Want the power to grow your company. Here it is!

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I have talked to hundreds of people who own their own business.  Most of them had the same exact problem, they worked way too much.  They never had enough time in the day and usually never got to the important things that needed to be done to take their business to the next level.  They worked too much working in and for their business and not enough time working on their business.  This is a plan that will keep you stressed out, busy and poor.  There are two things that must be done when you are in this situation.

Bar Graph showing growth
Grow your business, learn how

The first one is to make systems for everything.  You need to write a system for writing an invoice, a system for cleaning the bathroom, a system for opening and closing your business.  When I was in business I wrote over 50 systems for various things, from how to pack a computer for shipping to how to make a phone call to a business.  You also need to create the paperwork and checklist for these systems.  We had a document for when a customer would leave a computer at our store, to documents for figuring out commission.  Later on I moved the most popular forms online and customers and employees would fill them out at a hidden website.  So this is what you need to do, systematize, document the system then create the resources (Documents, tools, equipment, etc.) to make system work.  Having a system makes everything you do predictable and much easier.  Buying a franchise is usually little more than buying a system with a marketing package, a high quality system will run your business, and is worth the tens of thousands they charge, but it is even better if you make it yourself.  It took me less than two months of working after we closed to write all of our systems and support material.

Now that you have a system in place you need to leverage it.  That brings us to part two, duplication/delegation.  When you have a system in place it is much easier to train people, to measure there performance, and get them to exactly what you want them to do.  People like to know exactly what is expected of them, most people like to have a system in place.  Now that you have a system you can start to delegate things that you have always done.  In many small business the owner does everything, they clean the bathroom, they do the banking, they service the customers.  One thing I have heard often is that if you can find someone to do something that you do and they can do it 80% as well as you do then have them DO IT.  When you have delegated to too many people that you can’t manage them, then promote someone to be a manager and delegate the delegating to them.

Think about what your company will look like if you doubled its size.  Then think about what would happen if you doubled it every month.  Without a system and with out delegation you will be sunk.  This is the number 1 thing that keeps most small business small.  You have to design and run your company as if there were 100 locations, what would you do different?  If you own a small business and working without a system and delegating, 60 hours a week you really have a glorified job working for your “business”.  A business is a system, it becomes viral, easy and fast, and other people do all the work, and you simply manage it.

For much more information here are some books you need to read on this subject.

HERE is another blog entry by one of my friends that expands on this concept.  Please read it.

I am Jason Dragon and I hope you enjoyed this, subscribe to my blog, and tell others about it.

CNN, Finally doing something I like.

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In the past CNN has been very shallow and not very imformative.  They really like to gloss over most subjects.  All media really has gone in this direction.  Their goal is to write as if their audiance is a bunch of 5th graders.  This is not a joke, this is their real goal, they figure that if a 5th grader could read it then anyone could.  Most magizines and newspapers do the same thing.  Local news is also this way, specifically the morning local news.

CNBC is one bright exception to this rule, they are all about business and they talk directly to smart business people, but they also stay on topic so if it is not business related they say little about it.

Each of the two men running for office spends 1-2 hours of their day talking to the media and giving speeches.  The media does not air this, instead they take a short snip and just pound that for an entire day.  Most people don’t have access to the actual speeches, they must rely on the media and the media is doing a really bad job.  The funny thing is that they MUST fill the airwaves with something so they have people debate about small parts of these speeches.

It is like everyone is talking about the good and bad parts of a movie, and the debate goes on for hours if the movie is good or bad, but they won’t just show the movie and let us decide.  They want to make sure we decide the way they want us to decide if the movie is good or not.  This is a huge disservice to the audience.

CNN has broken this trend recently.  They now have started to air large parts of speeches and interviews, they then have someone come on and tell you if the facts stated are true or not, then they let the viewer decide.  WOW….what a revolution….people can actually decide for themselves and not be told my the media how to think!

