Internet Market Consulting

Internet Market Consulting: Proven Internet Marketing Strategies#links

2011-08-10T16:59:00.000-07:00

Internet Market Consulting: Proven Internet Marketing Strategies#links

ALERT OSCOMMERCE WEB SITE OPERATORS!

2011-03-01T15:01:00.000-08:00

ALERT! osCommerce web site owners, in light of the recent spike in web site hacking, specifically osCommerce web site's, it is extremely important to protect your business and your customers by upgrading your web site software and installing all security patches provided by the distributor. osCommerce is an online shop e-commerce solution available for free as an open source based software released under the GNU General Public License. While reports of hacked osCommerce web site's are on the rise all e-commerce platforms are attractive targets for hackers.

The problem with osCommerce, as well as most open source software, is a lack of support and difficulty finding information when problems occur. Most often you are referred to forums to sift through years of posts to figure out if others have experience correcting an issue and attempting to implement their solution or "work around". Reputable hosting companies notify their clients when their online store is at risk but most do not offer software support. There are things you can do to protect your site. You can help prevent hacking by monitoring your server logs for unusual activity, attempts to hack a web site will appear first in server logs as errors, usually someone searching for a database. Look for unauthorized access attempts or uploads to the site without your knowledge. The problem then becomes web site owners that are not comfortable installing updates or cannot find the time to perform maintenance. If you are among the previously mentioned group of web site owners we are here to help http://www.InternetMarketConsulting.com.

Protect your customers:

Do Not Store Credit Card Numbers
Monitor Server Logs
Promptly Install Security Patches
Back up Regularly

Alternative e-commerce solutions are available, that are not open source and often automatically install security updates for a specific period of time. These alternatives range in price from $1,000-$50,000 depending on their features, support and connectivity. Just because you purchase licensed software does not guarantee protection from hackers. You must remain diligent in monitoring logs, creating backups and installing updates when prompted.

Another option is to hire a website maintenance company to perform regular maintenance operations, security checks and updates. Conducting business on the Internet comes with responsibility to your customers to create a safe, enjoyable shopping experience. The idea is to create balance between security and convenience. If given the option most customers do not mind having to re-enter payment information if it means added security. In fact, I recommend that people never allow a web site to store payment information, while it may be faster and more convenient no site is impervious to a determined and well-financed hacker.

Real Estate Agents Contribution to Falling Home Prices

2010-06-29T10:15:00.001-07:00

Do real estate agents contribute to falling home prices? Agents looking to make a quick buck, push sellers to sell below comparable market value, bringing the market down and thus costing homeowners millions. Should the mortgage industry put a stop to these unscrupulous real estate agents? We would like to hear your experiences while buying or selling a home for a series of upcoming articles.

Tip 1: Columns Dropping off page.

2010-03-22T17:56:00.000-07:00

Problem: Columns of information are dropping off the page or rendering at the bottom of the page. Website Repair

Hosting $3.95, useless backups $19.95, a functional well-managed website priceless!

2010-03-01T19:22:00.000-08:00

What is the REAL cost of website hosting? Wow, you cannot believe your luck when you find this great deal for website hosting only $3.95 per month, you add on daily backups for only $19.95 because we all know how important it is to have everything backed up. Upon switching to your "too good to be true" hosting company you have a simple question, after thirty minutes on hold you finally reach a customer service agent. You spend an additional thirty minutes explaining how your website was fine last week but now the website is returning 404 codes, page not found error. Page not found, where could your pages have gone? You have not made any changes. Perhaps the agent does not understand you because of your thick American accent, which is understandable right, so you speak very slowly. The customer service agent tells you to email EVERYTHING you just said to their support team. Now, you spend twenty-five minutes describing everything AGAIN in detail with dates, account numbers, domain names and error codes in an email to the hosting companies technical support team. You get a receipt from the hosting company acknowledging your support request and informing that for you can pay for expedited support, which turns out to be $150.00 an hour. An email arrives from Phil at technical support at 3:30 the following morning asking you to please recreate the issue and send them a screen shot in jpg format. Your website has been down now for at least three days when you receive an email responding to your screen shot asking you to describe your problem; apparently, it is not standard practice to document all telephone and email interactions. This time you are to describe each step you took to recreate the problem in detail. Oh, and do not forget to include dates, account numbers domain names and error codes with your response. Each email signed “Kindest Regards,” but at this point, you are not feeling any kindness. A prompt response arrives, only fifteen hours later, telling you to reinstall your content management system. You reinstall your open source content management system and after several hours of trial and error the website is finally up and running but the content is missing. One more time you start the process of contacting your hosting company and their response, sorry they do not offer technical support for the content management system that you installed through their control panel. For those of you that are not familiar with “open source,” it is a program designed and distributed free of charge but once you install the application you are on your own. Some open source applications have been extensively tested and have excellent knowledge databases to help troubleshoot technical issues others provide forums that you can submit questions to other users, not such a good resource when you are way over your head. Now one may ask why you did not simply have the hosting company restore the site from those wonderful daily backups. Turns out when they say daily backup, they mean that they will backup your website every working day, not exactly every day but what they consider daily, and each time overwrite the previous backup. Geniuses, you would not want those redundant backups lingering around taking up space on your unlimited hosting account. Remember, your website has been down for three days and just so happens that they have a backup from the day after you first contacted technical support. Finally, in order to get your website repaired you call a professional website repair company. Come to find out, the website repair company offers monthly packages that include free hosting, redundant backups, monthly audits and updates. Hosting $3.95, useless backups $19.95, a functional well-managed website priceless!

