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Economic Stimulus Payments on the Way; Some People Will See Direct Deposit Payments Today

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:12:58 -0500

WASHINGTON � The Internal Revenue Service has begun to transfer economic stimulus payments to millions of Americans, some of whom will see payments in their bank accounts as early as today.

The IRS will issue payments of up to $600 ($1,200 for married couples) plus $300 for eligible children younger than 17, throughout the spring and summer. The first wave of payments will go to people who opted for direct deposit on their 2007 income tax returns.

�People who chose direct deposit will receive their economic stimulus payments the quickest,� IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said. �We know there are many people who are eligible for an economic stimulus payment who have not filed a tax return. If you think you may be eligible, even if you don�t normally file a tax return, please check it out. And, use direct deposit to get your payment faster.�

Whether a taxpayer opted for direct deposit determines how soon the payment will arrive. The first cycle of paper checks will be mailed starting May 9.

Even people who normally do not have a filing requirement may be eligible for the stimulus payment. People who have no filing requirement must have at least $3,000 in qualifying income. Qualifying income includes any combination of earned income, nontaxable combat pay they elect to include in earned income and certain payments from Social Security, Veterans Affairs and Railroad Retirement.

People with at least $3,000 in qualifying income may qualify for an economic stimulus payment of $300 ($600 for married couples) plus the $300 per qualifying child payment. However, they must file a 2007 income tax return by Oct. 15 , 2008, to receive a stimulus payment. They can use the simple Form 1040A and provide basic information. Form 1040A is available on IRS.gov, the official IRS Web site.

The payment schedule announced earlier this year is for people who filed early enough to have their tax returns processed by April 15. People who did not submit a return in time for it to be processed by April 15 may see their stimulus payments later than the scheduled dates.

Below are the schedules for economic stimulus payments related to tax returns processed by April 15, 2008:

Direct Deposit Payments
If the last two digits of your Social Security number are:	Your economic stimulus payment deposit should be transmitted to your bank account by:
00 � 20	May 2
21 � 75	May 9
76 � 99	May 16
Paper Check
If the last two digits of your Social Security number are:	Your check should be in the mail by:
00 � 09	May 16
10 � 18	May 23
19 � 25	May 30
26 � 38	June 6
39 � 51	June 13
52 � 63	June 20
64 � 75	June 27
76 � 87	July 4
88 � 99	July 11

Some taxpayers may receive smaller economic stimulus payments than they anticipated. By law, the stimulus payments are offset to satisfy past-due taxes, student loans, child support and certain other debts.

The IRS will send notices to taxpayers who have already filed a 2007 tax return and who are eligible for an economic stimulus payment. This notice will serve as an important recordkeeping document and should be retained by taxpayers. By keeping people informed, the IRS hopes to reduce calls to customer service representatives who are still busy helping taxpayers complete tax returns.

How to Move Your Real Estate Website to Top 10 on Google

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:24:09 -0500

According to a recent report from Borrell Associates, the real estate industry spent more than $7 billion on Web site design and maintenance, an expenditure that is anticipated to grow to more than $11 billion in the next three years.

The web has revolutionized how Americans buy homes. The number of homebuyers using the Web has risen steadily, climbing to 84 percent of all buyers in 2007 (up from 80 percent in 2006), according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR); Supplemental studies reveal that nearly 75 percent of Internet homebuyers drive by a home based on their Web visit. Nearly one out of every three homebuyers first learned online about the home they eventually purchased.

It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that to do well in the real estate business may require that one has a satisfactory online presence � most preferable, their own website. However, having your own website is not enough because most web searchers only search through the first 10 listing in Google. This means that to get noticed your website must show up in Google for the frequently search real estate keywords in your area; for example, Huntsville Alabama real estate, if you live in Huntsville Alabama .

