Jane says…..

Every successful online marketer says this is the bar-none, top-of-the-list, number one way to guaranteed success for any online venture.

What Is it?

Any marketer knows that nothing beats word of mouth advertising. It is simply the most powerful and cost effective advertising ever known. Even before the days of the Internet. Word of mouth advertising got every business where it is today.

Many entrepreneurs never have and never will spend money on advertising. Their entire business comes from people telling other people about their product or service.Could you imagine never spending money on advertising, but always having a steady stream of customers on your door step begging for your product or service.

This word of mout is what we call viral marketing.

However, word of mouth does not come easily.There is one catch to running a business only on word of mouth advertising. You must be selling an outstanding product or service. If you sell crap, the only word of mouth advertising you’ll have is negative.

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression before. A satisfied customer will tell three people about your product or service, an unsatisfied customer will tell ten.

If your customers aren’t happy you’ll have to work ten times harder and spend more money on advertising to sell your product.

There are two ways you can benefit from positive word of mouth. These are:

1. It’s free advertising. This is self explanatory. The less you have to spend on advertising, the more money you can put in your pocket and back into your business.

2. People are endorsing your product or service. Having someone endorse your product puts you at a greater advantage. When someone tells their friend about the positive experience they’ve had with your product, there is instant trust. People trust their friends. If a friend says your product is it, they’ll instantly trust you. Trust is a huge barrier to break down when it come to selling anything, online or off.

The one way I have found to work well with positive word of mouth is list building.List building by refering like ten people from your own effort and then these ten will go on to build your list up to a big size.

To give you an idea of how powerful word of mouth advertising can be in helping you to build your list, take a look below. Your list can grow exponentially without you ever even having to lift a finger again.This is a whole new way to LEVERAGE your efforts into a MEGALIST of monstrous proportions!

Let’s say you enroll SEVEN people from your paid advertising or any other form of advertising Seven is still pretty conservative for a completely FREE program… And let’s say each of those 7 also told 7 people and enrolled them And each of those also enrolled 7 people and so on

That would look like this:

YOU
1×7 Members =7
7×7 Members =49
49×7 Members =343
343 x7 Members =2,401
2,401×7 Members =16,807

TOTAL: 19,607 Members

That is 19,607 subscribers you get to mail to! And you only referred seven subscribers yourself!

Want to run the example with 10 referrals each? (That’d be a whopping 111,110 subscribers!) Or 20? I

won’t even do the math on that one, because frankly, you wouldn’t believe the numbers!

You get the idea. More and more people just keep learning about your business all through friends and associates. And it’s all free advertising!

If you think the above numbers are a bit of an overstatement think again. Go to http://Google.com right now and do a search on Autoresponder Magic. Autoresponder Magic is an eBook that was written by Yanik Siler several years ago. More than 80,000 web sites advertise his Ebook on their sites right now for

FREE!

When Yanik started out several years ago he didn’t even know what an Ebook was. Today he has more traffic coming to his site in a day than most web sites do in a life time.

That is how powerful viral marketing is. Do not skimpon using it. You can set up your viral marketing system to build your list by using ebooks, writing free articles and others.

Visit Lubowa.M.Planet viral Internet marketing websites.For Marketing Visit: http://www.conqueryourniche.com/forum/planetlubs For List Building visit: http://www.most-important-marketing-tools.com/marketing.html For 127 marketing software visit: http://www.most-important-marketing-tools.com

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If you are looking for fine Italian wine and food, consider the Abruzzi region of central Italy. You may find a bargain, and I hope that you’ll have fun on this fact-filled wine education tour.

Abruzzi is located on the central eastern part of Italy on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. The area is 2/3 mountains and 1/3 hills. Over time Abruzzi has belonged to the Romans, the Lombards, and the kingdom of Naples. While this area was once very poor, its income is now growing. Abruzzi and Molise were a single region from 1948 to 1965. Its population is 1.275 million.

