalty as well. The safest route is to not touch these accounts until you retire. If you must tap these funds, do so only with the advice of a tax professional so you are not surprised by unpleasant notices from the IRS come April 15.

Contribution Limits

Because the money you put into retirement accounts is tax deferred, the IRS limits the amount you may stash away. The amounts change based on your age and the rate of inflation (and the whims of Congress), but generally, $2,000 is the limit for IRAs and approximately $10,000 is the limit for 401(k) plans. Learn the rules and limits and consult with an adviser to learn how to maximize the tax advantages available to you.

Employee Benefit vs Individual Account

The biggest difference is simply that a 401(k) is offered as part of an employee benefits package, while an IRA is owned and administered by the individual account holder. This difference accounts for one of the major advantages of a 401(k) over an IRA: your employer usually matches your contribution to your plan up to a given percentage. For instance, if your contribute 2% of your pay to your 401(k) each pay period, your employer might match your contributions, essentially doubling your money. For many people, this benefit alone is reason enough to choose a 401(k) over an IRA if they must choose one or the other.

Freedom of Choice

There are also disadvantages inherent in the company ownership of the 401(k). Because more than one person owns funds in the overall account, a third party, usually an insurance company or other financial institution, administers the account. This results in less freedom for you in administrative options, such as changing, starting, or stopping contributions and in how your funds are allocated. For instance, company 401(k) plans might offer 10 mutual funds to which you can distribute your money out of the many thousands that are available. Because you are the sole owner and administrator of an IRA, by contrast, you can place the money in any investment vehicle for which you’re qualified. That freedom is essential for hands-on types who prefer to manage their own affairs and accept credit or blame for success and failure.

For some, this freedom is not an advantage at all; some people do not want to trouble themselves with asset allocation and mutual fund performance. If that describes you, a 401(k) would better serve your needs because your employer’s plan likely has an account manager watching its performance to maximize security and returns.

Whatever your preference, you are not limited to one choice or the other. Many people have both a 401(k) through their employers and an IRA. If you can afford it, contribute the maximum allowable amounts to both accounts. You’ll enjoy the tax advantages now and will be better prepared for retirement in the future.

• 67 percent of customers leave because of an attitude of indifference on the part of a company employee. (American Society for Quality, 2000)

• Enthusiastic workers often increase the quality of work by huge percentages-up to a 75 percent reduction in defect rates. (Sirota, Mischkind, and Meltzer, The Enthusiastic Employee, 2005)

• Business units with employee engagement scores in the top half compared to those in the bottom half reported 86 percent higher customer ratings, and 50 percent higher productivity (Coffman and Gonzalez-Molina, Follow This Path, 2002)

• The average cost of losing, replacing, and restoring equivalent productivity when a valued professional leaves, is on the average, one times salary. (Saratoga Institute study, 1997)

• Companies in the top quarter in training expenditure per employee per year ($1,500 or more) average 24% higher profit margins than companies that spend less per year.(Susan J. Wells, HR Magazine, 4/19/2001)

• Organizations that view their people strategy as a source of competitive advantage outperform those that do not by a margin of more than two to one, delivering a median shareholder return of 109 percent between 1996 and 1998, versus 52 percent for other employers. (Watson Wyatt,1998)

• The 20 percent of Taco Bell stores with the lowest turnover yielded double the sales and 55 percent higher profits than the 20 percent of stores with the highest turnover rates (Jac Fitz-Enz, The ROI of Human Capital, 2000)

• GTE found that a one percent increase in its Employee Engagement Index resulted in nearly a .5 percent increase in customer satisfaction with service. (Ulrich and Smallwood, Why The Bottom Line ISN’T, 2003)

• Based on a comprehensive review of the research, revenue gains of 40 percent or so can be realized by companies implementing work practices that result in high employee commitment. (Pfeiffer, The Human Equation, 2000)

• Public companies in the top 25 percent based on number of performance management best practices in use achieved a 7.9 percent higher total shareholder return (Hewitt Associates, 1996)

• Stock growth of public companies on Fortune magazine’s Great Places in America to Work outperformed companies on Standard & Poor’s by 133 percent to 25 percent for the five-year period 2001-2005. (Great Place to Work Institute, 2005)

• An additional 26 percent of shareholder value was attained by companies with significantly better people management practices. (Watson-Wyatt Human Capital Index, 2002)

• 41% of employees at companies with poor training plan to leave within a year vs. 12% of employees at companies with excellent training (American Society for Training & Development, 2003)

