Portsmouth MS students show off ideas at Invention Convention

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PORTSMOUTH — From helping the elderly to making exercise more entertaining, Portsmouth Middle School sixth graders exhibited their creations — some with not too modest sales tags — at their Invention Convention last week. Thomas Chlaupek, 11, displayed his prototype of the "Ultimate Lighting System" in which a sensor is placed under a rug beside the bed that triggers a light to shine when stepped upon.

He said he designed it for the elderly and those with Alzheimer's disease who may "get out of bed and trip on something" before finding the light switch. He priced his invention at $200 after researching sensor systems used in hospitals that trip an alarm when patients leave the bed.

A grocery cart with side carts to hold fragile items is 12-year-old Alison Hamilton's idea behind "Pimp My Cart." She said she wants to try her cart out at Clements' Market because "every time I go to the store with my mom she's always worried about the bread and chips getting smooshed."

Claire O'Connor, 11, researched the tools she needed for her "Airplane Entertainment Kit" by interviewing her little cousin who flew to California and studying what is placed in the backseat pockets of cars to entertain children. The kit includes a coloring book, blanket, DVD player and more, and is designed for "toddlers when they go on airplane rides so they don't get bored" because they'll "have everything they need in front of them."

Kyle MacDonald, 11, put his "DVD Helmet," designed for the exercise-reluctant, to the test on his 8-year-old brother who caught some passes in a football game wearing the helmet. The helmet has a small DVD player attached in front enabling his brother to watch "Remember the Titans" as he played.

"He could still see the ball and move his hands," Kyle said. "He thought it was pretty cool, too."

"We're tired of tying on our skates every day," said 11-year-old Timothy Doherty who, along with Isabel Regine, 11, thought up "Icelys" — sneakers with skate blades.

Both students are hockey players and wanted to create a skate that could get them on the ice faster. Though their shoes had removable tinfoil blades, they assured their audience that skate blades could easily fit in the same way.

"We think we're going to make millions with them," Isabel said.

Aaron Parker, 11, said he created the "Hotonator," a heated back pack, because "I get cold at the bus stop." He sewed a patch on the back of his backpack and inserted a heating pack that he said lasts up to four to six hours and works well.

Tired, sore feet were the impetus behind an invention by Liam Donovan Andrew Rossi, both 12. Their sneakers were outfitted with rubber bouncy balls split in half and placed under thick foam inserts. "When you walk your feet move inside the shoe and it massages," Liam said. "It works," Andrew added, saying that they had tested their product on Liam's mom.

Steven Vierkant, 12, wanted something that he could "play in the dark without disturbing my parents." He took a small toy car and covered it with glow-in-the-dark paint which charges in the daytime and glows for up to two hours. His original asking price was ninety-nine cents but he said he bumped it up to $2.99 "because I was thinking I could make a little money off it."

Kerri McVey, 12, and Brittany Cook, 11, designed the "Self-Watering Flower Pot" that they said nourished spider plants for two weeks with only one watering. The potted plants are placed inside a plastic container with holes punched in it that allow water poured into a larger plastic container to flow in as needed.

"It takes two weeks for the water to seep in all the way," Kerri said.

"So it waters itself," Brittany added.

Having trouble staying dedicated to practicing her violin, Katie Hobbs, 11, created a timer that starts when sat upon and beeps when the designated time is over. "Time's Up" also keeps kids honest, Katie said, because "if you get up it beeps and your parents know." She said since she's been practicing with the timer, "I'm playing a lot better than before."

"Life just got easier" is the slogan for 11-year-old Lexi Farias' "Little Helper." Her walker is equipped with tennis balls on the bottom of each leg for softer impacts and a cushion that folds down whenever a seat is needed. She said she got the idea from her best friend's grandmother, whom she thinks of as her own grandmother.

By Jill Rodrigues

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MP3 Tours

Naples woman’s invention tells good eggs from the bad
Magnetic clasps - Clever Clasp.

What could be better than having an insider walk you through his or her favourite spots in a new city or travel destination? How about having access to a whole library of such tours that can be downloaded right to your iPod or MP3 player? That's what Chicago-based AudioSnacks is offering consumers. Users can download audio tours of select destinations and can put up their own tours for purchase.