Agricultural products include grapes, olives, wheat, sugar beets, tobacco, saffron, pigs, and sheep. The Adriatic Sea and inland lakes and streams provide a wide variety of fish and shellfish. If I remember correctly, the first time that I heard of this region was decades ago, when I learned that according to Craig Claiborne, at the time Food Editor of the New York Times, Italy’s best food was found in Abruzzi.

Abruzzi has no large cities. Its administrative center l’Aquila has a population of about 70 thousand. But big cities are hardly a requirement for good wine. Few would ever claim that Italy’s best wines come from Rome, or the surrounding area.

Abruzzi devotes about eighty two thousand acres to grapevines, it ranks 10th among the 20 Italian regions. Its total annual wine production is about 110 million gallons, giving it a 5th place. About 90% of the wine production is red or rosé (not very much rosé), leaving 10% for white. The region produces 3 DOC wines. DOC stands for Denominazione di Origine Controllata, which may be translated as Denomination of Controlled Origin, presumably a high-quality wine and 1 DOCG red wine, Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Colline Teramane. The G in DOCG stands for Garantita, but there is in fact no guarantee that such wines are truly superior. About 17% of Abruzzi wine carries the DOC or DOCG designation. Abruzzi is home to about two dozen major and secondary grape varieties, a few more white and than red.

Widely grown international white grape varieties include Trebbiano and Chardonnay. Sauvignon Blanc. The best known strictly Italian white variety is Trebbiano d’Abbruzzi, felt by some to be Bombino Bianco.

The best known Italian red variety is Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. The Montepulciano d’Abruzzo DOC is the most widely exported Italian DOC wine.

Before we reviewing the Abruzzi wine and cheese that we were lucky enough to purchase at a local wine store and a local Italian food store, here are a few suggestions of what to eat with local wines when touring this beautiful region.

Start with a Pizza Rustica, Cinnamon-Scented Pie Stuffed with Proscuitto, Cheese, and Eggs.

Then move on to Polenta sulla Spianatora, Polenta (Cornbread) Topped with Sausage in Spicy Tomato Sauce.

For desert enjoy a Crostata di Ricotta, a Ricotta Tart.

OUR WINE REVIEW POLICY While we have communicated with well over a thousand Italian wine producers and merchants to help prepare these articles, our policy is clear. All wines that we taste and review are purchased at the full retail price.

Wine Reviewed

Abruzzo Illuminati Montepulciano d’Abruzzo “Riparosso” 2004 DOC 13% alcohol about $11.50

The marketing materials state that this wine has hints of an Amarone (a much more expensive wine) or a Ripasso ( a more expensive wine). There are raisings, currants, and tar on the nose whilst the taste profile is ripe, mellow fruit flavors of raspberry jam and ocha. It doesn’t contain a lot of acidity so drink it within a year. Pair it with pizza, burgers, or any meat dish that you tend to eat during the week.

This wine is said to complement pasta, red meats, and savory cheeses.

I found the Riparosso to be somewhat robust, with cherry and plum flavors. I didn’t have the feeling that I was drinking a regular Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, but instead almost a Ripasso, a wine that I prefer. This wine managed to feel full-bodied even with its light tannins. It balanced nicely the tanginess of barbecued eggplant loaded with garlic, and demonstrated notable spiciness when paired with a meat ball and vegetable stew. Its acidity was pleasant. I did not discern all the flavors listed above. For me the dominant flavor was black cherry. The final meat dish that accompanied this wine was a barbecued boneless rib steak with a spicy curry and cumin sauce. The wine seemed to pick up strength to accompany this meat, which by the way, we don’t eat on a regular basis during the week.

I tasted this wine with two related cheeses. Pecorino Toscano is a soft, nutty cheese. Interestingly enough, I found that the wine was no longer robust, it seemed to soften to accompany this mild cheese. In the presence of a Pecorino Fiore Sardo, a balsamic sheep’s milk cheese with a stronger flavor and coarser consistency than its Tuscan cousin, the wine almost magically picked up flavor to meet the challenge.

