With that said, however, the park is GROSSLY neglected by the town.

A Little Maintenance Goes A Long Way

1. Playground Access Afterhours
We dont go to the park every day. Not even every week. But the past 2 times we were there – today and before Christmas, in December, we found evidence that the park had been used afterhours by the wrong type of kids.

In December, I saw a used condom. Seriously, a used freaking condom.

I’m a huge fan of outdoor “fun”. I have to admit it. But the park, seriously?

It’d have been great to shove that incident off as a unique occurrence. Today, however, the park had huge Graffiti marks in multiple toys. And not even the cool, artisy, Banksy style graffiti. The ugly, gang-like, poorly drawn ones. See below:

Simple solution - a tall, solid, sturdy fence around the playground. Institute decent hours. While ill-intended folks could very well jump over the fence and have sex or graffiti, it’d take a lot more effort and draw that much more attention. Plus, it’d help with problem #2, which I talk about below.

2. Duck Feces
There are a bazillion ducks around the park, and while they’re very entertaining, they go about their “needs” EVERYWHERE. Seriously, everywhere. I’m not trying to potty train these ducks, but they completely ruin not just the green areas but large parts of the pathways and even the playground field.

Simple solution - a short, simple fence throughout the pathways would prevent the animals from going #2 there. Additionally, better enforcement in the “DONT FEED THE ANIMALS” rule can keep people from making a family activity out of feeding these ducks.

Not In The Budget?

Allow local community associations to pitch in. Allow businesses to contribute in exchange for subtle ad placements. It’s a fantastic asset to the neighborhood and it can draw much needed real estate attention to the area.

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Communicating Effectively Saves Time & Money

Mastering communication is the most profitable investments one can make when considering education. As Peter Drucker stated, in regards to the new information worker, the most valuable asset a worker brings to a company is the ability to clearly communicate with others that may not share his/her own ideas and ideals.

Picture this: you can hire a very talented designer in the U.S. for $40-55 per hour. She is almost as talented as the Indian designer that charges $10-15. But because of cultural differences and a lack of clearly stated goals, the Indian designer’s project outcome is miles apart from what you had envisioned.

If you’re able to describe terms and milestones extra clearly, and specify details with attention, even if it takes more of your time initially, you’d end up saving $30 per hour.

As the projects become more expensive, and the number of pieces involved increase, those $30 per hour quickly become $130, $300, or even $1000 per hour. If you’re able to describe exactly what you want and exactly what each piece involved needs to do, you save incredible amounts of time and money by avoiding back-and-forth corrections and revisions.

The same applies to every aspect of your life – imagine if your wife complains that you’re working too late one day; you reply, in an angry tone, that you’re working late to pay for her day at the Spa. Now, you’re both clearly upset and guess what – both wrong. As a good communicator, you need to be able to understand the message behind the message – she really wants your company/she is really tired/she is jealous – and knowing so makes your answer  more suitable – “I totally understand honey – I’ll make it up to you tomorrow”.

Communication is the means to any end.

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Or what exactly people type on a search query to find your site?

Specific data like that make all the difference when it comes to marketing your business online.

Google analytics has been around for a while – it’s 100% free, all you have to do is install it on every page of your site.

“it” is a javascript code of about 7 lines that change nothing on your site – it only allows Google to track each visitor while on your site.

It’s specifically beneficial to PPC advertisers to know what keywords are really converting – or for SEO campaigns to track where the highest traffic referrals come from.

It’s also one of the only ways to measure social media impact – Analytics gives you complete data on visitors that arrived on your site from Digg, Facebook, or Twitter so you can track your social media roi.

Market & Convert is installing Analytics for free

My web solutions agency is performing free analytics installation during the Holidays – to help business owners with their websites.

We create an analytics account for you, insert those 7 lines of code to every page on your site, and BAM!

The next day you can already visit your account to see traffic data.

All we need is your ftp info!

Visit our analytics installation page now -

the promotion is only valid until 12/20!

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We both sit and eat our cereals while watching this – he’s only 18 months, but he really calms down as he watches it, and he just loves the baby that shows up at the end.

It’s a short video, that comes from the movie The Secret, and has everything to do with the Law Of Attraction – basically, creating a good environment to start the day right.

Hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

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WOW – What a wonderful Thanksgiving day!

It was the very first time we took baby Leo to a restaurant for such a long time (1 1/2 hours) – but as you can see on the video, our boy did not mind at all. In fact, he only complained when we had to take his plate away from him to go replenish it a the buffet.

Seriously, he ate more than my wife did

And come on – could she be more cute? Did you see how shy she was at the camera? I got her by surprise, I admit, but she’s just too cute.

By the time we left, the entire staff at the Red Sky Cafe was in love with little Leo – which made it easier to justify the mess he had made

But all in all, this was an amazing experience – HUGE thanks to Chef Wes Stepp, who invited us to his wonderful restaurant.

