(c) 2008 Brent Wale

If you are either thinking about starting a cleaning company, or if you already own and operate a cleaning company, Your probably thinking about how you will bid on new accounts. First, lets talk about how much to charge when bidding on new accounts.

On your first few jobs take notes of the workload and time it takes for each operation, so you will know what to consider when bidding on future jobs, and how long it should take you, or your employees.

You’ll want to have a checklists to use when walking through the job with the prospective client, so you can find out, and record exactly what is wanted and bid accordingly. The objective is to bid the amount that will satisfy both you as a business person and the client.

Here are a few suggestions before making your final bid. Check the outside of the building to see if there are additional chores that could or should be included. Such as sweeping a parking lot, straightening the trash bin or washing the outside windows. Also check the general appearance (which will tell you the quality of work they expect),and see if there is someone that may be hard to please.

Always look for a behind the scenes person who has been there for a long time. These are typically the type of people who will be the one that calls you back to empty a missed ashtray. If I spot such a person, I add 10% to the bid and everyone stays happy!

What about Competing with lower price competitor’s without lowering your price?

Experienced clients know that you get what you pay for. So you don’t have to lower your price to beat your competitors. There is a better and smarter way. You can beat your competitor without lowering your price. Offer More Benefits. Offer more services. Take the time to really find out what they are looking for. Whats the most important thing to them when hiring a cleaning company. Let them know how important that is to you and your company. Get personable. Dont just rush through things.

Clients always compare the benefits they get from their purchase, they don’t mind to pay higher prices for better & more benefits.

What about your cleaning company being bonded?

Many businesses will not deal with janitorial companies unless they are bonded. Because you have access, often a set of keys to their buildings and they share the alarm codes as well. Normally the cleaning is done when no one else is there. A bonding service also helps protect you. If there is ever a question, the bonding agent arbitrates.

Tools for Internet Marketing have been rising to popularity these days because of cost-effectiveness and the possibility of measuring increase in profits and sales.

Pay per click (PPC) is a means to advertise business through the use of keywords/phrases in the search engines. The advertiser is required to only pay for each click that sends a visitor to his website. Search engines such as Overture, Google Adwords, Search Yahoo and Miva are just some examples of search engines. They offer top positions among the sponsored listings for particular keywords/phrases you choose. The idea for bidding is you have to buy/bid on keywords/phrases relevant to your business. The highest bidder gets to be on the top of the search result listing and the second highest bidder, of course, gets the next top listing and so on. Every time a visitor clicks on your website, you will have to pay the same amount that you bid on that particular keyword.

PPC can be very costly, time consuming and sometimes not worthy. But if you know how to go about the step by step procedures, PPC is a welcome change to traditional advertising. 

If you do your searches for products, articles and auctions in the net, you usually type in a keyword or a set of phrase to guide you in your search. Either you use Google or Yahoo Search depending on where you are most comfortable at and where you usually get the best results. As soon as you key in the search button, immediately a long list of keywords or phrase will be displayed containing the keywords you key in. The first or the top link that you saw is most likely the one who bids the highest for that keyword you type. In this way, businessmen will produce the desired results; they get to be advertised, at the same time, saving and spending only for the clicks they need that might translate to potential sales.

The way to start PPC bid management is to identify first the maximum cost per click (CPC) you are willing to pay for a given keyword or phrase. CPC varies from time and even search engine to search engine too. Maximum CPC can be measured by averaging the current costs of bids (bids range from $0.25 to $5). Average of these bids is to be used as the maximum CPC to begin with. As your ad campaign progresses, the actual conversion rate (visitors turning to potential buyers/sales) will be determined and you may have to adjust your CPC (bidding rate) accordingly.

When you start to bid, see to it that you adopt different bidding strategies for various search engines. Search engines have their own PPC systems that require different approaches. It is also worthy to identify different bids for the same keyword phrases in various search engines.

Another thing, it is wiser not to bid for the top spot for two reasons: 1) It is very expensive and impractical, and 2) Surfers usually try different search queries in various search engines before they settle on the right one that fits to what they are looking for. This hardly results to conversion. Try to bid for the fifth spot instead and work your way up.

If you are now going steady on your PPC biddings, it is time for you to develop your own bidding strategy accordingly. It is important for you to track down which sites bring the bulk of your traffic and identify the ranking of your paid ads. This will help your bidding strategy to be effective and you should also decide where you want your ad to be positioned. Usually your maximum CPC will limit your choices.