The Cost of Some Internet Marketing Techniques

2010-02-15T16:44:00.000-08:00

One common website repair request we receive at Internet Market Consulting involves repairing website design errors and penalties caused by "Black Hat" Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing companies.

Outsourcing SEO Can Cost You Your Website by Ward Tipton
If you are new to the world of SEO and SEM you may not know all of the actual subtleties involved but in all reality, if you are just going to hire someone to do your SEO work for you, you better know a whole lot more or you could suffer far worse than you ever would trying to do your own SEO work ... even without any real experience. Even if you hire an SEO Professional to promote your site, if they do anything that the search engines decide is unethical, your site will be banned and you will have no recourse, legal or otherwise to get it back in!
If you have already looked around the freelance sites, you may see all sorts of jobs people want done regarding SEO work. Somebody here needs ten PR5 or better one-way links to their site. Somebody over here wants 100 comments on DO Follow blogs. If none of that makes sense to you, you really do need to learn what it means whether you are going to promote your own websites or have someone else do it for you. Why?
If you do not learn about SEO your work could very easily get you banned from the Search Engines or decrease your rankings whether you do the work or not!
What? How? Huh?
The top search engines are constantly evolving their algorithms or the methods that they use to decide both your pages rank and its placement on the SERP or Search Engine Results Page. A while back, three-way linking or Pyramid linking was all the rage but they quickly became more costly than effective. The basic idea was to provide mutually beneficial, one-way links by linking three sites rather than just two. Thus, instead of reciprocal links (which are still valued less) between Site A and Site B, there would be a link from Site A to Site B, a link from Site B to Site C and a final link from Site C to Site A.
This effectively provided all three websites with one-way links and increased the value of those links. It may have taken the search engine a while to figure out this tactic but figure it out they did and many of those sites were penalized in rank and placement while some were banned altogether. Many of the people doing this were Professional SEO Experts who were hired by people just like you. While some of the people simply lost page rank, some of them really did lose any ability to get their site indexed on the search engines at all.
Over 80% of all organic (free) traffic comes from the search engines!
Once your website has been banned, sandboxed or otherwise removed from the search engine indexes you may just as well shut that site down and build it from scratch. Google does not care what SEO Service you paid to promote your site. Bing does not care what SEO Company you paid to promote your site. Yahoo does not even care what SEO expert you hired; once your site is off the search engines, it is off until the search engines decide to let you back in. This can take years to accomplish and most likely will require more money invested than you will ever be able to get back from your investment.
These days, as in the example given above, many people are searching for SEO Experts that will give them all these one-way links. They will only want DO Follow links back to their site and even many of the SEO "Experts" think that this is a good thing! But guess what! Google is neither stupid nor idle and when it updates the algorithms, unnatural website growth patterns are going to be red-flagged first and then the search engines will begin the banning process again. With over ten billion websites indexed each of the major search engines, they really do not need your website to provide their users with viable alternatives.
So what is the answer?
The answer is actually very simple. If you are serious about your online business and want to succeed and stay in business for the long run, do not try to jump to the head of the pack right away. Organic growth is, as the name implies, natural growth. When you are advertising and promoting your site, do not seek to aim for only the high value targets but take on all of the possible targets.
When someone sees your link tagged on one of your comments on a No Follow site are they any less likely to click it than they would be on a Do Follow site? You can still get traffic, and while you may get more value on the search engines from a Do Follow site, you can still get traffic from a No Follow site and your growth will appear more natural to the Search Engines insuring that you do not have to worry about being banned or sandboxed.
If you only have one or two websites that you will never be making a lot of money from, learn about the SEO and do it yourself. Would you let someone you do not know come into a brick and mortar business you have built and let them market it and promote it however they see fit simply because you do not know how ... even though your lack of knowledge regarding the subject means that you cannot even be sure that they do either? You cannot run a business like that in the brick and mortar world and expect to be successful. Running a business on the Internet is no different.
If you own numerous websites or have valuable and profitable products that will allow for the costs, pay someone to do your SEO for you but be selective. If someone is promising you that they are only going to get you One-Way links on Do Follow Sites do you really think that this "unnatural" growth will go unobserved to the Search Engines? Do you really think that something so Unnatural is going to outrank a site with the same number of links but showing all organic growth or natural growth? Guess what! If you do not know anything about SEO, you need to learn ... especially if you are going to hire someone to do it for you! The cost of unnatural growth can literally kill your website.
Proper SEO goes far beyond just getting all the "good stuff" and throwing it together and thinking you will come out ahead of the game. Proper SEO efforts involve many different aspects, some of them more beneficial than the others but only beneficial if you have all of them together, the better with the not so good. Anything less is putting your online business venture on a path to failure. If you are business for the long run, take the good with the better and sooner than you think, your site will be one of the best ... and that means you own the Search Engines, they no longer own you all because you took some time to learn proper SEO techniques!