Final verdict, as you can tell this wine is a definite keeper.

Extra note. Several months ago on a whim I bought a $6 bottle of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. Given the realities of the marketplace, I really doubt that any producer can come up with a decent bottle at that price. At first the wine was terribly acidic. I held out, finished the bottle and the last glass was almost OK. Yes, there are bargains, such as this Riparosso, but few in the $6 range.

Levi Reiss has authored or co-authored ten books on computers and the Internet, but to be honest, he would rather just drink fine Italian or other wine, accompanied by the right foods. He teaches classes in computers at an Ontario French-language community college. His wine website is www.theworldwidewine.com . You can reach him at ital@mail.theworldwidewine.com.

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Your Web site needs to do more than make your company look good. It has to support your overall business operations - customer service, sales and marketing and collaboration. Whether you’re planning an intranet or Internet site, don’t start before you check your strategy against this comprehensive checklist.

The following checklist and the associated answers will facilitate the analysis process ofr designing and building the website that allows your company to turn the corner.

GENERAL

1. Where did you hear about us?

2. Do you have a domain name? If not, do you have ideas on one? If so, what is it?

3. What is your company name? Do you want to use the entire name on the site, logo, and graphics?

4. Do you have special features in mind like ECommerce shopping cart, BLOG, RSS, Forms with emails, EZine, Newsletter signup, autoresponders, advertising landing/call-to-action pages, etc.?

MARKETING

5. Who is your intended audience? Are they regional, industry specific, company size specific, etc.?

6. Do you intend to provide a call to action - make a sale, call in to your office, fill out a form, etc?

7. Describe your ideal client and the specific attributes that we’ll be targeting in the website.

8. What are your website expectations, main emphasis and primary goals - increased sales, increased leads, etc.? Please prioritize.

9. What separates your company from your competition and what do you expect will draw clients to the website?

10. How do you plan to market the website?

11. What company properties do you want to emphasize on the website? Please prioritize.

IDENTITY

12. Do you already have a logo and other graphics to be used? If not, do you want to have one created?

13. Have you identified a tagline? That would be something like “Just do it”, “Reach out and touch someone”, etc. Here is some information on the subject http://advertising.about.com/od/copywriting/a/guesttagline.htm.

14. What keywords do you want to be found by in the search engines?

LAYOUT

15. Please provide a list of websites that you like and don’t like. Why do you or do you not like these sites?

16. Please provide a list of competitors websites.

17. Do you have ideas of the colors to be used, and colors you don’t like? Please provide example sites.

18. Do you have an intended website screen size - 1024×768, 800×600, or stretch to the entire width of the screen?

19. If the site isn’t the entire width of the screen do you have a preference for left or center alignment?

20. Do you have a horizontal or left-side vertical preference for the main navigation?

21. Please provide the main pages you need in the website.

22. Have you created the copy text for any of your pages?

23. Do you have existing business cards or other printed material we need to match?

24. Are you leaning towards custom drawn artwork or photographs?

POST-CONTRACT

25. Once we start designing the website we’ll need the following (Note that this information will be kept in strict confidence):

a. FTP access information - username and password

b. Hosting company and their tech support phone number

Michael A. Cordova is the President of 21st Century Technologies, Inc. Contact him at:

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With the internet, you can get almost anything at the click of a mouse. There is tons of data and information out there on all subjects or topics. And the Internet continues to affect how we operate on a daily basis. People use it for everything from entertainment to education. So it is not a stretch to the imagination to see that there are great financial possibilities for the entrepreneur.

Its not only for the professional business types, any individual can make money without a traditional company. You don’t need products to sell. How is this possible? Affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing works when a merchant gets an affiliate to promote his service or product. The affiliate shares some of the revenue. This scheme is an efficient way of getting profit for the merchant it also pays for the affiliate and the affiliate network.

