The power of complaining (politely)

Recently someone gave me a generous Amazon gift certificate and I have been ordering items here and there. Unlike my experiences with Ebay, on Amazon the merchants appear to actually care about the customer's experience. One of the items I ordered was a DVD of The Secret. I have and enjoy the book and sometimes it's nice to have positive reinforcement going on in the background, so the DVD playing would be good for that. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the DVD and it wouldn't play past the half-way point. Just as the site recommends; I contacted the seller about the issue before leaving feedback. They apologized and removed the charge right away! Of course, I left good feedback after that. So keep in mind, happy customers are your best advertising.

Goodness me cell phone follies

So I forgot my already missing the back to it phone was in my sweatshirt pocket today and it went crashing to the floor, rendering it inoperable. Damn. Luckily, I had a spare, a cell kindly provided by a friend which had a battery that both fit my phone and made it come back to life. Now I'm just waiting forever it seems for the phone cover I ordered to get here so I don't have to worry about my phone coming to pieces in my hands (or out of my pockets).

In other news, I'm making brownies :-)

Content is king

You hear this phrase all the time when researching search engine optimization. Creating content is key so go with your strengths. I have an account that is very visual in nature, so for that account the content is visual too. I concentrate on creating fresh images, publicize the fact that new images exist and roll out the images in a balanced manner. They entire days work isn't immediately published, this account has an established customer base so I give the current customers the opportunity to buy a slide-show of the best of the day's images while keeping the majority of them off the Web. I chose two or three to use to freshen up different ads. The creation of new visual content then leads to written content as I blog about the new pics and where to get the slide-show.

While I had the model there and ready to go, I also made a Youtube clip to upload to the account's channel. This is called making the most of the client's money and time and creating as much content as possible, now not only does the account have new images to sell and use for promotion, they have a behind-the-scenes type of video clip to promote via Youtube which also links back to their main website. Don't disregard the importance of search for images and videos, it is relatively new as far as companies taking advantage of it for SEO and therefore easier to get to the top of the list.

I bought the Cat Emery board today.

Clipping my cats claws is no picnic so when I read online that these are available in stores I decided to go for it. If you don't know what they are, it is a curved board your cat scratches and is supposed to file down their claws. Great idea, right? Well the jury is still out on whether or not they will use it enough for the intended purpose but I can advise you on one thing. The directions tell you to put the entire bag of catnip, which is included, all over the board to attract the cats to it. Only do this if you know how your cats react to catnip. I put about half of the bag on the board, the whole thing just seemed excessive to me, and my cats went NUTS, fighting with each other and rolling around as if posessed. So, it was an oddly entertaining morning here. I will post again when enough time has gone by to accurately review the item. Also, it was $19.88 at the local Walmart.

Holy lack of privacy Batman!

A colleague tipped me off to a very disturbing website. Type in a name at Spokeo dot com and get WAY too much information. Now, it is hit or miss, alot of info is flat out wrong and somewhat laughable, but still more then should be so easily accessible. To remove yourself from the directory click the 'privacy' link at the bottom of the page, insert the url of your profile and your main email address, complete a 'capatcha' type thing (this seems to have a glitch and keeps refreshing even when you do it correctly), and go to your email to click to 'remove me please' link. Good luck and more privacy to all!

Windy, rainy Friday

Sometimes circumstances challenge even the most positive thinkers to have an off day. This past week was a roller-coaster, awesome economically and challenging on the personal relationship front. As today has been quiet I am reflecting on how to make the best of challenging times. The plan here is to first, take care of myself physically. I developed this through trial and error, one can only booze and overeat it up as a response to stress for so long before you start to feel even more like crap! So rest when you are tired, get regular exercise, some of it outside and eat your veggies so that slip-ups aren't such a big deal.

Update on the Craigslist issue: as long as the ad is worded differently you can contribute an ad daily. No problem! By the way, that cute purse is still available, it is in pristine condition. Any Buffalo-area purse lovers out there, this is the deal for you!

Cute comic

I know just how he feels ;-)

We all need some stress relief

So I'm including a video of the sleepy cat. Happy Weekend everyone!

craigslist

So I created my first Craigslist posting yesterday, and learned today that even though the ad is completely buried that I am not allowed to make a new one today. So, one of today's tasks will be to figure out how to 'work' Craigslist, and when I do (and I will) you all will read about it here. Link to my ad. It's for a cute Dooney purse, giraffe print, so if you are in the Buffalo area and want a deal on a stylish accessory have a peek.

Spam from the name Googlesuccess

Yep, there is a Googlesuccess.net which is the real deal and Googlesuccess.org which is well-known on the complaint sites. My introduction to the spammers came a couple of hours after posting an item for sale on Craig'slist. I received an email from who I thought was an interested party and when I responded with my phone number (DOH!) an auto-response came back. Here is what was sent to me.

"Elaine Pettaway"

You don't have to sell this so cheap...

I used to sell stuff on CL just like you were doing to pay my bills. I was really getting ripped off by selling stuff so cheap. A friend of min told me about this website I should look at, and I made about $4000 from it last month... I'm doing better than I was at my regular job... If I can do it, you can. Visit http://googlesuccess.org

If you need help getting started let me know, it's simple."

Riiight. By the way, I was not under-valuing the item having done my research beforehand. So, watch out for this one!