How to Save Money on Home Removals

Moving home can be expensive and many of us will be looking for ways in which we can reduce the costs a little.

You may have certain options to do so when considering your furniture mover.

Here are a few ideas in that domain that might prove to be useful.

1. Do not move 'old tat'.

If we are honest with ourselves, we probably have an awful lot of old rubbish hanging around our homes in places like garages and attics.

Much of it may never be used or even looked at again, apart from when you are moving home! Remember, on the whole, the less you move the lower your costs may be. So, get it cleared out and sold off.

2. Shop around for moving company quotations.

Do not necessarily assume that the cheapest is going to be the best because you will want to make sure that your precious personal possessions are being handled by experts not amateurs. Even so, prices can vary and shopping around is a good idea.

3. Where possible, plan and book your move well in advance.

If you are trying to arrange things at the last moment, the chances are your choice of moving company will be restricted as will your ability to shop around for the most attractive deals.

4. Do your own packing - but be careful here!

If you do your own packing, then it's pretty much a no-brainer that it will prove to be cheaper than asking professionals to do it for you.

However, caution is highly advisable! Poorly-packed items are likely to arrive damaged despite carefully and specifically your removals specialist has been in their handling of the items concerned. So, know your limitations and if you have any doubts, spend money on professional packing!

5. Check out any special deals.

Some parts of the year and sometimes even parts of an individual week, are known to be reliably quiet in professional removals circles.

If you can be very flexible on your removal date and discuss your requirements with a local expert removal company, you may find that they'll be able to offer you a particularly attractive deal if you are able to move at a time and date that's convenient to them.

It's worth asking and you have nothing to lose.

6. Ask your removals company for help with packing materials.

If you are doing your own packing, going out and purchasing lots of new boxes and related materials may prove to be very expensive.

You may find that your selected moving company may be able to supply you with certain materials that may have been used but which are still in excellent condition. Some may provide them entirely free whilst others may make only a notional charge.

It's only going to be a lot more cost-effective than going out and buying your own new ones from scratch!

As a final thought, do not forget to ask your moving company for their advice on any other options you might have for reducing your costs. Most will only only too well aware how much financial pressure is placed upon families and individuals these days and will do whatever they can to try and identify other opportunities for you to save money.

Maiden Name Search Strategies Or How To Trace Your Family Tree

While it is not always easy to discover the maiden name of a female ancestor, there are numerous approaches which can be successful, and will perhaps lead to you discovering a completely new branch of your family tree. Or perhaps you want to know more about an ancestor or another person you just know the maiden name of. Maybe you will even find living relatives you never knew anything about!

The most direct and straightforward method to locate maiden names, or find people by maiden name, is to search through marriage records. This can be done at sites like [http://www.findapersonservice.com] or [http://www.searchmaidenname.com] and is usually the best and most reliable option. Marriage records do not only include the marriage license, but also documents like marriage certificate, bonds, and announcements. It is of course helpful to know the marriage location and at least an approximate marriage date - otherwise it can be quite difficult to find the right record.

Another source of correspondence between maiden names and other cues are cemetery records. Quite often, they will list women's maiden names along with the married name, or may also include the maiden name as a middle name or initial.

Maiden name lookup is also possible via census, land, church, birth death records. Land is often inherited from father to daughter, with maiden names being included in the deeds. Church records are a good source for christening records, which typically include the names of the parents along with the maiden name of the mother.

Make Extra Money With Microstock

If you are a freelance designer, illustrator or photographer, you may have gotten to the stage where you are a bit fed up with swapping all your time for money. If that's the case, then how do you supplement your income from work with extra 'passive' income

The answer you're looking for may be Microstock.

Microwhat?

Microstock organizations (such as iStockphoto) were created to provide a way for people to buy and sell photos at a very cheap price. I remember when I used to design brochures 10 years ago and the clients used to spend over $ 100 per photo. Now it is more like $ 1 per photo.

Photographers and designers of all kinds of standards can resell their photographs and vector illustrations in a royalty free format for a small commission.

The concept is based around small price high volume, so your work has to be popular for you to make this worthwhile. In theory you'll have a lot more sales from a lot more customers.

