What Are the Different Uses of Vending Machines?

A vending machine is an automated vendor. The automated operations performed by these machines make them convenient and time-saving at public and commercial places. A consumer needs to deposit the required money and the product he or she wants is provided by these equipments.

There are different versions of vending machines that have been launched since the first historical reference. The vending machine manufacturers have always tried to improve the usefulness and safety of these self operated equipments so that people can make best out of them.

Foods and Drinks

An automated vendor tool that provides food items or drinks to the consumers can be easily found at a commercial place. The tools vending healthy foods are installed at schools and offices to promote good health among students and employees. Fast food vending functions can be found at theaters, malls and other places that are visited by thousands of people on regular basis.

Snacks and ice-creams are other popular items that are sold through vending machines. Besides, there are automated vending tools that vend candies, chewing gums, sweets and other such small items.

One can find automatic vendors that provide soft drink cans at bus and railway stations, airports, recreational venues and other such places. In some countries, beverages and alcohol cans too are vended through these machines.

Automated Ticket Vending Equipments

A popular use of such tools is to sell tickets at various places. You can easily find them at bus and railways stations and metro stations as well. These tools make ticket selling a time saving process as there is no need to stand in a row to buy the tickets. These automated ticket vendors are quite useful to save customers valuable time and also reduces the operating cost being spend on ticket vendors who does the same task manually.

Other Uses

A vending machine may also be used to sell hygiene products. For instance, one can find vending machines that sell tampons and menstruation pads to women at women’s rooms at different public and commercial places. There are vending machines in the men’s rooms that vend condoms.

Machines that vend medicines are also common at public venues like transit stations and shopping malls. A popular use of these machines is to sell newspapers. The machines selling newspapers are different from conventional designs. These machines have a door that opens as the consumer deposits the money and the consumer can select the newspaper he or she wants. In other machine designs, the item purchased is dispensed into a slot.

Other uses of vending machines include the sale of cigarettes, small toys, fruits and other items. One of the latest uses of these machines is to sell music CDs and DVDs. The manufacturers are using different technologies like biometric recognition to make these machines highly safe and practical. The equipments are popularizing the concept of vending without human intervention.

Managing Time Wisely

Work can take up most of your time especially those who do online business, where most of your time will be spend on networking with other netpreneurs, reply emails and provide online customer services to your clients etc…

You tend to forget there still a lot of housework s needed you to attend to. By the time you done your work, you simply got no “energy” to do anything but to close your eyes and sleep.

Now I understand, why most women tend to work at home, part of the reason is that they can earning a living at home at the same time they can attend to errand, kill two birds with one stone, how wonderful !

But most of the time, thing cannot turn out what we want it to be, isn’t it? Hours seem to fly by when work online. You are tired, and it required a lot of effort s even to do the basic of household duties like l fixing dinner, fetching your kids from school etc.

Now fear not, start organizing your schedule well. Here are some tips to help you balance your work as well as your home. It worked for me and I hope its help.

1. Managing time wisely – First of the most important factor is to ask yourself how and where you want to spend your time is key to how to keep a balance in your lifestyle. You can start keeping a PDA or notebook to keep track your entire daily schedule. You can even do it online. Through this way, you can definitely cut some time out by doing certain tasks; for example you can read a newspaper or knitting in the car while you are waiting for your husband or children to knock off from work or school respectively.

2. Prioritize your tasks – Divide available hours between your home and your work diligently. In order to reach your personal, business or family goals, you must learn to cut down on “redundant” activities. For example, you can cut down these “helping other” activities (I know it tough as women we tend to have difficulties saying “No” as we are helpful by nature) but who going to help you when your life is “messed up”. So most importantly you really need to prioritize the activity according to its value or importance.

3. Learn to relax – Like I said ‘We Work to Live, We do not Live to Work’. It’s no point being successful at the expense of your home and your family. Set aside some time to relax some that you can recharge your life “battery” too much some thing is not good. You can organized some activities like going picnics at the park with your family or meet up with friends for coffee, these in turn will help maintain your social life. Similarly, surf the internet with your husband or children. Show them websites of their interest. That way, you will strengthen bond with them as well.