The merchant benefits by having someone else spend the time and money advertising and encouraging customers to buy the product. He also benefits though the variety of markets the products can be reached using different affiliates. And his sales may be increased through word of mouth rather than other costly endeavors. The affiliate benefits by getting a commission of each sale he makes. If a consumer clicks on the merchant’s link on the affiliate website and buys the product or service, then the affiliate may get percentage of the sale.

To become a successful affiliate, you must first figure out what you are interested in. What are you passionate about? You will have to build a website around your subject and be informative about the topic. It would also help to make your site unique.

Then look for a merchant that pays well for products or services related to your area of interest. While making these decisions you may want to think about the conversion rate of visitors becoming buyers. Browse through the various affiliate networks to find out which products work for you.

After choosing the area, the products you would like to use and setting up your website, you will have to address the issue of traffic to your site. This is important if you are to make any kind of money. For example, if you are selling expensive items it is possible to make a lot of money very quickly but high ticket products may be harder to sell. To help with promotion and marketing do some research online and purchase books about the subject.

Geoff Spencer is a staff writer at http://www.onlinebusinessgazette.com and is an occasional contributor to several other websites, including http://www.finance-journal.com.

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As a result of research and development that began more than two decades ago, National Prawn Company has completed phase one of a $350 million “modified extensive” shrimp farm on the Red Sea, 150 kilometers south of Jeddah. The $200 million first phase resulted in eleven farms and 2,800 hectares of ponds with projected production of 13,500 metric tons of whole shrimp a year. Phase two will add fifteen more farms and 3,500 more hectares of ponds capable of producing 17,500 tons a year.

National Prawn Company follows the codes of conduct and methods of production outlined under the United Nation’s definition of “Sustainable Development”. It produces antibiotic-free shrimp with no hormones and no preservatives using eco-friendly, sustainable shrimp farming methods. It uses low stocking densities and settling ponds to protect the local aquatic ecosystem.

NPC’s product line is currently marketed locally and internationally under the brand name “Al-Watania” and other brand names.

Work Force: More than 2,000 employees from 25 countries.

Broodstock: Specific pathogen-free, specific pathogen-resistant Penaeus indicus in its twenty-fourth generation.

Nauplii Production: 60 million a day.

Postlarvae Production: 180 million a cycle.

Processing Plant: Capable of handling 80 metric tons of head-on shrimp a day. M/S Marel/Carnitech (Denmark) supplied and installed most of the processing equipment. M/S Jonsson (USA) supplied the peeling machines and Mycon (Japan) supplied the refrigeration system. The plant is designed to process a wide variety of products from simple block frozen products to high-value ready to eat individually quick frozen and cooked products.

The shrimp reach the plant in less than an hour after harvest and are processed and packed in less than six hours after harvest. The plant has a large, fully automated chill room that can hold up to 25 tons of whole shrimp as it comes in from the farms.

There are three major processing lines, a head-on line with the capacity to handle two tons an hour, a headless line with the capacity to handle 1.2 tons an hour, and a peeling line with the capacity to handle one ton of raw shrimp an hour. Three plate freezers can freeze 20 tons of shrimp a day, and two spiral freezers can freeze three tons per hour. There are two flow pack machines from Sandiacre. As part of the worldwide marketing strategy, great importance has been given to the implementation of HACCP and ISO quality control systems.

Feed Mill: Capacity ten tons per hour. BUHLER (Switzerland) installed the machinery and technology.

Intake Pumping Station: The intake pump station was designed to create a flow of 90 cu/m/sec at a static head of 2.5 meters. It is equipped with twelve Amacan submersible, vertical pumps. The length of the intake canal is 35 kilometers!

Drain Pumping Station: The return water pump station is designed for a flow rate of 90 cu/m/sec at a static head of 1.1 meters. It is equipped with seventeen Amaline submersible, horizontal pumps. The total length of the return water canal is 38.2 kilometers.

