Have A Great Memorial Day

For you readers who are not U.S. citizens, thank you for your patience and please indulge us who are here. Today is Memorial day for us and it is surely recognized by us. It's a day where we as a nation, take a moment and thank the men and women who have given everything for our great country. It is often times easy for the true meaning of this day to get lost in the excitement of Summer starting along with picnics and cookouts. But please do not lose sight of the day's real meaning. Most of the things all of us enjoy today, we are doing so because those before us made selfless sacrifices. Today I am posting some words by Father Dennis Edward O'Brien below that says it all.

Happy Memorial Day

WHAT IS A VET?

Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye. Others may carry the evidence inside them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg - or perhaps another sort

of inner steel: the soul's ally forged in the refinery of adversity. Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem. You can't tell a vet just by looking.

What is a vet?

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armored personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel.

He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.

She or he is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang.

He is the POW who went away one person and came back another. Or didn't come back AT ALL.

He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each other's backs.

He is the parade-riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand.

He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.

He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean's sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket palsied now and aggravatingly slow who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.

He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being, a person who offered some of his life's most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.

He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known.

So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say Thank You. That's all most people need, and in most cases it will mean more than any medals they could have been awarded or were awarded.

Two little words that mean a lot, "THANK YOU."

"It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag."

Father Dennis Edward O'Brien, USMC

A Couple Of Videos & A Wordpress Plugin

Today I ran across a couple of informative videos from Sean Donahoe and his Firestorm SEO project. I believe his strategies program is available for sale on June 1st. When you opt in to get the free videos though instantaneously, you will kind of get a sense of what the tactics he teaches in them. I will say that regardless, you will learn some useful information in the free videos. The first is an interesting slant at uncovering some keyword phrases using the Google Adsense tool and the Google SKTool The second video covers training and use of the SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2 Wordpress plugin. I must admit that I have not run across this free plugin before myself, but it has some interesting uses.

Only So Many Ways To Say Some Things

The old duplicate content argument is starting to resurface again in relation to ranking in the SERPS. When dealing with product descriptions, you will often see the same stock description show up on several retailer sites. It is not uncommon to even see them on Amazon. Is it OK to use this duplicate content on your site? Sure, I guess, as long as the original source is allowing it. Which most do. If you were to build a complete site though with all duplicate content, it will be very hard to stand out in the SERPS ranking wise. I know there are only so many ways to say something is black and goes 55 mph. If you must use stock product descriptions, try to add something else unique to the page as well. Perhaps also a video or some product ratings. Try to make the full contents of the page be different than any other page out there. Yes. Even if it all is duplicate content. Tons of sites make a living off of aggregating content. Take Mahalo.com for example. I will say though, you stand a better chance the more unique you are. Even if this means spinning something with the Best Spinner. Try to put together pages of content that can not be found elsewhere and yet give the surfer what they are looking for. It is not so much the duplicate content that kills you, than it is the fact that no pages on your domain have uniqueness. Get creative, even if you are using SOME duplicate content. In all honesty though, the more original content you have on site, the better it is for all involved.

Incansoft 50% Off Memorial Day Weekend Coupon Code

Many of you have heard me mention the software of Michalis "BIG Mike" Kotzakolios and his company Incansoft. I own several of his products and for the next 3 days you've got an opportunity to grab any products in the Incansoft catalog for 50% off the retail price...until midnight Monday. To obtain the discount, just visit the catalog and enter coupon code HONOR in the text box above the Add To Cart button. As you add each product the discounted pricing will appear in your shopping cart. After you complete your transaction, you will receive an email with the download instructions and Registration Key. If you buy anything, buy the GFX Video Writer. It is a great program for newbies to veterans.

The Perfect Amazon Product

Let me start by saying this is no way scientific. It is merely a surface observation I have done from my own sites that I sell products from Amazon. It by no certainty mean you still can not color outside the lines.

The sites I have the most success with sell products that are in the $50-$150 range and those same items can not be found down at the local Wal-Mart. How is that for a broad range? Also based on 4% earnings per product sold, you can see that it does not take many sales for a site to earn it's keep so to speak. You will also find that most of these type products are easily shipped as well in this price range.

Does this mean you still can not sale hand held hair dryers because you can find them at Wal-Mart? Absolutely not. Research the niche. Some woman prefer a certain watt or brand of hair dryer. Just do your research, the answer is there.

Most people complain about the short Amazon cookie life, but I am here to tell you that if your site shows the product the surfer is looking to buy and it is the right price, you will have no problem converting them. This goes for most any product and any affiliate program. Some businesses do a better job closing the sale then others, but as affiliate marketers it is not hard to track who those are if you monitor your clicks closely.

Sometimes You Get Surprised

A while back I built a site using the Commission Ritual method and used a niche that I was sort of suspect about. Now let me say I did enough research on the niche to know it would be a moderate constant earner, but had no idea it would catapult into one of my top 10 monthly earners. The site has only 10 product pages and 5 articles. It was built as I said using the Commission Ritual formula, which is just one of many ways I build niche sites. The backlink building was a modest effort and the site only has 3 keyword phrases ranked in the top 3 Google results according to it's stats. What the site does do is convert. Mostly through Amazon using the PHPZon plugin. The site also shows 3 eBay results per product, but most shoppers seem to fine with being shipped off to Amazon. The site converts nearly 25% of it's Amazon clicks. That is an unreal conversion rate for sure. I plan on devoting more time to it now and go back and add about 20 more pages of product and content over the next 2 weeks. It just goes to show that some niches you think will be golden egg laying geese, lay modest scrambled eggs, while some you think may be marginal, blow the roof off. You don't know until you build it. The beauty of this business is you are only 8 bucks away from your next site. Ain't it great!

Great Content Still Gets The Best Kind Of Backlinks

It is a lesson that needs repeating often. So many try to avoid it, but the fact remains that great content will get your site the best backlinks in the shortest amount of time. Through the revamping of several of my own websites recently, I have focused on thickening up thin sites from the early days with great original content. Of course after adding this great content I promote the hell out of it through whatever social media I can in order to try to get it in front of as many eyes as possible. Many times it results in backlinks given unconditionally on like sites. Not all the time mind you, but more times than not. I target low hanging keyword fruit as well, which makes MOST of the articles easy to rank.

I can speak from experience that it does not take long for these type of backlinks to boost you tremendously in the rankings as these links usually come from more authoritative types of sites and carry heavy weight. It could be a forum post link or blog post. Regardless these links can juice a whole site inside and out. If you struggle with building backlinks unnaturally, concentrate on adding more great targeted content to your site. I promise it will not hurt you and only help in more ways than one. It has been proven time and time again, but many choose to ignore it as fact.