Bid gaps (e.g. $ 0.40, 0.39, bid gap, 0.20, 0.19, 0.18) occur when there is a significant price increase to move up one spot in the PPC rankings. It is best if you take advantage of the bid gaps by filling them in so you can save up your cents to other bidding opportunities. Often there are keywords worthy of lesser bids to get the appropriate ranking on the list and produce a good number of clicks and higher conversion rate rather than bidding higher but having a poor conversion rate. You have to put in mind that overbidding too is not good but rather the best position for the most effective bid. 

Using pay-per-click bid management in promoting your website will only be successful if you take time building many lists across many engines and studying the performance of every listing. In this way, you can make the most value from what you spend in the bidding process.  The key is to use the necessary precautions to stay ahead of the competition.

Bid Management Tools

In ensuring best results, you may use bid management tools. There are accepted and approved management tools that will help you in your bidding. They are categorized in two different types:

• Web based (services by monthly subscription) or,

• PC based (a purchased software)

Monitoring tools too may help in the tracking down of your keywords/phrases and search engines as to which among them often generate sales, overall and in relation to your cost per click. This is what you call return of investment (ROI) monitoring.

These bid management tools may include additional functions that may not get from online marketing tools that are readily available. Other tools can monitor competitor’s bids, produce reports for different parties and offer the ability to interface with multiple PPC engines. This is particularly helpful to those who manage more than a hundred keywords across several PPC engines to boost productivity and save time.  

Pay-per-click bid management is ideal for the effective promotion of your business online without the hassles of draining your financial keeping too much. It is now fast catching up as a means used in marketing your goods and services to reach to as many consumers as possible.  

 

Every prospective home buyer knows that the most nerve wracking part of the real estate search isn’t hiring a real estate agent or seeking the perfect location with essential features; it occurs once you’ve already found the most desirable residence your search has yielded. The moment of  truth happens when you resolve to make your offer. Most real estate agents are cautious to suggest a price, so it’s up to you ensure that you go about this undertaking properly and correctly.

Although no one expects you to become a real estate aficionado during the purchase process, there are several things that you can do to find out what the best offer is for the desired property. The first thing that you’ll want to try to uncover is why the seller wants to sell. The listing agent has this information, and some are willing to share while others are not. It certainly would not hurt to ask and may assist you in determining an appropriate bid.

The next area of research is your individual local real estate market. You need to know if your local market is supportive of buyers or sellers. If you are in a buyer’s market, there won’t be as much competition over the home you want. In other words, there may not be other bids out there on the home. If it is a seller’s market, the owner of the property may be far less likely to negotiate with you. The owner may not accept your offer because there may be several other, more attractive bid submissions.

Make sure that you contrast the list price of your prospective home to recently sold houses that are similar when it comes to size, age and setting. This will give you a broad sense of how much other buyers have paid for like real estate. Keep in mind that anything sold more than six months previous to your query is not applicable.

Another aspect to consider is how much homes are going for for in your area in terms of the average price per square foot. Although this is not a good way to come up with a good price to offer for the home, it is a great way to judge whether home prices in your area are going up or down.

Also try to find out the current mortgage balance that the seller is carrying. If the seller has already relocated and still owes a high amount on the home, they are much more likely to negotiate. If, however, the seller has already paid off the home, then negotiations will be much more limited.

Present the seller with your introductory bid which you have calculated based on the advice mentioned above. Don’t be disheartened when they in turn make a counter offer. This is a integral part of the process because it is quite unusual for the property owner to agree to your first bid. These negotiations are commonly made through the real estate agents, but don’t be disinclined to speak directly with the seller if you tend to prefer a more personal level of communication. This crucial course of action varies in duration for each situation and may be brief or lengthy, so maintain your patience. Also, make sure that you keep close tabs on the status of these proceedings and maintain a close professional relationship with your real estate agent. This will help to prevent another potential buyer from snatching the home of your dreams.

Find the perfect Arizona home: Catalina Foothills Estates Homes for Sale or Civano Homes for Sale

Beginning bridge players start by learning how to bid. Good bidding is the key to playing good bridge and it is a skill that is learnt with time and practice.

Start by adding up the points in your hand. This is the easy bit. You get four points for each ace in your hand, three points for each king, two points for each queen and one point for each jack. Add them up to find the total point score for your hand.

