Students Of Success

Camping on a motorcycle can present a real challenge, because you can’t carry much weight or volume, and there are few places to store your equipment on a motor bike.

Most motor cycle riders use bags or panniers at the back of their machines to hold the camping gear. These have to be tough and waterproof - a bit like their owners - to keep the camping equipment safe from the weather. And you don’t want anything coming loose and flying off either. It might cause an accident and you could be held liable for damages - or worse.

With a truck or an automobile, you can put your camping gear on the inside. But with a motorcycle, it’s got to be fitted pretty much on the outside of your machine. Some fancy fairings (wind breaks) have small pockets, but they don’t hold much camping gear at all.

You can usually fit a large cube-shaped bag on the rear luggage rack or pillion seat, and maybe a tank bag on the motorcycle petrol tank, and that’s it.

Some bikes may have a couple of large panniers at the back, like the leather saddlebags you see on some Harleys, or the stylish ‘fat briefcase’ types you see on a German BMW tourer. (I’ve always wanted one of those.)

All your camping gear has got to fit inside that limited space, so camping on a motorcycles gives you the same kind of storage constraints as a backpacker, except you can travel a lot faster than on foot.

Depending on whether you’re riding the bike solo or two-up, you’ll want a small tent, sleeping bag (or bags), sleeping pad(s) between you and the ground, a small camp stove, cook kit, plastic mugs, bowls, spoons and maybe knives & forks as well.

Have tea or coffee-making supplies, including powdered milk in an airtight container or sweetened condensed milk. (Anything else leaks or spoils too easy in my experience.) As for myself, I love to sleep in a Hennessey Hammock it’s perfect in the warmer weather and keeps the mosquitos away from you, so you get a good night’s sleep.

Just carry enough food (and water) to make a couple of hasty meals for when you’re tired, cold and hungry and miles from a diner or a McDonald’s.

Then include a change of clothing and extra socks and underwear. Toilet kit - toothbrush, toothpaste or powder, half a bar of soap (or a small cake or soap from a hotel), a small towel, comb, a few band aids, some asprin or Tylenol pain killers, and any feminine hygiene stuff or prescription medicines needed.

Out in the country or on the interstate highways, the larger gas stations that cater to truckers will have hot showers as well. That can really refresh you if you’ve been camping away from the comforts of home for a few days. Buy a meal there as well, to pay for the shower.

For camp lighting carry a small flashlight and / or a candle. Some will take a mechanic’s ‘trouble light’ which has a long cord and runs of the motorcycle’s 12 volt battery. If you’re going to be in a campground with mains electricity, by all means carry a mains-powered ‘trouble light’.

These are the things a mechanic uses when crawling under your auto to inspect it at the garage.

Your motorcycle should already have it’s own small tool kit, but it could be wise to carry a spare inner-tube and a pump. In case you get a flat tire 50 miles from nowhere. Here’s where membership of an auto club would be a good idea, just as carrying a cell phone (mobile phone) would also be cheap insurance.

The only other thing you need when camping on a motorcycle is a sense of humor and a large helping of common sense. You also need to show courtesy for other road users. Why? Because just about everything out there is bigger than you are! Ride your motor bike carefully, and stay safe and in one piece!

The author, David Harvey, has been camping since he was a boy and riding motorbikes since 1967. He now lives in Australia where he still enjoys camping and motor cycling. David has picked up a tip or two during those 40 years that he’s happy to share with you here and on his camping website http://www.All-Camping-Supplies.com.

Used laptop computers are everywhere these days. How can you sift through the mass of available used laptop computers to narrow your search down to the right laptop for you? This is the third part of a series of articles designed to give you a few suggestions for your next purchase.

Test the Keyboard and Built-in Mouse

When you get an operating system up and running, open a text file like notepad and start typing on the keyboard. How do the keys feel? If they are sticking, this may indicate coffee or another liquid having been dropped on the computer. A definite red flag.

Is the built-in mouse functioning properly? If it isn’t, understand that this could seriously hamper the portability of the laptop. Using an external mouse when you are on the go can be very inconvenient.

Laptop Battery: Don’t expect much

Laptop batteries generally don’t maintain a full charge for more than a year or two at most. The manufacture date of the laptop is often found on its underside. If the manufacture date is more than two years and it has an original battery, consider yourself lucky with any battery life you get. Most used computer dealers will not give you any warranty for the battery. An extra battery is always a wise purchase when buying a used laptop. Consider asking the dealer what it would cost to get another one.

Laptop multimedia: Testing the sound and video.

Sound and video are both things that are important to some people and not to others. If you see yourself listening to music using the laptop speakers, try to play some music on them to see how they sound. You may want to cart a music CD with you along with your Knoppix CD. Have realistic expectations though. Laptop speakers rarely sound full. They usually have a tinny sound with lots of treble and little bass.

If you plan on watching movies on the laptop, you may want to consider choosing a used laptop computer with a DVD-ROM drive in it. If that is important to you, I would suggest you carry a DVD movie with you to evaluate how well the laptop plays back video. If it pauses and labors with the DVD, you may want to consider another laptop.

Stay tuned for our fourth and final article on tips you should follow when purchasing a used laptop computer.

Joe Duchesne is the Webmaster of Asklaptop.com a site that offers you information when you buy a laptop including related information. Reprint freely as long as the links in this resource box are live and point back to Asklaptop.com.

Hollywood Publicist Michael Conley Confirmed to Speak at Indie Music Week

Nashville, Tennessee - Indie Music Week has announced that Michael Conley, veteran entertainment publicist based in Hollywood, CA, will be participating as an Indie Music Week panelist. IMW, taking place in Nashville March 11-12, will feature three industry panels of Major and Independent A&R, promoters, label executives, producers, managers and lawyers, and will wrap up with a Music Industry Summit.

Michael Conley represents many well-known personalities such as Olympic Gold Medal Figure Skating Champion Tara Lipinski, Roland Kickinger (former Mister Austria and Mister Universe) who recently starred as Arnold Schwarzenegger in the A&E movie “See Arnold Run”, fitness model/actor Morten Kublick, Robert Amstler, and teen model Jason Maves (Versace, Polo, Abercrombie & Fitch). Conley also works with identical twin brothers/soap stars, Seth Hall (Passions) and Bruce Michael Hall (One Life to Live), and most recently Mageina Tovah (Spider-Man 2), Michael Welch (Joan of Arcadia), and two-time Super Bowl Champion Dwight Hicks of the San Francisco 49ers. Conley also has the immense distinction of having been one of the youngest writers for the late Bob Hope, penning some 960 minutes of sketch comedy for his television specials.

Other confirmed panelists include Sony Music/Nashville Star’s Tracy Gershon, Danny Kee of Warner Bros. Records, Amy Stevents of Vivaton Records, Lyric Street Records’ Kirk Boyer, Larry Shell of Broken Bow Records, Abby White of Performing Songwriter magazine, Mitch Gallagher of EQ Magazine, Bradley Collins of BMI, and the Nashville Association of Professional Recording Services (NAPRS). In addition to the industry panels, Indie Music Week will also feature two Artist Showcases to be held at Nashville’s famous Douglas Corner Café.

To attend Indie Music Week 2005, please visit IndieMusicWeek.org for registration information. The registration fee for Indie Music Week is $99, with 50% fee discounts for music industry students or artists that showcase. To be an Indie Music Week sponsor, please visit IndieMusicWeek.org or call 615-292-1337.

One of the best ways to get free website traffic, as we all
know, is links from other sites which help improve your site’s
link popularity. Nothing new there…however now that Google and
friends are cracking down on reciprocal link exchanges and
de-valuing links from non-relevent sites, it’s become vitally
important to get 1-way INCOMING links from sites that are
related to your niche.

For example, a travel site would benefit from a incoming-link
from a holiday home rental company or an airline or car hire
place, but there would be NO benefit from getting an incoming
link from an online casino service or one of those ubiquitous
Viagra sales sites we all love to receive spam email from
(not!)…
Here’s what I suggested to one of my client’s (who runs a luxury
accommodation site) as a way for him to get quality incoming
one-way links:

Ideally, it’s MUCH better to have a one-way link coming into
your site, rather than having to reciprocate the link and give
them one back. HOWEVER, this is getting VERY difficult to
achieve.

Essentially, you are asking a possible competitor to give you a
link to your website, when they would much rather the searcher
just found them instead. Recipricol links are also starting to
lose their value in terms of link popularity. A one-way link
from a RELATED site is better than 5-10 2-way links from most
sites. So, I believe that in order for you to get as many
incoming one-way links as possible, you need to give website
owners a REASON to be prepared to give you that link for free. I
believe the best way to achieve this is to go back to something
I suggested in an email recently: As a way to differentiate
yourself from all the other sites out there offering similar
content/services to yours, you need to value-add so that it is
compelling for site visitors to make their bookings through your
site in preference to anyone else’s - even the actual
accommodation place site itself. As I suggested, one way is to
offer a package of discount vouchers for guests staying at each
place for all the local tourist attractions, and offer them as a
free giveaway to anyone making a booking through you. The more
discounts or specials you offer, the more attractive it will be
for someone wanting to make a booking thru you.

Perhaps on occasions, you might even persuade some companies to
offer free giveaways as an incentive to get tourists to visit
their premises (free wine samples or free food samples, etc.)
However, rather than call them up and just ask for discounts for
possible clients, why not approach them with a view to offering
to give them FREE advertising to your clients, in exchange for a
link from their website (designed the way we specify, and
preferrably placed in a vaguely decent spot on their site). So,
an example might make this clearer… Let’s say you have an
accommodation spot in Sydney. You contact all the related
businesses in that region that offer something that may be of
value to a visitor to the area. Say, a winery, a restaurant, a
car hire place, a movie cinema, a chemist/pharmacy, etc. Explain
to them that you would like to offer them free advertising for
clients you refer to their business while they are holidaying in
Sydney, in exchange for a link on their website back to your
site. Tell them you will put their details in a PDF document and
anytime someone makes a booking for an accommodation spot in the
area, you will email them a free copy of the document (sort of
like a digital voucher system) and they can print it out and
bring it with them for use while in the area. In fact, if the
truth be known, you could probably even put a link to the PDF on
your site so ANYONE can download it. Make them have to fill in a
small form to get it (name & email address) and then add their
name to your (upcoming) email newsletter. That way, even if
you don’t make a sale so far as a booking goes, at least you
have a good incentive for people to give you their email address
in exchange for downloading the vouchers for the location they
are interested in. Sell it to them on the basis that it WILL
give them FREE advertising. They don’t even have to offer any
specials (although if they do, that’s obviously a bonus for you
and the client), and all you ask for in return is a one-way link
back to your website. I’m not sure what sort of success rate you
would have getting this, but I would be surprised if it was less
than 1 in 10, perhaps even 1 in 5 businesses being prepared to
say yes. And, you have a WHOLE country of accommodation hotspots
you can call over the next 6-12 months and put this proposition
to, with a view to getting ongoing increasing one-way links to
your site from relevant businesses. Oh, a small but important
point. Get them to provide the text &/or graphics content that
goes in your voucher. Saves you some time & money. I would
assume that many of these places already have some form of
brochures & advertising, etc - just get them to email you the
image in a usable format.

If you have to spend time designing the look and content of each
ad, it will chew up your time, so if they see the value of doing
this, just explain that you will NEED them to email you their
voucher entry (perhaps specify the size and format, etc), and
you just drop it into a word doc (for example) and turn that
into a pdf when you have filled it up. Also, you will no doubt
have some places being concerned that they are going to be in
your voucher “book” with their competitors, which may (in their
minds) devalue it for them, so offer them exclusivity if they
come up with a great special offer for your clients. Rather than
making them pay for exclusivity upfront, get them to pay for it
when someone redeems the voucher, which is good for you AND
them. I believe this will be the best way for you to secure
one-way links from related websites, without having to spend
large sums of money. Once your page rank increases (for both
your home page AND individual internal pages), you will find
your site showing up higher in the organic searches across the
board, which is the ultimate goal anyway.

There you have it. Any business (not just accommodation) can
take this idea, mould it to their specifics, and be generating
great incoming links from relevent sites in days.

As a last suggestion, if you want to speed up the process,
contact prospective link partners by direct mail. That way, you
can get in touch with 10-100 of them in a very short period of
time, and only deal with the ones who see the value in what you
are offering.

All the best with your link building campaign, and remember that
success on the internet takes time and dedication. You won’t get
miracle results in 1 week, so be persistent.

The web is experiencing an online revolution in the making with Web 2.0; it is simply and powerfully restructuring it, making information more personalised and centralised.

Since the advent of the internet every user wanted a more personalised environment and this now comes in the guise of Web 2.0, with RSS feeds added, read and tracked right from your favourite search engines’ home page.

RSS is still in its infancy but it seems as if it will become an important component in the success of Web 2.0 as businesses take advantage of giving control to users. RSS is helping the web distribute content in an organised way and, over the next few years, I believe RSS will definitely be seen on every website and blog.

Using RSS, search engines return search results on specific keywords, connecting users with the information they want to read. This process of syndicating content from other websites by displaying RSS feeds is definately catching on with the ability to deliver fresh news to their users as it happens.

Not only are the big companies using RSS to get ahead of the competition but smaller firms like ours are also using it to the fullest extent for ourselves and our clients.

Media Director of V9 Design & Build, providing both local and outsourcing web and SEO services: we provide both brochureware and custom-designed websites, with tasteful design and branding, professional design and build, proven and successful SEO and e-marketing, e-commerce-driven database integration and content management systems.

Starting out from his Garage! Jeff Bezos built the foundation of Amazon.com from the garage of his two-bedroom house rented outside of Seattle. He fashioned his first office tables from wooden doors, angle brackets, and two-by-four lumber purchased from Home Depot.

This article summarizes the recognizable aspects of Amazon.com’s success and lays down lessons learned in the form of tips. You have the opportunity to analyze the tips given here and apply them with prudence to your own business.

You as the owner of your own home based business started - or about to embark if you have not as yet started - with the same resources as Jeff Bezos. You are in a similar situation - if not much better position - than the Amazon founder because you have the secret to his success to learn and apply into your own business.

Tip # 1: Be modest in your initial investment. For example, your laptop or PC shall not necessarily be top of the line. Your office location could be a corner of the house or your room, basement or garage. Save on office rent by all means. Be like Jeff Bezos and other successful marketers who spent prudently and succeeded.

Motivation
You should motivate yourself to succeed. When Amazon was struggling to make profits for the first time, only its founder Jeff Bezos believed that the business goal could be achieved in a year’s time. Everybody was astounded when Jeff Bezos achieved his goal after one year.

Tip # 2: The lesson that could be learned from the above account is to lay down and make known in clear fashion your goal to every stake holder of your small business. They include your spouse and your web designer, among others.

Write down this goal and post this on the wall beside your desk. Save this goal in your hard disk and make the text the start up page when you boot your computer. You can convert your goal into a screensaver. Read your goal to yourself every day as you go about your business on the Internet.

Tip # 3: You should motivate yourself every day and pass this motivation on to every one who’s involved in your business. To paraphrase the author Wallace D. Wattles who wrote The Science of Getting Rick in 1910, envision yourself right now as having a very successful business and do every which legal and ethical way to actualize your vision. FYI, Wattles’ book is featured in my web site.

Change
It is said that change is the one single permanent thing on this planet. Amazon changed the way it does business through the years. First it was an online book seller. Next it expanded into selling music and videos.

Then it offered toys, consumer electronics and software to its customers. These were linked with a host of new products until this very day. Amazon has a constantly evolving product line. Its competitors have a hard time catching up with the innovator.

During its initial years of operation, Amazon was not making any real profit. It practiced instead the habit of reinvesting its income into new markets. This it did to make possible for its customers to make wider choices for the company’s offerings.

Tip # 4: Your home based business should be run like Amazon. You could be selling your single information product now. Two weeks from today you will have added another back end product. Next month you will have introduced into your product line the inventory of the affiliate program you have joined in.

Tip # 5: If your web site is content based, you should be adding new content every day. Casual visitors to your web site will become your regular visitors when they see new content every time they come back to your site. And these visitors will in the end become your regular customers.

Be a Generalist
A generalist is one who does a multitude of things. In computer language it is known as multi-tasking. This has been the culture at Amazon.

Tip # 6: You as the single person in your home business must be a generalist, too. This means doing and knowing everything that goes in and out of your business.

You don’t know any HTML coding? This is tolerable. You must strive however to understand at least the basic formatting that goes into you site code. This way you can make small insertions into your web pages when your web designer is nursing a cold or is out of town. Or you can learn a thing or two on scripting. By the way, HTML tutorial is one of several categories among the home based business free learning stuff presented in my web site.

Work Ethic
Jeff Bezos was the company CEO and he and his wife were the first workers at Amazon. Their work ethic was marked with hard work and consistency, among others. These traits were handed down to their employees through the years.

Tip # 7: To succeed and last long in your Internet business, you should work hard to put your business online in the fastest and frugal manner possible. The important thing to consider is to start up and put your small business online early and rapidly. If you have to wake up at two in the morning to do your Internet work, by all means stick to this routine.

Tip # 8: You should be consistent in your business-related tasks. If your content needs updating twice weekly, follow this schedule with devotion. Visitors to your web site will notice even slight changes to your content when they go back to visit your web pages. Not to mention the search engine spiders which would just be too glad (i.e., in electron manner of speaking) to index new contents to your web site.

Be First to Embrace Technology
Amazon was among the first, if not the first, to adopt online book retailing. When the major book sellers - Barnes & Noble and Borders Books among others - realized this new way of selling books, Amazon was miles ahead. Jeff Bezos surveyed the Internet horizon and embraced the best technology on sight.

Tip # 9: New technologies come and go almost daily. Some of these technologies enable you to run your business fast and easy. Other technologies rob you of your investment. Your duty is to examine each technology and assimilate into your business the best.

Rick Tanzo is the webmaster of the InternetMarketingLearningCenter.com. Internet marketing and home business articles are featured in his web site. Reprint rights are granted so long as article, by-line and active links are reproduced intact. To learn more about Internet marketing and home based business visit
http://www.internetmarketinglearningcenter.com.

Despite manufacturers’ claims to be safe, vent-free space-heaters pose numerous risks to homeowners, including dangers to safety and health, and cause costly damage to homes.

One of the most overlooked aspects of vent-free heating appliances is how they generate gallons of excess water-vapor inside the home, which leads to moisture-damage to walls and ceilings, and unsafe mold and mildew conditions.

Not realized by most people, whenever a fuel is burned, large amounts of water-vapor gets released into the air. A normal vented appliance expels this moisture through the chimney or exhaust-pipe. However, an unvented appliance, such as a vent-free space-heater, has nowhere to send this moisture but into the rooms in which you and your family live. Like the outside of a glass of ice-water, moisture condenses on wall and ceiling surfaces.

To put the amount of moisture a vent-free appliance generates in perspective, a typical family of four produces approximately 2.9 gallons of moisture through cooking, showers, etc. A 40,000 btu vent-free heater generates six gallons of moisture in a 24-hour period. This is a sure recipe for an insurance claim.

Although most vent-free units are equipped with an oxygen-depletion sensor, the purpose of which is to prevent high levels of carbon monoxide, they don’t prevent LOW levels of the toxic, odorless gas. Problems associated with low-level carbon monoxide poisoning include frequent headaches, chronic cold or flu-like symptoms and nausea.

In addition to producing carbon monoxide, vent-free heaters exhaust other unhealthy by-products, including nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and several other forms of indoor air pollution. Such compounds can cause lung-irritation, and trigger asthma or allergy attacks.

Before you think about purchasing a vent-free space-heater, think again and remember the real cost of this low-price health and safety-hazard.

The author, John Bishop, is vice president and co-founder of Enhanced Living, Inc. (http://www.enhancedliving.net), a building science consultancy and contracting firm based in Troy, NY. John is the former state marketing coordinator for the award-winning Home Performance with ENERGY STAR and New York ENERGY STAR Labeled Homes program.

Ebay tips. Part 1 Please remember this is only a small amount of info that is shown in our EBAY VIDEO TUTORIAL
This can be viewed at www.onlineebooks.net

Do you know what one of the biggest money makers on ebay is?
Do you know that is has nothing to do with the auction you are selling?

That’s right, can you think of it?
The answer is the about me page, that’s right. Let me say it again,
The About Me Page.

This one page is the key to making alot of extra money from ebay.
Every visitor to your auction is a customer.They come to your
auction, have a look at it, then they decide if it interests them, then they either
buy it or leave. Why not try to sell the visitor that is not interested in your item,
an item that they are interested in.
Now the best way to do this is to use the about me page.

The key is getting the visitor to the about me page, if they don’t want the item.
How are you going to do that ?
Ask yourself this: What is the best price for something ?
What is the number one clicked on advertising word ?
The answer is FREE. The best price for anything is FREE.

So how do you use this for the about me page.
Well the first thing you have on your auction is a little headline or statement
basically saying “Just for taking a look at our auction we are giving away …..
Click here to find out how to receive it” . Then have the link to your about me page.
This in my experience is the best way to getting traffic to your about me page.

Once you have the visitor on your about me page what do you do with them ?

Once they are on the page you are basically trying to sell them something more,
or get them to go to your web site for a different product.

How are you going to get them to read your add if they are looking for the free
product ?

A good way of doing this is have the free product at the bottom of the page with
a statement at the top stating “To get your free … please scroll down to the bottom
of the page”. This way they have to scroll past the ads and graphics and hopefully
something will grab there attention.

So let say the visitor doesn’t buy your auction , doesn’t go for your other products on your
about me page and just downloads the free product.
So what dp you have in return for all your work?
Nothing right ? No money, no sale……………… or do you have something ?

If you set it up correctly you will have something. Something that could be worth
alot of money. There email address !!!!!

In the video we go threw how you set this up so that it is fully automated.

If you are looking for more ebay tips Please Visit Online
Ebooks
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Online . Please come and post your articles at our directory.