You can watch as Wes introduces his entire Thanksgiving menu on video here.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYBODY!

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Go Cheap, Go Chinese!?

At first, I thought I should look to China and get the cheapest labor I could find and that they’d still be really good.

NAHHHH! It blew on my face – huge communication barriers, mostly my fault, put a stampede on my project as I was unable to pass my vision to them in a manner that they’d get the concept.

Plus, the 12 hour time difference doesnt help at all – I had to stay awake to make the meetings and that would really screw my day.

Then I realized there’s a reason they’re so cheap – the technical part came out decent (they really know their stuff), but the part that required finesse, failed miserably. Again, my responsibility to make sure they got it.

Outsource Much?

Here’s another issue I had to face head first since the beginning (and that still confuses me sometimes):

1. Should I outsource even though I dont really have the margin to cover the outsourcing cost, just to free my time in order to focus on big picture? Or..

2. Should I keep my margins high by doing most of the work myself and saving outsource hours for bigger projects?

The thing with option TWO is this: how would I close bigger projects if I’m stuck doing small work?

So what’s the solution?

Outsource as much as you can – but KNOW what to do with your time.

Dont hover over the outsourcing people when you should be focusing on more important things. In other words, letting them do the minor things means NOT thinking about the minor things – so give’em instructions, strict checkpoint deadlines, and move on.

Last tip: sometimes softwares can be the best outsourcers – for example:

ViralUrl email marketing allows you to save time and money when building a list of subscribers. The Synnd software is a social media marketing robot – that can save HOURS of work. And the right plugin can save you tons of SEO time – try Jeff Johnson’s free traffic plugin to start.

BIG ONE – if you know any good outsource/freelance agents – PLEASE post their contact info on the comments. I’m always looking for new people to work with.

Thanks!

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Market & Convert offers small business customized web marketing solutions

So I’ve been working with small and medium businesses across the U.S creating solutions for their online marketing. Ironically enough, my own company’s website is not ready yet – but it should give you an idea of what we’re all about.

I’m writing this post for two reasons – I want your opinion on the content of the site: does it explain its purpose? What information is missing? Would you like to see prices?

Secondly, I’m officially inviting the selective readers of this blog to become affiliates for my company. With this offer, I blatantly invite you to advertise my company and I’ll pay you well for it.

1. What’s missing on the site?

Yeah, I know it’s not finished – heck, I’ve got all designers tied up with clients and I dont have a lot of time to get it finished myself. But on the parts that are already up, what is your impression of it?

I plan on adding free ppc tutorials there, and expand the navigation to a total of 25-30 pages.

But what would you expect to see when you arrived at the site? What would a business owner need to see in order to understand what we do?

2. Let me pay you for referrals

In case you’re wondering, the average contract for our services starts at $1000 – you’d get 30% of it.

One prospect that becomes our client for PPC and Social Media, for example, is set to pay $2000. How would you like a $600 commission?

Here’s the deal – post your feedback on the page here on the comments. I really appreciate it.

For those interested in becoming a partner, go to http://www.MarketAndConvert.com and fill the form to get the coupon. Our sales manager will contact you and get everything rolling.

Thanks!

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Having An Active Email List Makes Things Easier (not to beat them up)

“The Money Is In The List”

Yeah, yeah… but how do you get a list?

Well, first of all, you dont “get” a list – I’ve tried, and it DOES NOT work.

If you buy a list, and decide to start emailing them offers, you will get a bunch of spam complaints and your account will be shut off.

So we BUILD a list – which is also not easy at all. Well, kinda…

If you’re running PPC, you should ALWAYS direct traffic to a squeeze page. That’s a given. If you’re using the viralurl software, the same concept applies.

“But I think direct-linking is much easier” – EHHHHHHHHH WRONG!

With direct linking, you get much more people to see the offer, but they’re not ready for it yet – except for your ad, they really have no idea what to expect. And those that do buy your stuff, wont leave their info so you can email them later to buy more stuff.

So always have a squeeze page somewhere. It doesnt have to be a plain old page like Eben Pagan originally came up with, but it could be a blog, or even a squidoo – as long as you can capture their data.

Here’s where it gets tricky. Even though you have tons of email fields everywhere, people are just not signing up!

Warm Them Up

Again, if people are not driven to take action, they wont. If you expect it to happen just because, it wont.

Not only that, but email has been so beat up that people go extra lengths to protect it, which forces you to be EXTRA good.

Solution? OFFER YOUR BEST! Yes, give them so much info, or such a good bonus, that they just have to sign up.

It’s that simple.

I may be talking out of my arse, one would say… but this guy is definitely not.

He built a 200,000 emails list and continuously make $300-400k out of it.