The total points you how many tricks your hand might win. This is where it starts to become harder for a beginner. You need to learn the table that indicates the number of tricks that your points score should win. This is the starting point for your bidding. As a beginner you will also be trying to understand how your partner is bidding. You might feel that if you make a mistake with your bidding you will be letting your partner down. Once the game has started you will also be trying to remember which cards have been played. All this concentration can cause beginners to become flustered.

Bridge is a fun, sociable game. To overcome your nerves and allow you to enjoy your bridge games you need to practice your bidding.

The No Fear Bridge membership site allows you to practice your bidding in the comfort of your own home. In no time at all you will improve your bidding skills and amaze your fellow bridge players with your improvement and confidence.

To help with your bidding there is a weekly bidding quiz. There are 20 multiple choice questions covering all aspects of bidding. Just submit your answers. Each time you choose a wrong answer you will be given a clear explanation of why your answer was wrong so you can learn and improve. You can take each weekly quiz as many times as you like.

There is a weekly leaderboard (only your first try at the quiz counts for this!). See if you can put your name at the top of the weekly leaderboard.

Head over to No Fear Bridge now and sign up – just click the link the bio gox below. Be warned – this site can become addictive!

If you are new to the world of hotel reverse auctions/ bidding, you must do some research before bid on hotel rooms and travel services. New online bidders can be paying much more for an item than is necessary. Here are some things that you should look for:

1. Type of Auction:

Is it a Dutch, English, Sealed-Bid or Vickrey Auction? Most online hotel auctions are the Dutch-style, which means the auctioneer asks a certain price as a minimum (called a reserve) and the bidders keep bidding until time is up. The person who has out-bid the others wins and then must pay for the item.

Other types of auctions include business to consumer or

consumer-to-consumer. eBay is the consumer-to-consumer model where almost anyone can sell their wares and anyone can bid on the item or service. All though bid2travel.com is a business to consumer auction site for hotel room, where there are trusted Indian hotel chains who sell their vacant hotel rooms by reverse auction process.

2. No Reserve Bids:

This means there is no minimum amount you must bid before the auction will send you the item. This is a great way to save money and get great items – generally, there is no catch. Check the details before bidding. Bid2travel.com is also using the same pattern for hotel rooms.

3. Packing & Shipping Costs:

Always, and I cannot stress this enough, always check to see how much the shipping charges are before you bid! There are many examples of people having the winning bid on an item and then realizing the shipping fee is more than the cost of the item.

4. Spending:

Always know the maximum amount of money you are willing to spend for your hotel room or travel services. Also, do your research to find the fair market value of the room in a particular hotel.

5. Questions & Contact Info:

A reputable auction site or hotel room seller like bid2travel.com will have easy to find contact details to answer all of your questions. If you find no contact information, do not bid on anything. Chances are if you want to cancel / amend it or if the item is not as promised, there will be no one to contact then either.

6. Fair Value

When you are participating in a reverse auction hotel process of any hotel always gets an idea about the fair value of the room cost in that hotel. You can get the same from the travel Meta search engine sites like chaklo.com. They will give you an idea that which other online travel sites is selling room in a hotel and at what minimum cost.

7. Reverse Auction Newsletters:

You should sign-up for online auction newsletters, like one is available for the registered user of http:// bid2travel.com especially if you are not a regular visitor to this hotel bidding site.

8. Sniping:

It has happened to all of us. No one has outbid you on the item you want. Your bid has been the top bid for about a week. You check your bid moments before and when you turn away from the computer for one second a sniper comes in and outbids you and wins. Who is to blame? You are, in most cases. A sniper can be bidding on his own or can use automated bidding tools to outbid you. There is nothing illegal about it.

9. Bigger is Not Necessarily Better:

It’s not always better to bid big for the hotel rooms. Because when you place a bid for hotel rooms on site like bid2travel.com you are practically buying the vacant rooms and you can have a great chance of bidding the bid even at the 50% cost.

10. Oops…oh my God !

In the world of online hotel room reverse auctions, or any other auctions for that matter, a bid is a bid, and it is like taking your finger off a checker. You made your move and now you must live with it. If you must renege, you will be considered a bad person, regardless of the issue. This is because you have driven up the cost of the item for other buyers, you have promised the vendor that you will buy and now you have just gone back on your word. What do you expect? Only, only, only retract your bid when absolutely necessary. Thin09k before you bid for hotel room or any other travel services.

