Valuable Marketing Dollars

For many traditional business owners there has always been the cost of advertising. Back in the day of paper, we used the Yellow Pages to find a reputable vendor. Advertising in the Yellow Pages or any other paper medium is still very expensive and there is very little return on your investment unless you spent time and effort to track each new customer from that source, usually with a code on a coupon.  Many business owners will tell you how ineffective that is in acquiring new business. Why?  We all know the reason. We have smart phones and we have the internet. Why would you ever pick up a big clunky book to find something? You wouldn’t.

 

Instead you would do something now referred to as “Google it”. This simply means you would go to a website called Google and type in whatever you were seeking. Magically not one, but dozens of options became available to you, and if you were lucky, testimonies to go with it.   As a webmaster I am constantly finding customers who want their website to be number one when some puts in a common search term. They want their website “programmed right so it is number one”. Of course, who wouldn’t? But who is willing to pay for it?

 

Back in the days before the dot.com boom/doom, you literally had something called “meta tag” and “keywords” written into the code so your website would be found for your prospective client.  Things have changed dramatically, and one of the reasons why Google is probably the number one company is because they will take anyone’s money and put you higher on the list. Yes, it is true, you can throw millions of dollars at Google to achieve this.

 

Are there other ways that you can find clients using Google? Yes.  You can have a blog on your website that has interesting articles to drive customers to your site. You don’t have to pay to write a blog.  The search engines will still read and index your site based on the text that is coded into the files. Most blogs these days are written in SQL and PHP a different type of website programming language.

 

So rather than throwing more money at Google with the hopes of new clients, instead invest in your blog with quality articles. Share those articles to your personal network to drive business to your website. Websites that have copyrights on them are fine as long as it is the current year. Your website should always be fresh, attractive, easy to read, and most importantly, generating new business or repeat business for you.  Your website is your 24/7 employee representing you and your company.

 

Are you challenged with your website?  Is your website not producing leads, clients and sales? Then perhaps you need to reboot it to a new scrolling website, where you can direct your viewers to your products and services.  If you would like to reboot your website with a high caliber marketing tool, then I invite you my website, http://www.opusdeorum.com.

World Wild Web

Isn’t it kind of funny how the Internet, a geeky telecommunications technology at the time was branded “The Web”. When I think of a web, I think of a spider web. What does a spider web have to do with a communications means? There isn’t a connection.  Spider webs have nothing to do with the Internet.  But yet, somehow, it was born as the World Wide Web. Double you double you double you.  Damn, like that wasn’t a blunder to try and say that … at the time they also added in backslashes. What the hell was a back slash?  It sounded like it hurt. Spider webs and slashed up backs.  And to top it off, they have to get real personal and talk about your colon and “periods”. Could things get any more confusing?

 

Well one thing is for sure, the web just got more and more advanced. Things changed, and everyone just accepted the new technology as easily as they did Daylight Savings. Well at least in the United States we believe in Daylight Savings.

 

So why the long intro on the world wide web?  Well, myself like billions of people out there rely on it to make a living. Everyone’s reason and method is always a little bit different. It’s amazing how so many people need a service that I provide. The funny thing is I never went to school to be webmaster. I have no formal training, yet the things I know is worth thousands to some. Literally people are willing to pay me thousands of dollars to design and build a site for them.

 

Can anyone build a website? Sure. Of course they can.  I ask, can anyone make a meal? Sure of course you can, but just because you can cook a meal doesn’t make one a chef.  Nor does having a webpage make one a webMASTER. I find there are very few people that can call themselves Master of the Web.  There really is just way too much stuff to know to learn it all overnight.  While the Internet looks the way it does now, it will continue to evolve and change. One day, Internet, like a public drinking fountain will be free.

REBOOT Your Website! OpusDeorum.com

This is my newly rebooted website. I say rebooted, because all of the movie studios are doing it to movies.  And we all know what rebooting your computer is.  And technically, a website runs from a computer. So, since my website has gone through such a transformation, I wanted to share some of the things that have been going on.

