This past weekend Natalie Gublis became a rolex first time winner in the Evian Masters. Natalie won by 2 strokes over Jeong Jang and puts her in stride to play in the first ever St. Andrews Golf tournament. This is a historic moment for womens golf as this is the first the Old Course at St. Andrews will play host to a womens major championship. Nike and Adidas’s golf apparel ladies shorts and shoes are sure to get a big boost since the top players like Natalie and Michele Wie will be sporting their latest fashions while taking on the challenge of St. Andrews. We saw what it did to players like Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia when the men played there last week..
Archive for July, 2007
29
Jul
Golf Apparel
28
Jul
Finding the right agent
We have written about different types of real estate agents in the past and differences among some of the different companies. The tough part is finding a real estate broker in your area that is knowledgeable and tuned into your specific needs. Most of us who have sold a home and dealt with a real estate agent can probably tell stories of how the only thing that they provided was a sign in your front yard. Which this sign ended up costing you 6% of your selling price. The key is to find a certified sellers agent that only represents you the seller. So to lessen any conflict of interest and provide you with better representation. You can find a list of local seller agents at sites like gmacrealestate.com. You will be glad that you did a little research up front to save you the frustration in the selling process.
We have started this page to help communicate our upcoming 20 year class reunion. We will be using this blog as well as Classmates.com to provide updates and communicate with our classmates. Please post a comment with your email address so that we can notify you of updates. We will be adding features to this page in order to help you get regular updates.
27
Jul
Range Hoods reviewed
No matter if you are remodeling or buying new the kitchen is one key area that you should focus on. It is the area that most people will spend their time and the look and functionality can make or break your experience. Nowadays many kitchens are being designed with range hoods and stainless steel appliances. This gives the kitchen a professional look and overall finished look.There are many styls to choose from like this island range hood, or you can choose an under the cabinet look if your range is mounted against the wall. So now when you have friends over for dinner it will look like you are a great cook.
27
Jul
Vintage looks
I was shopping for some new clothes and noticed that the vintage look is back in style. It seems that the older and beat up the shirts and jeans look the more they can be sold for. I still cannot get over buying a pair of shorts that have holes and minor cuts in them because this is the in look. The vintage fabrics that are available are comfortable and I must admit that I have purchased a few items that my parents would cringe to see what I have paid. Even some of the clothes that my dad kept around is now back in style and people are paying top dollar for this look. So new is out and vintage is in so break out the old levis as they are back in style.
27
Jul
Outdoor cooking
It is almost like having your own outdoor kitchen where people gather to eat and socialize.
26
Jul
Capture the memories
I found that most of them ran off an SD card or other type of memory card to hold the pictures.
Just watching the nightly news tonight and they were profiling Miami and the potential condo bust and the trickle effect that it has on the rest of the area. The builders put up condos based on the potential market and now are having to sell off their remaining inventory at steep discounts. The real estate market varies from state to state and it all depends on the surrounding environment.In the Wilmington NC real estate market they are enjoying a more sustainable growth and the market is holding it’s value better than most other markets. This could be due to the fact that smaller markets are generally last to feel any effects of larger national downturns as they maintain a more manageable inventory of homes.
25
Jul
Student loans
Many of us that have completed our degrees did so by taking student loans.Most student loans do not come due until after you have been out of school for a few years. This can present a challenge for some who have forgotten about their debt and are now faced with 10’s of thousands in student loans. There are many companies that offer student loan consolidation that allows you to combine your debt into one lower monthly payment. This can be helpful to extend your payments and help you to manage the money owed.
The business world is shrinking everyday thanks to high speed internet, video, and web casting. It is now become even more important to be diverse in your language and understanding of other cultures. Being able to speak in multiple languages can also help in your career if you are employed by a multi-national company. Many organizations are looking for individuals who are culturally diverse and who can easily tranisition across the language barrier.
Enrolling in a English course in London is a great way to quickly get up to speed on a specific language and business culture of the target country you plan to visit or do business in. You can learn Spanish course in London,Italian course in London, German, and other with the help of Language Trainers. They are able to on site training for your organization if you have several employees who will be in need of the training, or structure one on one training for those who may be going overseas for a short term assignment.
23
Jul
Why blog for money?
I have had friends and family ask me what I do with my blogs. I simply reply that they provide an outlet to communicate with others and get paid to write about the things I love. This is the case with a company like PayPerPost. Just the other night we went to a local minor league baseball game and my kids wanted some stuff from the gift shop and I had no hesitation since I had just gotten some payments for work done for PayPerPost. I do not blog for PPP to try and quite my job, but rather have some extra spending cash to provide some extra things for my kids and family.
