LIFE EXPECTANCY

PARIS, France (AFP) — Healthier lifestyles and higher incomes have helped increase life expectancy in the 35 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations by 10 years in the past half- century, according to a report published Friday. 

The OECD's Health at a Glance 2017 report said the average life expectancy throughout the group of countries — which includes the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, and most EU nations — now stands at 80.6 years, an increase of more than 10 years since 1970. 

“Healthier lifestyles, higher incomes and better education have all contributed to boost life expectancy in recent decades,” the report said. 

“Better health care has also helped.” 

The longest-living are the Japanese and the Swedish, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report. Life expectancy at birth in those two countries was put at 83.9 years, with Spain and Switzerland not far off on 83 years. 

At the other end of the scale of the OECD countries is Latvia, with a much lower life expectancy of 74.6 and Mexico on 75 years. 

However, while some factors like a decline in smoking rates and higher health spending have helped achieve these figures, “there has been little success in tackling obesity and harmful alcohol use, and air pollution is often neglected”, the report warned. 

If the rates of smoking and consumption were halved, life expectancies would rise by a further 13 months, the research found. 

A main driver of the higher life expectancies has been steadily increased spending on health care, the OECD said, while pointing out that the growth has slowed since the financial crisis a decade ago. 

“Health spending per capita has grown [by] around 1.4 percent annually since 2009, compared to 3.6 per cent in the six years up to 2009,” the report's summary said. 

The US tops the list for health spending per capita — at US$9,862 (8,470 euros) per year, more than double the OECD average — but the report points out that the benefits are derived not just from how much money is pumped in but how effectively it is used. 

“Reducing wasteful spending is key to maximise the impact of public resources on health outcomes,” the report says, pointing to the increased use of cheaper generic drugs in some countries — including the US. 

Health spending per capita was also relatively high in Switzerland, Germany, Sweden and France, where it totalled 11 per cent or more of GDP. 

The report also warns against the overuse of antibiotics. 

Obesity remains a major problem with more than half, 54 per cent, of adults in the OECD countries overweight and nine per cent obese. “Obesity rates are higher than 30 per cent in Hungary, New Zealand, Mexico, and the United States,” said the report. 

On the plus side, fewer people are dying following heart attacks or strokes, and across the OECD countries, five-year survival rates for breast cancer are up to 85 per cent and just over 60 per cent for colon and rectal cancers.

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How A Content Upgrade Will Build Your List On Autopilot

Every online entrepreneur understands the importance of building their list of prospects and customers. Whether offering a free opt-in incentive, or selling a product or service, your customers should feel like they receive many times more value than they are expecting. This is true with list building content upgrades, just as it is with everything else you do.

What Is A Content Upgrade?

The name implies, a content upgrade is extra information that upgrades the content that someone has just read. For example, let's say your reader has just read your blog post about 'Cooking The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie'. If that web surfer has read your entire post, that means they are very inclined to receiving more information on that same topic.

Offering a checklist or report with '10 Quick and Tasty Cookie Recipes' would make sense as a content upgrade in this scenario. Improve on the information you offered in your blog post, 'upgrading' the knowledge, information and/or resources on that topic in exchange for that reader joining your email list.

More Value, Quickly Delivered

Checklists and other lists make great content upgrades. Your reader can digest the information quickly. Web surfers these days are highly distracted, and have short attention spans. They don't want to commit a lot of time towards consuming content, even if that content provides value. So make your content upgrade short and sweet.

You should also make your content actionable. Describe a 'simple win' scenario where your reader can notice some real improvement in his or her life because of the information contained in your upgrade. In the above example, a short checklist that offers 10 quick recipes is a high value resource by anyone who was reading your cookie blog post.

Build Your Email List

The quicker someone can experience and benefit from your content the better. That is why content upgrades for building email lists seem to work the best when they are short pieces of easily digested content. On your side of the equation, this means you can make multiple content upgrades quickly and easily.

Your reader gets a quick win. They don't have to spend all day reading a lengthy piece of content. They can realize value very quickly. You don't have to spend as much time in the production process as creating traditional opt-in bribes, your conversion rates soar, and you add one more happy follower to your email list.

