Your Questions About Direct Marketing Solutions

Jere answers:

I use Yahoo Answers to direct people to my services. The key is to give real value to the asker in your answer to their question. If you are a problem solver for them, they will seek you out for more of what you gave them. You don’t necessarily have to even place a link in the answer, as long as you can be contacted through IM or email.

If you are too aggressive and have an obvious agenda….ie: short answer and placing a link for them to click….that’s not so effective….if at all…especially when the link is not really relevant.

In fact I realized the potential of this forum very quickly when 3 weeks into it …it occurred to me to look at my site statistics….just over 600 unique visits…so I realized my answers were effecting or influencing people.
So what started out as just a place to throw my opinions and expertise out there, became a unique tool in my business process.

Direct Mail and marketing are my thing, and part of my overall strategy is to use this forum to help educate people about the effectiveness of direct mail, and that marketing is a businesses top priority. This forum also allows me to “practice” my knowledge. It allows me to perfect my thoughts on a given subject. This makes me that much more effective when I am sitting in front of a live client.

It is also a great way to stay sharp creatively. There are often questions that allow me to craft a unique solution to the question at hand.

As far as the effectiveness of Yahoo Answers, I can see a direct correlation between a batch of unique visitors to my websites to when I may have spent a chunk of a few hours on Yahoo Answers.

Several hits have translated into an actual contact, and this excersize allows me to also tweak web content so that more of those visits turn into contacts.

Jere answers:

Richard Clarke authored a book published by the Council On foreign Relations in June of 2001, stating that the US had to secure the oil resources in central Asia. Now when one does that, they have the ability to shut off the supply of oil to the rest of the world.

The reason the US is not energy independent, and it certainly could be is based in 2 reasons:

First is becaue crude oil is what makes the world go round. All trade among the market economies of the world are conducted in the “Petro-Dollar” due to the efforts of Henry Kissenger in the 1970’s to leverage every country into a market economy if they were not already a market economy. Book “Kissenger: Man of Peace?” This makes the US currency the defacto reserve currency of the world. This is part and parcel of the UNs agenda of “Interdependence.”

Second is because the US uses oil and sometimes coal as means of foreign aid. Direct and indirect is a factor as well. The oppressive regimes of the middle east are kept afloat by initially what were US oil companies, developing the resource and extracting it for export. If it were not for crude oil reserves under the Arab nations, there is nothing there for them to export except olives, camels and sand. There is no industry to speak of, at least not exporting to any significant scale compared to India, Japan or China.

With the recent move to altering the currency basis from the US currency to the SDR, the US currency is facing implossion in the world markets. The wars have staved that off for now, but for how much longer can the US afford to be involved in an intractable war that it will not win?

I am a realist, a paleoconservative. I fully understand there is no exit strategy for the US from Iraq- all that happened there were the “Combat troops” withdrew. The US garrison in Iraq still stands at 50,000 troops. The US never withdrew from Europe after WW2 was done. We are still there even after the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union collapsed.

I fully understand the real reasons the US went into Iraq and Afghanistan, and I disagree with those moves. I disagree with the propaganda that was used to rationalize those invasions. The evidence Condoleeza Rice promised to be revealed to the American public never was (because it did not exist).

The reason I found out the truth was because I shut off the TV set, shut off mainstream radio, and did my own research. The web is a great tool for finding the truth and sorting it out from the propaganda. I understand the anger of the person asking the question. Just because the US foreign policy is loony, does not mean every American is unaware of what is really going on. The Wikileaks fiasco is a fiasco because largely because the US government does not want the US populace to know what it really is doing around the world, or what a farce the US media is. It is no longer the fourth estate, it is the lap dog of those in the halls of power. Jefferson and Franklin are spinning in their graves.

Jere answers:

Well, with budget of 5,000 pounds, you should start initially with a press release. I use PRWeb, as they are able to offer several press solutions, but I’m not sure if they handle press in the U.K. Contact them to ask them if they do.(However, there are some free ones too!)

Then, there are tons of methods for you to advertise your magazine for free:

1) Create a squidoo lens! – There are tons of readers each and every day that surf through lenses to read, and charity lenses get a lot of traffic. You can tailor your lens to be highly focused upon your charity’s subject matter… As well as include a link to the charity’s website (Hint: make the URL point to page in website which users go to in order to sign up for the magazine). Plus, you can have multiple lenses about several different charity topics, and then cross-promote you lenses within your other lenses. This allows readers to find your lenses a lot easier, and increases the chances of a chained reading experience from users.

2) Social Media – Create a Facebook account, a MySpace account, a Yuwie Account, and a hi5 account. Then, start joining groups within the social networks that are business focused, as well as charity and non-profit focused. You can post bulletins and announcements either on your profile, or within the groups that you joined, instructing your friends to read a blog that you wrote on your profile… So, then you just need to write the blog or blurb on your profile which promotes your magazine. You have to spend 30 minutes to 1 hour each day inviting people to be your friend within the social networks, but they then become your future advertising market.

3) Free Classifieds – There are tons of websites that will allow you to post advertisements without spending money. Now, there are also advertising and marketing firms that you can hire to do a little marketing for you. However, do a lot of research on the firms to ensure that they are professional, and produce results.