About the Author

Ward Tipton is a Professional Writer who provides highly specialized and quality informational product creation and online content for his clients. Ward recently opened Professional Writing Services for content creation and content distribution services.

Prosper While Others Fail

2010-01-19T17:48:00.000-08:00

I always advise my clients beginning new businesses to be conservative and have reasonable expectations about the income potential their new venture. Traditionally, brick and mortar stores will not pull a profit for at least two years from opening. During difficult economic times, I recommend giving a business five years before expecting to pull a profit. Too many businesses cut marketing and promotional budgets to combat tough times, which is the worst possible cut back. During financial difficulties expect to work harder for less, but do not cut back on a company's most important expense, marketing and promotion. Putting more effort into promoting your business to new clients and remember to target clients left behind by failing businesses.

For more information read "Small Businesses and Hard Facts."

Find out how Internet Market Consulting can repair your website design to build Internet traffic, produce top search engine results and maximize website exposure.

Is Your Website Springing a Leak?

2010-01-06T14:33:00.000-08:00

Today, I would like to share a fun and informative article written by Philippa Gamse.

Imagine that you own a beautifully designed yacht. It looks great on the surface of the water, with superb lines, gleaming decks, a well-appointed galley… but you’re having real trouble getting out of the harbor and you can’t figure out why!

You investigate, and you find that beneath the surface your beautiful boat has a number of slow, silent, leaks. None of them are big enough to sink you on their own, so there’s no obvious immediate crisis – just a constant drain on your efficiency and your speed.

I’ve been reviewing Web traffic reports for over 10 years, and I believe that this analogy applies very well to almost all business websites. Very few sites are so terrible or have something so wrong with them that they’re clearly a disaster. Yet just about every site has some area where it’s quietly losing traffic, losing potential business or the opportunity to create relationships – or failing to attract visitors in the first place.

If you’re not regularly reviewing your traffic analysis, you can’t know for sure if your site is leak proof. In this article, I’ll show you a few of the most common areas where you can look for – and fix – those silent leaks.

1. Leaks in your Brand & Positioning

The excellent folks at MarketingExperiments online research laboratories have shown that clearly articulated and differentiating value propositions have a critical effect on Website conversion rates. (The conversion rate is the measurement of visitors fulfilling your desired outcomes – which might include calling you, buying a product at your site, signing up for your newsletter or blog feed, etc.) Your value proposition should be front and center on your home page. It should answer the classic question: “Why should we do business with you instead of your competition?”

Although this question isn’t a Web strategy issue in itself, it is one that many people struggle to answer. But the lack of a compelling opening message can be a major impediment to your online success.

How to check for this leak: Even if they don’t enter your site at the home page, most visitors who don’t know you will go there as the second page they look at to find out more about you and your business. If visitors are taking a quick look at your home page and then immediately leaving, something is wrong. Your copy is failing to pique their curiosity or to answer their questions: “Can this company meet my needs?” and “Should I explore further?” You have a leak!

2. Leaks in Visitor Engagement

Popular theory says that you have 10 seconds to engage a visitor – i.e. convince them to stay on your site before they click away in search of something more interesting.

While I don’t believe that it’s quite that simple, there are some definite ways to get rid of visitors fast before they’ve had a chance to really check you out. The best of these is probably the infamous splash page – the entry page to your site that your Web designer persuaded you to have because it “does cool stuff”. Hopefully there’s a “Skip Intro” button somewhere on the page! In all my reviews of traffic reports I’ve seen a consistent leak of up to 30% of visitors leaving from this page alone – before they’ve ever seen who you are or what you offer.

How to check for this leak: Easy – look for the splash page in your traffic reports and see how many visitors exit at that point. If it’s more than a small percentage, you have a leak – take the page out today!

The other major area where you should watch for leaks in visitor engagement is in what are called “landing pages”. These are inside pages of your Website which turn out to be the first page that a visitor sees, usually because you have some well-indexed content that they’ve found in a search engine.

Here it’s absolutely critical to understand the visitor’s mindset. Each visitor is at your site looking for something specific, they may well have found you by accident, so they may have no idea who you are – and worse, no interest in you.

The first page that they see on your Website must engage them immediately in accordance with their needs, and it must have enough context to draw them into other areas, and to want to find out more about you. It’s not enough to give great information on this page – they’ll soak that up, and then leave.

How to check for this leak: Hopefully your traffic reports are sophisticated enough to show you which keywords bring visitors to each specific page of your site. This shows you each visitor’s “mindset”.

If visitors are leaving a page very quickly, then it probably isn’t satisfying their informational needs, so you should review the content.

