American Taliban’ John Walker Lindh’s kin ask President Bush for mercy

By James Gordon Meek
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON – The parents of convicted “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh pleaded with President Bush Wednesday to commute his 20-year prison stretch as a final act of mercy.

Frank Lindh and Marilyn Walker didn’t help their son’s case by slamming slain CIA hero Johnny (Mike) Spann’s father, who blames the Muslim convert for failing to stop Spann’s gruesome death in a 2001 Afghan battle.

“John Lindh had nothing to do with Mike Spann’s death,” Frank Lindh said in San Francisco. “It was a shameful thing, I think, for that father to continue to make those claims against our son.”

The CIA paramilitary operative was gunned down in a firefight during a Taliban prison uprising at Mazar-e-Sharif two months after the 9/11 attacks.

Spann was videotaped questioning Lindh, who “didn’t say a word,” his dad, who’s also named John, told the Daily News from his home in Winfield, Ala.

Since then, the grieving father has blamed Lindh for joining the Taliban, meeting Osama Bin Laden and failing to warn his son a violent uprising was in the works. He opposes any commutation of Lindh’s remaining 13 years.

“I thought he ought to have got the damned electric chair,” Spann said. He called Lindh’s parents “cowards like he is.”

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Fewer Businesses plan year end bonuses

Slow sales and tight credit have small businesses scaling back on holiday cash.

By Emily Maltby

(CNNMoney.com) — Workers used to some extra padding in their year-end paychecks may be going without this year: Among small businesses that pay bonuses, more than a quarter are cancelling them this year, according to a recent survey.

The poll, conducted by payroll services provider Paycycle, found that 53% of respondents typically pay a year-end bonus to their employees or themselves. But this year, slow sales and a credit crunch have many businesses running close to the bone and cutting expenses where they can – including holiday parties and bonuses.

“It’s a difficult time, so business owners are preserving,” says business consultant Roberta Chinsky Matuson founder of Human Resource Solutions in Northampton, Mass. “This is not a time to add overhead.”

Even businesses that haven’t yet been affected by the economic turmoil are spending more carefully, taking preemptive measures in case they need extra cash reserves in the future, Paycycle CEO Jim Heeger says.

“In my experience, when it comes to cutting costs, small companies will curb benefits and cut pay instead of laying off employees,” he says. “Particularly at long-established firms, employees come first, because there’s a family feel to them. When owners remove their own bonuses, it’s to ensure the business keeps going with happy employees.”

Some owners are cutting into their own paychecks to preserve their employees’: While 26% of those that typically pay bonuses are eliminating them entirely this year, 32% of the owners surveyed by Paycycle said they will cancel their own bonus but still pay bonuses to some of their staffers.

Dr. John Gentile, CEO of South County Urgent Care in San Clemente, Calif., has given performance-based bonuses to his staff of 25 for the past three years, and plans to do so again this year even though it means skipping his own paycheck.

Business is up this year at South County Urgent Care: It’s getting more walk-ins from patients looking for care that’s less expensive than visiting a hospital or their usual physician. But while appointments are increasing, revenue isn’t – payments are coming in more slowly. As a result, Gentile and the company’s three other co-owners have forfeited their salaries for the past three months to ensure that they’ll be able to pay their employees the bonuses they deserve. (All four owners practice medicine outside the company to sustain their own incomes.)

“Everyone shares in the success of the company,” Gentile says. “Our belief is that the employees are the business. To have a strong work force, we have to take good care of them. They know that in this economy it’s very good to have a job, so to get a bonus is great.”

Cutting back on bonuses and other compensation can backfire and hurt the business, consultant Matuson says: “[Employees] say ‘the heck with it’ and lose their willingness to do the job. And that attitude will reflect on the customer.”

Michael La Barge, president of credit card compliance firm Datassurant in Reston, Va., views compensation for his 25 employees as untouchable. “We’re doing quite well, but I can tell you that I wouldn’t take away bonuses if we needed to reduce costs,” he says. “If employees already have low morale due to the economy, taking bonuses away would reduce it further.”

If it came down to it, La Barge says he would rather skip on his own pay. “You just need to have the guts to talk to your employees about the company in tough times. The leadership of the company should be hurting if the rest of the employees are – that’s just the right thing.”

