It is an idea who’s time has come: SPAGG.com
With the revitalization of the inner cities and old buildings as ” industrial lofts”, the green movement, and the economy and the slow economic recovery of late, the timing for SPAGG.com is prefect:
Spagg.com Network – the first place where private owners can securely rent their cars to make extra money. Owners and renters meet for pickup and drop off – it is perfect. It cuts out the middlemen completely, and utilizing today’s social network technology and mobile access to the best advantage of car owners who need to offset costs, the environment we all live in, the reduction of congestion and parking issues, the reduction of dependence on foreign oil: everybody wins on this one!
It was an Idea who’s time had come. I was so impressed with our first Bloblive we attended in Los Angeles.
But let me back up: I should start by giving you a little back round on myself: My name is Israel Rothman: I am a serial Entrepreneur, who has made, then lost over $8000,000.00 in the last ten years; but this is not about me, it is about the birth of the Internet, the development of a good idea, and about the beginning of a new era in human history:
It has been my honor to be part of this story, to lose everything twice in that time, and to be able to start all over again so soon.
This story is about cyberspace, and the Internet, and the future of the human race: it is about the technological changes that are changing the world completely, and so quickly that almost nobody sees where it is going, yet we all must try to jump in before it passes us by.
But more than anything else, this is ta story about change: the story of the evolution of an inspiration into a thought, then an idea into a reality, and then a website, and then a business, and then a convention. It is about users, and content, and websites, and humans, and machines. It is about collaboration, in person, remotely, and from across the world. This is the true story of Ideapals.org, and Moviepals.org, and many companies with many names. This is our story, and your story, and the story of what is to come: and, only because I am alive during this time too with you, parts of it are also my story.
I hope you enjoy this story, that you are inspired by the possibilities that have never existed before: I hope you participate, and innovate, and grow with us as you read it. But most of all I hope that it makes you think: because that is where everything begins, with a thought (what we call a spark), then an idea, then action, then collaboration….
This is the story of how Goerge Orwell’s vision of a future with the technology that we already have was exactly backwards: of how it is the least among us who have been empowered the most, of how there is no Big Brother, only us users, and playing on a more and more level playing field every day: where everyone, regardless of race, religion, or even location will have an equal chance to participate, and to communicate, and to learn, and to grow, and to build.
Living in what seemed to me like a frat house after the end of my 28 year marriage was very uncomfortable for me: so I wanted to use every opportunity possible to get out and to meet some new clients: having had mostly Realtor and Real Estate as clients had backfired terribly: I had made the most common mistake ever: under-capitalization: with no office, no employees, and almost no overhead at all I had thought I could do it without investors this time: then this bad economy hit, and all my Real estate clients stopped buying, and stopped paying: my son and I went from first year revenues of $779 in 2007 to almost nothing at all. The ex could not take it again, so here I was in Ventura, where I had no contacts, no clients, and almost no money, in the worst economy since the 1980’s.
So I looked online and found the ‘open mic’ meeting at Bloblive.com on Meetup.com (a social networking website), was taking place in Santa Monica that evening.
I convinced my son, Solomon to come with me, and we hopped in the $800 ‘beater’ car I had bought on Ebay when I had to give my Hemmy back, and off we went to Santa Monica for free food and an opportunity to get up in front of a small audience and speak about our business.
Interesting venue: while we were waiting for the show, we were given some blue silly putty and were told the best figurines would win a t-shirt.
We also had a drink, and met Brian Bentow, a young, very entrepreneurial software engineer form a good Jewish family in Ventura, of all places, who by some miracle had also showed up to promote his book about computer related injuries. We did not know it at the time, but Brian would become a client, then a partner.
User-generated, User-filtered content is the name of the game now: without it you will not compete is this quickly changing environment.
photo credit: Skype Nomad
I here it almost everyday:
“Must I post, can’t you just make me rank on Google search without me having to do anything?”
The answer is yes, and not.
What good will it do you? Even if i know some ways to fool somebody into coming to your worthless, page, what would be the point?
