Bid for Journal Is Talk of Wall Street

Financial analyst Edouard Morin slid from his lunch seat at the swanky Harry's Cafe around the corner from Wall Street and sized up the latest merger talk that has the business world abuzz.

"The Journal is an American icon," he said. But this is Wall Street after all, so he added an important caveat: "Everything is for sale these days, at the right price."

Some on Wall Street said Rupert Murdoch's attempt to buy The Wall Street Journal was a bad idea, while others said it was merely capitalism - you have to do what's best for the business.

The Bancroft family, which controls Dow Jones & Co. (DJ), says it is warming to the idea of selling the company, with Murdoch being the most visible suitor. His media conglomerate, News Corp. (NWS), includes the New York Post, Fox News, and MySpace.

The Journal, founded in 1889, has a daily circulation of about 2 million, and is one of the world's most venerable papers.

A cheeky list of who-reads-what that has made the rounds on the Internet says that The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country. And that the Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country - as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

But Murdoch has promised that if his company buys the Journal, he would ensure its editorial independence.

One young man looking to enter the stock market said he doesn't want Murdoch to transfer his brand of tabloid journalism to the Journal.

"I get all my financial news from the Wall Street Journal," said Rhudy Correa, 21, as he sat on the steps of the historic Federal Hall overlooking the New York Stock Exchange - a quick lunch-hour perch of choice for many Wall Street employees.

A college student working as a summer intern with Oppenheimer Funds, Correa said he wants the Journal to stay as it is. "I wouldn't advise making changes in it - that would be kind of touchy."

His friend, Christian Goodspeed, balanced a takeout container of Chinese food in one hand as he dug into it with a fork - offering his opinion of the Murdoch bid between bites.

"I go to the Wall Street Journal if I need investment news," said Goodspeed, 20, an intern at another Wall Street firm, Stoever Glass & Co. "It's a cornerstone, and it can't change. I wouldn't like that."

Even if Murdoch controlled the Journal, Goodspeed predicted there wouldn't be major changes.

But at least one person on Wall Street believes the Post has something to teach the stalwart Journal.

"If Murdoch can do for the Journal what he's done for the Post, he'd be doing a great thing," said Bob Dolin, who has worked for 27 years in his family newspaper stand on Wall Street, a few steps from the exchange.

"The Post has a very good variety of writers, plus sports and interesting articles. The whole format makes it very desirable," said Dolin, standing behind a display of Friday's Post, its front page touting a woman allegedly seen with Yankees star Alex Rodriguez - not his wife.

Dolin doesn't sell the Journal any more. The truck driver who delivers it refuses to walk the papers from the Wall Street corner where his truck stops to Dolin's stand.

Every day, the vendor sells about 60 copies of the Post - mostly to Wall Street employees. If they want to buy a Journal, they must take a few extra steps to the nearby Starbucks. [via]

Marketing with Promotional Items

Promotional marketing products are powerful business tools and are a great medium to build your corporate identity, reinforce your business message, and boost sales promotions. From achieving short-term goals like boosting sales to long-term brand reinforcement, promotional marketing products are suitable for achieving various goals. They also help in constantly boosting the morale of your employees and encouraging them to strive for more success. Promotional marketing products can be seen everywhere today and are popular because they work. Poor quality promotional products can, however, do more damage to your business and organization than the benefits they intend to provide.
When it comes to finding the right promotional products for your business, you want to choose items that display and endorse your companies’ niche products prominently. If you're promoting leather products, you don't want to give people mugs or caps. A small leather coin purse or a keyring with a touch of leather will be more suitable, perhaps. There are numerous products that can stand as appealing and interesting promotional gifts for your customers. People like to receive items and services that are useful, appealing, effective incentives and act as motivators. According to studies, promotional goods produce more sales. Customers who received promotional products reordered up to 18% sooner than those who received coupons, and up to 13% sooner than those who received no promotions.