Shrimp Head Powder: The offal plant processes fresh shrimp heads into shrimp head powder, which NPC sells as a feed ingredient in laminated, polypropylene bags weighing either 25 or 50 kilograms.

Miles of Roads on the Farm: 157 kilometers, 57 of them asphalted.

Employee Community: Furnished bachelor accommodations are provided with dining halls, relaxation facilities, indoor sports facilities, supermarkets and a mosque. Essential utilities like power, water and sanitation are available around the clock.

Distribution: NPC has entered into exclusive agreements with distributors in U.S.A, Canada, Spain, Cyprus, Italy, Australia, Japan, China, UAE, Korea, Egypt, Bahrain, and Jordan. It is looking for distributors in Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Lebanon, and Tunisia.

Employment: NPC is on course to implement its second phase and will be hiring people at all levels.

Yawar Nawaz

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How do you come out a winner when the bad press you get is national and it’s all over the Internet in 24 hours?

A winner is someone like Kyra Phillips, CNN anchor who accidentally took a microphone into the bathroom and then went on David Letterman to redeem herself.

Her reaction was on a scale with the bad press she got: national.

No matter where the bad press comes from, from the local paper to the national media, you can come out a winner if you adopt a transparent attitude, a sense of humor, if you’re authentic and if you have confidence.

Everyone goofs up once in a while. Companies also goof up once in a while. Maybe they overhyped the product, as a local paper accused Mannatech of doing.

But that accusation, even if true, doesn’t change what the product has done for anyone over the past 10 years, does it?

Hype and promises can kill good products.

Stick with YOUR story and the stories you know. That’s all I’d need. After all, everyone says their science and technology is the best. What matters first to me is whether it WORKS for me. Everything else is either second or irrelevant.

P.S. Silly comments like “It’s just a sugar pill” are usually from people with an agenda or axe to grind, on a par with “Oh, it’s just pond scum.” Like “the iPod is just another fad gadget,” from the lips of a competitor.

Kim Klaver is Harvard & Stanford educated. Her 20 years experience in network marketing have resulted in a popular blog, http://KimKlaverBlogs.com, a podcast, http://YourGreatThing.com and a giant resource site, http://BananaMarketing.com

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1-Money Generates Money

There is no FREE lunch out there. If some one tells you that you do not need any money to make a profit, you better think twice. Any business is an investment, any investment cost money. Any business needs advertising, any advertising cost money. Advertisements generate leads, leads produce money. There are ways to promote the business without putting any advertising budget but it takes time. Time is MONEY. Any businesses out there need to have advertising budget to attract customers. There is no different in Internet MLM business.

2- Hard Work Generates Money

Internet marketing is not about overnight success. It is a real business that needs substantial degree of hard work to become successful. Anyone who has a job know that in order to get the pay check, you have to put in certain amount of time. The concept is the same in Internet MLM. The only difference is you are actually building your own business instead of building people’s business. That is the reason why the pay check is fixed on your pay job while the pay check has huge variability on your Internet MLM business.

3- Knowledge Generates Money

Everyone gets pay for their knowledge. You, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Pierre Omidyar, Sam Walton and Warren Buffet get paid because of the knowledge. What is the different between you, Bill Gates and those billionaires? You probably know the answer by now. The point that I really want to make here is challenge you to learn more in order to earn more. Please refer to the post “Blueprinting in Internet MLM” to get more ideas of what knowledge can bring you.

4- Quality Content Generates Money

It is all about quality in any business. If your business can provide quality to customer, the greater the return, right? There is no difference in Internet MLM business as well. We have to find company that can provide great quality or value to customer, once customers see those benefits (quality), they will in turn join the program and hence generate income for you. Is that simple! This is the reason why I love GDI (http://freedom.ws/soxloo) and Success University (http://lloo1.successuniversity.com) because both of them provide great values to me.

