It used to be that freedom of speech was for the people. And, it used to be that there were at least SOME strategies in place to keep special interest out, such as limiting the amount of money a contributor could give to a political candidate.
Well… things have changed as of yesterday. The Supreme Court reversed a 20 year ruling on how businesses can support candidates. As of yesterday, corporations now have full rights to ‘freedom of speech’, and they can spend as much as they want to, to support an issue or a candidate, as long as they do it out of their own funds, and not via a donation to the candidate.
What does this mean for you and I?
Big oil and gas, the drug companies, insurance companies, etc., will get what they need from lawmakers to do anything they want. They literally can run their own campaign to get their candidate in office, who will of course vote for their special interests.
The Republicans of course love this, as they are all about special interest. They will easily be able to win elections. Special interest will of course be putting big dollars towards their needed candidates in their own way. They’ll be flooding the airwaves, the internet, television, newspaper, etc with their message guised in a way that makes the masses follow.
Here in Denver, the GOP is already acting on yesterday’s ruling, and working to change Colorado laws to reflect the Supreme Court’s decision.
We can thank George Bush for his supreme court nominations.
Bye Bye Democracy.
A vanity number is simply a toll-free number that will spell out a word or words to make a phone number more memorable. For instance, we have all heard the phone number 1-800 FLOWERS and remembered it because it was using words rather than just numbers. Businesses can increase their profits by simply having 1-800 vanity numbers. This will allow their customers and potential clients to always remember their phone number so that there is no chance they’re going to call the competition by accident.
We’ve all heard of vanity license plates where someone puts a word or phrase on their car license plate. Vanity phone numbers are similar in that the business or person is trying to brand themselves using a particular word or phrase. Part of the reason to use vanity phone numbers is because it is a lot harder to remember a series of numbers that it would be to remember a word or phrase.
If you are looking for a service that can provide a 800 vanity number be sure to check out this service provider:
Vanity numbers are more expensive and harder to find because you have to spell out a particular word. If someone else already has the phone number, it can be hard to get it away from them. Therefore, if a business is considering getting one they need to think it through before proceeding with any marketing materials. Having the company’s name is a great idea although it is not necessary that the business name is used if it is not available. Instead, the business can opt to pick a word or phrase that is more related to the industry that they are in. For instance, if it is a plumbing business they could spell out a word related to the industry such as “drain” or “faucet”.
1-800 vanity numbers are great for branding a business because customers will be able to easily remember the phone number without having to look at the telephone book or on the Internet. If the marketing is done properly using the vanity number, the business will be educating the potential consumers on who to call for that specific service or product. However, this kind of branding must be done consistently in order to drill the information into the consumer’s mind so that they don’t forget it.
I just had a bit of a laugh. I just read an article on the Wall Street Journal about ebay,
and how ebay sales have been hurting this holiday season.
As an eBay affiliate, I can tell you why. eBay recently changed the way that they pay their affiliate marketers. It used to be that a marketer got a % of the sale. Now, eBay pays a whopping 14 cents per click for most marketers.
Everyone knows that they can do much better with Adsense or Amazon in monetizing a site. So as a result, thousands of websites that once promoted eBay, are now moving in droves to Adsense or Amazon instead.
SAdly, eBay is still in a state of denial. They think it’s because there are no hard to find items other than Zhu Zhu pets.
Something tells me that when end of year figures come out, that Amazon will see a huge increase in sales, mainly because eBay promoters changed their sites around to promote Amazon products instead.
Are you having trouble finding Zhu Zhu pets this holiday season? They are going fast, and many stores are already out of them!
If you are looking for those popular zhu zhu pets or a different hard to find gift, be sure to use CraigZoom. CraigZoom will allow you to search ALL of Craigslist, rather than having to do the usual search where you have to search city by city.
You might also be able to find zhu zhu pets here.
The Zhu Zhu pets are inexpensive robotic toys that sell for about $10. The Zhu Zhu pets have been very popular, possibly due to the price in this recession. The stores are are starting to run out of them, much like the Cabbage Patch Kids did years ago.
To compound the short supply, is the fact that Zhu Zhu pets are not made by any of the big toy companies. Instead, they are made by Cepia Inc, located in St. Louis. Cepia Inc has just 16 employees in the US, and 30 in China.
So how did a small company like Cepia initially get the word out about Zhu Zhu pets to make this one of the hottest toys this Christmas season? It was through local cable ads, and internet marketing, where they tapped into “Mommy Bloggers”, which is initially they got word of mouth going.
So hurry and find those Zhu Zhu pets now… before it’s too late.
As many of you know, most of the eco-cleaning products on the market today, just don’t clean as well as brand name cleaning products. I hate to say that. I do my best to have a green house… but I also want a clean house.
I was asked to give some eco products an honest review from the EcoStore. My initial thought was “Happy to review – but be prepared for some negative comments”.
I was asked to try 2 products. It was my choice which products to try. I chose the laundry detergent and the auto dish powder. The reason I chose those is because I needed solutions, and I could provide some pretty tough tests.
Let’s start with the laundry powder.
I have a 9 year old son who manages to get very dirty by the end of the day. His shirts look terrible. As much as I try to teach him good table manners, he still manages to get food on his shirts, and wipe his mouth on his sleeve. Drives me nuts!
My son also suffers from eczema. He gets it very badly all over his legs. I typically buy the ALL brand, since that seems to work better than most brands. However, his eczema is still a problem.