Very soon (and is some ways already) it will only be the value of your site to your visitors, and how long they spend there that determines your rankings; the tips and tricks of Gurus like me will not help you, if Google knows that people do not stay on your site; and Google already knows everything.
I am living proof that most of you would rather buy sweet lies than hear the truth. But the truth is still the truth. It is all about the value of the resources you provide now.
Stop buying sweet lies. You need video, interaction, and real content to compete online in 2010: and the best way to get these things on a scale that will scale, is user-generated, user-filtered content. The way to get that, is with a social media enabled site.
When the market went bad, nobody was buying enough flooring and we were crunched for cash. One of my companies was on the verge of failure. I had to do something. What drove me crazy is that others, who were not as established as us, had not been around as long had the rankings we deserved considering our size and reputation, and their prices were even higher than ours. We are the best flooring people anywhere, but we could not seem to get the search engine traffic we deserved. Then I called Israel.
Talking to Isreal was a strange experience for me: he talks sometimes in thought trains a full paragraph long, and, if I tried to interrupt him with a question, he would insist that I wait until I heard the rest of what he was attempting to put across before I interrupted. I kept trying to tell him that I didn’t want to understand what he was saying, I just wanted hire him.
Indeed what he was saying was on a hole other level than anyone else I had spoken to, and he was very difficult for me to talk to. But in the end he managed to get me to understand small pieces of why I was not being successful with the three websites and all the money I had spent. I hired him, and he carefully moved the rankings and traffic to one website that he put up: a WordPress blog, where I, and the young helper I just hired (I really do hate computers) now have complete control to edit and change at will, and we know exactly what we must do to maintain our rankings.
Oh, did i tell you? We are number one in Google organic search results for many searches, and we know how to maintain that using
H
ow did we get to the top of Google’s organic search results for social media marketing?
A: I wish I could tell you it was by being cute, tricky, huge, wildly successful, popular, rich famous or something flattering like that.
However, that would not be the truth. The truth, believe it or not, is that we did it the same way we do it for our smallest, least expensive clientele: by consistently posting quality content at least once per week on our WordPress Blog. It never ceases to amaze me when people are not even savvy enough to be impressed with what we do:
- We do not have any tricks that aren’t public knowledge here: The Rothman Guide to Building Successful Websites
- We do not buy reciprocal links, submit our site anywhere, or participate in Spammy link-building campaigns
- We are not large or wildly successful, although this ranking is already paying off
- We are not the biggest, one of the very smallest companies actually to ever achieve rankings like ours
- We do not have thousands, hundred,s or even dozens of employees or participants blogging, in fact, it is mainly just me, and my son occasionally.
- I do not have any degree in this, or even a college education
- There is no secret trick, methodology, or secret that makes this possible
- We are not web designers who have thousands of links at the bottom of their clients pages, in fact, we do not do that
- we are not rich, huge, famous…
So this begs the question; why are we there? The answer is so simple it will surprise you: we qualify.
- We do not do spam or tricks or link-building
- While our site architecture is good, it is nothing that anyone with a properly optimized WordPress Blog or other good CMS can not achieve fairly easily
- We do not do anything that most of you are not already doing
But we do it well, consistently: a constantly refreshed source of new and on-topic information. So simple. So much less expensive than any alternative.
Ya know: one of my favorite quotes is an original one:
“Life is a never ending battle between you and you!”
That is right, like you, I am even a little vain, occasionally drink more than I should, have to scold myself. Actually, I have a little bit of a hangover at this very minute: but I am still here, doing what I do.
I am still thinner, and in better physical shape than most my age: and all this for one simple reason that makes up for everything above: I am consistent, and reliable.
Just as there is a soul mate out there somewhere who is looking for a 55 year old guy who will never let his body go to hell; who will never stop dancing and drinking on new year’s eve until he dies, who can be counted on: Google values a consistent, reliable, constantly refreshed, on topic source of properly formatted, unique in all the world information to deliver up to you and I on a search, including the search: our social media marketing.
I can do this, and others can, because the great majority of you will not; and because Google does a good job, with my help.
Something for you to think about in 2010, hmm? Or not: your choice. I am there, and Wikipedia is there, and everybody else is somewhere else. Where are you on January one 2010 at 8:20 in the morning? Think about that.