 

Once upon a time ago in a dot com boom,

I was a geek.  Okay, maybe I still am a geek, but at least now I am a cool geek.  I mean that in the most honoring of ways, to my fellow geeks out there. I have always had a thirst for knowledge and information technology was an area that you juts never could learn everything about … ever.

 

I’m not normally computer geeky. I didn’t take Cobal and Pascal in college, instead I made friends with those programmers and they taught me the things I needed to know. My first server was a VAX-VMS, and the funny thing is my iPhone 5 has more computing power that it did in its time.

 

So this story is about how my website has evolved and made its transformation to what it is you see above today.  I say that now because it will go through many more revisions and changes as technology and society evolve.  It originally started out as a playground for me to learn, evolve, grow, and ultimately teach this new cool technology we called HTML. Hyper Text Mark Up Language.  It was a bunch of brackets, words, symbols and slashes.  I got it. Didn’t like it, but I got it.  As geeky as it sounds, it came in handy at times being able to read and write “code”. Even today, in the ever popular blogging world, having to know code is valuable.

 

OpusDeorum.com was born in 1996 officially, and had an awesome Adobe Flash introduction on the home screen, where it then led you into the main site.  There you could read my works of art, explore fun websites, use the valuable tools and articles that were available, and there were even some fun recipes on there.  It was ad free, had no pop ups, and for the most part was a functional website. It didn’t sell anything, but amazingly received thousands of hits on a monthly basis.

In later years it evolved as new things came out, OpusDeorum.com was a learning tool, allowing me to learn and grow.  I’m not sure when it was, but at one point, my hosting company that I used vanished.  For ten years they were reliable, and then … gone.  Myself and my clients were screwed. Using Active Server Pages as my medium, nothing was stored locally. I had most of the original artwork for my own site, but many works of art, writings were lost.

 

I never created a blog on OpusDeorum.  It actually is a lot of work, hard to program, and by no means was anything fancy. Even the blog in WordPress is a poor writers tool.  Over the years my writings were housed on Xanga, MySpace, Blogger, and short articles on OpusDeorum. Eventually my writings landed here, on AaronsAfterthoughts.com.  I used a magazine theme for this particular website, incorporating an “infinite scroll”, which eliminates a footer, and on the main landing screen, any sidebars.    Of course the design, layout, header, background, are all my design.  I imported the blog from Google’s Blogger software. Since WordPress was created as a blogger’s site, and not a CMS (content management system) for a business website, I wanted to show what it could do for a writer.  In case you didn’t notice by this long article, I am a writer.

 

So back to Opus.  I have branded the site as what you see today. A website consulting, design, development company. I have easily spent a hundred hours working on it.  I really feel that if I wanted to attract high quality customers, then I needed a high quality site to impress them. Using parallax technology, I have a very clean, up to date website that impresses readers.

Living the Dream

As I work with my students each term, many of them don’t even know what they want out of a dream job let alone where to start looking.  Before you can say you are living the dream you have to be able to define it first. So let’s start with some basics.

1.  No bills.  Plenty of Money.
2. No boss.
3. Never have to be anywhere unless you want to.
4. No negative people in your life.
5. Glorious health.
6. MAGNIFICENT relationships. (Love, family, friends)

Wow, I guess I am living the dream.

A Prosperity Treatment (23rd Psalm)

The Lord is my banker, my credit is good.
He maketh me to lie down in the consciousness of omnipresent abundance;
He giveth me the key to his strongbox.
He restoreth my faith in his riches;
He guideth me in the path of prosperity for His name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk in the very shadow of debt,
I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me;
Thy silver and Thy gold, they secure me.
Thou preparest a way for me in the presence of the collector,
Thou fillest my wallet with plenty; my measure runneth over.

Who ARE You?

I smiled.  And with a cheerful smile in my sing songy voice I said, “As detailed as possible, please tell me WHO you are.”

 

Wow. Point blank, who are you?  Most people don’t really know who they are. And when asked in a point blank question, don’t have the foggiest clue on what to say, or even how or where to start.  And I think and even better question is .. who do you THINK  you are?  Both questions are like loaded pistols. The answers, many times will just amaze me. I am an expert at reading people. I can hear the lack of self-confidence in the hesitation of the responses. For the most part most people identify with whatever their  occupation is, or was. It really does amaze me how little people think of themselves. Seriously.

