No doubt you have heard about the biggest fiasco in stores this summer. What!, you have not heard about CHRISTMAS IN JULY!! Come on now, that has got to be the biggest bogus reason for a sale that I have ever heard.
On one TV news show, a reporter asked a little kid in a store "who is that".....while pointing to a drawing of Santa in swim trunks on the beach. The child hesitated for a moment and replied, "summer Santa?"
Let's face it, Santa is being perpetuated by big business to bring in money. All Santa means now is giving and getting, which both, in the eyes of retail, mean buying.
All I am doing is shaking my head in shame for businesses that have to stoop so low to get people to buy junk. I am walking away from that fiasco and I hope many other do too.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
SupaSwap - review
In their own words they state that they are like eBay but you can swap children's items with other people. You can also place bids and buy and sell. Of course SupaSwap wants their cut of the action at a whopping 10%!!!
Now don't get me wrong, they have a good idea going except most people will go to freecycle (one of the biggest swapping sites online) or craigslist for swapping. If they want to straight out sell then eBay is the way to go.
Another big turn off was this statement on their FAQ page:
Q: The item I bought was not 'as described'?
A: You must communicate with the seller if there are any problems with the transaction. SupaSwap are not responsible for any disputes between a buyer and a seller. Remember there is a feedback section that is designed to ensure honest and accurate trades take place between our members. However, if you report a problem then at our discretion we can investigate the matter and we reserve the right to remove a members access to SupaSwap.
At least on eBay you can get your money back or have some recourse, on SupaSwap there is almost nothing.
I am going to have to give SupaSwap a BIG thumbs down for now.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
How to monitize your blog for best income results
I bet you have tried everything to get just a few pennies from a blog you have put your heart and soul into. So what are you doing wrong? The most common mistake that I personally see is ads plastered all over the place and the worst offenders are those flashing red banners. Blogs that have that going on will see a high bounce rate in there readers. What they are doing is assaulting the senses.
Here is what you should be doing. Say for example you have a health foods blog. First you need to find an affiliate program that has lots of companies that have products or services that a reader to a health foods blog might be interested in. One of the best ways is to go to the main companies' website and look around to see if they have an affiliate program. If they have a product that they either make or distribute then they might have an affiliate program too. Join it and then start to promote that product.
The best way to promote a product or service is through your own personal review of the product or service and I mean a genuine review. Your readers want to hear what YOU thought or experienced with the product. For example, on that health foods blog, you could write a post about "diets for quick weight loss." In that post you could mention some of the products you have used including the one you are promoting.You want to be able to put several text links to that product in your review as well as a banner in the article itself (not at the beginning or at the end). People will only click on those links should your article be, #1 well written and #2 believable. Fail on either of those points and you won't get any clicks.
Lastly I want to point out that you must pick a product or company with a good landing page. You can sell your heart out all you want and send customers to those products all day long but if the page you sent them to is terrible then you have lost a sale. You have to pick and choose where you want to send your readers to and that page had better be the place they can buy the product right away.
Here is what you should be doing. Say for example you have a health foods blog. First you need to find an affiliate program that has lots of companies that have products or services that a reader to a health foods blog might be interested in. One of the best ways is to go to the main companies' website and look around to see if they have an affiliate program. If they have a product that they either make or distribute then they might have an affiliate program too. Join it and then start to promote that product.
The best way to promote a product or service is through your own personal review of the product or service and I mean a genuine review. Your readers want to hear what YOU thought or experienced with the product. For example, on that health foods blog, you could write a post about "diets for quick weight loss." In that post you could mention some of the products you have used including the one you are promoting.You want to be able to put several text links to that product in your review as well as a banner in the article itself (not at the beginning or at the end). People will only click on those links should your article be, #1 well written and #2 believable. Fail on either of those points and you won't get any clicks.
Lastly I want to point out that you must pick a product or company with a good landing page. You can sell your heart out all you want and send customers to those products all day long but if the page you sent them to is terrible then you have lost a sale. You have to pick and choose where you want to send your readers to and that page had better be the place they can buy the product right away.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Saving money on your own bills
One of the easiest ways to save money is to look at your own current bills ans see where you can reduce them. For example are you paying for duplicate insurance? Say you have an accidental death insurance policy that you pay for out of your own pocket but your employer offers one that is free to you. The same thing for term insurance, health insurance and other types of insurance.
