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Investment Advisor – Learn How to Hire a Dependable Advisor to Secure Your Financial Future

There is a reason most of us depend on our friends or ourselves for making important investment decisions. It is hard to find a dependable professional source of investment advice. There is no dearth of places to turn to for investment advice, but the decision to put a portion of your financial future in someone else’s hands should be made very carefully after collecting sufficient information.

What are the different types of financial and investment advisors?

Investment advisor is a professional firm or an individual that advises clients on investment matters. They may manage trust funds, pension funds and personal investments like stocks and mutual funds on their customer’s behalf.
Financial planners offer investment advice and help clients with savings, taxes, insurance, estate planning and retirement.
Brokers buy or sell stocks, mutual funds, bonds on their customer’s behalf.
How do I pick a good investment advisor?
Ask your friends and family if they know a good investment advisor. Also compare price quotes from multiple qualified investment advisors listed on B2B marketplaces and ask them for an appointment.

Interview your financial advisor extensively, judging their professionalism and experience. Let him or her learn about your tax situation, fiscal health and long term goals.

Ask the following questions to narrow your search for an investment advisor.

What experience do you have?
Where are you registered?
What investment services do you extend?
Do you have all the required licenses.
How much money do you manage for other clients?
How have your investments performed in the past one to ten years?
How will you assist me with my investments?
How are you paid?
Do you require a minimum investment?
How are you different from other investment or financial advisors?
Learn how your advisor gains from you
Investment advisors are paid either a percent of the asset value they handle for a customer, a fixed or hourly fee, or a combination of all. They have a fiduciary responsibility to act in your best interest while making investment decisions on your behalf. It is best to at least partially compensate the investment advisor based on his or her performance. In such an arrangement, the investment advisor makes a commission only if he or she meets your investment goals. Be wary of investments that pay a large upfront fee to the investment advisor or lock you into investments that levy a withdrawal penalty.

Check credentials and references

It is important to check references and credentials. For example in the US ask for ‘Form ADV’ for the advisors, which provides you with the advisors background, services offered, mode of payment and strategies used. Form is obtainable from the advisors, the SEC, state security regulator or those advisors managing $25 million or more in client assets. Also inquire about the advisors educational and professional background.

Know how to evaluate your advisors

Once you have hired an investment advisor, remember to evaluate his or her performance at regular interval. It is also important to meet with them regularly to review short and long term goals and to adjust your investment portfolio. Apply the following standards for evaluation.

Review performance: Check regularly how your money is doing in the investments advocated by your advisor. Evaluate portfolio performance with regard to investment goal and risk tolerance for invested assets. Use a proper benchmark or metric matching your investment strategy for various assets. For example if you have invested in stocks, use the market index as the benchmark for comparison.
Cost-benefit ratio: Though your money maybe doing well, it is important to ascertain the ratio of investment return delivered by your advisor to his or her earnings. Are you paying more than you thought for the investment return?
Quality of investment recommendations: Evaluate and test your advisors knowledge of the latest investment approaches, preparedness to stay above the rest in the changing market and insights or suggestions on new investment strategies.
Working relationship: Your investment advisor should regularly communicate and update you about your investments.
Personalized service: advisor should regularly review your investment goals and preferences and tailor the investments accordingly. You should be wary of investment advisors who show too much reliance on software programs to create your portfolio.
Hiring a good investment advisor is important to secure your financial future. Hire someone you can trust and can easily communicate with. If you advisor does not perform as expected, set up a meeting to rectify the situation else find someone who could be more helpful.

How Do I Start A Home Based Business?