 

I was at a restaurant and I noticed that the hostess had an unusual yet pretty name. I commented on how pretty her name was, and then said “I am sure you must you hear that all the time.”  She looked back with a sincere, genuine smile and said, “No, people don’t tell me that all the time.” I smiled back and said, “Well, that must be because they are shy because you are so pretty and don’t want you to think they are hitting on you.”  I tell you, I don’t think she had genuine nice compliment like that in a long time.  I make it a goal to compliment people everywhere I go. It has amazing effects.  Such as getting an awesome table at the restaurant where you just complimented the hostess. 😉

 

Who am I? My goal is to be a role model. We all have different ideas of what a role model is, and I think I do a pretty amazing job at providing a positive influential person to look up to.

 

I haven’t done a lot of studying on Ghandi, but there is one quote that really stands out to me.

 

 “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

My goal is to change the world. How can one person change the world? Do you have to be rich? Or famous? Do you have to be a leader? Do you have to have influential power? Do you have to be in congress?  Do you have to have a million followers in your tweets?

 

I used to think that one person couldn’t make that much of a difference.  I used to think that one person was powerless. I used to think that my thoughts didn’t matter and couldn’t make a difference.  But I was wrong. I was very wrong. And whom am I to feel that I can make a difference to change the world?  Every change, every movement, every action started with a thought. A thought from one individual.

….

 

All it takes is one person to communicate a thought … sending it out to the Universe, projecting passion and emotion behind it … and other “like” minds will be attracted to it.  And soon, that one thought becomes tenfold, and soon becomes hundreds, and then thousands.  Trust me on this one.  The terminology varies from culture to religion, but most accept this concept as “prayer”.   There is power in prayer, and hence there is power in thought.

 

When I am asked who am I … my first response is, “Who do you want me to be?”

…

Believe it or not, hundreds, if not thousands contemplate, and ponder the many thoughts that cross my mind in the form of my blogs. Who am I?  Perhaps I am just the messenger.

It Just Hurts (12.11.2007)

Darkness encompasses this haunted sorrow that gloom over my days and nights. Loneliness enters into the harbor seeking a single soul to rest it’s sails for once more.  Silence penetrates everything.  I sit in silence.  I talk to no one. My heart grows heavy and my mind wonders why. I head knows why, but why my heart? The insatiable chime that strengthened the little bond we had was quickly destroyed by a simple phone call.

 

The Angel of Death enters into my life once again.   And for once, I am just … silent.  As I listened to the conversation I knew an innocent soul has left this ghastly domain of a prison and freed into the whispering skies once again.   Death is a part of life.  But how would you live life if you knew exactly when you were going to leave this plane and move onto the next?  Like Oedipus, you know your fate and you can’t change it, but then how do you live today? What if you knew that day was closer than you originally thought?  Then what would you do, with what was left of “this” one?

 

My thoughts bounce around the room like a tennis ball on a court, all over the place. But the only judge in this court was my own consciousness placing blame upon myself.  I could have been more reassuring and loving. But as an empath, I couldn’t. I had already blocked out the feelings that were rushing into MY life, that were not my own.  I felt cold. But not as cold as the freezing Arctic wind that raced across the Talon’s windshield. I felt cold and heartless.  I shouldn’t. But I did.   How was I to know that the last time I saw DH would have been my last? I’m clairvoyant, not a fortune teller. And while many would say it was silly to take blame or responsibility of a death of a loved one, we all do it.  We all wish we could have, should have, … but didn’t with that person one more time.

 

I fight to choke back the tears. My voice crackles as I talk with my mom on the phone. Several times she asks me if I am going to be okay.  I reply “Yes, just a little choked up a bit Mom, that’s all.”

