Going to the Dentist.

I read a web release today about Charles Brown DDS PC that reminded me that I have to go to the dentist in January. The web release went on to describe how great the dentistry is that Charles Brown performs. That being said, I hear I have a cavity that might require that I get a root canal. I just went to the dentist six months ago, so I don't know how they could have missed a large cavity that might have been small six months ago.

Anyway, it's one of my wisdom teeth, so I asked what would be the harm of just getting it pulled out. The dentist explained that he was going to try to put a temporary filling first to see if that would suffice. If it did, then he would go in and refill it with a permanent filling. Then he said if that didn't work, he would do a root canal. My thought was that it meant visiting the dentist three times for a tooth that most people get pulled out. Well, I think I'd prefer getting it pulled out and over with. So what do you think?

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Tax Time and Bookkeeping.

Do you do your bookkeeping all year long? I am new to business online and bookkeeping was not my number one concern, but seeing that tax season is upon us, I realize I should have been bookkeeping all along, not haphazardly. Well, at least some of the bookkeeping is done. Now I have a Quickbooks program that is going to help me do the rest of it and also will help me get more organized for the coming years transactions. Don't do what I did. Just like your check register, as transactions are processed, get them in the books.

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Ready for Next Year?

I have a lot of plans for the year 2007 and God Willing, all will work out. What are your plans for the new year? I would like to build another website. My first has been a great experience and was relatively successful for 2006, so I felt that success bug and want to go there again and again. I would also like to get more organized and will be starting that today. I have had lots of visitors over the past few days, thus the inactivity towards blogging, but I will be back soon.

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Investing in Property Overseas

Do you wish you could buy property overseas? Property Investment overseas is definitely a challenge, but there are many who can help with your decision on what to buy and where. When my business gets to a point where I have extra income to invest, property is definitely the way I want to go.

Where would you buy if you could? I've never been overseas, unless you include Puerto Rico or Jamaica, but if I were to go anywhere, I'd go to Spain or maybe do a property investment UK style. However, making a property investment abroad for me is quite a challenge that I don't know if I'm ready to take.

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Organization in Business is a Must!

So it's tax time again and receipts are everywhere. Thank goodness for the filing system I have put in place, but I really need to get my act together with QuickBooks! At any rate, it's my first full year being in business for myself and I know how important it is to be organized even if you look at my desk and it looks like I don't.

So I bring up the idea of storage. What do you do with your old boxes, files, etc.? Do you have them housed at your home office, sort of a self storage technique, or have you gotten big enough to house them at a storage facility?

Moving.bz is a website that centers around helping with all kinds of storage needs. Their latest web release gave many options that they cater to from Self Storage to Mobile and Portable Storage and even Mini-Storage and Climate-Controlled Storage. So, if you need storage advice and want to look no further than your computer for help, check out their site.

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PayPerPost Now Requires Disclosure Effective TODAY!

This is not a paid post!

As of today, PayPerPost is now requiring that their Posties disclose that they are receiving payment for posts that they complete under the PayPerPost Terms of Service. The idea is to promote a more transparent platform for bloggers and marketers or advertisers to meet on. Here is some of the Press Release about this:

“The mission of PayPerPost has always been to be the top marketplace connecting bloggers and marketers,” said Ted Murphy, chief executive officer of PayPerPost. "We have always believed that the marketplace will naturally evolve based upon needs of the marketers and bloggers participating in the market. Proper transparency for WOM marketing has been an ongoing balance for our members and an issue with little legal precedent. Although the FTC was petitioned and recently declined any formal action against buzz marketing practices (e.g. Proctor & Gamble Tremor, BzzAgents), we believe the marketers and bloggers in our marketplace will benefit from today’s Terms of Service updates. We will undoubtedly lose some marketers and bloggers in the process, however we believe this measure serves our marketplace participants long term."

So, what do you think about this new turn of events. I've always chosen to disclose, but at times have neglected to just because I thought the post fit in so well with my own blog or because the feelings were genuinely my own or even because I was too busy and couldn't take out the time to type the extra "sponsored" word.

At any rate, this forces the envelope so to speak, so I do agree that in the long run, this will be better for bloggers and advertisers.

Here's the full release: New Disclosure Requirement

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

More About Associated Conent!

Over at the WAHM.com Forum, one of the members asked if one could briefly explain what Associated Content is about and what once does to earn money over there. Well, I was one of the forum posters and this is what I wrote:

Basically, you write an article about almost anything and then submit it through their online form. They don't accept poetry for pay though.

