Car scrappage scheme a smokescreen for price rises

Ford Fiesta, originally uploaded by sixate.

Car companies have inflated forecourt prices by up to a third to claw back scrappage discounts, an undercover investigation has found.

Motor manufacturers are accused of using the Government-sponsored "cash-for-bangers" scheme as a smokescreen to usher in inflation-busting increases.

‘What Car?’ magazine sent a team of secret shoppers check on prices at hundreds of car dealers around the country. They found that retail prices overall jumped by an average of nine per cent in the past 12 months.

Ford hit buyers of its Fiesta 1.25 60 Studio with the highest rise of more than 36 per cent. The firm's Mondeo 1.6 110 Edge, which went up by 19 per cent, also appears in a league table listing the five biggest price rises along with its Focus 1.6 Zetec that jumped 17.6 per cent.

The increases have in many cases wiped out the £2,000 discount given buyers trading in ten-year-old vehicles under the terms of Lord Mandelson's £400 million scrappage initiative.

The US car giant claimed that price rises in the UK were essential to offset the effect of the weak pound which make foreign-made goods more expensive to import to Britain.

But Peter Lawto, deputy editor of ‘What Car?’, said manufacturers are "hiding price increases" in scrappage scheme deals.

"Some of the price rises take your breath away. We have some sympathy for car manufacturers but this is opportunist so we shouldn't feel too sorry for them," he said.

"There is certainly an element of clawing back cash. They are making a killing off those people paying the list price.”

"We are seeing a pinch at both ends with prices going up and discounts falling."

The secret shoppers also found that hagglers are now offered smaller discounts – around £200 less than a year ago.

They were able to negotiate an average £1,699 off the windscreen price aside from any scrappage discount.

Renault is currently the most generous manufacturer with a typical £2,009 off – 13 per cent on average – while Mini is the stingiest with savings of just £125 or 1 per cent off its cars.

Ford refuted the accusation that it has taken advantage of the scheme to usher in price increases.

A company spokesman said Sterling has devalued by more than 30 per cent in the last 18 months and claimed that price rises were kept below that figure by cutting production costs to "limit the impact."

"The weakness of the Pound has had a huge negative impact on Ford's UK business," he said.

"The sustained and severe weakness of Sterling against the euro since the end of 2007 has forced the majority of the UK auto industry to raise prices.”

"Price increases are driven by the need to maintain a viable business and to recover relative cost increases caused by the weakness of the Pound over an extended period."

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said the pound was worth 23 per cent less last year against the euro than in 2007 and also insists that this is to blame for the majority of increases.

"The exchange rate has been the main driver on price changes," said a spokesman.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk

IMF warns of double-dip recession if deficits cut before 2011

In what is seen as a blow for UK’s Conservative party, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a paper by IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard that many countries risked sparking a potential double-dip in their economies if they start cutting spending and raising taxes too early, The Telegraph reported in its website.

IMF also warned that public debt levels in the economies of countries throughout the world had now reached similar levels, in comparison to gross domestic product (GDP), as it happened in the 1950s depression in the aftermath of World War II.

The special IMF paper, on exit strategies from the radical policies carried out by recession-hit advanced economies, emphasizes that governments and regulators should be careful not to start tightening either monetary or fiscal policy too early.

The IMF paper does not warn the UK specifically, but the warning comes only days after 60 economists warned that Conservative’s plans to start slashing the deficit from day one of their prospective government could derail the recovery from economic depression.

IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard said in the paper, "Notwithstanding the recent pick-up in growth momentum, there is little evidence as yet that private demand is self-sustaining. Hence, fiscal and monetary stimulus may need to be maintained well into 2010, although if developments proceed as expected, withdrawal could begin in 2011."

The IMF warning came in the midst of growing concern in the UK about the prospects of a relapse into economic weakness, with the UK Pound dropping at one stage by more than a cent against the dollar, and markets on both sides of the Atlantic sagging. The warning is also in tune with a hint from Mervyn King, the Bank of England Governor, that the Bank may have to countenance further quantitative easing in the coming months if economic conditions deteriorate.

Meanwhile, in the US the Conference Board shocked markets with a sudden plunge in its consumer confidence index to a 10-month low, with households expressing particular concern for their jobs. Also, Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has said that the financial system had undergone ‘by far the greatest financial crisis globally ever.’

The rich countries of the world should hold off from slashing budget deficits and exiting radical monetary policy for another year, the International Monetary Fund has warned.

European banks may need to raise €240 billion a year

Citigroup analysts including Stefan Nedialkov have warned that the biggest banks in Europe may need to raise €240 billion (£211 billion) annually for the next three years to fund the existing and new businesses, according to Telegraph.co.uk. They said the 24 European banks that account for almost 70 per cent of the banking sector's assets will face an increased need for funds, because of the volatile bond markets and the banks are required to work within the new Basel III capital regulations.