5- Internet Generates Money

There are about 6.5 billion people on the planet and about 1.1 billion of them use internet (Source from www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm) and the growth of internet user is growing exponentially over time. Imagine if you can share a piece of this pie, what is the return? That is the reason why we need to generate traffic into your website. Any traffic that visits you has a potential to generate income to you. 4 money generators that we discussed earlier lead to this. Prepare some budget, work hard to learn about the business and create quality content to attract traffic to your site.

A positive altitude causes a chain reaction of positive outcomes. It is a catalyst… a spark that creates extraordinary results!

Lickhau Loo is an Expert Internet Marketer. You can learn How to Make up to $2,000 a week wihout risking a penny in 3 easy steps http://www.unlimitedwealth.ws mailto: lloo@unlimitedwealth.ws

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The humdrum existence of going to the office day after day doing the usual 8 to 5 shift is a trying task for those who have lived all their lives doing so. This is why the convenience of doing work at home under amazingly flexible working hours is a dazzling prospect to them. Doing work at home that is as fulfilling as having a career working for a computer on the 19th floor of a skyscraper is already a possibility in these modern times. This is because the jungle-like network that is the Internet has given birth to a business that has given some people practically new lives doing nothing but so.

This particular business allows people to work at home under flexible working hours. There is no boss to scream around putting pressure on everyone about the deadline at hand. There is no clutter of messy paperwork that needs to be completed the soonest possible time. Conveniences such as these are experienced by those who are into affiliate marketing, the newest way to earn money without having to go through all sorts of routine found in regular employment.

Those who have been in the business long enough can attest to the fact that it is a lucrative business indeed, one that can actually give people things that they could not possibly possess or experience under ordinary circumstances.

The business called affiliate marketing involves an affiliate’s promotion of a merchant’s website. Here the website owned by the affiliate is made to advertise and market the website of the merchant through the affiliate program that they run. Whenever someone clicks on the merchant’s website promoted by the one owned by the affiliate, the affiliate is given a commission. This is in recognition of his effort in helping the merchant make a sale.

The system involved in affiliate marketing seems easy, but it also takes a lot of diligence and perseverance for one to be able to penetrate it thoroughly. Those who want to get into this type of business should possess the necessary skills to be able tread through the industry with confidence and self-assurance. Still, other factors are needed by one to be able to really break in. Knowledge about the business at hand is very important as it dictates the actions that are to be done by people who are into it.

The leading figure in affiliate marketing is the super affiliate. He or she is basically an e-mail marketer who collects large databases of e-mail addresses through newsletters. Super affiliates are also those who know the business even better than affiliate managers as a result of their knowledge about the affiliate marketing industry inside out. Those who want to be super affiliates should know that becoming a super affiliate is not easy, because it takes a lot to be able to master the marketing craft.

Becoming a super affiliate means having one’s own website and auto responder. These tools will help a lot in one’s facilitation of the business. Building one’s own list is another. Creating a loyal customer base and taking care of it is one secret that successful super affiliates have. Making good customer relations is also important if one wants to be a super affiliate to reckon with.

Continuing to market to the people on one’s list is another must if one wants to succeed as a super affiliate. Sending out quality content in lieu of ads is an advantage as products are marketed better whenever enough information is given about them.

Building traffic to one’s own site is also one of the most essential points in the affiliate marketing business. Making one’s affiliate links his own business will allow him to build a strong relationship with his customers, enabling him to market to them over and over again.

The most important thing one should remember if he wants to become a super affiliate is to treat affiliate marketing as a business first and foremost. If he is capable of doing this, then he will never have to go back to the humdrum existence of working the 8-5 shift. A career as a super affiliate in the business, which will change his life forever, could possibly take that unexciting job’s place.

