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Home Sales Are Up. The Recession Is Over. Things are Great.

Cigarette Sales Are Down

Contacting pcAmerica

www.talkpos.com

Join the pcAmerica blog at  http://www.talkpos.com/.

What is a blog?

Go to the Wikipedia online encyclopedia for your answer at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

A quick summary is that a blog is your own personal or business website where you can make comments about your business, opinions, and/or ideas.

If you want a FREE personal or business blog, just go to http://blog.com/ and start one.

Retail store and restaurant owners may want to start a blog to communicate with customers.

So, if your business needs some free marketing and publicity, you have a choice of Facebook, blogs, Twitter (all becoming extremely popular as  marketing tools).

Why blog? Below is a recent pcAmerica blog entry. Admittedly we blog to get new people more interested in our software and in making purchases from pcAmerica. As a retailer, we’re hoping that you are likewise interested in getting more people interested in your business.

Visit the pcAmerica blog at http://www.talkpos.com/. Start your own FREE blog at http://blog.com/.

Use your blog to automatically email to your customer with your latest updates, coupons, and great things happening within your retail store or restaurant. Increase your sales by 18% (read last week’s newsletter).

Here’s a recent pcAmerica blog entry:

Coupons In Your Point Of Sale System

Cash Register Express and Restaurant Pro Express both have integrated coupon tracking. Many retailers are using their retail point of sale system to enable coupons and discounts for specific items to drive traffic into the store. Several restaurants are also offering coupons, such as a free appetizer with any two entrees, to give more value to potential customers. The restaurant POS would have a button created for this coupon to automatically discount the appetizer from the check.

The coupon interface within Cash Register Express and Restaurant Pro Express is robust.

· Coupons can be configured to include or exclude specific items (for example, a coupon for $ 1 off all sandwiches except the portobello mushroom sandwich)

· Expiration dates can be assigned with optional manager overrides, helping ensure a more immediate surge of traffic

· Set valid times and dates for coupons, so they are only valid during specified days and times (ex: early bird dinner special Monday - Thursday, 2 PM - 5 PM.)

· Coupons are entered as their own item, allowing coupon redemptions and marketing success to be easily gauged. Simply run a coupon sales reports, and you can see exactly how many of each coupon were redeemed. This information can be used to run future successful campaigns.

Home Sales Are Up. The Recession Is Over. Things Are Great.

For those of you who read the newsletter every week, you understand that I can get a little sarcastic.

If you read the headlines this week, you read the read about how the economy is getting better and home sales have gone way, way up.

It’s a lie, or an exaggeration, or an optimistic press playing with words.

Here’s the truth.

Yes. Home sales did go up. This is actually better than going down.

What the press did not emphasize is that home sales are up in June compared to May. It is true that home sales rose 11% from May to June. However, what you are not being told is that home sales always rise from May to June. Just like the sale of bikinis rise in the summer, home sales go up in June. The school year is over and lots of people move.

If you compare this year’s June home sales to last year’s June sales, home sales are still decreasing.

Now, if you are an optimist, we can say that home sales are decreasing at a lower rate. We could have reached an inflection point which indicates that eventually, home sales will be going up.

Who cares about home prices? If more people buy homes, more people have money and are helping the economy grow. Eventually, home owners buy light bulbs and eat more hamburgers.

Is the recession coming to an end? Without getting too much into economics, just think of a V and a W. The President, the press, and many economists think we have a V. The left top side of the V is where the economy was before the recession. The bottom of the V is where we are now (at the bottom of the recession and we are moving up on the right side of the V). Things are getting better. However, many economists think we are in a W. That is, we have hit the bottom and now we are turning up a little. Soon we will be heading down again before we finally come out of the recession on the right hand side of the W.

In short, in my opinion we are doing the W. The economy has hit the bottom. We are coming out of it just a little, but still have some more downside before things will get better.

Why am I a pessimist? I think our lawmakers have it wrong (as well as the majority of readers judging from emails that I have received). We have hit bottom and things are getting a little better. However, we have a new round of financial problems coming up. States have lost so much money in the past year that many can’t balance their budgets. In fact, as of August 1st, New York City’s general tax rate will increase to 8.75%. I don’t know about your business, but when you lost money you have the choice of lowering your costs or bringing in new business. Politicians don’t seem to understand lowering costs so much! Instead, they are increasing taxes. Increasing taxes give consumers less money to spend. Less money to spend means more recession coming.

Read more about home prices and the economy by going to google.com/news and search for home prices.