These are some of few suggestions on balancing work and family. Hope you find it useful and most important thing is that you should start it Right Now! Cheer!

Learning How Horoscopes Are Done

In everyone’s life, there is a time when you wonder what the future is going to bring. This is natural as you would like to be prepared if a disaster or some other important event is going to occur. As a result, many people go to horoscopes for an answer. These horoscopes are available in a number of forms, such as the daily newspaper or consulting with people experienced in this field.

Astrologers, psychics or other people in the in this are are the ones consulted for determining your horoscope. They make a reading by working with the planets, moon, sun and elements tied in with your birthday. The reading is based on the location of these heavenly bodies, in the sky, at the time of your birth and one of the elements of fire, earth, water and air.

Each element depicts a certain personality such as fire, being hot and raging, water being slow and easy flowing, earth being solid and dependable and air being unpredictable. By matching these elements with the other items on the chart, it is believed that a person’s personality is revealed and their future actions can be predicted.

The planets are placed in a circle and divided into twelve blocks, each of which covers a certain period of the year. Each block is identified with a sign and one of the elements. The elements are interpreted as fire, your personality is intense, water, your personality is easy going, earth, you are a solid and dependable person and air, you do things that are not predictable. By matching these elements with the other items on the chart, it is believed that your personality is revealed and your future actions can be predicted.

The signs are shown in many newspaper horoscope printings. They are Aries, Leo, Sagittarius, Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces, Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn, Gemini, Libra and Aquarius. Many people read these signs every day to see what is in store for them.

There are many different types of psychics in the market today, many of whom appear on the Internet and are available for consultation by writing of by telephone. One should be cautious, if deciding to go this route, to investigate the person being consulted. Reliable psychics have a following that are willing to testify as to their ability. Many of the websites have testimonials listing likes and dislikes posted on the site.

Whether practicing as a psychic, astrologist, numerologist or others they are working on the principle of horoscopes. When seeking this type of consultation it should be remembered that a lot of personal information will be exchanged. Because of this factor, it is important to know that you are consulting with someone who has proven themselves in the field and the printed information should be read very carefully.

How to Make it Online Rendering Bulk SMS Service Delivery

Text message is a big revenue earner in the mobile industry today in Nigeria and in the diapora. People love to text and so is money being made by those who are involved in text messaging business. According to fastwebSMS.com, over 15 billion text messages are sent yearly in Nigeria. The number is still growing as the country’s tele-density moves into the 60 and 70 million text messaging subscribers. And since the people love text messaging, both to send and receive, it’s growing into one of the most powerful market plat forms in the world after the internet.

Now, not only do ordinary subscribers love text messaging, big and powerful organizations have come into the foray, using text messaging as a marketing tool to reach millions of telephone subscribers quicker, cheaper and directly with their advertising promotions. Now with bulk messaging tools online hundreds of GSM subscribers are reached with the same message with the stroke of a button saving time energy and company resources that are usually wasted in the old and conventional ways of advertising. On this discovery, hundreds of millions of naira would be spent by small, medium and large companies in SMS adve5rtising, marketing and promotion. Apart from the popularity of SMS as a quicker, cheaper, personal means of publicity it has more uses in every business. In fact any business that wants to keep customers patronizing them needs to use bulk text messaging service. Regularly advertising, like the newspaper take time to get to the consumers, and at times the people you are targeting may not even see your advert. But SMS gets directly to their phones and immediately they will read them while some might even call you back for more enquires.

And with the internet bulk SMS is made even more useful as companies can brand their text messages with their names to make consumers read them immediately they are received. The internet also makes it easier for you to sell wholesale bulk SMS to your customers anywhere in the country. The service works like one opening an email account on yahoo. You will open such accounts for your customer with has all the facilities for sending bulk SMS. Once they signs up with you they are your customers as long as that relationship remains.

The question now is what’s in it for me? How do I benefit? How do I make money from all these? What is the market outlook like for a sustainable investment? What are the returns on investment? And as these questions juggle your mind, take a look at a business with all possibilities for mega profit and that is wholesale Bulk SMS service. I call it the business for the ‘simple” man. If you have been looking for an online business that will make you regular income, I recommend wholesale bulk SMS business for you. Trust me, it’s a bomb in money making on the internet.