If visitors are reading the page (your traffic reports should show the time spent at each page) and then leaving, you’ve given them what they wanted but failed to draw them into the rest of your site. This can be fixed with more compelling navigation and calls to action.

Either way, you have a leak!

3. Leaks in Directions & Outcomes

I’m constantly amazed by the number of Web pages that give great information and content – and then just end abruptly – perhaps with some navigation tabs if you’re lucky!

Steve Krug in his excellent book “Don’t Make Me Think!” describes how crucial it is to direct visitors to the next step that you want them to take. If you don’t do this, and rely on your visitors to figure this out for themselves, there’s a strong chance that they’ll make a different choice than the one you want – or they’ll leave your site altogether, creating leaks in your potential revenue stream.

Every page of your site needs strong calls to action that stand out visually and click directly to where the visitor can fulfill the outcome that you want (e.g. “buy now!”, “sign up for our newsletter / RSS feed”.) Pages can have more than one call to action, and there’s nothing wrong with repeating them on longer pages so that they’re always within eyeshot.

And by the way, “Back to top” is not a call to action!

How to check for this leak: If your traffic reports show this information, look at the paths that visitors take through your site – where do visitors go next from each page? If many of them are exiting the site and / or they fan out across many pages with no clear pattern or direction, you have a possible leak.

4. Leaks in your Credibility Building

MarketingExperiments research has also shown that powerful, specific, and authoritative testimonials can have a major impact on your site’s conversion rates.

Consider this statement: “Documented results show that just a few hours with [ expert ] can increase lead generation by 125%”. Imagine how much stronger that assertion would be if there were some examples of the “documented results” and some customer quotes to that effect.

However, including a page on your site called “What Customers Say” doesn’t do it – I can safely say that visitors don’t go to those pages. And it’s not just traffic reports that tell me this – whenever I ask a live audience “Would you click this link?” there’s always a resounding “No!”

How to check for this leak: This is a much more subtle leak to detect, but it’s an important one. The question here is whether you are potentially losing business because your site fails adequately to establish your value and credibility.

My recommended approach is to review your site for credibility-building content such as client lists, testimonials and case studies. You need to spread your testimonials through your site, using short one or two line excerpts that are relevant to the content of each page – whether it’s about a product or a service, or the value of subscribing to your newsletter or blog.

Make sure that all of this material is linked to from other pages so that it’s easily found by visitors. If you then experience an increase in calls, or in the quality of your leads, then you might have just fixed a leak!

© Philippa Gamse. All rights reserved. Publication rights granted so long as article and byline are reprinted intact, with all links made live.

Philippa Gamse is a Web strategy expert who spends much of her time fixing leaky Websites and other website problems. Would you like your own “Leaky Boat Website” Review? Visit http://websitesthatwin.com/leaky-boat-report.html for more information.

Philippa Gamse is a Web strategy expert who spends much of her time fixing leaky Websites. Would you like your own “Leaky Boat Website” Review? Visit http://websitesthat win.com/leaky-

boat-report.html for more information.
© Philippa Gamse. All rights reserved. Publication rights granted so long as article and byline are reprinted intact, with all links made live.

This article courtesy of SiteProNews.com

Proven Internet Marketing Strategies

2009-11-08T11:34:00.000-08:00

Internet marketing as part of a company's overall marketing strategy is becoming an increasingly important part of nearly every company's promotional line of attack. To achieve noticeable exposure, professional and original search engine optimized content, written and propagated throughout the web about your company, products and services is necessary. This will provide the Internet exposure you need to be noticed. To deliver a sustainable long-term traffic solution, a company will need a thorough Internet marketing plan with a customized combination of Internet advertising methods. This article will cover many of the Internet marketing practices implemented today.

Essentially, Internet marketing is using the Internet to communicate a company's message about itself, its products, or its services online. Initially, Internet marketing consisted mostly of having a website and placing banner ads on other “affiliate” websites. A major problem with affiliate marketing is the tracking systems have issues ranging from revenue reporting errors to generating invalid code that causes code violations. While utilizing the affiliate marketing method, it is imperative to have access to multiple affiliate networks with reputable companies using proven methods of fraud prevention and revenue tracking that generates advertising code that is free of special characters and Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard compliant.

On the Internet, changes occur continuously and any Internet marketing professional must keep pace with the constantly changing promotional possibilities. Responsible Internet marketing using legitimate promotional practices, also known as “White Hat” techniques is a worthwhile yet gradual endeavor. Beware of companies that advertise an instantaneously successful website and try to sell some form of “Internet Marketing Program” or use techniques commonly referred as “Black Hat” that can get a website banned by search engines. In order to prosper on the web it is important to use evolving website promotion methods as well as proven techniques and online advertising services.

First, it is imperative that a website be free of errors with high quality well-optimized website design and content easily navigated by both search engines and users. Next, build Internet traffic using a combination of the following: Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which is marketing a website online using search engines, either by improving the site's natural (organic) ranking or position through search engine optimization (SEO), buying pay-per-click (PPC) ads or purchasing pay-for-inclusion (PFI) listings in website directories, similar to offline yellow page listings.

