If you are new to the internet and wondering what an earth this blogging craze is all about, or if you already have your own website and you’re wondering why everyone keeps advising you to start your own blog, read on. I’m going to explain to you what a blog is, why you need one, how to set it up, promote it and of course, make money from it. Blog is short for “web log” and is similar to an online diary or journal. The craze of blogging began in the very late 1990s and has started to become more and more popular over the last couple of years. Almost everyone seems to have a blog these days, from CEOs of large companies to webmasters, from world travelers to teenagers. Even my Dad has his own blog now! A blog allows you to communicate informally with people via an online journal, but it’s more personal and unstructured than a website and easier and cheaper to set up than a website. If you have your own website, but haven’t yet started a blog you can easily start one using a free service such as Blogger or WordPress. Try to post to your blog at least once or twice a week on topics related to your website. Blogging will help your search engine rankings and open up the communication channels between you and your visitors or customers, encouraging them to interact with you and give them a reason to return to your site in future. If you don’t have your own website and are looking to set up a blog quickly and easily I recommend opening a free account with Blogger. You can blog about anything you like, for example a hobby, a vacation, your home town, something political, a sport or your business. Just be sure to pick something that you are interested in and knowledgeable about. You can host your blog for free on Blogspot – all you need to do is pick a name that is relevant to the topic of your blog. Once you have set up your profile and chosen a template, blogging is as simple as sending an email to a friend. There are many ways to make money from your blog, but here are a few ideas to get you started: - Google Adsense - this is free to join and easy to set up. The ads will match the content of your blog and you will get paid every time a visitor clicks on an ad. - Affiliate Programs – sign up for affiliate programs related to the topic of your blog and display links to related products on your blog. Clickbank, Trade Doubler and Commission Junction are good places to start, or do a Google search for “affiliate program” + the topic of your blog to find more affiliate programs. Whenever someone clicks through your affiliate link and buys a product, you will receive a commission. If you are knowledgeable about your topic you could also write product reviews to help increase your affiliate sales. - Sell Advertising Space – if you have a popular blog you can charge people to advertise on your blog. This could be in the form of a text link, a banner or a graphic. You are not going to make money with a blog unless people can find it. As soon as you have started to post to your blog it’s time to start promoting it. You can get your blog noticed by… - Submitting your blog to blog directories – just search for “blog directories” in Google - Asking other bloggers to exchange links with you – you put a link on your blog in exchange for a link from their blog. - Writing an article related to the topic of your blog and posting it to article directories. Remember to include an author’s resource box with a link to your blog. - Pinging blog ping services every time you make a new post – pingomatic and pingoat are two sites you can use to do this. - Participating in forums related to the topic of your blog. Put a link to your blog in your forum signature. Finally, once you have your blog monetized and you have started promoting it don’t forget to post regularly. The most important aspect of every successful blog is frequent posting, so be sure not to let the virtual dust gather over your blog!
