Traveling is considered by most of us as a luxury item on our list of things to buy. We’d all love to travel more, and see the most exotic places from the presidential suite of the best hotel, alas, most of us have a limited budget. To meet this budget we need to make a few compromises, but still, there are things you can do to make the most of your budget.
Before we start listing the ways to save, there is one cliché I want to mention: “I’m not rich enough to buy cheap things”. It’s a cliché, but it’s true. Don’t go to the cheapest hotel you can find if you’re not sure you fully understand why it is cheap. If the price sounds too good to be true it probably is.
When you arrive you will find out why the price was low, and it will be too late. Your vacation could be ruined by building noises starting early in the morning, or by discovering that the hotel is in a neighborhood you don’t want to walk in after dark. It is better to pay a little more and have a good vacation (I know, you have this friend who always boasts he got an upgrade and a discount. You don’t have to tell him the truth either.).
If two hotels look the same but one costs 20% less per night, ask yourself why. Most times there’s a good answer. For example, one hotel has a convention center, and it is filled with visitors of a convention, and the other has no such facilities. Since you have no use for a convention center, you should gladly enjoy the lower price.
Here I will try to describe how to find a good place (Your definition of good), for a little less, or much less.
Find a package deal
There are many offers for hotel and flight packages that are sometimes really cheap. Compare the price offered to taking a flight and a hotel separately, because sometimes a package deal is not the best way to go.
Be aware of your needs
Beautiful decoration, luxury and large rooms are great to have, but they come with a cost. Think what your minimum requirements are. Some people don’t mind sharing a shower, while for others it could ruin the trip. For some, internet access is a must while others couldn’t care less. The less you need - the less you pay.
Are you really going to use the swimming pool or the gym? They look lovely in the pictures, but if you intend to spend all day sightseeing you may not need them.
The one thing I wouldn’t recommend to settle on (apart from cleanliness) is location. Living far from the center of the city you are visiting means you are going to waste time and money on transportation every day.
Wait for the last minute
This one is a bit risky, especially if you are visiting a popular tourist site during high season. If you are willing to take a risk, you may find a room that was left vacant due to a cancellation. The owners will be willing to lower the price rather than stay with an empty room for the night.
Book in advance
It is a bit ironic, because it is the complete opposite of the previous advice, but it makes sense. Imagine that it is now March, and you own a hotel in a summer vacation area. You had hardly any income during the winter. This is expected, but it still feels bad. You hope that the coming summer will be good, but how can you tell? If you have the opportunity to make a booking now for August, and maybe get a small down payment, you would be happy to lower the price for the security. By June or July, when most of the rooms are booked for the summer, owners will feel more confident about charging full rates.
Rent an apartment
Holiday apartments normally cost less than hotel rooms with equivalent rating and similar location. You get more space, privacy and the possibility of preparing your own food. On the other hand, you get fewer services - normally apartments are not cleaned daily and there are no meals served, no concierge etc.
Check discounts and corporate rates
Check if the hotel you want to go to has a discount for credit card holders, members of any clubs you belong to or corporate rates you may be able to use.
Can you change the length of your stay?
Most hotels offer reduced rates for longer stays. The total sum you pay will be larger, but the cost per night will be lower. If you are planning a trip to several places that are not very far from one another, and you wanted to divide your stay between the places, you may want to consider staying in one place and making day trips.
How to save after you arrive
Check the small print. If breakfast is not included, check the price of breakfast compared to having breakfast in another place (a coffee shop or diner). Check the price of local and long distance phone calls compared to using cellular phone or a calling card. Check the price of internet access. You may prefer to use an internet cafe or wait for your next stop.
When you check out carefully read your bill and make sure you are not billed for services you didn’t use.
Rachel Deutsch is the owner and writer of http://www.dream-vacation-in-Tuscany.com. On this site, as in others, she shares her experience in travel, and the interest in Italy, its history and its pleasures.
(Common Mistakes Most New Affiliate Marketers Make)
Copyright © Joseph Townsend
http://www.BestDealsMadeEasy.net
An Internet business that makes profit on auto-pilot can be an
excellent opportunity. Making money as an affiliate marketer is
easy, but making a lot of money is where the real challenge
comes in.
You can avoid some common mistakes made by most new affiliate
marketers and learn how to select programs that make residual
income for many months by simply following the advice in this
article.
Through affiliate marketing, you are able to sign up as an
affiliate by advertising for certain vendors and earn a
percentage of each sale you refer. This creates a win-win
situation for both the affiliate and the vendor. The affiliate
only refers people to certain websites without the worry of
fulfillment and delivery, and the vendor only pays when a sale
is made without the extra advertising expenses and upkeep.
