Be Aware of What They're Selling

Recently I've been seeing these Cascade commercials encouraging people to 'do it every night' because running the dishwasher only takes 4 gallons of water while washing dishes by hand uses 4 gallons every 2 minutes. As I mentioned a while back, I never had a dishwasher until we moved into this house, and I still haven't figured out what's so great about having one. Occasionally we'll have a house full of people, and it does come in handy, but the rest of the time it really is easier just to wash the dishes and get them done.


Still, this commercial had me intrigued. My view is that it takes the same amount of water, power, and dishwasher detergent to run the dishwasher no matter how many dishes you put in it, but maybe it really is better to run it every night, or a little more often, whether it's full or not. Still, I can't imagine that washing my dishes in the sink every night really uses that much water. Am I really wasting water by washing my dishes by hand?

So, today I thought I'd measure the water it takes to fill my sink up - just to see. And what I found out is that the most I use is about 5 gallons of water - and that's when I have a lot of dishes. Believe me, I can stack a drainer. I'm not sure why loading a dishwasher seems so much harder for me, but it does...

When I'm washing a regular amount of dishes, my sink doesn't get even as full as that 5 gallons. I might actually use the 4 gallons my dishwasher is supposed to use, but that's for all of the dishes. I'm certainly not using any 4 gallons every 4 minutes. What in the world are they talking about? Who does that?

But then, they are trying to sell dishwasher detergent. You won't actually be saving water or energy, but the more often you run your dishwasher, the more dishwasher detergent you'll need to buy...

I Want My Sunday Ads

When we moved to Anderson, we wanted to subscribe to the Sunday paper - for the ads.  While I know you can access pretty much any store's ad online nowadays, we still like getting them in the paper.  We really don't read the paper, but we like to sit down on a Sunday morning with our coffee and the newspaper ads.

We'd been getting the Milwaukee paper in Wisconsin so we decided to subscribe to the Indianapolis Star instead of the local Anderson paper because we figured the big city newspaper would have more of the ads we wanted to see.  WRONG!  There really weren't very many ads in the paper at all.  Jeffrey even drove to the gas station a Sunday or two just to buy the Anderson paper so we could compare.  Every time, there were more ads in the Anderson paper.  So we canceled our Indy Star subscription before too long and subscribed to the Anderson Herald Bulletin.  It costs a bit more, because you can't get just Sunday but also have to get Friday and Saturday.  Still, definitely more ads.

After canceling the Indy paper, I would periodically get phone calls trying to get me to re-subscribe.  Every time I told them exactly why I'd canceled the subscription - not enough Sunday ads.  Each time I was assured that they had added more ads, or that the holiday season was coming up so there would definitely be more ads.  I was even offered a Sunday only subscription for only $6/month.  My cheap frugal little heart really wanted to grab that one, but I said NO.

But in July I got another call offering me three months for the price of one, and I was again assured that there were more ads in the Sunday paper and several ads in the Thursday paper, which was also included in my subscription.  So I decided to give them another try.  It had been almost a year since I first canceled the subscription so maybe they really had changed.  We also kept our subscription to the Anderson paper, so I kept track of the ads every week in this Sunday newspaper ad comparison.

The results were pretty interesting - The Indianapolis paper usually contained about half the number of total ads compared to the Anderson paper, and there were usually more coupons in my Anderson paper, too.  One week the  Indianapolis Star only had 3 ads.  Three! Talk about ridiculous.  And that Thursday paper they told me had ads only contained a Kroger ad - which I get in the mail either Wednesday or Thursday anyway - and sometimes an ad for a weekend sale at Kohl's.

Needless to say, I have again canceled that subscription, and I have no intention of ever subscribing again. If you live in the Anderson, Indiana area and you like your Sunday ads, avoid the Indy Star.  The 'big city' paper really has nothing on our local paper here in Anderson.

Anybody else look forward to their Sunday morning ads?  And comics!

How to Be Remembered

I think all the pens in my purse are custom promotional pens from the bank or a hotel.  I love picking up those pens, mostly because they're free, but also because I always have the information for the bank as close as the nearest pen.

I thought about ordering some personalized pencils or pens of my own one time, but I wasn't sure what to put on them, and I didn't really know who I'd give them to.  So I didn't.  If you have a business, I think they're a good way to get your name and information out there, where people will see it on a regular basis.  For an individual like me, I'm not exactly sure what I'd use them for.  It might be a good way to advertise my blog if I ever go to one of those blogging conferences I'm always reading about.  They say you definitely need business cards printed for something like that, and some of these custom pens might be nice to go along with that.

There are lots of other interesting promotional items to choose from too at sites like GOPromos.com.  I guess the key is finding something people will hold onto and use - that also has your information on it.

Create Some Hype

Advertisers are learning that creating an online buzz and generating word-of-mouth Hype is a good way to drive traffic to their sites and generate business. This buzz often starts with online publishers and bloggers, and a new site called iHype brings them together.

