Values based investing
What is value- based investing?
It is investing in companies which line up with your values.
A value-based investment portfolio can be based on environmental factors, moral factors, or your faith.
Investments based on a set of values is usually called, “Ethical Investments,” but it really all depends on your code of ethics when deciding on what constitutes ethical investing. It is more commonly known as “Socially Responsible Investing,” but I prefer to call it “Values Based Investing,” because not everyone shares the same values.
What may be ethical for one person may not be so for another, therefore, it is up to each one of us to do our homework and read the information provided by the fund’s website. It is important to know what is ethical to you when choosing a fund to invest in.
A prudent investor after he or she has done their homework will discern between what is fact and fiction and whether a company actually lives up to their claims.
Green washing is when a company uses marketing to make claims of being a socially responsible company but in reality they do not practice what they preach.
A company may make donations to charities but that does not necessarily make them green, ethical, or socially responsible.
One company I know has stopped selling coal yet sells imported clothing from third world companies where the working conditions in the clothing factories are unknown.
There are several variations of value-based investments and they come under different names; here are the ones I know of:
SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE INVESTMENTS
These are investments which follow socially acceptable guidelines. They invest in companies whose activities are not damaging to the environment. You can be sure that these kinds of investments do not have funds invested in companies which are involved in fossil fuels.
ETHICAL BASED INVESTMENTS
An investment fund based on ethics may not invest in companies involved in the gambling, alcohol, and cigarette industry. Any investment related to the meat industry may also be off limits if you are a vegetarian.
FAITH BASED INVESTMENTS
Some churches have their own investments which are used to fund various church activities. For many investors in church funds the return on their money is a secondary consideration to the work carried out by the church with investor’s money.
GREEN INVESTMENTS
This is basically concerned with climate change and the environment. It is another name for socially responsible investing.
IMPACT INVESTMENTS
Another name for socially responsible investments.
It is important to follow the basic rules of investing and to diversify your investments and invest according to your age and life goals. Investing in mutual funds is an excellent way to reduce your risk as your money is spread over different companies. Diversification as it is commonly known is a good strategy to have particularly when you are older and have less time to recover from financial setbacks. The young ones are able to take more risks.
Balancing risk and reward is an art and to become really good at it requires experience.
Socially Responsible Investing
How To Succeed At Online Product Creation The Easy Way
Product creation could be a frightening subject for a lot of Internet marketers to face. Some folks who get in the game with the intention of making a full time income are completely ignorant as to how an online business operates. One of the most profitable ways to create online cash is by creating a product that others are happy to pay for.
Product creation is legitimate method of generating money through internet marketing but many entrepreneurs get it wrong. They start by imitating their Internet marketing gurus by creating information products on Internet marketing in hopes of getting rich the way their heroes did. The problem is that they usually don’t know what they are doing and enter a highly competitive niche with very little marketing experience or connections.
Here are a few tips for effective product creation that may help you get on the right track:
Start by finding a profitable niche with low to moderate competition. If you conduct some rudimentary market research and keyword research, you’ll find many opportunities in areas that will surprise you. Amazon and eBay are two great places to brainstorm for product ideas.
Developing Your Product does not have to be a difficult project. You can find experts in the right field for your niche and pay them to write the material while an artist designs the packaging and website or blog. You can outsource the entire product creation part of the project after you conduct the research and testing to ensure profitability.
Sales and marketing strategies should be created while developing the product and learning about the market. Some experienced marketers use pay per click to drive traffic to their offer page; some folks outsource the entire marketing campaign to affiliates through ClickBank or other affiliate programs.
Product creation does not need to be hard, particularly when the merchandise is electronic. E-books, videos, audio and multi-media products sell very well. They are distributed immediately to customers electronically. Once you have a good feel for a niche market, try to service your customers with associated products and upgrades. If you want to earn money online through product creation, you must understand supply and demand. The majority of new online marketers fail miserably because they go after highly competitive markets or forget to research their chosen niche properly. You have to create your products according to the needs, wants and desires of the prospective customers.
Using Social Networking to Grow Your Real Estate Investing Business For Free – 10 Quick Tips
If you’re not leveraging the internet to grow your real estate investing business, you’re really missing out. There is a lot you can do in the internet marketing space, but this article specifically discusses how to leverage social networking for real estate investing. Many social networking applications enjoy widespread use and best of all, they are free! Below are 10 quick tips on how you can use popular social networking tools.
Twitter:
(1) Use Twellow to identify real estate investors in your local areas and follow each one of them. This tool is like the Twitter Yellow Pages and categorizes Twitter users by industry. You can quickly do a search on the Real Estate category and put the name of your city in the search box. You’ll find a lot of people I’m sure! Also, a new feature called Twellowhood also allows you to find people based on location so check that out as well.
(2) Use a free tool such as TweetLater to set up automatic direct message responses to all of your followers that includes a URL to your website or squeeze page. (On a related note, be sure to turn off all email notifications on your Twitter account…unless you actually want your email inbox to be completely swamped!)
(3) If you’re a wholesaler, tweet about any real estate deals you’re looking to sell. Be sure to include a link to more information on the property. I suggest using bit.ly a simple to use URL shortener because tweets can only be 140 characters long and URLs can be quite lengthy. Bit.ly is also great because it provides real time click tracking.
(4) Be sure to retweet “RT” other investors tweets that have useful information…this helps you build trust and credibility and will grow your followers. Here’s how it works…let’s say a local investor @BobLocalREI has a great tweet that says “Great article about how to profit with real estate in declining market ” To retweet this, you would simply tweet the following: “RT @BobLocalREI Great article about how to profit with real estate in declining market .”
Facebook:
(5) Join existing Facebook groups with real estate investors from your local area. You can do this by clicking on “Groups” and then searching groups for terms such as “Chicago real estate investors”,”Boston foreclosure investors”, or “Orange county real estate investors” Be sure to introduce yourself to the group and post your offerings on the group’s public wall.
(6) Create your own Facebook group for real estate investors in your local area. Invite the members of the other groups to join your group. Encourage other wholesalers to join as well and post their deals to the group as well. Don’t make it a private group – make it open to all. This will create an excellent buyers list for you and will also connect you to other investors you can do joint ventures with.
(7) Add a form to your Facebook profile that allows people to opt-in to your newsletter that provides tips, news, and details of your wholesale/retail deals. There’s a great blog post from Return on Subscriber that walks you through how to add the form.
(8) Use the “update status” feature on Facebook. Your status can be about the everyday happenings with your real estate investing, it can mention a specific deal, it can be whatever you want. Also there are multiple tools that will integrate your Twitter and Facebook accounts which is a major time saver for those using both applications.
YouTube.com and other Social networking video sites:
(9) Search engines love video! Create videos with useful “How to” tips or information that is relevant to real estate investing (could be focused on buyers, sellers, or both). Consider using the Annotations feature within your videos in order to highlight important points in your video. With Annotations you can make thought bubbles, text in boxes, or links to other videos (but not to external websites).
Be sure that your video title and description are very well written and full of keywords that will help people find your videos. Before you get started, think about who your target audience is and make a list of a few real estate investing related topics that you can create videos for.
(10) Duplicating your video content is ok! You can post the same exact video in multiple content sharing sites (use TubeMogul for free!) and get maximum exposure from the search engines.