Living in Las Vegas, snow is a rare commodity. It gets cold, and snow up on Mt. Charleston, but generally it’s once in a blue moon for it to snow in the Valley and stick. However, as I type we are getting flurries. Who knows, we might be making snowmen in a little bit (they did on the other side of the valley day before yesterday).

And… in my continuing odd post for the day, I read something interesting in the Las Vegas Review Journal. A commentary written by Gail Collins, a columnist for The New York Times.

I’m not going to replicate the entire article, but the section that caught my eye about dogs:

“Folks at the University of Vienna conducted a test in which dogs were asked to shake hands over and over and over again. If you have any experience with dogs, you will not be surprised to hear that they were absolutely delighted. And they didn’t care about being paid! The opportunity to perform the same trick endlessly with a stranger in a white coat was reward enough.

Then the researchers brought in new dogs that were given a piece of bread as a reward for every handshake. The uncompensated dogs watched, lost their innate love of mindless repetition and grew sullen.

“They get so mad that they look at you and just don’t give you the paw anymore,” said Friederike Range, one of the scientists.

So OK. Dogs are secretly obsessed with fairness. (And bread. Who knew?)”

Strangely enough, as I read that portion it reminds me of so many individuals I’ve “met” online. They work their little buns off for nothing, yet some “bigger dog” comes along, steals all the thunder, and gets all the bread.

This might sound familiar to anyone who’s joined an affiliate program, promoted it with real heart, and gotten squat (or peanuts) for their efforts. While the “big dog” made tons of money from your efforts.

But there is hope… and a way around this… Start your own thing!

However, you must be picky! By that we mean, so specifically “niche” picky that you’ve taken a big old umbrella of a website (or blog) down to its finest points.

“Health” is not a niche, it is an umbrella. However, “colon cleansing” is a specific niche under the umbrella of Health.

“Home business” is not a niche. However, joining a specific home business (or starting your own service or product oriented website narrowed to a single product or service) IS a niche.

This particular blog you are reading right now is NOT a niche. It is an umbrella, encompassing all sorts of niche-like features to internet marketing and social media – from monetizing blogs, to social bookmarking, to freelance writing… and so much more (hang out a while and read the archives there’s tons of help and direction in this here blog!).

Get the idea?

Another valuable thing to keep in mind is choosing something you are passionate about. If you sign up for something that just sounds like a money maker, with no real understanding of what it is or how to run it, what’s the point? You’ll merely be out the money it took to join (and maybe maintain) because you lack passion.

So snow, dogs, umbrellas, niche markets, passion… and that wraps up today’s post

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Well, as you can see the entire week went by without a single post on this blog. The reasons are multi-fold, and I’m blaming the Olympics

While we revisit and revamp our high-end services over at Market-For-Me, assist Whole Hog Blog networkers, field marketing and advertising phone calls, and in general provide marketing assistance, the one bump in my particular road has been those prime time showings of the Olympic events.

I haven’t a clue why, but I will sit there and watch the marathoners do their thing, mile after mile. I’ve even stayed up the past two nights praying I will get a tiny morsel of “table tennis” (or as we refer to it around here “ping pong”).

In fact, pursuit of watching some Olympic-style table tennis became more than a bit of an obsession for me. I really enjoy a good game of ping pong. I figured, wow!, those Olympic players must be amazing. (more…)

If you’re tracking stats on your own blog, and you should be, there will be posts that you make where you notice lots of activity. Ideally, you (like us) have your hopes up each time you post that your readers will do more than read (which is always cool), and stay to strike up a conversation with you (in the form of comments).

Well we’re no different than you

We track things. We love to track things! It just may be an obsession around here!

So in going back through our visitor logs, there is a striking up swing whenever we talk about ways to (more…)