During the submission you will be given an option to submit for compensation or not. Usually I ask for compensation.

Then you just wait...sometimes it takes a week or so to get an answer on whether they accepted your article and then what they will pay for your submission. You then log back into your account and either accept or reject the offer. Usually it's between $3 and $12, but sometimes more.

They like articles about personal health issues and seem to pay more for those.

Also, each week, they have specific article requests that they offer to you in their internal email system. You get access to this when you have an account. The offers may come with monetary compensation, actually they often do, but sometimes it's just a contest and whoever wins gets paid.

The requests are often times fun, like once I wrote about my top ten all time favorite Luther Vandross songs and I received $10 for that submission.

Oh, you also earn money as an affiliate (I think $2 or something per person who signs up with your link).

WhiteyTighty, another forum member clarified my post a little by adding to the thread:

Technically you can't submit something you have on your blog, but you can write about the same topic really. I have sent a few in that were rehashes of long blog entries I have made.

AC doesn't use your blog at all. You write your artciles through the site. Everyone gets accepted and you can start right away. There are quite a few articles on there with tips on how to increase the offer they give you for a submission. You'll want to read those before you start.

You can submit an article as exclusive, or non-exclusive which means you lose rights to it if it is exclusive. Non-exclusive submissions pay much less typically, but if you are able to make money on it from another source there is no reason to shortchange yourself by submitting it as exclusive. You can always decline an offer as well if you think you can get more elsewhere.

So, that's it in a nutshell. Ready to sign up? Here's the link: Associated Content

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Increasing Link Popularity.

How do you increase link popularity? There are several ways to do this according to USWeb's latest web release. The concept of Page Rank is discussed, but in relation to getting back links from high page ranked sites vs. low page ranked sites. This idea is put into perspective.

USWeb says, "There is still importance to Page Rank but...What Google really looks for now are links pointing to your website from many different sources on the internet...Nobody can tell you the exact difference in the quality of one over the other but in our experience 1000 links from different websites with low levels of Page Rank work better in increasing your rankings within the organic results of Google."

Another thing to think of is whether the site linking to your site is has any relation to your site. This too is important. Google also looks at whether the link is within the content or with a listing of other links. The higher quality link would be within content.

USWeb's blog goes into more detail on this, so why not head over there and get some quality information about how to increase your link popularity. Again that link is: The Best Way to Increase Link Popularity.

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Associated Content Reminder!

Have you signed up with Associated Content yet? Don't forget to do this. Associated Content is a site where you can publish your content, articles, news, etc. for cash. You submit your articles using the specified form (this is quite easy to do - just follow the directions). Oh, they accept poetry, but don't pay for it.

I digress, you then wait, sometimes as long as a week or more, but never more than two weeks. You are notified of acceptance of your article with a price they are willing to pay you ranging from $4 to $10 and sometimes even $20. You either accept or reject the offer and that's that. If you accept the offer, you are paid within a few days and then your work is published.

To find out more about Associated Content, here's the link:

Associated Content

By the way, there are usually ongoing contests and requests for content that, if you participate, can earn you extra income. Here's an ongoing one:

Enter to win $100 and other cool prizes Follow the clues in this week's Read & Win contest for your chance at $100 and other entertainment prizes. Learn more here.

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Internet Business - How Have You Been Doing?

How have you been doing with your internet business over the past Rush of the season buying? Have you been successful. Did you anticipate being busy, or was it a surprise to you? Year after year, statistics are showing a higher number of consumers using the internet to make purchases. Some even do their grocery shopping online. I haven't gotten their yet, but I do use the internet much more than I use to, thus supporting the growth of online sales statistics.

Well, I was just checking in with you to see how things are going. I'm doing better than expected and am happy to report that. December is going to be a good month in the books!

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Gift Giving - Give Flowers!

Are you like me when it comes to giving gifts? I love to see the smiles on peoples faces knowing that the thought I put into the gift I gave fell exactly right on their hearts. I love to give all year long. What about you? I know this is the time of year when gift giving is on everyone's list of top tens, but are you stressed out about it? Christmas time is one of the more stressful times of year.

Well, DotFlowers.com has exactly what you need when it comes to gift giving and they make sure they do it just the way you like. They have flowers and gift baskets, cookies and ... well, you name it, whatever you think a flower/gift shop should have, they've got it and they've got it all year long. So why not send flowers to someone you love today!

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Don't Forget to Ping!

