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Hey Dads, this is a perfect gift for your wife Couple this with a homemade coupon good for time by herself to take a long bath, while you watch the kiddos, and believe me, she’ll thank you! Surprise your mom with a fun gift basket full of delightful ways to pamper herself from Honey Cat Cosmetics. Every headband is custom-made to order. Dainty Deity Designs uses interesting fabrics, top quality beads and crystals to create stellar hair accessories.

For the mom who loves jewelry will love this bracelet. Enter our special discount code, mom2008, to receive 15% off your Tuni & G purchase, through April 30th. The minky nursing cover, from Alex Casey Baby, would be a fabulous gift for the mom who is committed to nurturing the earth, as well as her children, go with a hip and stylish tee from PeaceLoveMom. Enter our special discount code, datestodiapers, to receive 10% off your PeaceLoveMom purchase of $20 0r more, through May 7th.

For the mom who is committed to nurturing the earth, as well as her children, go with a hip and stylish tee from PeaceLoveMom. Modern June is a shop that features Cool Stuff for the Hip Housewife! She would be thrilled to be able to transport her homemade cupcakes and muffins safely and in style. A gift from The Box Girls would be the ultimate gift for the mom who loves to bake! Every mom needs a night out with the girls every now and then.

The fun Flip and Tumble Bag is sure to please. Enter our special discount code, mom2008, to receive 15% off your Fuffy J custom purchase. For the mom who is committed to nurturing the earth, as well as her children, go with a hip and stylish tee from PeaceLoveMom. Enter our special discount code, mom2008, to receive 15% off your Tuni & G purchase, through April 30th. For the mom who is committed to nurturing the earth, as well as her children, go with a hip and stylish tee from PeaceLoveMom.

Modern June is a shop that features Cool Stuff for the Hip Housewife! She would be thrilled to be able to transport her homemade cupcakes and muffins safely and in style. Any mom who loves to bake! The Mommy bracelet, from M Jennings Designs, is a simple and elegant gift for any mommy, from new moms to seasoned moms.

Pamper your mom with a beautiful and thoughtful piece from Alli’s Originals. Every mom loves to be pampered! Do you have the perfect gift for the mom who needs some time away. Mother’s Day is just around the corner!

When performing your magic in front of people or an audience it is possible to misdirect well enough to create the proper illusion, the trick might not work the way you want but the people watching will not know. You can control the audience with a wide range of techniques.

If you change your routine for each performance you may find that you loose the angles you need to perform the illusion, so you have to be very careful about viewing angles. You can mystify the audience by doing magic and leave them mesmerized. The result to the audience is having the belief that some amazing thing just happened. Make sure when you complete the trick that the audience cannot examine anything after the trick has been shown, and so there’s the problem and worry of having to hide your tricks as soon as you finish each one.

When performing street magic it is usually street magic when you do it for a small group of people, in a bar or in your home or office. Buying close-up tricks or magic tricks for the street for your own personal use is one thing, but if you are buying them to perform on the street and become a profession street magician you will need to practice your craft. Some of the great magicians like David Blaine, stunned audiences with his exceptional skill of street magic. Doing street magic is sometimes known as naked magic, doing street magic doesn’t have props or stage hands it the basics of magic with maximum effect. The magician will use everyday objects to mystify the people on the street and keep them guessing on how he did it.

If you are doing tricks with cards practice in front of a mirror as fast or as slow as you can, trying to get a feel of how you move the cards in order to perfect the illusion. Many card magicians will perform some typical card tricks, and you can use the same cards to create the illusion that you have mental powers and use the cards to predict certain situations.

A variety of coin vanishing tricks are prevalent the world over. Some of the most popular coin tricks are the vanishing coin, eggcup and the broken pencil trick.

Everyone is familiar with the famous words of a magician, when children hear Hocus-pocus, abracadabra they become amazed and mystified with the man or women in the black tuxedo.

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According to the myth narrated by the Roman writer Apuleius in the Golden Ass, the beautiful Psyche, who was loved by Cupid, the god of love, was given immortality bu Zeus.

Psyche in the Roman mythology, is a beautiful princess loved by Cupid, god of love. Jealous of Psyche’s beauty, Venus the goddess of love, ordered her son, Cupid, to make Psyche fall in love with the ugliest man in the world. Fortunately for Psyche, Cupid instead fell in love with her and carried her off to a secluded palace where he visited her only by night, unseen and unrecognized by her. Although Cupid had forbidden her to look upon his face, one night Psyche lit a lamp and looked upon him while he slept. Because he had disobeyed him, Cupid abandoned her, and Psyche was left to wander desolately throughout the world in search for him. Finally after many trials was reunited with Cupid and was made immortal by Jupiter, the king of gods.

