Maria Sharapova Rules as the Top Paid Women in Sports

The world's best tennis players will compete against each other for the final Grand Slam title of the year with US open kicking off at the end of the August. The real action lies off the court when these super sports person signs and become the brand ambassadors for lucrative endorsement deals like apparel, shoes and racket companies.

No doubt Serena Williams is the No. 1 ranked player but she can never match the earning power of Maria Sharapova off the court. All the credit goes to the blue chip companies like Nike, Ericsson, Sony, Tiffany etc who signed Sharapova as their Brand Ambassadors.

As per the sources, Maria pulled in approx $24.5 million over the past year which made her the highest paid female athlete in the world. She earned almost $1 million from the prize money and the rest was derived from appearance fees and lucrative endorsements.

Sharapova's major breakthrough came when she won her first grand slam title back in the year 2004 at Wimbledon. As a result of her success and beautiful looks she signed some major deals with Canon, Palmolive, Colgate and Motorola. Not only this, at the beginning of that year she also signed a eight year contract with Nike which is worth of $70 million.

How Much Worth is Our US Presidents?

Have you ever wondered how much George Washington was worth of? Or how much is President Obama worth of? I know it might sound funny and weird to you but the fact is there was a time when the real worth of these people was estimated by the National Survey of America. This post might help the young readers as it will motivate them to do something great in life.

It is of no help in the financial endeavor of people who have already settled their financial life well. In the articles by the National Survey of America, they presented the entire list of the presidents starting from George Washington to Obama with their net worth figures. Not only this they also mentioned how they actually built this net worth amount.

I could not resist myself in copy pasting the list. I really apologize guys. I know its your hard work but I want my readers to go through that list too :)

Obviously it was not possible for me to paste all the 43 president's name here but I at least mentioned the names of those whom I personally liked and who became the president for some reason or the other. And please after seeing the list do not start commenting on the figures. These figures are the approximate values which were calculated. This is how it was calculated.

please note that they have calculated the figures keep in mind the dollar value in 2010.

Famous Presidents & Their Net Worths:

President (#)	Net Worth
George Washington (1st) John Adams (2nd) Thomas Jefferson (3rd) Abraham Lincoln (16th) Ulysses Simpson Grant (18th) Theodore Roosevelt (26th) John Fitzgerald Kennedy (35th) Lyndon Baines Johnson (36th) Richard Milhous Nixon (37th) William Jefferson Clinton (42nd) George W. Bush (43rd) Barack Hussein Obama (44th)	$525 million $19 million $212 million $1 Million $1 Million $125 million $1 billion $98 Million $15 million $38 million $20 million $5 million

So the winner over here is George Washington. Most of them have built their net worth with their real estate investments, books, autobiographies, interviews, etc. Trust if you are a finance savvy you will definitely like this.

Prize Money of $US420 million Reserved for 2010 FIFA World Cup

Like any other football world cups, the South Africa 2010 football world cup will also churn out with dollops of entertainment this time. A game with all highs, lows, celebrations and disappointments will turn out to be a complete family entertainment just like its predecessors. In the picturesque land of South Africa, the 32 qualified teams will battle for the world class honor for their respective countries. The heroes of the game will fight till the last to perform and display the seemingly impossible game with the emotions, blood, sweat, tears and passion of the players.



FIFA as an oldest organization have acknowledged the tremendous hard work and effort of the players and have fixed a total prize money of $US420 million. The organization has also decided that the prize money will be distributed among the team members only after considering their over all performance in the tournament.

For the status and legacy of the tournament the prize money of $US 420 Million dollar has been fixed. Not only this, the prize money has been increased 60% to what it was in the year 2006 world cup. There was meeting held at the Robben Islands where the President of the FIFA organization, Sepp Blatter with 24 men executive committee announced that the champions of the tournament will receive a cash prize of $US 30 million whereas the 1st runner up will take away the cash prize of $US 20 million.

With this, the General Secretary of FIFA, Jerome Valcke also announced a sum of $US 40 million for the best clubs of the world. This money will be shared with those clubs whose players are participating in the World Cup. For the insurance of the players from the clubs, a sum of $US 40 million has been set aside.

Jerome claimed that each and every club will receive a cash prize of $1600 per day per player whose players are playing in the world cup. All the 32 teams will get a total prize money of $US 1 million prior to the commencement of the tournament.