Today they had part of a speech where McCain was talking about his energy policy, and how he has an “All of the Above” policy, get the government out of the way of all types of energy and let the market go for it.  This is very different to the plan that Bush has had, but Obama has been telling everyone that McCain is McSame, the same as Bush and he said the other day that McCain supported the bush plan.  But here is where the kicker comes in, McCain voted Against the Bush plan and Obama voted for it!   McCain hammered this, saying “Everyone know that if you vote for something you support it and if you vote against it you oppose it, so why is he saying I supported it when I obviously did not.”  The fact checker came on and said that everything McCain said was correct.  He went on to say that even Paris Hilton has a better energy plan than Obama.

To be fair they talked about how Obama was just mentioning Tire Pressure in response to a question, and this is NOT his energy policy.  Some crazy republicans are telling people that this is the entire Obama plan which is not true.  You can read his plan on his site, I linked to it from my Drill Drill Drill blog.

They went on playing videos back and forth for quite a while….it was really good to watch.

Why do Europeans love Obama so much?

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I have noticed over and over again on the web, and talking with my friends in Europe that Europeans really love Obama, in fact if they could vote it would be a landslide election.  Of course all the info they get is from the media, so what is the European media telling people about him.  You can do a Google search and see long lists of glowing articles about him.  In the last two elections here in the US in 2000 and 2004 all of Europe thought that the democrats would win by a landslide and in both cases they were shocked and dismayed.

Maybe it is because Obama wants America to be like Europe in many ways.  He wants higher gas prices, wants to ban new drilling, and limit the importation of oil.  He wants to pay for universal health care, just like Europe.  He want to raise taxes to the point that you are working for the government.  Obama wants a weaker military, just like most of Europe.

Maybe it is true that he has become a celebrity.  Everyone knows how Europe loves those.

Europeans are blogging how they would love to be Americans, just to vote in this election.

But we here in America don’t want the be like Europe, with little economic growth, with a growing stronghold of atheism, with a weaker family structure than even the United States.

If you are in Europe, please tell me your view of Obama, I really would like to know if/why you support him.

Why you need to understand Elasticity

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You may have never heard this term, or you may be an expert at it.  Most people under estimate the importance of this subject to their business.  Price elasticity is one of the MAIN reasons that businesses fail or succeed.  When I was growing up I was always told “It is better to make three fast nickels than one slow dime.”  This is what I will get to.

Elasticity is the different demand of a product at different price points.  Let me take a very easy example.  I will use the humble water bottle.  I buy them for less than 10 cents at my local grocery store.  They sell better when cold and it costs about 1 cent per bottle to make it ice cold.  Now we go to sell them, what price do we do it at.  Well many places sell them for $1.  I would make 90 cents each but the demand is low, I may be only able to sell to 5% of the people because most know that is too much.  Now what if I lower the price to 50 cents.  The demand jumps by a lot, I have seen it jump to 25% or more.  Then I offer an option where they can get 3 for $1, and you now get 20% buying 3 and 20% buying 1.   Now let us see how much we make on 100 people.  Option 1, we make $4.50 profit (5*.90).  Option 2 we make $10 profit (25*.4),  Option 3 we make $22 profit (20*.4+20*.7).  Which one would you rather have?  It is a huge difference, and one that most people simply do not notice.  They equate profit per item with over all profit, when in most cases you make MORE profit with lower prices.

You look around all over the place and people just don’t get it.  They sell things for way too much, so they sell very little.  The smaller that a company is the MORE I see this.  Today I went to a local owner operated Asian restaurant, the food was good but we paid almost double what we would have paid for twice the amount of food at Panda Express.  The larger a company the more they understand this, in fact the largest and fastest growing company, Wal-Mart, is built on the concept of Everyday Low Prices.  They do whatever they can to make sure they have the lowest price.

Now many things can effect the elasticity of an item, such as lowering supply or raising demand.  Lets go back to water.  What if you are at a 6 hour long seminar and the ONLY drink is the bottled water, you could price it at $1 and sell a lot of them.  Now what if you had 50 people but only 24 bottles of water, now not everyone can get one and you can charge $2 for each one, people will wait until they really need it or until it is almost out of stock and they will buy.  (They may resent your operation and remember to bring their own water next time they come.)  When something is not elastic it is called inelastic.  In the case of 50 people with only 24 bottles and 6 hours with no drinks you could hold out for $5 a bottle, and at some point people may start to buy.

