slamboard

I am not going to get into specifics and name names with this post. I just want to relate something to you in the form o a story.

I spend part of my day looking through a plethora of WAH job postings and publishing suitable ones on a website. Some posting that show up in the feeds are obviously scams. Exclamation marks are usually a dead giveaway and, sadly the word legitimate is also a red flag.

Some postings look perfectly good and I only find out when I follow the links that they end up at a site that is just designed to generate adsense money. I was suspicious that some of these postings were copy and pasting text from real jobs elsewhere to be more effective. My suspicions were confirmed when I saw one with a paragraph from OUR site. Grrrr…

This company can provide retailers with gift cards. When placed at a retail point of sale, these cards have been proven to increase impulse purchases.

I used to work at a production plant that had a retail outlet attached to it. I was there long enough to see two or three different refits to the POS. They never did update from a manually organized frequent buyer card to a swipe card. I remember them actually looking through an alphabetized card catalog.

MerchantConsultingGroup.com can set a business up with a gift card system including everything you will need. They have three types of starter packages to match different sizes and types of retailers.

I was intrigued by the statistics on the site. 15% of gift cards are never redeemed. Of the 85% that are redeemed, 90% of the customers spend well over the amount on the card. These facts are obviously what keeps MerchantConsultingGroup.com in busy, but retailers get to share in the bounty. The fact that I have been aware of ever since my smart spouse pointed it out is that the revenue from the gift cards comes in well ahead of when the product goes out the door. In a large retailer this is another advantage to the bottom line.

I had an interest in a certain minor web celebrity over the course of the last couple of years. I just recently took note of the fact that I was ignoring him. That made me start thinking about how you can do something that works as far as entertaining people and generating traffic and you can think you are doing everything right and then ***POOF*** your audience disappears.

I think a lot of the time the forces behind this phenomenon are beyond our control.

I think the weird story line that seems to be going on on lonelygirl15 is a desperate attempt to avoid the downward trend. I don’t watch, but the titles and thumbnails are enough to show the desperation pretty clearly.

I will preface this post with the admission that I am too much of a wuss to try to make money by trading options. Having said that, I can get excited about the concepts.

OEXOptions.com has a mentoring system. The landing page intrigued me. I liked how the site is willing to lay out the strategies by way of examples. A detailed explanation of a sound geometric approach to profitable option trading is right there.

The examples given make a lot of sense to me. I don’t know if traders are as organized and decisive as the pretend trader in the example. I would guess that mentors must deal will new investors that are tempted by a let it ride mentality. I am reminded of Homer’s investment in pumpkin futures. He had watched the stock rise all October and extrapolated a huge windfall sometime in January. If he had had a mentor, he may have been told otherwise.

The Black Opp known as Subvert and Profit admits to having suffered a setback when many of its users had their Digg accounts suspended for misuse.

They are not deterred though, the recent post in their blog states that 70% of its users are back in business with new accounts.

If Disney wasn’t such a bear about copyright, I would have used the picture of Winnie attributing all his troubles to his love of honey. The method that Digg used to find the subversive users is commonly referred to as a Honey Pot.

ELTLearn.com has special training to help ESL students work on their accent. I am a native speaker of English, but I found out after a transcontinental relocation that my accent is not easily understood by many fluent English speakers. I have worked on moderating it as much as possible, but I still visit the best pizza joint in town in person rather than phoning in my order. I am from the East Coast of Canada.

Being clearly understood is only one reason to want to improve/change your accent. If you are competing for jobs or business, you may have to worry about people making harsh judgments about you based on your accent. I am self employed and almost all my important communications are via e-mail. I think the professionals who could benefit from this the most are foreign born doctors. Speak training would improve the efficiency of communication and it would probably translate to a more positive bedside manner.

Spanish language training is another service offered by ELTLearn.com. I am glad that I have taken a short course in Spanish.

I read a blog post recently by someone that got Dugg to Death after publishing a list of their 100 favourite Wordpress themes.

People who are using Digg and other similar services in an effort to drive traffic can either accept the risk of server overload, or they can prepare for it by appending a string from Coral to the URL that they are submitting for digging. This is a peer to peer type of thing that allows you to access cached content from wherever it might exist on the network.

Airgun Depot has the famous Daisy Red Ryder just like in the movie. These replica guns are quite popular, you should get one. If some department store Santa tries to dissuade you, just let him know that Airgun Depot also sells some really stylish and protective goggles.

While I was browsing the site, I learned something. You know those guns that come equipped with a red dot site, so there is a red dot from a laser on the spot where your projectile should make impact? Well I didn’t know that you can make adjustments to these things to compensate for wind and elevation. That is pretty cool. replica guns

I used to use a pump action airgun when I was younger. I can’t for the life of me remember what our favorite target was. Aluminum cans are readily available and they make a satisfying sound when you hit them.

The man in the centre is most probably who George W. Bush is picking as the new Head of the World Bank. Hopefully the dollar won’t drop to a new low of Tuppence a Bag.

His name is Robert Zoellick. He is qualified for the position. The other people in the picture are actors. They were never even shortlisted for the position.

If you own or work in a management capacity for a large employer, you know that tangible rewards can go have a great return on investment. I spent most of my working life as an employee and I can remember a few things that I enjoyed recieving. I took part in an ISO 9000 implementation for one employer. I gave up some weekends and I did some really boring documentation. I liked the jacket. All 200 plus employees had to put up with some extra work as this new process came into effect. We all got embossed pocket knives as a thank you.

I think that in some instances, an accomplishment at work is more deserving of a comemmoration than just a token. GDN is a great source for custom plaques. They are a serious B2B concern and they can source lucite products in large quantities at surprisingly low prices.

The array of promotional items that they can source is astronomical. My recommendation for anyone looking for gifts for clients or employees is a keychain USB data storage stick. If you get text related to your company or product printed on those, it will be noticed. Nobody is going to throw one of those away.