It's free to sign up for an account, for both advertisers and publishers (bloggers) so I'm going to give it a try. I love learning about new things and being a part of the buzz, seeing how a few posts can snowball until suddenly you're reading about it all over the Internet. Of course, getting paid to do it is nice, too.

Full Color Brochures

VistaPrint says that your budget should never force you to decide how many colors you can afford on your custom Brochures. I love that idea, because all those years we were putting together the school calendar, we never had the budget to use more than one color. Even one more color would have made a huge difference. Imagine if you want to put together a brochure to introduce and promote your company. You'll make a bigger impact and better impression with full color.

VistaPrint makes it easy to create your own brochures. Start with one of their templates, add images and text. VistaPrint has over 70,000 images to choose from, or you can upload your own. If you've already designed a brochure on your own computer, you can upload the file for printing. There is a one-time fee for uploaded images and files, but you can use that image in future orders at no additional cost.

VistaPrint lets you order your brochures in whatever quantities you need, and even in small quantities, offers the best value. Printing isn't quite the involved process it used to be, so the cost is lower, and VistaPrint believes in passing the savings on to their customers. For even more savings, enter the coupon code FreeBrochures08 to get 25 Free Brochures with your order.

Advertisers, See What IZEA Can Do For You

Do you have a product or a website you'd like people to know about? Give some thought to blog marketing. It's a great way to get the word out. You get bloggers talking about your product and your site, and the word spreads. Because bloggers are real people who love giving their opinions on any number of topics, you will get honest opinions. And because real people are giving real opinions, readers listen. At least I do. For instance, I was writing about a very interesting website today and the products they offer when I found another blog with a post about the same product. I was interested and excited about the product to start with, but reading the opinions expressed both in the blog post and in the comments made me feel even more confident in that product.

So, you've decided you'd like to try blog marketing. Now what? Do you need to scour the Internet for bloggers, asking them to post about your product or website? Sure, you could do that, but IZEA would really like to help you. Through PayPerPost and SocialSpark, IZEA works to connect advertisers with bloggers. Advertisers specify the requirements - offer amount, minimum number of words, links and anchor text, images, minimum RealRank or PageRank, and relevant blog categories. When the ad campaign or Opp is realeased in the Marketplace, only bloggers who meet those qualifications can reserve that Opp and submit posts. IZEA filters them for you.

IZEA offers a wide variety of Social Media Marketing services, from the blog posts we just talked about, to blog sponsorships and ads (see the ads at top left and click on 'Advertise Here' if you're interested), and product sampling. That's something bloggers really like, getting their hot little hands on an actual product, being able to use it, take pictures, and blog about it. IZEA can help you with that, too.

So what I'm saying is, IZEA wants to help you advertise, and they have a lot of great ways to do it.

How Do You Like My Logo?

I've been playing with logo design today. It would be nice to have logo of my very own, something that people can associate with me and my blog. I could put it on business cards to hand out when I'm away from my computer, so people can find me. I could even have letterhead and address labels for all my correspondence. OK, so I don't really use any kind of snail mail correspondence any more, but I could add my logo to my email signature.

All the big companies have easily recognizable logos. Most of them don't even need a company name to go with their logo. People take one look at the logo, and they know the company it represents. I may never be that recognizable, but it would still be nice to have a logo to use on everything. LogoYes makes it simple for anyone to create their own logo in a few simple steps. Their logo says "Look Big, Win Big" so why not try creating a logo just like the big guys?

Here are the easy steps:

• Step 1 - Choose an image style: High-tech, bold, or flair. They even give you a short description of the type of company that would be best represented by each style.
• Step 2 - Choose your industry from a list of several.
• Step 3 - Then you get a selection of black and white images to choose from. The logo creator notes that you will add color in step 5. You choose the image in black and white because a good design looks good in black and white as well as color. You can browse through the images, or search for something specific. You can click on each symbol to see all of them in that category - even the ones in the other styles you didn't choose in step one. I ended up choosing a butterfly, because there are butterflies in my blog header, and I liked one from the Flair style best.
• Step 4 - Once you choose your image, you add text (up to 2 lines) and choose a font.
• Step 5 - layout and design. Here's where you get to add color, move things around, rotate, flip, resize, etc. to get your logo exactly the way you want it. What I could have used here was a button I could click that gave me suggestions because, I wasn't quite sure what to do with my image and my text to make it look good. Luckily, there are several sample logos on the main page, so I spent some time studying those. This is what I came up with:
  
• Step 6 - You can buy the logo you create, or choose to create a business card with the logo so you can buy business cards in addition to your logo file. They have several different templates for the business cards. Simply choose one you like and edit the information. Here's mine, sized down to fit here:
  

What do you think? I'll probably have to play with it some more, but I like that the colors go with my blog, and the butterfly ties it all together. The whole process was really easy, and if you change your mind at any time, you can always click on the step you want to change to go back and fix it. It doesn't look like you lose any of your work by doing that, either. For instance, I went back to change my text, and when I got back to the layout step, my colors and placement were still there, so I didn't have to do that all over again. Or I could just as easily go back to the beginning and start over - until I get the perfect logo.