“AudioSnack is a place to find, purchase, download, listen to and appreciate audio tours that people just like you have created to share, and a place where you can do the same for others.” Tours are modestly priced—some are even free. Many feature downloadable maps to accompany the audio footage, and customers can listen to a sample snippet of a tour before deciding to purchase.

Already there are tours available for destinations in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, South Africa and more. Customers get a unique perspective and insights: they can take an audio tour through Chicago with a Jewish hip-hop poet, for instance, or see the sights in Seattle with a hot DJ. Since members are encouraged to create and upload their own tours, the library is likely to grow quickly. The company is also building a new section, offering campus tours for (upcoming) freshmen "who look lost no matter how many times they've looked at their maps."

[Via Springwise]

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Top 20 Motivation Hacks - An Overview

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For the last two weeks I've been posting the Top 20 Motivation Hacks, one by one. These are the tips and tricks that, if used in combination, are a nearly sure way to achieve your goals.

Achieving goals is not a matter of having "discipline". It's a matter of motivating yourself, and keeping your focus on your goal. Follow these hacks, or any combination of them that works for you, and you should have the motivation and focus you need.

Here they are, in reverse order (links take you to more on each):

#20: Chart Your Progress. Recently I posted about how I created a chart to track my progress with each of my goals. This chart is not just for information purposes, for me to look back and see how I'm doing. It's to motivate me to keep up with my goals. If I'm diligent about checking my chart every day, and marking dots or "x"s, then I will want to make sure I fill it with dots. I will think to myself, "I better do this today if I want to mark a dot." Well, that's a small motivation, but it helps, trust me. Some people prefer to use gold stars. Others have a training log, which works just as well. Or try Joe's Goals. However you do it, track your progress, and allow yourself a bit of pride each time you give yourself a good mark.

Now, you will have some bad marks on your chart. That's OK. Don't let a few bad marks stop you from continuing. Strive instead to get the good marks next time.

#19: Hold Yourself Back. When I start with a new exercise program, or any new goal really, I am rarin' to go. I am full of excitement, and my enthusiasm knows no boundaries. Nor does my sense of self-limitation. I think I can do anything. It's not long before I learn that I do have limitations, and my enthusiasm begins to wane.

Well, a great motivator that I've learned is that when you have so much energy at the beginning of a program, and want to go all out -- HOLD BACK. Don't let yourself do everything you want to do. Only let yourself do 50-75 percent of what you want to do. And plan out a course of action where you slowly increase over time. For example, if I want to go running, I might think I can run 3 miles at first. But instead of letting myself do that, I start by only running a mile. When I'm doing that mile, I'll be telling myself that I can do more! But I don't let myself. After that workout, I'll be looking forward to the next workout, when I'll let myself do 1.5 miles. I keep that energy reined in, harness it, so that I can ride it even further.

#18: Join an online (or off-line) group to help keep you focused and motivated. When I started to run, more than a year ago, I joined a few different forums, at different times, on different sites, such as Men's Health (the Belly-Off Runner's Club), Runner's World, Cool Running, and the running group at About.com. I did the same when I was quitting smoking.

Each time I joined a forum, it helped keep me on track. Not only did I meet a bunch of other people who were either going through what I was going through or who had already been through it, I would report my progress (and failures) as I went along. They were there for great advice, for moral support, to help keep me going when I wanted to stop.

#17: Post a picture of your goal someplace visible -- near your desk or on your refrigerator, for example. Visualizing your goal, exactly how you think it will be when you've achieved it, whether it's financial goals like traveling to Rome or building a dream house, or physical goals like finishing a marathon or getting a flat stomach, is a great motivator and one of the best ways of actualizing your goals.

Find a magazine photo or a picture online and post it somewhere where you can see it not only daily, but hourly if possible. Put it as your desktop photo, or your home page. Use the power of your visual sense to keep you focused on your goal. Because that focus is what will keep you motivated over the long term -- once you lose focus, you lose motivation, so having something to keep bringing your focus back to your goal will help keep that motivation.

#16: Get a workout partner or goal buddy. Staying motivated on your own is tough. But if you find someone with similar goals (running, dieting, finances, etc.), see if they'd like to partner with you. Or partner with your spouse, sibling or best friend on whatever goals they're trying to achieve. You don't have to be going after the same goals -- as long as you are both pushing and encouraging each other to succeed.

#15: Just get started. There are some days when you don't feel like heading out the door for a run, or figuring out your budget, or whatever it is you're supposed to do that day for your goal. Well, instead of thinking about how hard it is, and how long it will take, tell yourself that you just have to start.

I have a rule (not an original one) that I just have to put on my running shoes and close the door behind me. After that, it all flows naturally. It's when you're sitting in your house, thinking about running and feeling tired, that it seems hard. Once you start, it is never as hard as you thought it would be. This tip works for me every time.

#14: Make it a pleasure. One reason we might put off something that will help us achieve our goal, such as exercise for example, is because it seems like hard work. Well, this might be true, but the key is to find a way to make it fun or pleasurable. If your goal activity becomes a treat, you actually look forward to it. And that's a good thing.

#13: Give it time, be patient. I know, this is easier said than done. But the problem with many of us is that we expect quick results. When you think about your goals, think long term. If you want to lose weight, you may see some quick initial losses, but it will take a long time to lose the rest. If you want to run a marathon, you won't be able to do it overnight. If you don't see the results you want soon, don't give up ... give it time. In the meantime, be happy with your progress so far, and with your ability to stick with your goals. The results will come if you give it time.

#12: Break it into smaller, mini goals. Sometimes large or longer-term goals can be overwhelming. After a couple weeks, we may lose motivation, because we still have several months or a year or more left to accomplish the goal. It's hard to maintain motivation for a single goal for such a long time. Solution: have smaller goals along the way.

#11: Reward yourself. Often. And not just for longer-term goals, either. In Hack #12, I talked about breaking larger goals into smaller, mini goals. Well, each of those mini goals should have a reward attached to it. Make a list of your goals, with mini goals, and next to each, write down an appropriate reward. By appropriate, I mean 1) it's proportionate to the size of the goal (don't reward going on a 1-mile run with a luxury cruise in the Bahamas); and 2) it doesn't ruin your goal -- if you are trying to lose weight, don't reward a day of healthy eating with a dessert binge. It's self-defeating.

#10: Find inspiration, on a daily basis. Inspiration is one of the best motivators, and it can be found everywhere. Every day, seek inspiration, and it will help sustain motivation over the long term. Sources of inspiration can include: blogs, online success stories, forums, friends and family, magazines, books, quotes, music, photos, people you meet.

#9: Get a coach or take a class. These will motivate you to at least show up, and to take action. It can be applied to any goal. This might be one of the more expensive ways of motivating yourself, but it works. And if you do some research, you might find some cheap classes in your area, or you might know a friend who will provide coaching or counseling for free.

#8: Have powerful reasons. Write them down. Know your reasons. Give them some thought ... and write them down. If you have loved ones, and you are doing it for them, that is more powerful than just doing it for self-interest. Doing it for yourself is good too, but you should do it for something that you REALLY REALLY want to happen, for really good reasons.

#7: Become aware of your urges to quit, and be prepared for them. We all have urges to stop, but they are mostly unconscious. One of the most powerful things you can do is to start being more conscious of those urges. A good exercise is to go through the day with a little piece of paper and put a tally mark for each time you get an urge. It simply makes you aware of the urges. Then have a plan for when those urges hit, and plan for it beforehand, and write down your plan, because once those urges hit, you will not feel like coming up with a plan.

#6: Make it a rule never to skip two days in a row.This rule takes into account our natural tendency to miss days now and then. We are not perfect. So, you missed one day ... now the second day is upon you and you are feeling lazy ... tell yourself NO! You will not miss two days in a row! Zen Habits says so! And just get started. You'll thank yourself later.

#5: Visualize your goal clearly, on a daily basis, for at least 5-10 minutes. Visualize your successful outcome in great detail. Close your eyes, and think about exactly how your successful outcome will look, will feel, will smell and taste and sound like. Where are you when you become successful? How do you look? What are you wearing? Form as clear a mental picture as possible. Now here's the next key: do it every day. For at least a few minutes each day. This is the only way to keep that motivation going over a long period of time.

