Toxic Home Brew

Wow! Check out this video .... and then get rid of the bad stuff under your sink...

Watch the video here

For information on how you can take a step to clear your home of these products - go here... click me

Promoting Home and Online Businesses w/ Craigslist

Craigslist is one of the best classified ad resources on the net. We have used it sell vehicles and to promote our home-businesses, as well as promoting the tools that we use to promote our home-business.

Craigslist is structured geographically so that if you live in Denver and want to sell your couch and loveseat - it may be a good idea to post that to the Denver area. However, if you are marketing a travel service, health product, etc. - you would obviously want to spread the ad outside your area and likely even nationwide.

Craigslist will not allow you to post the same article to more than one area w/in 48 hours, so i have come up w/ a method to reach out to the entire nation without violating Craigslists policies.

I have a couple of main businesses i am working, 3 social networks, and a growing number of traffic generating/marketing referral sites that i would like to promote. So i have created a spreadsheet that on one of the worksheets has 3 columns, name of the business/ product/ service, a headline, body of the ad i want to post.

In the next work sheet i entered a date column and put in the current date then copied it out for 3 months or so. Then i added other columns for each the different items i am promoting. Now you will want to make a list of cities (minimum of 15) my list is over 40.

In the column of the 1st item you are promoting type in the 1st city on your list, then go down 3 rows and type in the next (your first city will be in the row of today's date, then your next city will be in the row of the date 3 days from now) continue entering the cities 3 rows apart until your list is exhausted.

Now go back to the top and highlight all of the cities that you just entered, right-click copy, then move to the cell one-down and one to the right of your top city and paste it there. Continue the pasting until you have filled in all of your columns. If you stepped down properly pasting then you will have some empty cells at the top right of your sheet. You can fill them in as you like. (at the bottom of your list will be the opposite affect you can use those cells to fill in the blanks at the top)

There you have it. Now every day you can open your sheet and look to see what items are to be promoted that day. Then go to craigslist and put in your add. Its a lot quicker if you cut/paste from your first worksheet the headline and body. This should take less than 10 minutes a day once you get the hang of it.

Leverage the "idleness of your past" into marketing for today

I have always been a bit of a "chat-nut". I remember even back in the mid to late '80s, i used my Commodore-128 (state of the art at that time) and got "online" over a 240-baud modem. It was my first online chat experience.
In subsequent years the "Chat Industry" really exploded. Millions upon millions were signed up w/ AOL, or MSN or Yahoo. I was a big AOL user back in the late 90's. And as a bachelor, i actually ended up meeting in real life, women who i had established contact with online. I think i did this 6 or 7 times.
Now that i am married - i pretty much try to stay away from the chatrooms as there is really nothing to be gained .... or is there?
A couple nights ago, i logged into Yahoo Messsenger and went into one of their small business chatrooms. It was there that i had kind of an "aha moment". I struck up a conversation w/ a young lady from Indonesia who was promoting her business and i noticed that in her "status" she had a link to her website. It dawned on me there that i could do the same and get some absolutely free advertising from it.
My experience that night brought me the realization that I could actually use the tools of my "former idleness" and leverage that today to grow my own network. If you are currently a Yahoo Instant Messenger user and have a nice long "friend's list - then you are perfectly staged to do this. Here is how:

1. Login to YM
2. Right-click your name at the top of the window and select "New Status Message"
3. Type in something like... "Home Business Opportunity: www.myurl.com"
4. Click ok.

You are now setup and all of the people who have added you to their frineds list will see that message next to your name in their YM window.
If you are not currently a YM user i probably would not advise you to "drop everything and join". But if you are a current user - then why not scrape up a few more contacts.
Lastly, I like to login to YM daily and keep it open. I usually go to one of the small business chatrooms, and leave that window open. Normally, i will get 5-10 IMs a day for people inquiring about my business. You can also just read the traffic in the chatroom and when you see someone submit a message about his/ her busieness - then send them an IM like ... " Hi (name) i was curious as to know how you are promoting your business...." This is a good started for getting a Yuwie referral or even getting a referral to your main business.

For what its worth....

My Favorite Time of the Day

Every night around 8 pm either myself or my wife - or - as is usually the case - both of us - puts our 20-month old daughter to bed. The routine is usually say a prayer thanking God for Olivia and asking that He would grant her a good night's sleep; a hug for mommy, a hug for daddy; then into the crib.

There is one point during this process that usually fills my eyes w/ the stuff of tears. It is the point that Olivia nestles her head against my shoulder as i am holding her. It is a moment of total surrender and total reliance. She is telling me without words....

"I love you and trust you, daddy...I have no idea what this world is about - but I know you are here to care for me and protect me."

This single moment makes every difficulty, inconvenience, annoyance, perplexment, disdain, aggravation, every dirty diaper, every snotty nose and all other negatives concerning caring for a toddler - worth every bit of the ride.

Many of you have been through this - if so, take a moment to reflect on the times that you had w/ your infant/toddler and remember that you were the most important person on earth to someone at sometime. Put that memory in a place where you can always access it.