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<title>Latest Articles by poyel</title>
<link>http://www.populate.net/</link>
<description>Articles at Populate.NET</description>
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<title>Belize Real Estate - Inevitable Growth?</title>
<link>http://www.populate.net/Finance/Real_Estate/Buying/belize-real-estate-inevitable-growth.html</link>
<guid>http://www.populate.net/Finance/Real_Estate/Buying/belize-real-estate-inevitable-growth.html</guid>
<pubDate>Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[ The headline on the International Living Magazine in December 2007 is straight forward: 'Belize: buy before the Europeans!' 

Amongst the financial crises triggered by the real estate market woos in the US caution is advisable over such a bullish statement. So, what are the reasons for such a headline?

Direct flights from Europe to Belize City will be launched by late 2008. This is major news for Belize and its real estate market. Europeans, armed with their strong currency, will most likely start to travel to this English speaking country in greater numbers. Transit though the U.S will no longer be required for European visitors. 

They will come for the classic Caribbean experience, the world class diving, the jungles and rainforests, the Mayan ruins, the waterfalls and rivers. And some will want to stay or retire here; hence real estate dollars are likely to follow close behind. 

We could observe this effect of new flight routes on real estate markets before. Wherever Ryanair (Ryaniar is a major European low cost airline) has started flying, the Irish and the British have followed and real estate markets have prospered. This is now called the 'Ryanair effect'.  

Rumor has it that direct flights to Belize from Canada might also start soon.

Real estate is all about timing and right now could be the time to focus in on this stunning country in the Caribbean. Property prices are still well below regional benchmarks.

Let's look at some of Belize's characteristics to further elaborate whether the above proposed demand really is valid:

The country is a parliamentary democracy and a member of the Commonwealth of Nations and is located between two rivers. The Belize River flows through the middle of the country.  With a Caribbean coastline, the Belize Barrier Reef and the Maya Mountains, there is a diverse countryside with plenty of outdoor recreation. Widespread savannas and wetlands provide a great biodiversity, both marine and terrestrial. The longest living barrier reef in the western hemisphere attracts divers from all around the world to Belize.

This Central American country is a former British Colony also known as British Honduras and has adopted English as native language.

Retirees in Belize can apply for a special status that provides tax breaks on retirement income and extends easy import of household items and furnishings.  

The gross domestic product of Belize has grown for the last 30 years. Agriculture, services and manufacturing are the major sectors of this expanding economy. 

Belize has the lowest population density in the Central American Region, and one of the lowest in the world. There is room for many people in Belize.

Adding to Belize's attractions is the cultural and ethnic diversity. There appears to be almost no friction between the harmoniously blended cultures and races. Belize is home to a wide range of ethnicities including Mennonites, Chinese, Mayan, Spanish, Lebanese, and East Indian. There is a great religious tolerance among people in Belize with Christians and Roman Catholics, Taoists, Buddhists, Hinduists and Jehovaha's Witnesses coexisting harmoniously.

Culture, economy and geography make Belize a desirable place to live. With this Caribbean country becoming more accessible through air travel it seems to be positioned well for significant growth in its economy, in general travel, and eventually, its real estate market. ]]></description>
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<title>Achieving Online Visibility Through Paid Inclusion Marketing</title>
<link>http://www.populate.net/Internet_Marketing/Site_Promotion/achieving-online-visibility-through-paid-inclusion-marketing.html</link>
<guid>http://www.populate.net/Internet_Marketing/Site_Promotion/achieving-online-visibility-through-paid-inclusion-marketing.html</guid>
<pubDate>Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[ A basic pre-condition for online success is that a marketer has to create web site visibility. Visibility, put simple, is nothing else than to ensure that Internet surfers find your website.
Only if your website has visibility it will be able to generate traffic. Only if your website has traffic there can be conversions from casual visitors into paying customers, and only then you will be able to make money online.

With literally millions of pages being added to the Internet each day and the competition (i.e. the pages that are indexed by search engines, Google 'knows' 366.000.000 pages for the keyword 'web hosting' at the time of writing) growing fast, generating visibility for a website does not get any easier.

Hence, the key question: How do I get my site to the top of the list?