Happy New Year, all. We are about to launch our masterpiece that we have worked on around the clock for months: what are you about to do?
When I called Israel My Webmaster had disappeared, leaving my expanding Massage business in Hollywood, California without a website.
Israel Immediately put up a new URL at http://relaxitsjustmassage.info/
Not having a website was critical to me because much of my business books appointments online, and I sell coupons for a group of discounted massages that are a critical part of my income. To compound matters, I am in the process of expansion with locations in Hawaii and Arizona. We intent to become a franchise eventually, so out website efforts are very important.
I am a very qualified massage therapist and an excellent business woman, but had always relied on someone else to do my website and have had a series of bad experiences.
Israel not only got me up and running with Wordpress: he made the website rank for many searches:
relaxing massage Hollywood California Google Search
He actually, somehow, by writing about me, made me come up on many searches in multiple places on the page with the brand new site, something the other guy could not do on many times the budget (what I bought from Israel: “SEO Blog” was only $479)
It does not take a rocket scientist to understand the value, for instance, of Twitter for instant feedback on a product, service, or copy.
But most people do not realize the value of a group like this one for market testing: case in point: we are about to launch a replacement for e-Lance and Rent-a-Coder for the buying and selling of digital media products and services of all kinds including websites, video, and marketing – all free, with nothing standing in the way of the transactions (sort of like a free dating site for business, with the best features of Linked-in, Facebook, Meetup.com.)
What Better place to get some feedback about the initial copy and branding: your opinion please:
Welcome to Ideapals: Bringing passionate people together to collaborate, innovate, and make money doing what they love:
We have created the ‘currency’ of “NODS”: work your passion here and get paid! Everything you do around here earns NODs (Natural Overtures Of Distinction) and we have placed a value on the currency of NODs: Whenever you have an idea, an opinion, a comment, a friend, or what we call a ’spark’, and you share it: you get paid in NODs!
Innovation and acknowledgment are the bricks and motor, the raw materials with which an idea, a group, or a community are formed.
Will next year be as bad as the last? Probably not. But now is the time to think about what you will do differently to make sure of it!
One of the things I like about blogging is that I can always work at any time of day or night. I have sold many millions of dollars from my efforts. (and I do not sell Real Estate; our average ticket is now under $1000)
We have written a complete guide of how to do this, and given it away for free here:
http://socialmediasystems.com/rothmanguide/
We did this because we think that, if people know all that we do for our clients, they will be more than willing to pay the $299 that we charge for an e-Book website and/or the $479 we charge for an SEO blog setup and hosting for one year.
The new redo of our website and this guide, which is being edited live, have resulted in the most interesting Google analytics data I have ever seen in 10 years of helping over 1000 companies come up on organic search: here are some highlights:
For the first 20 days of December since the new stuff has gone live:
3,971 Visits (traffic is up almost double) in 20 days
Average time on site: 3minutes 12 seconds (the highest we have ever seen)
Bounce rate: 60.01 %! This is the lowest bounce rate we have ever seen!
Google organic search traffic: 2,214 out of the 3,971 total visits!
I can only conclude that many of you are reading up on how to build websites yourself. Can I make a suggestion:
- Hire us, it is only a little bit of money, and your time is worth something
- This kind of organic traffic could sell real estate for you!
- You cannot make up for a life time of expertise in one read – hire us!
- Do something this year, to get the traffic from Google organic search and the others too next year
Here is a holiday offer: you are all reading our stuff: if you will hire us before Christmas (a few days: you can use any CC or Paypal or checking) and I will discount our already low $300 or $479 by another 10%!
That is $269 for an e-book, and/or $431 for a complete website, blog, and me writing about you to kick things off, trainings, rankings.