Cupid, Roman God of Love and perhaps the most famous of all Valentine symbols, has always played a role in the celebration of romance. As the son of Venus, he is often depicted as a mischievous, winged child whose arrows pierce the hearts of his victims, causing them to fall in love. Cupid is derived from the Latin word cupido, which means “desire.” His Greek counterpart is Eros (from whom comes the word “erotic”), young son of Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty, and Ares, God of War. In Greek mythology, Eros has a brother named Anteros, sometimes represented as the Avenger of Slighted Love and sometimes depicted as the symbol of Reciprocal Affection.

According to legend, Cupid’s arrows come in two varieties: the Golden Arrow, which generally signifies true love, and the Leaden Arrow, which represents wanton and sensual passion. He is also known to sometimes carry a torch with which to inflame desire between men and women. Cupid is not always successful in his endeavors, however. Sometimes his arrows turn people away from those who fall in love with them. In some mythological tales, Venus was scratched by one of Cupid’s arrows while playing with her son, the result being that the Goddess fell instantly in love with Adonis…the first man she saw after receiving the wound.

According to some sources, Cupid (as Eros) arose out of Chaos, along with Tartarus and Earth (making him one of the oldest Gods), only later becoming associated with Aphrodite as her winged son. The mingling of Eros (who, in this instance, was considered to have no parents) with Chaos is said to have created the race of birds. In certain mythological tales, it is stated that there was no race of immortals before Eros caused all things to mingle. Other legends maintain that Eros hatched from an egg laid by Nyx, also known as Night. Cherubs are also believed to be descendants of Cupid. Depicted as lovable little winged creatures devoid of either arrows or quivers, cherubs are typically not mischievous, as is their infamous alleged ancestor.

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This happens when children watch cartoons on TV. There will invariably be toys, cereal and candy the child just can’t live without. Savvy marketers have taken the whole idea of branding to a fan club status by developing online gaming locations where children can sign up for free, play games for free and encourage their friends to come and join – for free. In some cases children can send messages to other friends through the system and enjoy all the benefits of membership.

Of course, the reason children go there is the marketer has been successful in web branding their product. By providing a fun environment in which to play the child finds the product represented to be synonymous with an enjoyable time.

Children will take the information about the site to the schoolyard and share the ‘fun’ details with other children. Students might even help each other establish a free account while the visual impressions continue to work their magic.

This herd mentality should be a lesson to ecommerce websites. Make your site something people want to come back to. Provide a members-only area (make it free) that has information or a members-based forum that allow your members to view your site as a desired destination.

Perhaps the best way to describe what I am talking about is to work toward having your website viewed as a fan site. Make the end product about more than the product you’re selling. Make the website an experience that is tied directly to a product.

This happens in video advertising where an interesting ad doesn’t completely play out on the small screen, but the viewer is given a website prompt to entice them to come to the website and find out what happens next. This is another good example of web branding and one which combines multiple media elements to create positive impressions for lasting recall.

Imagine a cup with about a half-inch of paint on the bottom. You watch as the pain tips into a paint-by-number set. The only problem is the paint doesn’t confine itself to the section of the painting that was supposed to be the color that spilled. This is a picture of what it is like to tip your cup of web branding – it never stays in one place, but uses every area it touches as a means of positively impressing consumers with your product.

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I love reading autobiographies because, more often than not, one really gets to “meet the author” through the book, and it is easy (for me) within the first few pages to see if the article is being written from the writer’s heart, or if it is a bunch of hype.

I try to read them all because they can have a “grounding experience”. If the author is able to express him/or herself well, he/she can reveal things that are never told in the press.

On the few occasions I read a good one, I can get so fired up, I want to try what that person has tried. Of course at age fifty two, I am keenly aware of my on faults and liabilities and limitations, and I can’t “do it all” as I felt in my youth, so I do what I think I can do where my strengths are.

Two of the best autobiographies I read were Sam Walton’s and Charles Schulz’s, for different reasons.

I loved Schulz because I always heard he was always a nice guy, never let his success get to his head, and hung out with kids at the local skating rink until the time of his death. He put himself “out there” in spite of battling TRD (treatment resistant depression) and made a difference. He created a character, Charlie Brown, the proverbial loser, whom he knew, no matter how successful we all become, we can always identify a bit with Charlie Brown and his discovery and frustrations of his own failures.