There are three popular methods online marketers have been using to find the answer:

1. Pay per click (PPC) advertising: PPC is a very powerful method indeed and increasingly popular, very much to the delight of the dominating market leader Google. The price for a click in a PPC program is determined by bidding. Hence, the more popular a search term, the higher the price per click. According to CNET News the average fee is about 45 cents. So, only a website can deliver high enough a conversion on sales and the margin per sales is high enough this is a viable method to promote your online business. An additional turn-off is the issue of click fraud that keeps marketers wondering about the amount of legitimate clicks to a website.  

2. Search engine optimization (SEO): SEO is the application of strategies intended to position a Web site at the top of Web search engines and is arguably the most powerful way to create visibility for a website. Simply because it is free and the top results are likely to receive the highest click through rate (CTR) on search engine results pages.
However, given competition for high search engine rankings on the Internet, this is a rather daunting task. It generally requires a lot of expertise and increasingly also patience. 

3. Paid inclusion: A search engine marketing model in which Web site owners pay a search engine company to guarantee their sites will show up in search results. This method can be very rewarding. It is not as popular as PPC advertising and there are various smaller players with moderate fees that can, however, deliver substantial traffic to your website. The logic is very simple, there is a lot of traffic to be obtained away from the online marketing mainstream. ]]></description>
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<title>How To Make Sure That Pay Per Click Advertsing Is The Right Choice For You</title>
<link>http://www.populate.net/Internet_Marketing/Pay-Per-Click/how-to-make-sure-that-pay-per-click-advertsing-is-the-right-choice-for-you.html</link>
<guid>http://www.populate.net/Internet_Marketing/Pay-Per-Click/how-to-make-sure-that-pay-per-click-advertsing-is-the-right-choice-for-you.html</guid>
<pubDate>Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[ It is not merely a rule of thumb but a foundation for various business models on the Internet: Your web site either receives traffic for free through so-called 'organic' search engine results and linking strategies or you simply have to buy traffic. Free search engine results are sometimes being called organic as they are untainted by commercial pricing and conditions.

If your website is to be found among the top-ten search engines results for a competitive term like for example 'Hawaii rentals' on MSN Live Search you have to beat 20700000 other web pages that Live Search has listed in its index for this keyword (retrieved in January 2008). This is not an easy task - and that is why buying instantaneous traffic from a Pay Per Click Program is such an excellent online marketing technique and wonderful business for the providers alike.

Pay Per Click (PPC) describes an advertising method in which advertisers pay each time someone clicks their ad. The major PPC systems include Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing Solutions and MSN adCenter, all of which place PPC ads along with their search engine results and their network of website as well. The cost per click can range from some 5 Cents to as much as 50 USD and more, depending on the competition for that particular keyword. If clicks are very expensive, the cost might eat up your complete margin and hence render this online advertising tactic impractical.
Cost is the obvious disadvantage, while advantages include that is very quick and reliable to generate traffic (literally minutes), which is on top easily measurable. Measuring results is crucial to determine whether a PPC system can be profitable for your website:

The key metrics to understand are conversion rate and breakeven click value. The conversion rate is the proportion of casual visitors to your website who become paying customers. A conversion rate of 2 percent would mean for example that 2 out of 100 visitors buy from your site. The breakeven click value then is the maximum amount of money you can afford per click in order not to loose money.

At this point it is simply a numbers game to determine if Pay Pay Click Programs are feasible for your website or not. And this obviously is also determined by the nature of the products you are selling: The higher the value and margin of your products, the higher the breakeven click value and thus, the higher the likeability that PPC system do make sense for you. ]]></description>
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<title>Getting Web Site Landing Pages Right</title>
<link>http://www.populate.net/Internet/Web_Design/getting-web-site-landing-pages-right.html</link>
<guid>http://www.populate.net/Internet/Web_Design/getting-web-site-landing-pages-right.html</guid>
<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[ A landing page is the destination URL that users visit after they have clicked on a search engine result, a paid search listing or any other link that might bring visitors to your web site. The average web site visitor will know after just a few instances if the site she is currently looking at grabs her attention and might eventually have the potential to turn a casual visitor into a paying customer. Hence the importance of getting a landing page right, especially if the web site owner is paying for the traffic.

Here are some considerations aiming at improving landing pages and as a result web site conversions and return on investment.

First of all it is important to understand that search engines rank pages, not sites. A web site hence may have several landing pages optimized for different keywords. While the home page usually is the highest ranking page of a site in the search engines, it would be wrong to assume that it automatically is the best landing page. In fact, any web site optimization should try to get other pages than the home page into the search engines as well.