Elasticity is caused by many things but one of the most common is competition.  If company A sells something for $4 and it is well known this is the price, and you sell the same thing for $4.10 your sales will plummet, but as soon as you go to $3.90 your people will be lining up to buy your item.  Gas companies know this, that is why they watch their competition VERY closely.  But so many companies operate in a vacuum, they have no idea what others are selling the same item for, and they may just be 5% too high, and by dropping their price by 5% they could DOUBLE their profits.  Small restaurants are a very good example.  The local taco stand sells tacos for $3 each, and they are almost always empty, it is rare to even see 2 people in their store.  But down the street taco bell does a similar sized taco, for $1.  Of course the taco stand is better, but is it really 3 times better especially when all you want to do is get full.  Lack of competition also is true, we all have seen the gas station 50 miles from any other selling gas for $1 more than anyone else simply because they know you need to buy.

Another thing that causes changes in elasticity is economic conditions.  When you sell something that is optional, in a time of tight economic conditions your demand will plummet, so you must start lowering prices will do to get your customers back, sometimes you have to lower so much that it no longer makes business sense to stay in business, this is why starbucks just had to close over 600 stores. (It also did not help them that every corner store and McDonald’s started selling quality coffee for 1/3rd the price of starbucks.)

Some things do better when economic conditions are worse, I know many people that are buying more Ramen and Mac and Cheese, it is simply much more affordable if you have $4 gas, less money coming in and you still need to eat.

You also have to think about Complementary Goods.  This is where you must buy A and B together to use them.  Lets think about Peanut Butter and Jelly, and lets assume the only thing you can do with them is make sandwiches.  What happens to the demand of Jelly when the price of Peanut Butter doubles, the demand of both falls, even if jelly lowers the price a bit it will still sell less because the total price of the combo is more.  This is why SUVs sell much less when gas costs $4 a gallon.

So next time you price something look around, see what the market is doing, and don’t be blind to your competition, and for all means don’t over price your product.  One way to test different prices is to have a sale.  (Why do you think large companies have so many things on sale, they often are testing different price points.)

I hope this helps with your business.

July, A record month for this blog and why

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This month has really been a great month for this blog, it looks like Jason Dragon is getting some critical mass. July of 08 had over 2.3 times the unique visitors as the second best month, May of 08. Blogs are suppose to go up but this is a lot faster than normal. July 30 was the best day ever passing July 24 by 6 hits.

The stats say that this is due to a few things. First I started a Computer Entry section which is simply a page that has a list of all the blogs that I wrote on the subject of computer, but this page is very popular, it is on the top 5 of my pages every month. In that section I wrote an article about Laptop computers, and from the day I wrote it it has always been in the top 2 of all the pages. It now is by far the most popular article that I have ever written. But there is an article I just wrote yesterday, about StoresOnline, that had the LARGEST first day viewing of anything I ever wrote, it had more views than my entire blog was getting last month. The subject is something that many people are asking about online.

I also did a few things differently, I blogged a bit more with 14 entries, my previous record was 12. I also added my blog to StumbleUpon, I did not put the links from my blog so I really only got a few hits from that. But the MAIN area where I got more hits was by finding great blogs that had content that was much like mine and if I found a place where I could push the conversation forward, almost half of my new visitors came from that. I also was added to the Planet section of PF Buzz along with many of the top Finance blogs. I also was able to get more hits by adding more tags to my articles, I have about 20% of the hits coming from this. I also added myself to twitter finally, I have been trying it out before I publicize it but you can check it out if you like. I also rewrote my personal webpage at JasonDragon.com.

My best blogging moment of the month was due to a fairly unpopular buy very important blog I wrote, about why our country is in trouble economically. I linked to the Perot Charts site and the right hand guy, Mike Poss, of Ross Perot noticed the link and came to my blog, read it and took the time to email me about it. I always liked Ross Perot so it made me feel good to get this note.

In other blogging news I am still in the race for the 7m7y contest. This is a contest that could be described as mentorship by a really great and successful guy. He is going to mentor only 7 people and he is willing to do it for 7 years. He will help them all become multimillionaires. He will document the process and write a book on it. In two weeks or so the final 7 will be selected, I really hope I am one.