Forget what I said and go see what he’s saying.

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ViralUrl email marketing is more than a lottery

Yesterday, I posted about how to get your ViralUrl email open, so today, I’m going to talk a little about how effective their email marketing software is and what you can to do explore it.

So when you have a ViralUrl gold account, you’re allowed to email 3000 other members randomly, every 3 days.

As I mentioned before, because of neon-marketers and the volume of emails sent daily, a lot of internet providers will bounce your messages before they even show up in their inbox.

So out of 3000 you may get 900-1200 emails delivered. It’s still a decent number.

What I’ve experienced since February, when I got my account, is that around 80-120 people actually open a ViralUrl email. Out of those, around 30-60 will click on your link – depending on how good your copy is and how reliable your link looks like.

It’s beyond this post to explain good copywriting, but you know how valuable it its. What I want to talk about is making your links look reliable. I’m going to show you how to transform your weird affiliate links like this one:

http://www.productlaunchformula.com/plmjd.php?1715

into something much more sexy like this one:

http://www.marketandconvert.com/socialpilot

1. Log Into your Cpanel

2. Click on Redirects

3. Choose PERMANENT 301

5. Choose any domain (that does not have WordPress installed)

6. Pick an extension (/something – relevant to the product)

7. Add your affiliate link to the box that says “redirects to”

And that’s it!

The best part about it is that if you have a domain that is closely related to the product, the link looks way more professional and clickthrough averages go really high.

If you want to try it out, go sign up for a ViralUrl account now.

Any questions or concerns, post your comments here and I’ll get to them asap.

See ya soon!

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ViralUrl is the best lazy money maker

Whenever I dont feel like writing a blog post, or I dont want to start a brand new PPC campaign, I turn to ViralUrl. I see it as the “lazy money maker”, and I’ll explain you why:

If you’ve been online for more than a month, you know how your inbox seems to get flooded with offers; that’s because email marketing is the cheapest and easiest way to make money online.

And ViralUrl gives you 3000 people to email every 3 days, for an entire year, for $197 bucks. I’ve written about using ViralUrl as a list builder, but today I am going to focus on making the most out of each and every send.

1. Understand who’s the typical ViralUrl user

Of course, knowing your audience is a big part of any marketing action, but who’s using ViralUrl, and why?

First, know that they have well over 50 THOUSAND people using it – so let’s figure out who they are.

The service is not popular at all outside of the Internet Marketing arena. So we safely assume users are internet marketers – which rules out the option of using ViralUrl to promote health and fitness offers. STOP DOING IT!

Most internet marketers have already had or heard of a bad experience with Network Marketing – so don’t send them the latest 2-in-1 matrix or Robert Kyosaky cd… or (my personal favor) Donald Trump offers… You’re wasting your time.

So what do these people want? They want what you and I want: SELL STUFF.

Shocking, huh?

If they want to sell stuff, and you want to sell stuff, what do you do? Help them do it.

2. What To Offer ViralUrl Users

Send them to a cool post you wrote about email marketing, ppc, seo, whatever. Give them something that will be useful in their business.

SIDE NOTE: Usually, the biggest, most hyped product launch offers will work only if you’re able to send your ViralUrl email before all the gurus start emailing their lists. As you know, most gurus share common leads within their lists, and those leads are also on ViralUrl. So use your judgment.

3. How to get your email open

ViralUrl users receive an average of 69 emails daily. On top of that, most email providers will mark your message as spam, and even some users will mark it as spam (talk about bad karma).

So, out of the initial 3000, you may actually deliver 900 – 1200. That’s still pretty darn good.

Your biggest weapon in getting past other messages is being true, honest, and super cool.

How?

Well, for starters, stay clear of headline such as (real examples)

[Fname] – Your invitations to BLASTOFF – it’s FREE, it’s FUN & it’s a COOL WAY TO GET PAID!!

or

“THE BAR” is where it’s at..100% free,free,free!

For some reason, people think that being flashy will get their message across. I call those people NEON-Marketers™.

Use headlines that are clear, have no hype, and preferably some humor. Like this one:

Even A Caveman Can Make This Work

(I did open this email, only to see another MLM opportunity – what a shame)

4. How To Be Human

In the ViralUrl system mailer page, you have the option to email as the generic “members@viralurl.com” or using the same email as you login into the system.

ALWAYS USE YOUR OWN EMAIL! Here’s why:

Most ViralUrl users see the service as spam (again, bad karma) so they filter the messages to their junk folder. Also, some internet providers will block the message before it hits their inbox because they have that address blacklisted.

So use your own email, and when people reply to your message, reply back!

Finally, you can always make more money if people know you’re real.

So be a human – you may need some training, but I’m sure you’ll get it. Eventually.

Go sign up for ViralUrl NOW

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