Tuesday, March 11, 2008

How To Make Money Working Online

Most people who have a computer would like to learn how to make money working online. The challenge usually is knowing where or how to get started. Most everyone anticipates earning big money quickly only to experience little to no earned income. This usually leaves a person feeling frustrated and either ready to quit or more determined to get better results. If you maintain the burning desire to make money working online, you will need to keep your focus.

Writing to you from experience, I can tell you first and foremost - find a mentor! Find someone you KNOW who has obtained the results you would like to have for yourself. By this I mean you want to learn the truth about anyone who has claimed or is claiming, to make money working online. Dont fall for smoke & mirror type results that express or show a high or outlandish return on their effort. Use your own sensory acuity and listen to your inner voice. If it sounds to good to be true, then it probably isnt true at all. A great number of success stories are embellished specifically to get your interest and more pointedly, to get YOUR MONEY!

Ive read a great number of ebooks, how to manuals and numerous other resources to help in determining the right or best tools for the venture. Ive gleaned tons of incredible information from countless writers and their publications. One biggie that sticks out by devouring many different authors points of view is this, if you find yourself reading the same type of information from various individuals, you can bet its factual. The key is how to pick the best one(s) to learn from without spending a small fortune before seeing a return on your investment.

Best way to learn how to make money working on line is to not only read it but view it as well. My learning curve increased drastically by watching online videos of how to examples. Most people learn by watching others do something and then copy it or imitate their process. By doing so, you should find yourself getting the same results as your teacher or mentor. After all, if you want to make more money working online, you should be duplicating someone elses success patterns for yourself. Not to be a copy-cat or me-too product but more along the lines of catapulting (or slingshot) you forward to success faster!

The key for me to make money working online has been doing something proactive on a weekly basis. If you can take some form of action each day, then you will progress much faster. Obviously the more time you devote to make money online then chances are, youll see results much quicker. I suggest weekly because most individuals that want to free themselves by having an Internet based business have other jobs too. Its important to understand you can have success without being married to your computer every single day. Work smarter not harder or longer!

As an estimate, plan to commit at least 10 15 hours per week for at least 1 full year, as a suggested minimum! Everyone experiences different types of results throughout their first year but stick with it. Learn from others mistakes and benefit from their success tips!!

Aubrey Richardson is the founder of http://www.logofax.com - logos & clipart site. Find out how you can tap into earning money online http://www.internet-based-business-opportunity.com.

A Gift Basket for Faraway Family Members

I know very well what it's like to have family who live far away. When I was growing up, my grandparents and aunts/uncles and cousins lived across the ocean. When I had my own kids, their grandparents and aunts/ uncles lived on the other side of the country. Now that my sister has 2 small children, the youngest of whom I've never met, this being far away has hit me again. How can we show far away family, especially when children are involved, that we want to be close and stay connected?

We could design a gift basket for family members who live far away, just to say we care. We would put into it several mementos that make the distance between us seem smaller.

If we have young children, we could send grandparents a digital picture frame. In case you're wondering what a digital picture frame is; it is a device about the size and shape of a picture frame that has a LCD screen. The screen displays multiple photos in a slide show format, and it connects to the Internet via the phone line to download new pictures and information to display. You use your computer to upload photos to a website and every day the frame uses the phone line to connect to the website and download any new photos. This is an ideal way to send digital photos of the family to grandparents who lack a computer and/or the skills to use one.

We could also include a DVD, or a video depending on the equipment we and they have, of some recent activity; perhaps our child scoring a goal at soccer or performing in a recital, or even just a family picnic or something like that. Photos are great, certainly better than nothing, but they just don't show you what the child is really like as well as video does. They don't give you as much of a feeling of being there as a movie does. We could also include a tape (either audiotape or videotape) of our child giving the recipient a special message.

Of course we could always send regular photos too. One idea to make a photo special is to cut out the shape of the children (the important part) and have it glued onto a plastic block so that it stands upright by itself. Another idea is to frame the photo in a magnetic frame that is suitable for the holiday so that it is easy to put on the fridge. I have one on my fridge right now that is a heart frame for Valentines Day. You can often get these at places like Target. We could include a picture the child has drawn or painted, or even a small thing the child has made himself if the child likes to do crafts.

