
Guides Written by Greg Brown
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How to get your goods to foreign buyers with minimum hassle
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Plan, start, and grow what could be your most profitable region
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How to get your small business plugged into free trade with the neighbors.
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The key to exporting well is getting paid on time, every time
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Understanding who will buy your goods is key to selling abroad
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Don't know where to start selling abroad? Go to a show!
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How to sell to America's largest minority group
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Get your export business moving using a commonly accepted financial tool
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Connect to your clients and vendors without breaking the bank
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It's easier than it used to be and can make your team more productive
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Find out of you have what it takes to go global with your small business
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Find the right space for your growing small business
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For any small business, insuring the top people can be crucial
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Sell more by finding and cultivating more interested buyers
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A better bottom line comes from running your numbers against the competition
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A big opportunity can imply a big investment — and that means credit
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There's money in your patented or otherwise protected ideas — usually
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Get the most out of reaching potential clients via the Web
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How to give yourself a full view of your company's financial picture
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A copy machine is a must. But buy or lease? New or used copiers?
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Get a better deal on the things you need by shopping right
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You don't have to invent a business to get started. You can buy one instead
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Get out of the line and back to making money by banking via the Web
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Your salespeople work hard. Make sure they feel the love — and the cash
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Get the best retention tool for your small business — peace of mind for your people
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Even if they do their jobs well, your top managers — and you — could get sued
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Get the best wholesale food suppliers for your restaurant
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Your online image matters. Controlling it needn't be a chore.
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Going international? Here's how to get your space
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Get your sales, marketing or customer service messages out cheaply and efficiently
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There are good reasons to consider it. Here's how to proceed
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South America's largest market can mean big business
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Latin America's hottest consumer economy is on the rebound
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Find your way to big profits abroad not far from home
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Small countries mean big business with the right strategy
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Make money overseas with a low-risk, in-demand brand name
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Source products and get great results in a competitive labor market
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What you need to know as a foreign national business owner
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Improve your profit margin with cheaper labor overseas
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Move the data from here to there with no worries
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How Brazil, India, China and Russia will change your business outlook
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Think NAFTA was the end of U.S. free trade? Not hardly
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Keep key people with a benefit any working parent will treasure.
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A globalizing business needs employees who are ready to communicate.
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Get a graduate business degree without quitting your day job
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Find out if your newest potential hire is everything he or she claims
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Get help and network your way to commercial success
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If your small business is big enough, self-funding can slash costs
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How to get more customers by buying them
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Learn how to connect with the USA's biggest Latin American economic partner
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How to sell into the new, unified European economy
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Learning and working go hand-in-hand in these quick-hit specialization courses
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Cut software costs and boost productivity the Google way
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Reach your key customers online in their own language
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Wait or update? Much depends on the needs of your business now
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Get the best data on the Web fed to you -- effortlessly
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How to coax Web customers to keep clicking during checkout
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Easy-to-use browser tools for speed-surfing the Web
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Make sure your store or office shows up when people do local search via maps
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The top social network for professionals has lots of tricks up its sleeve
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Reach out and touch your customers straight from your Web site
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Language barriers needn't be an obstacle at your next conference or meeting
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The Sunshine State's largest city is a great town for hungry companies
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Be seen and heard at your next meeting or event
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How to effectively give back from your company's success
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Free trade and global growth is driving business on the isthmus
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Get your people off the roads and onto public transportation
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Hold your next event in just the right place with simple planning
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Simple changes in how you work can save your health
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Keep your data safe and your employees on guard with strong authentication
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Latin America's economic star is a great place to land in South America
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North Carolina's tech triangle is hopping with opportunity
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Communicate effectively yet still have time to manage and sell
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Stack 'em high with industrial shelving for storage and inventory
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Pump up your loan business with qualified real estate leads
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Set your customers' expectations with crisp, clean table linens
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Put your best face forward with your convention display
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How to find food service supplies and food service equipment vendors for your bakery
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How to get the best Internet service via satellite for home or office.
