AP9 Consumer Gateway Weblog

AP9 Privacy Matters -- 5 people who check your credit

AP9 Privacy Matters suggests reading 5 People Who Check Your Credit by Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine. Happy reading.

And remember, AP9 Privacy Matters members may log on to www.privacymatters.com to access their credit report today.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/YourCreditRating/5PeopleWhoCheckYourCredit.aspx

AP9 Companies Offer Tips to Get Ready for Swimsuit Season

You wake up one day and realize the birds are chirping outside. You smile. Spring has arrived. Then you see yourself in the mirror and realize how pale and “chubby” you look. You frown. You don’t feel quite ready to show off your figure at the beach. What to do asks AP9 Companies?

First of all, make your own plan of dieting and exercise. AP9 Companies offer a variety of home, shopping, traveling and entertainment savings programs, all of which you can use for each of the steps of your plan for a beach body. Need a treadmill? Want to find the swimsuit that will show off your best features? Is it imperative that you join a gym? Need a new pair of running shoes?

Members of AP9 Companies programs can save on all of these items and services to help anyone get back in shape for the summer. Along with all the savings and benefits, AP9 Companies would also like to offer some useful and healthy tips:

Moderation. If you’ve been a couch potato for more than the winter months, don’t expect to have the body of a swimsuit model. Your plan should integrate steps that will help you lose weight and tone muscles progressively for a period of at least eight weeks. Quick, radical diets will only give you short-term results and flabbier skin.

Eat right. Do it not only because you want to look better when you meet your friends at the beach, but also because it’s good for you. Start this spring by adding fruits and vegetables to your diet, and vary the routine by buying the most popular varieties each season and learning new ways to prepare your favorite meals or salads. Eat seasonal fruits or peanuts as snacks, and cut down on the carbs by eating them only for breakfast or lunch — not for dinner.

30 minutes. That’s the recommended minimum amount of time you should dedicate to any physical activity every day. Stop with the excuses; move around the house while cleaning for the new season, take the running/walking shoes out of the closet and walk around the block after dinner, go outside and play hide-n-seek with the kids, or just get on that treadmill. To make time go by faster, listen to your favorite music or watch a TV show, and use light weights or cans of vegetables to add some toning exercises to the program.

Sweat a little. Those 30 minutes a day are a big help for your heart and body, but if you want a more intense physical activity to look buff at the town swimming pool, get a gym membership and talk to a trainer about your goals. A professional can help you achieve results that will last longer without putting your health at risk.

Commitment is the ultimate key to looking good and also feeling good. Motivation will get you started, so once you get off the couch and enjoy what you’re doing, you’ll like exercising as much as you like the savings you get from the programs offered by AP9 Companies.

Adaptive Marketing LLC® Shares Business Plan Tips for

Congratulations! You’ve built a better mousetrap (or exercise machine or bottle opener or catering service or …). Now what? Well, as Adaptive Marketing LLC^® reports, it’s not enough to have a viable product — you also need a viable plan. As an industry leader in Internet marketing, Adaptive Marketing offers small business owners and millions of other consumers access to savings on the products and services that can make a difference in their lives. Business school textbooks are chock full of case studies on business start-ups that worked — and scores of others that failed. In fact, recent figures from the Small Business Administration show that fewer than half of all new small businesses last for at least four years. There are any number of reasons why start-ups ultimately break down, whether it’s a lack of financing, ineffective marketing, inadequate personnel resources, or even just poor time management skills. Whatever the problem was, the underlying cause can usually be tied to a lack of proper planning — a fatal flaw that can be avoided beforehand by developing a comprehensive, insightful business plan, notes Adaptive Marketing LLC^®.

So what all do you need to include in a viable business plan? Adaptive Marketing offers a few tips on the fundamentals of a good business plan:

-- Define your audience. Your target audience depends in good measure on the product or service you’re providing. A new cheesecake, for instance, is going to have a wider potential audience than would, say, a new software program for measuring lost productivity based on sick days and vacation schedules. Still, even the cheesecake can have distinct audiences — are you aiming straight for local consumers, for local delicatessens and restaurants, or for a nationwide audience through grocery chains and/or the Internet? Whatever audiences you choose for your initial launch, your business plan should take them all into account.

-- Describe your product or service in your audience’s terms. You know what you’ve created from your perspective, but what will your audience see in it? “Fresh, tasty cheesecake” might suffice on a local scale, but there are a lot of “tasty cheesecakes” on a regional and national scale. What features will make yours stand out in your audience’s eyes? Think of your product from the consumer’s point of view, and use that perspective to help shape your business plan.

-- Identify your sales and distribution channel(s) upfront. Oftentimes, it’s not the manufacturing costs that can drain a start-up’s finances, it’s the other stuff — how a product is marketed and sold and how it’s distributed. An Internet website requires less financing than a brick-and-mortar store, but walk-in customers at the store eliminate the shipping and handling costs that website sales typically require. Be sure to look long and hard at any and all options for selling and delivering your product; those will be major factors in your business plan.

-- Identify your financing options. The fabulously wealthy will have the money needed to launch a new business, but the vast majority of us don’t fall into that category, so you’ll likely need outside help to finance your start-up. There are typically two ways to do this: acquire a loan from a bank, or find an investor or several to share in the costs (and, of course, any profits). Either way, you’ll need to convince someone that your idea is desirable enough to merit financial backing. A well-developed business plan can do just that.

Business start-ups require a lot of time, effort and, in most cases, money, so you should be prepared to dedicate a good portion of your life to the effort. Still, with a well-defined business plan and, of course, a worthwhile product or service, you can join the legions of small business owners who’ve found their niche in the marketplace, reports Adaptive Marketing LLC^®.