Choosing and Caring for Silver Jewellery

Since the dawn of time, women have been attracted to beautiful things, and have wanted to look good. It's no wonder that jewellery ranks as one of the top accessories women favor in the quest to look their best. Silver is a great addition to your jewellery collection and can be dressed up in many different ways. Silver is a precious metal that is easily manipulated to form various shapes, according to what you want to achieve. Due to its semi-durability, it's mixed with a bit of copper to strengthen and protect it from damage. This means that great care should be taken to maintain the original shine and look of your silver jewellery.

When shopping for silver jewellery, make sure that the type you're looking for is sterling silver. Check that the silver is actually sterling by looking for the number .925 engraved on the jewellery. What this means is that 92.5 percent of the jewellery is pure silver, with a bit of copper and nickel added in. What you want to avoid is any jewellery that is 'silver plated' because, quite simply, this is just metal with a coating of silver, and with time, the coating will wear away and reveal the inferior metal underneath.

Silver jewellery is a great way of adorning any outfit, and is perfect for all occasions. Some tips for caring for it include: never swim in your silver jewellery. The silver will react with the chlorine or other minerals in the water and fade much faster with time. When you're out of the shower and preparing yourself to leave the house, don't lotion yourself up with your silver ring, bracelets or earrings on. They should be the last thing you put on.

Remove your jewellery and keep it safe before working out at the gym to avoid discoloration. It's a good idea to invest in a silk pouch that will serve as somewhere you'll store your silver jewellery when you're not wearing it, protecting it from scratches and accidental bumps. Regularly polish and clean your silver jewellery. You can easily do this with warm water and a soft cloth every so often, and then polishing it using a specially prepared lacquer that you can find in most jewellery shops.

Before buying silver jewellery, make sure that you're not allergic to it. Most people don't know what it is that they're allergic to when they get a reaction from wearing jewellery. In most cases, silver allergy is in fact due to the other metals that are found in sterling silver jewellery. You could speak to your doctor about this and ask for a test to confirm this allergy.Silver is always relatively low in price, especially in comparison to gold, so it won't put a dent in your finances. It looks good and gives that extra sparkle to an outfit, making you stand out. Silver jewellery is a perfect gift idea that will bring a smile to the person receiving it, and will carry memories of fondness for years to come.

Have you been trying to find beautiful Toowoomba silver jewellery? Discover one of the best Toowoomba Jewellers for amazing jewellery today.


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The Advantages Of E-Commerce From The Online Trader's Point Of View

Much has been written about the advantages of e-commerce from the customer's point of view, but it is just as advantageous from the business person or merchants point of view.

With e-commerce, suppliers can reduce costs to manage their inventory or stock because there are many very good web based management systems on the market that make automating the task easy. That is of course if you decide to hold stock. Many online businesses use a drop ship type business whereby the e-commerce business does not have to hold stock at all.

E-commerce expands the marketplace from a local or national business into an international one overnight. The ramifications of this are considerable indeed for the online retailer. Admittedly if the website owner is selling perishables it will be hard to do business outside a certain geographic area, but otherwise there is considerable scope for.

Online retailing is "tailor made" for monitoring customers buying habits. You can track the interests and preferences of customers and what is very important and rarely appreciated enough, is the fact that you can suggest follow up products and services to existing customers.

The next advantage from the online retailer's point of view is that you do not need physical premises to trade from. In fact many "bricks and mortar" retailers have taken the (often very emotional) decision to close their premises and go completely online. We recently saw an item on television about a lady in a nearby town who shut her millinery business, so saving about £1,500 per month in costs and expenses related to having a premises in the high street. Her turnover dropped by about 15% to 20%, but she was immediately a lot more profitable and her cash flow improved overnight!

Finally when you start your online business you very quickly realise that there are many many opportunities to use the flexibility of the business model in a number of ways. As an example you can start to outsource mundane tasks as much as possible. However this means sitting down and taking a very hard look at all your working practices. It is very easy to fall into the habit of chasing every customer as much as possible and trying to do as much as possible yourself. But remember that eighty percent of your time must be spent on marketing your online business and that means you have to study and learn the techniques to do this. The main thing is to find a company that takes you through every step of setting up an online business and train and help you to begin to make sales online.

Peter Robson is an accountant with over 30 years experience in the small company sector. With his business partner, Debbie Crossley he runs a company helping people set up and run e-commerce businesses. For more information go to http://www.yournichebusiness.co.uk/


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Essential Tools for the Amateur Jewellery Maker

As Jewellery makers, one of the most common decisions we face is whether or not to buy more tools. If so, which ones? Often the choice comes down to "Should I buy another tool or should I buy more material?" For those relatively new to jewellery making, it's an especially daunting question and without proper guidance it can be a costly one as well.

