Weekly Buggles

Most little girls (and big ones, too) do not like worms. To some of us, nightmares are made from such creatures. Their negative reputation precedes them; they are the quintessential creepy crawlers, oozing themselves side to side in a bed of slime, tangling themselves together into a pulsating mass. (I think I am scaring myself here. Oops!)

Back in the Dark Ages (AKA the 1960s), I had a high school biology teacher who seemed to thrive on worms and assorted insects, the more bizarre the better. One exceptionally odious assignment for a particularly sunny, breezy day was to dig up and then transport back to school the next morning a full dozen of the plumpest, wiggliest earthworms we could find, with an extra five points for each additional worm we evicted from the ground. How could I ever complete this assignment without having a nervous breakdown? Eww! Fortunately for me, a boy down the street with whom I had a platonic relationship for the previous ten years, rode to my rescue (figuratively and literally as bikes were still an accepted mode of transportation), armed with a garden trowel and a roomy glass jar. My hero! Gallant gentleman that he was, Marc dug for me a baker’s dozen of the juiciest, writhing earthworms ever to come out of a rose garden. And so, here begins my uneasy alliance with the earthworm.

Forty years later and a movement to be environmentally friendly is in the air. We recycle water, recycle paper, recycle old automobile tires, even recycle used computer printer ink cartridges. Why shouldn’t our friend, the worm, join the crusade? However, we will need to look at its cousin, the common red worm, Eisenia foetida, to do the job. Also known as the tiger worm, brandling, angle worm, manure worm, or red wriggler, the red worm lives in a different ecological niche than does the common earthworm burrowing in garden soil. You can find the red worm making its home near the surface in areas of high concentration of organic matter, such as what might be found in pastures, leaf mould, or underneath a compost pile. Another breed of red worm, Lumbricus rubellas, can be used in worm composting as well.

Gone are the days when the only source of getting news and current affairs was through the newspaper or at best the radio. Technology has progressed at such a rapid pace that there is a plethora of different media through which you can hear and see the news stories and current events on the move. Also, at the very moment some of these events might be taking place at the other end of the world. The numerous media channels include television, radio, newspapers, the Internet, and the mobile phone.

Article Directories

Besides providing the latest news on several websites, the Internet also provides article directories. These article directories give us the news regarding any topic under the sun along with expert comments and detailed analysis. These topics may include politics, sports, share market, and the current hot topics such as the recession, and many more. Articles regarding these topics are published daily to provide the latest news and an insight into the implications of the different news and current affairs.

Through these article directories, authors and promoters get a platform to showcase their views with the potential of being read by millions of people around the world. On the other side, visitors to the article directories websites get an opportunity to become aware of the latest news and current affairs. They can read the views of the authors regarding the same.

Article Marketing

Apart from projecting the latest news, article directories also provide opportunities for internet marketing professionals to submit articles for the purpose of article marketing. These articles provide information regarding the products and services. They use the website of the article directory with a view to informing the reader about their own site through the backlinks. This process of article marketing is an effective, fast, and convincing method of driving traffic toward the website of the internet marketer. The articles should be of high quality and should convey pertinent knowledge and experience regarding the products or services to impress the reader by the content. In order to gain further knowledge, the reader will the follow the backlink and visit the website of the internet marketer and might become a potential customer. This is exactly what is required to increase traffic and to gain more customers.

Most article directories offer free content. As such, webmasters use their sites to collect the free content and add the same to their own websites or blogs. Moreover, this content can be republished on different websites, provided the original links are preserved in the article and the original article author retains the credit. Circulating the article through a number of other websites will automatically increase the traffic to the website of the internet marketer.

Article directories also have a network of informational sites. This network enables any news and current affairs article or any article that is published on one website to be published on other websites of the network. The condition is just that the editors should find the content appropriate. Article marketing is a powerful tool for internet marketers. It is also very useful for search engine optimization in order to get a higher search engine ranking.

Every year thousands of people get guitars with the hopes of learning to play. But truthfully, not all guitars are suitable to learn on. If you are serious about learning to play yourself or if you’re buying the guitar for someone else to learn on, the following information is what you must know to properly select a guitar.

Playability

The most important aspect of any guitar is that it must have a good playable action. What this means is, the strings must be close to the fretboard to make them easy to press. When the strings are too high the person attempting to learn to play usually quits in frustration. They find it too hard. The saddest part is they think that it is something wrong with them. As a sales consultant at a music store I’ve heard so many adults say, “Yeah, I tried to learn when I was a kid, but I just couldn’t do it.” I then put my right hand fingers under the strings at the sound hole and lift the strings away from the fretboard. I’d say to them, “I’d bet the strings were up like this.” They almost always say, “Yes!” I am emphasizing the playability of the guitar so strongly because strings that are too high is the #1 reason why a person quits.

A Simple Test for String Height

The quickest and easiest way to check for the proper string height is to stack two quarters (25¢) and place them under the 1st string (the thinnest string) at the 12th fret (two dots). Ideally the distance should be the equivalent spacing of 1½ quarters. Two quarters that just fit without lifting up the strings is the maximum acceptable height. Anything above this is too high.

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Miscellaneous tax deductions might not save you a bundle of money on their own, but you should be interested in the totality of your tax liability. For this reason, you want to save all that you can. Some of these deductions may apply to you at the time you file your income tax return.

For instance, there is a deduction for expenses not reimbursed to employees. There could be deductions for things like gasoline and mileage for travel on behalf of your employer, meals taken on the road, clothing, and even entertainment. Any expense that could be considered ordinary and necessary for doing business on behalf of an employer could qualify for this deduction, as long as you were not reimbursed for the expense. These expenses must be in excess of 2% of your adjusted gross income in order to qualify.