Writing a content upgrade for an online audience is very different from writing for an offline audience. It's hard for some people to master because it means giving up old ways of thinking and embracing a new style. Throw out your traditional old-school writing rules and discover the easier and faster way to connect with your audience with this free download: 

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Getting Traffic to your website (4)

4.1 - Paid Traffic Methods - A lot of Internet marketers are intimidated by paid traffic. They might have been burned in the past, or they might be afraid of losing a lot of money. This is definitely a concern, so you need to approach paid traffic with a certain amount of caution.

But the fact is, if you do it right, paid traffic doesn't have to cost you a lot of money to test, and once you figure out how to make it profitable (or just breaking even) it isn't actually costing you anything- you put X dollars in and get Y dollars in return.

There are lots of different paid traffic sources so we can't discuss them all in this report, but let's look at a few of the most popular (and effective).

4.2 - Pay Per Click - Pay per click, or PPC, advertising includes sources like Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter. You pay a certain amount for every person who clicks on your ad and visits your website. That amount can range from a few cents to several dollars, depending on the market and the keywords that you're targeting.

If you're not careful, PPC advertising can chew through a lot of money in a pretty short time so it's important that you approach it correctly.

Make sure you're not targeting really broad keywords that are going to get a ton of clicks but poorly targeted visitors.

Example: You probably wouldn't want to target the keyword "lose weight" because it would cost you a fortune and those visitors could be looking for any number of things when they arrive at your site.
You would be better off targeting the keyword phrase "how to lose 10 pounds in a month" (assuming your website can help solve that problem) because while the amount of traffic wouldn't be nearly as high, those people are looking for a very specific thing.

You should also set your daily budget to something you're comfortable with. That way, if your ads just don't convert for some reason, there's a limit to how much you can lose.

Once you find a keyword/ad combination that is profitable, you can start to expand on it. Being successful with PPC advertising requires a lot of testing and tracking.

4.3 - Banner Ads - People have been saying banner ads are dead for over 10 years, but the fact is they still work if you use them properly. If you just blast a bunch of banners with "punch the monkey" kind of stuff to as many websites as possible, chances are it's not going to be very profitable.

But if you pick the sites where you want to advertise based on how relevant they are to your target market and design your banners effectively, they can still product a lot of traffic for relatively little cost.

Like PPC advertising, start small and track your results. Once you find a banner and/or website that's working for you, start to expand those successful campaigns to other places.

4.4 - Paid Ezine Ads - Paid ezine ads are another "old school" traffic generation strategy that can still work very well. Basically, you're paying for an ad to another marketer's email list. This could be a small ad placed in a longer newsletter or it could be a "solo" ad that is nothing but your offer.

This is a great way to leverage someone else's list to get traffic to your own site (and hopefully onto your email list in the process).

The key here is to target your offer to the audience. Make sure you subscribe to that marketer's list yourself and read several of their emails to see what kind of tone they use, and what sort of offers they promote.

You want to tailor your ad to appeal to the people who receive that person's emails, so make sure you offer something of value and that what you're offering is going to be appealing to the people who get the email.

4.5 - Facebook - Facebook is a fairly new source of paid traffic, and is constantly changing as more and more people start to use it. But with hundreds of millions of users, and the ability to target very specific interests and demographics, you should definitely include it in your paid traffic strategy.

The key to using Facebook effectively is to remember that most people aren't there to be sold to - they're there to be social. Most Facebook users aren't doing business there, even though it might seem that way to us internet marketers, so if you hit them with a high-pressure pitch (paid or not) it's probably not going to go over so well.

Once again, it comes down to building relationships with people first so they know and trust you. Once you establish that trust, you can start to ease them over to your websites and other offers.

Conclusion - Hopefully this article has given you a bit better idea of some of the ways that you can generate traffic to your website, but also what you should be doing with that traffic once it gets there.

New traffic sources constantly come and go, but most of the strategies we've discussed here have stood the test of time. While it never hurts to test new strategies and add them to the mix of what you're doing, don't let yourself get caught up in the latest "shiny object" that promises unlimited traffic with little or no work.

Those kinds of promises are generally too good to be true, and even if they do work as advertised it's usually going to be short lived. Once all the people looking for a magic button start abusing the technique, it won't take long for it to stop working.

If you build your traffic generation strategy on a solid foundation, you'll be seeing more and more visitors coming to your website for years to come.

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The Most Dangerous Number In Business

There's a well known saying that says, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." In the case of your online business, it means you need to ensure that all your online income doesn't come from just one source.