How Do You Get Started?

iStockphoto and other Microstock sites have no cost to join up and become a member. There is usually a vetting process though where you need to submit various samples from your portfolio for initial approval to become a sponsor. This process time varies depending on the quality of the Microstock agency.

From that point on it is pretty self explanatory. You upload your fi work, people download your best work. You get some nice royalty for each downloaded.

Can You Earn Much Money?

Here's the killer question, and your probably wondering whether it's worth investing your time to make it work for you.

Well, responsibilities vary from site to site, some people get some quick results, some people take a while to get going.

After a bit of investigation, I've found that there are a few 'Microstock Celebrities' emerging such as Lise Gagne and Yuri Arcurs. They make a full time income from Microstock sales.

In Conclusion

In my opinion, Microstock should be part of your passive income strategy. It's going to be hard work in the beginning, but you will reap the rewards if you keep at it.

Discover Three Keys To Unleash Your Innate Power

Everyone, who comes to me for mental / emotional healing, is seeking to step into their DESTINY-not just for their own fulfillment, but for the future of our world.

Do you desire to step into your DESTINY?

However, when thinking about what it might take to get there, do you feel overwhelmed by your day-to-day responsibilities, limitations, lack of connections, or weighed down by your 'To-Do' list?

For centuries many philosophers have intensively researched human capacity, they each added to the discovery that each of us has 5 "Quantum Powers" that are dormant inside us, just waiting to be unleashed, that can allow you to overcome these perceivable limits and step into the larger destiny the Universe has for you.

In my 50+ years of studying philosophy from Thales of Miletus (c. 624 BCE - c. 546 BCE) (pre-Soctratic) Greek philosopher who is often considered the first philosopher and the father of Western philosophy to modern-day philosophers, I am sharing their discoveries, and how you can access your innate powers.

There are 3 keys to unlocking Your Quantum Powers. Overcome Your Limitations. Accelerate Your Evolution. You will have Greater Impact in your life and on the world.

While these powers do not include the ability to grow wings to fly, turn invisible, walk through walls, or leak tall buildings, they allow you to ...

• Quickly increase your skill-building
• Profoundly improve your health
• Expand time in your day
• Reduce stress
• Expand your creativity and success
• Attract more money and support the projects that are important to you

These "Quantum Powers" are primarily undiscovered in the majority of people, but some of the most successful people in history have used them to somehow seemingly impossible things. Think of first inventors, people's lives that seem to flow through calm or choppy waters.

After mastering these Quantum Powers myself and provoking their effectiveness with hundreds of people the past 30+ years, I am confident you too will be glad you discovered the 3 keys to unlocking Your Quantum Powers.

This moment is the first moment of the rest of your life ; it is time to step into your DESTINY-not just for your own fulfillment, but, your family, friends and for the future of our world.

These are the 5 Quantum Powers I will explore with you to discover what you need to shift:

• Expand time so you can do more in less time than ever before without adding stress to your life
• Experience "sustained fire" to keep you operating at your highest energy level through even the longest, most challenging days
• Partner with the energy of the Universe to more easily accomplish your goals and fulfill your dreams
• Expand and express your creativity without sacrificing your daily responsibilities
• Attract the money, people and resources you need to move your projects forward and achieve the level of success you're driving for and deserve.

Allow me to assist you to overcome your limitations and step into a life of true power, connection and fulfillment.

I will assist you to take the steps you need to take to claim your happiness, success, fulfillment, and empowerment? You can take advantage of the opportunity to create a new reality for your life?

You may need to ask for assistance to clear out the self-doubt, fear, guilt, shame or unworthiness.

Here's to living your empowered life NOW.

There is no justification about asking for assistance to create happiness and success. If you have read the books, taken workshops, had psychic readings, taken prescriptions and OTC drugs and still struggle; you may have mental / emotional blocks preventing you from moving into your happiness and desires.

This is an investment in your Self, your happiness, your success, your fulfillment, and your empowerment. Following these principals will change your life forever. My desire is two-fold to assist you to experience it for yourself as soon as possible and to see the joy, happiness and success you create. Remember only you can create your happiness and professional success.

It is your DESTINY ... You can do it! Call me if you need assistance to overcome any blocks or sabotaging behaviors!

