How to Mail Christmas Cookies

 

One of my favorite gifts to receive during the Christmas holidays is something straight from the oven.  The more goodies, the better, I say!  But I’ve never received anything baked, through the mail.  And I’ve never sent anything perishable by mail either.  Not because I don’t think it’s a great idea, but because I always wondered if something baked would make it intact, and if it would taste good when it got to its destination. 

Well, I found a great article at AllRecipes.com that gives the scoop on mailing cookies, so I might just have to mail out a goody or two this year.  Here’s what I found out:

• Some cookies survive the mail better than others.  Cookies with custard or custard-like fillings apparently don’t do so well.  This includes cheesecake bars and the like.  Apparently, a modicum of firmness is required for mailing.  Also, (and this should be obvious) don’t mail cookies that require refrigeration.  Finally, skip the delicate cookies with a very crumbly texture.  

• Biscotti, Mexican wedding cakes, crisps, and shortbreads all mail well.  So do cookies with a slightly chewy texture, such as oatmeal cookies and chocolate chip cookies.  But these types of cookies need to arrive within a week, so if their destination is far off, ship them express mail.  Dense bars, such as fudge brownies, blondies, and peanut butter bars do well, as long as you individually wrap each one in plastic wrap to keep it moist. 

The Basics:

• Make sure you’ve thoroughly cooled your cookies before packing them.  Don’t pack crisp and soft cookies together.  The moisture will transmit to the crispies, making them less than crispy.  
• Don’t overpack your container, but don’t underpack either.  Underpacking leads to jostling, which leads to broken cookies.  Make sure they’re snug, even if you need to stuff a little tissue paper into the container.  
• Line the bottom of your container with bubble wrap, then parchment paper or cellophane, leaving just enough to tuck over the top.  Layer cookies, then a piece of parchment, then cookies…you get the picture.  
• When the container is full, tuck the cellophane or parchment over the cookies.  Then place one more piece of bubble wrap over the cookies and seal the container tightly.  Make sure your container is airtight.

That’s it!  Now imagine the look of surprise and delight on the face of the recipient of your Christmas goodies! 

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Referrer Detector WordPress Plugin

Many bloggers and website owners like to greet visitors coming from specific websites with a tailored message. There are many plugins that will make this for you on WordPress, but a cool one that I came across recently is called Referrer Detector.

It basically allows you to create messages that will be displayed to visitors that come to your website from a specific place, say Digg.com or Google. Right after installing the following places will already have a custom message:

• 9 rules
• Del.icio.us and Delicious.com
• Digg
• Gizmodo
• Google Search
• Lifehacker
• Live Search
• Reddit
• StumbleUpon
• TechCrunch
• Technograti
• TechRadar
• Twitter
• Yahoo Search

The plugin also comes with many customization options, including the ability to select if you want the message to be displayed before or after the posts (which is something I found problematic on related plugins).

Finally, there are many things that you could accomplish with this piece of code. For example, you could display an advertising box with AdSense just for the visitors coming via Google search, which would increase your CTR and remove the annoyance for loyal visitors at the same time.

Referrer Detector WordPress Plugin

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Work from Home Freelance Writing Finance Content

Nevistas Network is seeking someone to write 25 articles on various topics in the finance industry.  Pay is $20 per 300 to 400-word article.  All articles would need to be completed within a two-week timeframe.  Topics will be provided. 

These articles will be syndicated across the Internet.  If interested, send an example of your writing to: frankiefin@gmail.com.  This job is unresearched, so do your own due diligence. Good luck!

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My Baby Shower Favors Seeking Work at Home Customer Service/Order Manager

 

My Baby Shower Favors, LLC is seeking a customer service/order manager to work from home.  It appears from the ad, however, that you must live near their Marlton, NJ location. 

You  must have good communication skills, problem-solving skills, and be able to multitask.  You must be computer literate with strong experience in MS Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, and HTML.  Experience in Dreamweaver and FTP is a plus. 

This is likely a salaried position.  Compensation will be based upon experience and ability.  If interested in this position, visit the employment application page for more info and a link to the job application and pre-interview questionairre. 