Here are some common mistakes most new affiliate marketers make,
and reasons why you should avoid them:
1. Sending people directly to a vendor’s website.
You spend too much time, effort, and money advertising to send
people directly to your vendor’s website for a one sale
opportunity. If they don’t buy you lost the sale and future
potential sales. To prevent you from losing your future earning
potential send people to an opting page, where you exchange
something of value for their email address. By doing this you
create a way to follow up with all your potential customers for
future offers and sales.
2. Creating a website with too many affiliate links, tons of
flashy banners, and all the colors of the rainbow.
Make sure your website is easy on the eyes. You don’t want to
give a million affiliate options just give honest reviews of
your products and services pre-selling your visitors on its
benefits to them.
3. Falling victim of affiliate commission theft.
This could be a very big problem if you are not cautious.
Although you can’t eliminate it completely you can take some
steps to minimize it dramatically. You can cloak and redirect.
Don’t allow your affiliate ids to show in your urls.
It takes the same effort to refer a one-time purchase sale as it
takes to refer a residual type sale. With that said, it makes
excellent business sense to market as many affiliate programs
with recurring commissions as possible.
When selecting affiliate programs with recurring commissions you
should consider the stickiness of the services you are promoting.
For example, you refer a sale for a membership website which
only offers resale rights to products and nothing else to keep
the customer from canceling. People might join, download all the
products, and cancel within the same month.
On the other hand, if you refer a sale for an essential service
such as web hosting or an auto responder for your customer’s
business, then you are more likely to retain there business on a
monthly recurring basis.
In conclusion, try to avoid common mistakes made by new
affiliate marketers by sending your visitors to an opt-in list
first, pre-sell them on the product’s benefits to them, and
avoid affiliate commission theft. Don’t forget to look for
affiliate programs that have recurring commission potential and
research the stickiness of the product or service you recommend.
You can try each product and service yourself first to help in
your evaluation of each affiliate program.
“I am actually not a man of science at all. . . . I am nothing but a conquistador by temperament, an adventurer.”
(Sigmund Freud, letter to Fleiss, 1900)
“If you bring forth that which is in you, that which you bring forth will be your salvation”.
(The Gospel of Thomas)
“No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we cannot get elsewhere.”
(Sigmund Freud, “The Future of an Illusion”)
Harold Bloom called Freud “The central imagination of our age”. That psychoanalysis is not a scientific theory in the strict, rigorous sense of the word has long been established. Yet, most criticisms of Freud’s work (by the likes of Karl Popper, Adolf Grunbaum, Havelock Ellis, Malcolm Macmillan, and Frederick Crews) pertain to his - long-debunked - scientific pretensions.
Today it is widely accepted that psychoanalysis - though some of its tenets are testable and, indeed, have been experimentally tested and invariably found to be false or uncorroborated - is a system of ideas. It is a cultural construct, and a (suggested) deconstruction of the human mind. Despite aspirations to the contrary, psychoanalysis is not - and never has been - a value-neutral physics or dynamics of the psyche.
Freud also stands accused of generalizing his own perversions and of reinterpreting his patients’ accounts of their memories to fit his preconceived notions of the unconscious . The practice of psychoanalysis as a therapy has been castigated as a crude form of brainwashing within cult-like settings.
Feminists criticize Freud for casting women in the role of “defective” (naturally castrated and inferior) men. Scholars of culture expose the Victorian and middle-class roots of his theories about suppressed sexuality. Historians deride and decry his stifling authoritarianism and frequent and expedient conceptual reversals.
Freud himself would have attributed many of these diatribes to the defense mechanisms of his critics. Projection, resistance, and displacement do seem to be playing a prominent role. Psychologists are taunted by the lack of rigor of their profession, by its literary and artistic qualities, by the dearth of empirical support for its assertions and fundaments, by the ambiguity of its terminology and ontology, by the derision of “proper” scientists in the “hard” disciplines, and by the limitations imposed by their experimental subjects (humans). These are precisely the shortcomings that they attribute to psychoanalysis.
Indeed, psychological narratives - psychoanalysis first and foremost - are not “scientific theories” by any stretch of this much-bandied label. They are also unlikely to ever become ones. Instead - like myths, religions, and ideologies - they are organizing principles.
Psychological “theories” do not explain the world. At best, they describe reality and give it “true”, emotionally-resonant, heuristic and hermeneutic meaning. They are less concerned with predictive feats than with “healing” - the restoration of harmony among people and inside them.
Therapies - the practical applications of psychological “theories” - are more concerned with function, order, form, and ritual than with essence and replicable performance. The interaction between patient and therapist is a microcosm of society, an encapsulation and reification of all other forms of social intercourse. Granted, it is more structured and relies on a body of knowledge gleaned from millions of similar encounters. Still, the therapeutic process is nothing more than an insightful and informed dialog whose usefulness is well-attested to.
