In 2004 a man went onto the internet and offered to trade a paperclip for a house. Of course, no one took him up on it, but they did trade him for something a little larger. This man kept trading up, the trade rarely had much monetary value. Sometimes its only value lay in the fact that it was part of the scheme.
The man now lives in his house in western Canada. The house he traded up from a paperclip.
There are many investment strategies for managing a bullion or precious metals portfolio. It is one of the most secure ways of investing small and building up. And, it is easy to trade.
You can trade bullion for almost anything ? at a profit. The desire to own gold is so strong that many people will undervalue their own services or products in an effort to obtain gold bullion.
If only they knew how easy it was to buy on the internet.
The trick is to stick to the large trading houses. While there is a coin, or bullion trading company in every small city, there are different qualities and grades of gold. Even the slightest variation in weight can change a ?good deal? to a con.
The important thing to remember is that investing in coins, and investing in bullion are two different things. A coin has a fixed value attached to it. This value increases, or decreases, depending on how many people want to buy that particular coin.
The value has everything to do with the country that ?minted? the coin. It has nothing to do with the quality, or quantity, of precious metal in the coin.
Bullion on the other hand has no markings. Its value is 100% dependent on the quantity, and purity of the metal. It is not held by the constraints of the dollar.
However, as the dollar drops, the value of gold increases, because the lower the value of a dollar, the more of it is needed to buy an ounce of gold. This is good news for bullion investors.
Dan diBartolomeo said in 2007: ?While the gold price is the single most influential force in determining the behavior of gold mining shares, gold stocks are not nearly as sensitive to gold prices as current financial models suggest they should be.?
?Putting realistic numbers into the formula, the remarkable aspect begins to take shape. Assuming that the price of gold is $400 per ounce and direct mining costs are $300 per ounce. The gross profit is $100 per ounce. Note that the value is linearly related to this gross profit. If the price of gold changed to $500 per ounce (a 25% increase), the gross profit would be $200 per ounce, and the forecast price of the stock would rise 100%.
The percentage change in valuation of the equity position is four times as great as the percentage change in value in the commodity asset.?
The strategy is to purchase gold, at real value, and trade it for commodities which are normally purchased with paper money and currency. This type of trading gives the bullion investor more leverage when making a purchase.
Another way to invest is by buying futures and speculating on the market. At the moment, speculators have gold about $700 (summer 2007), but you can purchase gold coins for $500. Speculating is a gamble, but when dealing with bullion, the ?losses? are predictable.
As the world becomes more wealthy. As third world countries enter the manufacturing sectors, and as the standard quality of living increases around the world, bullion will become more valuable.
As Google began to place more importance on back links, it became necessary to ensure that other sites linking to yours had related content and a fairly good Google Page Rank. Webmasters everywhere began reciprocal linking campaigns. And as you might guess, they found the process to be very tedious and time-consuming.
To answer the call for something more efficient, software programs were developed which had the ability to automate much of the reciprocal linking process, saving considerable time for other things. These programs for the most part, had a short life-span because Google seemed to frown heavily on using automated programs to acquire links. It developed more sophisticated algorithms to sniff out sites that were engaged in automated reciprocal linking strategies and penalize them.
Google's emerging philosophy at that time seemed to be: Grow your site slow. Build sites that contribute something valuable to their engine's index. Add quality content slowly. Add back-links that offer quality information gradually.
Today, we find ourselves faced with even more stringent guidelines for acquiring back-links. The se's are taking an even more sophisticated view of things. Sites that naturally acquire back-links without any reciprocity are the ones being rewarded the most for their efforts. This slows the whole process of achieving higher ranking even further.
So where does that leave us today? If I am limited as to what I can do to influence Page Rank and position by only acquiring back-links naturally, what else if anything, can I do to speed up the process without sounding an alarm with the se's? There are some methods that have proven very successful and I've listed a few here.
Article Writing
One of the fastest ways to acquire links is to write and submit articles based around the knowledge you have of your sites theme and submit them to Article Directories such as - www.articles.com & www.goarticles.com . You can usually add a certain number of articles to their data base for free and after that there is a nominal charge for submission. Other webmasters who are looking for valuable content to add to their pages that don't feel they can write very well themselves are happily picking-up articles from these directories to add to their sites. In the guidelines for using articles from these sites is that webmasters must include the authors by-line in the article. If you include a link to your site in your by-line, then you will naturally acquire much needed back-links.
The only draw-back to this method is that you have no control over which sites pick-up your articles. Not being able to control this factor leaves some authors worried about their articles being posted on sites which may be considered 'bad neighborhoods.' My own feeling about this is that for every 'bad neighborhood' site that posts your article, you'll get a back-link from 10 sites that aren't since the whole point of adding valuable content is compliant with the se's in the first place.
I once wrote 2 articles on pet themes and submitted them to only 2 article directories. The results over the next few months were astounding! A quick search in the se's using my name or the article name revealed 100's of sites that had added my articles.
Not only will this method of acquiring back-links help but you'll find that you'll become regarded as an expert on the web over time, in your particular field.
Article Swap/Bartering
In some cases, if you have written some excellent articles, you may be able to find another web master who is willing to trade for some advertising space on his site. You provide him or her with several articles to post for his visitors and he in-turn would allow you some space to advertise your own web site. Or perhaps the webmaster has articles of his own that you could swap, thus adding much needed fresh content while at the same time adding a valuable back link for both of you.
Press Releases.
A Press Release is a great way to attract almost instant attention and get exposure by announcing your business to news wire services all over the globe. Every news wire service that picks up your Press Release and adds it to their RSS feed means a back-link for you. So here, not only are you creating an opportunity to share with others the announcement of your new business, but you're also indirectly going to boost your web linking popularity as well. I use the service provided by the folks at www.prweb.com . They will actually let you send a limited exposure Press Release for free if you can't afford to pay. The more money you contribute, the greater the exposure your Press Release will get, as well as some other added features.
Take some time to learn how to draft a great Press Release, after all, it is going to be looked at by journalists all over the world. It has to be newsworthy and it has to have appeal to as targeted an audience as possible.
Directories
Some say the days of directories being regarded as a great place to acquire quality back links is all but gone. I disagree. In fact, with the emphasis being placed on quality one-way linking, it has never been more important to consider the value of adding your site to some quality directories, even if that means paying a small fee to submit. I have included a list of some of the more affordable, yet still valuable directories for you to check out. Fees vary from $14 to $300. Do what you can afford for now and as you can add your site to some of the more expensive ones, do so. Make sure you are very careful to follow submission guidelines. Directories like Dmoz.org will not tolerate any submission that doesn't follow their particular guidelines. It is very important to ensure that your site is listed in the most relevant category in a given directory. If you can't find the right category, try contacting the site owner and ask that they add a new category that fits your site properly.
We use this term to describe a web site that has done such a great job of providing useful content that other sites will simply want to add a link to it for their own visitors to enjoy. Sites like these don't have to worry much about making an effort to add back links because it just happens for them. This is 'natural linking' at it's finest and the benefits are well worth the effort.
Shift Your Paradigm!
Stop focusing on trying to find ways to outwit the se's! Try some of the techniques I've mentioned here. Don't worry so much about where the next move is going to be with the search algorithyms. Relax . . . take a deep breath and focus your attention on building a website that people will love to visit frequently. Put some passion into it and you will eventually be rewarded.
Both Mark Walters & Brad Knell are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Mark Walters has sinced written about articles on various topics from Marketing, Modelling and Real Estate. Mark Walters is a third generation investor who guides others to financial independence through the Creating Wealth Club