I’ve been meaning to write this post for several days now, ever since I read an article in our Las Vegas Review Journal dated Monday, February 16th. In fact, it’s been sitting on my desk just waiting for the right moment to go from paper pile to post.

What really caught my attention was the headline, “Cultural differences: Economic values may explain why businesses owned by Chinese-Americans are faring well in the recession.”

We see all too often people pulling away from the very thing they should be doing during down times or slow times or tough times – especially online. The energy exerted to build a business is tamped down (or shut down) in the hopes that somehow, magically, sales will continue – in spite of no advertising or marketing.

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Here’s something that very well may (and should) change your perspective on “should I or shouldn’t I be advertising and marketing or even blogging?”

“The fortunes of a newspaper published out of a second-floor Chinatown Plaza office may give us insight into differing attitudes about money and ways of surviving tough economic times.

In a time when a 162-year-old national news chain such as the Tribune Co. file for bankruptcy protection, the Las Vegas Chinese Daily News is actually growing, fueled by an increase in advertising. The paper has gone from 16 to as many as 36 pages since printing its first copy five years ago.”

The article goes into further details by defining how different cultures view our current times; “…many Chinese business owners consider a time of economic stress a time to spend money on advertising.”

This advertising “outlook” is considered to be a definite separation of U.S. and Chinese cultures. Where the former sees nothing but doom and gloom when it comes to doing business, the latter are taking advantage of great rates and exceptional deals. These factors also attribute to the fact that over 20,000 valley residents of Chinese heritage are surviving the highest unemployment rates in a generation.

“Chinese attitudes about money include the notion of saving profits and growing slowly, instead of leveraging long lines of credit and expanding rapidly, several business owners said.”

Now here’s the best part, and what I’d really like you to come away with (having read this post… thank you):

“The Chinese rely more on what is known as a relational economy, compared to Americans, who function more in a “me economy.” The Chinese system is based more on, “I do something for you, you do something for me,” with everyone being on the same level.”

Sounds a lot like the Golden Rule applied with a fine paint brush to the art of keeping customers coming back by treating them right.

So if you’re asking yourself, “Is now a good time to slow down with my marketing and advertising?” we think it best to tell you the answer is no.

Recovering lost ground is costly.

Instead, plan and budget for an amount comfortable (and affordable) for you in today’s economy. Be it $10 or $1000, keep your business plans afloat and keep them growing.

We’ve said it before and we’ll keep on saying it. The internet waits for no man, woman, or child. Let up for even a tiny bit of time and your competitors are going to sweep right over you.

Your wise move is again budgeting. Keep your ads out there, continue investing your time and energy, too.

These rough times will not last forever, even if (in the moment) the light at the end of the tunnel doesn’t shine very brightly.

Stay on top of what you’ve been doing, and when the sunshine hits, you’ll be well positioned – ahead of your competition – in the months and years to come.

Today I’m going to reference you to a new forum that’s slow to get off the ground, but with enough interest who knows. It’s called Blogovela and while I just created an account there, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t, do be advised that the activity on it at the moment is a tad on the slow side.

And speaking of slow, the economy isn’t getting any better (as we’re all aware) while the Republicans (sorry it’s true) play their frigging games – as the rest of us hang my our fingertips hoping the layoffs and business shutdowns and rising unemployment stop soon.

So with that in mind, I’d like to reference you to the newest post (as of this moment) over at our Solo Ad Explosion blog. It’s all about video games, cheats, consoles, etc., and also you’ll find information on how to get paid to play video games.

Steve has done such a great job explaining it all that I’ll let you take the quick trip over to discover if making money playing video games is up your alley or not. Even if it’s not for you personally, maybe (especially during these tough economic times) you’ve got kids that can help bring in a few bucks doing what they love to do anyway.

Definitely worth looking into… And while you’re at it, write to your Representatives, Senators, and The Whitehouse itself and tell them to get the show on the road for heaven’s sake!

With the Super Bowl taking up most of today, that’s still no reason to miss out on some potential money making ideas for yourself online.

And we’ve got a truly interesting idea for you today.