Frankly, I would consider applying for this position even if you don’t live directly in the Marlton, NJ area, because since phone work can be done from anywhere these days, the company may consider a candidate from outside the area.  Good luck!

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Blogging Idol 2: Update Five (Winners of the Voting Session)

The open voting session was closed yesterday at midnight, and we already have the 3 winners (each of them wins 1 point). They were:

1. http://www.tofugu.com/ with 548 votes
2. http://www.happyschoolsblog.com/ with 514 votes
3. http://www.suzannefranco.com/ with 453

It was interesting to follow the evolution of the polls. HappySchoolsBlog.com and Tofugu.com were leading from the beginning, but the competition for the 3rd place was pretty tough. HeroesTelevision.com was taking that point until the very last day, when SuzanneFranco.com managed to pass its number of votes by mere 23.

Some people could argue that the bigger blogs would have an insurmountable advantage on the open voting session, but Suzanne Franco proved that this was not the case. She started the competition with 52 RSS subscribers, and her traffic is still much smaller than many of the other competitors. Still she managed to get a number of votes that was larger than many of the big guys.

Tomorrow at midnight we will know the blog that will have the largest subscriber gain, and on Monday (December 1st) the 3 judges will cast their votes.

Who will be the next Blogging Idol? Stay tuned for the post on Monday!

Blogging Idol 2: Update Five (Winners of the Voting Session)

Visit the original post at: Daily Blog Tips

Work at Home as a Research Consultant for Mintel

 

Mintel is in the process of building its network of freelance research consultants.  This is a telecommute position that can be done from anywhere in the world.  You must be fluent in English and have a computer with Internet access.  As a research consultant, you might be asked to visit local libraries to research relevant information.  You may be asked to do some market analysis or report writing on your findings. 

Some research may involve interviewing over the phone, and some may involved doing on-site store checks.  If you are interested in being entered into Mintel’s database as a potential researcher, forward your resume to: freelancer@mintel.com.  You will be contacted when a position matches your location and experience.  Good luck!

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Blogging Questions & Answers 27

Happy Thanksgiving for you guys that celebrate it (I know it was yesterday…). Another set of questions and answers is live.

If you want to ask a question you just need to leave a comment below with it.

1. James asks:

I run a podcast via a blog. I just started moving into video and I am now concerned that I have to many images, too many icons, and too many videos on the blog. Is there a chance I’ve overcrowded my blog?

I took a brief look on your blog and it does not look overcrowded to me. I think expanding beyond articles is interesting, especially if you have the time and skills to make cool podcasts and video posts. Very few bloggers do that, so it can become a unique selling proposition too.

The only thing that I would make sure is that your navigation clearly separates the three things. For example, you could have 3 main navigation tabs, one for “Blog”, one for “Podcats” and one for “Videos.” That one a visitor could reach the part of your site that he likes quickly and effortlessly.

2. Satish asks:

Is there a way to build automated link exchange system?
Ex:- If A and B exchange link.
A’s link on B’s website will be there until B’s link remains on A’s website.

I would like to do link exchange with some people, but I can’t keep monitoring whether they remove my link at any time, it should be handled automatically. Th

First of all I recommend exchanging links only with relevant websites, and for the purpose of adding value to the user experience and not to manipulate Google’s rankings.

If you follow that route, therefore, you would find yourself partnering with a handful of websites at most. On that case it becomes easy to monitor them once a month (even if you have 10 sites to check it will take 5 minutes).

The only scenario where you would need an automatic system is where you trade links with dozens or hundreds of sites, but this is something that might get you in trouble in the end so I would avoid.

Finally, I am not aware of any automatic system, but it should be possible to build one with PHP.

3. Transcriptionist asks:

What should be the optimal bounce rate? What is the minimum bounce rate that you think can be achieved? What were the bounce rates at the beginning of your blogs and what are the numbers now? How much did you target for your blogs at their inception, and have you been able to achieve it and if yes, how?

Apart from your own experiments and results in this regard and compelling content, what are other tips and techniques that you would suggest to bring the bounce rate down? Elaborate every little aspect in detail by dedicating a separate post for this topic please, as we all know the significance of controlling bounce rates arises from user behavioral tracking by major search engines and its subsequent effects on SERPs.