Don't forget to ping your blogs once you've finished writing for the day. I have found that this is sure to bring you some traffic and possibly, depending on your content, some long term readers. My reader base fluctuates from time to time. It's not where I'd like it to be, but I do notice a rise in visitors whenever I ping.

You can use services like pingoat.com or pingomatic.com. These two services allow you to ping to many places at once instead of one at a time. They ping to favorites like Technorati, MyYahoo, Feedster, Feedburner and many more. So, don't forget to ping.

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Conversion Lies and Testing!

James Brausch does it again with his Multivariate testing software. He goes into some of the reasons why conversion testing may not always tell the truth in his latest blog entry, "Conversion Lies." It's not so much that it's so technical that blows me away, but the confidence he has in explaining all the techno mumbo jumble makes one feel confident that he actually knows what he's talking about.

In fact, it's the comment he made in response to another commenter that I liked the best about the whole blog. He took the entire article and summed it up rather nicely since it seems like his commenter was still stuck on technicalities and not enough on the fact that conversion ratios and what works today as opposed to tomorrow is a never ending process.

For a fact, I can say this with confidence because in building my one and only website, I have learned that what works today may not work tomorrow and conversely, what works tomorrow may not have worked today. You must constantly be on your toes in this internet business industry, in any industry really. If you don't stay fresh, you quickly become back burner priority in terms of search engines and customers. Don't believe me? You'll see.

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Getting an Insurance Quote - It Can Be Easy!

A lot of people spend a great deal of time searching for the best quote when they buy things. My father, for instance, is the type of person that takes a lot of time to decide whether he wants to actually spend money buying this or that, or at least he use to be this way. He would research his product and then research it some more and then finally he would make a decision. Sometimes he would buy the product and sometimes he wouldn't.

Getting a car insurance estimate the easy way is a service that is made for people like him. Imagine shopping from store to store, insurance agent to insurance agent and then after having all of that paperwork in front of you, having to decide which rate you like over the other, which is going to cover you the most for the least amount of money. CarInsurance.com makes it easy for you.

Their latest web release reveals that they offer "the ability to shop for car insurance online" while meeting the consumers’ requests. They also state that "consumers can receive quotes from many insurance companies" and that "in some states you are able to purchase your insurance instantly, online."

Like I said, this is right up my father's alley. This is the day and age when ease is as important as quality. Are you getting what you're paying for? Do you even know what you've paid for? Don't let yourself find out that you don't have enough car insurance or that you have too much. Do your research and then buy.

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More Recommended SEO Reading!

I shared with you part three of a series by Brad Callen in the previous Blog Post, but here is part one. I personally think they all can stand alone, but again this is excellent reading if you are an internet website owner and are selling a product or service.

For a little bit of what you'll get read this:

What is the single most important factor that determines the success or failure of your online business?

* Your search engine rankings
* Your subscribers' list
* The quality of your product/service
* After-sales support

Actually, none of the above .

Instead , the one thing that convinces your visitors to buy from you and converts aimless browsers into enthusiastic, paying prospects is... (drum roll) …

Amazing sales copy.

Now, that's is absolutely true. I know from experience that the items I spent the most time writing sales copy for while thinking of the customer and not myself, are the items that sold the best. I have these amazing pedal car fire trucks on my site and people absolutely love them. They are my best sellers and I believe it has something to do with the fact that I focussed on what the customer was asking for instead of what I thought they might want.

So, do you want to read what Brad Callen had to say about Amazing Sales Copy? Here's his article:

How to Sell Ice to an Eskimo!

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Copywriting Techniques to Help You Sell!

I always enjoy Brad Callen's SEO Techniques and this week he shares an excellent bunch of copywriting techniques that I know you can benefit from. The one thing he mentions is to remember three words, "Salesmanship in print."

He goes into discussing the importance of those three words in creating copy for whatever it is you are advertising. I'm sure you're going to read all of this for yourself, but I'm just whetting your appetite here for more. Now, I am sure there are a great many books that teach about copywriting that you can pay for, but the gyst, the most important facts about copywriting are here for you to read for free.

Here's the link I received in my email, along with authorization to show it to you:

Copywriting Lesson

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Monex.com - The Silver Factor!

Silver has always been a popular precious metal and it's inexpensive to purchase, so there is always the opportunity even for those of you with a small budget to buy something for the special someone in your life. However, it may be that silver is not respected for it's value as much as gold or other precious metals are.

