This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of TravelPro for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go? Europe? Asia? South America? Visit family or friends anywhere in the world? Okay, you might think, “What are you crazy in this economy… I’m not going anywhere!” You’d be wrong because it is entirely possible that you could be the Grand Prize winner of the TravelPro sweepstakes! And, lugging huge bags around won’t be a problem not when you also receive two (2) Travelpro® Rollaboard® bags! Their luggage is rugged and very durable; fashion (great styling) also is another great feature. Plus “rolling” your luggage… what’s not to like about that?!

Where would I go? I’d love to win and get a chance to see castles in the UK or Ireland. Ideally, I’d love to visit Amsterdam. It’s been a dream of mine for a long time, but personally I don’t stand a snow balls chance of traveling unless I take great opportunities like this one to enter to win 500,000 Delta SkyMiles. Wow, that 500K miles!

My brother-in-law and his wife fly to the East coast quite a bit, and they are able to do so (and also “share the wealth”) because of the miles they rack up to fly for free. I’m ready to tell them all about the Travelpro® Rollaboard® bags sweepstakes. I don’t think anyone would object to getting even more travel time, do you?

Well… All you need to do is click the link above and follow their easy to enter instructions. Who knows, the trip of a lifetime may become yours!

Guest Post – Content by Mitch Osborne

We recently decided to take our neighbor’s advice and log onto http://get.wildblue.com/ and get satellite internet. We live so far away from town, that we don’t have the typical hard wired access to the internet, so we have done with out for a long time. I usually am able to use the internet after I get off of work at work if I need to send a personal e-mail or two.

It had never really been a problem until our daughter recently got married an moved two thousand miles away. We are a really close family and talk on the phone often. We wanted to get the internet at our house so that we could stay in e-mail contact and also access this blog that she and her husband have created.

They post pictures and information about what they do during the week and on the weekends. They post pictures of their new house and my grand puppy (that I miss so much). There is also a feature on their blog spot where I can write back and comment on things that they post. It makes me feel closer to her even though we are far away.

We are long time subscribers to Discover magazine, and this morning there is a sidebar column chalked full of information useful to those of us using the internet – be it for fun or business. According to this analysis, written by Adam T. Hadhazy, here are some amazing facts (worth noting!):

Fact 1: Number of Bytes Transmitted Online

According to a University of Minnesota report, researchers estimate the volume of internet traffic is growing at an annual rate of 50 to 60 percent.

The number of bytes transmitted over the course of last year:

o A whopping 78,000,000,000,000,000,000

Fact 2: e-Commerce Spending

In 2008, the United States alone spent $214.4 BILLION online. These statistics come from comScore reports. They continue to draw the conclusion that online spending is increasing by 7 percent per year. However, this is down from previous years (before the huge financial mess the country and world has gotten itself into or had done to us by greedy s.o.b’s, which was growing at a rate of 20 percent per year). Time for those recovery plans to kick in!

Fact 3: Trojans, Worms, Viruses, etc.

Symantec reports a total of 5,060,187 bot-infected computers, the same computers that deliberately send out spam to the rest of us poor suckers, have produced 1,122,311 different trojans, worms, malicious code, etc.

To make matters even more critical, and to highly encourage you to PROTECT your computer (I recommend Kaspersky!), the Sophos internet security firm “discovered a new infected WEB PAGE every 4.5 seconds, on average).

NOTE: If you’re using nothing but the feeble Windows firewall to protect your computer, change NOW. It’s much better to get a real firewall/antivirus and malware protection system (again I recommend Kaspersky) that to trust to the fact that the folks at Microsoft 1) stay on top of things (they don’t) or 2) give a damn whether your system gets infected or not. BE SMART.

Fact 4: Number of Minutes We Are All Online

Viewing JUST the social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, internet users have racked up a whopping 34,916,000,000 minutes in the United States alone viewing just these sites. In fact, in January 2009 all by itself, the average user spent 10 percent of all of his/her minutes online in these network communities.

Fact 5: What State Ranks Highest for Adult Website Subscriptions?

That dubious honor goes to none other than… Utah. In fact 5.47 households out of 1,000 have adult-content site subscriptions. Montana comes in with the lowest rate, only 1.92 out of 1,000 households. And, just to round things out, 36% of all internet users spend time on at least one adult web site per month (reported again by comScore).

So what does this all mean to those of us using the net for say internet marketing?

o Online purchasing (e-Commerce) though lower than recent years, is once again on the rise.

o Facebook and MySpace may be very popular (duh) – and worth investigating – but also make us warn that you best have a truly unique approach to getting some of that traffic. Invest real time into building the community. You’ll get the traffic, but you still need to persuade them to choose you for the sale.

o Not protecting your computer, and not having a firewall warning system in place, has got to be the dumbest thing anyone owning a computer can manage not to do. There are those out there with, apparently, plenty of time on their hands to figure out ways to either ruin your computer or, at a minimum, make it necessary for that trip to say the Geek squad at Best Buy to fix it up. This can be very expensive, so why allow it to happen in the first place? Get the best program out there that covers everything from surfing to email to… And again I suggest Kaspersky.

o Maybe, just maybe, we all need a bit more fresh air. I know I am guilty of rarely stepping outside. While I have, and continue, to lose weight, really watch and upgrade my diet, and get a bit of strength training indoors, nothing beats stepping out your door. In fact, medically, to ensure you get enough Vitamin D, you need to spend from 5 to 20 minutes outside every day – during the critical 10 to 2 hours (high noon) WITHOUT sunscreen to absorb the Vitamin D your body needs. Step outside, do a bit of weeding, talk to your neighbors, walk the dog. But get some fresh air LOL!

o Well… the last being the adult websites, don’t know what to say about that, but the fact that it’s Utah (we live in Nevada) has us laughing our heads off.

Okay, there are enough stats to keep you busy and maybe planning some internet and marketing strategies and plans for your business, blog, website online.

PLEASE Don’t forget to COMMENT!

I need to start this post by telling you that we (Scott and myself) have been around for a LONG time. I know more about advertising and marketing online then any individual program/membership owner can ever tell you. I do this day in and day out, trying to help you make sense of what it is you are doing online – and how to get it done.

Scott, with a background long on years in affiliate marketing, is also an expert when it comes to marketing, advertising, and promoting online. We teamed up a few years back, (the best move either of us ever made!) and provide several online business resources tailored specifically to help you be successful online, too.

Each and every thing we do – whether planned that way or not – revolves around helping others be as successful as possible online (with offline ideas thrown in for good measure).

With that bit of hoopla and flag waving out of the way, today we’d like to help anyone who’s stuck in what can be a vicious, yet unnecessary, cycle… (more…)