Note: you must mention this article, and request a special invoice here: mailto: info@socialmediasystems.com ; and you must do it before 12-25-2010
One of our current partners, Brian Bentow, is a computer programmer who wrote a book about computer related injuries: his experiences prior to meeting us, and the processes he went through learning about self-publishing a book, are valuable to anybody who has something to say, and who wants to get the word out for pleasure and/or profit. In fact, this is easier and less expensive than ever before, but there are many out-dated methods and services to be avoided. This article will help the reader avoid spending the money, time, and anguish that Brian experienced on this, his journey:
“My name is Brian Bentow and I published my book called The Computer Athlete’s Handbook: Your Guide to a Happier, Healthier Techy Lifestyle through CreateSpace, Amazon Kindle, and MobiPocket over a year ago and had moderate success. I sold around 100 copies, mostly through Amazon.com, http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Athletes-Handbook-Healthier-Lifestyle/dp/0982044704/.
I had read Dan Poytner’s Self-Publishing Manual. I recommend reading that book. However, the version I read was a bit outdated and did not discuss the benefits of Print-On-Demand services at great length perhaps because they were relatively new at the time. Consequently, I had to do my own research and make my own decisions. I decided to do Print-On-Demand because it has the following benefits:
1. You can update the content of your book at any time and I wanted to get feedback and planned to make a new edition in the future (This turned out to be extremely important because after I broke up with my girlfriend, I needed to update my dedication page.)
2. You don’t have to worry about returns, shipping, or fulfillment
3. You don’t have to buy a few thousand books and invest several thousand dollars and garage space
4. Createspace has a special program to put your book on Amazon.com for you
5. You can always do a large print in the future if the book becomes very successful and distribute the book through bookstores
I Would Want to Have a Relaxing Massage in Hollywood from Someone with This Kind of Attention to Detail!
The front page reads:
“If you’re looking for ultimate relaxation and a healthier you – you’ve come to the right place. The specialized massage therapists at Relax, It’s Just Massage are committed to your comfort and satisfaction.Massage has been found to improve circulation, joint range-of-motion and flexibility. It can reduce many common ailments such as stress, muscle tightness, aches and pains – even anxiety and depression.This is your time to relax and escape.Choose from a variety of services:Swedish Massage Deep Tissue Massage Hot Stone Massage Sports Massage Prenatal Massage Seated Chair Massage Out-call Massage to your home. Not sure what treatment is right for you? Our knowledgeable staff can assess your needs and help you choose. Book an appointment online:”
I have never seen a more well laid-out website for a Massage place, and they have taken over their own website, after suffering the ‘disappearing webmaster syndrome’. This is WordPress, with Suffusion theme completely redesigned by the massage professionals themselves: they have followed every instruction:
They have written great articles all about every different type of massage, with pictures to go with the detailed explanations of all the services they provide.
They have completely redesigned their own look for the site, using the customizable theme.
These are not your average massage therapists: their credentials for Sweedish deep tissue massage, sports therapists massage, relaxing massage, ..
Relax, it is just Massage in Hollywood California, 90069
Believe me, I have had a good massage, and I have had a bad one: and you want these amazing therapists with this kind of attention to detail and this wonderful facility in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard taking care of you!
Hair, Nails, elaborate photos to choose from, and an offer to match nearby competitors’ prices are just a few reasons that Finesse Spa is a huge business: these reviews rankthem as 4.5 stars out of five possible out of fifty reviews!
Better customer satisfaction (the sure sign of great customer service) is probably not possible when you are working on something so subjective as women’s hair and nails.
The photo gallery here, at their new website, provides a plethora of looks, hairdos, treatments, nails, wedding do’s and the like to choose from, previews of the lush facilities, and they already rank on Google for many broad searches, like
spa raleigh north carolina google search
If you type into Google search “ISO 9001 Quality Control Experts” or anything else to do with Guaranteed Certification in this niche market, you will find our client: Qualaco, Inc. Even though this is a brand new domain we reserved for them, they already have organic Google rankings targeting their niche market exactly.
They not only rank on Google searches for whatever they write about in this niche market they know so much about: they also have greatly enhanced their business plan. You see: Qualaco, Inc. is a management consulting company with a niche specialty which addresses a huge, lucrative marketplace: there are many companies in aerospace, oil, Government Services, Defense contractors, Food services, Transportation and many other gigantic industries who are compelled to conduct quality control audits in order to maintain certifications necessary to conduct their businesses. While these mandatory third party quality control audits have tremendous value for other areas of Human Resources and efficiency in manufacturing processes improvement, they are absolutely mandatory in order to maintain various government certifications.