Well, did you know that silver is one of the better precious metal options you should look into when investing? I say that because of a web release I read written by Monex.com. Apparently, "world demand for silver now exceeds annual production, and has every year since 1990. Above ground stockpiles of silver bullion are low, shrinking rapidly and approaching zero."

How's that for value!

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Paint.net - A Great Program for Banners!

A few posts back I spoke about Paint.net and explained how wonderful it is for creating banners and cleaning up pictures. Well, after working with it a few times now, it has become a favorite freebie of mine! I can't tell you how much it has helped with creating banners on my website. The feature I enjoy the most is that after layering your pictures one by one, you are able to fuse them together so that the banner becomes one picture.

There is definitely a learning curve to this awesome tool and I've seen the same features and more on other picture programs, but this is still a free tool that you can use. Don't become frustrated if you don't figure it all out the first time. It's not as hard as it looks. Just set your canvas size, then start importing files using the "Layers" drop down menu.

Have fun!

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Have You Tried Hoodia?

I have been floating around mom forums for the past year or so and have heard so much about this Hoodia product designed to help persons who wish to lose weight. I know this isn't really on topic, but since I'm trying to lose weight, I thought I'd throw the questions out there.

Who of you who has tried Hoodia really thinks it's worth it to invest time, money, emotion and energy into? Can I really lose the weight they promise I'll lose. I need to lose about 30 pounds. How fast is the weight going to come off? Will it make me jumpy? Does it affect my heart? What are the side effects? Now there are these Curb Your Cravings Hoodia Patches. It's becoming as big as the South Beach Diet- Maybe Bigger!

Anyway, from a skeptical consumers standpoint, these are just a few of the many questions I have about putting something in my system that will help me to lose weight.

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Search Marketing - Are You Targeting Your Market?

So you start an internet business. What next? Do you just hope everyone out there, the millions or billions of people online in this modern age, find your tiny little site? Well, if you do, you are in for a mighty big surprise. Someone once said to me something like, imagine you have never visited New York, ever. One day you decide to fly there. You step off the plain and Bam! You're in New York. You don't know anyone and noone even knows or cares that you have stepped off the plain. What do you do?

Do you go to your corner Starbucks, order a coffee and introduce yourself to all the other clientele? When do you start taking down names and phone numbers - right away? You are going to be your own advocate online if you want a successful internet business. You have to get the search engines to notice you and to do that, you have to know who to market your stuff too. What are you selling? Who are you wanting to buy what you sell? Where are they hanging out online? How can you make contact with them?

I had to learn this the hard way, but eventually I came to understand that you just can't market to everyone. You have to choose. This is what USWeb addresses. Their latest web release pointed out how research confirms "that 70-80% of prospective web customers use search engines or search directories to find relevant content, search engine marketing is the most widely used method of attracting visitors to a website."

After learning this statistic, don't you think that search engine marketing deserves your attention?

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Keeping In Touch with PPP!

For all of you "Posties" out there as those who post ads on their blogs for PayPerPost are called, make sure you keep up to date with all the happenings at PayPerPost by visiting the PayPerPost blog! I'm a frequent visitor and feel like one of the family.

Of course, you can participate by commenting and you can view the latest crazy YouTube videos as well as get more serious information. For example, there was a recent planned server change that was going to take place, I believe this last weekend (don't quote me, but I remember reading something like that.) Anyway, if you were in the dark about the change and couldn't get onto PayPerPost's site, that was why. In fact, the blog post came out with plenty of notice, but not too much that Posties would forget.

So bottom line, make sure you keep in touch by visiting the PPP blog.

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Changing Established Habits - How Easy is it?

I subscribe to James Brausch's blog since one day I found a very inspiring post there. I've noticed he makes it his business to find out what those who make their money using the internet need, and then he strives to supply it. I have yet to subscribe to any of his services or offerings, but I do enjoy the posts he writes to inspire.

His latest post reminds me about my future goals, long term and short term, and how important it is to think about how to attain them. Considering the year is swiftly coming to an end, what are your goals for the new year? Could it be the ever hard to accomplish loss of weight? Are you going to focus more on how to market your business so you are more successful?

Have you established habits that are hard to break, but that you wish to break in order to get a better hold of success? This is the focus that Mr. Brausch takes in his latest blog about Changing Habits to Change Results. As they say in the Search Engine Optimization and marketing world, good content gets results, back links, etc. and I don't mind supplying this one way link to his blog post.