Another method of Internet marketing, article marketing, involves writing articles related to your business and publishing them online with syndicated article sites. Article marketing can result in a traffic boost for a website, and the distribution of syndicated articles can promote a brand to a wider audience.

In addition, social media marketing is quickly developing into a significant marketing medium. It connects businesses with an audience by driving online conversations in social media outlets to increase brand exposure. Twitter, a micro-blogging site, Facebook and MySpace, both social networking sites, are utilized to keep companies at the forefront of their respective industries.

Finally, the integration of web design, development, and Internet marketing with focused traffic-generation tactics is vital to the success of a site. With the right marketing strategy, designed specifically for a site, traffic will build now and continue in the future. Successful Internet marketing can transform a business from a struggling enterprise into a lucrative business. Find out how Internet Market Consulting can help you.

Copyright 2009 Internet Market Consulting. All Rights Reserved.

Website Repair, Design, Marketing

Both Microsoft, Google seal deals with Twitter

2009-10-22T21:52:00.001-07:00

Google and Bing indexing twitter updates. What does this mean to the Internet marketing?

Both Microsoft, Google seal deals with Twitter - Tech and gadgets- msnbc.com

Donate Life California

2009-10-21T16:08:00.001-07:00

104,000+ waiting for an organ in the U.S. alone, and with 10 million blind worldwide waiting for a corneal transplant, and so many burn victims, amputees and other injured people who would benefit from skin and/or tissue transplants. Sign up online to become a donor - each state has its own online state registry for you to quickly and easily sign up. Below is the link for CA.

Donate Life California

Bloggers Forced to Disclose Payments

2009-10-07T16:19:00.000-07:00

The Federal Trade Commission issued their first new updates to The Guidelines for Testaments and Endorsements in Advertising since 1980. The FTC recently determined that bloggers, both professional and amateur, must disclose to readers any money or "in-kind payment" received from organizations to review products. Companies referring to research group findings about a product must inform readers of their relationship to such group. Even if there is no requirement for a positive review, bloggers must still disclose their relationship to the organization promoting the product or service. Violators face fines of up to $11,000 per infraction.

VOTE NOW! GQ Magazine "Better Man, Better World" Search

2009-09-10T12:34:00.000-07:00

John has dedicated the last 6 years of his life to making the world a better place - to help increase lives saved and improved through organ, tissue and eye transplantation. But he’s not a surgeon or healthcare administrator or politician - instead, he’s a creative entrepreneur who has built modernized electronic medical records software for the transplant field.

John’s work fights against odds that are daunting: today, more than 100,000 people in the U.S. alone are waiting for an organ transplant. Nearly 20 of them will die every day due to the severe unavailability of organs. More than 10 million men, women and children worldwide suffer from corneal blindness that can be eliminated through ocular transplantation. Burn victims, amputees and many others can be helped through the transplantation of skin, bone and tissue that is in short supply as well.

Back in 2003, John made an enormous sacrifice and life decision – an Ivy League-educated, successful corporate attorney, media executive and Internet entrepreneur, John walked away from those successes, driven by his passion to contribute to society in a more meaningful way.

John created far-reaching partnerships with leading transplant surgeons and organ, tissue and eye transplant organizations spanning from California to New York and Washington, DC and many places in between. Working closely with these partners, he created a software organization – Transplant Connect - to step in and replace the inefficient paper and phone-based steps that slow down the donor-transplant process with modern, real-time, Web-based software.

Constantly traveling and often working for no salary, John’s dedication was so strong, he even mortgaged his Los Angeles beach house to fund his organization’s efforts in the early days. His perseverance and commitment to touching lives by improving transplantation has remained unyielding through those challenging and difficult times.

Transplant Connect has directly expedited, improved and modernized transplantation. Today, nearly 50% of all U.S. organ transplants are enabled by the software John’s organization created, and with his software, faster and better decisions are made, with the result that more lives are saved and improved.

John’s efforts have touched many thousands of lives across the U.S. in just a few short years. Through his resourcefulness, talents and dedication, John has already contributed greatly to creating a better world. John Piano
President & CEO, Transplant Connect

John works tirelessly to help increase lives saved and improved by organ, tissue and eye transplantation.

