Funny T-Shirt Thurday is here. This one gave me a bit of a laugh. If you have a bald head and put this shirt on it would make people laugh like crazy.

You can find the Charlie Brown Yellow Zig-Zag Peanuts T-shirt Here!

A few days ago I was watching Wall-e and the song Put On Your Sunday Clothes from the musical Hello Dolly just caught my attention. There was something about this song that made me want to find out what it was. This got me thinking how many other people might have felt the same emotion towards this song. With a quick search I found that this song from 1969 was being rediscovered by a new generation.  When the makers of Wall-e add this song to the soundtrack did they know that they would get a new generation to listen to this song and want to watch Hello Dolly, was this a marketing effort. When children watch movies their parent or an older person usually watch the movie at the same time. What a great way to market content to an audience who was expecting to just watch a kids movie, and now want to go out and rent the original movie that the song was featured in. When I went through the comments on YouTube it seems many people found the song from watching Wall-e. It’s funny how a movie from 1969 is now on my list of movies to watch.

Enjoy! It’s a make you feel good song.

If you work on your own web sites at some point you need to edit an image. The top choices for my business needs are the following:

1. GIMP which is a free download and is an open source project to match PhotoShop. This easy to use photo editing software is the best choice for those on a budget and need something free and that works well. There are so many features that a newbie might get a little lost. There are a few books on GIMP, but most people who have worked with PhotoShop should not have any trouble getting the program to do what they want. GIMP is available for all computer OS’s.

2. Microsoft Digital Image Standard

You might have to look around for this one. It might no longer be for sale by Microsoft. This program cost form $60 to $100 and is very easy to use. Many of my logo’s and photo editing projects are done through Microsoft Digital Image. It might be one Microsoft product that just works. We have to give them credit for making a good program. The lite version of PhotoShop would be in the same price range and match most of the features. This is one of the most used programs in my tool box and I have used it for hundreds of projects. Would like to see Microsoft update this product and continue to support it.

These two programs are my favorites to edit images. With these two programs on my computer I have been able to make web sites look like a pro design them without spending much money. Many people work with PhotoShop and I hear great things about the software, but the cost goes beyond most budgets. At some point I would like to buy PhotoShop and learn how to use it. In the meantime these low cost solutions do a great job for what I need.

Want to grow your blog or web site traffic? Well there is a great book called  The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly. This book with the super long title is a guide on using social media to grow your business. No matter if it’s your personal blog or a business site that you need to market, this book teaches you how to do it.

Official Press Review:

Though it may not yet have affected the value of 30 seconds of Super Bowl advertising, PR insider Scott argues that understanding the growing irrelevance of marketing’s “old rules” is vital to thriving in the new media jungle. Already apparent in newspapers and magazines (with sharp downturns in circulation and ads), radio (on the losing end of the iPod revolution) and direct mail (digitally replaced by spam), the imminent fall of traditional mass media marketing means new opportunities for legions of smaller companies and independent professionals who need to reach niche markets cheaply and effectively. The way Scott sees it, this is also good news for consumers: the online culture of integrity and information tends to produce quality content for less, as opposed to the vapid, one-sided and pricey advertising of print media and television. Scott provides the technical novice a thoughtful and accessible guide to cutting-edge media arenas and formats such as RSS, vodcasts and viral marketing, without neglecting the fact that technological wizardry can’t substitute for a well-thought out marketing program. Besides emphasizing fundamentals like defining one’s audience, Scott also drills home the ethos and etiquette of the web, encouraging content that’s both useful and unobtrusive. This excellent look at the basics of new-millennial marketing should find use in the hands of any serious PR professional making the transition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

I found this to be a another great book to add to my collection. There are many ideas that I will be using and returning to this book many times over.

You can find this book here for $11.53!

It’s been a while since I last worked on the back end of vendingmatic.info and it was about time for a change. The changes started with a new template which I find makes reading easier on the eyes. There is also the addition of video and Twitter updates. The video box will allow me to add my own video content in the future. One thing I have been meaning to add was a Twitter update section. These little changes add to the experience of this blog. It’s been almost a year that this blog went up and I hope the readers appreciate my effort to provide new ideas to make money online. As I continue to grow the blog any back links would be appreciated. If you want to exchange links just leave a comment and I will respond as soon as possible. Let me know what you think of the new changes and if there is anything I could make better.

The funny t shirt for this Thursday is based on ET.

Find it here!

The past couple months my summer reading consisted of books on SEO and marketing online. The amount of information that I was able to learn from my summer reading is already starting to pay off. In this new age of Internet marketing every little piece of information counts. With Twitter and Facebook being sites that have a huge potential to bring traffic to your web sites, you need to know how to capture this traffic source. If you are serious about getting quality traffic to your site then start reading. You need to know what to do and how to do it. There are many web sites that can provide you with quality information, but sometimes a good old fashion book on the subject is the best learning tool. One book that caught my attention this summer was Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs By Brian Halligan.

This book will help with the following:

• Improve your rankings in Google to get more traffic
• Build and promote a blog for your business
• Grow and nurture a community in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
• Measure what matters and do more of what works online

The copy I have is for review only and the book is now available for pre order.The book will retail for $16.47 which is a great price for so much information. This is information that will make you a lot of money in the long run.

If you would like to get a copy of Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blog please click here for more details!