Of course, most of these ideas are not just for children and grandparents, although I know that the time when you feel the farthest away from your family is when either you are a child away from grandparents, or you are away from a small child, especially a grandchild. These ideas can be applied to any faraway family members. When family members move away is when they most need to know that we're thinking of them. A gift basket would be a great way to reassure them of this.

Tracy Crowe loves to feel connected and closer to her family.

Dog Training: To Punish Or Not To Punish

Punishment is a controversial subject in dog training, though it is widely used by both traditional and positive trainers.

The most common punishment is positive punishment. It consists in stopping an undesired behavior by adding an unpleasant thing or situation. Therefore, leash tugs are positive punishments.

On the other hand, negative punishment consists in stopping an undesired behavior by removing a pleasant thing or situation. Thus, you would be applying negative punishment if you remove a food treat or a toy from your dog's sight.

Positive punishment is widely used by traditional trainers and seldom used by positive trainers. Negative punishment is mostly used by positive trainers and seldom used by traditional trainers.

Typical positive punishers in dog training are: a pinch from the prong collar, an unpleasant and perhaps painful sensation when the choke chain closes, the "No" command, water squirts on the dog's face, loud sounds produced by objects thrown near the dog, electric shocks produced by electric collars and electric fences, etc.

Typical negative punishers in dog training are: ignoring your dog, a food treat removed from the scene, a toy removed from the scene, the end of a game, the end of a walk, stopping the walk when the dog pulls the leash, etc.

Although punishment is so widely used to train dogs, even in positive training, most trainers are not aware of its risks and limitations. Both positive and negative punishments could produce collateral adverse effects which include stress, anxiety and a reduction of learning abilities. Besides, when used too often, punishments could also lead to shyness and/or aggression. Of course, negative punishment tend to have less (or at least less intense) adverse effects.

Another disadvantage of punishment is that it has no long term effects. While you can use punishment to stop your dog from doing an unwanted behavior, this does not ensure that the behavior's frequency will be reduced. Punished behaviors tend to be maintained when the punishment is not applied frequently. That is the reason why prong, choke and electric collars are used even on dogs that have already being trained.

Despite the short term span of punishment, punished behaviors' frequency seems to be reduced in dogs that have been trained in such way. However, this usually is an erroneous interpretation because those behaviors don't appear when the punisher (maybe the trainer) is present. Then, after the punisher has been removed, the frequency of those behaviors tends to increase again.

It is very easy to see what I explained in the previous paragraph. Just look for a traditional trained dog which has not been trained by his owner. The dog will work perfectly when the trainer is present but stop working when the trainer is absent. Therefore, you can infer that the dog experiences some kind of anxiety when the trainer is present, because that man is somehow associated with punishment.

This does not mean that traditional trainers are cruel or violent. Of course there are stupid and cruel guys who call themselves trainers, but most traditional trainers can train dogs that obey happily and without fear. However, to achieve this level of training while using punishment and negative reinforcement, you must be very experienced. It is not easy to become a good traditional dog trainer.

A similar situation occurs when using negative punishment. For instance, you can stop your dog from jumping on you just by ignoring him when that behavior is displayed. However, it takes just one reinforcing episode (giving attention to your dog when he jumps on you) to take back the unwanted behavior. Even worst, it is very likely that the jumping behavior will be strengthened by that reinforcing episode, so you will need much more time to retrain your dog.

Ok, at this point it seems that this article is just an anti-punishment propaganda. Please believe me, it is not such thing. Punishment could be useful to train animals, which has been proven by scientific studies on experimental psychology. However, it could also have really big drawbacks.

So, if you are thinking to use punishment to train your dog, please don't rely only on reading about it. Call an expert and ask him/her to teach you the proper way to use punishments. And please don't believe the false statement that "choke chains, prong collars and electric collars are not punishing devices, but corrective ones". They are punishers. Therefore, if you are going to use those devices to train your dog, learn it from an expert.

On the other hand, you have a lot of alternatives to train your dog without punishment. There are several proven methods to stop your dog from doing unwanted behaviors without using punishment: training an incompatible behavior, putting the unwanted behavior on command, reinforcing every behavior except the undesired one, changing the motivation, etc.

Rodrigo Trigosso is a biologist and professional dog trainer. His website at http://www.dog-training-tutorial.com provides objective and reliable information on dog training and behavior.