Kimkins Controversy - Kimkins Scam

Save on Printer Ink and Cartridges

It’s quite appropriate for me to be writing a post about printer ink cartridges this week. We have been trying to save money by buying those generic refill kits with the hypodermic needles and the syringes and the complicated instructions. I think yesterday was about the fifth time that I have done the procedure and I experienced a minor accident. I was using a new kit with a larger needle than the previous one. I had mistakenly assumed that the air inside the empty ink cartridge had some kind of escape route. As it turned out, I had been unwittingly loading an ink bomb with ink and highly pressurized air. The little black dots are very small. I think I managed to clean them all from the desk… and the wall… and my glasses

These kits are the cheapest of three options. Buying compatible cartridges is easier and you still save a lot when compared to brand name replacements. You get what you pay for to some extent. If you have a pricey all in one printer, you might not want to void your warranty.

InkjetDeal.info is a great site for finding deals on both brand name and compatible cartridges. I have a Canon Printer. The actual Canon cartridges are kinda pricey. InkjetDeal.info has links to stores that have lower prices for these and they also point to sites that sell compatible stuff at a fraction of the cost. Coupon codes for printer cartridges allow you to save even more.

‘Woman Savers’ Site is Flawed but Potentially Useful

In case you didn’t know it, there are websites that host user generated databases of people, mostly men, who behave badly in relation to intimate relationships. The worst flaw that I can see with these sites is that abusive men may deduce who has created a profile for them and coerce them into deleting it. The owners of WomanSaver.com site charge users $25 to delete a profile.

I am not saying that this kind of site shouldn’t exist. They are probably somewhat useful in hindering the criminal behavior of men who troll the internet for victims, although there as well as in real life, aliases are a quick fix for a bad reputation

Online Loans

If you are in the midst of comparing different providers of Online Loans, you might want to consider looking at loans.online-finance.net. They have a review and rating table for a selection of the ‘top’ lenders right at the top of their homepage. The ratings are all pretty high, five out of five stars for all but one of the loan providers. The reviews don’t go into much detail. When a consumer is comparing loans, the actual cost of borrowing is going to be the key factor that they use for making a comparison. These online loan comparison and review sites hardly ever have this information. I think that this is partly because the actual rates and terms are always subject to change. Also, they are a marketing tool for the lenders as much as they are a comparison tool for the borrowers. The biggest benefits to borrowers from a site like loans.online-finance.net are the various tools and calculators and the convenient layout of general information related to the different types of loans.

PERSONAL LOANS | PAYDAY LOANS | CREDIT CARDS | AUTO LOANS | DEBT CONSOLIDATION

The above list shows all the different categories of credit products that are reviewed by loans.online-finance.net. The credit cards that are reviewed might be the most useful products. I think that the importance of having a credit card for various transactions that are carried out online has caused the market to grow and also to become more competitive. Cards that are easy to get, but that have very limited credit are offered by a number of lenders. If you are 18 years old and you have a valid Social Security Number and a valid address in the U.S., you can get a gold Master Card. The initial credit won’t even be $100. As with all the review and ratings on the site, all the credit card companies get four or five stars. There are a couple of reviews that talk about rates. 9.75% APR sounds pretty enticing, but you have to look carefully at the details of any agreement. The rate for cash advances is more than twice that.

What Can be Learned from the Kimkins Controversy?

How do you react when your children express curiosity in the interests and stories that you are pursuing online? There are a lot of life lessons to be learned from the Kimkins saga. Educators talk about ‘teachable moments’ and there have probably been a quite few of them in households where the exposure of the Kimkins fraud was being followed or carried out.

There’s a valuable lesson in business ethics. There’s a valuable lesson or two about human health. I think there are even lessons to be learned about collaboration and communication. If you have teens looking over your shoulder occasionally, it may dawn on them that adults are just as prone to ‘teh drama’ as they are.

Do You Have an Online Business Idea?

Making money by selling a product, a service or information through an eStore is not rocket science. The first thing that you have to do is find or create the thing that people will want to pay for. This is hard for some people because they undervalue their product or because they pessimistically conclude that there is no market. When you figure out what you want to sell and you figure out how to pitch it to potential customers, you are essentially ready to build a store.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes time to launch a store, you just decide on which shopping cart software you want and then have it installed on your site. Americommerce.com is an industry leader in shopping cart software and their version 4.3 is loaded with great features. The One Page Checkout will be appreciated by your customers. Drop Shipping Support can be a great feature. I know of someone who was marketing liquid sucralose and she used drop shipping straight from the manufacturer. It was convenient and efficient.