The teams will fight against each other for the prize money as well as for the beautiful world cup in the cities of Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, etc. The tournament begins on 11th June, 2010 and will end on 11th July.

Lets blow three cheers for the world cup, the teams, the players and lastly the host South Africa.

Performance Pays When It Comes to Business

When it comes to some business activities, the conventional method of paying first and measuring performance last is changing. In the advertising industry, for instance, it's no longer meaningful to simply role out a large advertising campaign without first knowing what the return on the investment will be.

With traditional types of online advertising, like pay-per-click, a campaign is rolled out even before you know if it will generate any sales. Unless you have money to spare (a rare condition in this recession) or business loans for this purpose, you can end up shelling out money that never returns a direct benefit in proportion to what you spent. Take a cue from modern methods and choose strategies that will lower the risk of loss and increase performance from the get go.

Cost-Per-Action Advertising

New affiliate networks call cost-per-action networks seek to reduce the risk and increase advertising performance for its advertisers by generating sales leads from advertising activities. These can later be mined for email marketing campaigns, increasing the performance of your advertising dollars by generating a valid email of a prospective customer. Now, instead of spending a few cents for each click and generating thousands in advertising costs with little to show for it, you can spend a few hundreds and get a valid sales information that helps you market people every time an action is taken. If the action requested is never completed, you don't have to pay for the publishing of your link. You only pay for performance on that link.

cost-per-action networks seek to reduce the risk and increase advertising performance

Hiring High Performance Individuals

Another way that businesses have be lowering the cost of hiring and increasing performance is to hire on a part-time or temporary basis. With the labor pool filled with qualified applicants, hiring people on a short-term basis can be a great way for business owners to try out candidates to see if they will work out. If they don't, then they can just end the relationship at the end of the contract period and start again with a new face. This keeps performance high and lowers costs of employee staffing.

Sixth Harry Potter movie breaks all previous records

As per The Financial, the daily newspaper of New York, the latest harry potter movie, "Harry Potter and the half blood prince" has earned more than $60 million on the opening day at the theaters in US. The sixth Harry Potter movie has broken all the previous profit earning records of previous movies.



"Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix" earned around $43.7 million as per Warner Bros on its opening day couple of years back and earned around $142 million after one week which was an outstanding performance by any movie.

The sixth series of J.K.Rowling's Harry Potter series was scheduled to release in November 2008 but was finally released on 15th of this month. In Russia, the movie was released on 16th July and was hosted in more than 900 cinemas.

Earlier "the Dark Knight" was able to make records of highest selling movie on the opening day but "Harry Potter and the half blood prince" was succeeded in breaking its records too. The international earnings of Harry Potter movie was $46 million on the opening day which made the total of more than $100 million on the very first day.

This movie is seriously something to watch out for!!!

Death of an American Icon as GM declares Bankruptcy

On Monday, GM will declare its official Chapter 11 bankruptcy. GM once called the American Icon is surely no longer the part of great American Icon Team. Others belonging to this team are still surviving including Apple Inc. and Microsoft. GM has definitely gone to the garage. Barack Obama is very disappointed with the news.

Death of an American Icon, GM - 1908-2009 :(

The largest US Auto maker will file its bankruptcy on Monday in the Federal Court in New York City, as confirmed by the FOX Business Network. Obama has decided to provide details on how to reconstruct GM as it was before. This will take place before the formalities of the bankruptcy filings. Even though GM has been declared bankrupt, it was found by the media, they negotiating for their two high profile cars, Hummer and Saturn.

GM will continue to negotiate with its creditors regarding proposal made by GM that would increase its shareholder's stake in a new restructured company to 10% that equals to increase the stake by 25% which is a good news for the bondholders.

The only thing that GM is now expecting is support from its creditors. They have also declared Fritz Henderson to remain the GM CEO. Al Koch, MD of AlixPartners, a business oriented company that helps in restructuring of bankrupted companies. Earlier they have guided K-Mart, the largest bankruptcy in US to come out of bankruptcy.


CM CEO, Fritz Henderson after declaring bankruptcy of GM.

Obama confirmed that the GM bankruptcy will involve the treasury spending of around $30.1 billion so that during bankruptcy period operations can be performed.

Now let's hope GM comes back to its original position once again. I surely don't want to see the death of an American Icon, GM.