For your convenience, I offer a 20-minute FREE no-obligation phone conversation to answer your questions and discuss how you can discover and create personal and professional success. http://drdorothy.net And you will receive value in the 20-minute conversation.

Typography Fundamentals

Typography is one of the considerable knowledge and industry fields, based on typefaces. They are an integral part of any graphic design, publishing or typing projects. However, before clashing with fonts' choice that appears to a major issue in design, one should get acquainted with typography fundamentals, accumulated from famous typographers for centuries, including basic terms, styles and principles.

Typography is a primary integral part of any web0design project, as its main purpose is to carry information. In addition, it is an art of text decoration, so it could readable and beautiful at the same time.

Type family is usually mistaken for types or fonts. In sober fact, it is a group of fonts of the same origin, structure and image. It is a set of stylistically similar characters that you can write or print. Type family includes figures, letters and symbols. Font is a narrows concept, which is determined by several factors, such as size and style. In general, Arial is a type family, and Arial Bold is a font of this type family.

Serif fonts or Antiqua embraces all the fonts with small serifs at the top or at the bottom of their characters. They are strongly recommended for large text paragraphs because of their low readability. These are good for headlines and title lines. Serif fonts have been used since the Middle Ages period (for instance, one can pay attention to OldStyle Century). The characteristic feature: the part written at certain angle is usually thin. Beside Old Style Century, the group of old-fashioned Antiqua fonts embrace such type families (remember this term?) Centaur and Goudy Old Style.

The 18th century was a turning point in typography. It was a period of transitional serifs . The difference between wide and thin character lines is strongly visible, which may be observed in numerous fonts of the time - Baskerville, Times New Roman, Caslon, Bookman, Georgia, etc.

Later they were replaced with Slab serifs , which feature the same width of the lines.

Sans serifs or Grotesque fonts appeared at the end of the 18th century. There are four main types of sans serifs: grotesque fonts (Franklin Gothic) are very similar to serif fonts; Neo-Grotesque fonts (Arial. Helvetica), Humanist fonts (Optima, Verdana, Frutiger) are marked with thorough calligraphic letters and Geometric sans serifs are the most advanced modern fonts. The last ones include Metro, Futura, Eurostile, Rodchenko, etc.

There are also some other groups of fonts of equal importance, including Script and Decorative, but mostly they came from basic serifs and sans serif fonts .

What Makes One Human Different From One Another?

There are so many people sharing and living this world together in different places. We recognize them from where they come from, in this case are the countries they live in or maybe the nationality they have. We also notice that different people believe in different beliefs. They also have different levels of wealth or authority. However, are those things really the way we differentiate one human with one another? Are those what mark every single human on earth? They are definitely not. These are not the right way to differentiate and divide every single human.

The Wrong Perception

How did all of these start? When did the stereotyping of each countries, religions, power or wealth owners start? There's no absolute answer. Suddenly, we are all living in the period where people can be judged from their nationalities or races, from their beliefs or religions, and from how wealthy or powerful they are.

Nowadays, we often hear the sentences, "This country is a war country. They love to start wars. They love to kill and attack others for their own purposes". Or another says, "This religion is the belief of violence, anarchy, and fanaticism". The other saying is, "Never believe rich people and also bosses or even government. They are a bunch of arrogant types who are only interested in gaining more and more profit for their own". Is it really?

It's not. These are the wrong perception and stereotypes that have grown a bit too far among the mind of people. It's not the skins, races or countries that form people and make them love doing bad things. It's also not the religions or beliefs as it's crystal clear that there's no religion that would teach the believers to do anarchism or violence just because some others disagree with them. And it is not power or money that makes someone arrogant. Even if power or authority and money can often blind a human-being, not all are that way.

These wrong perceptions are just our way to make it seem right to judge people and to have negative thinking about others as it seems easier to do so than to acknowledge the good traits that humans have. So then, what can really differentiate one human and another?

Choices, Behaviour, and Personality

Yes, these are the answers, their way of behaving or what choices they are making in their life. To repeat, it's not certain country, race, religion, or money and power that can make one to turn into bad. It's how they behave, what they intend to do, and the choices they decide in walking through their path of life.

