Yesterday I wrote about the importance of creating a life story while announcing a 21 day writing challenge. Today is day 2 – no way I will let this opportunity disappear.
Each day I plan on writing about how I am taking action on my 21 ideas for creating a better life story which means I will actually need to write for 22 days in a row. My first listed idea is to learn something new everyday so here is a list of things I learned today:
- Hyperlocal blogs are on the rise
- OPS stands for On base plus slugging percentage in baseball
- Google custom maps can help with local SEO (source)
- My father-in-law’s website has 3 duplicate copies in Google (not good)
- Local SEO is more about citations than links
- dk @ purposeinc is a local blogger here in San Diego who appears to be a chiropractor
- San Diego Padres had a great home opener 17-2 win over the Atlanta braves
- San Diego Convention Center offers $10 flat rate parking – awesome for Padre games
- Adsense is very inefficient for monetizing most websites
- Apparently, insurance claim adjusters is a flexible job
So there you have 10 things I learned today that contribute to making my life a better story to share. I hope this inspires you to learn something new today.
I am starting a writing series today inspired by Colleen Wainwright’s (a.k.a. communicatrix) 21-Day Salutes™ and Chris Brogan’s blog post challenge on the importance of story in your life.
How do these two things come together?
The most obvious one is they both involve writing on your own blog; however, the real reason is both goals align perfectly for me. Let me explain. I was brainstorming ideas for a 21 day series to get in the daily habit of writing when I started reading Chris Brogan’s blog leading to the challenge.
The two fit perfect because earlier this month I told a good friend that I wanted to start using my personal site as a journal for a few reasons:
- Share with family later in life
- Review in the near future for personal growth
- A great start to an autobiography one day
- Why not, it is a great learning ground
- Gain more experience blogging
Where does the importance of creating a story fit in?
Your life is your story so the more meaningful things you do in life that bring you joy will create a better life story. This is important because those with a fun & fulfilling life story tend to be happy at the end of their life from my limited experience.
Everyone creates a story through life; but is yours worth hearing? Mine will be worth hearing although it may be worth hearing to some already. To make sure I apply creating a better story my first 21 challenge starts today and focuses on how I can make my life a happier story for me. Some days that might just be reflecting on parts of the back story and adding the written record on these pages.
21 Ideas for creating a better life story
- Learn something new everyday
- Don’t miss anything
- Laugh at yourself, today
- Read a poem
- Write a poem
- Go for a walk
- Go camping
- Travel on a budget
- Play a game
- Invent a game
- Write 1,000 words about what you did
- Write 1,000 words about what you want to do
- Make a list & check it twice of things you want to do
- Make plans to do one of the things on your list above
- Eat something new
- Help a stranger
- Ask a stranger for help
- Give someone gas money
- Give someone a ride
- Be thankful for what you have
- Sacrifice a want for a need
There you have it, 21 ways to make your life story better which will in turn make you happier.
A few closing thoughts
If you know me then you know how much I love marketing and web analytics. I bring this up because there is the importance of telling a story in the marketing & analytics disciplines. Marketing is about telling a story that connects with your audience most effectively with a shared experience. Web analytics is data telling a story that takes a very talented storyteller to interpret and convey to others in a meaningful way.
I urge you to take up Chris Brogan’s challenge for a chance to win a copy of Donald Miller’s book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.
Tribute to Jim Rohn
Jim Rohn
Jim Rohn is one of the best speakers I have ever had the pleasure of listening too. He holds a secret to inspire that everyone could learn from. In addition, he has unmovable faith in himself and God.
It is with deep sorrow and exceeding happiness that I pay tribute to the passing of Jim Rohn on December 5, 2009. I am saddened I will never get to see him speak in person yet joyful knowing he has moved on to a better place.
Thank you for all the inspiration; it will continue to live leaving a legacy for generations. Goodbye Jim.
You can watch the tribute video here.
One of the many things I love is marketing and at the center piece of any great marketing campaign is the promotion. Dating back to political propaganda, direct mail and now widespread on the internet.
Today I share with you a recipe for a highly effective promotion so you can create sales letters that convert like never before with some practice and get your slice of the pie.
Highly Effective Promotion Recipe
1 part Headline, the shocking attention getting titled necessary to capture the attention convincing them to read at least one more line.
1 part Sub Headline, reinforce the headline with emotion, benefit and action to keep your prospect reading.
1 part Body, the meat and potatoes of your promotion include all the benefits loaded with emotion to drive home the sale. You may want to create urgency with scarcity or appealing to a cause greater than yourself as a service to others.
