April 2008

Advertising is the key to any successful business. While that statement is very true, it is also very vague. There are many different kinds of advertising. You can have a billboard up on Interstate 80, or you could have a television commercial in rotation at the cable company. Both are effective forms of advertising, but they are also very different.

A lot of smaller companies also don’t think outside the box when it comes to advertising. When they hear that word they instantly think commercials and billboards and anything big that costs a lot of money. The truth is that it doesn’t need to cost that much. There are many cheap ways to advertise. You can print up business cards and leave them at grocery stores, or you could make up a lot of pens and hand them out to random people. You can even print up discount checks that connect to your bank account to use when you are purchasing for your business. The point is that you don’t need to advertise big, you can advertise in a smaller sense that gets out to many individual people.

If you satisfy one person then that person will most likely tell another person, and the tree will grow from there. You would have all those satisfied customers just because you gave away a few free pens.

I need to get tires this week. I am also in the market for an oil change. I am going to see if Pep boys can do it fairly cheap. I don’t need the best tires, I just need tires with some traction so I am not all over the road. Hopefully when I call them tomorrow they can give me a good price.

The economy is bad. Children are hungry because parents can’t afford to feed them as much as they used to. People are loosing their jobs and they simply can’t find another one to make the kind of money they need to maintain their quality of life. For those who have good jobs, it is the rising gas prices that are eating away at their pockets. A Hybrid Prius now costs over $40 to fill up its gas tank.

If those two things weren’t bad enough, food is also going up in price. Even if you have a good job and a short commute to work,you are still spending more money at the grocery store. Even cheap food sources such as a slice of pizza are going up in price because of the price of milk and grain. It is a bad time for us Americans, and I fear it will only get worse.

There are some things that you can do to relieve the strain of the rising prices. You can always get a second job, but if spending time with your family is too important to you then you could try making money online. SocialSpark is a good way to make some extra cash. It is the latest thing from Izea, the same people who brought you PayPerPost. Since it is from such a trustworthy company, you know that they have a strict moral code that they obide by. That code includes Audit-able in-post disclosure, 100% transparency, real opinions, and they are search engine friendly.

Personally I have been using PayPerPost for over a year. Social Spark is a great extension of that, that offers a lot of great new features, things like ways to get your blog out there for free, and an extensive place to meet new people who use the site to make money like you do.

As I reported a few weeks ago, The Sarah Connor Chronicles was renewed. Here is the official press release from Fox.

FOX TAKES BACK THE FUTURE WITH A SECOND SEASON OF “TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES”

This Season’s No. 1 New Scripted Series Returns with All New Episodes

Brian Austin Green Joins the Cast as a Series Regular

FOX has picked up 13 episodes of TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES (T:SCC) for the 2008-2009 season.

The explosive, season-ending cliffhanger left CAMERON (Summer Glau) rocked by a car bomb and SARAH CONNOR (Lena Headey) close to locating an important Skynet component. Viewers were left with unanswered questions regarding DEREK’s (Brian Austin Green) true intentions and JOHN’s (Thomas Dekker) fate as the savior of mankind. These questions and more will be answered in season two of TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES.

The show currently ranks as the No. 1 new scripted series this season among Adults 18-49. The action packed series represents an exciting reinvention of the “Terminator” film franchise, in which the strong and intrepid Sarah discovers that protecting her son and stopping the rise of the machines is more difficult than she had ever imagined.

Produced by C2 Pictures in association with Warner Bros. Television, TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES is executive produced by Josh Friedman and John Wirth. James Middleton serves as consulting producer, while Toni Graphia serves as co-executive producer and Natalie Chaidez serves as a consulting producer for the series.

The Lep’s Lair Girl of the week has some interesting yet each very different women interested in it. I just have to figure out which way to do it, voting or soul decision. I am leaning toward voting, but I am not yet sure how I would do it. If you have any thoughts on it let me know.

Expired Domain Names can be a very good asset if you aquire them soon after they expire. You don’t even need to have anything on there except for an ad, but if it was a site with a lot of visitors then they would go to that site and you will make money without having to do anything. It is also good if the person who had it originally wants it back. Normally they are willing to pay a decent amount above what you would have paid for it and in doing so you can make a decent profit.

How do you find recently expired domains? Doing it by hand can be a big job, going to every website you can think of and seeing if it is expired and if it is then you need to see if it is up to be registered again. Well there is now a much easier way to do it. The new way is to have a domain name RSS Feed. All you need to do is enter some keywords and basic search requirements into a form and it will generate an RSS feed for you that you can keep track of domains that are set to expire soon. The feed is also good if you want to keep track of your domains that are set to expire.

My host finally merged my databases into one central location. What does this mean? Well it means that I can finally get something up that I have been wanting to for a while now, I just need to program the backend to do what I want. It also means that I am no longer waiting for them before I do any database work, I can do anything I want now and not have to worry about if it will get deleted when it is moved.

I announced this feature last night on Myspace, and so far I have had a few responses. Looking at the nominations though, I don’t know if I will be able to choose a girl based on looks alone so I have been asking them questions seeing what their answers are. I didn’t really expect that it would be that hard so I may need to make it its own section and then have people vote on the girls based on their looks and responses to the question.

I also have an idea for breasts, like a Lep’s Lair Breasts of the Moment type thing, though I don’t know how well that would be popular with the girls, mainly with the guys.

That is Krissy and my bedroom. It is really small and we would love to extend it, but we don’t have the money right now. We have been trying everything to get money, from grants to entering contests with cash prizes. One contest we entered was a chance to win $20,000 Home Makeover from Renuzit TriScents.

I think everyone has an idea of what they need to Tranform Your Home into a true reflection of who you are. The problem comes in forms of limitations. For us that limitation is space and money. Of course if we had money then we would have more space due to renovations or having the means to move.

If you are interested in entering the contest then all you need to do is upload video or a photo and essay explaining and demonstrating why your home needs a makeover and explain how Renuzit TriScents can help you. It doesn’t sound so hard right? The most important thing that I could tell you is to Be sure to follow the official rules, and then maybe you will be able to Transform Your Home into what you have always dreamed it could be with just a little extra money that you didn’t have at the time.

I just watched Michelle Obama on the Colbert Report. There are rumors in whcih she was called an elitist and at first she had her guard up while Colbert made fun of the reports, but after a few minutes she seemed to lighten up and even laughed when Stephen said that children seem to think her husband has handles attached to his head. It was an interesting interview, now if only Barrack would appear on either his or John Stewart’s show.

If you are one of my friends on Myspace then be on the lookout in your bulletins for a new feature that will be coming soon to Lep’s Lair. Please note that I said feature and not section because with the blogs I noticed that there was a major lack of consistence,so I am going to try and change that in the coming weeks. Be on the lookout for the announcement and what I need from you guys very soon.

The peekaboo stripper pole is a portable stripper pole for your pole dancing class, or you could use it if you have a lot of strippers over your house. It is cheaper and lighter than a normal stripper pole that can be installed in your house. Celebrities like Carmen Electra and Kylie Minogue are fans of the company.

The same company who created the peekaboo stripper pole is working on a concept for a video game for the Wii. If the video game and pole come out then I think it will take gaming to a whole new level. With the balance board coming out in a few months it is going to be interesting to see how it will be implemeneted in other games, but a stripper pole would surely bring about other “activity” games out, which may or may not be a bad thing.