Thank you to all my readers, and all the people that subscribe to this blog, if it was not for you I would not be doing this, and this process has really taught me a lot.

Thanks, Jason Dragon

The StoresOnline meeting, what I thought

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I always am trying to learn about business. Today I attended an event that I received an invitation for. It is for a company called StoresOnline or StoresOnline.com. It is a company that sends our huge amounts of direct mail with invitations to an event about how to make money on the internet. They promise free dinner and a free (128MB) MP3 player to everyone who shows up and stays for the whole event.

Well let me tell you what it is all about, and what you should expect if you ever go to one. First off they seemed professional and they really has their act together. While we waited for it to start they were showing a slideshow with facts about the internet and how big of an opportunity it is. It started on time then they spent about 30 minutes telling people about the internet, and how powerful it was. They then offered a website you could build yourself, selecting from about 40 templates, inserting your text and photos, and setting up your shopping cart with the items you want to sell. It was almost like the one that I currently use, PrecisionWeb, but they made everything through the website, no FTP, no domain name, no email or any of that (At least they did not mention this). For this service they charge a set-up fee of $199 (That if you bought before you left the room and thought about it would be reduced to $50.). Then they charged a hosting fee of $24.95 per month. I pay only $19.95 a month for my service and I get MUCH MORE than they offer.

Now here is where it starts to get really bad. They took some polls. First off most of the people there were over the age of 65. Next of the 200+ people there only 7 of the people in the room currently had a website of any kind. (That includes MySpace or blogs or anything) Next at least 2/3rds of the people I talked to there did not even own a computer. Now at the end of the meeting they handed everyone a order form/contract. If you sign it says they will bill your credit card the monthly fee until you cancel in writing. For me it was crazy. But I was surprised when I looked around almost half of the people there were signing up, handing over their credit card info and their money. One guy who signed up for his own web site did NOT even have a computer, and only used one a few times in his life.

The people who run StoresOnline know that almost all of these people will NEVER make even one sale. Whenever they talked about their success rate they always said “Very active clients” or something to that extent. Should you really be selling this service to people who you know with 98% certanty that they will never do anything with it, is that really ethical?

Now I would say that everything they said was very honest (They were careful about this), and they did disclose a lot of things about but they did not mention and success rates or anything that would make people think twice about this. Many times the pointed out how much that they were disclosing, even though the most important things were not. It was very polished.

Now they started talking about the fact that if you have a web site but nothing links to it, and no one knows about it, it will never be successful, which is very true. They now said that they have the fix for this, and they will show you how you will found with ease and how you can make a ton of money using their secret tricks to get listed first in every search engine. They then showed some examples of their clients, like the one who is FIRST on google with the keywords “inland empire thomas guide”. OK anyone that knows about SEO is laughing right now, I know. It was hard for me not to. If you search for “thomas guide” they are middle on the second page, not too bad. They listed 10 different methods that they will teach you to drive traffic to your site, such exciting things as, “Permission Email”, “Newsletters”, and “Affiliate Programs”, and they promised to teach you all the secrets of these. What was missing from the list is anything that is Web 2.0, such as blogging or and community like linked in or myspace. Everything they were showing was right from 2001.

Next they pushed an event in two weeks where they would be talking more in depth about internet marketing. You would need to buy the plan today in order to go to this event. And then they dropped the bomb, at this event in two weeks they will offer a package that will give you access to these secrets and the other things that you need to get people to go to your site it will ONLY cost $3,600, but they will make a special offer at the event, but you have to go to hear about it. They then talked a bit about dropshipping and how it is the KEY to success, then they told the only lie of the night about how people can go to your site, order something and some of the money is “Wired” to your paypal account while the rest of the money is sent to your dropshipper and it all happens while you sleep with nothing from you. I talked to them later and they said that it really is not possible to do this but they just wanted to make it simple to understand for the people there, and I found that acceptable. They talked a lot about dropshipping and that they had a special secret list of dropshippers. I do not know for sure but I would bet you that this is NOT included in the $3,600 that it is an extra charge. They also talked about 1 on 1 consulting and how important it is, this may or may not cost more.