3 parts Testimonials, testimonials help build influence because it is some one else (i.e. stranger with the briefcase), serve as social proof, a celebrity testimonial is awesome because it serves as an unofficial endorsement of sorts (an actual endorsement is even better). When authoritative people in your field give a testimonial that helps to build your authority so definitely include any “influencers” you have testimonials from.
3 parts Bonuses, you want to include some freebie extras and tie a direct dollar amount to each one. You have seen this on TV where they have order in the next 5 minutes and get yada, yada, yada a $109 value for $19.99 or something to that effect. Remember to make it something your customer wants along with being easy and inexpensive for you to fulfill.
1 part Contact Information, collect at least the name and email address of your prospect; you may also want to capture a phone number if you plan on calling them. Take a note, if you are not going to call, don’t ask for the phone number at this point.
Now you have an easy to follow 6 ingredient recipe for a highly effective promotion page that can be used for sales, lead generation, event registrations, charitable donation drives and petition drives to name just a few. Remember even simple recipes take practice to perfect.
I watched “The Secret” yesterday morning and am very glad I finally took the time to intently listen. Assuming you have not seen “The Secret” I highly recommend you watch for yourself because it could change your perspective on how your thinking impacts your life.
The basic premise of “The Secret” is that you attract what you think about. For example, when you think about debt you attract more debt into your life and when you think about love you attract more love into your life. So maybe you haven’t heard of “The Secret” instead you have heard of “The Law of Attraction”. Well to keep things simple The Secret is The Law of Attraction.
Now to some this seems perfectly logically while others believe it is fake however no one can deny that people from all walks of life practice “The Secret” daily. This is the part that caught my attention the most; when everyone from religious leaders to political leaders along with philosophers, doctors and scientists agree on a common principle it is worth noting and paying attention.
In the film you are presented with great people from the past such as Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King and Plato who put “The Secret” to use based on their own quotes. In addition, several very successful people who live today including Fred Alan Wolf, Bob Proctor and Michael Beckwith share how the secret has impacted their lives.
One of the main recurring themes in the secret is to visualize what you want so that it is attracted to you through meditation, thought or actual pictures. John Assaraf, an entrepeneur, featured in the secret introduces the idea of Vision Boards to help your brain think about the things you want by providing a daily visual display.
The concept is very similar to writing down your goals and reviewing them daily only you are using images instead of written word. Although I have seen some vision boards that have words on them to. In fact, you probably made a vision board in school without ever realizing it. Ever gone through magazines and found pictures you like then pasted those pictures to a poster board? I know I did.
I believe this is a very worthwhile practice and am working on a vision board for my future this week. I plan on putting things to represent a happy marriage, a humble home, a wonderful family, eating nutritious and staying healthy with exercise.
What will be on your vision board?
Do Babies Like Yoli?
Are you a parent with a young child, baby or infant? Assuming you miss the opportunity to taste Yoli for free then watch the video below and decide.
As you can see young Luke loves Yoli and imagine how your child will react to an amazingly healthy drink with no preservatives, no pasteurization, no sugar, no artificial colors, no caffeine and no fillers:
What does Yoli contain? All natural ingredients, low glycemic index, stevia reb-a, high ORAC antioxidant and live, active ingredients.
Mother nature is absolutely amazing to me sometimes. Despite how much humans destroy the earth she is able to quickly repair. When we as humans decide to help nature out magic happens. Here are 7 things I bet you don’t know about planting trees that helps the world:
- Planting Trees Heal the Land
- Planting Trees Grow Community
- Planting Trees Creates Jobs
- Planting Trees Create Biodiversity
- Planting Trees Empower The People
- Planting Trees Reverses Global Warming
- $100 in Trees Plants a Forest
Below is an awesome 9 minute video about how people planting trees is changing lives and helping the environment:
Become a part of the solution and get involved with Trees For The Future. Also, every time you buy Yoli you are supporting Trees For The Future and all the wonderful things planting trees does for the world.
I first discovered web analytics when I read a post on Slashdot about some stats collected via WebSideStory. A short time later I was working for WebSideStory where my love for web analytics bloomed.
I am asked all the time, What free web analytics tools do you use or recommend? The obvious answer is Google Analytics because of the many advanced features it offers.
You may not want to use Google Analytics because of several reasons including fear of how Google may use that data or wanting a server side solution instead of a JavaScript tag solution. Here are 15 additional free tools for analyzing your site:
Woopra : Real-time web analytics tool that uses client desktop software to get the stats instead of a web interface. This is probably better for those with a super fast internet connection coupled with awesome computer hardware. Although it works just fine on my 4 year old Toshiba Satellite laptop. Woopra is a JavaScript tag based solution.