We have not only allowed out wonderful efficiency expert consultants to reach their audience in a new way, without the usual very expensive process of calling on Government agencies and large corporations directly and breaking down doors so to speak. We have also installed special plug ins into the Wordpress blog we created for them, which allow them to set any number of special permissions providing access to client specific pages, where internal auditing and employee moral monitoring, and anonymous tips information can me collected and monitored all year long; also with special access to the management of clients to have constant information fed to them, and time and date stamped records to be maintained as a permanent record, thereby turning a yearly service into an ongoing one, without almost no internal cost. This has enhanced their ability to provide a value to their clients, and to operate profitably with minimum human man hours, their chief limiting factor because their knowledge and what they do is so very specialized that they cannot duplicate themselves.
What we have done putting them on top of Google was easy
T hese guys deserve credit; this theme: Suffusion WordPress theme by Sayontan Sinha is the best, most user friendly, feature rich, customizable theme I have found: I have just changed mine to this one instead of the one I built from scratch, and I will be using this one for most WordPress setup.
In Two and a half hours I have done all three of these sites from scratch using this theme, which also allows for different numbers of columns, different widget areas, and any other modification you like, with check boxes that activate built-in style sheet and a blank CSS that automatically overrides the others:
We are editing and preparing this now, may take another week or so. In the meantime, here is some information on managing email lists: (if you want the guide when it is done opt-in to the list)
2010 Managing over a thousand spams, newsletter, CRM, for FREE
Gmail has industrial strength spam filters, and can be uses to check all of your pop accounts. You can also then check this ‘filtered’ spam-less mail from your Outlook. I keep Gmail open in FireFox, and chat with technology partners while I am notified of incoming mail. I then occasionally download the remaining spam free mail to my Outlook, as redundant backup, and to allow robust followup options, including my linked-in signature: below; I export all my email lists from Outlook, and import them into my triple opt-in PHP list Server:
http://rothmanmarketing.com/lists/
Which is free software installed on my site to build my triple opt-in subscription list (nearly 10,000 and growing now)
I can also occasionally insert card-scan email lists easily into my op-tin-programming to build the list.
Sorry about that, (Solomon hit the wrong button) this was an old post were pulling information from to update so we will just update it now: Here is the updated version
Most of the guides, how to articles, and general industry advice we have read on social media marketing contain some “myths” :
- If you read tech SEO (search engine optimization) Blogs, you will find information on how to solicit and promote yourself on the the thousands of social media sites using overly sensationalist tactics in combination with what I call “friend” networking (spam) , or the process of connecting yourself to as many active users as possible by adding them to communities or by joining them as friends.
- To give some detail on what this quickly amounting mass of social media marketing literature gets entirely wrong: spam is not sustainable
- You don’t need to hit the front page or get even a large amount of diggs or votes for it to be beneficial and get you new customers, but these sites are becoming spam factories, and they are loosing their value. Quality of content is more powerful than quantity for rankings and traffic building (and credibility and conversion, for that matter)
- You shouldn’t write about stuff that goes against your marketing message – stay on-message
- A small site will be more successful on the search engines if the content centers around a single topic (topic specific posts)
- Use multiple other related sites, conquest other posters rankings by commenting with links to more information on your site, but try to build a following that opts-in because of the value, rather than the volume of the content.
- The wrong hit accomplishes no useful purpose - sheer volume has not value if it is not the right volume
- Even if no one promotes your stuff, promote yourself – (add one comment to each post of your own, for instance, nobody wants to go first)
- Add hooks every now and then to try and convert the traffic. (like: this is actually a specialty, you know; and what we would say about you would be immodest of you said it!)
