Your Questions About Direct Marketing Solutions

Jere answers:

Word-of-Mouth
A loyal customer, friend, family will be a good start to introduce your business.

Press Releases
Use this to tell, announce and launch a new product or service.

Direct Mail
It a cheap way to target your email marketing. Build lots of list of prospect. You need email marketing service on this case.
Recommended source: http://homepage.aweber.com/

Company Web Site
A good website will tell your customer and prospective clients what you do and what service you can give to your customer.

Payment service
E-commerce solutions to accept payments for your business.
Source: http://www.intelli-collect.com/creditcard.html

Jere answers:

Ultra caps have improved dramatically in the last few years. However, each cap is good only for a volt or two, so you need several to get 12V, then you have to parallel them to get reasonable current. Also, as the cap discharges, its voltage drops down to zero. This means you need sophisticated electronics to get much energy out, as motors pretty much need constant voltage to work well. So, a 12V motor won’t do much on say 5V.

The weight of the ultracaps is something like 10x to 100x more than lead-acid batteries. The cost is something like 100x to 1000x the cost of the batteries. I figured these out once, you can do it by googling ultracaps on the internet to get weight, size, capacity, and cost of ultracaps. Ultracaps are adequate to store energy from braking to a stop and for a quick burst of power to accelerate up to high speed quickly, but this costs something like 2x to 5x the cost of the entire battery pack. They are nice for performance, but just too expensive right now.

For batteries, weight and cost are both important. Best lead-acid by weight seem to be 12V-9Ahr (5 lb weight) and 12V-21Ahr (10 lb weight). For useful power, use 0.6C/hr for the 1 hr rate, so the larger battery will put out 0.6*21= 12.6A for 1 hr. Using an 80% efficient motor, assuming 12V, and using 746W/HP electrical conversion, this battery is good for about 1/6 HP for 1 hr, or 1HP for about 5 to 7 minutes. Best prices for the smaller battery is about $20, best for larger is $30. To get these prices, you likely want to buy cheap surplus Chinese made batteries, which may have less capacity and/or more weight. Fancy batteries have lighter weights, but way more costly.

A bicycle uses perhaps 1/4 HP when cruising at say 15mph, 1HP at top speed of say 25mph. A 50cc moped puts out 5HP at speed of say 35mph.

So, in designing your motorbike, you need to minimize power needed and maximize power output.

A very efficient motor/drivechain is key. One with a 90% efficiency instead of 45% gets twice the performance from the same batteries. Very difficult for hobbyist to get efficient motors at reasonable cost, I have not been able to find. There are a few in-hub motors for front wheel of bicycle that make about 1/3 HP on 12V, and 1HP on 36V. They are direct drive, look like about 65% efficient. They may be your best bet.

Drag needs to be minimal. You want very low friction bearing, like a bicycle or equivalent. Narrow and high pressure tires reduce rolling resistance. Some streamlining will increase both speed and range.

Good luck!

Jere answers:

You dont use your own printer to save money. Printing at cvs/costco or online site is almost always cheaper and the photos come out great. Sites like shutterfly, york, snapfish even give you a certain number of free photos for signing up.

Kodak printers claim to have cheaper ink (their cartridges are $10 while the others are $15-$20) but 1) Kodak printers have been reported as troublesome and 2) you can find cheap compatibles for most other brands but not Kodak. With Epson printers you get free ink and the best warranty.

The best deals in photo printers are the Epson Artisan series direct from epson.com with full 2 year warranty starting at $99. These are wireless copier/scanner/fax/photo/CD printers with 6 individual ink cartridges for high photo quality. The best warranty in the industry. For two years, Epson will fedex a replacement and pick up the old one should you need it. I recently bought 3 Artisan 800 refurbs for myself and 2 neighbors. It’s an awesome machine!

Http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/Product.do?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&sku=C11CA53201-N

If that’s beyond your budget, the Epson NX 415 is $50 direct from Epson. It has a one year warranty. It’s also a great multifunction printer. My dad bought one.
Http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/Product.do?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&sku=C11CA44231

You might be able to get an extra 10% off by using the code Epson10.

Triple capacity ink cartridges for Epson are under $3 and you can get 20 free cartridges every month at http://www.ccs-digital.com/freeink.asp

Be careful with the latest epson printers. They use a brand new cartridge (T125) which you will have a hard time finding compatibles for. Unless you enjoy paying about $70 to replace your cartridges, stick to a printer which uses T069, T078 or T098.

Jere answers:

You can consider developing an ecommerce store promoting or selling physical products..
Thats what I do… There is no need to stock anything as in my case, I sell Amazon products as an amazon affiliate. Anyone can go to Amazon.com and sign up as an affiliate and promote their products… Whoever go to your website and click on the link , they gets directed to Amazon.com and when they make any purchases, you earn a commission…. Can’t get easier then that for a passive income..

I make my site with the help of a script call the WP shop builder… You can refer to this Forum discussion for more info :-
http://thereviewspecialist.com/wpshopbuilder

Jere answers:

1) Carbon Taxes
Flaws: Taxes are politically unpopular, difficult to pass. Taxation can slow an economy because it produces no immediate work, which causes government spending to have less of a multiplier effect on money supply than does private expenditures.

Merits: The political and economic problems can be overcome by making the tax revenue neutral, i.e. All revenue is passed back to taxpayers, so people and companies with low emissions get a kick-back. Costs are then reduced to administration.

2. Cap and Trade.

Flaws: enormously difficult and complex to administer. The plan that passed the U.S. Senate allowed companies to offset emissions with programs that reduced atmospheric carbons but some of those activities, such as planting a forest, could happen in other countries and would be difficult to verify.

Requires a government entity to set the cap, which would be highly political.

Merits: Allows the free market to set the costs of emissions. Companies that require more can buy more credits on the open market, and companies that reduce can sell credits — this makes technical improvements very valuable and motivates investments and applications of great minds.

Regulation:
Changes with every election. Always has unexpected effects on the economy.
Can force most rapid changes as it does not require waiting for the market to work.

Geoengineering
Unknown. Requires a sponsor — ie somebody has to pay for it. Would have to directly remove CO2 or else will create other problems. For example, global dimming solutions will reduce daytime heat while global warming continues at night so the difference between night and day temperatures rapidly decreases with huge ramifications for agriculture, and it does not address acidification.
Merit: Theoretically might not require as rapid of a transition to modern energy sources

Adaptation
Not fully possible. Climate change threatens food sources, both ocean and land sources. How do you adapt to less food? It is more expensive and will require massive taxation. In the U.S., the taxation will be more at local levels than nationally.
Merit: It is our chosen path.