Schulz reveals in his book some of his ironies. Remember the little girl with the red hair that Charlie always thought he could have loved? In real life, Schulz was dating a redheaded woman who dumped him for a fireman because he would not give up his dream of becoming a cartoonist and was getting nowhere. A few months after she married the fireman, Peanuts became syndicated. What man in the world cannot identify with that scene? And one cannot help but admire the savvy of Schulz and his ability to turn paper and pencil into an empire. He didn’t do it with hype. He did it because we could identify with “the lost child” in Charlie Brown, where everyone else, even the dog, had the answers when he didn’t.

Why Sam Walton? Who can’t be amazed by this small-town country gentleman who understood the importance of quality and service, and demanded it no matter how big they grew he demanded that he and his employees keep that same personal service. Though, of course, given today’s marketplace that has not happened, he has managed to do so online, and to a certain degree in his stores, without a lot of hype.

One of Wal-Mart’s top executives last month revealed that sales in the stores had been down .05% but up online 43%. This is important information in that it means either they are doing something right on the Internet, or more people are shopping on the Internet. Certainly their website only offers a portion of products that is available in their store. And often the prices are a bit higher. So something has happened.

What is it? I strongly believe the dot.com boom is just starting, not based on the Wal-Mart story, but considering all the tools now available to online e-tailers and marketers of services, ebooks, etc.

Ezine articles alone can help one develop a huge following. Does Wal-Mart use ezine marketing? I don’t know for sure, but they don’t need to. I just did so for them, and so do many others when quoting something about Wal-Mart. It is in our everyday vocabulary. It’s a brand, a household word ingrained in our psyche, that a hundred years ago did not exist.

Forty years ago, Woolworth’s and Sears was the same. But something again happened. What was it?

The Walton family made a very shrewd move. They decided that they would buy more volume at lesser prices and pass the savings along to the consumer and rely on turnover of products. At times, they would take losses on products, but make up for it on others. They created a strict policy from whom they would purchase, and researched each provider to be certain they were capable of delivery.

Now, any one of us can do the same thing on the Internet. With a little research, one can find wholesalers that are real wholesalers/dropshippers and can match and often even beat prices that the big dogs sell for. Indeed they have a recommended retail price which is generally a bit high. I try with my stores to take the prices down (and even offer a further discount with coupon codes) across the entire store.

If you have not tried coupons or coupon code sites, some of them can be very profitable. I simply have one word across the board on all products at my store. At checkout, the customer types in “storewide” on any purchase and receives another 5% off the discounted price. This does not seem like a great deal, but when buying consumer electronics, computers, digicams and other items I sell, it can add up, and the fact that the prices are already discounted from the recommended price offers added value. Internet shoppers love “extra value” and one can keep a majority coming back month after month, year after year. I occasionally look at the newsletter sign up (always have that opt-in offer on your site), and see that a lot of our shoppers are return customers.

Another sales strategy (especially on the Internet is offering “freebies”). There are a number of ways to do this.

Though a good many of my products such as pet chewies might sell for as low as $3.00, a lot of products are more expensive like laptops or home entertainment system. It is easy to spend $500 or more on a good system.

So I decided to cross-promote from another e-store I have and offer free gourmet coffee gift baskets (our private label, a $50 value) with any $500 purchase.

You can even take this a step further and offer free engraving. For instance, the coffee gift basket also has cartoon coasters and a cartoon mug from our cartoon inventory site. We offer free engraving of the customers name and web address making it a unique corporate gift, and a good many orders come from that very promotion.

All this is not a lot of hype. It is common sense. Customers on the Internet are looking for good and interesting deals (as well as quality products and service). I decided early on, for instance to carry only name brands. I am not sure name brands are always better than non-name brands, but I do know that I often type in a name brand when I am looking for something. For instance when I was doing a Google keyword search for an IBM Thinkpad “R” Series, I found one (at my store) and it was the best deal AND I got the free gift basket and extra 5% off.

I felt like the guy who owns “Hair Club For Men”….I loved it so much I bought the business. I will be honest, there are some products we just don’t carry and I want them (for my own private use). I am not ashamed to say that; not every store can please everyone, including mine. So when I shop, I put on my “customer cap” (no longer the e-Willie Lohman) salesperson, and begin looking for good deals, or interesting deals and promotions that are not all hype, just like the folks who shop with me.

Don’t be afraid to look around and see what others are doing if you own a store or some stores.

Don’t plagiarize their site or concept, but if something is working, think of your own promotion that may work even better.

You will be surprised at the amount of orders that happen. Next week I will be talking about double opt-in email campaigns and if they are more (or less) targeted than pay-per-click and if they are more or less effective.

Stay tuned! And thanks for your time.

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