To learn anything new we need three things; tools, materials, and instruction. This trinity is the foundation for developing any kind of skill or ability. Knowing we need some of each to get started, how do we know which, what, when and why? We could buy tools endlessly and still never have all of them.

I find it's better to buy fewer tools and more materials. It's not only the wisest approach to long-term development; it's also the best investment strategy for getting started.

It actually doesn't take many tools to make handmade jewellery. Most aspiring jewellery makers start off buying more tolls than they need. Often they are encouraged by tool makers and vendors that they must have a certain tool to make jewellery. They might also be influenced by others who have more tools than they know what to do with, and definitely have more than they need.

So, where to begin? First we have to have an idea of what we want to do. Let's assume that we want to learn to make jewellery by fabrication directly with metal. The best place to start is with solid foundation skills: forging, forming, bending, sawing, piercing, filing, and cold construction. Just these techniques alone allow us to make jewellery endlessly. They are certainly sufficient to develop and refine our skills and to learn our material.

If you're just starting to explore metal, you don't yet know which techniques you like. Buying many specialised tools will financially confine you to a particular technique before you've decided if you like it. I would suggest beginning with the bare minimum of tools and buying additional tools only if you determine that you want to continue. This will be particularly true for tools used in making handmade rings.

There is an adage that you should always buy the best tool that you can afford. This is sound advice, but not in every situation. I suggest good quality for specific items, especially pliers, but sometimes an adequate is sufficient to get started. Buying economical tools where acceptable allows us to buy a few extra items, invest in more material, or pay for instruction.


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Small Business Ecommerce Solutions - Helping With New Business Start Ups

Every day there are numerous new business start up ideas by people from around the world. And with the Internet available with so much information, all you need to do is to get online to see what's available and to put your ideas together. Or those who wish to start their own online business but do not seem to know where to start other than getting on eBay or Amazon (provided the country you are living in offers these), you could consider checking out the available small business ecommerce solutions.

Start Building Small

No single building every appeared magically in one week. So don't expect to get your online business up and running within a week unless you had already taken the time to do your research and come up with a solid business plan. Many new business owners start up by trying different types of ecommerce software. And they learned by trial and error. Most business owners may have a bit of Internet knowledge on how to get things set up so the popular shopping cart software providers have taken a lot of time and effort to make their solution as simple and easy to use as possible. This is to help new merchants start off steadily by providing them plenty of ropes and guidance to show them how things are done.

All The Tools In One Place

If you have never built your own website or online store before, you would not want to waste a lot of time, effort and energy looking for the tools that you will need to get it done. That's why these ecommerce solution providers offer everything under one roof for faster and easier access. Most of the features and tools that you need to build an online store would be available in the admin panel categorized properly. And even if you didn't know how to use them, there are plenty of short videos and easy description to teach you which you do not have to pay extra for.

Affordable And Versatile

While many ecommerce software out there may be affordable, it is also important that new business start ups choose those that are versatile. Not only do you need a business plan but you will also need to prepare a list of questions to ask the service provider. Things like how customizable if the cart and whether they allow for expandability as your business grows.

Summary

So if you're planning to start your own business, be encouraged that you can get plenty of help by accessing the Internet and looking for these small business ecommerce solutions. Don't be afraid to try them out.

Harry Goldberg is a retired ecommerce entrepreneur who has built and sold over 100 online stores. He now encourages people who wish to start up their own new business to check out the range of small business ecommerce solutions which they can find easily online. He also encourages them to use an ecommerce software that is affordable, powerful and versatile and to think long term for their business.


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Film Fatale: Lights, Camera, Madness Review