Clarence Binayu is the founder and Webmaster for http://www.virtual-guides.com. Here you can find FREE information on many subjects including business, automobile, travel, vacation, affiliate marketing, advertising, internet, sports, entertainment, technology, communication, fashion, home improvement, culture, education, society, science, politics, fitness and health. http://www.virtual-guides.com provides you with helpful guidance, tips and news update, from basic to the latest skills, knowledge and information, about these subjects.

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If you are looking for fine Italian wine and food, consider the Sardinia region of southern Italy. You may find a bargain, and I hope that you’ll have fun on this fact-filled wine education tour.

Sardinia is the second largest island in the Mediterranean, located in the Tyrrhenian Sea west of mainland Italy. Sardinia’s terrain is mountainous, and its beaches are excellent. Sardinia is known for archeological ruins and has become a tourist destination for the international jet set. Because of its exceptional location Sardinia has always popular, Invaders include Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, and Spaniards, without mentioning numerous Italian peoples. During part of the 18th and 19th Century it was united with the northern region of Piedmont in the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. The population is about 1.6 million.

Sardinia’s administrative center is Cagliari, an ancient university town on the southern coast of the island. Its population is approximately one hundred sixty thousand. The famous author D. H. Lawrence compared this beautiful city to a “White Jerusalem.” Another city of interest is Sassari, which has the best collection of Sardinian art.

Sardinia is Italy’s leading source of organic produce, and includes nearly one-third of Italy’s land cultivated biologically. The climate is subtropical and more than half the territory is devoted to pasture land. Food is plentiful, it is said that there are over 500 kinds of bread, perhaps one for every village. The inland is full of meat, including lamb, goat, pork and game, while the coast teems with fish, lobster, and eel.

Sardinia devotes about 107 thousand acres to grapevines, it ranks 8th among the 20 Italian regions. Its total annual wine production is about 28 million gallons, giving it a 12th place. About 57% of the wine production is red or rosé (only a bit of rosé), leaving 43% for white. The region produces 19 DOC wines and one DOCG wine, Vermentino di Gallura, one of the two DOCG wines produced in southern Italy. DOC stands for Denominazione di Origine Controllata, which may be translated as Denomination of Controlled Origin, presumably a high-quality wine. The G in DOCG stands for Garantita, but there is in fact no guarantee that such wines are truly superior. About 15% of Sardinian wine carries the DOC or DOCG designation. Sardinia is home to almost dozen four major and secondary grape varieties, about half white and half red.

There are no widely grown international white grape varieties in Sardinia. The best known Italian white varieties are Vermentino, Nuragus, and Vernaccia.

Widely grown international red grape varieties include Cannonau, known as Garnacha in Spain, and Grenache in France and elsewhere, and Carignano, known as Carignan in France. The best known Italian red variety is Monica, which probably originated in Spain, and may be related to California’s Mission grape variety.

Before we review the Sardinian wine and cheese that we were lucky enough to purchase at a local wine store and a local Italian food store, here are a few suggestions of what to eat with indigenous wines when touring this beautiful region.

Start with Melanzane in Pinzimonio, Smoked Eggplants in Mint-Basil Oil.

As a second course try Aragosta Arrosto, Roasted Lobster with Parsley and Bread Crumbs.

For dessert indulge yourself with Seadas, Pastry with Cheese and Bitter Honey.

OUR WINE REVIEW POLICY While we have communicated with well over a thousand Italian wine producers and merchants to help prepare these articles, our policy is clear. All wines that we taste and review are purchased at the full retail price.

Wine Reviewed

Sella and Mosca Cannonau di Sardegna (V) DOC Reserva 2003 13.5% alcohol about $12.50

Cannonau wine may qualify as the mother of all European wines. It is made from the Grenache grape, which originated in Spain. The producer, Sella and Mosca, has the second largest contiguous vineyard in Italy. Over 6 million bottles are year are produced on an estate of more than 1500 acres. Some will say that such a humongous estate is unlikely to produce an outstanding wine. Such a claim may be incorrect, but this wine was far from outstanding.