10 Awesome Things That Would Happen If Health Reform Passes

2009-08-27T12:31:00.000-07:00

Unable to win the debate on the merits of their arguments, opponents of health care reform have resorted to a dizzying array of outright falsehoods to terrify Americans into opposing a process that might deliver real benefits to their families.
They've falsely claimed that the government would "take over" the health system, put private insurers out of business and let pasty bureaucrats decide what treatment Americans would receive.
They've spun wild tales of federal agents coming into Americans' homes for lifestyle checks and faceless government officials making end-of-life decisions for patients.
They've falsely claimed that the legislation being considered by Congress would cover undocumented immigrants, and they sent around elaborate-but-wholly-fake "analyses" of the supposed bill, with references to made-up page numbers and all.
All of these serve the same ends: using the politics of distortion and distraction to capitalize on people's natural fear of change and compelling them to fight noisily against their own interests. And it can be somewhat effective -- that's clear from the raw, populist anger unleashed into the health-care debate in recent weeks by well-heeled corporate-lobbyists bent on derailing the democratic process.
The industry-approved fog-and-monsters strategy has another benefit: It puts advocates of reform in the position of batting down a series of nonsensical arguments based on an endless string of health-policy straw men when they could be explaining why getting something decent done would in fact be good for the country.
So let's get past the fearmongering and look at some of the highlights of what's really in the more progressive legislation working its way through Congress. The proposals aren't perfect. As I've written before, in their current form, the bills fail the test of having a truly "robust" public insurance option, and as such has limited potential for cost savings.
But they are also substantial reforms that would go quite a way toward beefing up the health and economic security of a lot of American families if enacted.
The following breakdown is based on the legislation developed by three committees in the House of Representatives (HR 3200) and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. A third piece of legislation is yet to emerge from the Senate Finance Committee. Reports suggest that the legislation coming out of Finance will be much more accommodating to the insurance industry and other corporate stakeholders.
Much of the real legislative fight will come when the two Senate bills are combined and then, later, when the final Senate and House bills are reconciled.
1: The First Thing That Will Happen Is Absolutely Nothing
At least that's the case for a lot of people who now have quality health insurance.
If you have a decent health plan through your job, nothing will change for you in terms of your insurance.
In fact, if you work for a large or medium-sized company and have decent coverage at a price you can afford, then nothing can change for you -- you'll be ineligible to enroll in the public insurance option (which is discussed below).
If you have already have government-run health care -- if you're a vet, or are on Medicare or Medicaid or have a child in the State Children's Health Insurance Program, nothing will change for you in terms of your coverage. (One exception: Under the House bill, eligible children would be shifted from S-CHIP to a new public insurance program in 2013).
The only thing that would change for you in these circumstances would be this: your current insurance company would have a harder time screwing you over if you get sick. That's because, although your policy wouldn't change, it would be governed by new public-interest regulations for the entire health insurance industry. (See next item.)
2. New Protections for Consumers
Regardless of your place of employment or the kind of coverage you have now, new regulations would take effect in 2010 that would go a long way toward curtailing the insurance companies' worst abuses.
Insurance companies could no longer deny coverage to people because they've had health problems in the past, nor could they charge hugely different rates for different groups of people (premiums could only vary by age, geography, tobacco use and family size).
The House bill bans recissions -- the insurance industry's habitual practice of collecting premiums until someone gets sick, and then digging through their histories for an excuse to cancel coverage.
Insurers wouldn't be allowed to cancel an individual's coverage for reasons other than failing to pay the premium.
Insurers would no longer be permitted to impose annual or lifetime caps on benefits.
Insurers that sell insufficient, cheapo plans that leave people vulnerable to medical crises would be required to disclose that fact to their customers.
All insurers would be required to disclose how much of their spending is on health care and how much goes to costs like overhead, advertising, etc.
The legislation (especially the Senate HELP bill) creates new tools for fighting insurance fraud and abuse.
3. Medical Bankruptcies Would Plummet
One of the most significant of these regulations is in the House bill: a cap on out-of-pocket expenses. If the measure passes, individuals would face a maximum of $5,000 in out-of-pocket expenses a year, and families no more than $10,000. For poorer families, the limits would be much lower: $500 per year, for example, for a family making less than 1.33 times the poverty rate.
In 2007, Harvard researchers studied thousands of bankruptcy filings and found that medical causes played a role in more than 6 in 10.
4. People Who Could Never Get Decent Coverage Will Finally Be Able To
So far, one of the great victories for the anti-reform movement has been convincing many small-business owners that health reform will put them under.
The reality is that small-business people, their employees, independent contractors, freelancers, entrepreneurs, part-timers and the "marginally employed" would be the biggest winners from the legislation if it passed as currently drafted. Small business owners and their employees -- as well as those other groups -- would, for the first time, be able to get decent coverage at a fair price, and if eligible, both employer and worker would be able to get extra help paying for it.
Under the current system, most of the largest employers in the country self-insure -- they pay their employees' claims directly and cut out the middleman.