There are a few common mistakes related to landing pages, these include:

1.) Not realizing the importance of landing pages. The attention span of web site visitors is very short, so any web page has to grab the attention of visitors, engage them and eventually induce them to take action. This ideally happens on the landing page, we cannot expect the casual visitor to click to another page after the first page she visited was already boring.

2.) Overburdening the landing page with information. A good landing page will be targeted and not divert the attention of visitors. If we try to make a clear call to action we cannot tell the visitor about every aspect of our business on a single page.

3.) Suppose that the best copy is brief copy. While the attention span is short on the Internet, it does not mean that visitors do not want to read copy to inform themselves. A visitor's decision to take action has to be supported with relevant information.

4.) Presenting the visitor with a contact form on the landing page. Yes, the landing page is supposed to deliver a strong call for action, but it would be foolish to believe that a visitor will taken action right away after 'landing' on a page. It is impossible to push people on the Internet, so the landing has to provide a good opening to pull people along to take action. ]]></description>
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<title>Notions of Freedom for the Permanent Traveler</title>
<link>http://www.populate.net/Personal_Development/notions-of-freedom-for-the-permanent-traveler.html</link>
<guid>http://www.populate.net/Personal_Development/notions-of-freedom-for-the-permanent-traveler.html</guid>
<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[ PT Lifestyle is a viable and extremely rewarding lifestyle for the 21st century and beyond. PT is viable because of globalization, the Internet and communication technologies and the resulting empowerment of the individual. It is rewarding because it highlights freedom and self-actualization. PT may be an abbreviation for post tax, perpetual or permanent travel, and positive thinker. Whatever the abbreviation of PT lifestyle - a consensus lies in the offshore nature - , paramount to its notion is freedom as the major goal in life. Freedom has manifold connotations; here are some elements of freedom for the practitioner of PT lifestyle:

- Freedom is ultimately a frightening concept for most people and commonly mistaken for irresponsibility. This is a complete perversion of life itself: freedom can only happen if we assume complete and unconditional responsibility of ourselves.

- The first level of freedom to be achieved is freedom 'from': Freedom from having to go to the same office every morning to live from hand to mouth; freedom from having to participate in the daily rat race of the average employee, freedom from having to refrain from our dreams in life due to financial restrictions. The best location-independent way to generate income is the Internet. Most of us will still require some cash-inflows, unless you are already financially free and can rely on investments only. Making money is a viable choice for a PT lifestyle.

- 'Freedom from' also has a psychological dimension: Freedom from having to participate in the worlds' 'aspirational consumerism' (Noam Chomsky). Don't think 10.000 Dollars equal the down payment for a new BMW, think 10.000 Dollars equal x amount of time to live freely. Value is given by the freedom a good provides, not by conspicuous consumption. Psychological freedom is the personal strength to realize that there are only individuals in his world. 'Society' and 'culture' are notions to describe phenomena we are all susceptible to. 'Zeitgeist' defines a corridor of acceptable actions, but eventually society and culture are empty words that prevent freedom as they divert from ultimate responsibility of the individual.

- Financial (physical) freedom and psychological freedom add up to 'freedom to' be the person you want to be, or as Nietzsche would say, 'to become the person who you are.' Suddenly travel does not only mean physical travel but also a spiritual quest in realizing the potential to become the best man (or woman for that matter) we can be. I would strongly support the notion that physical travel is a means to achieve spiritual travel.

This is where the means of a practical PT lifestyle meets its own end. With a little injection of hedonism and to make it more presentable PT lifestyle might as well be called digital bohemian. ]]></description>
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<title>Domain Name Selection for SEO</title>
<link>http://www.populate.net/Internet/Domain_Names/domain-name-selection-for-seo.html</link>
<guid>http://www.populate.net/Internet/Domain_Names/domain-name-selection-for-seo.html</guid>
<pubDate>Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[ he Registration of domain names is a thriving business on the Internet today - this is evident by the high bids that companies are willing to pay in Per-Per-Click (PPC) engines to attract potential customers for domain name registration.

The business of domain name registration is sometimes referred to as 'Internet Real Estate'. Just like we can occupy high traffic areas in the central business districts of major cities in the real world, we can register domains for commonly used words or sought after keywords to generate traffic more easily to our websites. While most common words and abbreviations have already been taken for the most widely used top level domain names, with a little bit of creativity we can still register an endless number of promising domain names.

While there is no clear indication to what extent .com, .net as well as country top level domain names such as .co.uk, .de, .fr and so forth influence search engine rankings of websites, the word is that .org domains are still favored by Google as part of the non-commercial tradition.