#4: Keep a daily journal of your goal. If you are consistent about keeping a journal, it can be a great motivator. A journal should have not only what you did for the day, but your thoughts about how it went, how you felt, what mistakes you made, what you could do to improve. To be consistent about keeping a journal, do it right after you do your goal task each day. Make keeping a journal a sensory pleasure.

#3: Create a friendly, mutually-supportive competition.We are all competitive in nature, at least a little. Some more than others. Take advantage of this part of our human nature by using it to fuel your goals. If you have a workout partner or goal buddy, you've got all you need for a friendly competition. See who can log more miles, or save more dollars, each week or month. See who can do more pushups or pullups. See who can lose the most weight or have the best abs or lose the most inches on their waist. Make sure the goals are weighted so that the competition is fairly equal. And mutually support each other in your goals.

#2: Make a big public commitment. Be fully committed. This will do the trick every time. Create a blog and announce to the world that you are going to achieve a certain goal by a certain date. Commit yourself to the hilt.#1: Always think positive. Squash all negative thoughts. Monitor your thoughts. Be aware of your self-talk. We all talk to ourselves, a lot, but we are not always aware of these thoughts. Start listening. If you hear negative thoughts, stop them, push them out, and replace them with positive thoughts. Positive thinking can be amazingly powerful.
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Ready To Assemble Furniture, No Tools Needed

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www.inmodern.net

Everything can be upgraded, even the incredibly easy to assemble furniture that we covered last year. The Simple Furniture Company launched its latest brand last week, and it's an upmarket version of Real Simple Furniture. InModern's design is sleeker and more sculptural, with upgraded prices to match (USD 249 for an RSF desk; USD 400 for an InModern desk).

Design aside, the premise remains the same: no tools needed to assemble or disassemble the furniture. The pieces are made of real wood, not particle board, and the wood comes from certified environmentally responsible forestry. Everything is manufactured and assembled in the United States.

We still like the idea of eco-friendly, real simple furniture, and we look forward to hearing from entrepreneurs setting up their own local versions. Come to think of it, click-and-go furniture would be an ideal match for EvolvingVox, the 'temporary ownership network' that furnishes student dorm rooms. Perfect for temporary use, since flat-packable furniture significantly reduces storage space when items aren't in use.

Source - http://www.springwise.com/

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Enough Bullshitting… Let’s Make Money In 24hrs Or Less!!!

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So word has it that I haven’t made many good posts lately that help people make cash. Well, I agree, so here’s how you can make some bank quickly and easily without breaking the bank too. Let’s take a quick look at Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing and see how underrated it is and how you can seriously make some cash without getting too wrapped up and hung up on the usual things that stop you from moving forward.

1- Create a site. If you don’t know how to, well, get someone to do it for you. It’s not that hard, hell, even I can do it and I am a retard when it comes to tech/design stuff. So buy a domain, get a cheap hosting account for it, toss up a WordPress blog and theme (takes the hassle out of creating a site), and you’re in business.

2- Depending on what your domain theme is, if it has one, make the site around an affiliate marketing offer. It can be a product, a service, doesn’t really matter which. Just pick something! There are no bad ideas or good ideas, everything can work in it’s own right if done correctly. If you are being a lazy bastard and need me to pick one for you, then choose a product that is cheap for the end user and serves some type of beneficial purpose. Ad networks have a billion offers, I’m sure you can find one. But try and keep out of finance/mortgage and ringtones for now, because those take lots of research, time and cash.

3- Great, you have your product picked out, now make a blog post about it. If you don’t know all that much about it, do some quick research on Wikipedia or Google. It’s also a good idea to put a banner up or a full page ad for it if you aren’t going to write a blog post about it. Either way, make sure the theme of the blog is about the product you are promoting. Maybe make the color scheme the same as the page where the user will buy something or fill out the lead.

4- So let’s assume you have your domain, host, blog with the offer all setup. Alright, so now comes traffic, the fun part! Let’s use Google Adwords and MSN AdCenter for it. Take $100 and deposit it into each of the accounts. You probably won’t use all of it, but it’s good to have it in there. With Adsense we can begin right away, but with MSN you may have to wait 24 hours or so until their slow asses get to approving the account. With both though, there are tons of free cash coupons and promo codes out there, and some on WickedFire.com that you can use and get some free cash to use.