Next look at that home protection plan, the one that covers items that break around the house. I had one for 2 years when we first moved and it cost $800 a year. I had one thing fixed, a leaky toilet and the hassle of finding someone that was under the protection plan was a PITA. It took 2 days of calling people since the plan did not have a provider list for me but said the people that they contracted with would be able to tell me if they were on the plan. After the repair was done and even approved by the repair person via phone to the protection plan, the plan refused to pay. Their reason was that I could have found someone closer to me!!!! After 3 months they finally paid up and then I dropped them. The repair cost $150 and the deductible for me was $35 so for that year I still paid $835 for a $150 repair. Was it worth it? NO
Another bill to look at is your electric bill. I saved $20 to $30 off of that every month. I switched to those florescent bulbs all over the house. I use to think that they did not give out enough light, until I realized that the light has to be left on for at least a minute for it to warm up. After that first minute the light was as bright (if not brighter) than the original incandescent bulb. Of course the incandescent bulb will be phased out in the near future all together.
Lastly you can bundle services for money off your bills. Internet, phone and TV service is the first one that comes to mind but there are others. Insurance can be bundled too. Having your home, auto and health insurance through the same company will often get you a discount off of your premiums. Banks will often offer great discounts on having your mortgage, CD's and loans all tied into one checking account.
Look over your bills, you can reduce them.
Next look at that home protection plan, the one that covers items that break around the house. I had one for 2 years when we first moved and it cost $800 a year. I had one thing fixed, a leaky toilet and the hassle of finding someone that was under the protection plan was a PITA. It took 2 days of calling people since the plan did not have a provider list for me but said the people that they contracted with would be able to tell me if they were on the plan. After the repair was done and even approved by the repair person via phone to the protection plan, the plan refused to pay. Their reason was that I could have found someone closer to me!!!! After 3 months they finally paid up and then I dropped them. The repair cost $150 and the deductible for me was $35 so for that year I still paid $835 for a $150 repair. Was it worth it? NO
Another bill to look at is your electric bill. I saved $20 to $30 off of that every month. I switched to those florescent bulbs all over the house. I use to think that they did not give out enough light, until I realized that the light has to be left on for at least a minute for it to warm up. After that first minute the light was as bright (if not brighter) than the original incandescent bulb. Of course the incandescent bulb will be phased out in the near future all together.
Lastly you can bundle services for money off your bills. Internet, phone and TV service is the first one that comes to mind but there are others. Insurance can be bundled too. Having your home, auto and health insurance through the same company will often get you a discount off of your premiums. Banks will often offer great discounts on having your mortgage, CD's and loans all tied into one checking account.
Look over your bills, you can reduce them.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Don't get mad, just write a nasty blog post about it
Do you realize that as bloggers we can change the world? Instead of getting mad and pissed off and ranting and raving to our family and friends, we can and do tell the whole world about it.
So what ticked me off to start this blog post? This time is was our friends, and when I say "friends" I mean distant, very distant business partners at IZEA. They went and introduced SocialSpark 2.0, an updated version of their current SocialSpark blogging advertising platform. Last month when they said they would be using Google Analytics and dumping their own "real rank" bit of garbage, I was thrilled. That was until yesterday they released the NEW platform. They decided in their infinite wisdom to require them to automatically publish paid blog posts to your blog and that they would need your password and user name to get in. I said woe, no way. I have 10 blogs on my blogger account and only one of them is in their system. They all have the same password and user name. There is no way I am handing over my keys to MY blogs to some company that I have earned $25 in the last 3 months.
I also found out that IZEA has been getting some backlash from other bloggers in their system, a BIG backlash in fact. On their own blog post announcing the release of SS 2.0 there are currently over 25 angry bloggers posting comments to the post. Because of the backlash on that blog post, Ted, the owner of IZEA thought he had better clarify things on his next blog post explaining why they want to have access to your blog. He tries to rally the troops but he is failing fast.