Almost nine years ago, when I was just getting into the publishing online business, a friend of mine was running (and may still be, we fell out of touch) a highly successful catalog-type business – yes from online!

At the time, I was extremely busy doing other things, although in the back of my brain I knew she was on to something.

So, lucky you! This morning I came across how you can grab yourself a Free copy of Retailers Forum Magazine.

RetailersForum is going digital. Until recently it was only available in its offline form. However, now they plan to each month – on the 1st of each month – release their current free digital version!

What you’ll find are wholesale items like:

o Jewelry
o Apparel
o Gifts
o Novelties
o and more

They are even throwing in “informative business articles.”

RetailersForum offer to you is straightforward and very simple. They are inviting new startups or established businesses who need to find merchandise to read their free magazine!

Let’s face it, with times like they are having options to make money online is without a doubt critical. This company has been around so long that they helped others back during the recession of the 80s and 90s.

RetailForums has been in business since 1981, and it’s definitely worth a little effort on your part to visit that link above (put down the nachos for just two seconds) and see what they can do for your business online and off!

Enjoy!

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Google’s page rank is finally meeting its (long overdue) end.

I don’t know how many pages I’ve visited of late that get decent (or boatloads of) traffic yet have no or very low PRs. In reverse, you’ve got the huge PR website, yet you can easily tell (via add ons, etc.) that no one knows they even exist.

For further proof, head to the Google search itself. Type in anything you want (I typed in “latest news google pr“) then start scanning and researching the leading results. For my particular phrase, front page results reflected posts and web pages posted last month to several years ago. I did check the “pr” and “alexa” for many of them. No surprise to find that front page results included sites without any PR at all – along with some with traffic so minuscule anyone would be shaking their head over “why the front page?” (Maybe our accompanying illustration helps reinforce the head scratching, mind boggling way this is all “determined.”)

It’s fact – while there are popular sites (depending on what you type) like WebMD or Amazon in your search results, you always find within those same front page results websites with no PR and a variety of traffic (low to high).

So I’m going to go further out on that limb to say that I think when it comes to choosing “traffic versus Google PR” that anyone in their right mind would opt for the traffic, right?

Boatloads of traffic!

The Google PR used to be a badge of honor, and many a webmaster or seo expert sweated bullets over this one. Maybe some still do.

However, even the folks at Google cannot or will not tell (or do not know) whether PR really means a hill of beans in the end.

What prompted this post was an inspection this morning of my ezine advertising website.

At one point in its so far 7 year history, it achieved a traffic rank of under 21K and held onto a PR 4 (for this type of niche this was outstanding). Then along came one of those infamous algorithm changes and now… well this morning on my end of the world there is no PR on the site. Zip, zilch, nada.

Now it could be the folks at Google are in some cycle doing updates again. Could be the poor thing just lost out in this latest round of bids for ranking. Be that as it may, thankfully it does sit on the front page for many of the distinct keywords necessary for folks to find it. And that’s what counts.

Google plays with their algorithm so much and so often, you could easily drive yourself insane figuring out your next move. Running around in circles trying to please or appease, you’ll not only get dizzy, but allow much of your competition to race right past you.

What should you be working on? Words. Content. And more importantly, in SEO terms, keyword content. You do have to know the difference between appropriately working those keywords into your content (and which ones are really going to be any use to you in the first place) and cramming them into metas and content like there’s no tomorrow. Do not be short sighted nor mislead by shady tactics.

The time is ripe for the rest of the world to just “do their own thing.” Work your website or blog the way you wish to work it (and start having fun for a change). Go for the gold, go for traffic. Let’s also hope that Google drops this antiquated ranking platform very, very soon.

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• 20 Factors to Better Google Rankings
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Doing something a bit different today – these were just some of the many, many posts I enjoyed reading today:

You Know You’re A Smippy When…

Great Green Projects for 2009

The End of the World Quiz
(Warning: If you’re easily offended you might want to skip this one, but it’s funny!)

And don’t forget to sign up FREE during the prelaunch we posted about yesterday!

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Six must have marketing tools you’re gonna need to buy anyway, so why not wrap them all up into one package AND potentially make money doing so.

There’s a no brainer

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