Following these basic rules will help you in the online reverse

auction world. These are not the only things you should know, just the basics. Spend some time watching the auction before bidding and see how it works. Happy Bidding!

For us cyber residents, eBay is the virtual Wal-Mart; it is the next door shop where I can get the thing I desire, for the price I dreamt of. While the former part of the previous sentence is true to an extent, the latter part, about the price, might not always be correct.

There are instances where I put a bid on eBay and such online auction sites assuming that the bid I placed is the highest and then suddenly prior to the closing of the auction, some clever person just outbids me and takes the dream away. I call him a sniper. A guy (not always a person) sitting just for the target to come out and BOOM! The target is gone.

Auction sniping on eBay and other auction sites is a method where the bidder waits until the last, maybe just seconds before, to bid on the auction prior to the auction’s close. This often ensures that the snipe bidder’s bid precludes competing bids and wins the bid at the lowest price. This technique is being used increasingly by bidders and there are automated bots available to ensure that the snipe bidder win the auction with consistency.

Ebay estimates that approximately 10-15 % of all closed bids are being won today by eBay snipe bidders. They are not complaining, and if some quarters are, their resentment is not very vocal today. The seller is getting the true price, or so he thinks, the middle agency is getting its share of commission; the buyer is living to bid another day. Its guys like me who wait patiently for a long time, for a nice thing to come up, and end up losing it to a last second bid.

Snipe bidding at eBay and other auction sites is not without its share of problems. First, the snipe bidder has to be online just at the time the auction is to close. This becomes a hassle in case of time zone changes. The iPod available at the discounted value might just be lost if the closing time happens to match with your siesta time. To come to your rescue are automated programs called snipe-bots which can be programmed to make the best bid at the time of close of an auction.

The next problem is that of available bandwidth and response of the server. Matching the correct time has a lot of variables. The time it takes for your bid to register at eBay, the bandwidth availability at the critical time of placing the bid, the competing sniping software through which others are bidding on the same product, and of course the associated security issues are some of the random variables that have to be taken into account prior to resorting to manual snipe bidding.

There are however, some automated services available on the internet which reside on servers which are always on and provide a timed bid facility. They scan the eBay auction which has been entered at the time of initiation and determine the current winning bid. At the time of close of the auction, they feed another bid with the required amount so that the winning bid is theirs.

The software can be used for a variety of auctions like the English auction, the second highest auction and the open auction to name a few. They are custom made and can also be effectively be used to evade Twain marks, or the symbol entry facility being increasingly used today to evade automated programs. The security of your eBay id and password are however threatened by some not so certified software agents.

Snipe bidding is gaining popularity and the sniping software is getting more and more advanced. The advantages of sniping on eBay are many which include prevention of nasty emotional bid wars where people keep bidding and counter biding each other. This leads to an overpriced auction, not advantageous to the final winner of the bid. The process of the auction is getting automated and soon it just might become a case of a software winning against another on eBay. Snipe bidding is advantageous to an auction bidder and an accepted practice today. Try it and you might benefit. But for guys like me, we will have to walk to the nearest store get what I desired; at the price the shopkeeper dreamt of.

Estimating house painting jobs is something that you develop over time. I can go into any house and go from room to room and tell you by eye just how much paint you will need to do the ceilings, walls and woodwork. I can also tell you just about how long it will take to paint each room basically.

I can even tell you just about how long it will take to paint each room in general. But estimating many times goes a lot deeper than just eyeballing a few simple rooms. So here are 6 points to help you when figuring your bids or estimates.

1.) Know Your Target Market

When getting prepared to do a painting estimate you first need to know your target market or markets. Are you going to be painting in the mid-class neighborhoods or are you aiming for the high-end expensive neighborhoods? Or are you going after commercial or industrial accounts?

Now you can you gauge how high you are going to set your bid rates. You can have have high-end rates for larger homes, or for commercial or industrial painting, and mid prices for the rest.

Personally, when it comes to painting for residential customers, I keep my rates the same. I do not care if it’s high-end or middle class. If they cannot afford my painting services, I am out of there. Once you have painted at a higher price, it’s hard to go lower unless of course, you are hard up.

If you are estimating painting jobs for big business you can and should aim competitively high without worrying about much competition as you would in residential painting. Plus larger commercial customers have deep pockets. Also to consider, if you are tackling those types of accounts you will need extra painters anyways so you definitely need to aim high in your bidding to cover their wages and benefits.

