This is something I hadn’t heard about until recently, but it’s intriguing - the steadiness of gold, plus the investability of IRAs and 401k accounts. Simply put, a gold IRA is an IRA account that includes gold bullion as one of the investments. When you buy gold bullion and put it in a gold IRA account, it’s a nice way to offset paper stocks because the market price of bullion tends to rise as paper stocks fall. So you can buy bullion in an IRA as a traditional investment method, or to offset other investments you have. Given the current economic climate, it’s something worth discussing with your broker or investment advisor.

Gold has always been a hot item, remarkable in its ability to hold its value regardless of the economy. Historically, this ability to hold its value is a reason that so many countries used gold coins for so long. Gold has been around for a while–England’s first gold sovereign was issued in the 1400s–and still forms the backbone of most economies, including those that have moved from the gold standard.

Understandably, there has been a resurgent interest in gold lately, in particular gold bullion. You can buy gold bullion as a way to supplement an existing investment portfolio, or as a standalone investment.

According to GoldCoinsGain.com, when you buy bullion you are buying an asset that moves against paper investments, sowhile your stocks are tanking then your bullion will remain a solid–sorry, bad pun–investment.

Our friends over at Edward’s Hair Solutions have pointed us in the direction of a very disturbing trend: counterfeit GHD hair straighteners. In recent months, fake straighteners from the Far East have caused household fires in the United Kingdom and Canada. These deceptive knock-offs lack the safety features that have made GHDs so popular in the first place, and are of a lower build quality that helps to keep the prices down.

Edward’s offers a handy guide on how to spot fake GHD hair straighteners and the comments on that article point to this being a worldwide problem.

It’s a shame that consumers and shops alike (not to mention GHD) are suffering from these knockoff products. Shops like Edward’s Hair Solutions, which is an authorised seller of GHD hair straighteners, not only have to compete against the prices of counterfeit products but must convince informed consumers that they’re the real deal. It’s a conundrum - you either have people shopping on price alone who would much rather pay £50 than £85, or you have saavy consumers who are skeptical that a non-High Street store could be legit. (Worth noting that fakes have even been reported on Amazon, so nobody is immune to this criticism.)

What are you doing this holiday season? Are you even going to try to buy straighteners with all the confusion in the marketplace?

Ask anyone who has applied for a business loan, mortgage or even a credit card in the past year, and there’s no disputing that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to secure a line of credit. Businesses, in particular, are hurting from this belt-tightening - moreso than individuals, many businesses live on credit and floated money. With the world credit markets in crisis, many businesses are facing the option of changing the way they handle their finances, or going under.

Businesses who have been let down by banks and other traditional lenders in the past 12-18 months are increasingly looking to alternative methods to pad their capital requirements and pay the bills each month. Alternative services include seeking financial services from third-parties, who have the ability to transfer funds through ACH processing, eliminating a company’s need to rely strictly on banks for their loan needs. For many businesses, this means getting instant access to cash without delays due to paperwork, payment hold times or snail mail applications.

With electronic payment processing, businesses are able to move money securely and instantaneously, benefiting their customers and their supply chain in the process. It may be a break from popular, traditional methods, but there’s nothing popular about the current economic situation!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the new kid on the web development block. People with SEO skill sets help to build and market your website so that it gets high search engine rankings and maximum traffic; after all, traffic = conversions = profits.

Apogee Search, one of the world’s largest Search Engine Optimization firms, has lots of great resources on their site for both new and seasoned SEO professionals. One of my favourite resources is their very in-depth Search Engine Marketing Glossary. The glossary introduces SEO-specific terms - both technical (301 redirect, alt tag, etc) and non-technical (link farm, keyword density). This portion of the site is extensive, highlighting a few terms that even I’ve never heard of (and SEO is one of my day jobs)! Read the rest of this entry »