In order to avoid a repeat of the credit crunch and to lessen the banking industry's cyclical instability, the Basel Committee of central bankers and financial supervisors seek to implement their Basel III proposals on the quality of banks' capital.

According to the analysts, in Jan 2010 the banks issued €56 billion of long term and medium term funding, but the investors' appetite for new issuance has fallen in February because of the concerns over the state of the European economy has grown. Also there are disturbing reports about credit markets flashing the hottest warning signals since the current economic crisis evolved. There are also reports of many shares falling on the news of fund-raising questions.

In volatile market situations like this, the banks will have to offer better returns on investments attract investors in future. Also, the Citigroup estimate that the impact of increased funding costs on banks earnings may reach 10 per cent in a worst case scenario. Also, funding availability is not likely to be a major issue for most of the banks before 2012, and the new stable-funding ratio regulations from Basel only appear onerous for a relatively small number of banks, the analysts said.

The analysts also said the Franco-Belgian financial services group Dexia, the Belgian banking and insurance group KBC, and Britain's largest retail banking group Lloyds Banking Group will see the highest impact to normalized earnings and funding needs from higher cost of raising funds and the new regulatory requirements from Basel. The impact is likely to be less on Citigroup's key ‘buy-rated’ stocks, which include Spain's second-largest bank BBVA, Greece's largest lender National Bank of Greece, Asia-focused bank Standard Chartered, and Swiss banks Credit Suisse and UBS.

Though there were initial fears in early 2009 that the stress of the recession that began in 2007/2008 could lead to the break up of the Eurozone, the Euro's value actually strengthened by end-2009. Helping the poorer performing economies of Eurozone countries, bond yield spreads between Germany and the weak economies eased the strain on them. It may be noted, for the turn around in fortunes, the European Central Bank (ECB) injected €500 billion into the banks in June.

But in early 2010, fears of a sovereign debt crisis loomed over countries such as Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal, leading to a crisis of confidence, and widening of bond yield spreads and risk insurance on credit default swaps between these countries and other Eurozone members, especially Germany and France. After the government bond auction in Portugal, there are fears that sovereign debts may kick of new global pressures. These fears also weakened the Euro and triggered a widespread global stock and commodity sell-off in February 2010.

4 Crucial Things You Need To Do To Build your List

Online marketing may have developed a sudden surge these past few years, but many in the know how have felt its rise even from way then. As more internet based businesses are put up, the need to develop new marketing skills and knowledge based on this new medium have arisen. More and more marketing strategies are being discovered and developed to cope with the changing face of business the business world.

The demand for online marketing tips and strategies have drastically grown and a new form of business has been born, internet marketing strategies. While there are companies that are all too eager to help your site and business build a clientele for a fee, there also many ways that can spread the word about your sites subsistence in a more cost free way. One of this is Opt-in email marketing, also known as permission marketing.

Opt-in marketing requires the permission of a willing customer to subscribe to your marketing materials, materials that take form in newsletters, catalogs and promotional mailings via e-mail. The more opt-in marketing mail is sent, the more chances there is to bag sales and more sales. To do this, you must build a list of all those who wants to subscribe to your opt-in marketing list.

From your list, you will get your targeted customer, this is a good list since they already have shown interest in what you have to show and sell since they have willingly signed in for your list. These are the people who have liked what they have seen in your site and have decided they want to see more and maybe even purchase what ever product or service your company and site has to offer.

Many people would think that building their lists would take hard work and a lot of time to build and collect names and addresses. This is not so, it takes a bit of patience and some strategies but in doing this list, you open your site and your business to a whole new world of target market. Take the effort to take your business to a new level, if traffic increase and good profits are what you want, an opt-in list will do wonders for your business venture.

There are many sources and articles in the internet available for everyone to read and follow in building a list. Sometimes they may be confusing because there are so many and there different ways. Different groups of people would have different approaches in building an opt-in list, but no matter how diverse many methods are, there are always some crucial things to do to build your list. Here are four of them.

1) Put up a good web form in your site that immediately follows the end of your content. While some may say this is too soon to subscribe for a website visitors application, try to remember that your homepage should provide a quick good impression. If somehow a website visitor finds something that he or she doesn’t like and turns them off, they may just forget about signing up.

A good web form for subscribing to an opt-in list is not hard to do. Just write a simple short statement about how they would like to see more and get updated about the site. Then there should be an area where they could put in their names and e-mail address. This web form will automatically save and send you the data’s inputted. As more people sign in, your list will be growing.