I have tried to spread some of the knowledge and good fortune with friends and family through blogging. So through the past year I have acquired several domain names and set them up so that some of my friends and family can start their own blogs with a little boost rather than starting all the way from scratch. What a blessing this has been as they have really gotten into the whole blogging scene and the extra cash and knowledge has been a huge help to their families. I look forward to helping others find the world of blogging and creating their own niche and who knows maybe some day I will join the like of PPP as being seen as channel to connect people with things that they love to do.
One of my friends who has done some amazing things is Chris who has several blogs such as SingleSourceWriting.com and MyFavoriteblank.com. The amount of time he has spent keeping these current and making them his own shows what a little enthusiasm and some added knowledge can do. He was recently featured on PPP RockStartup video for a HDTV he won while blogging.
22
Jul
Creating your eCommerce
My online experience started with selling odds and ends on eBay. It seemed like a good way to make some extra money, and so many people were doing it. After a while I started to look at what my actual costs were including time to package, mail, and list items. Was it worth the cost? So I decided there had to be a better way, and I came across a friend who asked if I had tried using a Dropshipper. ( For those unfamiliar with this, it is where a company houses and then ships the goods to your customers. Your customer makes a purchase through you. You then turnaround and place the order with the Dropshipper, and they ship out on your behalf)
WOW! To have no inventory cost, someone else to package and send the goods with your name on it, what could be better?
As I found out there were hundreds of dropshippers, and they all had different policies, so I narrowed the list down.
Now that I had these dropshippers with literally thousands of products, how can I list them, and get them sold. eBay was not option, because every item would cost me a listing fee. So I found similar sites, with good traffic, that did not charge a listing fee, but charged on the actual sale.
Here are two of the ones I use:
iOffer
Live Deal
As my story continues: I was looking for drop shippers (these are companies that will stock the products and then ship to your customers, for a small fee) to help in my online business. I was able to come across Free Store Club. They are actually a business opportunity to have your own online store for free, and then you get a chance to earn additional dollars, if you give away free stores, and those members upgrade. You can also purchase the items at the wholesale costs and resell them. Not a bad way to get started! I signed up for free and listed some of the items, on iOffer, and sold some. Had them shipped and made a little bit of money. Then as I was trying to upload inventory every other week, I thought it would be great if I could just get people to my Rogers eMall store. Then they could see the entire inventory, they would make the purchase, and then I would get paid on the difference between the wholesale cost, and the cost I had listed on my site. The question was how do you get traffic and visibility without spending a lot of money initially? Plus how can I create a secure payment gateway for my customer to pay that was cost effective and secure. Stay tuned for how I found the Traffic Exchange and Banner Exchange business, and actually started my own.
Here are some simple tips to create your own brand and store:
Create your website
Go out and secure a domain name for your store or business and get your own hosting account. There are lots of hosting companies out to choose from so shop around and look for ones that have some high ratings and that offer eCommerce support.
A web designer
There are professional designers who will gladly charge you thousands to build your site from scratch. For most new business owners this is not an option. You may not need the flash animation and fancy graphics. The plus is that most web designers can help you optimize your site for search engines which is another critical piece since most people will use search engines to find products that you may be selling.
Online Site Builder
An online site builder is the budget way to go. With site builder programs such as Site Studio, your website can be online within minutes. A step-by-step menu allows you to choose a layout and colors, and then add a site description, a logo, and content. Your template may not be unique, but your content will.
Now it’s time to Set up an e-commerce store
When your customers find your site and your products they are going to want a way to easily make a purchase. When you set up an e-commerce shopping cart, you’re providing a way for your customers to bring their purchases to the cash register. There are many vendors and choices depending on the size and nature of your inventory.
osCommerce and Miva Merchant, are well know shopping carts and offer some of these features:
They allow you to add, delete products categories and information easily with an integrated database
Receive payment via numerous online and offline payment processing methods which is key to success since only limiting your customer to one payment type may cause them to shop elsewhere.osCommerce is an open source program. Store owners can set up their online stores using osCommerce with no costs involved. For small stores, it has all the features you need for an online store. Drawbacks of osCommerce are that customization is not easy, and online stores using osCommerce tend to look similar.
Step 3: Get a merchant account and payment gateway
When customers arrive at the checkout counter, you need a way for their payments to be transferred from their credit card accounts to your bank account. The method you choose may depend on your sales volume.
For high-volume sales, an e-commerce merchant account plus a payment gateway will meet your needs. A merchant account provider authorizes the transfer of payments to your account, and a payment gateway transfers the information from your customers’ financial institutions to yours.
Here you will want to compare the merchants closely as their fees will vary significantly depending on your average sales volume and content you are selling. At companies like First Data they offer free software, and free services like gateway pages,shopping cart setup, and merchant account setup. Plus they can work in both your online business as well as your off line store.
