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If only this were true. Sometimes in our lives, visiting the doctor will become unavoidable. But if you do go to a doctor, make sure you’ve asked around for personal references and ensure you’re getting good help.
Nina Putilova was suffering from eye troubles and was scheduled for surgery in her left eye. The doctor operated on the wrong eye, her right eye. What happened next was the doctor blinded her good eye (sounds permanent; not sure) and left her bad eye troubled (probably had vision problems already). Unable to see and move, she tripped and broker her hip. No one offered to help?! What ended happening was unable and remained in a wheelchair, probably for the remainder of life (not sure on this).
No matter how you look at the story above, it sucks ass. A lawsuit (which is now suing) will never compensate for what happened. Be careful of help you receive.
Source: Russia Today
Got your attention didn’t I? Running an affiliate marketing business is still running a business, in spite of the affiliate pretenders and outright internet marketing fakes. Like any business, to be successful, your revenues need to exceed your costs, which only then allow you to attend affiliate parties and ensure you’re buying clothes at Nordstrom– not at garage sales. Some tips:
- relationships are for the long run: Increase your knowledge by networking with leaders in the industry. Seek out these folks at conferences, walk up to their booth to say hello, ask questions, hand out business cards, get their card, make sure to respond back. Nobody is going to give you anything until you can offer something of value, too– a chicken-and-egg problem for most people. Long-term business deals are what make money. The folks who are impressed with your bling-bling are other pretenders, not real business folks. So stop hanging out at the strip club, and start making connections.
- start building your sites with real content to get real exposure: With those new connections, offer to guest post on their sites (like I’m doing now), and also start posting helpful, potentially humorous tidbits on your own site. You want to be associated with industry leaders and be able to write articles that make you a though leader in PPC, site development, high volume email deployment, facebook advertising, or whatever your area of expertise.
- How are you different than everyone else? What is the ONE thing you do that is absolutely world class? Blog about it, specialize in it, tell the world about it, do more of it. Maybe you run a online casket site and make a killing on selling things to old people. Who cares? If it makes money and isn’t going to land you in jail, then do it. BlitzLocal does local online marketing– not sexy, but tons of clients there.
- Focus on PROFIT, not revenue: We know folks who do $100k a day in revenue and actually lose money. Are you considering your bottom line, net of the cash you are floating, currency exchange rates, marketing expenses, engineering, and so forth? Are you putting together a monthly or weekly profit and loss statement? If not, how do you know if you’re making money or not?
- Operate like a real business: Scott Richter runs an affiliate marketing company that operates out of a 30,000 square foot building. He has accountants, lawyers, engineers, marketing folks and looks just like a real business. Even if you’re smaller, you should still have one room that is your office– it can’t be your bedroom. And go that office every day dutifully. If you do PPC, do you have PPC management tools? Do you have affiliate network software to help you optimize your traffic? What other tools do you have in place to be more efficient. Even if you have no money, you can still use Google Analytics, wordtracker, Google insights for search, and other free tools.
There you have it. How many of these affiliate blunders apply to you? What are you doing to build relationships with people who can help you?
This is a guest blog post by Dennis Yu, CEO and Founder of BlitzLocal. Dennis was able to generate over $823,000 in half the month of April this year alone spending hardly over $12,000 to achieve that type of ROI. He is very knowledgeable and is someone I highly respect. Please check out his blog for more useful and insightful tips. Definitely a man in a league of his own.
For those unfamiliar with what affiliate marketing is, please look at this article on wikipedia to get a basic understanding: Wikipedia
I originally grew up in Portland, OR for most of my life and things are very different in Oregon than anywhere else in the US. Now I currently live in San Francisco, CA. I wanted to touch base on some of the major differences. First, as some of you may or may not be aware, Oregon rains about 8-9 months out of the year. It probably rains the most here more than anywhere else in the US, even more so than Seattle, it’s northern neighbor in WA. Second, Oregon is sales tax free. Meaning everything and anything you buy in Oregon does not have any sales tax. Third, its the only state I know where you can’t pump your own gas because legally (or so it goes), its against the law and there is a gas attendant that pumps all the gas for you (every station is full service).
There are millions of other differences but moving to San Francisco is like living in a totally different world. It’s sunny pretty much year round here, the culture and architect is completely different than anywhere else in the US (you almost feel like you live somewhere else), and above all, San Francisco is so expensive to live, that they have their own city rules on top of state rules. For example, there is a 3% health tax you must pay if you dine out that only applies within the city of San Francisco. Coming into the city from either the Golden Gate bridge or the Bay Bridge, you are tolled. So not only living here is expensive, commuting into the city is expensive. Its so spendy that San Francisco is one of two cities in the entire US that has its own minimum wage, at $9.79 currently. The highest state minimum wage in the US is currently at $8.00.
There are a billion other things that make it expensive here but this new rule brought to my attention by Consumerist is fucked up. If you toast your subs at subway, you are charged a tax! If you don’t, you won’t?! What the hell is that. To clarify, I’m not complaining or ranting though it may sound like it. I just find it odd that they would try to find dumb ways to continue charging people stupid fees and taxes in this horrid economy. While I’m doing great, many people aren’t. One less than that hurts people’s wallet is one more step towards helping the economy out.
Random street performers and artists from around the world come together in this wonderful masterpiece to compile one of the best integrated music video I’ve seen. Literally 10 years in the making. Check it.
Just a quick update to my previous blog post. A lot of people starting emailing me, texting me, sending me chat messages, etc… thinking my birthday has already passed. To clarify, its not until March 23rd. That is the true Day of Destiny.
Growing up, I never think much of my birthday. It was just another day of the year, another day of aging. Unfortunately I never wanted to really grow old. At some point years ago, I figured the ideal age I wanted to be is 25. Its a great age to be. You’re not too old to hang with the younger crowd but not too young to hang with the older crowd. Insurance drops for the first time when you hit 25 and for most people, you would have already graduated from college and had time to build your career if you’re not already doing some entrepreneurial things. Life is good at 25. For years I wanted to hit 25 as others were yearning to turn back the clock to be younger. Now I am 25, I don’t want to age anymore but of course that’s not possible.
I am far from achieving all my goals that I wanted to achieve but I am well on track. Life can always get better but I am content to some extent with the way things are. I can’t really complain. With that said, my birthday is fast approaching and I’ll be 26 soon. It never was a significant day. It was just another day of the year where I got older. But all of a sudden things changed drastically and now my birthday has become a day of destiny in my life.
To sum it up, my business partner shares the same birthday. What are the odds that the one person you become business partners with share the same birthday. Some have said it was destiny. I just think its crazy. To make it even more crazy, our flagship product is set to launch the same day although I never intended it that way. Even the company incorporation will share the same birthday. While these things are not that significant, I still think its pretty cool. Maybe it was destiny…