• A five-point improvement in employee commitment on a Sears employee survey drove a 1.3 percent improvement in customer satisfaction, which in turn drove a .5 percent improvement in revenue growth. (Rucci, Kern, and Quinn, “The Employee Customer Profit Chain at Sears”, Harvard Business Review, 1998)

• Over a five year period (1996-2001) companies with effective human capital management practices (human capital index scores) achieved a 64 percent total shareholder return vs. 21 percent for low human capital index scores (Watson Wyatt, 2002)

• A five percent increase in employee retention at advertising agency Leo Burnett increased productivity by more than 20 percent and profits by 50-100 percent. (Reichheld and Teal, Bain & Company, 1996)

• A study of 30 steel mini-mills, some characterized by a “control” management approach, and other based on a “commitment” style with more training, decentralized decision-making, small-group team problem-solving, higher wages, and a higher-skilled workforce, concluded that “commitment” mills required 34 percent fewer labor hours to produce a ton of steel and showed a 63 percent better scrap rate. (Ichniowski, Shaw, and Prennushi, 2000)

• Human capital practices that most drive shareholder value are: Above-market pay, linking rewards to performance, competitive benefits with choice, commitment to performance management, flexible/collegial workplace, high trust in senior leadership, and managers that demonstrate company values. (Watson Wyatt Human Capital Index Study, 2002)

• Companies that successfully implemented “high performance work practices” and increased the use of such practices by one standard deviation achieved, on average, a seven percent decrease in turnover, and, on a per-employee basis, $27,004 more in sales, and $18,641 and $3,814 more in market value and profits, respectively. (Huselid, 1995)

• After factory floor workers were given the training and freedom to make repairs to their own equipment rather than having to call a supervisor every time they had a problem, they reported fewer occupational injuries and increased job satisfaction. (University of Sheffield, 1990)

• High-performance people systems are those that include “rigorous recruitment and selection procedures, performance-contingent incentive compensation systems, management development and training activities linked to the needs of the business, and significant commitment to employee involvement. (Becker and Huselid 1998)

• Top performers, or “A” players” in any function (not just employees in sales generating or billable positions) create from 80 to 130 percent more value than “C” players (Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod, 2001)

• Companies that spend $273 per employee per year on training average 7% voluntary turnover compared to 16% for companies that average $218 per employee per year. Carroll Lachnit, Training magazine, September, 2001)

• High-performing companies share a set of general practices that lead to superior economic results: 1. reasonable job security, 2. highly selective hiring, 3. higher pay, 4. strong autonomous teams with decentralized decision making, 5. reduced status distinctions, 6. extensive training, 7. open information sharing, 8. linking of performance and reward (Pfieffer, 1998)

• Non-financial human performance, culture, and leadership factors drive at least 35 percent of a company’s evaluation by stock analysts and investors.(Ernst & Young)

• According to one long line of research, differences in the quality of enterprise-wide people systems can increase a firm’s market value by as much as $73,000 per employee (Huselid, et.al.)

• 50 percent of HR executives report that their companies are increasing their investments in tracking the impact that metrics such as turnover rates, productivity, and employee morale have on the bottom line. (Workforce Management, 2004)

Enlightened CEOs already understand one undeniable conclusion from all this research-that investing in people is the surest path to business success, especially in a time when there are more jobs than people to fill those jobs. Other CEOs, who focus more on short-term returns than long-term success, who still believe in the “cannon-fodder” theory of human resources, who still insist that money is the main motivator, who are distracted from the organization’s best interests by their own greed, or whose leadership ability is hampered by the limits of their emotional intelligence, may never be persuaded.

Even so, smart, caring, and well-informed HR leaders must not give up the fight to educate and influence executives to do what is in their own intelligent self-interest and the long-term interest of the business to do. And when senior leaders respond by saying, “but we are already successful” the appropriate reply must be: “and think how much more successful we can be!”

1. Graphic Laden.

A web page should load in a reasonable amount of time. If you use too many graphics, or graphics that are not scaled and saved in the most efficient format, your pages will take longer to load. Impatient users may bail out and go to another site. Clean and fast should be the goal. You can usually make a very nice layout using HTML and CSS without the whole page being a sliced up graphic. Of course I’ve built sites for people who insisted on pages based entirely on graphics and in that case I usually try to get the Adobe Photoshop files from the graphic artist and slice them and save the slices myself. This way I can mix and match file formats. For example sections with few colors can be saved as gifs which are usually very small, especially if you tweak the number of colors. Sections that contain more colors or photographs work best as jpg image files. Mixing file types like this can cause some issues that you should be aware of: colors may not match exactly between a gif and a jpg. For example if you have a background color in both or some other object in the images of adjoining cells you may have trouble getting a gif and jpg to look seamless because of slight color shifts.