Having several income channels means that if one channel starts to fall off, you'll have others that can help your income while you explore new online business options.

One is the most dangerous number in business.

Although an online business is probably the easiest business to start up, you can't rely on just one product at one price to generate all your online income. Successful online businesses have a good mix of related products and services that deliver income channels.

Sell Information Products

One of the best information products you can produce is to write and sell your own eBook. You need to write an eBook on a subject that people are looking for information about. The subject can be one that you're very experienced about or it can be one that you become knowledgeable about by researching the information you need to know. The great things about producing an eBook is that you create it once and you can sell it again and again.

Sell Other People's Products

You can sell other people's products as an affiliate. You find a product that you believe is good and will sell well and you begin to promote it. Each time you make a sale, the product owner will pay you a commission. Promoting just means that you're raising awareness about a product by driving traffic to it. You can promote physical and digital products on your website, in your eBook, in articles and on popular social sites.

Create A Membership Website

A membership site means that you get paid to pass your knowledge onto others. Let's say you're an expert on dog training. You set up a site where people pay you a monthly fee to log in and get access to answers to their questions on how to train their dog.

Online Coaching

Coaching and teaching has become very popular online. You can set up a teaching website sharing information about whatever you're knowledgeable in and charge for lessons or online classes which you do via video. There are many people who want to learn from the comfort of their own homes. Create a lesson plan, put up a website and publicize your site through free press releases, forums, blogs, social media etc.

Freelance Services

There are many ways you can generate income from an online freelance business. If you can write, you can earn money writing for other online businesses whilst you're developing your own products. If your skills are more technology based, you can do graphic design work or build websites. You can provide your skills via websites like Freelancer, Upwork and Fiverr.

When you start your own business online it can very exciting. But it can be overwhelming too. There's the worry that you might get caught up with technical issues that seem impossible to understand. You might feel that you're too old, too young or too inexperienced. Here are the 5 steps every successful online entrepreneur needs to take: http://jonallo.com/start-a-home-business-online/

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Getting Traffic to your Website (3)

3.1 - Off site optimization - Off site optimization really comes down to links pointing to your website. The more links you get, from related sites that also have some power of their own with the search engines, the better your site is going to rank (and the more traffic you'll get as a result).

This is where the short- and long-term strategies start to overlap a bit. If you're using any of the short-term traffic strategies we just discussed to get quick traffic to your sites, they will also help you with SEO in the long term.

The links in your forum signatures, guest blog posts and submitted articles will all help push your site up the search engine rankings so while you might get a short-term jump in traffic when they first go live, they will keep working for you for a long time.

This is why it's a good idea to keep doing those things, even when your site starts to get traction in the search engines. It will continue to drive both instant and longer-term traffic.

3.2 - Social Media - Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are a relatively new way to get traffic, and as a result they tend to be misunderstood. A lot of marketers use them as a kind of "announcement" service, posting links to new offers, affiliate promotions, new blog posts and anything else they want people to visit.

But that's all they ever post, and then they think social media doesn't work because nobody ever clicks through on their links.

The fact is, social media is a longer-term traffic strategy. You need to build relationships with the people you follow before you can expect them to click on any of the links you post.

Example: Think of it in "real world" terms. If you went to a party or some kind of meeting, would you just make a sales pitch to everyone you talk to? Or would you have a conversation first, so you could get to know one another and what you could offer?

Treat social media like you would a "real life" meeting - offer value first and build up some trust with your followers before you start hitting them with a bunch of offers.

3.3 - Relationship Building - Building relationships isn't really a traffic generation method in and of itself, but it applies to virtually every other strategy to some degree. If you build relationships with the visitors to your website, or to the other places you post your content, you're going to be a lot more successful in the long run. 

When you have strong relationships with your visitors, they're a lot more likely to return. And return traffic is one of the keys to a really successful website.

Look at it this way. If you get 100 visitors per day and you have no way of getting them to come back to your site after they click an ad or an affiliate link, you have to find 100 new visitors every day to maintain your results.

But if you get 100 visitors every day and get 10 of them into your "relationship funnel" so they return to the site, you've increased your future traffic without having to find "new" visitors. It's over-simplified, but let's assume that they come back the next day. Now you've got 110 visitors, of which 10 will again become return traffic.