2.) Fool-Proof System

You need an accurate estimating method that works perfectly every time without fail. Whether inside or outside. You can stand and stare at a project all day and try to guesstimate exactly how long it will take you to paint something or you can use an accurate method for bidding paint jobs and walk away smiling and not wondering if you might bite the bullet on that one.

3.) Allowances

You need to allow for fuel, travel time and even giving Uncle Sam his cut. If your going to be driving long miles you definitely want to account for fuel and travel time, even overnight expenses if you get that radical in your painting business. Again, if you have employees you will need to account for their wages and benefits in your bids also.

4.) Hidden Expenses

You need to be aware of hidden expenses or projects that add extra time and extra materials to a job. Things like hard to cover colors, excessive prep time, high-work, down time due to outside sources that are common in new construction, etc.

5.) Cost of Materials

You need to know how much paint and materials you will be using. (Note: A good estimating system will automatically include all your paints and materials.)

6.) Flexible Methods

Your estimating system should have several ways of figuring your bids. Just like a set of golf clubs, some times you need a different driver to make it on to the next green. Different jobs require different painting estimating techniques.

For example: painting ceilings, walls and woodwork estimating can change if you have excessive woodwork like walk-in closets with tons of shelving. Or rooms with high walls.

The same goes for exterior work in residential painting. Are the surfaces smooth and clean or is there stucco or shingles that require extra time and materials? When you have an accurate system in place you can build up an estimate to meet the type of project you are bidding on.

Many times on larger estimates, I will cross-check my painting bid from different angles by using two different estimating techniques just to make sure I have it all together and did not leave anything out of the big picture.

Bid rigging refers to the felony crime of conspiring with other competitors to raise purchase prices set for local, state, or federal government bids

The US government often accepts bids for the procurement of goods and services. When competitors commit the crime of bid rigging, they agree among themselves in advance which competitor will put forward the winning bid on the government contract.

By conspiring, bid riggers keep prices up and ensure that each competitor gets his crack at a government contract. It isn’t necessary that all competitors are involved in the conspiracy. But if enough are, it can influence a government decision maker who will be likely to ignore or be skeptical about lower-priced bids if the majority submits higher price points.

Consequences for Riggers

Bid rigging violates federal law (i.e., the Sherman Act) and may carry fines for corporations up to $10 million. For individuals the penalty is up to $350,000, a 3-year prison term, or both, if the violation was committed before 22 June 2004.

If the violation was committed before this date, the maximum fine for corporations is $100 million. For individuals, it’s $1 million and a maximum 10-year sentence.

In some cases, maximum fines are raised above Sherman Act limits to TWO TIMES the loss/gain involved. Penalty enhancers, include mail/wire law violations, false statements offenses, etc., which make the perpetrator subject to fines and sentencing for these other crimes.

Aside from criminal penalties, a bid rigger also faces potential civil recovery by victims who may get up to THRICE the amount of original damages suffered.

On top of it all is the damage to a firm’s reputation, as in the case insurance giant Marsh & McLennan.

Beleaguered by bid rigging allegations, the firm had to change its leadership and sell off assets (like its $25-million Falcon jet) to cover losses. And, as if to distance itself from the excesses of the past, it even turned its ousted CEO’s posh executive suite into a conference room.

Four Types of Bid Rigging

Virtually all types of bid rigging tactics involve an arrangement among several or all bidders to predetermine the winning bid and eliminate competition. Four of the most common types of bid rigging plans are

1. Cover Bidding. Also called complementary bidding, this is the most common form of bid rigging. Riggers agree to make bids priced too highly (hence the word “cover”) to be chosen or that contain unacceptable terms to the purchaser. These cover bids make it seem that real competitive bidding is going on when, in fact, they conceal secretly puffed up pricing.

2. Bid Suppression involves refraining from bidding or withdrawing one’s bid to cause a predetermined competing bid to be accepted.

3. Bid Rotation. Bidders conspire to take turns in submitting the lowest bid.

4. Subcontracting. Competitors who submit intentionally losing bids or suppress their bids receive, in exchange for their collusion, subcontracts from the winning bidder.

These tactics are usually difficult to uncover since collusion is done in secret. Out of the four tactics, however, subcontracting is the easiest to detect.