2. Color Choices.

Just because it looks cool to you doesn’t mean everyone will find it easy to read and appreciate your psychedelic color scheme. Try out your color choices on a mix of people before you get too far into your design.

Don’t turn people away just because they have trouble reading your site. There are colors for backgrounds and text that perform much better than others colors for some types of sites, do your research first!

3. Animated Graphics.

You want your visitors to concentrate on whatever your site is about. If your pages look like the arcade at an amusement park with animated gifs everywhere they may never get to the part of the site that you want them to, such as the “buy” button. A little animation goes a long way.

4. Flash Splash Screens.

Flash is big these days and very useful for a lot of tasks, however, one thing you should avoid is a big flash welcome page as the default page of your web site. Most people find it very annoying to sit through it, or to have to click a skip button.

5. Cross Browser Compatible Issues.

Always check out your site on the main browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Opera) a PC and Mac if possible. You’d be surprised how each web browser has its quirks. Sometimes a page will look really bad or completely wrong in one browser and you’ll have to spend time correcting the problem. But, you won’t know unless you test it… don’t rely on your visitors to tell you.

6. Broken Links.

This one should be obvious, check you site’s navigation and all the links occasionally. There are some tools available to do this for you if you have a really large site.

7. Disjointed Layout.

Make sure your site is easy to navigate. Have someone who’s not familiar with your site use your site. Ask them to purchase something, or find the page for sending in questions, etc. Watch them as they work. Listen to what they have to say and fix your site to make it work better.

8. Incomplete Contact Information.

Keep the contact information on your site is current and complete. Do this as soon as anything changes.

9. Text in Graphics to Make “Pretty Text” vs. Real Text.

Font styles are somewhat limited for web pages. Some people want their site to look really good with fonts like you can use in word processing packages. So how do you do that? You can make it in Adobe PhotoShop or another graphic package and save out your text as images. This works really well as far as looking good, however, because images are naturally larger than text, the pages will load slower. But, the biggest drawback is not size, it’s that you have your text, which tells what your site is about, locked up in images.

It’s not accessible to search engines that crawl web sites.

What does that mean? It means that if you’re relying on traffic to your site from search engines, you want real text, not images of text that only humans can read. If your site is not dependant on search engine traffic, then this may not matter other than the slower load time for the image laden pages.

10. Using Something Just To Be Using It.

When we remodeled our house, I wanted to use some stone somewhere. Our contractor kept saying that if we did, it would look like we used stone just to use some stone; it wouldn’t look natural like a house designed from the start with stone. The same is true of web sites. Don’t use flash, or background sounds, or videos that automatically load and start playing, or JavaScript that opens 900 windows. Only use those things when they are necessary, don’t use them just because you may know how and want to show off.

11. Not Updating the Site.

As things change you should modify your site to reflect those changes. As you add new products or announce new products, you should add them to your site. As people change in your organization, you should update your site.

Put a blog on your site and update it every day or so. Your web site can be a tremendous asset in your marketing toolkit, but only if it’s kept current and fresh.

Use this list of items to make your web site better and more enjoyable for your visitors.

Introduction

It takes more than mere information to engage website visitors. They need a reason to make an inquiry, subscribe to your newsletter, or buy your product. So how can you get the visitor to stop skirting around the edges and come right on in? Take a look at the following 10 ways that can help convert your site visitors to leads.

1. Improve your Web Copy
As with all good web copy, trim the fat and give them the cold hard facts. Visitors want to know how the service or product will fulfill their want or need. Compelling, interactive, well written content will pull the reader in. How can you make sure you have good web copy? Follow some of the basic principles of good copywriting and you’ll be fine. Make the copy concise, and speak to the target audience. Remove all the hyped up marketing lingo such as ‘we have a fantastic product’ and ‘we’ve had overwhelming results.’

2. It’s About the Customer
Everyone wants to know “What’s in it for me?” The customer may have a problem and want a solution, or they are looking to invest in a product but need to be convinced it’s a good choice. Your goal here? Show them the solution. Tell them the benefits of the product or service, rather than highlighting the features. The features won’t get their problem solved or make the sale, but the benefits will.

3. Be Approachable
Use an active and friendly voice to engage the customer and keep them motivated to continue through the process of clicking on your newsletter link or making a sale. An active voice is energetic and approachable, and ultimately, it’s more personal.