Big firms that don't self-insure buy insurance on the large-group market, where risk is spread out over a large pool. Large-group plans tend to be more or less comprehensive and, relatively speaking, affordable.
But those forced to purchase coverage on the individual or small-group markets have little buying power and are routinely forced to pay budget-busting premiums for the worst possible coverage -- plans with high deductibles, caps on benefits and strict limits on what is and isn't covered.
This gets to the heart of the "public insurance option" -- the most contentious point of debate in the reform battle. It would work like this: The government would establish regional exchanges, or "gateways," that would be open to those who would otherwise be forced into the individual and small-group markets. These gateways would have relatively large insurance pools just like large employers -- and public programs like Medicare -- have now.
Within these large purchasing pools, people would be able to choose from among different insurance plans -- one a government-run "public option" and the rest offered by private insurers.
In order for private insurers to sell plans through the exchanges, they would be required to offer a standard set of benefits (which the public option would have to offer as well). They'd also be permitted to offer plans with more bells and whistles at a premium price.
For those enrolled in the public exchanges, the process would be quite similar to what employees in many large companies experience -- they would simply choose from among a variety of plans, with slightly different levels of coverage and costs.
Compared to the plans now available in the individual and small-group markets, they would pay a lot less for significantly better insurance (which, in reality, is what those "teabaggers" are protesting).
Because of pressure from Republicans and conservative Blue Dog Democrats, the public exchanges will phase in slowly, over a period of four to six years.
5. (Almost) Everyone Gets Covered
That brings us to another "controversial" -- but ultimately commonsense -- piece of the puzzle, the "individual mandate." It means that (almost) everyone would either have to buy health insurance or pay a modest penalty that would contribute to the system. In the House bill, the penalty would max out at 2.5 percent of income. Waivers would be available in the cases of economic hardship or for those who have religious objections.
There will be those who get those waivers; others will be left behind -- it's not a truly universal system. But according to preliminary projections, the result would be an uninsured rate of 3-5 percent, rather than the 16 or so percent who lack insurance today, reducing the rolls of the uninsured by some 20 million30 million.
6. Those Who Can't Afford the Premiums Will Get Help Paying
Ultimately, even if the public exchanges were to succeed in bringing the price of health insurance back to earth, a lot of people would still be priced out of the market.
All of the Democratic plans come with subsidies to help those at the lower end of the economic ladder get access to decent health care. The most generous are in the House bill, and how extensive the subsidies will be in the final legislation will be a point of heated debate.
In the House bill, individuals making less than 400 percent of the poverty line -- $43k per year and families earning under $88k -- will be eligible for subsidized coverage on a sliding scale.
Those at the lowest income levels (but who earn too much to get Medicaid) will be required to pay no more than 1.5 percent of their total income for health coverage.
Subsidies would also be available for co-pays -- also for people earning up to 400 percent of the poverty line.
Finally, many small businesses would be eligible for tax credits for insuring their employees.
7. No Free Lunch for Businesses
Currently, large employers that rely on low-skilled workforces usually offer little or no health coverage, and much of these workers' health care is already subsidized by taxpayers in the form of Medicaid and Medicare payments, other public programs and unpaid bills for emergency-room visits. Under the proposals in Congress, medium and large firms would face a simple choice: Offer their employees decent coverage or pay something into the system to offset the burden their employees' health needs impose on the American taxpayer.
8. More Low-Income Workers Eligible for Medicaid
All of the plans being considered by Congress make more of the working poor eligible for Medicaid by lifting the income limits on eligibility.
9. Some Things Will Change, but You'll Never Notice
The right's fearmongering is only effective because the health care debate is often so complex. Opponents of reform paint dark conspiracies about some of the more-obscure provisions in the reform package (a good example being the gross mischaracterization of a rather innocuous provision that makes counseling on living wills and other end-of-life decisions available to ill seniors as a "government death panel").
It is true, however, that the proposed legislation contain a number of provisions that aren't getting a lot of attention in the debate.
For example, there are measures that would impact the way doctors are paid, allocate additional dollars for developing the health care workforce and bring new technologies online.
These provisions will have a significant impact on a variety of stakeholders -- mostly health professionals -- but ordinary people looking for health coverage are not going to notice anything different about their health care.
10. Over Time, the System Will Become Healthier
Everything depends on what the final legislation entails. But if it were done right, those systemic changes -- greater competition, tighter regulation, technological improvements, a greater emphasis on prevention, the buying power and efficiency of less-fragmented insurance pools and an end to treating the uninsured in emergency rooms -- would gradually "bend the cost curve" of health coverage and offer insurance to tens of millions of people who today struggle with the health problems and stressful economic insecurity of living without insurance.
As I've argued before, the Democrats' approach is far from perfect. But the things outlined here are essentially what would come about if the more-progressive version(s) passed.
Understanding what's actually contained in the legislation leads to an unavoidable conclusion about the anger we've seen in recent weeks: it's doubtful that at anytime in the history of our nation have a group of people been so furiously opposed to something that would so obviously be an improvement over what they now have.
It's nothing less than a testament to the power of industry propaganda.

