Category: Current Local Events

I have mentioned before that I have an interest in Internet marketing, and I even have a few links on this blog that might someday earn me a commission, provided someone actually clicks on them, and then buys something. The two affiliate programs I have signed up for so far are with Amazon.com, who seems to be taking over more than just the book market, and VirtualSheetMusic.com, who have a very useful service for anybody looking for classical sheet music with some extras. The links are elsewhere on this blog, but I have not included any affiliate links in this post for reasons I will get to below.

I continue to read and study whatever I can find (mostly freebie stuff, but I’ve occasionally purchased some information when it seemed reasonably priced) about Internet marketing, particularly concerning blogging, since I’ve decided that I want to blog. It’s unlikely that I will ever make a living blogging, but it is enjoyable.

One of the freebie items I can across was the Income Blogging Guide by Andrew Rondeau and Joel Williams. I don’t really recall just how I managed to find their site. It is the typical squeeze page with a promise to give you some free information in return for your email address. I figured I’d give it a try, so I gave them my name and email, and downloaded the ebook.

I was impressed with the ebook. Now, for me, it didn’t have a lot of new information, but it did have some, and some of the things that I already knew were presented in a slightly different way. It was well-organized, and well-written. Somebody did a lot of work to write this, especially considering that it is a freebie. It covers quite a bit of ground in 95 pages, and there isn’t a lot of fluff. Starting with how to find profitable niches, they proceed through the nuts and bolts of registering a domain name, getting a hosting service, and installing and configuring a WordPress Blog. In fact, nearly half of the book is on how to effectively use WordPress, and while I’ve already progressed well past the point where I need somebody to explain how to install WordPress, I did pick up a few handy tips on how to streamline the maintenance process, and which plug-ins they like (and why).

If you are a complete newbie to blogging, this will give you all of the information you need to get started.

Now, obviously, you don’t go to that much work producing a high quality ebook without expecting some return on the back end. The book does have some affiliate links, although they are not overbearing with it, and the services they recommend are all basically useful and cost-effective. I already use some of them.

A few days after I downloaded and read through the ebook, I got an email that I almost deleted as spam, but just before I did, I had the dim recognition of the name “Income Blogging Guide,” so I opened it and read it. The email told me that I had just won an iPod (yeah, right, and that widow of the Nigerian official is still trying to arrange to transfer a big wad of money to my bank account), so I going through the motions needed to consign it to the spam bucket again, when something made me hold off on that and go back and search my email, where I found the original download links. That confirmed that I had really corresponded with these folks before. Then I went back and examined their site again, and sure enough, they had promised that everyone downloading their free ebook would be entered into a drawing to win a new 8Gb iPod Nano. Even though I was still a bit skeptical, I went ahead and supplied them with my mailing address (the separate drop box address I maintain for my corporation, not my home address).

The iPod arrived Wednesday. So now I can not only vouch for the ebook, but I can vouch for the fact that they really did give away a new 8Gb iPod Nano like they said they would. I see that they are indeed practicing exactly what they preach in their ebook (which I went back and read again, this time much more thoroughly, and came away even more impressed than before), and I think that they deserve success in their Internet marketing efforts. In fact, if I see anything they offer that I think might help my own efforts, I would be inclined to give them my business. In fact there are no affiliate links at all in this post, just the freebie link to the Income Blogging Guide, and I don’t get any commission if you click on that one. Check them out. It will be worth your time. You probably won’t win a free iPod, but if you act on the information in that ebook, you might come away with something even more valuable.

Just got back home from a concert at a local middle school, Robinson Middle School here in Plano, Texas. It was, to say the least, an interesting experience. I had not previously bothered to go to a middle- or high-school orchestra concert in Plano simply because I didn’t think it would be worth my time to go hear a bunch of youngsters scraping bows on strings. But since I have 3 private students in two of the Robinson Middle School orchestras, I promised them I would attend tonight’s concert.

A little perspective: Back in the 60′s, when I was in high school in El Paso (population about 250,000 at the time), my high school (Irvin) had about 1400 students, grades 8-12. Of those 1400 students, about 100 of them played a musical instrument, and most of those were in the band, not the orchestra. The orchestra of which I was concertmaster consisted of about 30 students.

Now fast forward to May of 2010 in Plano, Tx (population about 270,000, in about 1/3rd the area of El Paso). Robinson Middle School (3 grades) has just over 1000 students. Nearly 25% of them play a musical instrument, about 80% of those being strings. Of the 5 orchestras that I saw this evening, one of them was about on the same level as the 8th-grade orchestra at Irvin, one was about the same level as the “advanced” orchestra, and the other three were much better.

In 1969′s El Paso, I was a stand-out as a high school violinist. Here in 2010′s Plano, I wouldn’t have been anything particularly special. I’m going to have to get out to more local school concerts.