Here is a list of things you must do to be TOP 10 in GOOGLE:

Buy a good real estate domain name
A real estate domain made up of real estate keywords related to your niche, city or state is best. A domain name like realestatenewyork.com is better than johnbrown.com as the keywords real estate and New York (if you sell real estate in New York) are part of the domain name.

Age of Domain
Google and other search engines assign a low ranking to domain names that are only registered for one year. This is because there are many online businesses that buy domain names just to test them for a few months, if not days. Buying your domain name for 5 to 10 years sends an indication to Google that you are serious about business � that your real estate website is no fly-by-night operation.

Domain IP address
If you have more than one domain on the same server � with the same IP address assigns to all your domains the result could be a decrease in your page rank, if not overall traffic. There is a possibility that if Google suspects that one of the websites on this server is serving excessive spam, the entire list of websites on this particular server could be blacklisted.

If your real estate website is maintained outside of your operation, check with your webmaster to ensure that you have a unique IP.

Webpage optimization
Ensure that your title tags, description, meta keywords, internal links, photos, and content is fill with real estate keywords that are relative to your industry and mirrors the search term that home buyers are using to search for homes. Do the following:

1. Make each page title tag be made up of most frequently used search terms and keywords used in your real estate niche that is relative to your page. To get these keywords visit Google tools or wordtracker.com.

2. Use no more than three search term per title; keep your title short, no more that 60 characters, with your main search term at the beginning

3. Write good Meta description with solid copy, filled with the most suitable key phrases.

4. Add no more than 7 keywords to you Meta keywords. Keep the keywords relevant to you topic. Although some search engine does not require them, it can be still useful

5. Add alternate tags that are made up of keywords to your photos

6. Bold and add internal links to keywords in you main content

7. Build your heading (H1) with keywords

Link building
Although internal links are essential, external links are incredible valuable. Google has recently clamped down on excessive two-way linking that verges on the border of cloaking. Therefore, I highly recommend three-way linking. That said, it would be a plus to your linking strategy if you had more than one website: one as your main site for receiving incoming links and the other as a directory or a blog via which you could link to others. That way, you will avoid the possibility of being penalized by Google. Remember to always add rich keyword phrases to you link title.

Use the tools from the guys at buildpr.com in your linking strategy. If you do not mind spending a little to promote your site download the tools from IBP, this tool will show exactly what your real estate competitors are doing. Submit to free directories like www.realout.com . If you have the extra dollars to spend on marketing, I would recommend that you place text ads on reals.com and its affiliate of websites. For $99.00 you can have your text ads placed on these 12 sites for a year:

Reals.com

RealEstate4.com

LinkRE.com

RealEstateYellow.com

iRealEstateDirectory

DirectoryRealEstate.com

NetSavvyAgent.com

Realestatebig.com

RealestateAward.com

RealestateRegional.com

RealestateKey.com

RealestateBest.com

5 of the best free directories include:

Open Directory Project (http://dmoz.org/)

World Site Index (http://www.worldsiteindex.com/)

Domaining.in (http://www.domaining.in/)

Web World (http://www.webworldindex.com/)

Search Sight (http://www.searchsight.com/)

5 of the best paid directories include:

Yahoo! Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com/)

Best of the Web (http://botw.org/)

Business.com (http://www.business.com/)

Aviva (http://www.avivadirectory.com/)

Ezilon (http://www.ezilon.com/)

Submit articles to article directories
Submit well written articles on subjects in your real estate area. Imbed links pointing to your site on these articles and submit them to articles directories. Every link will provide a back link to your page. If your articles are very authoritative � filled with useful information it becomes more likely that other webmasters will add it to their pages, thus increasing your back links even more. Here are some reliable directories:

365articles.com

amazines.com

article99.com

articlealley.com

articlebiz.com

articlecity.com

articledashboard.com

articledepot.co.uk

articlehub.com

Articlesender.com

bigarticles.com

biz-whiz.com

buzzle.com

ezinearticles.com

ezine-articles-planet.com

ezineplug.com

ezine-writer.com.au

freezinesite.com

goarticles.com

ideamarketers.com/writers.cfm

ideaviewer.com

ireprint.info

isnare.com

linksnoop.com

pnnonline.org

Searchwarp.com

simplysearch4it.com

Press release
Submit 2 press releases every month to online press release directories. Here are a few that I find reliable:

prleap.com

clickpress.com

pr.com

express-press-release.com

Pr-inside.com

pr-gb.com

pr-usa.net

live-pr.com

bestsyndication.com

americanchronicle.com

RSS News
Add two sets of rss news on your front page with no more than 10 stories per feed. If you are for instance, in the Huntsville homes for sale market you can add one RSS from a Huntsville local TV or newspaper source and the other RSS from a real estate source. Use an RSS reader that converts it to HTML rather than JavaScript. That way, the search will see actual text when Google crawls through your site. Because these news sources update daily, if not hourly, Google will crawl your site often, looking for fresh content. My website www.huntsvillepr.com is crawl through every day or so by Google. Check out rss-info.com for converting any RSS to php or html.

In addition, create your own site RSS feed and include it in the border of all your pages. If your site give updated real estate information, ask others to include your rss feed in their site

Create Blog
Blogs are a great way to embed links into content and to create addition back links and traffic to your website. Visit blogger.com � creating a blog is as easy as 1,2,3. What is great about blogger.com is that your content is instantly searchable in Google search engine. If you are not comfortable with the whole blogger phenomenon you can easy create an online presence with Activerain.com

Today real estate Listings are distributed broadly and indiscriminately to virtually every facet of the internet. A home buyer can find homes listed on sites as broad as Realtor.com and as targeted as BobVila.com. There are a myriad of real estate related websites that realtors can place their ads on for free, some for a small fee, some allow realtors to place links on unique pages.

List your real estate business on Yahoo! Real Estate, http://realestate.yahoo.com/info Zillow.com�, and Trulia.com. These companies have launched a standard multiple listings services, through which realtors and other listings providers will be able to distribute their listings data to several of the leading real estate sites in one common format, making it easier to get critical information to consumers faster and more efficiently.
Try creating relationships with some of most visited real estate websites:

Realtor.com
Move.com
HomeGain
Zillow
Rent.com
Yahoo! Real Estate
ZipRealty
Apartments.com
ServiceMagic
Trulia.com
MSN Real Estate
VisualTour.com
Homes.com
RealtyTrac
WhiteFence
ForRent.com

In addition, although it does not provide for link building and property listing, Yahoo�s www.kijiji.com is a free classified portal that provides an easy means of advertising and drawing visitors to your website, thus creating brand awareness.

Better yet, use a one-stop-post for all your real estate listings. Visit www.postlets.com and sign up for an account. Through postlets.com you can post your real estate listing to most of the well established real estate brands like Trulia and Zillow.

Social media marketing
The industry has undergone a remarkable shift. Layers of cyberspace connectivity are developing in numbers too numerous to list. An outgrowth of the MySpace social networking phenomenon, sites such as LinkedIn are geared toward linking professional profiles to garner career opportunities, consulting offers, new ventures, and job opportunities.

You must get involved in the top social media sites to understand them thoroughly. My thought process behind this was that the only way to start understanding the type of content that works is by being exposed to the stories, titles and content on a daily basis. Therefore this mainly involved using Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon and the like on a regular basis.

Well, at the end of the day, what really counts is perseverance. Rockerfeller once said, "persistency is the single most important thing in business". If you post one blog a day, you will have 365 pages at the end of the year - more pages than the average book. THINK ABOUT IT!

How Credit Rating Affects Your Car Loan

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:22:00 -0500

I think that most people will agree that it is important that one understands the car buying process and how credit rating affects interest rates and the overall car buying experience before one goes to the dealership.