Every day that goes by, you're getting more traffic while you're still only having to generate 100 new visitors. Over time, your traffic will continue to grow even if you don't do any more work to find new people than you already are.

One of the best ways to build these relationships and generate return visitors is with our next traffic strategy - list building.

3.4 - Generating Traffic Through An Email List - One of the biggest advantages of building an email list is that it lets you control your own traffic. If you have a list of people interested in your market, it doesn't matter if Google, Facebook and every other traffic source shuts off tomorrow - you can still generate traffic just by sending out an email to your list. And if you have a brand new page or website that you want to direct traffic to, you can do that as well. You could set up a website in the next half hour, send an email 

to your list and see traffic to your site within a few minutes.

Even when you're paying for traffic, it's pretty tough to get visitors within minutes of finishing a new site.

List building as a traffic strategy is a bit of a Catch-22, however. You won't be able to generate that "on demand" traffic until you've built a list, and to build a list you need to get some traffic from other sources first.

That's why it's important to use all the strategies we're discussing, but get those visitors to subscribe to your email list so you can contact them over and over again in the future. 



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Getting Traffic to your Website (2)

2.1  Guest Blogging -  Guest blogging is another great way to "siphon" traffic from a community of people interested in your market. A blog is a little less interactive than a forum, but it has many similarities.

Find some of the most popular blogs in your market and see if they accept guest bloggers. Some sites are up-front about this, with a page that explains exactly how to become a guest blogger for them. Other sites don't advertise it, but if you spend a bit of time reading through existing posts, you'll be able to see if the same person writes them all or if the site has used guest posts in the past.

Generally guest posts will have a resource box or author byline that gives more information about the author, as well as a link back to their website. If you see any of these, it's a good indication that the site accepts guest posts.

The key to getting your post accepted is to offer a high-quality article that the blog owner would be crazy not to accept. Spend even longer than you usually would researching, outlining and writing these posts. While it means an extra investment in time, you can get a lot of traffic clicking through to your site if your guest post goes live on a high-traffic blog.

And while this click through traffic will slow down once the post has been live for a while, it can continue indefinitely as that post gains traction in the search engines. Plus that resource link pointing back to your site will also help you with SEO in the long term, so this is a powerful strategy.

2.2  Article Submissions  -  Article submissions, or article marketing, can be another powerful traffic strategy that will provide you will both short-term and long-term benefits. Much like guest blogging, the short-term traffic will come from people clicking through on your resource box links to visit your website.

By submitting your articles to high-authority websites, you can leverage their power with the search engines to get your articles ranked quickly and generating traffic. This direct traffic can actually continue for the long term if your article gets some traction with Google and the other search engines, but it also helps your own site rank better so it starts generating search engine traffic of its own.

Which brings us to longer-term traffic strategies...

2.3  Long-Term Traffic Generation  -  We're going to look at three longer-term strategies for getting traffic to your websites:

1. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization
2. Social Media
3. Relationship Building

2.4  Search Engine Optimization - SEO is probably the most common free traffic strategy. 


There are dozens of techniques for improving your rankings in the search engines, and just as many products that teach you how to implement them. Some of these methods work year after year while others are more short-lived.

You'll also see a lot of methods that would be considered gray hat or ***** hat meaning they might go against the terms of service of one or more search engines, or even cross legal lines.

You'll need to decide for yourself exactly what lines you're willing to cross in the interest of getting traffic to your website, but keep in mind that the stuff that crosses those lines tends to be the techniques that are more short-lived. They may require less work up-front, but in the long run you can wind up spending more time or money to maintain your traffic because things keep changing.

SEO is a huge topic that goes way beyond the scope of this report, but let's just look at a few of the most important principles. There are two main factors to SEO - on site and off site optimization. On site optimization is things like using your keywords in strategic places on your pages:

-The TITLE tag
-In the page content itself
-Image ALT tags
-etc.

At one time, repeating your keywords over and over throughout the page (known as keyword stuffing) would improve your results but the search engines have evolved well beyond that. Don't do this, just use your keywords and other related terms naturally in the content.

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Life (and Nutrition)

Another thought provoking video (Below) regarding the frailty of life. You might be wondering why I am discussing the matter of nutrition on this blog. Well. it is simply that in my own way I try to view life holistically and find that anything that affects the power of thought is not only of interest but is potentially critical (if ignored).

