Friday, February 23, 2007

Buying The Best Photo Printer - 10 Tips

Printing digital photos at home can be a fun, creative experience or an expensive printing disaster. If you want to have an enjoyable photo printing experience, you must have a good photo printer, the right printer ink and of course the proper photo paper.

Choosing a photo printer these days is a lot like walking into a car lot and saying show me a dependable car. Photo printers are sold absolutely everywhere and they all claim to be the best photo printer on the market. The Canon Pixma, HP Photosmart, Epson Stylus, Lexmark Home Photo, and the Sony Digital Photo Printer are all popular well made models, but how do you know which one will give you the best photo prints for your money?

Purchasing an inkjet photo printer rather than an all in one printer or a multifunction laser printer is the most cost effective way to get dazzling digital prints. Inkjet photo printers are manufactured specifically for photo printing. They use intricate print technologies that will produce high quality crystal clear photographs.

Selecting the best photo printer that will give you the absolute best clarity when printing your masterpieces is easy when you understand that image quality is all about resolution. Specifically, how many dots per inch (DPI) of ink the printer lays on the paper. A good rule of thumb to use when you're out shopping is; the higher the resolution or DPI number, the smaller the dots and, in theory, the better the prints.

Another important specification for inkjet photo printers is ink drop size. Usually measured in picoliters; the smaller the number, the more ink per square inch can be printed on the paper. The more ink on the paper, the more precise and lifelike the print. Canon's new Pixma iP5200 has a rating of one picoliter, the best rating in the industry, but you can find many photo printers rated at one and half and two picoliters.

Photo printers with such high specs start at about $150, which may seem expensive since you can go out a pick up an inkjet for 50 bucks, but it's really not very expensive once you see how much the printer ink and photo paper is going to cost you.

Let us do the research for you, check out our printer reviews of the Top 5 Best Photo Printers In America at pcPrinterReveiws.com and pick up your online guide to finding cheap printer ink and printer paper while your there.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

How to Buy Outdoor Furniture Online

Buying furniture online is a fairly new experience for many people. Although some people may be wary of buying their outdoor furniture online, there are actually several benefits of online shopping. For instance, you do not have to go to one of the big chain stores to fight the lines, deal with the possibility of screaming kids, load the furniture up in your own car, take it back to your home, and assemble it yourself.

Buying furniture online is not that much different than shopping at your local furniture or outdoor store. However, it is extremely important know the Web sites where you will be shopping. Make sure you do your research on each site before placing an order for a piece of outdoor furniture. When placing an order for something as large and expense as a piece of furniture, you should check out each website’s shipping and return policies to check for any hidden fees that may be involved. It is also often beneficial to read online reviews of each store and see if they are listed on sites like BizRate, that show customer satisfaction. And before you place any order online, make sure that the checkout process is secure. A secure site will begin with https, or have a little lock in the lower right hand corner of the page.


However, your first avenue to find the right internet store for buying furniture is to do a quick informal survey of your friends and loved ones. Ask them if they have ever shopped online to buy outdoor furniture. Then ask them what sites they looked at, which ones they actually bought from, and how the overall experience went. Valuable feedback from friends and family should never be overlooked when investing in something special for your home.

If your loved ones feel like they could shop at a site again, then you should feel comfortable giving this site a shot. After you have compiled a list of Web sites from friends and loved ones, you’re next step is to do your own Web search for outdoor furniture. You want to look at the big name retailers, as well as the smaller more personal companies that are online today. While the big e-tailers are sometimes able to offer perks like free shipping, the smaller stores are often able to provide you with a more personal shopping experience and immediate customer service.
By now you should have a list of sites to look at. Next, you want to compare the price of the furniture, any shipping costs involved, sales tax, any kind of warranties and guarantees they offer, and whether or not they have references or any sort of customer ratings or reviews on the Web. One advantage of shopping online at a smaller internet store is that you only have to pay sales tax on your purchase if you live in the same state as the physical location of the web site. This little perk could add up to quite a bit of savings when purchasing large items like outdoor furniture.

Now that you’ve narrowed down your list to the top few stores that offer the greatest prices, the cheapest rates on shipping, and the best warranties on their furniture, you should actually then make sure they have the furniture that you want. The best way to do this is to get the names and brands of the furniture they sell, and see if there is a brick and mortar store nearby that sells it. Then you can go to the actual showroom and see whether or not you like the furniture in person. If you are not able to find a showroom that sells the furniture you are interested in, make sure you double check the store’s return policy in case you are not satisfied with the look or feel of the furniture.

While shopping online for outdoor furniture may seem like a daunting task, following these easy steps will decrease your shopping headaches. And before you know it, you and your family will be enjoying your brand new outdoor furniture.

Thomas Easterday is the Director of Marketing for The Cedar Station. The Cedar Station carries a complete line of Outdoor Furniture, including great Garden Benches for your enjoyment. For more information about The Cedar Station please visit http://www.thecedarstation.com/ .
www.Amazines.com

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Downloadable Audio Books: A Popular Trend

Audio books are a recording of traditional books, read by a narrator. They are available in abridged and unabridged versions. The abridged books are altered at the narrators' discretion but still carry the original intent of the story. Unabridged titles are read word for word form the original printed text.