The newest software also has a new and improved focus on Customer Relations Management. Having the optimal relationship with your customers is a key to success. I have attended seminars on the topic and I heard time and time again that energy spent in retaining a customer and keeping them happy was a better investment than energy spent searching for new customers

Television Reaches People

For an example of the effectiveness of television as a promotional media, there has been a spike of search engine traffic coming to this site because of some talk about Kimkins on national television. It was just a rerun of the Mike and Juliet Show, but it was during the tear end holidays when people are thinking about dieting while still digesting Christmas turkey.

If you have a product or a business that you want to promote, you should not overlook the potential of TV media as a promotional tool. You also have to keep in mind that making a successful television advertisement requires a specific set of skills and talents. Hawthorne Direct has over 20 years experience in advertising. Hawthorne Direct is now creating cross-channel marketing campaigns that can increase your sales and generate leads. They have some great video presentations showcasing past promotions for business and government. They create infomercials in both long and short form.

The return on investment from these marketing campaigns is what brings big names like Jenny Craig and Mercedes Benz to this promotions company. Speaking of ROI, I was astounded to see just how much a company like Jenny Craig spends on advertising. I’m not going to publish the figure that I saw because I couldn’t corroborate it, but I had a discussion with a marketer I know and I was told that they probably expect every dollar spent to bring in two or more dollars of increase sales.

A Search Engine Marketing Consultant

I just spent the better part of an hour browsing through the advice that is being doled out by a Search Engine Marketing Consultant. One thing that I noticed right away is that he has a consistent tone in his blog. That is something that I have to work on. I have been researching the positives and negatives of using blogs as a promotional tool quite a bit lately, and this guy seems to be doing it right. Promising weekly tips is a great way to get return readership. A couple of pages back in his blog, Danny DeMichele, the Search Engine Marketing Consultant, talks about Behavioral Targeting. This is something that I have never heard of, although it sounded eerily familiar when it was described. Apparently having a campaign that follows an internet surfer around to more than one site and redundantly assails him with the same message is effective. People mock the redundancy of George Bush all the time, but they tend to forget that the reason he does it is because it works. If you are selling a web application or an eBook, I say go for the BT. If you are selling an unnecessary war, please go back to your advisers and try to come up with a better product. Danny expects that social media outlets will step up the sharing of data to enable more effective behavioral tracking in the near future.

Danny recently mentioned something that was already on my mind and that is the importance of who your neighbors are for a search query. With regard to the Kimkins controversy, I have been checking the Google return for ‘Kimkins’ on a regular basis and occasionally taking action based on what I see. SEO common knowledge says that a user will only check a handful of links before deciding about something. My effort to warn potential customers away from a fraud is not even half as difficult as competing for customers with people who are providing a similar product.

Standing at the Computer…

I explored the idea of operating a computer while standing rather than sitting sometime last year. I decided that it was not right for me. I think that it is something that everyone should consider. Some workstations are designed in such a way that they can be adjusted for standing or sitting. I used to work at a repetitive task that required me to stand for hours at a time. My coworkers and I eventually made modified task chairs that would allow us to do the task while seated. I tended to go back and forth between sitting and standing.

Making a point of getting up from your computer for short breaks is a smart idea.

Will Kimkins Endure?

I really do expect Kimkins.com to go away at some point, but I am not certain that it will. I know enough about the internet to know that the site metrics have a value in and of themselves. The lifetime subscription business model could come to an end and the site could remain in some form to generate advertising revenue.

Even though some advice that was dispensed by Kimkins.com runs counter to current medical standards for a safe and healthy diet, low carb eating is still a popular and viable option. I think one advantage that Heidi has is her keen understanding of her core demographic. It is actually almost scary how well she can speak to the conventions and insecurities of middle class house wives. Maybe she should become a political strategist. She would have to have a minder of some sort to look after the loose ends

Where would we be without Maps?

I was lost recently in an unfamiliar town and I had a woefully inadequate map. I was with my spouse and we were both getting quite frustrated. It was early evening and being December it was already quite dark. We ended up walking into a drinking establishment and having a drink to soothe our jangled nerves. The second part of the plan was that I was going to ask for directions.

As luck would have it, the bartender had a small stack of placemat-sized maps that showed a larger area and greater detail than the sightseeing one in our little travel guide. I told him the name of our hotel and he grabbed a highlighter and outlined our best route. I accidentally left my hat at the bar, so we had to go back the next evening. I really didn’t mind the return trip and we had no problem finding his business with the map.

If you have a bricks and mortar business, especially one that is off the beaten path, you would do well to check out the map printing services offered by LocationMaps.com. They provide an ad free, web based map service to subscribers. You can even get a two or three map layout to embed on your site which you could use to show customers and suppliers both how to get into your part of town and also a closer look at the street layout in your neighborhood. These are very clear and purposeful maps.