Market Potential

The market potential is huge it’s determined by the number of subscriber base in the country, we are now heading for 70 million subscribers out of the population of 140 million, according to 2006 census. Imagine we have grown in the last couple of years gone by already. So, the figures keep growing and that is how the market potential keeps increasing for you to make more profit.

Your Profit Potential

Bulk SMS business is a volume driven business with greater advantage for growing customer base. As a wholesale bulk SMS reseller you have a platform that helps you retain your customers once they sign up with you they are bound to stay with you buying SMS regularly from you. And with the ongoing tread, If you have just 1,000 customers signed up with you, and each of them are able to buy up just 5,000 SMS monthly that’s N5, million income but your profit could be around N500,000 to N 1 Million monthly. Good business isn’t it?

Competition & Marketing Challenges

Don’t think others are going to fold their hands and watch only you take up the wholesale bulk SMS reseller business. No, of course! You are going to face competition like in any other business. At least, you should know you are not the only one reading this step by step guide right now. But, the secret to dealing with competition is to market yourself in such a way it would seem like you are the only one offering that services. Yes! That is what you have to do. And one way to do that is to identify who your target market is and device strategies to keep bombarding them with your offer until all those who would require your service have signed up with you. Here is my step by step guide on How to sell wholesale Bulk SMS Online! Follow it religiously and you will never make mistake.

Customized text message from research is one of the laziest ways of making money in Nigeria with no capital requirement and there are a lot of opportunities in this business.

Here is your opportunity Lock into it now!

Looking forward to hearing from you.

How Customs Tracked N67m From Smugglers, Intercepted $8m Illegal Movement January in Lagos

As one of the watchdogs of national economic security in Nigeria Customs Service, has again showed in words and deeds, that it is serious with ensuring that the activities and operations of smugglers, money launderers, people dealing in illegal arms and corrupt politicians, are tamed this new year and off course, new decade.

January, 15, Jerry Attah, public relations officer, federal operations unit of NCS in Ikeja, Lagos, told the world through the media that Usman Yahaya, who resumed duties as acting controller of Customs for FOU ‘A’, hit the ground running when he intercepted contraband goods valued at over N67million in one week

According to Attah, barely one week in office, his quest for outstanding performance using credible intelligence yielded positive results with the interception of 2,065 jerry cans of vegetable oil 25liters each, 1,185 bags of 50kg foreign parboiled rice, 1500 jerry cans (25lts) of diesel, with a duty paid value of 67,362,500.00, between January 7th -14th January 2020 along different unapproved routes within our areas of coverage.

This feat is coming as a result of series of meetings held with our sectional heads, team/patrol leaders where he unveiled the management’s mandate bestowed on him which includes blockage of all revenue leakages, trade facilitation and intensification of anti-smuggling operations at various entry points: seaports, land borders, and Airport within our areas of jurisdiction in the south west zone.

DC Yahaya warned smugglers and ‘would be’ of the danger that lies ahead for them if they do not engage in legitimate trade, as some have started counting their losses

“You will agree with me that the fight against smuggling can only be won if all hands are on deck”. He called on all the members of the media and the general public to support the fight against smuggling by providing necessary intelligence that could assist the service in reducing smuggling to its barest minimum.

Meanwhile, DC Yahaya’s redeployment was part of the Comptroller-General’s strategies to re-jig and reposition the Service for greater efficiency and effectiveness especially in the areas of revenue generation, trade facilitation as well as combating smuggling.

DC Usman Yahaya is a quintessential and an enforcement guru who hitherto was the Coordinator of Strike Force, Zone ‘A’, before he was posted to FOU ‘A’ as the Acting Controller.

He took over on Tuesday 7thJanuary 2020, from Comptroller Aliyu Mohammed, who was elevated based on his record to a new assignment as the Acting Sector 4 Commander of Border Drill Operations code named Ex-Swift Response.

