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luni, 27 ianuarie 2014

An Old Timey State of the Union

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This Tuesday, January 28th, we're offering a special enhanced version of the President's State of the Union address. Which got us thinking -- what if every president had one?

Watch the video -- then tune in tomorrow night for the real deal:

Applying Lessons from the Publishing Industry to SEO Consulting

Posted: 26 Jan 2014 03:11 PM PST

Posted by SarahKershaw

"Search has been less and less relevant since Facebook released News Feed. Now we get the vast majority of our traffic via social, and about 1-2% from search"
â€" Chris Dannen from Fast Co Labs

"We benefited a ton from an early SEO audit thanks to IAC's SEO pros, but once the right framework was in place, it's been up to us as content creators to really dig deep into Google Analytics to determine where the opportunities lieâ€¦"
â€" Jordan Shakeshaft, editorial director of Life by DailyBurn

"None" was another person's response to my question about the role of SEO within her company. "There's very little of actual value in it for us." This from a respected British magazine.

In preparation for this post, I started thinking about publishers and their plans for 2014, specifically their growth strategies for the coming year. My thought was that as the publishing industry usually leads the way when it comes to new content techniques and products, it is at the forefront of publishing initiatives. As publishers blaze new trails, we as consultants have the opportunity to learn by proxy, observing what has worked and what has not. These observations can then be applied to our own clients' content creation. In this post-panda arena, the scramble to produce high-quality, compelling content is as real as ever, and lessons need to be learned fast. Let the publishing industry be your guide; come, walk with me.

In researching this post, I spoke to a combination of editors, industry analysts and publishing company employees. The quotes are representative of my contacts and their responses, but it is in no way comprehensive for the publishing industry as whole.

As per the quotes above, the sobering reality is that, at best, publishers see SEO as just one small part of their marketing strategy. Moz's very own legend, Dr. Pete, has been trying to tell us this for a while, encouraging the search community to look beyond rankings. Our goal as consultants is to continue to add value in this altogether more varied landscape. The good news is that we can if we leverage our technical knowledge and use this to present some of the newer ideas, beyond our usual scope, to our clients.

This post is an examination of some of the other opportunities publishers are pursuing this year, along with my dreams for what they could be doing and some tips on how to present these ideas to clients.

What are publishers doing for growth?

1) Investing in site redesigns

The internet was all aflutter earlier this month, when The New York Times launched its site redesign. That project, in addition to generating buzz, traffic, and links, was the site's first major redesign since 2006. The main visual changes include:

Changing of fonts and font colours so it more closely resembles the print edition. The links from the home page to the categories page are now black, not blue for example.
Article comments now appear on the right-hand side of the article, allowing comments to receive the same level of visibility as the article.
Infinite scroll, rather than pagination.
A much more minimal look on article pages with more white space.

This redesign freshens up the look of the page as a whole and the cleaner, sparer UI is more in keeping with what other publications are doing. This video from Fi talks us through its process for redesigning USAToday.com, which has several design features in common with the Times' update.

The insight: Good design matters.

Your access point: When presenting ideas of this ilk to your clients, it is important to be in cahoots with the designers. Your aim is to collaborate in these projects, ideally from initial conception. The advantage of being an outsider weighing in on a site redesign is that you are invariably not bound by the limitations of a CMS or the like; you are free to see the site and where it stands in relation to industry competitors with a detached view. You can represent SEO and call on your experiences with redesigns to offer suggestions.

2) Embracing social

You probably already know that social networks are an increasingly important means of discovery, and amongst the under-45s, they are the most popular method of finding content. Social becomes more and more important as user groups get younger. For example, 44% of 18- to 24-year-olds rely on social, versus just 19% of users over 55. This is illustrated by this graph from the Reuters Institute's Digital News Report 2013:

Clearly, if you wish to build long term trust with your users, social networks are critical for getting your content in front of younger users. It goes without saying that social networks are also now critical for engagement among all age groups.