Saturday, October 1, 2016
The great debate
If you are anything like me, the smallest decisions can quickly become material for the greatest debates of your life. You can turn the tiniest molehill of an issue into a huge mountain of a decision just by sitting down and analyzing too much. Sound familiar? Have you ever gotten weighed down in trying to make small decisions of little consequence and had trouble keeping perspective? I definitely have. It is so easy to take a minor decision like 'what should I eat for breakfast?' and turn it into a two-sided debate that can last long beyond normal breakfast hours. You begin to debate whether you should have a healthy, balanced breakfast of wholegrain toast and fruit or if you can indulge (just this once) in a less-healthy meal of packaged pastries and a latte. Did you eat healthy enough the day before to reward yourself witha sugar-filled breakfast? Are you planning to eat better food for the rest of the day? These questions and more can add unnecessary stress and debate to your choice. Those of us who are analytical by nature have an even tougher time not turning everything into a debate in our head. Take shopping for example. You find a great sweater on sale for ten dollars, but there is an even cuter sweater that you are sure you'd wear more. The cuter sweater, however, is forty dollars. What do you do? People like me start making mental lists of the pros and cons on each side of what has become a great debate during your day. Do you save the money but forfeit the better looking sweater? Or do you splurge and take some dollars away from another item you really needed to buy? What a task it can be to make choices like these when we let ourselves make big issues out of small ones. Is there anything we can do to stop making ourselves debate each decision we make each day? I for one am tired of living this way. It is one thing to be intentional about the choices you make, but it is another thing entirely to overwork your brain with debates over breakfasts or new sweaters. I guess I only have one piece of tested and tried advice to give people whose biggest opponent in any debate is themself: stop it. When you feel a silly debate about to be had in your head, just stop it. Take a moment to settle down your thoughts and to really consider how important this decision is. The chances are that it is not anywhere worth near the time and energy you will spend analyzing the choice. You will find, as I am beginning to, that ninety percent of the things I let become a great debate in my head are really not worth having a debate about at all. Have the unhealthy breakfast, buy the expensive sweater. Do what you want. Just stop being so indecisive about what that means.
Why measure your website when you don t sell online
What if every week you place a stationery order for you business? Pens, paper, staples and so on. And what if every week when that stationery order arrived you were only delivered 10% of what you'd paid for? Wouldn't you want to track down what was going on? Well, the same principle applies to your website, even if you're not directly selling online. After all, what if the overall cost of your website is more than its worth to your business? Unless you're measuring what is going on, it could be that week after week, you're only being delivered 10% of the business that you're paying for. But I'm not online to make money, it's just for general brand awareness Surely if you just have a brochure site or an information site, you don't need to worry about measuring? The site is just about letting people know you are there, right? Wrong For what is the ultimate point of generating that awareness? There is still an action attached to it somewhere - be it a phone call, an invitation to quote, a sale a year down the line. It's the reason your business exists. Whatever it is that you want people to do once they have awareness of your business. That's what you need to measure. Measuring lets you decide if the benefits you receive from your website justify the price you are paying. Because every website has a cost, even if it is just in terms of time. Measuring sounds difficult Measuring is about ensuring that you are achieving success outcomes that are worth more than you're paying for them. It will show you if the money you are spending on your website and marketing is making you richer or poorer as a result. Measuring doesn't have to be difficult and there are plenty of tools out there. Web analytics software, Excel spreadsheets, even just an old fashioned calculator will help. But tools alone can't tell you the answers. Measuring does require some thinking on your part. Your brain is the most important measurement tool there is To get started, think about how much a successful outcome is worth to you. And it doesn't just have to be sales. Newsletter sign-ups have a value, so do phone inquiries or speaking engagements. The important thing is to give the success outcome a cash value, even if it doesn't have a specific price attached to it. For example, you may decide a newsletter sign up is worth Ј50. From then on, its pretty clear that you don't want to be spending more than Ј49.99 to achieve that sign up. Also keep a note of how people heard about you. Online this can sometimes be tracked automatically. But offline the chances are you'll need to ask. You may discover, for example, that 25% of your phone enquirers saw your website prior to calling. Once you can measure that and assign a rough monetary value to those calls, you'll soon be able to judge if the website is a cash cow or a money pit. Website measurement is not just for businesses that sell directly online By measuring, you can ensure your website is earning its keep. And that applies to any organization spending money, time and energy on their website. If the evidence shows that the website isn't shaping up, you have the choice of fixing it or dumping it. Either option beats continuing in the dark week after week. No more putting up with only 10% of the business that you're paying for. Just like you'd track down those mysteriously elusive pens, pencils and staples, website measurement means you can track down that missing website business too.