4. Trust is a factor
Trust is a big factor, so create plenty to go around. A visitor can’t see you, so the issue of trust is even more important on the internet. I’m paid every day by a person I have never met, now that’s trust! How do I know I could trust him? The first time I worked with him, he outlined the process and followed through with my expectations: I was paid on time and in full.

If you are exchanging personal information online, privacy also comes into play. Assure customers you will maintain their privacy. Tell them why you are collecting data and make them aware of what you are using it for. Place your privacy policy on your website so it can be clearly accessed. And if you are engaging in online sales, increase the trust factor by offering a variety of ways to order your product, such as via email, by phone, over a secure payment system such as Paypal.

5. Look professional
Almost half of website sales are lost because the website fails to provide the trust test with the customer. A website with an unprofessional look and feel makes the customer uneasy and gives the illusion that you are not trustworthy. Bye, bye sale.

6. Make an offer
Make the customer an offer they can’t refuse. Provide them with something for free, such as an information package or set of articles: For example:

•5 great advantages to using a virtual assistant at invesp.com. Receive our special report on 5 advantages that will reduce your expenses and increase your bottom line.

•The best web copy ever in a short time with a small investment. Join our “VIP Club” at www. invesp.com to beat others with new killer web copy.

7. Position yourself
Tell the customer what makes you special and different from the other guy. Why should they do business with you? For example, my position as a writer is that I am diverse and able to write in a variety of mediums. This makes me unique, because some writers love writing copy but hate writing proposals, or they’ll write a sales pitch but won’t write a sales manual. Stand for something and make it known.

8. Forms
Give the customer a reason to fill out a form or sign up for a newsletter as a way to continue to communicate with you. Once you have their permission to contact them, you can start offering tools, information, and benefits to communicating with you. Maybe you are sending them information packages, or keeping them in the loop with special offers. Whatever it is, getting them to sign up will increase the likelihood of a lead.

9. Maintain loyalty
You can build and maintain customer loyalty in a variety of ways. Perhaps one of the most important way is to keep your promises. Are you offering a durable product with free shipping or a solid service with a money back guarantee? Stick to your promise and follow through and your customer will remember it. All customers like to be valued, and value builds loyalty.

10. Track it
Track what your customers are looking for. Did they find their information or product? Ask them how they got to you? What words did they use to search and find you? Ask the customer what they liked and what distracted them. Your customer is a great tool to gauge success. Use it.

A popular way to earn online today is by using private label resell rights programs. They can help people of all business levels from newbies to advanced online Internet marketers leap ahead with successful businesses. Here are 10 tips for using private label resell rights to benefit your business:

1)    Go through all of your training materials and / or private label resell rights guides that come with your products. And go back over them regularly. You want to get THE most out of your program.

2)    Go through every item you are given and make use of it. Let nothing go untouched. Put everything to work for your business.

3)    If you don’t understand something, ask! And remember, there are no dumb questions. Learn more, earn more.

4)    Give your private label resell rights content a unique selling position. Make it stand out by revising it, adding your own special content like digital photos, graphics, additional textual content, quotes, stats, etc.

5)    Do a little ‘something’ every day to use and promote your products. Don’t let getting busy get in your way.

6)    Get help! No need to go it alone. You want to grow your business, so reach out! If you’re afraid to hire help or don’t have the available funds, think about teaming up with a fellow business associate and do a joint venture together. One of you assembles everything online, for example, while the other focuses on marketing.

7)    Find a mentor or coach who has been there, done that. Seek advice and follow it. A good place to start is with your private label program operator. See if he or she can point you to successful members using the system.

8)    Package bonuses with your products. Shoppers love a good deal, so give them one. Entice them with a bundled report, audio and video.

9)    Add freebies to your marketing campaigns. Many people still shop online for freebies. So entice them to opt-in to your autoresponder article series by offering a free report, ebook or other electronic download made from your private label resell rights materials.

10)    Automate! Let your computer and Internet marketing systems do all the work – or at least as much as possible. Dig in and learn all the components of your autoresponder, for instance, and learn how to set up forms to automatically capture leads. Learn how to set up a forum to grow your sites and a branded thank-you page to sell back end items with enticing sales copy and great shopping cart navigation and buttons, even an affiliate program to recruit your own sales team… and a whole lot more.

There are a lot more tips to using private label resell rights. To stay informed, sign up for more here: http://www.espired.com/i10/automaticnicheprofits.html

Tips plus the training provided by your private label resell rights program and your other auxiliary marketing tools can help you put everything together – fast and easy- so that you can start or jumpstart your online business…and run it!