An optimal bounce rate is below 15%, but keep it in mind it is very hard to achieve that. The minimum that you could have without needing to spend a huge amount of time and energy on the tweaking process is probably around 25% is 30%.

I am not sure what my bounce rates were on the beginning of my blogs were because I didn’t use to check on them. Even today I don’t check bounce rates that often or for the blog as whole. Usually I just work with bounce rates on commercial projects, sales and landing pages.

As for optimizing sites for low bounce rates, I am working on a long and structured article on the topic. It will be part of my next project, so stay tuned for that.

4. Rick asks:

What’s your take on having a companion newsletter for your blog? (You don’t seem to offer one so perhaps that speaks volumes.) People swear by it, but I’m trying to understand why you wouldn’t just put all your content on the blog and skip the newsletter.

If you have the time available I think that having a newsletter to complement your blog is a great idea. Internet marketers swear by email lists because they are the most responsive channel you have, and it has been proven time and time again.

Additionally, I find that a newsletter allow you to build a closer relationship with some of your readers, because an email is more personal than a blog post.

Why not just put all the content on the blog? Well, because some of the content that will be suitable for your newsletter will not be suitable for the blog and vice versa. Suppose you want to give people a sneak peek into your latest project. A blog post would broadcast it beyond your control, while with the newsletter you could be sure about how many people would get to known your news, how they could share or act upon it and so on.

5. Ad Pr New York asks:

What are the best traffic stats to use?

Looking for one that is full featured and accurate.

Detailed referrers and demographics are important

Google Analytics is definitely the most robust and feature rich web analytics program out there. It is also free, so you can’t go wrong by giving it a try.

Sometimes it will report underestimated traffic numbers, but the difference will be small, and much more realistic than the rest of the trackers out there that always over estimate numbers.

6. Simon asks:

1) How do I block an IP address that is spamming my blog frequently and consistently with useless comments and links to non-Google approved sites? It seems like there is some bot auto-posting spam comments.

2) Is there a way that in the page navigation of a blog we can make a link to an outside page? Would this be done through altering the header.php to include another link or through the manage pages section in admin?

1) You can block his name internally on WordPress. Just go to “Settings,” then “Discussion,” and you will find a blacklist box there. Alternatively you can also block his IP with a .htaccess file if your server runs on Apache. You just need to insert the following code on the .htaccess file (changing the IP address obviously):

order allow,deny
deny from 200.20.2.1
allow from all

2) Yes you can do this. Basically you would need to delete the code that calls the page links automatically from WordPress and add the links manually. Once you have that you can add a link to whatever site you wish.

7. Netpreneur asks:

I have a plan to make a blog with forum inside, what are characteristics of content for blog and forum?

The blog content will be generated by you (or by other authors that you will hire), while the forum content will be generated by the members. You might be present and active on the forum, but unless many other people are too, it will become a ghost forum.

What I recommend is to work first on the blog, make it popular and build a community around it. Once you have that accomplished, then you launch the forum to support the lateral discussions that might arise from the blog posts.

Blogging Questions & Answers 27

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How To Market Your Website Without The Help Of Search Engines And Offline Marketing?

You may have done up a very beautiful website. So what’s next? You’ll usually think of some expenditure that you have to pay to bring in that market. You’ll think of paying tv commercials, newspapers advertisements, or even how to get to the top in search engines. You’ll think of both paid search results as well as organic search results. All these ways can truly bring in some results. But can they help you to bring in tremendous results?

Many internet marketeers tend to do joint ventures. That’s the way they can almost instantly make a fortune out of it. That’s how it made them survive through the internet empire. Do you do joint ventures? The internet is actually a place of collaboration. It’s not about competing over each other’s products. In fact, your competitors are your best complimentary marketing partners you can leverage on!

Joint venture will almost never happen between competitors. That’s because the traditional media has made them that way. They like to talk about market share.. While the people in internet talk about sharing the market! At least, it won’t happen for now in my very understanding.

The moment an MNC starts to joint venture with another competitive MNC, i believe we will start to see a whole new chapter about marketing which the internet has been trying to foster.

That’s also the very reason that we’ll almost never see them going to succeed in internet.

