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February 27, 2005
A Big Parrot
One of the challenges of the web is learning, constantly learning. If you hate learning new things, internet marketing is not for you.
I've been trying to figure out how to embed a photo in a blog all morning. This is a parrot from the day spa on Roatan, an island near Honduras. He entertained us on a recent cruise.
Learning how to resize this enormous photo took a few tries. It's like being a scientist. You can't yell and swear at your computer and expect it to listen. Sometimes you need to walk away from the keyboard and get some green tea and let things cool down before you test new things.
Now that I can do a photo, maybe I can figure out video and audio clips next....
Posted by universalprofit at 12:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 25, 2005
Guess Who I Played Poker With?
I was in a no limit poker tournament at the Orleans Hotel in Vegas last Sunday night. The room was packed with over 250 players.
During Round 2 my table got busted up and I moved to Table 23...guess who was sitting 3 to my right?
Tom Vu.
Remember the old get-rich-in-real-estate infomercials from 15 years ago?
I loved his style. He would sit in a hot tub with 3 or 4 bikini clad women and yell at the camera. "You're a loooosaaah! It's 2 am and you're watching me! I came to dis country with nuttin' and wash dishes and now I am rich! Come to my seminah!"
Tommy got in some heat with the feds and that brought a swift end to his infomercials a long way back. I think he still makes periodic appearances at Ron Legrand or Robert Allen events.
He's a helluva poker player. I nearly busted him, but the big stack came over the top of me and I let the hand go....the big stack broke Tom early that night, but he's a good player.
I think I finished about 90th. Just couldn't catch a hand in the third hour.
I also saw Robin Leech from Lifestyles of The Rich And Famous walzing throught the lobby. Both he and Tom are symbolic....a multi-layered lesson to keep in mind as we climb the wealth ladder...no shortcuts.
Posted by universalprofit at 11:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Lesson From The Grand Canyon
I just got back from Las Vegas and the most impressive thing I saw was the Grand Canyon.
If you've never been, you must go. Bring bug spray, the black flies were vicious.
Building an internet business is a lot like the canyon. It starts out like a trickle. But the persistence factor eventually creates this huge, impressive thing.
I was getting discouraged at a site I built that just wouldn't index. The engines must have hated it. But when I was away Yahoo ate the whole thing and I made 11 cents from it last week....the trickle begins.....
Posted by universalprofit at 11:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 24, 2005
Are Laptops Obsolete For Road Warriors? by David Ledoux
Are Laptops Obsolete For Road Warriors? by David Ledoux
I can hear a guy pecking on the keypad behind me.
I am in the business center at the Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas. Another blinding blizzard has hammered Toronto, but its warm and sunny here. If this was 4 years ago, I would have lugged down my 6 pound Dell laptop to write this. But not anymore!
Nearly every hotel has a business center now. Email communication and the need to access the web has forced hotels to extend their services. A lot have high speed internet access directly in the room. In my room is a webtv to surf on the TV. It also has ethernet in the room. But I grabbed a coffee at Seattle's Best Coffee and came down here.
You can hear the ding! ding! of the slot machines no more than 5 feet away. Occasionally you hear the scream of tourists who hit a minor jackpot on the nickel slots. Vegas is one wild place....
As I glance around the casino, I see a cross section of America. Sure there are a ton of international visitors like me here. But you see the major trends right in front of your eyes if you just pay attention.
You see an elderly lady on oxygen putting nickels into a slot machine because she is bored. You see a stout gentleman around 370 pounds wheezing by. You see a young married couple in their early twenties with a toddler and a baby in a carriage. You see retired couples playing Keno.
The entire demographic make-up of books like Age Wave and Faith Popcorns books represented. And it could make you rich if you take action.
People are getting older. Sicker. Broker.
There are a ton of people between the ages of 16 and 25. More than 25-35.
The Baby Boomers aren't all broke. A lot of them have a lot of money. They want to buy condos, big motorhomes, and enjoy retirement.
I've been coming to Vegas now for a decade. I see more condos. More people. More hotels. More sin, less kids. More sports like hockey and Nascar. More wealth. Higher limits on blackjack. Poker is exploding.
Get a couple of profit centers in front of these booming trends and markets and watch what happens!
There is an Omaha High-Low Poker tourney in about an hour....but the buffet is calling me.
I appreciate you!
David Ledoux
Author, How I Went From Welfare To Millionaire Without Winning The Lottery
Posted by universalprofit at 06:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 10, 2005
Scary Stuff - Idiots And Power - A Dangerous Mix
I was horrified to read this article about a school in the US that is computer tagging its kids. School Run By Idiots
Man, this crap is getting way, way out of hand. Talk about a moron out of touch with reality. This Ernie Graham jackass has to be reeled in before he can do any more damage.
From fingerprinting and eyeball scans to tracking chips and bar codes...where will it end? I can just hear some old timer now "In my day, kids lived in fear of the strap!" No kidding. Now they live in fear of Big Brother....
If people take it lying down, it will just continue to get worse. My advice? Spread the word, fax someone in Congress, scream and kick a little.