Cancer treatment may cause heart disease
Certain breast cancer treatments have been found to make women more susceptible to heart disease. In the October 9 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, a variety of sources for heart disease risks have been identified, such as chest radiation, lack of exercise during treatments and stress. Pamela S. Douglas, M. D., chief of cardiology at Duke University and co-author of the JACC paper, said that the greatest damage comes from a breast cancer treatment mainstay: chemotherapy. Douglas always felt that “the benefit of saving lives outweighed the risks and were just part of the accepted cost.” But with the success of treatment and growing survivor numbers, Douglas and her colleagues are urging doctors to take the long view when deciding on a woman's breast cancer treatment. First treat the cancer, but don't forget about cardiovascular health down the road. Chemotherapy is a systemic therapy that makes use of drugs to treat cancer. Prior to a surgery, chemotherapy may be used both to reduce the size of the breast tumor and to destroy cancer cells wherever they may be. After the surgery, chemotherapy works throughout your system to kill cancer cells that may have spread throughout your body. Chemotherapy affects the whole body by going through the bloodstream. Just like other systemic treatments, the purpose of chemotherapy is to get rid of any cancer cells that may have spread from where the cancer started to another part of the body. The body's normal cells grow and divide in a controlled manner. Cancer cells, however, grow and divide in seemingly total chaos --- without any control or logical order. Chemotherapy works by stopping the growth or multiplication of cancer cells, thereby killing them. Specifically, Douglas and her team of researchers are looking at chemotherapy medicines called anthracyclines. These compounds are used to treat a variety of cancers, which includes leukemia, lymphomas, uterine, ovarian, and breast cancers. Anthracyclines are also known to have a weakening effect on some women's hearts. According to Douglas, “There are other drugs that are less harmful, and we know a little bit about how to lower the doses”, but added that it's too soon to start completely overhauling breast cancer therapy. Instead, doctors and organizations including the National Breast Cancer Coalition are calling for more research into cancer treatments to see whether other drugs might yield the same result without the added long-term risk. Douglas also stresses the importance of taking into consideration the different factors surrounding a woman's condition, as patients are “taking hits from multiple places.” While the cancer therapy might be one source of added cardiovascular risk, diet, weight, and family history also play a major role. Still, she advises patients who learn they have breast cancer to consider treatment. “First get cured!” But she clearly emphasized to seriously take the consequences that dieting and regular exercise can have for your health while taking chemotherapy medications, something that is not necessarily heart healthy. No matter how you look at it, cancer treatment remains to be a right combination of medicine and living a healthy lifestyle.
Confusing retinal migraine
Due to the varied types of the disease, most doctors would diagnose migraine based on the universally accepted standards of The International Classification of Headache Disorders (ICHD) to avoid misdiagnosis. Retinal migraine is a classic example of confusion and misdiagnosis, simply because the term is often poorly understood and widely misused. When a migraine sufferer is given a diagnosis that lacks accuracy in diagnostic terms but is given more of a descriptive term, a problem may arise. When these descriptive terms are used frequently, they miss out on its real diagnosis. The International Headache Society (IHS) came up with a standard diagnosis to make communications easier for patients who need to consult other doctors or change doctors. Retinal Migraine is an actual migraine diagnosis which is often misused to define any migraine that is associated with any visual symptoms, or a migraine with visual symptoms minus the headache. It is characterized by recurrent attacks of unilateral visual disturbances that precedes the headache period of the migraine attacks, starting with monocular (affecting one eye) visual symptoms such as scintillations, scotoma, and temporary loss of vision. Symptoms Scintillation is the perception of lights flashing in different intensity during the migraine aura and can be a symptom of the aura phase of a migraine attack. The headache period begins during or within sixty minutes of the visual symptoms that are consistent with migraine without aura: Headache duration of 4 to 72 hours. Symptoms should have at least two of the following characteristics: 1. unilateral location 2. pulsatile quality 3. moderate or severe pain intensity 4. aggravation by or causing avoidance of routine physical activity such as walking or climbing stairs And at least one of these characteristics: 1. nausea and/or vomiting 2. photophobia (heightened sensitivity to light) and phonophobia (heightened sensitivity to sound) The main difference between retinal migraine and migraine with aura (neurological phenomenon) is that the former has monocular visual symptoms as well as total, but temporary, monocular blindness. Since there are no known causes of migraine disease, diagnosis is done by tracing the personal and family medical history of the patient to rule out other causes of the symptoms. Treatment and Remedies There are several over-the-counter and prescription medicines that can provide migraine remedies or aid in relieving symptoms of attacks when they happen. For most people, treatments to relieve stress prove to be equally helpful as migraine remedies. Retinal migraine is a diagnosis of exclusion, however, and patients will generally require a complete cardiovascular evaluation to rule-out embolic and other vascular disease as a cause of the visual loss. Patients diagnosed with this condition may be treated in the same fashion as patients with migraine. Patients who are having infrequent episodes are given medications used for other forms of migraine to relieve other symptoms. These medications can include nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), anti-nausea medications among others. The choice of medications may depend on the age of the patient's severity of the condition. For frequent migraine attacks, the same preventive therapies used for other migraines can be explored. But, as always, remember to consult your physicians for proper diagnosis of your condition before taking any medication.