I was a little hesitant to try something new, but did want to see if this laundry powder both cleaned, and would also not stir up his eczema.
I tested the eco laundry powder for about 3 weeks, as I wanted to give it a little time, to see how it impacted the eczema. I have to say, I was very pleasantly surprised. Not only did it clean beautifully, but we did not have an eczema outbreak on his legs!
The dishwasher powder was the other product I tried. The reason I chose that product is because I have been having trouble getting clean dishes. I’ve been getting a film on my dishes lately, and I don’t know why. We recently purchased a new dishwasher hoping that would help, but it didn’t. We still had a film on our dishes. I tried several different brands of dishwasher soap ( powders and liquids), but have not had much success. I wonder if it has something to do with our hot water heater. I’m not sure. The hot water heater is new too.
The point is, I’ve been having trouble getting clean looking dishes. I normally rinse the dishes very well before they hit the dishwasher.
My first day of the test, I thought I would give it a very tough test. The night before we had gone out to eat, and I had a burrito left over. The next day, I used a clear glass dish to nuke the burrito in the microwaver. This of course caused baked cheese to stick to the sides of the glass dish. After I ate the left over burrito, I decided to let the dish sit and dry out. Let’s just say it was a nasty looking dish.
I decided not to give it a rinse, and put it in the dishwasher as is. I had absolutely no expectations that this laundry powder would clean the dish. I wasn’t even sure that my other dishes would look clean. I was fully expecting a film on the other dishes.
To my surprise, when I opened up the dishwasher the next morning, all my dishes were sparkling. I went to reach for that nasty looking dish, and it looked beatiful. I was shocked to say the least.
So… needless to say, I’ll be a new customer at the ecostore.
I was just reading the latest issue of Food Entrepreneur Magazine, and read a surprising statistic.
An independent study by research firm Knowledge Networks-PDI shows that in-store sampling substantially increases sales the day of sampling AND influences a 75% increase in sales even at 20 weeks after the sampling.
Wow! I wonder if we’ll start to see more in-store sampling. I know that when I’m at Costco, I’ve used the samples to try out new products. Many of those products are now in my freezer.
Normally speaking, a catalog page in pretty boring. It shows pictures or lists items for sale in a particular category. As a buyer, you look over the items and select an item for purchase.
Well… here’s a unique twist. This catalog page is so interesting that it has actually gone viral. I found out about it be being a recipient of one of those mass email forwarding campaigns ( which I hate and usually don’t pay much attention to).
Take a look at HEMA’s product page – just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens. DON’T CLICK on any of the items in the picture; just wait.
http://producten.hema.nl
HEMA is a Dutch department store. The first store opened in 1926, in Amsterdam. Now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands.
This company has a sense of humor as well as a great computer programmer, who has too much time on his hands.
Back in the days, freebies were usually just old, small samples, almost expired, discardable, low-quality versions of products and merchandise. The only good thing about them is that they were free. Somehow, in the course of time, businesses have evolved and adapted more intelligent marketing and promotional gigs while consumers have become more discriminating and far more intelligent in their purchasing habits. Getting a substandard free product is not going to fool consumers anymore into thinking that paying for it will get them better quality all the time. This is not how it works today. Many good quality products are being offered for free, and yet, despite that, businesses have not suffered; in fact, most claim to have increased in sales and profits since.
On that note, a free Wordpress theme is not at all a mediocre version of its paid themes. The free Wordpress themes available on the internet are state of the art designs offering some of the best themes with advanced graphical interface programs, community friendly templates, and innovative widgets and plug-ins. Generally, free Wordpress themes come with the same set of features with a few variations depending on the category of its design.
WP Themes and Features:
• Widget compliant
• RSS subscription
• CSS/XHTML supportive
• Adsense
• JPG, PNG, GIF compatible
• Easy customizable designs and layouts
• “skinable” themes
• Web 2.0 compliant
• Grid-aligned, 1, 2, 0r 3 column layouts
• Theme Editor enabled
Surf the net, scroll down the categories; choose among any of the thousands of high-quality free WP themes online. You can take all day with such a wide selection of very useful, efficient, easy-to-use, and craftily designed themes, but do remember that they are FREE and therefore, you can always come back for more!
Wordpress comes free as part of the Hostgator hosting packages. It’s easy to install, and there are plenty of help videos available.
If you are looking to make a custom header for your Wordpress theme, check out the Banner Generator.
If you would like to learn how to make money with your Wordpress blog’s, I highly recommend that you check out Wordpress Goldmine. I’m a member myself, and have found the information there to be top notch. Mark has a ton of great how-to videos, as well as an easy-to-follow system on how to successfully make money with free Wordpress blogs.
Did you know that lots of great internship opportunities are listed on Craigslist? One of the best ways to search for an internship is to use a tool like CraigZoom, where you can search ALL of Craigslist, rather than have to search city by city.
This is particularly handy if you are willing to relocate, or if you can do your internship online. In the case of internet marketing or writing, you can easily do your internship from the comfort of your own home. Internet marketing companies are constantly in the need of good people. It can be a great way for you to learn the business, so that you can eventually start your own internet business.
If you want to create nice looking custom animated banner ads, be sure to check out the Banner Generator software program. It’s only $27, and very easy to use.
Here’s a tutorial you can look at:
How to create an animated banner ad
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