2) As mentioned in the first tip, make your homepage very, very impressive. You need to have well written articles and descriptions of your site. Depending on what your site is all about, you need to capture your website visitor’s fancy. Make your site useful and very easy to use. Do not expect everyone to be tech savvy. Invest in having good programming in your site, make your graphics beautiful but don’t over do it.

Don’t waste your time making the homepage too overly large megabyte wise. Not all people have dedicated T1 connections, the faster your site gets loaded, the better. Go for a look that borders between simplicity and sophisticated knowledge.

3) Provide good service and products. A return customer is more likely to bring in more business. Even then and now, a satisfied customer will recommend a business always. Word of mouth and recommendations alone can rake in more business than an expensive ad. As your clientele roster grows so shall your list. With more members on the list, the more people will get to know about what you have new to offer.

4) Keep a clean and private list. Never lose the trust your customers have entrusted you. If you provide e-mails to others and they get spammed, many will probably unsubscribe to you. Remember, a good reputation will drive in more traffic and subscribers as well as strengthen the loyalty of your customers.

Making Money Selling Other People’s Products

A lot of people are now getting into online businesses and online marketing either to supplement their “real world” income or for it to become their primary source of income. Why? Because online marketing just provides them a lot of benefits!

First, you can reach just about anybody in the world who has Internet access if you market your products online. That means a wider market for you, which can translate to larger profits. Second, setting up an online business requires only a fraction of the cost required to set up an actual business establishment, which means a lot of savings for the business owner.

Another aspect that has attracted a lot of people towards online marketing is the fact that one doesn’t have to have his own products to get started. In online marketing, one can start making a lot of money just by selling, or even by just trying to sell, other people’s products. And getting started with this kind of marketing strategy is actually quite easy. All that one needs to do is to set up an agreement with an online retailer or merchant, and after everything is settled, one can immediately start making money by selling the merchant’s or the retailer’s products.

Incidentally, the most popular and the fastest growing method of selling other people’s products online is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing, in its simplest definition, is a relationship between an online merchant or retailer, who has products to sell, and his affiliates, who are willing to promote the merchant’s product on their website.

In a typical affiliate marketing set up, the merchant provides his affiliates with banners and text ads that links to his site. The affiliates will then get these ads posted on their website and they get paid whenever traffic or sales is directed to the merchant’s website. Affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although other online merchants would opt to pay a fixed fee for the affiliate’s compensation.

Starting to make money online with affiliate marketing is relatively quick and easy. All that one has to do is to sign up as an affiliate for an online company that offers affiliate programs. An alternative method, and usually an easier one, is to sign up as a member of an affiliate network—a network that hosts a variety of affiliate programs for different online merchants or retailers. Signing up is usually free, although other companies and networks may require you to pay a particular fee. Such fees, however, are made as payment for additional services that the company may render, like providing you with tools and assistance to jumpstart your online business.

When you sign up with an affiliate marketing program, you are usually required to fill out a form containing information about yourself. Some affiliate programs may also require you to present the URL of your website and describe its contents. This will allow the retailers to verify that you actually have a website with contents that are relevant to their products. Some affiliate programs, however, won’t require you to have a website. After filling out the form and all, you are then allowed to choose the affiliate programs you want to promote.

After signing up with an affiliate program and being an actual affiliate, you are now ready to start making a lot of money by selling other people’s product online. How do you make money? There are actually a number of ways for you to earn money as an affiliate, and most of these ways depends on the type of affiliate marketing program you’ve gotten into.

Many affiliate marketing programs compensate their affiliates in either of three ways: pay-per-click (PPC), pay-per-sale (PPS), or pay-per-lead (PPL). In pay-per-click affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever he directs traffic to the merchant’s site. PPS and PPL affiliate marketing programs work rather differently. In PPS, the affiliate only gets paid when his referral converts into an actual sale. In typical PPS affiliate programs, the affiliate would usually get 15% to 20% commission for each conversion. PPL affiliate programs work the same way, although affiliates are paid a fixed fee whenever his referral converts into a lead for the company.

Some affiliate marketing programs are two-tier programs, wherein the affiliate is also allowed to recommend other affiliates to the merchant. In such affiliate programs, the affiliate would not only be paid for the traffic or sales that he would direct to the merchant’s site but also for the traffic or sales directed by the affiliates who signed up with the program through his recommendation.

Yet another way of earning more profits with affiliate marketing is through residual affiliate programs. Residual affiliate programs are affiliate programs where the affiliate gets paid a number of times for as long as the merchant keeps the customer the affiliate has referred to his site. One form of residual program gets the affiliate paid a commission every time the referred customer purchases something on the merchant’s site. Another form of residual affiliate program gets the affiliate paid a percentage every month for as long as the company keeps the referred customer.