So here is what I what I think about it all. If someone is clueless about what is out there, and they are really motivated to build a business and need someone to hold their hand they could be successful with this system. (But how many smart motivated business people are clueless, they don’t coexist.) There is always the few successful people in any group. But for the VAST majority of these people it will keep their hopes up, BUT they will never make a penny, and many will spend thousands. I think their products seems good, I have seen others sell less for more money, but I also know if you look you can get much more for much less. Of course when people pay a lot for a little many of them get angry and upset, I just found a blog that some of these people have created, visit it HERE. Be SURE to read that site before you do business with this company.

One really annoying thing is that during the break I started talking to some other people there about computers and how I sell them. One of the StoresOnline people came up to me and was not happy, he basically asked me to sit down and stop talking to people. It was too late, I already gave them my business card.

I am really impressed with their presentation and how it all works, it was very slick, and I am sure they make a ton of money. They really controlled the room, no one could talk to each other and every time someone tried to ask a question they would stop them, one guy even got mad and yelled over them, but he was ignored. Who would of thought you could sell $100 worth of stuff for thousands and still have people lining up. They are able to send out targeted direct mail, then hold a meeting, give away free food, and free gifts and STILL make a profit. I need to figure out how to do this with one of my businesses. Maybe get business owners in a room and talk to them for 90 minutes on how to get the most out of computer technology, then sell them computers, and show them send out cards. At least I would only talk to people who I knew could use the product, not just any dumb person with a credit card like these guys do.

A great source for motivation, PF Buzz.

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The world of blogs is huge.  There are over a million active bloggers, and millions more who do it every now and then.  Tens of millions of people read blogs every day.  Of course you know this, you are reading this blog right now.  But what it new that I want to tell you about it a site called PF Buzz.  The PF stands for personal finance.  It is a group of about 50 blogs all about how to make more money and save the money that you make.  Almost anything you want to know about this subject you can find in one of these blogs.

Now I do not agree with all the other viewpoints, many are designed to show you as an employee how to save the money you make, but as I have said before earning more money is a much better focus than saving money. I am a business person not an employee. It is still great to know what other people are thinking.

The biggest value of this site is the awesome blogs on personal motivation, and there are many of them.  They tell you how to think correctly, how to be organized and how to set goals and generally how to be successful.  This is the important stuff that if you read every day will put you in the right mindset for success.  I have PF Buzz on my Firefox Bookmarks toolbar so it is always there, only a click away.  If you want to be successful I suggest you do the same.

We are in trouble, the numbers prove it

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I am a numbers geek, I always have been.  I love charts and data.  Today I found a site that has some of the best data, presented in the best way.  It has been created by Ross Perot, another number geek.  Click here to visit Perot Charts.

It has charts on many subjects, but the one that made the most impact on me is the one about the suicidal spending of the US.  CLICK HERE to view it.  Basically it shows, plain as day with real, unarguable data the problem that the United States has, and how URGENT it is that we change it.  If you think the war is our main problem you are saddly mistaken.  The perscription drug benifit passed a few years ago costs us 6 times as much as we are spending on the entire war.

Our entire government is ran on only 38% of the budget, 9% is interest, AND the rest of the budget was spent on entitlement programs.  The pensions, social security and medical care that the government promised the older generation.  A generation that, for the most part, is no longer working to help our economy and is growing in size every day.  $1,143 trillion was spent in FY 2007 for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alone.  This is more than $10,000 for every working household in the US.  If you have a job that means you gave away over $10,000 last year as a part of this Pyramid Scheme that can not exist in 30 years, unless we bankrupt our nation.  Most people I know who are on social security are MUCH better off than the people I know who are not on it, yet the government forces you to give to them.  This simply is NOT the place of government.  Are you MAD yet, I am.   Please read the charts, get all the data.

Drill Drill Drill

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As you may have guessed this blog is going to be about Oil.  There is so much debate now about oil.  By far the price of oil and the worrys it has caused in the economy is the most important issue to the population of the US.  Over 70% of Americans think that we should drill as much as we can.

