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
Plan To Succeed With Information Product Creation: Why You Need To Split Your Process Up
One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.
However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.
Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.
But why?
In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!
So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)
The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.
Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.
Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.
By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.
You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.
A Guide on Successful Product Creation and Internet Marketing
Product creation in Internet marketing is getting stiffer and stiffer nowadays owing to tough competition between Internet-based businesses. Putting up a new product requires plenty of brainpower and finances along with an ability to take risk. With that, even if you have the product well-set already, you have to position it strategically in the Internet landscape for others to notice. You should get the interest of Web users and turn them to actual customers. Aside from the usual physical products, many different products that thrive well on Internet marketing include E-books, membership sites, and video lectures.
The long and difficult process of product creation begins with ideas. They are easy to get – compared to the effort that comes with analyzing the market for that idea. Before the idea turns to a product, businesses often spend money, even amounting to millions of dollars, to ensure the success of the new product that emerges from an idea. Businesses undertake many types of market research and surveys before releasing their products to the public. Now, you may think that because your business is small, you can’t afford research or you don’t have to do research; you can and you should. The Internet allows you to disseminate materials needed for your market study to many people at once without your having to spend a cent.
It is a common maxim in business: Look at your destination first before mapping out your journey. So what are the goals you intend to accomplish with your product creation ventures? The everyday travails of your business may make you forget the end in sight. On the other hand, prepare to entertain new developments that come to your mind in your product creation. Your conception of a product may have started this way, but a few tweaks here and there along with some market research results and it ends up another way. Take it as the result of a creative process, not as a failure to reach your goal. After all, your product creation activities are intertwined with a long-term goal that you should strive to sustain at your utmost: profit generation. So if your less profitable initial idea evolves to a more profitable product, be thankful!
With your product made up already, start doing some aggressive Internet marketing. A product purchase typically comes after more than five times a customer is exposed to an informative call-to-buy message. Thus it is important to get the contact details, like the e-mail address, of potential customers who are on the brink of a sale. Use the results of your market research to determine the demographics to which you should concentrate your marketing efforts.
With consistent product creation, you can make an inventory of your products that you can market in due time. Just keep making products – the moment you succeed in making and marketing a product, customers are surely wanting more from you, so give it to them. Keep them on your side through constant product creation.