The assumption of office by Usman Yahaya at FOU ‘A’, naturally, has sent panic to all smugglers and non-compliant traders knowing very well his antecedents as an Enforcement Czar.

Yahaya thanked the Comptroller General of Customs, Col. Hameed Ibrahim Ali (Rtd) and the entire Management Team of the Nigeria Customs Service for considering him worthy and assured he will work assiduously with all officers to justify the confidence reposed on him.

Attached are his official portrait and pictures of seized items for your immediate use

Again, the Comptroller-General of Customs, Col Hammed Ali, rtd, on Tuesday in Lagos told newsmen how officers of the Federal Operations Unit of the Nigerian Customs Service intercepted illegal movement of over $8million at the Muritala Muhammed International Airport in Ikeja, Lagos.

Speaking on the interception, Ali explained that based on credible information received, FOU Customs intelligence unit, was activated and detailed to storm the E wing unit of the MMIA on January 16, 2020, where the illegal movement of the foreign currency was intercepted.

According to the customs boss, one Chimezie Okonkwo, driver of the coaster bus where the currency, loaded in six bargo bags and conveyed to the airport was arrested.

“On Saturday, January 18, 2020, an inventory of the consignment was taken and was witnessed by representatives of the Directorate of State Security Service, DSS, Customs Intelligence Unit, Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing Unit, in the presence of the suspect”, he said.

He further explained that at the end of the inventory, a total of 20 sealed wraps were opened, counted, re-sealed, and re-wrapped under video coverage, where the total sum of $8,065,612, was counted.

The Customs boss, while reminding Nigerians that only $10,000 is the threshold allowed for genuine drivellers, who have no intention, of laundering for international terrorism, drug smuggling, arms proliferation, and other criminal acts, pleaded with members of the public and the press to join in the fight against all forms of smuggling and money laundering.

Small Business Email Marketing – How to Improve Your Marketing ROI

IPT Ltd recently released some survey results that proved very interesting reading. They asked the public what they considered to be the most effective marketing medium. There were no surprises to see that TV came first with 37%, but a surprising second was email, which came in at 32%! Which approach do you think will generate the best return for a small business? Yes, small business email marketing!

Obviously, you will need the contact details of your customers as well as any new prospects, for your small business email marketing plan to succeed.

There are two ways that you can get people visiting your business to give you their contact details. Get them to fill out a form on the premises for you to manually upload later or, (the best option), direct them to your website where they can fill in a opt in form.

To ensure that people actually want to give you their details, you’ll need to offer them some kind of incentive. Buy One Get One Free offers, competitions, and even valuable free information do a good job. Every person who fills in the opt in form becomes a member of your email “club”, people you’ll be able to contact time after time.

There is a well known business maxim that goes “people only do business with people they like” and if we add ‘know and trust’ then there you have the goal of online email marketing. Each email you send will build up trust and the likelihood that the email prospect will buy from you when the time is right.

Email marketing for small businesses is a really good business-building decision for all small businesses. As well as being a extremely cost effective, emails build trust, credibility and enable you to send messages to your customers or clients at a time when they are ready to purchase, whether that is the 3rd email you send, 14th or 154th!

A good small business email marketing approach to take is to describe a problem that your target market has, and suggest your product or service as a solution. As you show understanding of the problem, on a subconscious level your email recipient will know that you can solve it. Another way is to provide useful tips people can use, as this demonstrates knowledge and expertise. Also sending an email with a coupon that can be printed out and used as a discount is good business email marketing approach as well.

The same research completed by IPT also shows that most influential aspect of an email communication is discounts or money off at 27%, second comes general interest about product or service at 24% and joint third place at 20% is prize draw and brand familiarity. These statistics should help in your decisions as to what to include in your own small business email marketing campaign.

One example in the ‘real’ world small business email marketing success I can think of is a dog breeder who started a monthly newsletter with photos of the dogs they had available. This meant that if a person came by and didn’t want any of the dogs on that particular day, they could sign up for the email newsletter and get photos of new dogs sent to them each month, without having to visit the breeder’s home. Now these dogs were selling for about $1300 a pop, so this was a brilliant way to keep in touch with potential dog buyers.