The outstanding comment from the talk that stuck in my mind was that the type of nutrition regarded as appropriate for a balanced healthy lifestyle is what your grandmother would have recommended, 

i.e. one with a minimal amount of processed food (containing additives). 

Little wonder that obesity rates are so high when 'junk food' is so readily available and cheap.

My dear wife, a superb cook herself, has long since bemoaned the demise of cooking in schools and that children are not having any experience of how to provide for themselves given basic ingredients. At the age of 70 I am convinced that her cooking has played a major role in my personal health/fitness/condition. Every day I walk anything from a minimum of two to eight miles. I cycle 2/3 times per week and I still enjoy a pint or two with my friends. 

However, enough about me, the main message from this talk is that it is the damage to the cerebral function which is the most 'depressing' outcome of poor nutrition. On the plus side, the economic savings achieved by providing nutritional 'boosters' are very persuasive in comparison to more conventional expensive psychological therapies. Thus there are strong arguments for the adoption of policies which promote the importance of nutrition earlier in the 'cycle of life' so that young children grow into adults who are more self sufficient in terms of providing for themselves.

The link to online marketing (which I took up as an antidote to boredom) is largely down to my examination of aspects of lifestyles which encourage making decisions to extend the human potential. I find the subject fascinating and eye-opening as I research various elements of human activity which are fundamental to well-being, both physical and mental. The process of growing old is inexorable but it can be affected positively if the issues which have a detrimental effect on 'survival' (without being too dramatic) are firstly identified and secondly acted upon. 

I hope to develop this argument over the coming few weeks/months/years and I would welcome any thoughts/experiences that you might have and wish to share.

To your health and prosperity

regards

Ray

6 Easy Ways to Increase Engagement On Instagram

Instagram is a great tool for schools, nonprofits, churches and civic groups to use. It's easy, and people love it because it's all about visuals. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Why should you be on Instagram?

Here are some statistics that should get you excited.

• Over 600 active monthly users.
• 40 billion pictures have been shared on the social site.
• Each day, 4.2 billion people like pictures and videos on Instagram.
• 28 percent of Internet users between the ages of 18 and 29 are on the platform.
• 8 percent of brands use Instagram, and it's expected to increase to over 70 percent by the end of this year.

Some reasons brands, including nonprofits, are migrating to Instagram:

• You can upload as many as 10 videos or pictures into a single post, which means if you grab someone's attention with your primary image, they'll take a few more moments to scroll through your other videos or pictures.
• You can sponsor your posts or create ads to a target audience, which helps you grow with the right people and encourages those in your target audience to get involved with you.

The reality is that Instagram is an excellent tool for nonprofits and others to grow their base. By telling visual stories, you can raise awareness for your brand and get people caring and involved in the work you do. And with the creative use of hashtags, you can grow your follower base every week.

If you're looking to grow your followers on Instagram, here are some helpful tips you should consider:

• The best times for engagement on Instagram are on Mondays and Thursdays.
• You can use up to 30 hashtags on Instagram. Use relevant hashtags. Some hashtags you can use include #philanthropy, #fundraising, #volunteer, #causes, #nonprofit, or
• Make sure your videos are fun. And, if you can't make them fun, then make sure they're high-quality and striking. Ask yourself when posting if the videos or images grab you. If they don't, they're not going to engage others either. Remember, you're trying to capture people's attention, and since a lot of young people are on the site, they're looking for things that catch their attention.
• Tag people in your posts. Use @mention (username) to tag your best supporters, champions, and others outside of your organization to help you raise awareness. When you tag others, it helps your post stay relevant longer.
• Social media is all about networking. People want to see YOU. Make it a point to let your followers get a "behind the scenes" look at the work you're doing.
• Millennials and Generation Z, many of those who are on Instagram use filters and emojis. Make it a point to use them on Instagram. Filter your images and add emojis to your posts and videos. As people are scrolling, this helps grab their attention.

Want to take a look at some great examples of nonprofits using Instagram effectively? Take a look at this Causevox article by clicking here.

Statistics provided by: https://www.omnicoreagency.com/Instagram-statistics/

Author of "Not Your Father's Charity: Be Bold, Dominate and Succeed in Marketing For Today's Digital World On A Limited Budget" - Free Digital Download at http://www.notyourfatherscharity.com

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