There are probably thousands of home businesses you could choose, but how do you choose the right one? Well this article should help, you see I have already done all the investigations into finding a successful home business for you, so take note as I reveal the different types, which are scams? and whether there is a business model out there for YOU!So What Suits YOU? During your research you should really ask yourself what type of business would suit your lifestyle? I mean, lets say that you have children still at school, that could certainly rule out Forex or Commodity trading, as you must be able to monitor your trading screen pretty much ALL the time, AND THIS IS OBVIOUSLY NOT SUITABLE OR CONGUSIVE to the school run is it? So start by writing down EXACTLY what it is you want from your home business, what you enjoy and how much time you can commit to it, especially in the early days.Make sure that your business of choice is in an area which is of interest to you, working with something that you are passionate about will help you to discipline yourself to do whatever is necessary to succeed, and will help you soldier on when the inevitable roadblocks appear (and they WILL).Make sure the home based business you are thinking of starting is a legitimate one. Many MLM’s for example, in my opinion are bordering on the illegal, so do your due diligence, check out the owners, find out what their motives are, talk to the users of the systems and find out what the success ratio is.There are a lots of reviews posted around the Internet these days on just about everything you could think of, so utilise this resource and gather as much info as you can BEFORE making your decision.How Do I Start A Home Based Business?What about Support? One of the fastest ways to shorten the home business learning curve is to have access to, and the support of, a mentor. There are many home business systems out there which will promise you support and mentoring, but will dramatically fall short on this very important aspect, so another positive to look for is to ensure that any home business you are looking at starting gives you all of the support and training you will need to succeed, but more importantly provides you with the proof that they do, BEFORE you commit.What about cost? Even though running a home based business can be considerably cheaper to start than a traditional bricks and mortar business, there will still be costs, and anyone who tells you otherwise is talking nonsense.For example, you will need a Website and hosting, and you will probably need a marketing budget, as the fastest way for you to get results and start making money, will be to do some paid advertising. But this will really be a decision only you can make based on how quickly you need to see a return on your investment. There are many FREE marketing strategies you can use as well, but these tend to be more long-term, and WILL NOT produce big results quickly. I recommend implementing both free and paid marketing personally.How Do I Start A Home Based Business?Finally, you simply MUST Create a business plan. You know the old adage “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”, and this is very true. I have seen many businesses fail simply because they did not have a strategy to work with and therefore could not measure how they were doing. So set-up a plan for your home based business and follow through with it. Again when deciding what business system to invest in, check out the advice you are given on this subject and use this as part of your criteria when making your decision. Any legitimate home based business system SHOULD have within their support program, ALL the advice you would need to help you to create a good business plan to suit YOU.I would like to leave you now with a final piece of advice. Follow your plan through and take consistent daily action. Many people have the right idea and start out with the right intent, but fail to take the necessary actions. And remember that a business, whether it’s a home based business or not cannot succeed overnight.Nothing about running your own home based business will be easy, but if you take my advice and stick to it YOU WILL improve your chances of success a hundredfold.All the best.
-Jon

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A Guide on Successful Product Creation and Internet Marketing

Product creation in Internet marketing is getting stiffer and stiffer nowadays owing to tough competition between Internet-based businesses. Putting up a new product requires plenty of brainpower and finances along with an ability to take risk. With that, even if you have the product well-set already, you have to position it strategically in the Internet landscape for others to notice. You should get the interest of Web users and turn them to actual customers. Aside from the usual physical products, many different products that thrive well on Internet marketing include E-books, membership sites, and video lectures.

The long and difficult process of product creation begins with ideas. They are easy to get – compared to the effort that comes with analyzing the market for that idea. Before the idea turns to a product, businesses often spend money, even amounting to millions of dollars, to ensure the success of the new product that emerges from an idea. Businesses undertake many types of market research and surveys before releasing their products to the public. Now, you may think that because your business is small, you can’t afford research or you don’t have to do research; you can and you should. The Internet allows you to disseminate materials needed for your market study to many people at once without your having to spend a cent.

It is a common maxim in business: Look at your destination first before mapping out your journey. So what are the goals you intend to accomplish with your product creation ventures? The everyday travails of your business may make you forget the end in sight. On the other hand, prepare to entertain new developments that come to your mind in your product creation. Your conception of a product may have started this way, but a few tweaks here and there along with some market research results and it ends up another way. Take it as the result of a creative process, not as a failure to reach your goal. After all, your product creation activities are intertwined with a long-term goal that you should strive to sustain at your utmost: profit generation. So if your less profitable initial idea evolves to a more profitable product, be thankful!

With your product made up already, start doing some aggressive Internet marketing. A product purchase typically comes after more than five times a customer is exposed to an informative call-to-buy message. Thus it is important to get the contact details, like the e-mail address, of potential customers who are on the brink of a sale. Use the results of your market research to determine the demographics to which you should concentrate your marketing efforts.

With consistent product creation, you can make an inventory of your products that you can market in due time. Just keep making products – the moment you succeed in making and marketing a product, customers are surely wanting more from you, so give it to them. Keep them on your side through constant product creation.

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