First, the car buyer should know that banks, lenders, insurers and car dealerships regard a credit rating or credit score as a reasonably accurate indicator of future consumption behavior. While insurance companies relate credit scores to the probability of claims being filed, lenders, on the other hand, use the rating as an indicator of potential defaults.

Low credit ratings, therefore, translate to tougher loan terms and higher insurance premiums. That is why it is recommended that car buyers check their credit report for discrepancies in their credit history. They can find out by contacting any one of the three credit bureaus � Equifax, Experian or TransUnion.

Credit ratings are expressed in a numerical range from 350 to 850 which gives an indication of the consumer�s bill paying habits. To a lender the score indicates the level of risk that the lender will undergo by granting a loan to the consumer. High scores mean consumers are likely to be more trustworthy and have a higher tendency to pay their bills on time.

The use of credit ratings to factor out car loan terms is not always reliable, but this is the norm in the industry. Fortunately, there are always ways to improve your credit rating and obtain good terms on your loan. Companies like cardownloan.com has a system that helps buyers locate banks and car dealerships that are willing to work with people with little or no credit.

Consumers with little credit that are not ready to buy a car can improve on their credit by paying their bills on time, reducing the amount of credit account that they open, prevent the possibility of undergoing collection agency notices, repossessions, foreclosures, tax liens, or bankruptcies, and avert from having increases in credit card balances or a reduction in credit limits.

It is important to bear in mind that not all financing options are equal or may be perceived to be fear. Rates vary widely from dealerships, banks and credit unions; rates vary from used cars to new cars and from the length of the loan. For instance, bankingmyway.com 36 months loan for a new car is 6.38% while a used car is 6.9%. For a 60 months loan on a new car the interest rate is 6.55 and 7.04% on a used car.

Calling all Huntsville Jazz Lovers

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:30:59 -0500

As many of you know I work at WJAB 90.9FM and coming up THIS SATURDAY is our annual fundraiser.

Every year we need voulnteers to come up and answer phones/take pledges. its easy, fun and you get fed.

SOOOOOOO can you, your group, your organization, posse etc come and help us out for a few hours???

Please email me back ot call Ms Artis at 372-8790.

If you likeJazzzzz show your support. Give WJAB a call.

This post is bought to your by HUNTSVILLE PR

5 reasons why your Credit rating is low

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:47:50 -0500

The recent financial trends have not been encouraging for those who have bad credit or little credit. The rise in foreclosures, the steady climb in inflation that outstrip the rise in wages, the astronomical increase in gas prices all combine to make several of us think of our financial situation and our credit rating.

A slight move in your credit score can make a world of a difference when it comes to the interest rate you will pay for loans such as auto and mortgage loans. Here are five things that affect your credit rating negatively.

#1 The biggest factor affecting your FICO score is your payment history: How promptly you pay and how often you've been delinquent on monthly payments. If you are late on your bill payments, event a 30 day late on credit cards or regular bills such as utilities, phone or house payments and your FICO score will begin to decrease dramatically for each late payment. So it is very important that you pay your bills on time. There is no room for procrastination when it comes to your credit.

#2 If you have applied for any new credit accounts - which is usually an indication of risk, your FICO score will be reduce, so you will want to restrain your tendency of applying for any new accounts. Try keeping your accounts to a tolerable or sustainable minimum.

#3 If you are like the millions of Americans who have recently been served with collection agency notices, repossessions, foreclosures, tax liens, or bankruptcies your credit score will be affected. On a good note, the credit agencies have recently changed the way they calculate your FICO score. If you suspect discrepancies in your credit report you can check with the companies that you owed and have the credit reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion) recalculate your FICO score.

#4 If you have closed any credit card accounts, seen an increase in credit card balances or had credit limits reduced, your credit ratings can be reduced. These activities can affect the ratio between how much credit you're using and how much you have available. In fact, some debt managers say that if you're using more than 50 percent of your available credit it can have a negative impact. On the other hand, if you close too many of your accounts, limiting your credit activities, you could suffer from having too little credit in the long run.

