It all started for me with the creation of the iPod. To that point in my life I hadn’t had my own portable MP3 player, I had been using a hand me down Walkman that my brothers no longer wanted as they upgraded their mobile music devices. I was instantly intrigued by the device as I started to see them popping around my school. It was so different than any other mobile music product that had ever been created – it was a creative solution to housing and playing music in the rapidly emerging digital music market.

I got my iPod and then the iPhone 2.0 came out – I had to have it – and so I did. The iPhone was a complete game changer from the very beginning and the team at Apple has only continued to amaze with what they have been able to do with that phone.

Technological advances aside – the real inspiration for me was seeing how well Steve Jobs and Apple commanded the respect of the industry, the buzz that it created around it’s products, and the constant attention that it’s brand received over these past 10 years. At least in my life, I have yet to see another brand that captivated it’s audience so well. Steve personally inspired me with his love for his work and his life. Watching the Apple events (which have been known to crash websites) was just so inspiring to see how much he truly enjoyed his work.

Steve Jobs is a man who I will truly miss – only time will tell how much his life impacted the technology sector. I pray for peace and comfort to be brought to his family and loved ones and I am just happy to have been alive to watch his story unfold. Here’s to Steve Jobs – Rest In Peace. To end this Friendship Friday I want to leave you with the words from Steve Jobs speaking to Stanford in 2005. My favorite portion of this speech comes around 08:11.

I launched this website back in 2008 not knowing where it would lead. If you’ve followed me from the very beginning you know that we’ve covered just about every major topic in business and internet marketing that you can think of. One day an ex-coworker complimented me on how smart I was for “self branding” myself with this website. At the time, I didn’t quite know it, but that’s exactly what it ended up doing for me.

In the past few months while my amount of posts has diminished – business has been growing astronomically. We went from just a name on paper to serving clients all over the country in just a few short months.

I wanted to write to update all of you and to say thank you for all of your support, all of your kind words, and for just reading. I take what I do very seriously and it is nice to have readers who also take their work seriously.

That’s all for now – please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or ideas that you think we can help with. Till next time…

Yesterday 4/30/2010 was my last day at eRetailing. It was a really bittersweet day for me. It was time to move away from the colleagues and friends that I had and move on to take over the web presence of The Flag Lady. With this new position come a lot of great challenges and exciting opportunities for growth. It was something that I needed to do not only for myself but also for the family business.

I am going to miss everyone at eRetailing very much but I am very confident that they will continue to succeed in all aspects of internet marketing. If you take a look at some of their web properties you’ll see just what I’m talking about. You can find all sorts of great deals on CustomizedGirl.com, BridalPartyTees.com, and their newest and most exciting venture CustomizedGraphics.com. They were a great company to work for and I won’t ever forget the great things I learned while working with them. Thanks for everything.

I can not tell you how great it has been for me to hear from all of you and hear how much my writing means to you and how the things that I’ve shared have helped you in one way or another. I believe that the internet is the single greatest communication device ever created (DUH!) and I am happy that I have been able to inspire some of you to try new things, but more importantly to continue your studies as an internet marketeer.

In closing for today, I just wanted to say thanks again to all of you, your support has been overwhelming to me. Until next time…hit the books.

A lot of online businesses have embraced how powerful the blogging community has become and how great a blogger can be at helping sell your products to a target market. One of the tactics that we use is to contact a blogger from one of our niche’s ask them if they’d like to review our product, and then we sponsor a contest in their honor. Well when they are reviewing the product, now they’ll have to make it blatantly obvious that they are receiving the item they are reviewing for free.

We never ask for a good review, we specifically ask them to be honest in their review of the product, and to tell all of their readers exactly how they feel. It’s a risk we take that they may or may not like the product. With this new FTC lock down on testimonials it is going to significantly hurt a portion of our revenue model, in an already down economy. Now we have been doing online commerce for years now, so chances are we’re going to survive, but what about all of the others who are just getting online, also trying to run successful businesses, and are already feeling the crunch of these poor economic times? They are going to be the ones really hurt by all of this. This is just another example of how government regulation in business does a lot more harm than it does good.

This is just my opinion. I feel very strongly about this issue and I’d love to hear what each of you think about it. In a time when sales are very hard to come by for almost EVERY industry, the government wants to make it even harder to sell. It’s just bad for business and bad for capitalism.
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This is a trend we’ve been seeing for awhile now (not just this administration). In my opinion it needs to be brought to a screeching halt.

Think of it like this, before when you made a posting on your Facebook Page, or a status update that you really wanted everyone to have a chance to see, it was quickly pushed to the bottom of the pile by other status updates from other users. Now, your page updates, (contests, blog posts, and promotions) will still be able to be seen for a much longer time. This is about the single greatest thing that Facebook could have added for business promotions.

From what I can tell their doesn’t appear to be any real algorithm for success just yet for how to make it into these news feeds, even the Facebook Blog post at the end says “Raylene, a Facebook engineer, hopes this blog post made its way into your News Feed.” I guess it is once again even more important for you to post a lot of interesting content in order to reach your audience effectively. Good luck!

The Best Internet Marketing Blog Carnival will have everything from SEO, PPC, Social Media, Linkbuilding, and other Internet marketing news. I am starting this carnival because I believe it is important for each of you to find the best tips possible from as many sources as possible. As you know I always preach about how you should continue to learn, and seek out information. I hope that this blog carnival will bring a lot of great new ideas to all of you. Thanks everyone, now get out there and start reading and learning some more!

I think that this gentleman actually makes a compelling argument, even worse I think that some of our lawmakers might feel the same way. Could this be the potential knockout punch for affiliate networkers? It’s got me a little bit worried. I don’t know what the rest of you are thinking but I’d be very interested in finding out.

Below is a screen shot of the image from the original post:

United Airlines, American Airlines, Delta are all going to offer wifi service on their flights. The wifi connections are probably going to cost a little bit of money but if any of you have been as frustrated as I have that I could not access the internet in the air you’ll be willing to pay a solid amount just to be able to get work done. The wireless service will be based off of the aircell telephone technologies that were introduced to airplanes about 15 years ago.
Southwest Airlines is in the meantime looking into offering a satellite based internet connection. While they have not unleashed any official plans to bring internet connections to the air they are in the process of testing.

Obviously with 9/11 and the collapse of the air travel industry following those events, it wasn’t high on the priority list. But in this fast paced world of constant communication it is about time that they got some connections to their airplanes.

The pricing structure will likely be similar to some major airports in the country which are based on a per flight connection rate. The price is not yet known but it would seem to me they would be able to make their money back in ticket sales and added flight value in a very short amount of time.

My best bet would be that they will charge around $5 per flight to use the internet. I love and have to be connected at all times, so to me that is a fair price, but for the shorter flights that might be a bit steep. Either way, I am extremely excited about the news and I am betting that all of you are as well.