Both psychological and scientific theories are creatures of their times, children of the civilizations and societies in which they were conceived, context-dependent and culture-bound. As such, their validity and longevity are always suspect. Both hard-edged scientists and thinkers in the “softer” disciplines are influenced by contemporary values, mores, events, and interpellations.
The difference between “proper” theories of dynamics and psychodynamic theories is that the former asymptotically aspire to an objective “truth” “out there” - while the latter emerge and emanate from a kernel of inner, introspective, truth that is immediately familiar and is the bedrock of their speculations. Scientific theories - as opposed to psychological “theories” - need, therefore, to be tested, falsified, and modified because their truth is not self-contained.
Still, psychoanalysis was, when elaborated, a Kuhnian paradigm shift. It broke with the past completely and dramatically. It generated an inordinate amount of new, unsolved, problems. It suggested new methodological procedures for gathering empirical evidence (research strategies). It was based on observations (however scant and biased). In other words, it was experimental in nature, not merely theoretical. It provided a framework of reference, a conceptual sphere within which new ideas developed.
That it failed to generate a wealth of testable hypotheses and to account for discoveries in neurology does not detract from its importance. Both relativity theories were and, today, string theories are, in exactly the same position in relation to their subject matter, physics.
In 1963, Karl Jaspers made an important distinction between the scientific activities of Erklaren and Verstehen. Erklaren is about finding pairs of causes and effects. Verstehen is about grasping connections between events, sometimes intuitively and non-causally. Psychoanalysis is about Verstehen, not about Erklaren. It is a hypothetico-deductive method for gleaning events in a person’s life and generating insights regarding their connection to his current state of mind and functioning.
So, is psychoanalysis a science, pseudo-science, or sui generis?
Psychoanalysis is a field of study, not a theory. It is replete with neologisms and formalism but, like Quantum Mechanics, it has many incompatible interpretations. It is, therefore, equivocal and self-contained (recursive). Psychoanalysis dictates which of its hypotheses are testable and what constitutes its own falsification. In other words, it is a meta-theory: a theory about generating theories in psychology.
Moreover, psychoanalysis the theory is often confused with psychoanalysis the therapy. Conclusively proving that the therapy works does not establish the veridicality, the historicity, or even the usefulness of the conceptual edifice of the theory. Furthermore, therapeutic techniques evolve far more quickly and substantially than the theories that ostensibly yield them. They are self-modifying “moving targets” - not rigid and replicable procedures and rituals.
Another obstacle in trying to establish the scientific value of psychoanalysis is its ambiguity. It is unclear, for instance, what in psychoanalysis qualify as causes - and what as their effects.
Consider the critical construct of the unconscious. Is it the reason for - does it cause - our behavior, conscious thoughts, and emotions? Does it provide them with a “ratio” (explanation)? Or are they mere symptoms of inexorable underlying processes? Even these basic questions receive no “dynamic” or “physical” treatment in classic (Freudian) psychoanalytic theory. So much for its pretensions to be a scientific endeavor.
Psychoanalysis is circumstantial and supported by epistemic accounts, starting with the master himself. It appeals to one’s common sense and previous experience. Its statements are of these forms: “given X, Y, and Z reported by the patient - doesn’t it stand to (everyday) reason that A caused X?” or “We know that B causes M, that M is very similar to X, and that B is very similar to A. Isn’t it reasonable to assume that A causes X?”.
In therapy, the patient later confirms these insights by feeling that they are “right” and “correct”, that they are epiphanous and revelatory, that they possess retrodictive and predictive powers, and by reporting his reactions to the therapist-interpreter. This acclamation seals the narrative’s probative value as a basic (not to say primitive) form of explanation which provides a time frame, a coincident pattern, and sets of teleological aims, ideas and values.
Juan Rivera is right that Freud’s claims about infantile life cannot be proven, not even with a Gedankenexperimental movie camera, as Robert Vaelder suggested. It is equally true that the theory’s etiological claims are epidemiologically untestable, as Grunbaum repeatedly says. But these failures miss the point and aim of psychoanalysis: to provide an organizing and comprehensive, non-tendentious, and persuasive narrative of human psychological development.
Should such a narrative be testable and falsifiable or else discarded (as the Logical Positivists insist)?
Depends if we wish to treat it as science or as an art form. This is the circularity of the arguments against psychoanalysis. If Freud’s work is considered to be the modern equivalent of myth, religion, or literature - it need not be tested to be considered “true” in the deepest sense of the word. After all, how much of the science of the 19th century has survived to this day anyhow?
Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.
Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.
Visit Sam’s Web site at samvak.tripod.com