Audio books are gaining popularity all over the world for many reasons but mostly because you don't have to give up reading just because you are too busy. Many of us enjoy reading a good book and have favorite authors whose books you had to buy and carry with you all over the house in the hope that you will get the chance to open and read it as soon as you get the chance. Unfortunately when we read our whole body comes to a stand still as we engage the attention of the brain through the eyesight without which you cannot conduct other activities. However since the audio books have been introduced you can listen to your favorite book while doing other things like chores or driving. People who spend a large amount of time traveling find audio books to be an excellent way to put normally wasted time to good use. The fact that audio books can be listened to multiple times over several days helps with memory retention of the content. It is estimated that audio books produced $187 million in revenue last year and the projected sales for the near future is in the billions of dollars.

Downloadable audio books from a reliable source such as www.EarForAudiobooks.com is an economical alternative to joining a book of the month type club. The advantage of a downloadable audio book is that you can gain access to it at any time of the day and have the freedom to download the audio books immediately. So, you can have 24x7 downloadable audio books available and there is no need to wait for books to arrive after being shipped for delivery. What's more, there is no time limit nor are there any due dates and once you've downloaded the audio book you are the owner forever.

Many people today have embraced audio books for the sake of the trees being used to create the paper book besides the fact that they are extremely convenient not to mention easy to carry and store. You can listen to an audio book on your ipod or MP3 player by downloading to whole book on it, which fits in the bag or coat pocket.

Downloadable audio books are growing in popularity because they are easily accessible, affordable, and portable. They fit into today's busy lifestyles and the increase in sales is proof that more and more consumers are discovering audio books.

Article's Source : www.Amazines.com

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

E-Commerce Basics For Online Retailing In 2007

Online selling is one of the few bright sectors in the retail firmament. You will be aware of the overall growth rates: 50% is not uncommon. For mail order companies, online sales routinely count for over 30% of total sales. The pace of change is phenomenal: marketing concepts and tools are fast developing and the body of insight into what works and what doesn't is expanding exponentially.

So, what will make the difference in 2007? Recent evolution of what really matters on the Internet is less focused on technology, but on sales & marketing insight, good old fashioned attention to detail and sound operational execution. The technology is evolving, but we are of the opinion that this is the least critical factor at present. Provided your site works and copes with reasonable sales growth, that is.

Concentration next year will be on what works for customer acquisition, using pay-per-click advertising, affiliates, community marketing, as well as conventional catalogue marketing. Affiliates can generate up to 10% of your online sales managed well: PPC campaigns can easily account for 50% of total sales, but nothing beats the long-term value of good search results in Google, now 60%+ of the UK market.

Once the visitors come in, it's a question of making your products easy to find and navigate. It's amazing the difference a little analysis of your catalogue can make to a site's usability: the number of products, the number of categories and product groups and factoring this into the site's layout. Bizarre marketing categories and names may not prove attractive to first-time shoppers. Small tricks like best-sellers and featured or favorite categories can scoop 20% of your home page visitors. Bear in mind, of course, that only 40-50% of all visitors on a well-performing will actually visit the home page.

More frightening are the howlers some sites can make on conversion (even the very largest), making it challenging to checkout. It's surprising what simple improvements can be made to steer your customers through the process. Basket drop-off rates of 50% are not uncommon in the industry - clawing that back can pay huge dividends.

But, at the end of the day, you manage what you measure. Bill Gates said the Internet is the world's largest reporting engine and it's true. Even with tools like Google Analytics, it's possible to sell the source of visitors, where they go on a site and what they buy. The detailed analysis of your site's performance as a sales machine is critical to success: even small changes can produce massive returns.

Roger Willcocks is managing director of Screen Pages http://www.screenpages.com, which provides e-commerce services to online retailers. To receive a free E-commerce Heailthcheck, visit the Screen Pages website
Source of Article : www.Amazines.com

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Thursday, February 1, 2007

Shopping Guide

Some people, unwilling to face the thought of death, never buy coverage at all. Others feel guilty about the prospect of leaving loved ones behind end up buying too much. Buying life insurance is a personal decision and what type or kind of policy you choose or use is based on your individual needs. While no insurance plan is perfect, having the facts to make an informed decision can make a difference. Take some time to balance the costs, coverage and convenience of any plan that you are considering.

Before putting your signature on an insurance policy, it is important to study the contract back to back. The policy contract spells out what you need to do to obtain and maintain coverage. It also will identify situations in which the insurance company would not cover a claim. This may happen, for instance, if the policy holder commits suicide within a year or two of the issue date. It also should indicate whether the premiums will remain the same during the term of the policy.

Finally, you would want to verify that the policy accurately reflects the information you supplied in your application. Is the name of the beneficiary correct? Mistakes could cause problems later on. Read the fine print and by all means ask questions if you are uncertain. Granted, sitting down to review an insurance policy doesn't sound like much fun. However, it is worth the time.

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