However, this article is not looking at how the domain extension influences the ranking of a website as this is thought to be insignificant for search engine rankings. A stronger influence on search engine rankings have indeed the length of registration, frequency of DNS changes as well as the reputation of the registrar.

Even though sometimes overrated in its importance - especially in relationship to its effect on search engine rankings, domain names do remain an important asset for the online corporate identity of your business.

The main consideration concerning your domain name will be to choose between a creative name (such as 'yahoo', 'alibaba', 'kazaa') or a keyword name (such as 'study-tourism' or 'retail-gifts'. In fact using main keywords in your domain name does have a positive effect on your search engine rankings, especially to get your rankings off the ground after launching a new website. Down the road the effect however becomes almost negligible.

While many people tend to register numerous domain names to accommodate most important key words within them, they overlook that Google and other major search engines will pay almost the same attention to sub-domains. So instead of registering 'hawaii-real-estate', 'florida-real-estate' and so forth, we might as well just register 'real-estate' and have sub domains such as 'hawaii.real-estate', 'florida.real-estate' and so forth.

What people further underestimate is that search engines in general look for keywords in the URL (unique resource locator) which comprises of the top level domain, any potential sub-domains and of course the file name. So, if you happen to be using a creative domain name that does not contain any important key words, you can of course include your main keywords in the file name of the webpage itself, i.e. florida-real-estate.html.

Hence, in a nutshell, while domain names are a major asset for your corporate identity, their significance for search engine rankings is overrated, as there are various ways to accommodate significant keywords in the URL and eventually other on-site factors (coding techniques, content) of a website will have a greater impact for search engine rankings. ]]></description>
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<title>Can You Do Well In The IELTS Exam Without A Tutor?</title>
<link>http://www.populate.net/Culture_and_Society/Education/College-and-University/can-you-do-well-in-the-ielts-exam-without-a-tutor.html</link>
<guid>http://www.populate.net/Culture_and_Society/Education/College-and-University/can-you-do-well-in-the-ielts-exam-without-a-tutor.html</guid>
<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[ Many - but by no means all - students who take the IELTS Examination for a quantitative assessment of their English-language skills for entrance to universities in the UK and Australia take a course to prepare for the test itself. It's a strongly recommended idea as the IELTS test does not only require solid knowledge of the English language, but also specific techniques to do well in the IELTS test.

People with very high English skills can do well in the exam with no preparation. But even many of them find the severe time limits on the writing tasks, for example, to produce 'band' scores that do not accurately reflect their real writing skills. 

Even its creators conceded that IELTS is a tricky test. Question types - there are 10 in all - are often not used in a straightforward manner, requiring both agility of thinking and extra time in answering on the part of the IETLS candidate. Learning how IELTS asks questions, as well as the kinds of questions it asks, can make a significant difference in overall performance.

Perhaps most critically, for both the writing and the speaking tasks - the most difficult for most candidates anyway, because they involve self-expression in English - are expected to be performed according to established IELTS formats. However, the administrators of IELTS spell out those formats nowhere in their published literature. For that matter, the formats are not often made clear in the numerous books on IELTS preparation on the market.

For all these reasons, to get the band score that most accurately reflects your real English-language skills, some kind of tutorial is advised. In large cities with educational centres, there are both universities, schools and private companies that offer such IELTS-preparation courses. In such places, it is also usually possible to find private tutors, although seeking them out can be more difficult.

The books on IELTS Exam preparation are surprisingly poor overall. There also are online courses. Looking in your favorite search engine for 'IELTS online preparation' will provide you with some reasonable choices.

Unless you know your English skills are at or near the native-speaker level, it is strongly advised that you take some kind of IELTS tutorial before you take the exam to get the band score that most accurately reflects your real skill level. Conversely, taking an IELTS-preparation course to improve your English skills is wrong-headed. That should be done in another context. There is too much to be taught about the exam itself to allow for the teaching of skills at the same time. ]]></description>
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<title>Phuket Afther The Tsunami</title>
<link>http://www.populate.net/Recreation_and_Leisure/phuket-afther-the-tsunami.html</link>
<guid>http://www.populate.net/Recreation_and_Leisure/phuket-afther-the-tsunami.html</guid>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[ Although it would misrepresent the facts to say that today's Phuket - Thailand's largest island and one of the world's top tourist destinations - looks the same as it did before the 2004 tsunami that was the greatest natural disaster in Earth's recorded history. But reliable anecdotal evidence does confirm that visitors to Phuket would have little reason to think that the island and its famous beaches were ever struck by the deadly wave.