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Get the most from your team by highlighting workplace communication
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Best tactics for selling off prequalified sales leads from a sales leads list
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Looking for a top-drawer candidate? Start with a top-drawer executive recruiter
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Bootstrap your way into the fast-growing computer services and computer repair business
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Join the ranks of self-employed with a tried and true concept: a mail-order business
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Get a slice of lucrative commissions organizing freight for shippers and truckers
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Get the job done with minimum risk using high-quality utility carts and material handling carts
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Find and buy the right computer mouse or computer touchpads for your needs
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How to Choose the Best Local and Long Distance Phone Service
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Cut your costs without cutting quality when choosing among long distance carriers
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Get cutting-edge business phone features with no hardware with virtual private branch exchange
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Connect your business to more sales with the right business phones
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How to choose a lectern or podium for events and public speaking
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Business broadband can be a great tool if you know how to use it well
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Use corporate performance management and business performance consultants to outperform your competition.
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Multimedia projectors, once the province of boardrooms, are turning into sales tools and the center of the new home theater
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Ready for your close-up? First, take a closer look at camcorder and video camera choices
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Bring the world to your PC or Mac with a speedy computer modem or cable modem
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Networking your home office or small office computers needn't be complex
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Get the most from your tech budgets with hired brains and professional tech muscle
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How to buy the right HP printer from the company that's synonymous with printing
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How to contract AT&T business phone service from the global telecom
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Bridge the digital and print world with a high volume scanner
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Power up your online presence with a dedicated Web server
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How to select server software for a host of business needs
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Choosing a phone system for your small business or satellite office
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Choosing a business phone system for your growing small business or satellite office
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Move your business into high gear with consistent, quality air freight and air cargo services
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Getting your all-important supplies and finished goods to market dry and intact
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Setting up a warehouse racking pallet storage system on budget
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How to arrange shipping with a refigerated shipping company or buy a refrigated truck
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Move your mobile service force into high gear with productivity enhancing dispatching software
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Cut costs and maximize profitability with a fleet management system and fleet maintenance management software
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Line up the money you need to get your semi truck financing in order
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Need to keep moving? Wireless Internet service can tag along
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Cut down on bureacracy and get things done with workflow management software
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How to wire your office for high-speed Web and telecommunications
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Keep construction project management on track with heavy-duty construction management software
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Using material management systems to stay on track with raw materials and parts for production
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Stay on top of your quality management system with QMS software
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Choosing among cellular service providers and paging service providers for your company
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Understand and negotiate fees and terms set by banks and credit card processing companies.
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How to find and work with a 3rd party logistics provider to outsource your supply chain
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Find and buy the right speed and size hard drive storage for your needs
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Streamline customer relations and keep sales on track with banking software systems
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Not all business banking is created equal. Find the right banking institution for your small business.
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How to trade the foreign exchange markets for business and profit.
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Fire up your mortgage lending business with new real estate lead generation strategies
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Make sure your credit history is the best it can be using your own credit report
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Sell more health policies by finding and using a health insurance lead generation system
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Get your small business rolling with high-speed business T1 Internet access
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Eliminate credit card debt using credit card debt management tools
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Move your business into high gear with the best Internet service for your needs
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Get cash for growth by using accounts receivable factoring.
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Pump up your call center sales with qualified telemarketing lists
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Earn serious high yield fixed income with corporate bonds in your portfolio
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Intelligently buy and sell investments through brokerage firms
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Get on the road to financial security using the right financial services
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Prepare for the long-term using fixed or variable annuities
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Matt, what in your experience is the absolutelyl cheapest way to sell online.
For instance, if one wanted to sell exacty one eBook, and expected slow sales for some time, what is the best route?
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In my experience, the single biggest reason that anybody resists technology is inertia. What they have works for them, and change means ... change.
I don't believe that security is truly the issue. It's more a matter of incentives to deal with change, which are already common in the industry.
When you see major banks working with QuickBooks, perhaps even a big bank buying Intuit and incorporating QuickBooks, then you'll see a major shift toward small business accounts online, I think. That plus incentives -- carrots or sticks, like fees for sending statements by regular mail -- will do the trick.
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I bought a 40 GB Apricorn external hard drive just for keeping photos backed up. I like it because it's small, the cord stores inside the base and because it runs on power from the USB connection. No cords, no batteries. The actual drive inside is made by Hitachi. They cost about $100 and work just fine. All you can do wrong, really, is misplace it.