Posted by universalprofit at 11:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 06, 2005
Danger! Adsense Under Attack!
Nothing ticks me off more than psychos who threaten any of my streams of income.
I found this article about thieves who use bots to hack Google Adwords and get their ads to the top of the pile. Adwords and the corresponding Adsense income are important tools and very important revenue generators.
I think these guys should share the same cell with the virus writers and a 6 foot 10 nutjob with a few diseases and a penchant for internet nerds...
Posted by universalprofit at 08:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 03, 2005
RSS Gives Velocity To Information
Why The Velocity of Information Impacts Society
By David Ledoux
Do you blog?
Pardon?
It's not everyday that new words get invented. Well, actually it might be. When I was in school the periodic table of elements only had about 90 elements. What the heck does new element 104 "Unnilquadium" taste like?
But "blogging" and "bloggers" and "pinging"? Now you're just talking crazy talk. For the purposes of moving forward quickly in this article, I will assume that you know a "blog" is a weblog. Basically it's like the old cork bulletin board in the supermarket lobby, but in the digital age.
Here's the scoop on blogging. It's slowly replacing newspapers, radios, and even email as the preferred way to get our news.
My wife hates it when I say things like that. I try not to make grandiose predictions anymore, so I added the word "slowly". Is radio dead? Not yet. But reading a newspaper? How quaint. How 20th century.
The problem with blogging was you had to surf to find blogs. You never knew if they were updated. Which kind of defeated the whole purpose. Enter stage left, RSS - Voila!
RSS, or "Real Simple Syndication" allowed blogs to syndicate their content, so other people could put the blog's content on their site. This took the blog from being only on one webpage, and allowed it to be seen everywhere and anywhere. Think of it this way. In the old days 600 years ago, only one copy of a town newspaper was printed. It was posted on a board in the center of town.
Guys would congregate near the board, and the smarty pants who could read would recite it to the dullards who couldn't read or they would get beat up and their lunch money would get taken...not much has changed in 6 centuries.
Then Guttenburg invented the telephone...oh wait, that was Edison....or was it Bell? Gutenburg invented the moveable type, right? Then anyone could buy a paper. Kids would stand on a street corner yelling "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!" The VELOCITY of the news increased from one paper in one part of town, to thousands of papers all over town. Great wealth was created in the newspaper business by increasing the velocity of the information.
RSS allowed blogs the same jump in speed. A writer's blog moved from the board in the center of town, to anywhere on the web that was needed.
Then along comes Yahoo. They see that email is slowing dying and they make a visionary leap forward. They completely change their "My Yahoo" service into an RSS reader. You can create your own homepage on yahoo, and completely customize it with only the feeds you want. YOu can now find custom news as fast as its updated anywhere in the world. This is a massive leap into the future. YOU decide on your content, not some news programmer.
Not to be left out, Gates and the boys just modified "My MSN" to do the same thing. The big dogs see RSS as the next hugething on the web. it allows you and me to sort out all the spam, the chatter and the noise, and to filter, collect, sort and pre-digest the content that is meangingful to us. Wow!
If you want to reach people, blogging is now the way to go. Find your voice! If you don't know what to blog about, here are two powerful tools to help. First is Technorati. Think of it as the Yellow Pages for blogs.
I was amazed to do a search for my name in Technorati. I was astounded to find dozens of MLMers blogging using my articles from ILOVEMLM's affiliate program. They create on-topic top-quality content for their readers, possibly earn commission, AND they are getting indexed in the major search engines in a few hours in many cases.
If you are involved in weightloss, or long distance phone services, or health and wellness, search on that topic and you will be shocked at the quantity of content that you can blog on. You can see what is HOT, what is being discussed and even participate. This is the true pulse of whatever niche you may have an interest.
Second, Google Alerts.You can customize this news robot to email you everyday news stories on your particular search topics. Very powerful. You'll always be on the cutting edge with this.
Over the next 10 years, the western world will polarize into people who get their news at the speed of light, and those that read about it a few days later on dead, pulverized trees. Magazines will become recaps, reviews and commentary on past events. High velocity consumers of information will get knowledge delivered to their cellphons and pda readers in real time.
Will it make our society any better or worse? Time will tell. But now is the time to create your own channel. Your blog is your chance to be David Letterman, Walter Cronkite, Martha Stewart, Stephen King or Down Town Julie Brown. Find your voice.
I appreciate you!
David Ledoux
How I Went From Welfare To Millionaire Without Winning The Lottery
p.s. my first blog is now up at DavidLedoux.com You can add my RSS feed to your Yahoo or MSN page and get my weekly rants delivered to you in nearly real time!
Posted by universalprofit at 11:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 02, 2005
Technorati
I just listened to a killer conference call on blogging. Have you ever seen Technorati? Me neither. Think of it as a killer search engine for blogs only.
I'm trying to get it to love this blog through this link:
Technorati Profile
Man, the web moves fast. You can build a watch list around topics you want to monitor. I searched my name, and am blown away how many people are blogging my ILOVEMLM articles with their affiliate links...they are getting into yahoo faster than my main site is. It's amazing stuff.
Posted by universalprofit at 06:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack