Mr Beach Bum.com

A big part of being wealthy is holding onto your wealth. This doesn’t mean you have to drive a junk car around to save money, but you can certainly get the car you want and pay no more than what you feel you have to pay for it. Especially if monthly payments are involved.

Think about it for a second. If you go in to a dealership without a plan, you are the salesperson’s wet dream. There is nothing they like more than a clean slate. They are very good at finding out things about your finances and just how much car they can get you into without you even realizing it if you aren’t careful. And don’t think for a second that just because the salesperson seems nice enough that they wouldn’t oversell you a car for their own benefit. You can’t blame them, it’s how they make their living, after all.

The biggest mistake people make is going in without any up front research. The internet has made it possible to go in armed and dangerous, but this alone is not enough. You need a few other weapons in your arsenal before you take on the sales force. Yes, I said sales force. Nowadays, you don’t only deal with one salesperson. They take the entire team out on you and you’d better be prepared and ready for battle. Now let’s get down to today’s tip:

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Happy Easter everyone. Coming next week, we’ve got a new series of posts to give you some great car buying tips. Even if you aren’t in the market right now, you’ll want to keep all the tips in your pocket for future reference. I believe that everyone will benefit from using some of these great tips, so check back next week for this exciting new series.

Moko, a dolphin in New Zealand, given the name by residents, has amazed the beach community by offering his help to 2 stranded pygmy whales. Moko helped a stranded mother and her calf by guiding them to safety after several failed attempts by the locals on Mahia beach. 

Locals managed to unbeach the whales but the whales would simply strand themselves again. This happened 4 times and residents were losing hope. But Moko came to the rescue and guided the whales out to safety before all hope was lost.

Read the rest of this amazing story here.

I found an interesting article on Yahoo News this morning that has some excellent advice on getting bloggers to link to your website, images, etc. The advice I tend to agree with most is in regards to copyright notices on your site. Don’t take the approach of “This is my content and nobody esle can use it without my permission” if you intend to have other bloggers even give you the time of day. They’ll simply move on to another site that is more open in nature. Instead, make it easy for them to use your content, but also make it easy for your web link, and your credit for the work, to be included with the content. This is a win-win situation for you.

 Read the entire article here.

As many of you know, I enjoy looking at my search phrases and usually get a kick out of some of the search phrases people have used to find me. Well this time around I guess you could say that things have really come full circle. Yes it’s true, someone actually did a search for the following:

“Beach Bum Search Phrases”

Woo hoo! I love it! I guess some of you out there get just as much of a kick out of looking at these as me. Well good. Here are a few more fun ones to share with you this month:

 ”Make your own beach online” - Hmm, not sure exactly what they are going for here but what is even more strange is that there were actually 5 searches that matched this phrase. Go figure!

“Like it up the bum” - It occurs to me that merely typing that phrase in a post is going to have some affect on my google ranking but oh well, it’s still pretty funny to think that some poor schlub went looking for butt porn and found me instead.

“Beach bum look” - Fashion advice, from a beach bum? Okay, that’s easy. Just get yourself a pair of board shorts and an aloha shirt. Make sure you wear the aloha shirt open, it looks cool that way. You also need to get yourself a good pair of sunglasses. I highly recommend Maui Jim sunglasses! Oh, and don’t forget the mai tai, of course!

This may be considered a bit old school by today’s “web 2.0 ” standards, but the good old fashioned method of swapping links with other websites in your niche (blogs included) is still one of the best ways for you to get your site “out there” in front of people.

A lot of people set up their blog or website and immediately go to town on setting up Adwords and other pay-per-click type solutions and spend a lot of money trying to get the word out. I am not saying you shouldn’t do some of that but you really need to think about how the web really works. Why do we call it a web anyway? The reason is because it is a mesh of links between sites and your true goal should be to become somewhat of a “hub site” that people will come to in order to find not only your wonderful content or service but even more information and services from your niche.

Even if you don’t ever become a true “hub site” you will still benefit greatly by achieving a high number of incoming links from other sites and this should be one of your primary focuses, especially early on in the start of your site.

 The challenge you will have is that there are a lot of big time sites out there that make it very hard to get a link from. They may let you link to them but you might have to pay to get a link back. Don’t just pay every time. Try to be creative instead. What could you offer them now that might be of value. Perhaps a free review or something in exchange for a link to your article?

You will need to have a links section on your site and this will quickly become one of the ugliest pages on your entire site, but it is also one of the most important if done properly.

Also, don’t be afraid to check out your competition from time to time. Look at their Alexa site info. Especially under “sites linking in”. If those sites linking into your competitor have high rankings then you may consider contacting them to do reciprocals with you as well because most of the time these same sites will be somewhat related to your niche just as they are your competitor. Don’t reinvent the wheel here people, there is no shame in using some of the same methods to reach success as those who have come before you. It will be up to you to differentiate yourself in the long run but when you are just starting out, all bets are off.

We will look at this in more detail in a future post but for now, think about who your #1 competitor is and go straight to alexa.com and check them out. See who helped them get where they are now and then you can start sending link exchange requests like mad! Good luck!

If you’re old enough to remember the Betamax fiasco in the 80’s then you may recall how one technology sometimes just tips the right way and the momentum is all it takes to put the final nail in the coffin. However, with Betamax, Sony didn’t give up until well into the early 2000’s. In fact there are still some news outlets out there who are still relying on Betacams I’m sure.

Lucky for us, Toshiba decided to throw in the towel relatively early this time. But is this really good for the consumer?

Sure, Blu-Ray is arguably the superior format. After all, it does have more storage space per disc. But what do you suppose will happen now that Sony holds so many cards?

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Flash can really make a statement for your website and is very effective, when used properly, for advertising your site. The obstacle to flash, for many, is the upfront cost of Adobe Flash software (at $699). But even if you spend the money on the software, you are then faced with the task of creating your own flash projects, which can be daunting if you aren’t familiar with the software and can also result in less than stellar flash projects if you simply aren’t an artist.

I was faced with this same dilemma recently so I did some research and found a potential solution. It’s called Flash Ad Creator from a company called Laughingbird Software and the price is $39.99.  Sounds like a great price when compared to the alternative, but can this really do what I need it to do?

The idea behind the product is that you are given some pre-made flash templates. When you find a template that works for you, you can edit the pictures and text to make it your own.  The website claims that this is easy to do and that there are hundreds of templates to meet your needs. I decided to purchase the product myself in order to give this some real-world testing.

The purchase and download process is standard enough and resulted in no problems. I did avoid paying an extra $6.99 by un-checking a box that was automatically added to my cart for “unlimited downloads”. I don’t blame the author for offering it but for the $6.99 I will make my own backup copy of the download and take my chances. If, however, you are apt to lose downloaded software all the time then this might be something you’ll want to keep. As mentioned earlier, the price of the Flash Ad Creator is $39.99 via download. They also have options to receive the product on disc too if you really want that.

Now the fun begins…

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