The marketing materials stated that this wine is more or less ruby in color, tending to orange upon aging, with a light scent of grapes with a characteristic flavor ranging from dry to sweetish. It was aged three years in oak prior to its release and may be cellared for a decade or more. The wine is said to be particularly suitable to accompany red meats and seasoned cheeses. Uncork it at least one hour before serving.

I found that it had quite a light color for a red wine. To my mind, it was thin but pleasant with very little nose. I first tasted it with a rib steak marinated in a spicy sauce. This pairing brought out the fruit, and the wine was pleasantly acidic, but I would have preferred a more robust wine to balance the meat. I finished the bottle withy barbequed hamburgers, and it didn’t go quite as well. The wine was weak, perhaps affected by staying too long in the bottle.

Pecorino Sardo is a traditional sheep’s milk, semi-cooked hard cheese that comes in a “sweet” or “ripened” variety. The sweet variety is soft, and the ripened variety is hard. My cheese was ripened and treated with balsamic vinegar. A commercial roasted eggplant with sweet red peppers accompanied the wine and cheese. Everything went well together, the nutty flavors of the cheese balanced the wine’s fruit. In conclusion, I liked the wine best with the cheese. I don’t plan on buying this wine again, I found it a bit overpriced. Even though it didn’t cost a lot, one might have thought that a mass-produced wine from Sardinia would be somewhat less expensive.

Levi Reiss has authored or co-authored ten books on computers and the Internet, but to be honest, he would rather just drink fine Italian or other wine, accompanied by the right foods. He teaches classes in computers at an Ontario French-language community college. His wine website is http://www.theworldwidewine.com. You can reach him at ital@mail.theworldwidewine.com.

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The idea of a home business is very attractive to most people as it offers them the opportunity of being their own boss and working on their own hours. However, you should be careful because running and profiting from a home business is not as easy as an advertisement make it sound. It requires equal amount of time and hard work as a regular job or business and more of discipline and self-control than you might be used to.

There is no shortage of home business opportunities. All you need is a product idea and starting from there you need to go on an information gathering mission in order to determine the feasibility of your business project and getting to know what it will cost to start and run your own home business. There are also many opportunities for people who do not have a product idea of their own but would like to promote an existing business. These programs are known as affiliate programs and there are many such home business opportunities on the Internet.

Be careful though. The Internet is overcrowded with home business opportunities and there are many fraudulent websites that will take your money and simply tell you to do something silly in order to make a profit. Two of the oldest home business frauds involve the envelop stuffing and handling insurance claims. These programs will ask you for a modest amount of money (allegedly for equipment and training) but you never make enough money to recover your investment.

A good way to avoid scams is to do a thorough research on the business topic. Affiliate sites will never, ever, under any circumstances make you money unless your build a healthy downline. Do not listen to whatever the main business-offering website says, even in its testimonials. Search for third-party evaluations of a home business. Get references with telephone numbers and speak to people who have used the business directly. Unless you can contact the people in the testimonial, the testimonials are unreliable.

If a home business opportunity offers to make you money while working 1 hour a day (sometimes it can be 15 minutes a day) then ignore it. A genuine business opportunity will need some serious amount of hard work and time. It will never be so easy. Your income will directly be proportional to your inputs. For fifteen minutes a day, you will earn practically nothing so do not even go in that direction.

Home business is a good option for someone who wishes to fill in the time when the kids are in school, or perhaps your job does not involve long shifts, and so on. People do not start a home business with the idea of spending 8-10 hours per day on working. These people can only spare a couple of hours and their incomes match their efforts. They are not going to get rich this way.

Ryan Ginster is the owner of http://www.ginstermarketing.com/ He makes his money with PlugInProfitSite, you can grab one at: http://www.ginstermarketing.com/pluginprofitsite.html Check his blog also: http://www.ginster-web.com/homebiz.

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