With a lot of options available and a lot of ways to earn money, affiliate marketing is undoubtedly the most popular and the easiest way to make money by selling other people’s products online. As to how much money one can get from affiliate marketing actually depends on the affiliate. A dedicated and hardworking affiliate would certainly get more from the program compared to those affiliates who would simply sign up and forget about the program later.

6 Ideas for Viral Marketing

Here are six ideas to help you start your viral marketing campaign:

1. Purchase the branding rights to a viral E-book. Allow people to give away your free E-book to their visitors. Then, their visitors will also give it away. This will just continue to spread your ad all over the Internet.

2. If you have the ability to set up a forum or other bulletin board, you really have a great tool. Allow people to use your online discussion board for their own website. Some people don't have one. Just include your banner ad at the top of the board.

3. Do you have a knack for web design? Create some templates, graphics, etc. and upload them to your site. Then, allow people to give away your free web design graphics, fonts, templates, etc. Just include your ad on them or require people to link directly to your web site. Make sure that you include a link back to your site in the copyright notice and require them to keep your copyright notice in tact.

4. Write an E-book. Allow people to place an advertisement in your free E-book if, in exchange, they give away the E-book to their web visitors or E-zine subscribers.

5. Write articles that pertain to your product or service. Allow people to reprint your articles on their website, in their E-zine, newsletter, magazine or E-books. Include your resource box and the option for article reprints at the bottom of each article.

6. You can easily find products on the Internet that will sell you a license allowing you to distribute the product free of charge to other people. Look for those products that provide "branding rights". That is where you can include your own name, website, and contact information.

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Can You Really Use Articles To Build Your List?

Getting customers in your site should always be ranked as high as the importance of the quality and the excellence of the product and the services you provide. They should go hand in hand in providing your customers the satisfaction they get in exchange for the money they have paid for them. Customer service should as well be as fantastic so that the customers are provided with the same satisfaction.

One of the ways you can combine marketing and customer service is through opt-in marketing. With an opt-in list you get the opportunity to introduce your site and products on a good time basis. Opt-in marketing strategy is a marketing strategy that is virtually low cost and not time consuming. Here, you get the consent of your website visitors to subscribe to your newsletters and other promotional materials such as catalogs and free promotions.

Opt-in marketing uses your list of subscribers to send e-mail to. These e-mails will contain the materials you will send to your subscribers. It is essential that you present your promotional items in a manner that will catch the interest and the eye of your subscribers to keep them wanting for more. The best way to do this is to provide fun, entertaining and informational articles.

Well written articles full of content and useful information will help in building your list as more subscribers will be enticed your list. When they have read the samples of your contents in your sites, they will be intrigued as to what will come next. Subscribing to your newsletter will offer them a glimpse of what you have to offer next.

Many sites and companies have captured the importance of articles and this also aids in search engine optimization. As more people are heading towards the internet for their information needs, serving the right information to them via articles in your site will increase the flow of your website traffic. With more traffic, the percentage of your sales will grow. More sales turn into more profit.

There have been the rise for the importance of well written, information enriched and keyword packed articles for the content of their site as well as for newsletters. These articles provide the information many are seeking in the internet. If your site has them, more people will be going to your site for information and research.

Well written articles would also boost your sites reputation. If they are filled with many information you will be regarded as well informed and an expert on the subjects that you tackle. Your articles must be well researched so that the people will trust you. When you have gained their trust, they will always come for you for their needs on that subject.

In connection, you must write articles or commission them to tackle subjects that are closely connected with your type of business. If you have a site for a medicine tackling a certain disease, your articles must be about the diseases. Or if you sell materials for home improvements provide articles with those themes. Most articles searched for are tips, guidelines, methods, manuals and such. If you provide these articles to your customers and you have their trust, they will always go to your site for help and advice as well as for your products.

With the loyalty of these customers, they may subscribe to your opt-in list to receive all the information you have. If you provide them with the answers for that need, they will be happy to be receiving your newsletters as well as other promotional materials to keep them well informed. Others may even forward your newsletters to other people when they find a certain article interesting.

You should provide links in your newsletter so that when other people are reading it and wants to read more, they may click on the link and go to your site. With the articles you have in your site that are good, they may decide to sign up as well for your opt-in list. This will build your list and make it bigger.

Make sure to keep your subscribers happy and interested in your newsletters and promotional materials. Keep on posting and writing good articles for your site and newsletter. If you are not interested in writing them or if you just don’t have the time, there are many available well experienced and knowledgeable writers available to help you out. This is an investment that will pay for itself in time.

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