4) Write Articles – Article directories allow an author to write specific subject-matter articles, and to get them top ranking within search engines. Ezine Articles is my article directory of choice, as it seems to get the highest ranking within Google, as well as a few other major search engines. Plus, they have an extremely diligent filtering program which ensures that garbage material is left out, so that the included articles are of extremely high quality.

5) Search for other opportunities to promote your charity through businesses and social networks that will promote your charity at no cost to you… This is inclusive of donation programs! Charity awareness applications are taking off within social networks, and usually have a donation feature which allows users to either make a direct donation to your charity, or to earn a donation for them whenever they take advantage of advertisements or online surveys!

Jere answers:

How do you convince yourself that anything manufactured and sold in market has a purpose?

Since nothing is created without a purpose, definitly the most important thing in the universe, our lives are meant for some purpose.

Since we as spirit souls are eternal, it is natural instinct not to accept the death as the end of all, but the problem is that the eternal spirit soul having misidentified the temporary body to be the self does not wish to give up the temporary body at the time of death. But, nothing can avoid the death of the body. The body has to die, because anything that has birth has death.

The solution, therefore, is to revive one’s eternal constitutional position as spirit soul that never takes birth and never dies. Then, you will never have trouble accepting the reallity that the body will die but the spirit soul will survive the death of the body and live on.

Jere answers:

There are diverse types of insects in your home that will hamper your peaceful life. So far, we have discussed natural methods to get rid of many of those insects. However, there are some insects that are mortal threat to your health. Those insects will suck your blood and transmit fatal diseases to you. Those insects are bed bugs, biting midges, body lice, head lice, mosquitoes and red poultry mites. You must be wondering how these insects have damaged your health till date and wish to get rid of their attack. Here are some natural methods to get rid of blood sucking insects from your homes.

Bedbugs and Red Poultry Mites are nocturnal insects that hide in the crevices of your bed during daytime and come out at night to suck blood. They often go undetected and a huge population will be awaiting you by the time you find out what has been biting you. Here are some easy tips to kill the huge population of bed bugs.
Expose the bed insects infested items to hot sun for two or three days. This will drive away the mites and bugs in the infested items.
Vacuuming is very effective to remove insects and eggs from mattresses, carpets, walls and other surfaces. After vacuuming, you have to dispose the vacuum contents in a sealed trash bag.
You can impinge steam wash to your carpets and mattresses to kill the huge population of mites and bugs.
Sticky traps or glue boards can be used to catch the mites and bugs that wander about.
The tea tree spray will drive away the insects as in a charm.
The insects infested areas can be fumigated to drive the insects away. Biting Midges are one of those blood-sucking insects that are difficult to control. They will suck blood all through day and night. You can try these methods to control biting midges
Use low pressure and high-pressure sodium lights for outdoor lighting. These will attract only a fewer number of biting midges to your area.
You have to regulate the moisture around your house. Biting midges lay their eggs in moist places
Vinegar spray will work as a charme to repel bed bugs.
You can try Ivomec to repel large biting midges.
You can prepare the home spray by mixing octagon soap, mouthwash, and warm water to spray on the biting midges infested areas.
Body Lice are always associated with the poor hygiene of a person. So, these insects will not infest people who bath regularly and wear clean clothes. Take these simple ways to get rid of bode lice
A hot shower and regular washing of your clothes and beddings will eliminate body lice.
You have to dry your washed clothes for at least 45 minutes.
You can rub lindane or elemite lotion all around your body to get rid of body lice infestation.
Head Lice are usually found on head and they also appear amongst hair in other parts of the body. Head louses usually like clean hair and infection by these insects is not necessarily to do with poor hygiene. You can take some home remedies to chase away the head lice.
Comb your hair regularly. The combing of your hair with a metal comb will increase the blood circulation in your hair and will chase out the hair lice.
You can apply the natural herbal oils to the scalp and hair to keep the hair lice away.
In addition to direct control of the hair lice, you can soak the combs and brushes in hot ammonia solution for one hour to prevent the hair lice infestation.
Mosquitoes carry various diseases like malaria, flu, etc. The female mosquitoes suck the human beings in order to have enough protein to lay eggs. They are the most dangerous insects in your house. Do stay away from mosquitoes by using these simple preventions.
Do not allow stagnant water to accumulate in your yard, old tires, buckets, unused plastic swimming pools, the base of a flower pot, pet dishes, plastic covers or any container that may collect water for more than two days.
You have to change the water in birdbaths, fountains and wading pools at least once a week.
A thin layer of oil over the mosquito larvaes will kill them.
You can keep the ornamental pools with minnows and goldfishes. They will gobble a huge population of mosquitoes.
You have to keep swimming pools, saunas and hot tubs clean and chlorinated.
You have to fills the unnecessary holes around your home.
You must keep the bushes and hedges trimmed to reduce the hiding shades for mosquitoes.
You can mow your lawn at least once in a week.
You can prevent the indoor infestation of mosquitoes by window screens and netting.
Apart from these natural remedies you can always seek the help of professional pest controllers to make an insect free home. However always remember that insects feed on unhygienic surroundings. If you have a good sanitation; you will be the sole owner of your house and the insects will be jinxed by its charm.