Film Fatale: Lights, Camera, Madness is the perfect example of a hidden object game that does not focus on overly artistic graphics and visualizations but on the other hand, delivers a magnificent storyline coupled with one of the best game play presentations I had this month. With that said, some people are easily turned off during the first few minutes of playing, but in my opinion it is worth it for us to take a peek further down this game's rabbit hole.
The game's storyline takes you back in the bustling years of the 1940's wherein a man named M. W. Vernon is at the forefront of that time's movie and film industry. Being a man of great vision and innovation, he built a movie studio on his own private island to begin making his best movie yet. However, this project was unable to continue due to several mishaps and troubles that fell into his work. On another time, your mother and retired movie star Rita Rey has been kidnapped. And now, it is up to you to save her in Vernon's island while trying to contend with the madness of the once great director.
As I had said on the first paragraph, Film Fatale: Lights, Camera, Madness is all about presentation. Even with the unimpressive graphics, the developers made sure that you are always gripped tight by the story from beginning until end. The voice overs are fantastic and the background music fits the game very well. All in all, it is a very fun game, and that is the most simple but straightforward adjective I can think of to describe it - fun. Something sometimes lost in technicalities of reviews such as this one that oftentimes I am lost for words on how to describe the experience brought forth by games like these.
The game is hidden object, but most of the scenes are less cluttered with stuff. Puzzles are also unique and well thought of, but ranges only from easy to moderately challenging at best. It really felt like you are just breezing through the game eager to know on what happens next to the story. I guess that is the only flaw of Film Fatale: Lights, Camera, Madness. It felt short, but that may only be me.
I highly recommend everyone to give this game a try and see for themselves on how brilliant this game is. Film Fatale: Lights, Camera, Madness is a highly fun and addictive game, and I am looking forward for more from this game's developers.

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Wholesale Sourcing Tips for Newbies

If you want to sell wholesale products online, this can be a very profitable business. But in order to operate a successful online store, there are a few things you will have to do well.

1. You need to be able to create a website that appeals to people

2. You need to sell the right products,

3. And, you need to be able to get people to your website so you can present your offering.

Luckily, there are great resources to help you set up your e-commerce store. Some are paid and some are free to use and take advantage of.

Sourcing Great Products to Sell

One of the key aspects to a successful e-commerce business is that you need to find the right products to resell and source them from a good wholesaler. There needs to be a good flow of information between you and your wholesaler. The products need to be in demand and they need to be of good quality. The pricing needs to allow you to make money. Also, the delivery transactions, whether they are to come to you or are to go directly to your customers, needs to be smooth.

Here are some tips for sourcing good wholesalers to deal with:

· Learn the market you're planning on working in. This will help you develop your website in a way that will appeal to your target audience. This will increase your chance of getting website traffic and of making sales.

· Check out some dropship and wholesale B2B (business to business) directories. There are many of these and they can help you find companies to deal with. You might even start here before you know what you want to sell as you can get ideas for various products that you might want to sell from your website.

· Carefully research companies you're considering dealing with before you send money to them.

· If you choose a company to deal with, especially an overseas company, do a small test order before ordering a large one.

· If possible, use escrow services with new companies to be sure you are protected. An escrow service will hold the money for the transaction and will only release it to the wholesale company when you agree. And with escrow services, the money typically won't be released back to you unless you agree or the wholesaler wins in a moderated arbitration session.

E-commerce websites can be highly profitable. Researching to find the right products coupled with the right strategic relationships and site execution could help you achieve success.

Matthew Bredel runs TheWebReviewer, a site that provides home based business reviews. If you're interested in dropship and wholesale areas, consider checking the Alibaba review (Alibaba is a global marketplace that connects you to a world of wholesale companies in China. Also, read Matt's blog, Inside the Internet Marketing Mind at http://www.matthewbredel.com/1601/thinking-about-starting-an-online-store-where-do-you-start.html to learn more about setting up and running a successful e-commerce store.


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The Surprising Adventures of Munchausen Review

The Surprising Adventures of Munchausen is another Big Fish Games exclusive that graced me initially as possibly another hidden object game that is like all the others that came before it. However, this game also teaches me to not judge a book by its cover, because as I soon found out, it is not a hidden object game. This game goes beyond hidden object as it is more an adventure, and a whimsical, crazy and humorous adventure at that.

The story of the game starts as some evil wizard destroyed the Heart of the Kingdom. Without any light and prosperity in his kingdom, the king was offered a solution to marry his daughter to a strange and evil man that can bring the king an enormous amount of money. Desperate and hating her predicament, the princess calls for Baron Munchausen for help. The Baron is eager to do so, and as he enters the scene, prepare to have so much fun unlike nothing the crazy Munchausen can.

For those who do not know yet, the origins of The Surprising Adventures of Munchausen game predates to an actual living man that lived from 1720 to 1797. He told many outrageous and farfetched stories of his adventures that lived to this day on books and movies. Well now, you can experience a made up tale of the famous Baron through this game. And true to his many adventures, this game is also very unique, very funny and full of Munchausen's comical braggadocio that you will definitely enjoy playing it until the end.

Really, this game started quite amateurish to me and I was expecting no surprises, but all that impression blew away the instant that the game play starts. You see, the hidden object scenes follow a different kind of game play. Well, you still need to find objects, but instead of a list, you need to associate other items on your list with these hidden objects. Other than this, other game play mechanics include helping Munchausen by following listed instructions and the usual adventure game play where you need to use inventory items to keep Munchausen progressing in his adventure.

