Domestic Geek

Dang, tomorrow is the last day of November! This month just flew by. Except for today. A 65 minute drive to get 18 miles to work just sucks. Stupid snow. Stupid people who don't know how to drive in snow.

Since I'm freakin' freezing (it's 13°F and quickly dropping) and I feel like doing nothing besides sitting on this couch wrapped up in my quilt, I present links to cool, stupid or interesting stuff I've been meaning to post and just haven't yet:

A Real Simpsons House — don't know why, but it's kind of cool.
Adultitis — how to find out if you suffer from it and how to treat it.

Well, shoot...I had more than that on my brain when I started this post. The dog keeping me awake all night has messed with my brain. I'll add more later as I think of them.

You know how I wrote this morning about wanting to get some money put away for my future. Just working a 9-5 type of job the rest of my life isn't going to do that. I'm looking into ways that I can cash in on the Internet and I've found a book that may just help me do that. Jeremy Palmer of QuitYourDayJob.com has written an ebook called High Performance Affiliate Marketing, an affiliate handbook packed with tips on how to generate income as an Internet affiliate.

Jeremy claims he made over $1,000,000 last year. While I probably wouldn't want to invest the time and energy it would take to make that kind of money, it would be nice to get enough extra income coming in where I wouldn't have to go work a second retail job until I retire.

Campbell's Soup is running their Click for Cans promotion again this year.

This year, one NFL team will earn a donation of Campbell's® soup to the food bank of its choice. How much soup? We'll get the official stats for all the players on the winning team's official roster and donate one can for every pound the total team weighs! So far, the Green Bay Packers remain the undefeated Click for Cans champs – will they stay on top, or will they get a run for their money this year? It's up to you!

Don't be discouraged if your team doesn't get the most clicks. The team that improves the most in the number of clicks from last year will also receive a donation! We'll donate 2006 cans on behalf of the team that shows the most improvement in the number of clicks from last year.

Each day you can vote for your favorite NFL team (Go Broncos!). There's still 31 days left in the competition, so head over there and VOTE!

Have you ever been out running errands and found something you'd like to purchase later, but didn't have paper to write yourself a note? How about needing to do something later, but by the time you get home, you can't remember what it was? Now there's a awesome new service out there called BrainCast. Once you sign up for the FREE service, you can call a toll-free number you can call to leave yourself messages that will be forwarded to your email inbox. You can enter up to three phone numbers you'll be calling from and to which email you'd like those messages forwarded.

It's like that episode of "The New Adventures of Old Christine" where she calls her answering machine multiple times in the middle of the night to remind herself of stuff she needs to do that next day without having to have an answering machine! I just programmed my free number in to my phone. I'll let you all know how it works out.

I've been doing a lot of reading on search engine optimization (SEO) during this job-hunting period. Since it seems that a lot of companies are requiring SEO skills of anyone their hire to do any web work, I wanted to see if it was something I really wanted to learn. The truth is, SEO is an animal unto itself. It takes a lot of knowledge to get the search engines working for your business. It's not enough to get clicks to your site, you need to be able to reach the people that will actually buy and use your products or services. If these companies were smart, they'd obtain the services of a company that specializes in Search Engine Marketing.

Apogee Search is one of those companies. They have recently joined an organization named SEMPO whose goal is to educate and foster awareness of SEM and its role in marketing. SEMPO has the sponsorship of search engine giants Google and Yahoo. Anyone who has surfed the Internet recently is aware of many of the unsavory tactics going on to boost search engine rankings. Apogee hopes their involvement in SEMPO will promote fair and ethical practices in the SEM field:

Apogee Search is in full agreement with SEMPO's recent moves toward establishing standards of behavior that will hopefully aid in cleaning up the dirty underside of the Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click industry. Apogee Search CEO/President William Leake, a frequent international lecturer and guest speaker on topics such as "Avoiding Search Engine Marketing Malpractice" has long believed that SEMPO could play a more positive role in advancing the overall industry.

For something as important to a business as optimizing their sites for search engines, they really do need to leave it to the professionals. I'll keep the folks at Apogee Search in mind when I get my own online business going in the future.