I have been also monitoring Twitter for gossip on SocialSpark and there too have been some rumblings. Since it is still early in the battle of SocialSpark versus the bloggers, I can see that the low end bloggers don't care since they earn a $5 here and there and maintain their blogs solely for SS (those are the crap blogs that have lot's of links pointing to them, poor grammar and ads plastered all over the place and only 3 visitors a day). It is the high end bloggers that are fighting it or plan on leaving. Gee, that will make the advertisers happy. They will have access to 1000's of crap blogs instead of well known cream of the crop blogs.
Let's sit back and watch to see what will happen in the next 24-48 hours. Wow, I am not pissed off anymore, see what writing can do for a person......it calms them down.
So what ticked me off to start this blog post? This time is was our friends, and when I say "friends" I mean distant, very distant business partners at IZEA. They went and introduced SocialSpark 2.0, an updated version of their current SocialSpark blogging advertising platform. Last month when they said they would be using Google Analytics and dumping their own "real rank" bit of garbage, I was thrilled. That was until yesterday they released the NEW platform. They decided in their infinite wisdom to require them to automatically publish paid blog posts to your blog and that they would need your password and user name to get in. I said woe, no way. I have 10 blogs on my blogger account and only one of them is in their system. They all have the same password and user name. There is no way I am handing over my keys to MY blogs to some company that I have earned $25 in the last 3 months.
I also found out that IZEA has been getting some backlash from other bloggers in their system, a BIG backlash in fact. On their own blog post announcing the release of SS 2.0 there are currently over 25 angry bloggers posting comments to the post. Because of the backlash on that blog post, Ted, the owner of IZEA thought he had better clarify things on his next blog post explaining why they want to have access to your blog. He tries to rally the troops but he is failing fast.
I have been also monitoring Twitter for gossip on SocialSpark and there too have been some rumblings. Since it is still early in the battle of SocialSpark versus the bloggers, I can see that the low end bloggers don't care since they earn a $5 here and there and maintain their blogs solely for SS (those are the crap blogs that have lot's of links pointing to them, poor grammar and ads plastered all over the place and only 3 visitors a day). It is the high end bloggers that are fighting it or plan on leaving. Gee, that will make the advertisers happy. They will have access to 1000's of crap blogs instead of well known cream of the crop blogs.
Let's sit back and watch to see what will happen in the next 24-48 hours. Wow, I am not pissed off anymore, see what writing can do for a person......it calms them down.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
My biggest complaints about health insurance companies
As a woman I think that health insurance companies discriminate against us, or at least they don't give a damn. Take for example 15-20 years ago, most insurance companies did not cover birth control pills but they did cover abortions. When I was pregnant, my doctor prescribed me prenatal vitamins and when I got to the pharmacy, I was told they were not covered. I seemed to me that the insurance company was not interested in preventing a sickness or condition as much as it was treating the condition after the fact.
If more health insurance companies would cover routine check-ups, vaccines and cancer screenings (many of them still don't) they could not only save themselves money but maybe, just maybe more of us could afford health insurance if the costs were lowered by less people getting sick.
Unfortunately the health insurance business is not set up that way. They are not a non-profit business but a FOR profit business. That means any savings they could get by offering preventative care, they would pocket it and not lower premiums.
I am still waiting to see how this Obama health insurance thing plays out. Since it passed several months ago, I have not heard anymore about it. It seems to have been swept under the rug somewhere.
If more health insurance companies would cover routine check-ups, vaccines and cancer screenings (many of them still don't) they could not only save themselves money but maybe, just maybe more of us could afford health insurance if the costs were lowered by less people getting sick.
Unfortunately the health insurance business is not set up that way. They are not a non-profit business but a FOR profit business. That means any savings they could get by offering preventative care, they would pocket it and not lower premiums.
I am still waiting to see how this Obama health insurance thing plays out. Since it passed several months ago, I have not heard anymore about it. It seems to have been swept under the rug somewhere.