See more stories tagged with: health reform
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.

Security Company Points to Flash/Acrobat Reader Vulnerabilities

2009-08-18T12:24:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, Adobe released a critical patch for Flash Player and Acrobat Reader. According to online security company Trusteer, about 80% of users are still vulnerable, and perhaps more startling, the company views this as being possibly the biggest security hole on the Internet today.

That 80% figure is based on Trusteer's installed base of over 2.5 million online banking users of the company's security service.

"The penetration of Adobe Flash and Acrobat is unparalleled," a spokesperson for Trusteer tells WebProNews. "According to Adobe, 99% of Internet users run Flash.

So so many people on the web are running Flash, and Adobe released the patch two weeks ago, why are so many still vulnerable? Trusteer thinks Adobe just has issues with distributing patches.

"Adobe is facing some major security challenges and one of its biggest hurdles is its software update mechanism. For some reason, it is not effective enough in distributing security patches to the field," says Trusteer CEO Mickey Boodaei. "Given the lack of attention this situation has received to date, it appears that few people understand the magnitude of the problem. We recommend that all enterprises and individuals install the latest Flash and Acrobat updates immediately."

Accoreding to Trusteer, targeting products like Flash and Acrobat is attractive to wrongdoers because they reach such a huge portion of Internet users. Browser use is much more diversified with Internet Explorer reaching about 65% of users and Firefox reaching 30%. Targeting Adobe's products just covers a lot more people.

About the author:
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. Twitter: @CCrum237

Google Wars Heating Up!

2009-08-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

Things are heating up between Google and Microsoft with the introduction of Bing, Microsoft's new search engine. The first assault, the introduction of Google Chrome, Google's first Internet browser, attempting to cut into Microsoft's Internet Explorer market. Microsoft has maintained a stronghold on Internet browser market for many years, it is estimated that 75% of Internet users browse the web with some version of Internet Explorer. Microsoft counters with Bing, successfully competing with Google's search engine and surpassing Yahoo, the second leading search engine, within the first month of it's public introduction. Now we hear that Yahoo has agreed to join forces with Microsoft to further weaken the search engine giant, Google, on the battle field. Google retaliates by announcing their newest weapon, Google Chrome OS, an open source operating system, competing with Microsoft's monster Windows OS.

How do Google Chrome users rate Google's new browser? Does Bing deliver quality search engine results? What impact will a FREE operating system, in the personal sector, have on computing in the future? Imagine the possibilities...

Browser Stats

2009-08-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

Browser Stats
Fri Feb 1 00:01:02 2008 - Tue Mar 31 23:58:00 2009 425.0 Days

1. MSIE 7.x 28059716 (42%)
2. MSIE 6.x 22054024 (33%)
3. FireFox 11723025 (18%)

Read more... Visit us at http://www.InternetMarketConsulting.com/Support/Browsers.html#Stats

2009-08-04T15:34:00.001-07:00

69nuvhq75m

Website Repair or Redesign

2009-07-10T16:45:00.000-07:00

When inspecting needlework for quality craftsmanship you view the stitches from the back of the piece. If the stitches are well organized, formatted and even you know the piece is a quality item. You can evaluate the quality of a website and skill of a designer by looking behind the scenes. Are the files well organized and grouped in relevant folders. Does the site meet World Wide Web Consortium standards?

If a piece of needlework has uneven stitches and hanging threads you have one of two options. Pull the uneven, poorly formatted stitches and replace them with quality work or scrap the piece all together. A poorly designed website has similar options. You can hire a website repair company to correct the errors or completely rebuild the website using a skilled website designer.

Remember when it comes to website marketing, Quality Counts! If your website is not being seen in search engine results there is a good chance that the site is poorly designed. Consult an experienced Internet marketing company that specializes in website design, website repair and website promotion.

Bing vs Google

2009-06-18T12:39:00.000-07:00

Will Bing even the search engine playing field? Google's monopoly seems to have competition in the new search engine Bing. Try it now with these easy plug ins: Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome etc...

Let Internet Market Consulting make sure your website appears as designed and is listed in top search engine results in all major search engines.

Website Repair
Website Promotion
Link Development

WEBSITE BUYER BEWARE

2009-06-08T11:03:00.000-07:00

Beware of companies such as the telephone book/advertising companies that offer what may appear to be a good deal until you find that the contract is riddled with hidden charges and fees. Stuck in a dead end contract, need help Website Repair, Traffic Building , Domain Administration. Let Internet Market Consulting take care of every aspect of your website so that you can focus on operating your business.

Interviewing a web design firm.

2009-06-04T16:13:00.000-07:00

The first and most important question to ask a web design firm is...

Who owns the rights to the completed website design?

Correct answer: The website design and all materials contained within belong to your company once the design is complete. Your company should be able to move the website to a new host, and change the registrar at will.

2009-05-28T07:25:00.001-07:00

Need a Pet Sitter to care for your beloved animals while you're away. http://www.APetSitterService.com

What is Website Promotion?

2008-02-02T12:22:00.000-08:00

Internet Marketing has quickly become a necessary element in building and tracking revenues online today. Start-up business owners often overlook this step, but the fact is promotion is critical to the success of a website. Even the most astonishing, visually attractive and interactive site is irrelevant if unseen. Internet Market Consulting specializes in increasing the traffic to Websites using search engine optimization and submissions, web directories submissions, affiliate programs, link development and article submissions. In addition, email campaigns and pay-per-click advertising can help leverage your web presence. Internet Market Consulting will keep your site fresh, up-to-date with a consistent traffic flow.