Personal Finance Budget
Setting up a personal budget for you and your family isn’t as hard as you might think. What’s hard is maintaining and keeping it working for you for any length of time. If you are setting up a personal finance budget, here’s 3 tips to keep in mind.1. KEEP IT PERSONALThat might sound like a given, but with so many budget programs and plans out there, you’d be amazed just how easy it is to try and shoe-horn your personal finance situation into another person’s perfect design. Don’t do it.By trying to make someone else’s ideal, your own, it will only be that much easier to give up on it later when it turns out that it doesn’t work for you. This means setting up categories that are specific to your situation and lifestyle. If you do a lot of camping, for example, and that’s not one of the categories on your pre-formated budget sheet, don’t try to squeeze it into “Recreation” or “Entertainment.” Make a category for “Camping.”2. KEEP IT SIMPLEOne of the quickest ways to give up on a personal finance budget is to have it be so complicated that the week after you set it up, you’re not sure why you did what you did and can’t figure out how to update it. Keep it simple.Keeping the budget simple also means not having it be too much work to maintain. If it’s too much work, then you are really not going to feel like doing what needs to be done, because, it’s too much work.3. AUTOMATE TASKSDo what you can to make things happen automatically so that keeping and maintaining a budget doesn’t wear you out. For example, if you want to track how much you are spending on entertainment during the month, just keep your receipts and stash them in an envelope somewhere. At the end of the month, just add them up and you know how much you spent. This is much easier and “automatic” than writing down everything on a daily basis.As I mentioned at the start, this article was about how to keep the budget going once it gets started. You could sit down tonight and make up a budget, but will it work for you? Will you be able to maintain it over the long-term?Follow the 3 budgeting strategies above and you will greatly increase your chances of designing a personal finance budget that will last as long as you need it to.
3 Very Important Underwater Photography Tips To Bear In Mind For Stunning Underwater Photographs!
Underwater Photography Tips #1 – Objects Underwater Are Further Away Than You Think They AreAre you aware that the ocean acts like a gigantic lens? It refracts whatever you see underwater at an index of 1.33. Hence, underwater photographers should note that when they wear a mask or when their DSLRs are in housings, objects that may seem to be only one metre away from them are actually 1.33 metres away.So what I’m trying to say is that objects you see underwater are actually at a further distance than they appear to be in your eyes. This is why you will have to be aware when focusing on underwater photography subjects.Underwater Photography Tips #2 – Get Creative with SettingsWe all know that setting your DSLR to automatic will make things easier for you. However, be mindful that you should get creative. You can make use of the different settings available for shutter and aperture.Using manual for underwater photography will be a great way for you to experiment what settings works well and doesn’t work well underwater. From experience, pictures will normally appear looking a little flat with presets. This is simply because you adjusted neither the depth of field or exposure.Another thing that you might want to try out is to vary the shutter speed settings. What this does is that it helps you gain control of the background color. Let’s put aside the thought of how fast your subject is moving underwater and the use of the strobe for now.Be mindful that using a slow shutter speed at 1/60 sec normally produces a beautiful blue ocean background. However, using faster shutter speeds like 1/125 sec will create a background color that is close to black. Why is it so, you ask? Well, using faster shutter speeds allow less light into the camera, resulting in a dark background.Underwater Photography Tips #3 – Light Is ImportantThere you have it – light is indeed a very important element in underwater photography. This is why it is of utmost importance that you use an external flashlight or strobe. These gadgets will provide light while you’re taking pictures underwater so that all the colors of the spectrum are put back together into your photographs.When you conduct underwater photography attempts without using external light, you will notice that the results of your photos will be tinged with yellow, green or brown. Be on the lookout for lights that provide a variety of settings.It is best for beginner underwater photographers to use strobes. Strobes are external light gadgets that can adjust automatically. Strobes have through the lens (TTL) metering. This metering is based on your DSLR’s automatic metering.
The True Essence of Digital Marketing in Dubai Real Estate
Digital Marketing brings about great evolution in the field of marketing and regardless of what industry the concept is interpreted, there is always room for innovation and creativity. Unfortunately, this concept is not well adopted by Dubai Real Estate in the recent times, and a Pied Piper (of Hamelin) approach has been followed by most of the digital marketers which is losing the true essence of Digital Marketing. Most marketers try to copy the concept of one another and sometimes unlawfully even disguise their artwork concepts to catch leads online which although works great for numbers but it is almost zero when it comes to conversion because of quality.In the basics of marketing, it is taught that every product has its own unique selling proposition (USP) and thus has a different target audience, where one marketing strategy cannot be applied to all. The setback of not following this concept has brought about digital marketing to such a stage where almost the same advertisements are being exposed to same audience over and over again via social media, emails, SMS and online portals which dilutes the interest and confuses a genuine client to what should be opted for amidst this war of similar offerings around all digital channels. Additionally in this process there has been a huge wastage of resource occurred that could have been capitalized better if an optimal utilization approach was adopted. One of the major reason witnessed behind this scenario is the gap that exists between marketing team and their on-ground experience of real estate. Generally, the organizations when they outsource their marketing campaigns to external agencies the objective of both the parties are different where the organization intends to save cost for the marketing campaign and on the other hand the marketing agencies focus on generating more numbers in leads so they can argue on their next contract renewals. In the whole process the essence of advertising the USP of the property is deprived and instead of targeted marketing, the approach goes to mass marketing concept which then again goes against the literature of digital marketing. The only party happy in this scenario is the service provider that are Google and Facebook as their business earns more revenue as the competition gets intense and companies are willing to pay more for the same campaign.The digital marketing especially social media, SEO and SEM works mainly on bidding structure for a certain set of audience, and of course the mightier bid wins the race, but a well experienced marketer would always opt for an optimal bidding strategy on a specific target segment which would reduce down the cost per qualified lead significantly and eventually would utilize the concept of digital marketing to the fullest. It is high time now that marketers and especially digital marketers should realize the full potential of digital marketing and bridge the gap between knowledge of Dubai Real Estate and marketing approach which would immediately provide better results. The second step includes researching on the appropriate target audience for a specific property and justifying the time spent on this research which would discriminate quality versus quantity at large.The culprit of this situation cannot be solely blamed upon digital marketers, rather the industry leaders and deciding management have also contributed to a large extend where they have missed out on allocating the right resources at the right time on the right places. Firstly, it is highly suggested to conduct digital marketing in-house since the stakeholders involved in the campaign are many at times exposed to sensitive data of clients and an in-house marketing resource would be not only be focused more upon generating quality leads, but would abide by the values of the organization and would not put up fake or flashy ads which in the long run only results in wastage of monetary resources. Additionally, there should always be an experienced real estate personnel working closely with the marketing team to ensure the research and messages are appropriate and accurate. In the event that organization intends to outsource marketing campaigns, it is highly advised to allocate an experienced personnel as a point of contact for the agency who would not only monitor the progress but would work closely to devise campaigns and messages which only would ensure success in the long run.Although, the current situation depicts not a very good picture for digital marketing in Real Estate, but if this Pied Piper approach is not followed and right tools are used by the right person with the right resources, there is still a lot to be extracted from the benefits of digital marketing.