If you are planning a promotional campaign and need a little help with deciding the products and designs, visit our online store at www.ideasbynet.com. We are the UK's largest supplier of promotional merchandise. We offer a wide range of promotional gifts, corporate business gifts, products, and items. We assure you the best value, lowest prices, best quality, and round the clock service.

At ideasbynet.com, a few popular categories of such promotional items are promotional mugs, promotional pens, promotional mouse mats, promotional umbrellas, promotional conference folders, promotional bags, promotional clothing and caps, promotional desktop gifts, promotional keyrings and keychains and promotional printed paper Products. Other popular categories of promotional gift items are clocks and watches computer accessories, calculators, mobile phone holders, torches, travel and accessories, stress Toys, calendars and planners, fridge magnets, games and puzzles, confectionery, golf gifts, and executive.

Log on to www.ideasbynet.com to browse through our wide range of promotional products at great prices. Order promotional gift items online and get a steep rise in your business. [via]

Common Mistakes in Article Marketing

Marketing that is based on information is one of the oldest and most effective methods for bringing targeted prospects to your site and converting then into buyers. This is part of the reason that software and distribution services that make the process of article promotion easier are so popular lately.

There are two things that makes article marketing works. First, the article you are submitting and second, the preparation you do before you write the content of the article.

There are lots of mistakes on article marketing. Mostly are not known. The following are some of the mistakes that should be known and some advices to overcome them.

- Publishing articles with contents that is not helpful to the readers.

This is one of the mistakes that is very common but not known to many writers. A writer should not think that all he wants is links back to his site and any visitors the article generate.

Not all article bank and directories are accepting articles and contents automatically. If you want your articles be admitted, write articles that the directories want to share with readers.

If you want article marketing to work for you, write articles that the publishers want in their publications. This also means obeying the standard guidelines, researching a good topic to write about, running a spell check or even hiring a writer to produce articles on your behalf.

- Article writers usually confuse the reason to promote the reason of writing an article.

There is only one reason to write an article. It is to inform the readers. If your article is not geared towards this as its primary purpose, you will fail to see the benefits of promotion because no one will want to read your article.

The key primary benefits of promoting an article are lead generation, branding, as corollary, online promotion, particularly as part of your optimization efforts.

The number of links you are able to generate by submitting your article to hundreds of sites will matter little if you are unable to get them picked up by publications or read by people who search for information.

Sure, if you know what you are doing, all those links pointing back to your site will count for something in your search engine result, but remember that generating links to your site is only part of optimizing your site for different search engines.

In order to overcome this issue, you will need to figure out how people will read what is in your article, and then click through to your site from your resource box. The best start to a solution is to produce better content.

It is a matter of choice, you can get little exposure from increased link backs on a very basic level, or you enjoy massive exposure from a little extra work.

- Failure to maximize the promotional opportunities of article marketing.

It is a fact that articles marketing can help you generate additional links back to your site. But there is fact that only few writers know: you can get more visitors and better search engine results from articles in a variety of ways.

You can mention the desired keyword in strategic places. But you should remember that you should take care not to overdo it. There are also some people that want you to use anchor text which is also effective method. But it should be known that majority of directories and publications are not able to support this.

It is not just about the links back to your sites. Part of doing well with article marketing is picked up by publishers with large audiences or gaining the ability to leverage other brands due to the quality of your work. Better search results are great.

- Starting the article promotion even without a concrete plan.

Not all articles can fulfill the purposes of promotion. Some will work better for branding and other can generate leads and increase sales. But if you do not start out with a concrete plan for what the function of your site should be, you will end up not satisfied with the result.

Before writing, decide first if what the purpose of the article is. An article meant to brand you as an expert should display your knowledge. One for generating leads may need to be geared towards solving very specific problems.

Knowing the mistakes in article marketing is necessary. It helps you solve problems and challenge you to do better and improve your work. [via]

Improve Your Marketing Article With Split Testing

Article marketing is fast becoming the most popular form of online promotion in modern times. Gone are the methods when PPC ads and banner ads were all the rage; now websites are trying harder and harder to attract people with article marketing.

Article marketing is also the most intelligent way of garnering traffic. The articles are generally written expertly, and that creates a very favorable impression in the mind of the reader about the author. This increases the chances of the visitor coming on to the author's website and most likely doing some business.

When the owner of a website attempts to use article marketing as the tool for promotion of his or her website, naturally the onus of the success of the scheme depends mostly on the article. Needless to say, the article must be so attractive that the person reading it must feel tempted to click on the backlink in the author's box below the article and visit the website.

But with people of so many varied tastes, it is very difficult to work out a formula that would work for all. Same is the case with a marketing article. You would think you have written the best article possible and it is sure to drive people in hordes to your website. But then, that may not happen at all. What goes wrong? The likely reason could be, your article does not find high appeal among the readers, though you may feel it is the best ever possible.

This is where the method of split testing can help in a very huge way to improve the quality of your marketing article. Split testing is a method of trial and error, where you find out what works best for your marketing article.

What is Split Testing?

Split testing is a method in which you test two options against each other, and find out which works the best. When you split test your marketing article, you are actually trying out two different options and trying to see which one of them will work in a better way for your website.

With marketing articles, you can split test the following things:-
(i) The keyword used in the article
(ii) The heading of the article
(iii) The formatting of the article like bulleted lists versus running paragraphs etc.
(iv) The lead and the closing paragraphs
(v) The info provided in the bio box
(vi) The call for action line, if any.

How to use Split Testing to Improve Your Article

Using split testing methods for an article does not require much skill. This is what you have to actually do. Let us suppose you have to test two keywords against each other and see which works better for your article. For example, your keywords could be 'dental works in Oklahoma' versus 'Oklahoma dental works'. So, you will make two articles, which are identical in all respects, except the keywords.

Now put up the first version of your article (let's call it A) on half your article directories and the other article (B) on the other half of your article directories. Then you track which of the articles brings more click through traffic to your website. There are tracker softwares available for this tracking process.

The end result is, you come to know which keyword has actually brought in more traffic. You will then discard the poor keyword and retain the strong one. If you now wish, you can split test the strong keyword with another option, and again see which works better. This process can be kept endless and you can always keep searching for better options.

Once you have checked for the best keyword, you can start checking out for other aspects of your article, and make it more and more appealing to get in better traffic. [via]

4 Oil Workers Kidnapped in Nigeria

A group of gunmen wearing security force uniforms invaded a compound in restive southern Nigeria and kidnapped four foreign oil workers without firing a shot, police said Saturday.

The abduction occurred overnight at the U.S.-based oil-services firm Schlumberger Ltd. (SLB) in Port Harcourt and the kidnapped included one Dutch, one British and one Pakistani citizen, Rivers State Police Commissioner Felix Ogbaudu said.

The nationality of the fourth captive was not immediately available. The British embassy in Nigeria had no information on a missing Briton, and the company and other embassies weren't immediately reachable for comment.

In what appeared to be a first, the gunmen wore uniforms that resembled those of one of Nigeria's two police forces, and they were able to enter the compound and leave again without firing a shot, said Ogbaudu, speaking by telephone.

He noted that both uniforms - black for regular officers and green for elite mobile police known by the abbreviation Mopol - are simple in appearance and easily duplicated. The gunmen couldn't be presumed to be security forces, he said.

"Remember, it was dark and any black uniform will be seen as a police uniform and green will be Mopol," he said.

Nigeria's security forces, however, are deeply corrupt, with police shaking down travelers at checkpoints across the country. Many of the more-sophisticated crimes are presumed by Nigerians to have at least a tacit involvement by police who have been paid off to look the other way.

A former inspector general was forced out after local media reported that he had embezzled funds and owned more than 70 homes in Nigeria.

More than two dozen foreigners are in captivity in the Niger Delta region where all of the crude in Africa's biggest producer is pumped. Over 200 people have been abducted since militants upped their bombing and kidnapping activities in the region in late 2005, slashing crude output by about one quarter. Only one arrest has been known to be made in the region connected to the spate of kidnappings.

More than 100 foreigners have been taken this year alone as criminal gangs have taken up the practice. Hostages are usually released unharmed after a ransom is paid.

The militants say they're trying to force the federal government to give more state-controlled oil funds to their region, which remains deeply impoverished despite its natural bounty.

President Umaru Yar'Adua, who was inaugurated as Nigeria's new president last week, has promised to try and solve the rising violence in the region. Militants say they'll keep up their attacks, but will be watching keenly to see if Yar'Adua keeps his word.

Nigeria is Africa's top crude producer and a leading exporter of oil to the United States. [via]

Thousands to Protest Upcoming G-8 Summit

Buses and trains from across Europe streamed into the northern port city of Rostock on Saturday, bringing thousands of protesters to the largest-yet demonstration over the upcoming G-8 meeting of industrialized powers.

Some 13,000 police were on hand, and organizers said they expect up to 100,000 protesters for the daylong demonstration under the motto "another world is possible."

"The world shaped by the dominance of the G-8 is a world of war, hunger, social divisions, environmental destruction and barriers against migrants and refugees," organizers said in leaflets handed out on the streets. "We want to protest against this and show the alternatives."

Hours before the official start of the demonstration, authorities said more than 20,000 protesters had arrived in Rostock.

Police helicopters hovered overhead as thousands of demonstrators danced to protest songs and waved flags outside the city's main train station.

The crowd was peaceful - a small group of protesters set up a wooden chess board to pass some time while a heavy police presence watched from a distance.

Dozens of different groups, including communists, anarchists and environmentalists, were taking part and messages were mixed: Some urged action from the G-8 countries in the fight against HIV/AIDS, African poverty and climate change, while others questioned the legitimacy of the existence of the G-8 itself.

The protest comes ahead of the three-day summit that opens Wednesday in the nearby northern resort town of Heiligendamm, where German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosts the leaders of the other G-8 nations - Britain, France, Japan, Italy, Russia, Canada, and the United States.

In the morning, protesters were gathering at two meeting points in town, to march along two different three-mile routes into downtown Rostock and converge in the late afternoon at the harbor for speeches, followed by a concert.

Protester Kay Stenzel got up at 3 a.m. to drive in from the eastern city of Bautzen with four friends to voice his discontent with the G-8 leaders.

"They want to impose their wills upon the poor nations," he said at the meeting point outside Rostock's main train station.

He waved a red flag onto which he had painted a black cat, an animal he chose because it was "unruly."

On their Web site, organizers emphasized that they wanted a peaceful protest.

"There is no reason to be afraid to come to the big demonstration in Rostock," they said. "We will have a very big, very colorful and very strong demonstrations. We do not expect major problems with the police."

They then added, however: "This may be different with the actions following later in the week of protest." [via]

Heat on small business after tax deadline

The South African Revenue Services (Sars) has warned that small business owners who failed to apply for tax amnesty will face penalties. This, as thousands of small business owners countrywide rushed to meet today's 1pm deadline.

Adrian Lackay, the Sars spokesperson, says those who have not applied or submitted forms will be prosecuted. Lackay says there will be a dedicated focus after the deadline because such businesses face the risk of being prosecuted.

He says it is a criminal offence if you do not return the forms. There is also a possibility of attaching assets or properties that may be register on the name of the individual or the business.

Amnesty

Meanwhile, the Sars in the Northern Cape says it is satisfied with the number of small business owners who have registered for tax amnesty. Sars says they have exceeded their target of 1 500 businesses by 500.

Moeti Mokotedi, one of the small business owners who managed to beat this afternoon's deadline, says for all these years he have been running the business, wants to make sure that at least for one year or two that he has not been submitting the returns, he got amnesty for that. [via]