For owners in a tight cash crunch who have no choice but to cut back this year, full disclosure is the best policy. Matuson’s advice: “If you think it’s best to cut bonuses or pay, be honest with employees about the company’s situation and why they’re not getting what they expect – but then don’t show up in a new BMW in January.

Source :- http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/15/smallbusiness/smallbiz_bonuses.smb/index.htm?postversion=2008121512

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5 Ways To Increase Your Website Profit Without Increasing Traffic

To succeed in Internet marketing, you need to learn how to maximize the value of your website visitors. Here are the top 5 strategies on how to squeeze the most profit out of your website

1. Tweak Your Sales Copy

The most sure-fire way to increase your profits is to tweak your sales copy to increase the conversion ratio of your website. Conversion ratio is how many visitors you need on average in order to make a sale.

Look at your website statistics for the last month – how many unique visitors did you have? Now look at your sales report – how many sales did you make? Based on these numbers, how many visitors do you need to make a sale?

Let’s say you are currently selling to 1 out of 200 visitors. If you tweak your sales copy so it starts selling to 1 out of 100 visitors, you will double your sales – without having to increase your traffic!

2. Tweak Your Prices

Most commonly you will make more money if you increase your prices. Lowering prices can result in more sales, but lower total profits – the number of additional customers is often not enough to cover the price drop.

If you slightly increase your prices, most of the time you will not lose many customers and will end up with more money in your pocket.

Experiment with both increasing and decreasing your prices to find your most profitable price point.

3. Capture Visitor E-Mails

If you don’t get your visitors e-mail addresses, you lose those visitors forever once they leave your website. You will not get a chance to convince them to buy at a later time.

When you get their e-mails, you can constantly follow-up by e-mail and get many more chances to sell. If you don’t have a mailing list on your website, you are leaving a lot of money on the table.

4. Upsell

If someone clicks on a “Buy” button for one of your products, offer them a choice of “deluxe” version of this product at a higher price. This technique is called “Upsell”. The prospect is already excited about the product, and is very likely to go for a beefed-up version of this product.

Just ask if they want a deluxe version, and offer a choice of “Yes” or “No, I just want standard”. You have nothing to lose. If they choose to upgrade, you get more money just for asking. If they go for the standard version, that’s what they would’ve gotten in the first place – you still don’t lose anything.

5. Backend Sales

Those who already bought something from you are very likely to buy from you again (providing that your product met their expectations). It’s much easier to sell something to existing customers than to a cold prospect. Sales that come from marketing to existing customers are called “backend sales”.

Keep in touch with your customers by e-mail, and promote your other products that might interest them. If you don’t have additional products, become a reseller for other companies that sell relevant products, and make commission on those sales.

By :- Home Based Business Opportunities

Find Success With An Internet Home Based Business Opportunity

Internet marketing has come a long way in just a few short years allowing numerous internet Home Based Business Opportunities to spring up and grow. This has also made finding an internet home based business opportunity easier, and yet more confusing than ever. Finding one that is not just after your money is the first step, then finding an internet home based business opportunity you can believe in is the next step.

As multilevel marketing matures it slowly roots out more unscrupulous operators who are only interested in scamming an unsuspecting public. However, they have also given a jaded view of legitimate multilevel marketing programs as people relate to them as pyramid schemes and believe they are only after their money.

Despite the numerous multilevel marketing offers promising gold and usually only delivering coal dust, many are finding an internet home based business opportunity to help them turn their financial world around. While their income may not be instantaneous riches, they typically find it growing month-by-month eventually reaching a point at which they can devote their energies on multilevel marketing efforts, keeping their cycle of growth moving.

An internet home based business opportunity exists when a company has found a successful formula for sales, advertising and marketing and finds its growth potential limited only by the number of distributors available to perform the functions. They will usually offer the chance to grow with the company by teaching its methods with others, usually setting up an internet website for them and supplying all the tools needed to grow. Typically there is a small fee for all the education, training and materials they supply which is usually more than offset by the commission structure paid for sharing that information with others.

You now have your own internet home based business operated by you with the site, the knowledge and materials provided by a company hoping you do well. If you succeed the company continues to grow and it is in their best interest to help you in your effort. While they want you to help sell their product or service, they also encourage you to bring in new people to train to do what you are doing so, not only will their business prosper even more, but you can also increase your earnings as the newest member of their multilevel marketing family also succeeds.