5- Time for some keyword research. Before you start to use every keyword tool under the sun, let’s do a bit of manual work. First go and look at the advertiser’s page and pull keywords off there by hand. We want to focus on something called LONG TAIL KEYWORDS. We don’t want the one or two word keywords because they are very general, expensive, and usually being looked at for research purposes and don’t have many “buy now” people using them. A long tail keyword are those 3, 4, 5+ word keywords that really target a product. So for example, a good longtail mortgage refinance keyword I would use is “refinance los angeles california” or “bad credit refinance new york” INSTEAD of “refinance new york” or “refinance la”. You can even compare the prices, and you’ll see the longer ones may not get much traffic on it, but they are so cheap compared to the other more general ones.

6- So you have some general and longtail keywords. Fantastic. Now some people use misspelling tools and whatnot, which is a good idea, so go over to SEOBook.com into the tools section and use Aaron Wall’s misspelling tool. But don’t do that just yet, because that’s the last step. What you should do first is get a nice long list of longtail keywords of what you think people are using when they are in “buying mode” when searching on the engines for your product. So if the product is some kind of insole for a shoe, your keywords would be: buy shoe insole, cheap insole for shoes, doctor recommended shoe insole. Those are pretty good, and sure, they are nowhere near as robust as something like “shoe insole” or “shoe pad” but they are more likely to be in buying mode than researching mode. So your job, for the next 1-3 hours is to gather up as many of these keywords as possible. If you want to use keyword tools to do it for you, by all means, knock yourself out, but if this is your first time doing something like this, and you want to learn how to do it right, do it by hand, the old fashioned way, just until you get the swing of things. When you’re done collecting the keywords, run it through the misspelling tool, and save the end result. Make sure to also group the keywords into 5-15 keywords per group for Adwords and AdCenter. You’ll thank me later.

7- We have our keywords, the site, the domain, the product. Wonderful, now on to getting some traffic finally! Take those groups of keywords and make one primary campaign for them in AdWords and the sub-campaigns for them based on which keyword theme they are. You don’t want to put too many keywords into one group because you want to keep your ads as relevant as possible for that group of keywords that it represents. So go ahead and make your ads. I typically write out 3-4 ads in the beggining, but sometimes as little as 2. It really depends on how confident you are of the keywords. Make sure to include the keyword, or the main idea of the base keywords (meaning, if the keywords all revolve around “back pain” make sure “back pain” is in the ads). Don’t be boring with the ad copy either, try and liven it up to get the attention of the searcher that will make them want to not only click on your ad, but also buy or fill out a lead for your product. Use your domain and page/site for this. Make sure all the traffic goes to your killler blog page.

8- Once you’re done with all of the above do something very important now.. Change the keywords so they are all EXACT and PHRASE matches. You can even go as far as to create seperate ad groups if you really want to, but sometimes that’s just overkill and may also screw up your other campaigns for good keywords. The reason you don’t want to go with broad in the beginning is because you’re on a mission now. That mission is not to make money, but to get your CTR up to a nice level. You’re going to want to be doing this for a good day or so. Don’t worry, you won’t lose much money, and afterall, a lot of those clicks aren’t just going to go nowhere, they’ll be going to your blog/promo page. You still have a great chance that they will also result in a sale/lead. So no need to fret about it.

9- Wow step 9 already, look how quickly we flew through this tutorial. Granted there are a lot of details being left out, but you will learn them on your own and pick them up pretty quickly too. You have to admit, this is a hell of a lot easier than you thought it would be right? So the reason I want you to use a blog or something with content on it and not just a redirect or linking directly to the affiliate code is because Google and MSN have this algorithm called QS aka Quality Score. They say, that if a site looks like it’s not selling something exclusively, meaning, that the site’s sole purpose is to spread information rather than sales then it should not be paying as much as a commercial site that has a huge budget. Also these types of results (your site) are relevant for users and give them what they are looking for, instead of a sales page and a “buy this thing now or you will die!” approach. We want the users to buy or fill out leads, but we don’t want to give them the impression that it’s ALL we want, so maybe tack on a newsletter signup link. You can use Aweber, they are cheap and good. Also tack on a few information links on the blogroll or in the posts. To really beef up your QS, send some inbound links from other blogs, directories, sites, forums, wherever really. Just pretend you are SEO’ing it as well as using it for a PPC campaign. Within 2 weeks or less your QS should jump, your CTR should jump, and best of all, your PPC bid price will drop! In the wise words of Borat.. Wowaweewa!