Laser resurfacing
: Laser resurfacing or “laser peels” is generally used to minimize the appearance of fine lines, mainly in the areas around the mouth and the eyes. It is also an effective solution for treating facial scars or areas of uneven pigmentation. Laser resurfacing is performed both on the whole face as well as in specific regions. The procedure is frequent done in conjunction with another cosmetic operation, such as a facelift or eyelid surgery. The benefits of laser resurfacing of skins are ahead of those offered by another skin rejuvenation option. It is the best treatment to ensure overall improvement of chronically photo damaged skin. Skin damage caused by photo aging is presented in various forms like rhytides and actinic keratoses, scarring from severe acne, surgery, or trauma. These are all cosmetic disfigurements posing psychological problems to the patients. Most of these problems can be effectively cured by laser scar resurfacing. The laser resurfacing procedure uses a light beam from a CO2 laser. The idea is to vaporize the upper layers of damaged skin at specific and controlled levels of penetration. A significantly positive side of laser resurfacing is that it produces less bleeding, bruising and post-operative discomfort than is typically seen with other resurfacing methods.
Eligibility for laser resurfacing
Before you proceed for laser resurfacing, you need to consult a doctor to check your eligibility. The consultation will include a careful assessment of the problematic area. Your skin condition will also play a crucial role in this regard. For example, dark skin types are more likely to complications from skin pigmentation after laser treatment. Skin conditions helpful for laser resurfacing A full-face laser resurfacing is likely to produce dramatic result mainly in aged, sun-damaged skin where actinic and seborrheic keratosis, lentigines, and telangiectasias are common. Besides, CO2 laser surgery seemingly gives good results for all scar types. However, laser scar resurfacing is a better option for saucer-shaped distensible areas, rather than pitted scars for which dermabrasion is a better option. Laser scar resurfacing is also a suitable option for problems like atrophic facial scars, hypertrophic scars and traumatic scars, which can also be ablated with considerable improvement of their appearance. Laser scar resurfacing is of great help in blending the scar with the texture and color of the patient's skin. Skin conditions not suitable for laser resurfacing However, laser resurfacing has certain limitations as well. For example, the procedure is not that effective in treating the nasolabial folds.
Risks and uncertainties in laser resurfacing
Handling of laser resurfacing by a qualified and experienced surgeon reduces the chances and level of complications. However, the outcome of the surgery is not completely predictable. The risks you should be prepared for in this surgery include – • burns or other injuries caused by the heat of the laser energy • scarring • obvious lightening or darkening of the skin area that has been treated Sometimes the healing seems abnormal or delayed. Besides, sometimes there is evidence of abnormal pigmentation or scarring. In such cases additional coercive measures and treatment may be required. The risks can be reduced to a great extent by choosing a plastic surgeon specially trained in laser surgery.
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