In my opinion, The Surprising Adventures of Munchausen is really one fine game that if you are a seasoned hidden object player, you definitely need something like this to change your perspective, that not all games like these are gritty, dark and eerie, but can also be simple and fun. Too bad that the adventure is quite short, but I am looking forward to a sequel just the same.


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Tips for Getting Ready to Set Up an Online Store

If you're thinking about becoming an online entrepreneur and aren't sure what sort of business you want to get into, a bit of homework is in order. If you want to consider owning an online store as your business, there are many potential benefits of owning an online store:

You're Not Bound By Borders

If you open an online store and set up the ability to ship products out, you can find customers from just about anywhere. Optimizing and advertising could bring you clients from far and wide.

You're Not Bound By Specific Store Hours

Selling online means you can sell at any hour of the day or night. The right setup could make it simple for you to earn money from your website even while you're asleep or on vacation.

Dropshipping

Some online store owners warehouse the goods they sell and some simply set up dropshipping relationships. In a dropshipping relationship, you facilitate the order and gather a commission rate but you never have to touch the physical product as you have a relationship with a wholesaler or distributor who does the order fulfillment services on your behalf.

Tips for Researching Your E-Commerce Options

If you like the sounds of starting an online store, you'll want to do a lot of homework to get ready to launch your store. Areas to investigate will include:

· Setting up your online store. You can find web designers who will do it for you but you can also find website store memberships that will let you create your own store even with limited technical knowledge.

· Sourcing wholesale products. There may be local wholesalers you can deal with but you might opt to look a bit wider to see if you can find products at deep discounts. You might opt to look at China wholesalers, for instance.

· Setting up a merchant account. How will you get paid for goods? There are various service providers that can help you get money from customers.

· Shipping. What sort of methods will you use for shipping?

· Customer service. Will you handle inquiries? How will you do that? There are services you can use to be a virtual support desk. Or, you might opt to do this yourself until volumes grow enough to justify paying for a customer service desk.

· Website traffic acquisition. How will you attract people to your store? Will you do a paid advertising campaign or an organic SEO (search engine optimization) strategy? Learning about getting your new site found is going to be a big part of your homework. Traffic won't necessarily show up just because you create an online store so be prepared to learn about e-commerce marketing.

E-commerce ventures can be very profitable but you'll need to do some serious prep work to get things moving and even once your store is live, the work will continue. There are great free and paid resources that can help you prepare and a bit of homework and due diligence will go a long way.

Matthew is the developer of TheWebReviewer. Matt has researched many home business ideas including setting up your own store. Get more advice about wholesale sourcing and check out this AliExpress review, which can help you see the potential pros and cons of using a B2B marketplace to source wholesale products from China.


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Hosted Shopping Cart Software Bundled With SEO

How would you like to work with hosted shopping cart software that also achieves optimization simultaneously? Creating the site and then stepping ahead to build SEO features is an obvious waste of time - not to speak of the additional money you spend.
When looking to buy shopping cart builder, it would be worth the time to check out some of these features, which can make life easier.
Hosted shopping cart software offers multiple advantages and costs less as it is available on Software as a Service - SaaS model. The monthly fee options will be flexible and offer a wide choice; for instance for a little below $40 a month, you can build a site for 500 products and enjoy bandwidth of 5Gig; at the other end of the spectrum for about $150 a month, you can raise the bar to a site featuring 5,000 products and 20 Gig bandwidth.
Automatic SEO comes through certain built-in abilities. The hosted shopping cart software ensures that all URLS end with HTML tags 301 redirections are automatic. Custom keyword rich feature for URLs leading to category page, product page and the product review page are your sure drivers for better ranks. Of course, the site acquires additional power if you can customize article page Meta keywords, blog category Meta keywords, Meta descriptions.
Most tools ignore the product page - a critical flaw in these days where the browsers tend to rank each page of the site and missing the all-important product page defeats the very purpose. Select the hosted shopping cart software only if it accommodates SEO Friendly Product Page URLs and other product page optimizers.
All this would be fine, for a new site; but any e-commerce store owner will naturally be possessive about the old URLs, hundreds of internal links and thousands of inbound links. Since, no one would willingly lose these precious traffic drivers, the solution lies in ensuring that the hosted shopping cart software allows complete SEO migration. It should be possible to move all links and URLs and without effort. Once SEO is taken care of, it is time to look at handling payments.
Security is a crucial point that requires crystal clear assurance. The hosted shopping cart software needs to provide full-level PCI standard compliance and Visa and MasterCard data security standards. At the same time the payment procedure should not be cumbersome to put off the prospective customer (most of them may not be computer savvy.) A simpler technique, something like a 4-step security survey would keep the buyers cheerful.
Is such feature-rich hosted shopping cart software available? Yes and you need not be designer working with PHP or other programming languages, HTML and CSS is all you would need. This seems to be the time for exciting and robust web designs.
Dorothy Carter is a vastly experienced technical writer. She often writes about eCommerce software. She has a great understanding about online store builders and hosted shopping cart software.