If you paid someone to prepare you taxes, you can deduct those fees as long as they are in excess of 2% of your adjusted gross income. This can include tax publications, computer software, and electronic filing fees. Taxpayers often overlook this particular miscellaneous deduction.

You can deduct gambling losses on schedule A of your income tax return. This deduction is limited to the amount of gambling winnings you took in at the casinos. In other words you cannot report that you lost more than you won. I know that sounds unrealistic to any of us who have ever gambled, but there it is.

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If you have a blog and are eager for the rest of the world to discover it, then a road map on just how to promote your blog is probably just the thing you are looking for. And not just any road map, a detailed, descriptive road map, so you know exactly what to do, right?! Here is an easy-to-follow plan just for you…

Actually, focusing more on the subject of how to promote your blog effectively is an even better plan. Because effectiveness is key when you are searching for the best ways for promoting your blogging efforts.

You work hard on your blog, so you want to implement promotion strategies that give you the most bang for your buck, right?

But exactly what to do and how to promote your blog can be an overwhelming task. Believe me, I know – I’ve tried nearly all of them.

I’ve paid hundreds of dollars on all sorts of bookmarking, directory submissions, not to mention social networking and extensive “Goggling.”

But what I’ve discovered is that there are a handful of tried-and-true, tested methods that can bring loads of visitors to your blog. And you don’t have to pay money to promote your blog – these are all FREE!

You can learn how to promote your blog very quickly and easily with these 5 simple steps.

Don’t worry if they seem long – they are really very easy and will bring you more readers than you ever imagined -

Step 1 – When looking at how to promote your blog, the first step is to pinpoint what your goals are for your promotion efforts.

Picture a business – businesses don’t just purchase ad space or hire sales people without a clearly defined plan in place. They have a goal in mind and everything they do relates to that goal.

The same goes for your blog. Jot down a few goals you want to accomplish with your promotion efforts – do you want to hit the 100, 500 or 1,000 visitors/day mark or get 500 new subscribers to your newsletter or sell $x amount of dollars in your amazon store? Why are you promoting your blog? This is a crucial step – one that can’t be ignored. Having a goal guides you in deciding where to send all of your blog visitors.

You wouldn’t want to send readers to your blog without having it structured to receive those visitors. Imagine getting loads of new readers, new potential customers to your blog, only they are leaving within minutes of arriving (check this percentage on how to use Google Analytics) or they are being sent to a page that is not relevant to what they were expecting. All of your promotion strategies just flew out the window! Setting up goals and clearly defining what the customer should do next is critical in any promotion strategy. Key question here – Why are you promoting your blog?

Step 2 - After you’ve come up with a concrete goal, then it’s time to put the wheels into motion. I will use the well-known example of dog training to help explain this step. Dog training is a very broad niche – imagine your niche is more specialized – dog training a lab.

Your blog, Dog Training a Lab, is all set up and you have been posting quality content for a few weeks. You want to promote your blog with the goal of selling items from your amazon links. That is your ultimate goal – to sell items that you will refer your readers to, through Amazon links from your posts.

Since we’ve defined a goal, we can move on to putting a plan into action.

And as with any marketing or promotion efforts, the question to ask is how do I get in front of the people interested in what I have to offer? Where are all these people hanging out? Where do people who want to talk about dog training gather…

Well, they gather on Forums -

People who want to know about dog training are on community forums discussing dog training with others.

I Googled dog training forums and several websites came up, then I Googled dog training a lab forums and a few forums came up that are geared just for labs!

Brilliant!

Go where the people are – there are people interested in dog training a lab on community forums. Go there and participate. Contribute and you will get visitors coming to your blog to purchase your latest and greatest dog leash or some other item you are blogging about.

Step 3 - Next it’s time to get on Twitter and start tweeting, notice I said start tweeting. Just being on Twitter doesn’t do anything for your business, you have to actually say something.

If tweeting is just too far out of your comfort zone, try tweeting someone else’s posts or re-tweet what someone else has said to start with. You still gain popularity because your name is on the tweet. Keep using it and you will gain followers. Take a big leap of faith and tweet something – spread the word on a new dog training video you just saw. You will start tweeting, which will send people over to your blog, which will make you sales in no time.

Step 4 - Set up Facebook for your business. Tell your friends about a sale on dog toys or mention a new blog post you just posted. The point is to be as exposed as possible so visitors can find you anywhere and everywhere. Generating friends on Facebook will be covered in another post, but for now put a button on your blog to encourage others to find you on Facebook.

At the bottom of your posts in your blog, put a social connect button with a Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg and Google+ button so readers can simple click a button to post to Twitter or any of the others – again, this makes it easy for visitors to share a great post with others and it will generate more traffic to your blog. If you use WordPress, there is a plug-in for this, Blogger will have an option on their set-up as well.

Step 5 – Comments make the world go round. You may have heard this from me before, but comments really are like gold. Find other blogs in your niche or a little outside of it. Let’s look at the dog training a lab example. I would hop over to other dog training a lab blogs and read their posts and make an intelligent comment. Then I would scale up and hop over to some general dog training blogs and read their posts and comment there. See where this is heading?

Treat the comments you receive with care – they do so much more than take up space on your post page. Comments show interaction – visitors like to see and read comments. Comments build your rapport with the search engines. They provide links coming in to your website; they build links out of your website. Comments mean you have an interactive, attentive blog and that is what means the difference between a successful blog and an unsuccessful blog.