10- This is not over. Just because your ROI is 2:1-3:1 or better doesn’t mean you are leaving this alone and moving onto the next thing. Your ass needs to go over everything, step by step. Keep a list. What went wrong and why? What changes did you make to it, and what type of effect did it have on the sale/lead/traffic? Ask yourselves as many questions as possible. If you can’t answer it yourself, go to the forums and ask someone there. There is an answers to almost any PPC and affiliate marketing related question on WickedFire.com somewhere, and if we don’t have it, another forum will, or ASK about it, because as great as we may seem to think we are, we can’t read your mind and see what’s going wrong. Be as detailed as possible too!

So there you have it. A blog post of value, quality and meaning. Will it make you millions? I doubt it. But be realistic, you need to try things out and learn them for yourself before you can pass judgement on it or decide it’s “too hard”, because this is not hard at all. This is easy shit compared to any job offline that you may have had to do for a paycheck. So quit sitting on your ass and reading this, and go out and do something about it! The rest is up to you boys and girls, so go make me proud and try it!

[Via Aojon.Com]

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Long Copy, Long Copy, Long Copy

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Goal improvements

I don’t write long copy because I like long copy.

I write long copy… because that’s what works.

You start at the beginning of your sales message… cover the points your prospect needs to hear in order to make a decision… urge him toward the right decision (buy your stuff)… and close with panache.

When you can do that in a few terse sentences, or in a single brief whiz-bang video, let me know. I’ll be right on your heels with my next pitch.

After almost three decades in the front-line trenches of business — slogging through the fog and chaos of multiple technological upheavals — I’m not holding my breath, though.

Still, the nature of business requires flexibility.

And, curiously, this is NOT an age-related thing.

At both seminars, I encountered wizened old farts who were cleaning up online, totally hip to every cutting-edge burp and tweak of the Technology Beast… and I met bright young business would-be-wizards who couldn’t ossify and wall themselves up in a cave fast enough.

And vice versa, of course.

The guys, young and old, who were making it work were flexible jaguars, alert and eager to learn. The ones wandering off into the desert — young and old — were dogmatic dinosaurs, unable to change even when the case for change couldn’t be more obvious.

Two quick examples: (1) I met several too-young-to-be-considering-suicide online biz owners who were, indeed, considering some form of suicide… because the Google Slap of last summer ruined their only business plan. Without the easy traffic of unchallenged Adwords, they became depressed and sleepy and unable to adjust.

Get a grip.

(2) I also recently critiqued a direct mail letter that looked like it’d been written in the early 1970’s, fossilized, and put somewhere safe from every single change that’s happened to advertising since Jobs and Woz wandered bleary-eyed from their garage-lab, giddy with success.

I didn’t even bother getting into the copy — instead, I gave the mailer a focused little pep talk about what had transpired since the digital explosion.

The basic rule is simple and eloquent: Things change.

And most folks resist change. Yes, that super-tight polyester disco-era leisure suit in the back of your closet may yet come back into vogue… but nearly every aspect of successful advertising has moved along at a brisk clip.

The days of easy traffic online are now as quaint as the days when having a toll-free 800 number was an exotic luxury. Ancient history.

The good news: It’s actually fun to stay hip and wired into the cutting edge.

There never was a rule dictating that the adventure and excitement had to stop in your life after a certain expiration date.

The key is simply to stay loose and alert, like a jaguar. The action is still hot and heavy at the front lines, as it always has been and always shall be.

And if you need a little help finding your way through the fog and chaos of the rear ranks… well, that’s what guys like me are for.

We live in exciting times. I understand the urge to go hide under the covers… but I also know the thrill of going mano-a-mano with the great Technology Beast, and winning.

Grrr.