#5 Inquires into your credit report affect your ratings as well, but the effects are very some and in most cases negligible. Multiple inquires into your credit report for the purpose of a mortgage or auto loan will not affect your credit score. That's because the FICO computing system was recently changed to protect the consumers from being penalized for seeking multiple, competitive interest rates on home or auto loans. So several inquiries from auto dealerships or home mortgage companies in a 45-day period, are treated as a single inquiry.

Taxpayers Can Check Their Refund Status

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:18:23 -0500

Taxpayers who have filed their federal income tax returns and are expecting their refunds can use the Internal Revenue Service�s online tool, �Where�s My Refund?,� to check on the status of their refunds.

�Where�s My Refund?� is fast, easy, safe and convenient. Nearly 9.7 million taxpayers have checked the status of their 2007 federal income tax refunds online, up about 18 percent over the same time period last year.

To get to personalized refund information, taxpayers should be ready to enter their:

Social Security Number (or Taxpayer Identification Number),
Filing status (Single, Married Filing Joint Return, Married Filing Separate Return, Head of Household, or Qualifying Widow(er)),
Exact refund amount shown on their tax returns.

Taxpayers can check on the status of their refund seven days after e-filing a return. For a paper return, check four to six weeks after mailing the return.

�Where�s My Refund?� also includes links to customized information based on a taxpayer�s specific situation. For example if �Where�s My Refund?� shows that the IRS was unable to deliver a refund, a taxpayer can change his or her address online. Taxpayers can avoid undelivered refund checks by having their refunds directly deposited into a personal checking or savings account.

If 28 days have passed after the IRS says it mailed a refund check, �Where�s My Refund?� enables taxpayers to initiate a trace.

New this year Spanish-speaking taxpayers can get information about the status of their federal refunds using D�nde Est� mi Reembolso? available by entering the Spanish language area of the web site by clicking the Espanol link on IRS.gov. The refund trace and address change features are only available in English at this time.

Taxpayers without internet access can check the status of their refunds by calling the IRS TeleTax System at 800-829-4477 or the IRS Refund Hotline at 800-829-1954. The TeleTax refund information is updated each weekend. If you do not get a date for your refund, please wait until the next week before calling back.

Where�s My Refund? is also accessible to visually impaired taxpayers who use the Job Access with Speech screen reader used with a Braille display and is compatible with different JAWS modes.

Some scam artists are sending phony emails, including those relating to �Where�s My Refund?�, to trick individuals into revealing personal financial information that can be used to access their financial accounts. People who want to access the genuine IRS Web site and the �Where�s My Refund?� feature should go directly to the IRS Web site by typing the address, www.irs.gov, into the address` line of their Internet window. The only genuine IRS Web site is IRS.gov.

First Westin Hotel Opens in Huntsville Alabama

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:34:45 -0500

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE: HOT) and O&S Holdings, LLC are pleased to announce the highly anticipated opening of The Westin Huntsville on Saturday, April 12, 2008. The 11-story hotel features 210 beautifully appointed guest rooms and 74 residential condominiums on the top six floors. Guests are invited to refresh and rejuvenate at this elegant new property with the help of the Westin brand�s signature services and amenities.

Overlooking a scenic, ten-acre lake, The Westin Huntsville is the newest addition to the Bridge Street Town Centre, a premier mixed-use lifestyle center within Huntsville's Cummings Research Park, the hub of North Alabama�s space and defense industry and the second largest technology park in the United States. The offices of Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin are all close by. Guests will also enjoy proximity to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, the Huntsville Botanical Gardens and several area golf courses.

The Westin Huntsville features the largest hotel ballroom in the city, with 7,900 square feet of space that can accommodate as many as 850 guests. For smaller events, this space can be divided into six separate meeting rooms. A state-of-the-art, 792-square foot boardroom is also available.