But most of the democrats are against this position.  They simply have to be against it because some of their biggest supporters are the radical environmentalists.  They know that this group is very vocal and will cause them problems.  But they also know that 70% of Americans see that the high price of Oil is killing our economy.  Every nation out there that has oil is drilling and sucking the oil out of the ground as fast as they can EXCEPT the United States.  Our leaders how bowed to the environmental lobby and for about three decades now have made it hard to drill oil and almost impossible to build a new place to refine it into gas.

The solution is to drill for oil.  We already know where massive amount of oil is.  There is enough oil off the coast of Santa Barbra, Ca to eliminate our importation of foreign oil for 10 years.  There is enough oil in Utah and Colorado in the form of oil shale that we could be a global exporter for decades.  There is enough oil in Alaska to run the US for the next Century.  But there is a ban on drilling off shore, so the CA oil is out.  And Oil shale takes 8-10 years to get government permits to even explore and then you have to start the process all over again to actually get the oil, so no major companies are even trying.  And we all know that the democrats won’t let anyone drill in Alaska.

We have the means to get out of this oil crisis very fast.  We have the capacity ready to go.  The oil companies are eager to drill, so investment is not a problem. 70% of the people want to drill now for more old.  The only problem is our leadership.  The good thing about that is that I think that most people understand this and this November we get the chance to change our leadership.  Anyone who stands to block more drilling will have a hard time being elected.

The democrats think that this problem can be solved ONLY by saving oil, and becoming more efficient.  That is a big part of it BUT it will not change prices enough in a short enough time to save the economy.  We need to do both save oil and get more.

So where do the presidential candidates stand on this issue?

Obama stands for slashing Carbon Emissions by 80%, no matter the cost to the economy.  He is for investing more in biofuels cause the price of foot to go up even more.  He wants to cap the amount of oil our nation can import, and he wants to not allow any more drilling.  This will cost our government much more for everything, and he wants to spent hundreds of billions on doing this.  This means that everyone will have to pay by having  much higher taxes.  Higher taxes, higher fuel costs, higher food costs, that is what Obama stands for.  Check it out for yourself at his site, CLICK HERE.

McCain stands for expanding domestic oil and natural gas exploration AND production.  He is also for investing in clean energy, promoting energy efficiency and protecting our environment.  He is for nuclear power, which is clean and has no carbon.  Click here for all of his views.

So when you go vote, remember you are voting for the future of our economy.  It is the number one issue that people are interested in but the media is hardly talking about the truth of what candidates are talking about.  They gloss it over with all this other talk, but it is easy for you to see just by looking at their official sites yourself.

There is one quote that I keep hearing Obama Saying that drilling for oil will not produce oil today.  He is implying that it will not fix the problem and he uses that to say the whole idea of drilling dumb.  Everyone knows that you have to drill and invest now to to get a benefit later.  It is like having a kid, it is not instant, and everyone knows that.  Obama’s speech on this just shows everyone how dumb he thinks most Americans are, and how easily fooled they can be.   I just hope he is not right, but I have lost many times before betting that Americans are smart.

Drilling for Oil, WILL have a fast effect on prices.  10 days again bush talked about drilling more and asked congress to act on this and remove all limits to off shore drilling.  After saying that the price of OIL has dropped by over 12%, almost $20.  If we actually passed this change it would drop by more, and as soon as we did the oil companies would drill drill drill and the price would be below $2 at the pump within 5 years, below $3 in a few months.

Computer Entry: How to Buy a Computer Monitor

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This article is part of my Computer series, click here for the list of other entries.

When it comes to monitors there are many things to consider. I will tell you more than you probably ever wanted to know, at the end of this you will be a monitor expert and know more than almost any clerk at any store you walk in to. It may be a bit long with stick with it, you will be glad you did.

First we will start with the difference between a CRT and a LCD. By now the LCD has won the game for new monitors, but many still debate whether to keep the OLD CRT or to upgrade to the LCD. Well there are many reasons that a LCD is better, the only reason to use a CRT is if you don’t have the money to get a LCD.