What is surprising is the extent to which publishers are still missing this opportunity, whilst newer companies such as Upworthy and Buzzfeed are swooping in and winning traffic. This recent article from the Media Briefing visualizes how some of the media players are doing on Facebook, and the newsworthy part is that none of the more established players feature at all. In short, they are not getting it right. The winners in this particular data set are companies that have been formed within the last eight years (Buzzfeed was formed in 2006, Upworthy in 2012); the Huffington Post is the old guard here, and that is only nine years old.

The results are clear Upworthy and Buzzfeed have mastered the sort of content that gets people sharing. Whilst the audience may eventually tire of cats in unlikely situations, photoshop-shaming, and listicles, you can be sure that both companies are investing time and effort to evolve from their current strategy. Mark Suster expanded on this idea in a recent post, saying "I think companies like Upworthy can build really compelling businesses in the future â€" but I'm willing to bet serious cash ... that it won't be by sticking to the playbook [that is, writing content to generate as many social shares as possible] that has worked tremendously well to date."

The insight: For all of the chatter about social networks, publishers are still not getting it right.

Your access point: Present working in social networks as a series of easy-to-implement A/B tests.

Using the Upworthy premise, as outlined below, clients have a quick, clean testing method that should give them confidence to test their social network content.

Upworthy produced a wildly popular slide deck back in 2012 that outlines some of their tactics, which makes for an interesting read. The key takeaway, regardless of the sort of content your client might produce, is the idea of testing multiple headlines. Upworthy writes 25 different headlines for a post, and then tests the headlines in two demographically similar cities within Facebook for an hour or so. They then push the headline with more shares.

This is both agile and data-driven; keep this example in mind, as it's deliciously simple and reasonably easy to implement. It can also be applied to subheadings, images, and more. As consultants, A/B Testing is very much within the traditional scope of your work. By using this experience (and the client's trust in this experience) you are moving into new terrain via a familiar method.

Let social embrace you back

To approach the opportunities of social networks from another angle, Facebook and Twitter are both making a concerted effort to woo publishers. Facebook's algorithm tweak in August 2013 has increased the amount of traffic sent to news sites. Buzzfeed saw a 69% jump during this time, and they were not the only ones. In December 2013, Facebook gave us more insight.

"We've noticed that people enjoy seeing articles ... and so we're now paying closer attention to what makes for high-quality content and how often articles are clicked on ...

"Starting soon, we'll be doing a better job of distinguishing between a high-quality article on a website versus a meme photo hosted somewhere other than Facebook ... this means that high-quality articles you or others read may show up a bit more prominently in your News Feed, and meme photos may show up a bit less prominently."

(Is this the end of memes? Maybe so if Facebook gets its way)

The insight: Facebook is working to keep its users entertained with your content

Your access: Leverage your Analytics prowess; you are an Analytics tiger!

Analyse your Facebook referral traffic comparing August-December 2013 with the previous six-month period and the same period in 2012, and assess how much impact the algorithm update had on your site. In the same article quoted above, Facebook claims that they have increased the amount of traffic to media sites by an average of 170%. If you did not see a significant jump it suggests that the site is not sufficiently integrated into Facebook. The sort of numbers referenced by Facebook (the 170%) are considerable, all publishers would love to see traffic increases in this range, let this be your approach to re-evaluate your Facebook strategy.

But wait, there's more

Beyond sending more traffic to publishers, Facebook is also working with publishers to share the vast trove of data about what is trending so publishers can incorporate it into their stories. Facebook's Public Feed API shares public data and is open to anyone with the functionality. A second API, the Keyword Insights API, is only available to a select number of news organisations. The Keyword Insights API allows news organisations like CNN, Today Show, and BSkyB access to programmatically search through Facebook's public data for anonymous keyword data. This data can be sliced by gender, current city, and age range. There are no plans yet to release it to a wider audience, but it seems inevitable that (if successful) it will be rolled out in the future. (Note, an email to Facebook about this has not yet been answered. I will update in the comments if I hear more.)