Stay frosty…

John Carlton, http://www.marketingrebelrant.com/

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What Great Advertising Really Is

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Many business people have a distorted view about the distinction between sales and marketing. The common view looks something like this. "Market by advertising to get your name out there, so that people will be familiar with you when you come knocking on their door to sell your products and services".

And off they go, to promote their company with image advertising that shouts to the world how great they are.

They hope, and they pray that some how, some way, the message about their brand will stick in people's minds. Never knowing if it does, or if it doesn't. Or whether their marketing dollars are paying them back in increased sales.

Some even think that a cutesy jingle, or slogan is enough to get their phones to start ringing.

This all too common approach, is a huge waste of time, and money. Never let an advertising rep tell you any different.

Sales and Marketing are far more alike than most people realize. The sole purpose of marketing, and advertising is to make sales. Full Stop.

If you don't know how many sales dollars your advertising is really bringing in, stop advertising.

Advertising must do much more than just get your name out there. It must educate, qualify, convince, and persuade.

Great Advertising is Nothing Less Than "Salesmanship in Print!"

Think of it as a sales presentation that's geared toward accomplishing a carefully defined objective, whether that objective is the actual sale, or a step toward it.

Most successful campaigns are in fact a series of graduated commitments, leading up to a transaction. It might start with something as simple as an exchange of information. For example, the prospect's name and address, in exchange for some information about solving a problem. That's always a winning formula.

When a prospect takes this step, they are actually qualifying themselves, persuading themselves, and giving you permission to follow up with them, all at the same time. And without any investment in personal selling.

After all, why should you waste your valuable time talking to a prospect that isn't already highly qualified, and predisposed to buying from you?

The key to profitable sales, marketing, and advertising lies in the response. Yet 90% of businesses fail to ask for, and track incremental response in their advertising. The only thing they track are sales, and then wonder why their results are so abysmal.

Why Is Incremental Response So Important?

Because it tells you what you're getting, so you can change what you're giving, until you get what you want.

The majority of people need to be exposed to your value proposition more than once, before opening their wallets anyway. Why not play an active role in the process, and track the response you get to each successive stage of commitment?

Think of a pyramid, with rows of blocks piled one on top of the other. The wider you build each row, the better your chances of getting to the top.

If all of this sounds just too simple, and you don't believe it has the power to line your pockets with all the money you want, think again.

There are millions of businesses out there that just don't get this.

Nobody knows for sure how an individual will react to a given message. But en mass, human nature is as predictable as the hands on a clock. If you broadcast a message, the collective response will consistently come back to you within an amazingly small variance. So measure your response, try things, and repeat. It's that simple.

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Proposed Tax Breaks

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The Senate is currently considering a plan to link the much-ballyhooed federal minimum wage increase to a package of tax breaks designed to mollify small business owners. According to a press release from Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the chairman of the Finance Committee, the provisions include:

1. Extending for the next five years the "Work Opportunity" Tax Credit, which can be claimed by employers who hire workers off welfare, for example. The bill would also broaden this group to include returning veterans.

2. Extending by one year the tax rule that allows small businesses to bundle as much as $112,000 in expenses into one annual deduction.

3. Extending by one year the rules that allow entrepreneurs to deduct expenses incurred while refurbishing leased facilities or in some cases facilities that you own or build.

4. Allowing a larger group of companies to use the simplified cash method of accounting for tax purposes.

5. Making S Corp status available to more new and existing businesses.

6. Creating a certification process for professional employer organizations or PEOs, which serve as the employer of record for companies that want to outsource basic human resources functions.

What do you think? First, are tax breaks a fair trade for higher minimum wages? Second, which of these provisions do you find most appealing? Third, are any of these proposals, in your view, a bad idea?

Inc.com

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Sinus Buster Success Story

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http://www.sinusbuster.com/

Wayne Perry was having some success convincing people to pump hot pepper spray up their noses to relieve sinus congestion and chronic headaches.

But his big break came in a meeting six months ago with the man who decides what health and beauty care products go on the shelves at Price Chopper supermarkets.

After hearing Perry’s sales pitch, Dave Mongillo, a category manager at Golub Corp., parent of Price Chopper, remembers asking some co-workers with sinus problems to try the nasal spray. Their seal of approval helped get Sinus Buster into a few stores on a trial basis. Today, the product is in about 70 of the chain’s supermarkets.