But even with that it will still cost you. The average 19” LCD uses only about 50W of power, while the average 19” CRT is over 250W. In Arizona we have cheap power, costing only on average 9 cents per KWH. After taxes and such it is about 12 cents. If you count the heat created by the CRT and the power to cool this heat during the summer you would have to count about 24 cents per KWH during the summer and 12 cents during the winter. This is an average of 18 cents per KWH. A 200 usage will result in 3.6 cents per hour. I use my monitor about 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. That is $2.50 per week. With an average 19” monitor costing less than $170 it would only take 68 weeks for a new 19” LCD to pay for itself. If this is not reason enough to get one then let me give you a few more.

The LCD monitor will take up much less space on your desk.
The LCD monitor will allow you to work longer with less eye strain. Think of a CRT monitor as a particle accelerator aimed at your head.
The LCD monitor has a much crisper picture.
The LCD monitor is much less heavy in case you need to move it.

So now that you see clearly that a LCD is the best choice PLEASE don’t do what most of my customers want to do, they simply select a size and shop for the absolute cheapest LCD of that size. That is a very bad idea. Like anything else you get what you pay for, and in monitors if you pay a bit more you really get a lot extra. Well there are a lot of things to look for.

LCD monitors work by having a white light in the background, then each pixel blocks anywhere from no light to all of the light, it does it in Red, Green and in Blue. So to make purple it will only block the green, red and blue shine through and purple is created. Most LCD monitors can block each color in any of 256 different levels. This gives each pixel 16.8 million different color combos.

Monitors also have different speeds at which they can change these colors. Most are 5ms, meaning 5/100th of a second, or 20 times per second. Most humans can only see about 20-25 updates per second, the older you are the lower this number is. For anything except video or games 5ms is fine, but if you want to have faster refresh rates 2ms is a much better for only a little more money. The eyes of most people can not tell the difference between 2ms and 5ms so don’t get all caught up in this. Beware that some cheap monitors are 8 or even 10ms, this costs them less to make and many unaware customers looking only at price buy these, even people with bad eyes can notice video slowness in these monitors.

As I said there is a white light at the back, if you want great bright graphics you need this light to be brighter. They measure this brightness in cd/m2 which means Candle power per square meter. A rating of 250 cd/m2 would be like having 250 candles in a square meter. For me the higher this rating is the better. If you are in a bright room such as an office you really need to focus on this feature. Again many cheap monitors are in the 200-250 range, simple because it is cheaper and people often only look at price. 300 is actually much nicer and the most popular brightness level, but for a bit more money you can find 400 and 500 cd/m2 models.

Now because your pixels are blocking the light you have to be concerned of how good of a job they are doing. This is called Contrast Ration. 500:1 means that the whitest white is 500 times brighter than the darkest dark. We already know exactly how bright the white is by the brightness measurement so what we really are talking about is how dark the monitor can get. Dark is great for video games, and movies. If you are in a typical office environment just doing normal typical office stuff then forget this number, it means very little to you. But if you want great crisp colors and dark darks in you movie then look for a large ratio. 700:1 and 800: are good and very common, only the cheapest or oldest monitors will have numbers lower than this. 1000:1 is the most common, but 3000:1 is getting very popular among high end quality monitors.

Now you have to decide if you want speakers or not, I have a great set of speakers so I don’t care either way, but for most offices your computer probably does not have speakers. About half of these monitors have at least basic speakers. Because I don’t need them I will look for one without them or one that has them hidden. If you need them you may want to look at the different sound out put but I have found that almost all of them are a very poor 1 to 2 Watts of power.

Now you will see monitors that are grey, or black or silver, even white. For me a black border is by far the best. It is much less distracting to the eyes.

You also need to decide if you want the Widescreen 16:9 ratio or the normal 4:3 ratio. Because the size of the screen is measured diagonally a monitor of the same diagonal size that is 4:3 will be about 10% larger than a widescreen. But if you are watching a movie and 40% of your screen is the black bars on the top and bottom then your movie will be larger on a 16:9. For me I like to have wide screen monitors, because I can then put things side by side. It is better for writing things surfing the web. Humans see much wider than they see high, so it makes sense.