You just need to look to the Fortune Global 500 corporations to see more examples of email marketing success. They recognize that staying in touch with clients and customers through email can actually cut your advertising costs and get you more sales. With small business email marketing you can easily get to the stage where an email blast is more successful than a £2,000 for a full page newspaper ad.

So, what are you waiting for? Let’s get you started then…

Congestion at Nigerian Sea Ports

As at the last count, more than 2000 vessels were still stranded on the high seas of Nigeria’s territorial waters due to their inability to berth at Lagos sea ports. This is not the first time importers and exporters are being made to go through a lot of pain to clear their goods at the nation’s sea ports. Annoyingly, it also appears this won’t be the last. As a matter of fact, congestion at the ports has become a chronic problem. It has been identified as one of the factors responsible for the diversion of Nigerian-bound goods to the ports of Benin Republic and Togo by Nigerian businessmen. No one can blame the importers, because even during non-crisis periods, it is still cheaper and faster to clear goods at the ports of these neighboring countries than at Nigerian ports, which explains why imported goods from Cotonou and Togo are cheaper than similar goods in Nigeria.

Successive administrations in Nigeria have repeatedly given the impression of attempting to address this issue. But none have gone beyond lip service. It is therefore understandable that most observers saw a recent stakeholders’ forum to address the issue of port congestion in Nigeria as another attempt by government to buy time. Many who received the news believed that the game of deceiving Nigerians was about to be repeated. Forum of various types have become a deceitful way of doing things at government ministries in this country. In the end, the only purpose such forum serve is to achieve publicity for government officials by forming part of news items on television network news.

We expect the federal government through the ministries of transport and finance to conduct an independent investigation into the problem of congestion at Nigerian ports so as to objectively identify the true causes of the congestion. A stakeholders’ forum which brings together customs officials and clearing agents cannot achieve anything. You cannot expect clearing agents registered by customs to openly criticize the customs. This is Nigeria; Customs will simply withdraw such agent’s license the next day.

Operators at the ports have often pointed accusing fingers at the Nigerian Customs Service and the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA). The customs service still insists on manual inspection of all containers arriving at the ports. How many can they check in a day? A full, automated clearing system should be put in place as obtains in other parts of the world. Nigerians also see as disheartening the presence of multiple units of custom officials, all performing similar tasks at the ports. On its part, the NPA should purchase and install modern cargo-handling facilities to replace those epileptic, obsolete and non-functional equipments at the ports. The NPA also needs to jettison its policy of assigning certain vessels to particular ports, as this arrangement makes some terminals congested while others are barely utilized. Ships should be free to berth at any available terminal. Government should also take measures to fully equip other seaports outside of Lagos, such as Warri, Koko, Calabar and Onne sea ports which are grossly under-utilized.

Summary Measures such as these will help in addressing the long-standing problem of congestion at the nation’s seaports. Nigerian businessmen and ultimately the Nigerian economy will be the better for it.

Author: Kenneth J. Agwu

Advantages of Social Media Marketing

In the world of business, marketing is essential. However, in our new digital age, traditional marketing is becoming increasingly ineffective, and a new form of marketing is on the rise. Because of its many advantages, social media marketing has become an almost essential part of any business’s attempt to establish a firm footing in today’s competitive market. When considering the pros and cons of different marketing methods, think of all the time and money that was traditionally spent on marketing your products or services, and compare it to what it now costs to market your business on social sites.

Originally, businesses paid out of pocket for advertisements on television, billboards, or in newspapers. Eventually, these strategies came to the point where they were not cost effective in the least. Of all viewers of advertisements, only one to two percent actually contacted the distributor and was interested in their product. Why was this? One of the most interesting advantages of social media marketing is that when viewing television, advertisements often irritate and interrupt viewers, causing most of them to be uninterested in the advertised product. With social media, the targeted audience not only watches the advertisement, but also participates in it.

Participation is a key advantage of social media marketing. Online, people willingly participate in activities and blogs that market your company for you. When the customers become involved with your business or company, they not only care about your products, the come to care about your business. Social involvement with customers usually leads to an increase in clientele and customer satisfaction.