Logdy: Another real-time web site analytics tool with a web interface & login. Lodgy is also a JavaScript tag based solution.
Wordpress Stats: If you have a wordpress blog then you should definitely try out Wordpress Stats. It is web analytics for writers/bloggers. I believe it uses calls to your wordpress database to build the stats making it a server side PHP based solution; no JavaScript tag required.
ClickTale: ClickTale records a visitors session on your site for you to play back later. Great for more visual analysis of page layout, intent and figuring out where people get lost or confused. ClickTale requires a JavaScript tag at the top and bottom of your page so performance is a concern for high traffic sites. I recommend only using ClickTale for a small percentage of visitors; you may even install only on key pages you want to optimize.
Clicky: Clicky has a limited free option however the real analysis power lies in the paid version so I would recommend trying out the free version if the paid features are must haves for you. Clicky is also a JavaScript tag based solution.
Piwik: Open Source web analytics so you can change anything you want. Piwik uses PHP & MySQL to run on your server and it generates a JavaScript tag for your site. I believe Piwik was the first open source web analytics solution although there are a few other open source web site analytics tools now.
Firestats: Firestats is free for non commercial use and is a PHP & MySQL solution; as with all the other open source web analytics tools it is server based and not JavaScript.
Yahoo Web Analytics: When Yahoo purchased Index Tools the product got renamed to Yahoo Web Analytics. It is only free if you advertise with Yahoo so a bit of a grey area in terms of free. Definitely worth looking at as an alternative to Google Analytics if you advertise with Yahoo. Yahoo Web Analytics is a JavaScript tag based solution.
AWStats: The most basic and very common server side web analytics tool that parses your web server log files. You really should be using at least one other solution since there is very little to no actionable insight with AWStats. At least extend with JAWStats below.
JAWStats: JAWstats is an extension of AWStats that uses a PHP server side script to track your website. It is free and open source.
Mochibot: Need a web analytics tool for Flash? Mochibot is designed specifically so you can track your flash content across the web. Great for Flash games, videos and animations especially if you encourage sharing or embedding. I don’t use much flash so no experience with the tool…yet. Mochibot uses ActionScript so it lives within your SWF flash file. Pretty much if they use flash you will be able to track. One very key advantage here is that Flash cookies don’t get deleted nearly as often as standard web cookies. My understanding is that the only way to delete is manually; thus you can get much more accurate visitor counts.
Grape Web Statistics: Open source GPL web analytics tool. There is a live demo of Grape however I didn’t see anything too impressive. It is in beta so as it matures I would expect more robust reporting.
TraceWatch: Open source real time web analytics solution with a nice feature list including pathing and an API. Uses PHP and installs on your web server. There is a JavaScript tag available for non PHP pages also.
GoingUp.com: If you are into SEO (Search Engine Optimization) the you might want to look at GoingUp. It appears targeted towards SEO & organic traffic. It has a second component called GoingUp! Ranker which checks your site in the search engines. I am a bit leary of pinging Google from my web server because Google does not like automated scripts hitting its search engine even though they send googlebot out to do the exact same thing to everyone else!
Open Web Analytics: An open source PHP based solution that you run on your own server. No JavaScript tag used. The only downside I see is that if you use Wordpress & wp-cache plugin. Unless you installed wp-cache to solve an issue this is worth a look. Claims to have click path analysis which any analyst knows is gold.
BBClone: Down at the time of this writing; I will update when I have more information.
You may notice I left out qualitative feedback tools & mechanisms such as 4Q by iPerceptions. I may do a post about survey tools later because this article is focused on quantitative tools.
I have not personally tried each web analytics tool however I did verify each has a free option; most will give you additional features with a paid option. I plan on trying each tool over time so that may take a bit. I will continue to update this list as things change; leave a comment if I missed your free web analytics tool.
Chandler is the Champion!
Check out the Rock N Roll Marathon that was held in San Diego on May 31, 2009. Chandler is the champion!
During the race, west bound on Friars Road (mile 12). Go Chandler:
Dirty Leslie providing support at mile 12:
Mark and Brittany offering their support:
Mom and Son:
After 26.2 miles and 4 hours 25 minutes of running we have a winner (in the family):
Congrats, Chandler is the Champion!
Double V8 Engines – CA Historical Vehicle, originally uploaded by mesimoniv.
I went to Cruisin Grand on April 24, 2009 and came across this gem. Definitely one of the coolest cars I’ve ever seen. You can see from the license plate it is a California Historical Vehicle. Enjoy