Marketing on the internet is a lifelong choice. We should not see a web community being built just because the company is holding a temporary campaign. This database is the key to market without having to spend more money, trying to look for them again. In fact, we should think of search engine as a complimentary to bring our marketing to the next level.

The moment we see more traffic coming from the search engine, we’ll see our success is drawing very near.

Why spend too much money on another media such as tv and radio when you can focus on the same media, i.e internet?

Just think about it..

Visit the original post at: Charles Lau dot Com

Work-from-Home Opp: Writing Product Descriptions for Shopping Site

An unidentified organization is seeking to hire several “qualified and efficient” writers.  You will be writing product descriptions for a shopping website.  Compensation is on a per product or per word basis, and depending upon the number of descriptions written, can vary from 5 cents to 10 cents per word, with bonuses for those able to complete more than 100 descriptions per week, when they are available. 

You must reside within the U.S.  If interested in learning more about this opportunity, contact: job-933872275@craigslist.org.  This job is unresearched, so please do your own due diligence.  Good luck!

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Website Traffic Series Part 20: Leveraging Holidays and Big Events

Christmas, thanksgiving, the summer Olympic games, the U.S. presidential elections, you name it. For most people those are holidays where they rest and hang out with family and friends, or big events that they watch on television. For website owners and Internet marketers, however, those are great traffic generation opportunities!

The concept: The Internet is already the main source of information around the world. Kids, teens, workers, and even grand parents now turn to the web when they need to find something. On big holidays and events those folks will concentrate their attention, and if you manage to get your website or blog aligned with what they are looking for you might end up receiving huge traffic.

Suppose you have a website about cooking and recipes. On thanksgiving you could publish a series of posts explaining how to cook a turkey on other recipes that people could make on their homes. Depending on the quality of the content and on your promotional efforts you could attract many visitors with such a series.

Does it work?: Yes, and many webmasters and marketers exploit this trend year after year. There are basically two channels that you might tap into: search engines and social media.

For the first one, you would need to perform some keyword research, and then publish targeted and optimized articles. The success of this route will depend on the overall authority of your website and on the backlinks that your articles will receive. If you manage to rank for a popular keyword on one of those events, however, the result would be a huge and profitable influx of traffic.

The second channel is social media, and in order to get exposure there you would need to get creative with your content. Lists and funny stuff always perform well on those sites.

How to get started: If you want to use this strategy, the first thing that you need to do is to create a list of holidays or events that are related to your niche. Here is a small list with some of them:

• New Year’s Day (January 1st)
• U.S. Independence Day (July 4th)
• Thanksgiving (November 27th)
• Christimas (December 25th)
• Summer Olympic Games
• Winter Olympic Games
• FIFA World Cup
• Presidential Elections

Once you know the holidays or events that you are going to target it is just a matter of preparing the content. You can get creative here and use articles, songs, quizzes, videos and so on.

Wait until a couple of days before the event and publish it. Know if your target is organic or social media traffic and promote it accordingly.

Gather the results, analyze what worked and what didn’t work, and repeat the next year (or after 4 years).

Over to the readers: Have you tried to leverage big holidays and events to generate traffic? How did it work out?

Website Traffic Series

• Part 1: Web Design and CSS Galleries
• Part 2: Blog Carnivals
• Part 3: Leave Comments on Other Blogs
• Part 4: Faking A Website Sale
• Part 5: Pulling an April Fools Prank
• Part 6: Using Forum Signatures
• Part 7: Putting A Blog on Your Static Website
• Part 8: Adding a Forum to Your Site or Blog
• Part 9: Buying Targeted Traffic
• Part 10: Email Signatures
• Part 11: Put Your URL On Online Profiles
• Part 12: Email Bloggers to Showcase Your Best Content
• Part 13: Faking a Hacker Attack
• Part 14: Promoting Your Content on Social Bookmarking Sites
• Part 15: Promoting Posts That Link to You on Social Bookmarking Sites
• Part 16: Promoting Your Content on Social Networking Sites
• Part 17: Using Article Directories
• Part 18: Exchanging Links with Partner Sites
• Part 19: Using Cross Feed Promotion

Website Traffic Series Part 20: Leveraging Holidays and Big Events

Visit the original post at: Daily Blog Tips