The insight: other publishers are working with Facebook, if only in the sense that they are incorporating new data sources for their users.

Your access: Shaming (gently!). Depending on the size of your client. The Keyword Insights API isn't publicly available yet, but you can present opportunities for anyone consistently producing content to get access to similar data. For example, try Mass Relevance, a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer, which can provide insights and trends from Facebook slicing data by a variety of metrics, including device.

What publishers could be doing

Now we have a general sense of how some publishers are trying to grow, I've also compiled a short list of some of the opportunities or ideas that have not been mentioned thus far. This list is based on stealing ideas from other industries, general common sense, and no small amount of wishful thinking.

1) Embracing Google products

Google's range of products is staggering. For publishers this can lead to confusion about how to use the products available. To address this, Google has created Google Media Tools, a valuable hub designed to demystify many of the products in the roster, explaining everything from hot searches and trends to Google Earth to Google Crisis Response, and references examples of how publishers are using these products. For example, NBC Today uses Google Trends each Monday to give viewers a sense of what was popular over the weekend. At the Google For Media Summit, hosted earlier in January, attendees tweeted about BBC News' integration with Hangouts.

Quick note: Make sure you get it right. This screengrab of a Google search for "bbc news" is from 22nd August 2013, not 2001...

Clearly, it can be difficult to implement, but do not give up. Again, referring to Dr Pete's slide deck, as Google products increasingly appear in the search results, pure organic search results will be forced lower down the page. Embrace Google's products to maximise your client's chances of staying on the first page.

The insight: Competing for organic rankings is only ever going to get you so far. (Again, Dr Pete said so!) Encourage clients to embrace the suite of Google products out there, in the spirit of trying new things and also offering new products to the end users.

Your access point: Your expertise. Most people do not differentiate between Google Search, Google News, Google Local, Google Trends, etc. Anything to do with an internet search engine is your domain.

Your second access point: Training.

Offer your clients and their writers training in using these new products. As an experienced consultant, there will inevitably be a few training slide decks or "best practices" guides in your past. Use this didactic approach to showcase your knowledge and support the clients when they start to use them. As with the BBC example above, it might not be perfect immediately, but persevere.

2) Planning for change

"The pace of technological change will not abate, and to think of our current time as a transition between two eras, rather than a continuum of change is a mistake."
â€" Richard Gingras, Senior Director of News and Social Products at Google

The New York Times appears to have taken this advice seriously, for amidst the redesign fanfare, the most important feature is the Times' decision to change the back end. I interpret this as a commitment to the future; this fluidity is admirable. As referenced in this Fast Co Labs summary of the redesign:

"The new system, however, is more dynamic. "We can continually iterate on the site and take advantages of the trends as we see them happening, rather than having to do a big unveil."

Insight: Change is the only constant. (this is probably true of more than just technology used in the publishing industry)

Your access point: this will be the toughest sell of anything else recommended in this post. Persuading clients that it is important to invest money in the backend system without any proven ROI is difficult. I'd welcome any ideas in the comments, but know this: It still has to be done. The best method I have so far is to use sites like the New York Times as a case study. The theory being that as they can present new ideas quickly, they get more press (possibly with links), and maybe even more readers. By monitoring new products on The New York Times and monitoring their search visibility using a tool like Searchmetrics, you should hopefully see traffic growth. You can then present this data to your clients. The good news is that you don't have to manually check the Times' site everyday; instead, sign up for the free email digests from Mediagazer, as they monitor new product developments.