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The Constant Evolution Of Rise Of Flight

One of the best things to come out of the video game craze of the 80's, was the desire to create and produce more realistic action and flying games.

That craze also led to developers trying to find a way to get those games into people homes, which they did with the introduction of game systems.

We are a greedy lot though, and the demand for bigger and better games meant that those systems continued to develop, until they finally reached the point where they are at today. The realism in today's games is staggering when you compare it to those early efforts, and it's hard to imagine how far they will go in the future.

Rise of Flight is a perfect example of the tweaking that goes into the games, as well as the systems they are played on. It may be an incredibly popular World War I flight simulator, but that doesn't stop the fans from wanting more. It appears that the Rise of Flight developers are in agreement that their game could be better, as they constantly seem to be adding new options, all of which are designed to add even more realism to a game that was already bursting with it.

As you might expect, the planes are the focal point of the Rise of Flight game, and while there are a good number to choose from, enthusiasts of World War I will still want to see other planes included that may not have shown up in the original version. To that end, the makers of the game teamed up with a Ukrainian software modeling team to help them develop even more methods of flight. You would think that would be enough to keep even the most hardcore gamer happy, but they still want more.

The next step for the Rise of Flight developers was to add a level of artificial intelligence that would control such things as cloud patterns, as well as the level of darkness of the night. That may sound like an insane level of detail to the majority of us, but when you are designing a game that is based on real historical events, then you will want to include as much realism as possible, all with the goal of putting the player in the middle of the action, and asking them to suspend belief long enough to believe that they are actually flying a World War I plane.

With all those little tweaks and additions constantly being made, it means that the Rise of Flight game is in a constant state of future development. That is great news for fans of the game, as it will mean that their experience will only continue to improve. In fact it might only be a matter of time before they are dodging bullets from a World War I plane while still sitting in their own living room.

You can watch some videos of this great World War 1 flight simulator in action, and find out more the game at the Rise of Flight website. If more modern flying is where your interests lie, check out the aircraft at the Flight Simulator Online Game site.


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Why Using A Professional Shopping Cart Is Important For Your Business?

If you think that running a business is easy, you probably have not experience many of the heartaches that new merchants or sellers have experienced. Most people have the mentality that if it's free, then go for it. However, at times, certain things will require you to pay a certain price so that you do not end up regretting later. Here are just some of them.

Free Versus Quality

While there are many online shopping cart software providers out there offering their product for free, you would really need to try out their software to see what it actually comes with. Because when you talk about free stuff, chances are there's a lot of stuff that is probably not included or the ecommerce solution could be a very simple product by itself. If you're just starting out, it would be good to try these solutions and then check out the free trial periods offered by professional shopping cart providers to see the difference. You will definitely be able to spot the difference in quality and what is being offered.

Your Business Needs To Look Good

No one is going to really buy from your site if your online store looks really cheap littered with advertisements every where. In order for customers to take you seriously and to even hang around long enough in your site, they would need to be captivated and interested in what you have to offer. That way, you stand a chance for them to consider buying from you. And you can't get good looking templates from cheap service providers. You need to pick a really good, reliable hosted shopping cart. Best would be to utilize the free trial periods that they offer to have a look at what are the templates that you can use for your business before deciding.

You Need The Right Tools

You won't be able to build anything much if you do not have access to the right tools and the right information. And besides, it will end up being a very frustrating experience and a complete waste of time if you discovered that whatever you've been building just isn't going to cut it. So stop wasting time and use a professional shopping cart. At least you can get in touch quickly with their customer service to ask all the questions for free.

Summary

So please don't take the easy way out. Choose your hosted shopping cart wisely. You will be glad that you did.

Harry Goldberg is a retired ecommerce entrepreneur who has built and sold over 100 online stores. He shares how important a professional shopping cart is to new merchants and sellers as he would not want them to waste time using a cheap solution that is not going to get them anywhere. He advises that it is better to choose a reliable hosted shopping cart after checking out what they have to offer during their free trial periods.


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