Price Chopper is the single largest seller of Sinus Buster, which is made from natural ingredients including sea salt, eucalyptus oil, distilled water and capsicum, a type of hot pepper. When sprayed into the nose, the pepper’s active ingredient–capsaicin–soothes inflammation in the sinus cavity without causing “rebound” headaches that are common with over-the-counter medication, Perry said.

Perry, 41, a former self-defense instructor, came up with the idea for Sinus Buster 10 years ago during an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey television show.

As part of a publicity stunt, Perry got blasted in the face with pepper spray. Moments before, he came down with severe headaches, a condition Perry has suffered for years. After getting hit with the pepper spray, he realized his headache was relieved.

[Via Dane Carlson's Blog]

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I want to point out that when you take a mundane, boring, low profit niche, like “dogs”, with a little research and luck you can discover pretty decent smaller niches inside the big low profit niche.

For example, dog flea control. When your dog gets fleas, you’ll pay any money to get rid of fleas (electronic flea collars can be pretty expensive). When a person searches for flea medication or flea treatment, you can be sure that they are in a buying mood.

With a little testing, you can fairly easily figure out what keywords perform best in this niche – flea collar, flea medication, flea treatment or flea shampoo.

If I wanted to find another profitable dog niche, where would I look? How about dog insurance or pet insurance? It might work. How about dog bites? Dog bite law, dog bite lawyer, dog bite settlement. These might be worth something.

How about dog cremation? Or dog cemetery? Definitely worth looking into. What else? Some rare medical condition or medication. Expensive vet procedures. Dog grooming. Etc.

Now, most of these won’t turn out to be very profitable, what I am saying is that you should always try to find a niche inside a niche that others haven’t thought of.

In order not to violate Google TOS, I rate niches with my own star system. ** - $0.20-$0.30 per click average, *** - $0.30-$0.50 per click average, **** - $0.50-$0.70 per click average, ***** - $0.70-$1.20 per click average. While I don’t mind sharing information on ***** niches, I don’t make this information publicly available because it would quickly kill these niches or get Google pissed off at me.

All AdSense niches were tested by me personally and your results shouldn’t be very different, unless your account was smart-priced, too much time passed since my testing, MFA got a hold of the niche or your site or traffic source sucks big time.

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Local man to take invention to national exhibit

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By HALEY HUGHES

Staff writer

It may very well be the next big thing.

From fledgling inventor Donald Waters comes Timbertite, a new way for commercial truck drivers to secure dunnage to their vehicles. Dunnage is a term for spare pieces of scrap wood that is used to support loads, like cargo that is transported on a 18-wheel flatbed truck.

Typically, trucking companies and their drivers secure dunnage under the beds of trucks with either rope or elastic cord. But the knots often shake loose with the movement of the truck, especially over uneven roads.

"Cargo needs a means of securement and needs a means of proper securement," said Waters, who is from Beech Island. "Until now there's no way to store them. I literally just touched a cord and it came loose. I'm a thinker. That just got my little brain thinking."

What encouraged him even more was an experience while he himself was driving a truck on a construction site.

"The dunnage that I had secured under my trailer became loose and slid to the passenger side, hitting a bridge support as I passed through a construction site," he said. "It was enough to get me thinking even more. I didn't want to improve a product. I wanted to create a product."

The Timbertite features a 5,000-pound capacity polyester strap and a compression spring to maintain tension. All one has to do is secure the hook into the eyebolt on the spring assembly and tighten as desired.

"I designed every part of it," Waters said. "Nothing is store bought. There were a few prototypes that got thrown away. Now I've got it to where I want it."

As far as he knows, rope or elastic cord does not meet the standards of securing cargo on commercial trucks. Waters feels Timbertite meets or exceeds such standards.

Timbertite received its patent in 1999 but now Waters is looking for a licensee or a manufacturer. He will be attending INPEX — the Invention and New Product Exhibition — in Pittsburgh, Pa., on June 6-9 in hopes of doing just that.

"I'm very much looking forward to the show in Pittsburgh," he said. "I think it's an asset of safety to the trucking industry. I'll feel good about myself if I've known I've done something to make safety better."

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