Think what you will about ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, much of the credit for the remarkable recovery, arguably the most thorough of any of the places hit by the tsunami, belongs to him. In a move redolent of his effort to pay off Thailand's debt to the IMF for its recovery from the 1997 financial crisis, Thaksin determined early on that Thailand would attend to its own recovery - and not wait for international relief funds to arrive.

Some of that recovery has been laced with controversy. Chief among them are the charges that many of the former prime minister's friends became the recipients of the country's largesse, extra-legally taking over rights to lands that belonged to longtime Phuket residents whose documents of ownership were destroyed along with so much else during the catastrophe.

Still, contrary to dire predictions by many about the long-term negative effects the disaster would have on Thailand's important tourist industry, they have not come to pass. For the most part, tourists have returned to the beaches and resorts on the Patong Beach side of the island, on the Andaman Sea coast, and new or rebuild resorts are there to accommodate them - and to provide essential work opportunities for Thais in the tourist industry. No appreciable drop in tourist numbers has been reported in this critical region.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for all of the parts of Thailand's Andaman coast struck by the tsunami. Reconstruction has been slower and more fraught with controversy in Khao Lak to the north, Phi Phi Island farther north, and coastal Krabi across from Phi Phi. Longtime visitors to many of those locations have, in various ways, tried to prevent the original owners of tourist properties there from losing their land and licenses. Not all of the efforts have been successful, and lawsuits regarding lands are choking Thailand's cumbersome court system.

Even so, the dramatic recovery of Phuket has become a beacon of hope for similar places on both sides of the Andaman and Indian Oceans, for whom recovery has been slower and fraught with even greater troubles. ]]></description>
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<title>Phuket Tourist Life After The Tsunami</title>
<link>http://www.populate.net/Career/phuket-tourist-life-after-the-tsunami.html</link>
<guid>http://www.populate.net/Career/phuket-tourist-life-after-the-tsunami.html</guid>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800</pubDate>
<description><![CDATA[ It has been just a little bit more than three years ago that the popular tourist destination Phuket was hit by the Tsunami. We all remember the terrifying pictures of this greatest natural catastrophe in the recorded history broadcasted around the world. Most of us living in Thailand had friends and family or new people directly who lost their lives in the tsunami or were inflicted physical and mental hardship from the tidal waves along the coastlines if the Indian ocean. Phuket, also called the pearl of the Andaman sea, one of the world's most popular tropical tourist destination because of its many attractions ranging from nightlife to stunning natural beauty and a whole array of water sports, the years to come suddenly appeared destined to loose momentum. 

What has changed since then? What have we learned? What has happend to the risning star among the tropical islands that was increasingly gaining a reputation for yacht charter and deap seas fishing as well?

Anchalee Wanitch Thepbutr, president of the Phuket Provincial Administration Organization, said during the second anniversary of the disaster that the island's tourism industry has already got back to the stage before the tsunami.

The post-tsunami devastations along the popular beaches of Patong, Kamala, Karon and Kata have been replaced by new hotels, restaurants and street markets and are once again bustling with foreign and local tourists.

Disaster evacuation plans appear to be history and have not been implemented as widely postulated after the tidal waves had struck in 2004. Likewise the beach zoning plan allowing people to escape from giant waves also appears to have been forgotten: The beach-strip extending 30 meters from the high-tide level that the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department demanded should remain empty and free from any obstacles is now packed with chairs, dining tables and booths of vendors selling food and souvenirs.

In fact only warning signs indicating in which direction to run if a tsunami ever were to strike again reminds visitors of the disaster from three years ago.

As an irony of history the second anniversary of the tsunami was overshadowed by scandal involving money donated from abroad. A recent letter to the Thai Royal Police signed by diplomats of seven countries asked for an internal audit investigating of the use of sixty million Thai Baht in donations.

So, until further notice Phuket remains a top destination for sun and fun seekers. Especially for yachting, sailing and fishing Phuket has become increasingly renown.

The common opinion of locals in Phuket appears to be that now everybody would just run and not wait until the wave comes. And that is probably the remaining lesson from the 2004 disaster: Tsunamis can happen in Thailand, before that was thought to be impossible. ]]></description>
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