3) Understanding paywall models

Paywalls are starting to work, and you can be certain that your clients will be watching how competitors are starting to use them. As a consultant, it is important that you understand the variety of paywalls out there and how to implement them. These articles from SEO Book and Mashable are excellent resources to get you started. Google also has some limited information about using First Click Free, their solution for publishers wanting to charge for their content whilst still appearing in the search results. The goal in this instance is to develop an opinion on paywalls as well as an up-to-date idea of how your competitors are using them (and if they are successful).

The insight: As paywalls are beginning to pay off, you will be asked about them

Your access point: Forward planning. By researching ahead of time, you will be ready with an opinion when asked (and you will be asked).

4) Putting their content to work

Publishers are in the enviable position of having plenty of content to play with, however now it's a question of putting that content to work. Here are a few ideas, some riskier than others.

i) Creating new page types

Creating new page types is a classic tactic to get more traffic. If this is what your client is looking for, look at different ways of categorizing your content.

As referenced in Sara Wachter-Boettcher's Content Everywhere, the BBC Food pages tried this approach in 2011 by introducing pages organizing their content by recipe and also by ingredient. This led to an increase of 150,000 in organic traffic, and overall traffic doubled to 1.3 million visitors.

The insight: New page types lead to more traffic

Your access point: Grounding the creative task of thinking of new page types within standard information architecture best practices. Abby Covert, Information Architect extraordinaire, explains it well: there are 5 methods of categorizing. Use these as a starting point for inspiration when thinking about how to group your client's content:

On this theme, I would love to see news publishers in particular tagging their content with zip-codes. I think it would prove a useful resource for tourists, anyone looking to rent or buy in an area, historians, and even schools. This could become even more useful on portable devices if there was an opportunity to tie news stories of particular importance into existing map products. But I'm getting carried away.

Some news organisations are already trying new page types, the AP has, frankly, had some fun experimenting with Archive page types to commemorate pivotal moments in history, and has used its own images and stories to add to the narrative.

ii) Partnering with new businesses

Partnering up with other businesses can be seen as risky because success cannot be guaranteed. One option would be to partner up with some of the newer content creation services on the market. LinkedIn has just bought Pulse, a service that pulls in news it believes will be of interest to you based on your LinkedIn profile.There is also the wistful Kennedy app, which automatically supplies iPhone users with context when taking notes and writing deep thoughts.

Insight: Your client's content can live on in different formats.

Your access point: Introducing this and other like ideas to your client. In terms of publishers, the opportunity lies in being part of the potential newsfeed as it is a valuable branding opportunity. You might be able to generate revenue from supplying products like this with your content.

5) Looking to other niches within publishing and adapting their best ideas.

The academic eBook publishing industry is in a stage of rapid change as it moves beyond the basic eBooks into much more exciting enhanced eBook territory. The broader industry themes are:

Interactivity
Socially-connected groups
Adaptive eBooks

Interactivity

Bookry, a Welsh company, is just one of the many companies out there building interactive components for eBook. The company specializes in building widgets that allow eBook users to play with data tables. This allows users to see how positive coefficient correlation looks and how the data points, when changed, change the graph. By allowing users to play around with the data, you make them think about the material itself. The most obvious use is to improve educational resources, but there's no reason why it couldn't be applied in a broader sense for all publishers.

Socially-connected groups

The idea behind this is that eBook publishers are trying to encourage commentary and interaction with the course material. Most publishers are already offering social sharing as a matter of form, however some eBook publishers are going one step further and developing products that allow all the comments, notes and questions to be stored in the cloud, all in one place. This allows the user to keep track of where she has interacted but also is useful for professors looking to grade a student on the quantity and quality of her interactions. It would be incredibly useful for users to track all comments and interactions in one place, other than on the site of the comment.

Adaptive technology

McGraw Hill launched what they call Smartbooks last year, designed to assess the reader's understanding of the material and then adapt it based on her knowledge of the subject.

Another company, Knewton, based in New York, specialize in adaptive technology and offer education publishers the opportunity to personalise the reading experience. The effect on students' pass rates has been impressive, which supports the idea that tailoring content to the user's comprehension boosts retention. Any publisher or content-producing site looking to launch a body of work for a large audience of differing ages might find these developments interesting.

This is an extremely top-level summary of some of the developments in the eBook publishing sphere, as documented in the Digital Book World Conference held last week in New York.

The insight: use developments in a related industry to inspire your clients, in ebook publishing as per my example, the industry leaders are pushing ebook content in new, exciting, immersive directions, adapt these ideas to suit your customer's content.

Your access point: Your expert curation skills. By taking the time to understand the broader industry trends, you can skim the very best ideas and present them as opportunities to your client. If you assume responsibility for industry developments, you save your clients time and headspace whilst also expanding your sphere of influence.

Have you seen new publishing products, or been involved in building them? Do you have any strong opinions about where content creation is heading next? Please share in the comments below. In terms of reading around on this subject, I've included a limited list of resources that I have found helpful.

Resources

Ebook Publishing - useful for quickly gleaming ebook industry trends
Future of StoryTelling - the best thing I watch; it covers the new ways to tell stories
Understanding Media by Understand Google - a free and useful Coursera course (sign up for the next semester!)

People

Tim O'Reilly - an ebook pioneer. He's thinking at least two years ahead.
Charlie Melcher - of Melcher media, founder of the Future of StoryTelling mentioned above and also involved in Al Gore's Our Choice app, as referenced in this Tedtalk.
Frank Rose - Frank Rose writes beautifully on immersive content, he will inspire you to think about the role the audience plays in telling a story.
Tim Pool - now at Vice magazine. Tim's livestream of NY's Occupy Wall Street has changed the perception of citizen journalism.
Jeff Jarvis - this post from 2008 has some thought provoking ideas.
Chris Danen - Fast Co Labs, tends to write about the future of media and often brings in Fast Co examples.

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Seth's Blog : ...different people differently

...different people differently

Don't teach your students as if they are a monolithic population of learners. They learn differently, they have different goals, different skills, different backgrounds.

Don't sell to your customers as if they are a fungible commodity, a walking ATM waiting for you to punch. Six of one are not like half a dozen of the other. They tell themselves different stories, have different needs and demand something different from you.

Different voters, different donors, different employees--we have the choice to treat them as individuals. Not only do they need different things, but they offer differing amounts of value to you and to your project. The moment your policy interferes with their uniqueness, the policy has cost you something.

We used to have no choice. There was only one set of data for the student body, one way to put things on the shelf of the local market, one opportunity to talk to the entire audience...

One of the biggest unfilled promises of the digital age is the opportunity to go beyond demographics and census data. Personalization wasn't supposed to be a cleverly veiled way to chase prospects around the web, showing them the same spammy ad for the same lame stuff as everyone else sees. No, it is a chance to differentiate at a human scale, to use behavior as the most important clue about what people want and more important, what they need.

It's a no-brainer to treat the quarterback of the football team differently from the head of the chess club. We treat our bank's biggest investor with more care than someone who merely wants to trade in a bag of pennies. Instead of reserving this special treatment for a few outliers, though, we ought to consider what happens if we offer it to all of those we value.

The long tail of everything means that there's something for everyone--a blog to read, a charity to donate to, a skill to learn. When you send everyone the same email, demand everyone learn from the same lesson plan or try to sell everyone the same service, you've missed it.

A very long time ago, shoe salespeople realized that shoes that don't fit are difficult to sell, regardless of what you've got in stock. Today, the people you serve are coming to realize that like their shoe size, their needs are different, regardless of what your urgent agenda might be.

• Email to a friend •

duminică, 26 ianuarie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Start of a Global Currency Crisis?
Mid-Level Manager at Target Responds to Mish Part-Time Job Thesis
Were You Aware the NFL is Treated as Non-Profit and thus Exempt From Taxes? Should it Be?

Start of a Global Currency Crisis?

Posted: 26 Jan 2014 09:29 PM PST

In Emerging Market Contagion Spreads, I presented a viewpoint that emerging market currencies have been under pressure because of falling commodity prices.

Commodity exporter currencies such as the Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, and Brazilian Real have been under pressure for the same reason.

Yen Connection

In addition to the commodity collapse thesis, Pater Tenebrarum at the Acting Man blog throws Abenomics into the mix of possible causes of the Currency Massacre in Emerging Markets.

Both Venezuela (socialist worker's paradise) and Argentina (nationalist socialist paradise) have a problem with their foreign exchange reserves. In both cases it stems from trying to keep up the pretense that their currencies are worth more than they really are.

Since they have maintained artificial exchange rates – coupled with capital controls, price controls and other coercive and self-defeating economic policies – people have of course felt it necessary to get their money out any way they can. This includes making use of every loophole that presents itself, so that e.g. in Venezuela, so-called 'dollar tourism' has developed, whereby citizens travel abroad for the express purpose of using their credit cards to withdraw the allowed limit in dollars at the official exchange rate [then buy goods or bring back the cash to exchange on the black markets at much higher rates].

Now the governments of both Venezuela and Argentina have reacted – the former by introducing a 'second bolivar exchange rate' for certain types of exchanges, the latter by stopping to defend the peso's value in the markets by means of central bank interventions.

To be fair, quite a few emerging market currencies as well as the currencies of developed countries that are large commodity exporters have been under pressure for some time. The Indonesian rupiah has basically crashed, the South African Rand and the Brazilian real have fallen to their weakest levels since the 2008/9 crisis sell-off, and even the Canadian and Australian dollar look a bit frayed around the edges these days.

We cannot help thinking that all this upheaval is the prelude to a more serious denouement down the road – perhaps sooner than most people currently think.

One of the sources of all this recent trouble is quite possibly Japan's decision to inflate with the help of a generous dose of 'QE' and deficit spending. Although the yen's anticipatory move lower could so far not really be justified by actual money supply growth, the fact remains that it did decline rather sharply. This in turn has put pressure on Japan's competitors in Asia, which in turn has put pressure on their suppliers in commodity-land and has altered capital flows, etc.

Recall that the Asian crisis of the late 1990s was preceded by a devaluation in China, after which the yen started weakening rather precipitously as well. Of course the situation was different in that many of the countries hit by the crisis had their currencies pegged to the dollar at the time, but the point remains that a weakening yen preceded the event. A parallel is that there are once again quite a few countries that sport large current account deficits and have experienced major credit and asset booms. In short, there are many balloons waiting for a pin.

No US Hyperinflation

While misguided US hyperinflationists predicted the collapse of the US dollar, I expected a collapse in commodity exporter currencies. Please see my November 8, 2011 article Perfect Storm; Eight Reasons to be Bullish on the US Dollar.

I also expected a slowdown in China, a plunge in the Yen, and a currency crisis not related to a sinking US dollar (See March 12 2012 article Japan's Debt Disaster and China's Non-Rebalancing Act: Economic Toxic Brew Portends Currency Crisis).

Here we are, with still other currencies in the problem mix. Consider this chart of the Turkish Lira.

Turkish Lira vs. US Dollar

Since mid-2008 the Lira collapsed from 1.03 to 2.45 to the US dollar, a collapse of 58%. Turkey's deputy prime minister Ali Babacan Blames Fed Tapering.

Babacan said the central bank was taking the necessary steps to deal with the situation, and said Turkey was protected against the swings in the market by its sound finances.

"The balance sheet of the government, the banks and households are quite well protected against market volatility."

Turkey-Greece Connection

ZeroHedge notes Turkey's liabilities have multiplied dramatically in recent years with over $350 billion of foreign bank exposure on an ultimate risk basis.

According to Gavekal, as quoted by ZeroHedge ...

Turkey is not, however, showing any signs of stabilization. The lira continues to fall, and policymakers are doing little to contain the situation.
Not only is its current account deficit at nearly 8% of GDP - the highest in the MSCI's emerging markets universe—but the country is also geographically closer and thus more dependent on the eurozone, whose economic recovery is painfully slow. Its political situation is also clearly very unstable.
Already fragile Greece is particularly exposed to the Eurasian republic. Turkish credit as a proportion of total Greek bank assets stands at over 5%, compared to 0.7% for the next two largest (Dutch and UK banks).

It's difficult to know whether this is the start of a major currency crisis or if central banks can paper over these imbalances still another time, but things sure are heating up rather quickly on numerous currency fronts at once.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Mid-Level Manager at Target Responds to Mish Part-Time Job Thesis

Posted: 26 Jan 2014 12:27 PM PST

My part-time job thesis is easy to describe:

Obamacare exacerbated the already ongoing trend towards more part-time employment by lowering the definition of full-time employment to 30 hours.
As a result, companies reduced employee hours from 32-34 to 25-29.
In turn, workers picked up extra part-time or weekend jobs with minimal hours, to help make ends meet.

A few days ago, Target made the claim it would not reduce employee hours because of Obamacare. See Target Drops Healthcare Coverage for Part-Time Workers, Claims No Reduction in Hours.

My response was that Target was disingenuous, and that the only way it would not reduce hours due to Obamacare is if it already did so well in advance.

A Home Depot employee asserted that Home Depot did just that (see Anecdotes From Home Depot Employee), but I had not heard from Target employees yet.

Today I heard from a Mid-Level Target manager (MLTM) who wishes to remain anonymous. MLTM writes ...

Hello Mish

I appreciate your blog and felt that I should contribute at least what I have observed in my time at Target. I'm an exempt store employee (middle management) and I can attest to the fact that Target has been controlling hours of hourly employees as you have suggested.

This is a trend that began well before the recent press release regarding health insurance for part time workers. Policy isn't explicitly stated, but part-time positions have a 12 month auditing period. Average weekly hours are tracked in order to not exceed the part time threshold.

It is common to have part time team members scheduled to cover full time shifts or responsibilities. The two most striking aspects of this effort are on the team members and on shoppers.

The vast majority of team members have such limited hours that to survive they must either have other employment. Some have other full time employment, most an additional part time position. Alternatively some of our part time positions are filled by retired workers or college students.

Turnover, attendance, and work quality and customer support are greatly affected by these facts.

The customer impact, as many of your readers may have noticed, is that there are not enough team members to assist or process transactions at any given time. This frustrates shoppers and makes lower cost internet shopping experience all the more attractive.

A downward spiral of falling sales, fewer hours/team members, further falling sales, and increased operational costs from Obamacare and other regulations pushes costs up when the consumer is buying less from stores and more from on-line vendors.

Anecdotes do not constitute data, but the overwhelming number of similar emails I receive sure rings true.

Competition in the form of "Retail Sales Cannibalization" is intense.

Moreover, the huge, ongoing discrepancy between the establishment survey and the household survey also suggests my thesis is correct.

For details, please see Employment vs. Jobs Discrepancy based on December 2013 Data, released in January.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Were You Aware the NFL is Treated as Non-Profit and thus Exempt From Taxes? Should it Be?

Posted: 26 Jan 2014 10:20 AM PST

With the Super Bowl a week away, here's a question on my mind: Were you aware the NFL is treated as a non-profit organization and thus exempt from taxes?

If you weren't, you are with the majority. Only 13% of people polled got the question correct. Curiously, it's only football that's exempt from taxes, not baseball or other sports.

Please consider a Fairleigh Dickinson University report Your Tax Dollars into NFL Owners' Pockets?

Americans may love football, but few support the use of public funds and tax breaks for the National Football League and a vast majority were unaware the NFL is a not-for-profit entity, according to a recent national survey from Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind.

