Dwayne Coots

Archive for the ‘Resources’ Category

I’m not famous for losing things. Sure I’ve misplaced a set of keys once or twice but I do chew through eyeglasses at least a couple times a year. And if not lost then they get broken. It’s just the way it is, always running to the next meeting or standing in line. If you wear glasses you know how expensive that can get.

This morning I came across a cool review at fellow Examiner Eric Hammer’s site. It was about a company called Zenni Optical and the details made me click over to their site.

Zenni really has their act together. They offer a huge line of high quality eyeglasses at a discount prices. Their website is easy to navigate, but the show stopper is the selection and price.

One the second page of frames I found a near perfect match for my $250 frames for only $29.00 – I almost cried. So just to go apples to apples I checked the Titanium Alloy category — the reason my frames were so expensive, at least that’s what the salesperson said – and found a flexible titanium set like mine for a whopping $39.00 (they’re model #3742 if you’re curious).

You can compare your frame styles (they have a super selection of sharp looking frames) and you’ll have your glasses delivered in about two weeks. Shipping costs are minimal and if you buy several pair you’ll save even more.

New unemployment numbers out today and somehow the administration has tortured the figures to show a 9.7% unemployment rate. So of course the argument starts and the complaining continues.  It’s hard to have a conversation with anyone lately without the subject turning to no work and lost jobs and what are we going to do? I feel your pain.

But like we talked about earlier, there are still some great ways to make money out there. You can do it on the Internet or you can do it in your home town. For example, one of the coolest ways you can self-employ yourself and work part time while job hunting (if you must) is to set up as a booth, kiosk, or roadside vendor. It’s cheap to get started and you can make some great money.

One very nice company to work with is Moda Sunglasses. They provide nice packs with assortments of high quality wholesale sunglasses you can order and resell for a great markup and still have room to give excellent prices. Check out their site and see the styles and prices and do some thinking about how you could set up to sell these locally or even at online auctions.

Anyway, the world is changing and unless we figure out how to employ ourselves instead of running around trying to fight for the latest crappy job available things are only gonna get worse.

Lisa and I have been with the same car insurance company since we got married 18 years ago. In fact I was with them on my persoanl auto insurance even before that. No tickets, no accidents, good deal.

But it adds up over the years and with all the car insurance commercials on TV and different rates they promise you start to wonder. It does not help that we have never really got a break for being good drivers. Oh sure our rates don’t go up much, but then they have never ever ever went down either. I figure they owe me a free car by now.

So we’re doing the comparison thing to see if we can get some better rates. Particularly since we now have a teenage son behind the wheel. I’ll post the results.

Dwayne

There are few SEO strategies more effective than article marketing. In my ongoing webmaster resources series on article directories, I wanted to spend some quality time looking at A1articles article directory. For several months now the site has been an excellent source of Free content and expert articles I republish to help enhance the quality of the web properties I manage.

On the promotional side of things A1 really kicks because of the tools they provide to experts. Anyone who publishes content to the web knows the tool set is so important to making the most of your time. I also loved the speedy approval process and extra SEO support coded into the directory article and topic pages.

Looking at the content publishing side of the equation, the most important thing I noticed was the ease of use to repub their content. How about this for features?

• Killer RSS grouping
• One click print option
• One click Republish (including HTML and raw text versions!)
• Tag list and SEO freindly titles

So if you need a great source of top drawer free content click over to A1articles.

Getting your site noticed in all the clutter out there is critical. Most webmasters know article marketing is a powerful way to promote your website. With this in mind, I set out to review some of the top article directories and highlight the best ones on the web. No A-list of article directories would be complete without a close look at Article Alley.

Article Alley combines the best features of Article Marketing with the powerful synergy of easy syndication. Webmasters and experts can easily publish articles to their system to promote a site and drive traffic, while at the same time web publishers can syndicate quality content in a snap. We love Article Alley and use their articles on several web properties – both for business and personal sites.

So if you are an expert that wants to use this powerful technique to gain traffic and authority, or if your a busy web publisher who needs to beef up your content, Article Alley is the tool for you. Check em out: Article Alley