Just a few ideas on how to make more money with your blogs
I was over on You Tube a few days ago and watched almost 50 short videos on internet marketing. Most were by people that didn't have a clue to what they were doing and they just re-hashed the old visit other blogs and make comments and of course have a Twitter account and a Facebook page (remember when it was a MySpace page?). Then I stumbled upon a great guy that was actually the head of a big company and he was teaching SEO tactics to affiliates. Although he was showing how to market a product, some of the same concepts could be applied to marketing a blog.
He was saying not to bother as much with the making comments on other blogs or even using Facebook, he was saying that you should let Google do the work for you. The number one thing he was emphasizing was to write unique and well written content. Do not duplicate any content since Google will notice it and put your little article in never-never land. If you start to write unique in-depth articles of more than 1000 words then Google will start to take notice of them and put you up higher in the search engines. But your content MUST stay in line with the rest of your blog subject matter in order for this to work. Say for example you have a blog about skin care. An in-depth article about adult acne causes would fit right in, but one about muscle cars would not and Google would penalize your blog for doing that, because it does not contain relevant content. Don't forget that in your in-depth articles you can place your affiliate links and suggestions for where to purchase items that you have mentioned.
So I tried that method on one of my blogs. First I Googled the title of my blog post to see how many other results I would be up against. There were only 3 pages and most of them were not really relevant. So I wrote my article and it took several hours to put it together and another 2 hours to get my affiliate links placed just right. After the post went live, I pinged it with ping-o-matic and then Tweeted it. About an hour later I typed in the same search terms I used before and there was my article on Google search, 3rd from the top!!! It had been indexed already. Now I just have to sit back and let that article make money for me.
Now if I do, say 2 in-depth articles a week for each of my 5 active blogs then it should take only a month till I start seeing a dramatic increase in traffic to my blogs and I have let Google bring that traffic to me.
By the way the article was about manipulating graphics between software programs. I just thought you might want to know.
He was saying not to bother as much with the making comments on other blogs or even using Facebook, he was saying that you should let Google do the work for you. The number one thing he was emphasizing was to write unique and well written content. Do not duplicate any content since Google will notice it and put your little article in never-never land. If you start to write unique in-depth articles of more than 1000 words then Google will start to take notice of them and put you up higher in the search engines. But your content MUST stay in line with the rest of your blog subject matter in order for this to work. Say for example you have a blog about skin care. An in-depth article about adult acne causes would fit right in, but one about muscle cars would not and Google would penalize your blog for doing that, because it does not contain relevant content. Don't forget that in your in-depth articles you can place your affiliate links and suggestions for where to purchase items that you have mentioned.
So I tried that method on one of my blogs. First I Googled the title of my blog post to see how many other results I would be up against. There were only 3 pages and most of them were not really relevant. So I wrote my article and it took several hours to put it together and another 2 hours to get my affiliate links placed just right. After the post went live, I pinged it with ping-o-matic and then Tweeted it. About an hour later I typed in the same search terms I used before and there was my article on Google search, 3rd from the top!!! It had been indexed already. Now I just have to sit back and let that article make money for me.
Now if I do, say 2 in-depth articles a week for each of my 5 active blogs then it should take only a month till I start seeing a dramatic increase in traffic to my blogs and I have let Google bring that traffic to me.
By the way the article was about manipulating graphics between software programs. I just thought you might want to know.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Affiliate marketing and why I am going to try it out
Affiliate marketing has always intrigued me. Years ago I thought you just put a bunch of affiliate banners on a website and that was it to affiliate marketing, but I was wrong, so wrong. A good marketer has to convince the reader to want to buy what ever they are writing about. How can people just write a good article and get people to click through a link and buy something? That was the part that intrigued me. The successful ones were not the scam artists but just damn good writers. So I have decided to try my hand at it.
I will write about what I am passionate about and leave the diet supplements and cell phone article writing off of my list. I also spent most of yesterday watching several CEO's of SEO companies give seminars on YouTube about affiliate advertising and my eyes were opened way up. They gave some very insightful guidance on how to go about affiliate advertising without being a jerk or scammer and become known as an expert in your field. That was exactly what I had been looking for.
I will write about what I am passionate about and leave the diet supplements and cell phone article writing off of my list. I also spent most of yesterday watching several CEO's of SEO companies give seminars on YouTube about affiliate advertising and my eyes were opened way up. They gave some very insightful guidance on how to go about affiliate advertising without being a jerk or scammer and become known as an expert in your field. That was exactly what I had been looking for.