Now you also have the choice of inputs with most nicer LCD monitors. The cheapest ones only have VGA (15-Din), but the nicer ones also offer DVI and recently HDMI. Some even have component input. If your monitor has more than 1 then you usually have a button that lets you select which input you would like to use at any given time, this is useful for the people with more computers than monitors, like techs often are. DVI is digital and if your computer has a DVI out I would look for a DVI monitor for sure, it is much nicer, but if you computer only has VGA then only get DVI if it is free or you are fairly sure you are upgrading soon.

I saved the two most important considerations for last, Size and Resolution. Most people think too much about money and they instantly think that smaller is better, but in todays market a 15” and a 17” screen are the same price, and in many cases the 15” is more money. Also a 19” is often only $20 more than a 17” and a 22” is often only $40 more than the 19”. For most people I suggest a 19” for offices and a 22” for home use. If you use the computer a lot at the office then get the 22”. See you are already paying for the monitor, and if you want to upgrade at a time in the future you will not be able to get the full value for your smaller one, thus it will cost much more to upgrade later than it will to do so today, so buy the size you really want right now.

Next is resolution, this comes back to the eyes question. Most sizes have a resolution that makes up about 90% of the market for that size. Almost all 19” widescreen monitors are 1440×900 while most 22” monitors are 1680×1050. Every now and then you can find monitors for about 20-30% more money that jump to the next level, such as a 1680×1050 for a 19” Monitor. Most monitors are designed for what looks good at that size. I would only suggest someone to go to the higher resolution if they have very good way above average eyesight.

You should always try to run a LCD at the highest resolution that it can support, if you don’t then your images will look very bad. It works like this. If the monitor can display 1280 pixels wide but you select 1024 then that means that 5 pixels in the monitor are trying to display every 4. So they will not line up, it works like this. Imagine pixel 1,2,3,4,5 and data pixels a,b,c,d. Pixel 1 will show the color of a and 25% the color of b. Pixel 2 will show 75% the color of b and 50% the color c. Pixel 3 will be the average of half the color of b and half of c. This is easy math for your computer and monitor but it will make everything look blended and blurry. For all the people who can not see well lowering your resolution will make your screen look even worse than running at the correct resolution and resizing as much as you can to make things larger.

One of the first things that I tell people is to think about their eyes. How large do they like text. Computers today STILL mostly render things based upon resolution. In a dream world you should always run your monitor at the highest resolution, so things would be the most smooth but be able to resize things based upon your taste BUT this is NOT the case. Unfortunately MANY things in computers are still a set number of pixels in size. At least in vista they allow you to change most of your OS to make it larger, you really only have this problem on the web. So if a person with bad vision buys a really large 24” monitor and has a resolution of 1920×1200 and they use that resolution things will still be small, so they sent the resolution to something like 1280×768, now things are only about half as crisp and clear as they should be, there is no winning this game. They could always use the zoom feature of their OS but that is not very user friendly. I hope they fix this problem but I don’t see this ever being fixed.

Last, monitors die sometimes, also they often have dead pixels, a pixels that will not change to the correct color all of the time. Most of these are covered under warranty, but many companies will not return a monitor unless it has at least 6 or 8 dead pixels. You want to be clear of this before you buy. And if you are buying a really cheap monitor then test it before you leave the store. Almost every year a new company starts up and dumps a ton of cheap monitors on the market, they sell millions of units promising a 3 or even 5 year warranty, then after a year they go out of business, change the name on all the boxes and do it all over again. Now there are some really good quality monitors from companies you may never have heard of, just because you have not heard of them does not mean that they are not good, but if an expert has not heard of them beware. We currently sell Hanns-G for many of our mid range monitors and we sell Samsung or Viewsonic for our high end monitors. We have had great experiences with all three of these. We have had bad luck with KDS, Acer and a few other brands that are now gone.

So bottom line, think about what your needs are. Don’t shop for the cheapest. If you have more questions then contact me, I will be happy to help you select your monitor, and I will probably be able to find a much better one at a better price than you ever thought.

This ended up being much longer than I thought, thanks for reading all of it, please forward this to anyone you know who is thinking of getting a new monitor, they will be happy you did. Leave a comment if you liked this blog.