I don't want you to miss this post as it truly helps to put your focus on what you wish to do to change your established habits, habits that might not be working for you and your internet business.

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Promoting Your Business Offline.

With all the online promoting I have been trying to do, it is easy to see that my time has been so consumed that offline promotion is suffering. What do you plan to do in the coming year to promote your internet business offline?

I'll tell you what I'd like to do. One of the things I have done this year is send business cards in the envelopes for the junk mail advertising I have received. Instead of sending in an application, I just send a business card in the prepaid envelope. I don't know if this is a little unethical, but my reasoning is that they solicited to me, so why not solicit to them.

I can't say what the response has been from that type of offline advertising, but I have been getting an increase in sales month to month and, of course, my motto lately has been, conversion conversion conversion! So, does that method of adverstising work? It could be the reason my site has been noticed.

I haven't done this yet, but I also have plans in place to get a business promotional product or two with my website address and logo preprinted onto them. Then it's just a matter of handing them out at venues where the people that I believe would enjoy the products I'm selling are located. I can't wait to do this. I've received so many advertisements in the mail from companies that want you to patronize them by buying your promotional marketing products through them. I have even noticed an increase in advertisements for companies that provide really neat corporate gifts. The rates are pretty competitive for pens, hats, notepads and the like. It's really a great idea. I know I've called a few companies for services just because of an ad or flyer I received in the mail.

Anyway, these are just two of my ideas. What do you have in mind? Remember, planning for the coming years successes should already be in the works, so hop to it! :-)

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Build Traffic Naturally!

That's the gyst of what James Brausch seemed to be encouraging in his latest blog entry, "Traffic Lies." And to tell you the truth, I find this to be so true. The more time I spend on link exchanging and the pursuit of back links, the less time I have to spend on article writing and creating good content.

It's really the good content that gets you quality back links and natural traffic. In fact, this is the way search engines prefer back links. On top of that, successful internet businesses focus more on improving Conversion percentages, isn't that true.

Take a look at why Mr. Brausch wants you to be cautious about junk traffic sites and junk link sites. At the end, the article sort of leaves one hanging, but the point is well made - Build Traffic Naturally!

Traffic Lies

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Blogitive Update - Unfortunate Changes!

For bloggers who sign up to "get paid to blog" sites like Blogitive, it is becoming more and more apparent that advertisers requirements are become more streamlined. They want quality advertising and quality blogs to have their ads posted on. This is obvious with the latest changes that Blogitive has seemingly been forced to make in order to stay afloat and a respected "get paid to blog" company.

Here is some of Blogitive's thoughts on this and the subsequent changes they are planning to make:

The goal for Blogitive is to create a market place for all bloggers to make money. Unfortunately some companies disagree with that vision, and have a limited ability to block it, at least for their users.

Starting on Dec. 4th, we will no longer be able to accept or provide offers to blog hosted on services like writingup.com and blogparty.com. There is a short list of these types of sites that allow you to post content on their site, and then add your AdSense account info to earn money trough clicks. I will not name the companies, but we have gotten at least two companies like these that object to Blogitive being used on their network and have pulled down pages, as well as closed accounts. We are going through our network one-by-one, if you use one of the networks we are discontinuing, we will let you know through email.

If you would like to read more about this, click here.

I'd love to hear from you. Comment Below or Email Me Using the Sidebar Link. Thank You. :-)

Email Marketing and Your Business!

Email marketing is new to me and it's something I am looking forward to pursuing in the coming year. I believe 2007 holds some big things for our company and our website. Anyway, back to email marketing, I was wondering what are some things that you could suggest to a novice that might help me avoid the pitfalls of spam emailing and other negative types of email marketing.

Is email marketing similar to direct marketing? I have some research to do in this regard, obviously, but as I said I know this is one of the ways to increase conversion ratios. In business, that's really the bottom line, isn't it - Conversions?

So many websites focus on Page Rank and Google to measure their online status, but I might be off the mark a little, however, I truly believe Conversion is the number one indicator of a successful or nonsuccessful business.

So what are your plans for the coming year? What are you planning to do to increase your conversion ratios? And, by the way, if you are looking at direct marketing as a means for increasing your business success, RedClayMedia.com may be able to help you out. They describe themselves this way, "Red Clay Media is a new jersey based direct marketing company focusing on mortgage leads consumer lists mailing lists and business lists." So, if this is something you might want to pursue, take a gander at it.

My email address is in the sidebar. I look forward to hearing from you. I'd like to include your answers in this post, so please respond.

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