Can you still earn big money from doing paid blogging, yes you can
For those of you who are still sitting on the fence and don't know if there is any money to be made in paid blogging I have a picture to show you:
It is a screen shot I took this morning of the open opportunities at SS(IZEA). I would like to point out that I am not qualified for any of them because they are aimed at mommy bloggers with blogs about babies and home life and food bloggers with blogs about food, none of which I write about.
Just last week there were several blog opportunities in the $500 range for bloggers who have 30,000 unique visitors a month that wrote about travel or vacations.
So if you think that paid blogging is dead, you are dead........dead wrong.
It is a screen shot I took this morning of the open opportunities at SS(IZEA). I would like to point out that I am not qualified for any of them because they are aimed at mommy bloggers with blogs about babies and home life and food bloggers with blogs about food, none of which I write about.
Just last week there were several blog opportunities in the $500 range for bloggers who have 30,000 unique visitors a month that wrote about travel or vacations.
So if you think that paid blogging is dead, you are dead........dead wrong.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Oregon is now ranked 3rd in the nation as the worst hit state in the recession
What shot Oregon to almost the head of the class is the fast rising foreclosure rate. The number of homes that went into foreclosure in the last 3 months, in Oregon, jumped a whooping 20% over the prior period. Analysts are putting the blame on the fact that Oregon was one of the last to feel the recession, I say BS! It is more of a case of a high unemployment rate that got its start way before we officially got it declared a recession.
Oregon's unemployment rate is currently just over 12% and I know of 3 people that have been unemployed for nearly 2 years in Oregon. The stress that they undergo just to look for work almost acts like natural weight loss supplements, since they don't feel like eating when they worry. Fortunately for 2 of them, their homes are paid for and they have no mortgage but the other one is sick with being stressed out.
HP used to be one of the largest employers in Oregon with their campus that is located in Corvallis. At one time they use to employ over 9,000 workers in Oregon, if not more. Their Corvallis location, just 5 years ago had 5,000 to 6,000 people working there. Now they barely have 1,000 or less at the location. It was the printer ink cartridge division of HP. Was the dwindling worker numbers due to a recession? Heck no, they started shipping out jobs overseas. First it was to locate the manufacturing to Singapore then the R&D moved to Ireland. I personally would like to see outsourcing of jobs to overseas put to an end, but how? I have an idea.
Everything that is imported into the USA has to go through customs. So why not put a HUGE import tax on items that are made overseas by USA based companies? That would not only hurt their bottom line but would encourage them to bring back those jobs. The federal government would also benefit with a huge tax income increase from imports. Come to think of it, why stop at USA based companies and just put a flat import surcharge on everything coming in, other countries do that to USA made items, so let's play the game they are playing.
Oregon's unemployment rate is currently just over 12% and I know of 3 people that have been unemployed for nearly 2 years in Oregon. The stress that they undergo just to look for work almost acts like natural weight loss supplements, since they don't feel like eating when they worry. Fortunately for 2 of them, their homes are paid for and they have no mortgage but the other one is sick with being stressed out.
HP used to be one of the largest employers in Oregon with their campus that is located in Corvallis. At one time they use to employ over 9,000 workers in Oregon, if not more. Their Corvallis location, just 5 years ago had 5,000 to 6,000 people working there. Now they barely have 1,000 or less at the location. It was the printer ink cartridge division of HP. Was the dwindling worker numbers due to a recession? Heck no, they started shipping out jobs overseas. First it was to locate the manufacturing to Singapore then the R&D moved to Ireland. I personally would like to see outsourcing of jobs to overseas put to an end, but how? I have an idea.
Everything that is imported into the USA has to go through customs. So why not put a HUGE import tax on items that are made overseas by USA based companies? That would not only hurt their bottom line but would encourage them to bring back those jobs. The federal government would also benefit with a huge tax income increase from imports. Come to think of it, why stop at USA based companies and just put a flat import surcharge on everything coming in, other countries do that to USA made items, so let's play the game they are playing.
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