More than half of respondents (56%) identify themselves as fans of the NFL, but when it comes to tax dollars being used to help the NFL, an overwhelming majority of Americans say it should be 'under further review.' Seven-in-ten (69%) oppose the use of public funds to build and support stadiums for NFL teams, and virtually the same number (71%) say no to tax breaks to attract or keep a team in town.

"The public's love for the game clearly doesn't trump their fiscal restraint when it comes to big time sporting events," said Krista Jenkins, director of PublicMind and professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University. "Even teams who don't make it to the Super Bowl generate millions from licensing and ticket sales. The public says taxpayers shouldn't be hit up for support when there's enough in the NFL coffers to pay their own way."

Digging deeper, there's little evidence to suggest that some are more persuaded by NFL appeals for public funding than others. Across gender, race, and age, opinion remains consistent -- a resounding "no" to tax breaks and public funds. Even self-described football fans are largely opposed to corporate welfare for the NFL, although it's notable that fans are twice as likely as non-fans to favor tax breaks for NFL teams (27 versus 14 percent, respectively).

The same survey also finds that most are unaware that the NFL is a not-for-profit organization. As a recent report in The Atlantic outlined, the NFL and its teams are the recipients of a good many direct and indirect subsidies. However, more than two-thirds (69%) say the NFL is NOT a nonprofit, with only 13 percent correctly identifying it as not-for-profit.

"Since the NFL is generally associated with wealthy owners and players, not to mention the tremendous revenue that each team generates year-round, the public would not be expected to know the League is a non-profit organization," said Jenkins. "With billions likely to flow from the Super Bowl, it would seem a contradiction that the organization behind it all would be technically a not-for-profit, but that is indeed true about the NFL."

Fairleigh Dickinson University Survey Question

How Did the NFL Get Tax-Exempt Status?

Bloomberg explains in Americans Think NFL Should Pay Taxes

The NFL enjoys vast support among the American public despite recent controversies, but when it comes to taxes, the league is best served by keeping fans in the dark.

A survey conducted last month by Fairleigh Dickinson University found that people overwhelmingly oppose tax breaks enjoyed by the league, while the majority had no idea the National Football League has nonprofit status. The poll, which questioned more than 1,000 people, found that 56 percent identified themselves as football fans, 69 percent don't think public money should be used to build stadiums, and 71 percent oppose tax breaks to keep an NFL team in town.

Most interesting, however, is how effective the NFL's public-relations machine has been at keeping its nonprofit status out of the public eye. Only 13 percent of those polled correctly identified the NFL as a nonprofit. It seems most people have a hard time reconciling tax breaks for a league flush with cash at a time when government budget cuts are threatening classrooms and even the IRS itself.

To clarify, the NFL is not categorized as a charity under the tax code; rather, it falls under Section 501(c)(6), which exempts trade or industry associations from taxation. In 1966, the tax code was amended to include professional football to facilitate the merger of the NFL and the American Football League, by granting the sport antitrust and tax exemptions. The IRS specifically mentions the sport in its statute:

IRC 501(c)(6) provides for exemption of business leagues, chambers of commerce, real estate boards, boards of trade, and professional football leagues (whether or not administering a pension fund for football players), which are not organized for profit and no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.

With $9.5 billion in revenue, the NFL doesn't seem to fit this definition. The next-richest professional sports league, Major League Baseball, does not enjoy the same break.

There's a bipartisan campaign to amend the tax code, which is right in the wheelhouse of liberal activists calling for increased taxes on millionaires and conservative critics of government waste. Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, recently announced he would retire from Congress, but not before introducing a bill that would strip the NFL of its nonprofit status. The PRO Sports Act proposes taxing any professional sports league that brings in at least $10 million. In such a politically polarized climate, it seems football might be our great uniter after all.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

luni, 27 ianuarie 2014

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