Know your audience and speak to their desires and emotions to get leads, their logic to convert to sales: be personal:
In 2010, when you consider SEO, SEM, SMO: don’t be stupid: the rules have changed again:
Beware outdated techniques and services: any methodology that is designed to bring an unworthy site up on the first page organic search results of Google and others, at best, will not work for long; at worst, these outdated, yet still widely offered services will get your website penalized, or even banned. Internet services and techniques, and the professors and self-proclaimed experts on the specific topics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM); and now Social Media Optimization (SMO) have always been purveyors and protectors of rapidly outdated skills sets: which is happening now at a much faster rate as the technology moves further into a parabolic curve of advancement.
Fortunatley, a new age is upon us: what we called an “I am a Realtor too!” website in 2001 (when most of our clients were Realtors, and we were able to create rankings for such sites by giving away free ads) simply cannot be ranked for any sustainable period of time if at all now: although many not-so-up-to-date sources of misinformation will tell you otherwise for long enough to get your money. Our free ads sites worked after until 2003, when the search engines decided that any number of links originating from one URL (website address) would be treated as only one link, and subsequently that a database address would be treated exactly the same as a unique domain. Link-farms (web-rings, etc) evolved and adapted with social-bookmarking (Digg.com, Stumbleupon.com, Reddit.com) and user-generated, user-filtered content to compensate for subsequent changes to the algorithms determining that such contextual links needed to be from topic-specific authority sites to do any good, and now, as is always the case eventually, those sites have lost their relevancy because they became spam factories just as you started to learn about how well they worked for a little while. When Google decided that dynamic content was better that static content, and some rocket scientist decided that Blog sounded better than Weblog, or Newsgroup ( as we they were called in the 80’s), the blogosphere erupted, and social networking sites really came into their own. Now we all have too many profiles that we never update or use, too many ‘free blogs’ to keep up with, and ‘Splogs’ (spam blogs designed to harvest spam and feed it to the search engines) don’t work anymore either for any length of time, because people like me (and you , I hope) report them to Google and get them banned.
If you are even thinking about using Elance, Rent-a-Coder, Freelancer.com or any other online freelancing site, get ready for some Brain Damage! These sites are terrible for both the clients and the freelancers and here are just some reasons why:
For Clients:
- What if I don’t know exactly what I want? Too bad! These sites want a piece of the transaction so they control your freedom to work directly with the client to help define the project to meet your business goals!
- Who is actually doing the development? Because you cannot work with the freelancers directly, you may THINK you are working with a qualified freelancer but they just hand the project and a programing book off to a high school student!
- These prices are too good to be true! They are! The freelancers are forced into a competitive bidding process so early in the project that is so heavily weighted against them that they are forced to underbid poorly defined projects. In fact, these projects are typically a miserable experience for the freelancers and you are likely to get crap back!
- Why can’t I find top-notch professionals? On these sites, the freelances are incented to do quick and dirty jobs to meet hard deadlines. Scope can and should change as you learn more about the project. It is nearly impossible to do Agile or intelligent development in this way!
For Freelancers:
‘What an amazing story’: that is what you will hear on the Dr. Bunny show :
In my opinion, Dr. Bunny Vreeland herself is the real story: an animated redhead with a bubbly personality, Dr. Bunny Vreeland, Clinical, Medical Hypnotherapist in Ventura California has more than one gift: she can read you like a book, help you quit smoking, erase hurtful memories, create good ones: basically Bunny is the master of a very little known, real skill: she can literally re-program your mind like a hard drive: but when you listen to the Dr. Bunny show on local news-talk radio station KKZZ 1400 AM 12-1 pm Monday-Friday in Southern California, you will here her exclaim over and over again:
“What an amazing story” as she interviews a wide range of interesting people.
Born with the amazing gifts she has, the ability to look inside a person and feel who they are, and why, Dr. Bunny has spent her life understanding not only her gifts, and how to use them for good, to actually help people change their lives for the better; but also the ongoing clinical, medical science behind the human mind, and what actually makes us the way we are, and what makes change possible. A modern day saint to those of us who are lucky enough to know her in person, you have never met a more humble, bubbly, genuine person.
But that is not all she is good at: she is also tech savvy, and media savvy, a wonderful marketer: here radio show is my idea of excellent integration of a local and worldwide media strategy, with a strong web-presence, mobile device listenership with broad appeal, and a strong web presence, with a complimentary message which feeds her core business.
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