Fore more details about these options, see WebSite Source Hosting Solutions: E-Commerce.
How to create a secure payment environment
A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate enables you to receive credit card information securely from your customers. When a payment page is using SSL data to encrypt data, a small image of a lock appears at the bottom right of the screen.
Many web hosting companies offer this as part of the eCommerce package so be sure to check this feature out when shopping for a provider.
Step 5: Generate traffic
This can be done through Pay Per Click advertising, link exchanges, and blogging.
22
Jul
Brilliant diamonds
Diamonds are a girls best friend and my wife continues to remind me of this on a yearly basis when our anniversary comes around. One of the best looking diamonds I have seen is the princess cut set in Platinum or white gold. At reeds jewelers they have special cut princess diamond ring that is brilliant in color and really look great. This is their Roberta Z diamond semi-mount that is set in white gold.
20
Jul
Accessories for a cause
In the world of fashion many designers and consumers are shopping with a purpose. For vegetarians and vegans everywhere you now have choice in choice in shoes and bags. 100% Vegan Shoes and Bag for both men and women and the styles that have are quite current. So what can you expect in a total vegan shoe. They are made from faux leather or faux suede and have the look and style of many of todays popular footwear from womens to mens. More and more people are becoming conscious of the types of industry’s that they support and this goes from where you buy your coffee to the shoes that you put on your feet.
An added plus a vegetarianshoesandbags.com they have a strong commitment to their customers and products that they even donate some of the profits back to various animal charities. Thee phrase on their front page is quite interesting” You don’t eat em, so why wear em” This is true for any cause when you ask someone what they are passionate about they want to help impoverished nations but yet they will go out to eat and throw out food that is still edible. Or the most recent events to hit the news with the NFL and Michael Vick. He was charged with being in attendance at a bull dog fight which illegal and cruel. So his punishment was mild, and the group PETA has vowed to boycott the NFL for their light hearted action. I am not sure how many avid football fans are part of PETA, but would you boycott one of your favorite pastimes if someone in that organization did something against your values?
17
Jul
Going old school
There is something great about going retro and having items that you grew up with. When I was in high school the shoes to have were Air Jordans I remember getting my first pair and heading out onto the court I am sure that they helped me to sink the long range three and drive the lane with ease. The psychological effect that a new pair of basketball shoes can have on a young kids game is quite something. At the time they were abuot $75 which we thought was pretty expensive. Nowadays that is the starting price for most kids shoes.
15
Jul
The 411 on sports events
The All Star break has come and gone for Major League baseball and now the fun begins. Baseball is way to long for me to get interested until after the break. The pennant races should be interesting and our home town team, the Seattle Mariners, are positioned to have a great year. We are actually headed to the game at the end of July and were able to get tickets in the 100 level which should be great. For playoffs though it may become more difficult so we are hoping to be able to get in early enough to secure some seats. I know this is wishful thinking and there is a lot of baseball left but it never hurts to dream.
For all your sports event tickets for baseball, football, and other sports get the 411 at Sportstickets411.com . A sports entertainment site with great resources for every sports event nationwide including team and venue history with sports event tickets.
11
Jul
Distance learning
Companies are using distance learning to help train and educate their employees.
One of the faclulites that you will have access to is Sara Orem, faculty member in the online university’s School of Business and Technology, co-authors book titled ‘Appreciative Coaching: A Positive Process for Change’In addition to serving as a faculty member and coach in Capella University’s School of Business and Technology, Orem is the principal of her own coaching firm.
Can you really enhance your Alexa ranking through various widgets, and other means? We are going to try and see what the results are in a few weeks. Watch our journey unfold.
read more | digg story
7
Jul
Finding free stuff
Finding items to buy online is so easy today that even my kids will shop on the internet or do research before asking for something. There are a lot of sites that you can go to find discounts and special bargains. At Mysavings.com they provide a site where you can find Free Samples and Savings on products, and some great deals. For instance when we went to the site today you could find a wireless router for only $5. They also had free samples of folgers coffee which is great if you have not seen the price of coffee lately.
You can even find coupons to may online retailers like Home Depot, Walmart, and BestBuy. They even have a forum where you can communicate with other online shoppers for great deals and bargains. You can search the internet for hours to find the best deal or you can use a central resource like Mysavings.com to save you time and money.
6
Jul
Playing in the mud
I remember when I was a kid and would come in after playing in the dirt and mud and mom yell at us to get outside and wash off before we came in the house. Can you believe that today there are skin care products that are actually made from mud of the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is thought to contain various healing properties and cleansers and so now there is a line of products that contain mud from the sea. I believe that for my mothers birthday I will have to get her a bottle of the Seora Mud Shampoo and see what her reaction will be.