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Yep, Spanish company (thus the name). Whatever you think a phone is right now, kiss it goodbye, that's for sure. While you're at it get ready to stop paying phone bills, too, for most consumer calling. My bet is the major fixed line ops will have to start giving away landlines, long-distance or both to convince you to bundle in pay TV and wireless through them. AT&T already has stopped charging their customers for land to cell/cell to land calls inside the network.
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Increasingly, the world of one-size-fits-all job boards is giving way, logically, to industry-specific sites. We posted an internship position on JournalismJobs.com, for instance, and it has been consistently filled for several years running. Look for the appropriate job board first, then take a listing. They're usually cheap or, perhaps, even free for intern-only listings.
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Not sure about the satellites. If I were concerned about gaming, I would be absolutely looking at coax cable and the highest possible speed package, without a doubt. Pushing polygons takes a fat pipe.
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I left Skype out of this guide only because it's not quite ready for prime-time as a business solution. Mostly, this is because of the handset vs. headset issue, and because most office PCs are so stripped down they don't handle audio well or, often, even have speakers. Forget microphones of any quality.
That said, Skype can be hit and miss. We use it to call South America regularly and for a free or nearly free (2 cents per minute) service, it's amazing! I also bought an excellent Logitech webcam (1.3 megapixel QuickCam Ultra Vision is the model) which allows my sons' grandma in Chile to see them in super high resolution live video. Very cool!
There are handsets, even wireless Bluetooth handsets, for Skype, so we're getting closer, but for a small business this is better as a Web conferencing tool or for a single executive who makes lots of international calls -- hopefully riding along on someone else's bandwidth -- than for an entire workforce.
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There's a pretty big gap between true executive search (i.e., expensive headhunters) and what most small companies actually do (advertising on the Web, relying on their own managers or just sourcing from staffing companies). I've tried to fill in a bit with a new entry on finding an industry-specific recruiter.
There are likely hundreds, more than the physical space Work.com guides comfortably allow, but the sites listed go to great, searchable databases, as well as your own much-more detailed site on this very subject.
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The consensus seems to be "worse than what?" Many cable users complain of regular, explained outages. Weather is a factor, but the sat-geeks seem to believe that it's 99% poor installation, exacerbated by weather.
Another crack on satellite is that it's slow, but again, "slower than what?" Top speeds are be slower than top potential speeds on cable, but those top speeds are in the priciest bracket and faster than most people will pay for or, frankly, need. A bit like owning a Ferrari in a town with a max speed limit of 30 mph.
Always, talk to current customers. If the local satellite provider is awful (and they're all local resellers), the technology won't be the problem. It will be the installation and, later, customer service.
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Oh, there's tons more, and people write new ones all the time. One of the better ones I didn't mention, since it's very Webmaster oriented, is
About this Site by
LifeHacker editor Gina Trapani. One right-click and you can see the relevance of any page on the Web through Google, Alexa, Yahoo! and bunch of other tracking services, including Who Is queries.
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Great stuff, Shara. Do you know of any hosted forum or community providers that are as easy to use as, say, Blogger or Typepad?
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Point taken. I had avoided using Spanish-language sources on the assumption that most Work.com users are not conversant in Spanish. However, to Scott's list I would add
Expansión, the major business magazine, and
Reforma, one of the two major dailies in Mexico City.
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I take your point. This is exactly why self-funded plans usually work best for larger workforces, like county governments. However, the purpose of stop-loss policies is to protect small businesses from one-off cases that can ruin an otherwise functional plan. Somewhere between sure losses (ie, premiums) and predictable losses (claims) is a theoretical healthcare nirvana. It's worth considering.
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State economic delegations vary, of course, in seriousness, quality and activity. It helps to focus on border states, but even then it's a moving target. Florida's group is very concerned with agriculture, banking and tourism in Brazil and the Caribbean, while New Mexico, Arizona and California, understandably, are concerned with northern Mexico issues, and that means industry and some ag.
Who is governor can affect budgets, as do national political cycles on both sides of the border but, in theory if not practice, they are a great networking opportunity and a chance to reduce costs by sharing resources.
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Nope, not messing at all. I got no problem whatsoever with people selling to people -- having seen it be the savior of many folks in the developing world, for instance. I take your point however about PS Parties. Any reasonable suggestions/alternatives are welcome. These were meant only as illustrations, not endorsements.