All people have both dark and bright personality in them. But, which personality is going to win and appear to the surface, or how people are going to behave is a question that should be returned back to each person.

Also, how war is decided to start and how people want to be fanatic, violent, and be an anarchist are the choices they make on their own. It all started from the personality war that first appeared inside one soul that ended with a winner who then decided to start another war outside himself with another person.

So, the only lifetime question is, "which choices are we going to make" or, "how will the war inside ourselves win to lead our next step?" These things are questions that can only be answered by ourselves.

Search Engine Optimization: The Fundamentals

A website needs to be aesthetically appealing. Visiting a page that looks unprofessionally done or is difficult to navigate can lead to many people getting a poor impression of the organization. For this reason, a good website design is something many businesses in 2011 will invest in. The problem with that however, is often the site will then not be properly optimized and subsequently, not seen by many people.

There are five Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization. When properly rented-out, a website can earn a better search ranking leading to more traffic and more sales (or members, donors, etc). The position where a website is found on a search engine in influenced by two variables: the intensity and quality of the search engine optimization and the number of competitive websites. Nonetheless, here are some techniques used to achieve the five Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization.

1. Age of the URL

Often, this is a factor that a website owner has little influence on. The most important thing a website owner can do is get the site up as soon as possible. Once the URL is purchased, putting up an "Under Construction" page can help. Since the site is not indexed at this point, it is practically impossible for someone to fall upon your site unless directed to it by exact URL. The "Under Construction" page does however, count towards the age of the URL and therefore will help getting the site seen once the development of it is complete.

2. Onsite Optimization

When most people think about onsite optimization they think of keyword rich text. Selecting the best keywords and properly including them in the text is only one important step for this fundamental. Another important step is ensuring that the website's source coding is correctly written. Site's should be properly compressed to improve load times and meta tags, alt tags, headings, the description, keywords and the title should all be complete and keyword rich. Finally, the point that needs to be taken care of first - the site's structure. Also known as a website's theme or silo, a site's structure determines a user's experience and a search engine spider's ability to crawl it. A site's theme should go from most general to most specific in terms of topic.

3. Linking

It is important to remember that the Internet is often called the World Wide Web because of its structure. The more links that a site has going to it, the more paths are there for the spiders (and the visitors) to get to the site. By getting other sites to link to one company's website, it is increasing its visibility and its ranking. Google looks at the links like votes for the site. Inbound links pointing to pages other than the home page help get those pages ranked on Google as well. For many industries, it could require hundreds of links per page to get onto the first page of top search engines. To help with the task, posting on blogs and using social networking sites also sends links to the site.

With the recent changes in the use of social media on a website's ranking, it is believed that Facebook's 'Likes' and Twitter's 'Follow' count as votes to the site, much in the same way links count. This is why many businesses are pushing their Social Network presences in order to improve their search engine optimization.

4. Occurrence of Content Changes

CBS.com has over 20,000 visits per day from Googlebot, Google's web crawler. It is because major news sites like CBS and CNN change content every few minutes. This factor helps rank CBS and CNN as 10/10 by Google's page rank. Most businesses do not have the time to keep up with the news sites but changing the text and photos a few times per year positively impact a site's positioning. Google will judge as if the site is being maintained and updated and will position it ahead of a competitive site that is not maintained.

Using social media on sites like Twitter and Facebook, or a blog, allow for constant updates or 'tweets' under the organization's name. Today, this also counts as content updating and can get good positioning on search engines.

5. User Provided Content

More and more sites are asking for reviews and comments, there are two reasons for this. For one, it increases interactivity and therefore improvements user experience. Users spend more time on a site and with each minute that passes the chances of converting them into customers increases.

The second reason is founded in search engine optimization, and is the fifth and final principal. Content provided by users tells Google and the other top search engines that people actually use your site. It increases the chances that other users may find it interesting and therefore improves the website's position on results pages. Using a blog is feasible, the easiest way to get user content through comments. If an interesting posting is made, followers of the blog are likely to comment and Google recognizes this.

With these five Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization, a website's positioning on the search engines will improve. Depending on the quality of the work done, its intensity and the site's competition, it could greatly impact the positioning on search engines. If properly formatted, the better positioning translates into more traffic and higher conversion rates.