Another advantage that comes with social media marketing is that online advertising with sites like Facebook is one hundred percent free. You no longer have to rent a billboard or air time on the television or radio. You do not have to pay for ink and paper and distribute fliers about your business. You can do it all electronically and be much more productive. Almost every human being, in the United States at least, has heard of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Most of them have profiles. By marketing your business online, a completely new world of advertising opens up.

With all these advantages, a business almost cannot survive in our world without internet marketing. The best thing about it though, is that it is affordable, effective and can work for anyone. Any business, no matter how small, can effectively market itself online.

Strategies For an Online Job Search

Finding a job used to be a very slow process, but this has drastically changed with the advent of online job search boards. Rather than waiting for the Sunday newspaper to find good jobs to apply for, you can now set up an account with a multitude of online job search agents and have hundreds of leads delivered to you inbox daily. This article will show you how to properly put together an online job search that is efficient and effective.

Online Job Search Strategy – Step 1: Get Your Profile Online

The first step in conducting your online job search is preparing electronic copies of your resumes and cover letters. The major online job boards allow you to create a free profile and upload as many targeted resumes and cover letters as you like. Putting your job search documents in an electronic format makes it super easy to distribute them to potential employers quickly. Once you have put your resume in an electronic format, it’s important to upload it to as many sites as possible. Most importantly, make your resume “searchable” or public to employers. This way when an employer runs a search for specific keywords, your resume will show up without even needing to apply for the job.

Online Job Search Strategy – Step 2: Set Up Automated Job Search Agents

The major online job search sites offer a fantastic automated feature – emailed search results. You can create a free profile that will bring daily leads to your email address. When you create a job search agent, be sure to use as many relevant keywords as possible relating to your field. Don’t just use the title of the position you are looking for, include synonyms and related words to increase the chances of finding leads you are interested in. For example, if you are an accountant, don’t just search for “accountant.” Instead put together a large string of related keywords, such as: “accountant, accounting, general ledger, finance, financial reporting.” You may end up seeing jobs that you are not qualified for, but it’s better to have too many than too few.

Online Job Search Strategy – Step 3: Managing the online application process

It can get pretty cumbersome to manage the application process once you have multiple emailed search agents created. To keep yourself focused, you need to have a good process for organizing the leads. I like to use the daily job application organizer that you can find at JobSearchPower.com. By keeping a list of jobs you are interested in you can be sure you are following up properly on each job you apply for.

Be a Computer Guru and Earn Money

If you have skills with a computer, than why not put them to use and make some cash? This is a great and relatively easy way to make some extra money because many people are not computer gurus.

How To Start

What you will want to do first is start small. While it may seem hard to find people who experience computer problems in public, putting an ad in a newspaper isn’t going to land you many clients because this field is usually very over saturated with competition. So the best way to start out is by printing out flyers detailing your service. Will you be focusing only on the software aspects of a computer, the hardware portion, or both? Remember that fixing computers is not usually rocket science, and if you cant figure out a solution on your own, the internet can do wonders (as you may already know).

A great place to post your flyers are at public areas (where you are permitted). Check with local businesses and ask if you can post flyers in their building. The key is to target your primary audience, which is usually middle aged people and older.

The best way to get clients is to use your age to your benefit. Most people with computer problems are going to be much older than you are and they most likely equate computer literate people to young people like yourself. By saying your 16 and want to help fix someones computer at half the price as professional shops, they’ll give you a call.

Pricing

Computer repair prices vary and most of the time businesses will charge by the hour, or simply charge a flat fee. The easiest thing to do is to stay negotiable. Compare your prices to other repair shops and cut them in half. The lower you go, the more chance you will have a returning customer.

One other element you should think about is whether you will be working from within your residence or making house calls. While the former may seem easier on your part, you may not receive as many customers as if you were offering to go to their residence and fix the problem for them. And think about other people living with you. Will they like to have people drop by with computer parts all the time? The latter is probably the best choice as far as business is concerned, however it also requires a mode of transportation.

Lastly, print yourself out some nice business cards and watch the cash roll in.

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