Bridge Street Town Centre is a 550,000 square-foot, retail lifestyle center with space for more than 70 stores and restaurants, many of which are new to the North Alabama market. In addition to shopping and restaurants, Bridge Street also features the 14 screen Monaco Pictures, 210 room Westin Hotel, 74 luxury Westin Huntsville Residences, and 133,000 square feet of office space. Construction will continue on the Offices at Bridge Street, which will open later this year

Huntsville Alabama real estate events

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:27:13 -0500

Monday

Realty World South will host a free "Lease to Own" seminar at 1874 Slaughter Road in Madison at 6 p.m. Learn how to improve your credit score and become a homeowner. This seminar is conducted each Monday. Call 325-8500 for reservations.

Tuesday

Weichert, Realtors - The Executive Group will host a free real estate career seminar each Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the company's office at 2304 S. Memorial Parkway. Call 533-7210.

Thursday

Huntsville/Madison County Homeownership Alliance will hold a free First Time Homebuyer Fair at the Richard Showers Center, 4600 Blue Spring Road, from 3 to 7 p.m. Learn about down-payment assistance and other financial assistance, and how to obtain a low-cost mortgage. For more info, call 551-1610.

Friday

Madison County Real Estate Investors Association will host two sessions of the new Millionaire Maker Board Game. Have fun and learn how to build wealth. This event will be offered at Crestwood Medical Center's Women's Center, 185 Chateau Drive, on Friday from 6 to 8:30 p.m. and again Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m. Cost is $10 per person or $15 for two. Participants must be at least 15. To register, visit www.MadisonCountyREIA.com or call 829-2304.

This post is brought to you by HUNTSVILLE PR - Huntsville Alabama Real estate Media

Cheap Auto Insurance

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:17:53 -0500

The price of gas may be climbing to epic heights, but your car insurance doesn't have to, especially if you use the aptly named CheapAutosInsurance.com as your source for auto insurance quotes online.

The site is refreshingly different from most web pages hawking insurance quotes. For one thing, it's free of external advertising, and for another, it offers real information on how you can save money, right on the first page, in the form of a list of tips that you can apply to a new policy, or use to improve the premium on one you already have in force. "Just as having your auto and home policies with one company can save you money, so, too, can having both your cars on the same policy," reads the beginning of one of the snippets of advice. It goes on to suggest combining your home and auto insurance policies so that one company handles both, which generally nets you a significant discount.

CheapAutosInsurance doesn't just offer quick fixes for your insurance rates, however, it also has a collection of articles about each facet of auto insurance. Need to know the difference between comprehensive and collision coverages, or exactly what sr22 insurance refers to? This website has an article about that.

In addition to static articles, CheapAutosInsurance.com also offers insurance industry news, which their staff writes weekly after scouring various sources for relevant information. You won't read about the latest celebrity DUI here, but you will learn about the recent increase in minimum liability requirements in Texas.

Information is all very well and good, of course, but CheapAutosInsurance.com also offers free auto insurance quotes. The link for the simple input form is found on every page, and the information required is fairly basic. All data is transferred securely, and there is no obligation to purchase anything.

Information, advice, and fast free quotes all make CheapAutosInsurance.com an excellent resource for your auto insurance needs.

Office in Madison County up for grabs

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:41:44 -0500

The deadline to qualify to run for these offices is this coming Friday, April 4, 2008, at 5:00 p.m.

The local offices up for election in Madison County this year and the annual salary of each are as follows:

Madison County Commission Chairman - $83,977.95, plus car, plus other benefits
District Commissioners 1 through 6 - $60,322.50, plus car, plus other benefits
Madison County Tax Assessor - $69,800.85, plus car, plus other benefits
Madison County Tax Collector - $69,800.85, plus car, plus other benefits
Madison County License Director - $69,800.85, plus car, plus other benefits