With a solid internet Home Based Business opportunity you not only receive commissions on your sales, but you also receive commissions on the sales made by the people you brought into the business. In most cases if that person brings in additional distributors you also get a part of their sales as well. With many companies the commission structure may end at two or three distributors under you while others have no limit, although the commission amounts will be considerably less the further down the line you travel.

Are you looking for easy ways to make money?

Home Based Business Opportunity

Are you looking for easy ways to make money? Let’s analyze 3 easy ways you can make money using the internet. Internet marketing, affiliate programs, and a home based business.

Internet marketing is the use of the Internet to advertise and sell merchandise or services. This involves use of Web sites and e-mail to inform customers about a product, solicit their questions, and accept their orders directly through the electronic medium. Virtually any product or service can be sold online over the internet. This is a great way to make money if you already have a product.

A home business is a business which is carried on entirely within a dwelling unit by the occupants and with no more than one full-time equivalent non-resident employee, which is incidental and subordinate to the dwelling use, does not alter the exterior of the property , or affect the residential character of or have unreasonable impacts on the surrounding neighborhood. A home business can be anything from party plans, to mlm businesses, or any business based in your home and conducted outside of it.

Affiliate programs allow Web sites who provide links to your site to receive payments or reciprocal advertising in exchange for promoting your Web site. Audio/Video streaming – Audio/video streaming allows you to provide visitors to your site with a real-time sound or video experience. Backbone – The network of connections and high-speed lines that forms the infrastructure of the Internet. An important consideration in choosing a Web site host is that host’s proximity to the backbone. The less intermediate network distance between your provider and the backbone, the faster and more reliable your Web site will be. Affiliate Programs are a way to make money selling other peoples products.

An excellent program that combines all 3, internet marketing, affiliate programs, and your own Home Business Opportunities is the Plugin Profit Site. In 3 easy steps you can be set up with your own money making website, and internet marketing newsletter that you can run from your own home. This is an easy way to make money for someone who doesn’t have the time, money or knowledge to set up their own Home Business Opportunity on the internet.

Maintain Network Marketing MLM Internet Home Based Business For Profit

Home Based Businesses

As the business world evolves into a global economy, people are needed to supply services to many industries in many markets and network marketing MLM is creating many internet home based business opportunities for people to make a profit by working from home. Network marketing MLM may not take any special skill or training, but it does take effort to duplicate proven successful methods to promote internet Home Business Opportunities online.

Basic needs for a network marketing MLM Home Based Business to succeed include a decent computer, a high-speed internet connection and a desire to be successful. With those basic needs met, finding the right home based business for you and learning to help it grow will insure you can maintain the business for profit while looking for additional opportunities.

Many companies involved in network marketing MLM have spent a ton of money learning the ropes of network marketing and have slowly become proficient at it and are now seeking other to help their business continue to grow. Some may cite noble reasons to wanting to share their methods and a few may simply say they want to grow bigger and make more money and need your help to do so, but the bottom line is their methods have been proven to work and if you follow their lead, you can be successful as well.

When you first begin the money may trickle in making you believe there is little to gain by continuing, but as you continue to follow their directions it will not be long until you find another person with the desire to succeed in their own network marketing MLM home based business and it is now your turn to pass on the training you have learned. If that person shares your desire for success you will start seeing additional income from their efforts as well as your own.

For the sake of argument say you find three more people who want to be involved in your business, bring to four the number of people working under you. If you receive just $100 a week from each of those people, plus your own income of $200 a week, you will see $600 a week in cash coming into your account. If it is a really good opportunity and each of those four eventually have four working for them and you receive just $50 a week from their efforts, you will be receiving $1,400 a week with $1,200 coming from no effort of your own other than having taught the first four the network marketing MLM Techniques and maintaining a good business relationship.

If each of the four under your initial four each add four more and you receive $25 a week from them, well you can see the potential for exponential income growth that started with just you and four other serious minded individuals. Your income will be enough to provide a comfortable living with no additional effort on your part, so not only will you have the money, but you will also have the time to enjoy life. Diep Tran is Internet marketer, and webmaster of Internet Home Based Business Opportunities.