 

Today I just got to the point that I didn’t have anything left to say.  I felt empty. I felt lonely. I felt sad. I felt tired. I felt weak. I felt vulnerable.  I got to the point that there wasn’t anyone that I could really talk to. Amazingly though, I did talk with a lot of people.  I had to charge my phone twice today.  I felt like my students, rambling on and on with no caboose to my train of thought.   But in all my conversations with people today, there really wasn’t anything anyone could say that could make me no longer feel all alone.  There wasn’t anything that was going to make the hurt go away.  And like I said to Mom tonight, “It just hurts Mom, that’s all. Only time can heal a death wound like this.”

 

Two deaths of family members in one year.  I guess right now I don’t have a 2007 summary like my friends.  All I can really think of right now is the people who were in it with me … and those who no longer will be with me in 2008.

My Energy

Days of happiness and nights of enlightenment pass by as the moon circles overhead so subtly yet ever so present. Clouds of frustration blow out of our lives as the winds of inspiration cool the challenges of perspiration that glisten on our worrisome forehead.

 

The darkened mindset has left our lives while a new brighter, sunnier window of tomorrow opens once again.  As I open the doors of my prosperity, I proclaim my thanks to the Universe for showing me the light.  There are certain laws in this Universe we must obey.  You cannot change a fact. For ultimate truth can never be changed. The sun is bright. That is a truth. All living things must eat. We control our thoughts.

 

I live a life with the mindset that I am put on this planet, in this life to be something much bigger than I can possibly fathom right now.  My goal is I want to change the world … with a thought. Slowly but surely, my energy is touching many lives, each and every day.  I give a little bit of my power, my energy to anyone I touch, and thus, I have positively impacted that person’s life for the better.  Maybe it was only to give that person confidence? Maybe it was to teach them a lesson. Maybe it was just for that person to question his/her own higher purpose?

 

The ultimate reward for me is when one of my pupils (enrolled in the University of Life, taught by me), takes what I said and applies it in his/her life.  I know when they are using particular words, thoughts, ideas, that it was me that taught that to them. My students at the college really take what I say to heart.  Once I responded to the student that I spent a half hour on his resume for him to do nothing with it.  I said I don’t do this because it’s fun for me. I’d rather be playing Wii. He told me because of that he worked even harder, to gain my approval.  To this day he holds me in the highest respect.

 

And then there’s the student I caught cheating,  He copied a cover letter out of the book and “changed a few words”. Cheating is cheating in my book, and in his case, the grade book.  I didn’t report him to the school. But I made him sweat bullets for 48 hours before I responded. I taught him that cheating has severe consequences, brought on by a choice HE made. He’ll never cheat again.  He had to write an essay explaining himself. Him putting it to paper, admitting what he did was the worse punishment I could have possibly given him.  He does have a conscious. And I put his conscious into his consciousness.  And like with all my students I let him know that it all started with a thought, and the smart idea of his that he could cheat. Cause and effect. You cheat, you get caught, you get expelled.  They all choose their words wisely in my classroom. I think it teaches responsibility if you think before you express yourself. I ask them if they have ever heard of a Reader’s Digest.  Most have. I suggest that some of them start reading it so they aren’t writing like fifth graders, but the educated, intelligent professionals I know they are. Wow, talk about kicking it up a few notches.  I have a high regard to individuals who can express themselves with more than “Cool dude. Right on.”

 

I think some of my friends talk more intelligently around me than they normally “think”. I love it when I can learn something from my friends.  Like this past weekend I learned I am SO loved.  And if you don’t agree, look at who’s kissing me.  I couldn’t believe how much energy was shared, back and forth.  It was just amazing. Love truly is one of the strongest emotions there is.  When you’re in love no one can rain on your parade. But if you give it some thought, … some attention, love is also … just a state of mind.  You CAN recreate that feeling again, anytime you want. I know I can. I close my eyes and Paula and Brittany are both kissing me and I’m just feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.  So with that, I highly suggest you delete and get rid of ANY photo that you have that captured any bad energy. It works both ways.  If you have pictures of people you don’t need to be in your life, then GET RID OF THEM. Pictures have power. That is after all how we create our own reality.  We visualize in pictures, not words. We read words, but we see in pictures.

Gravity of the Situation

Just like the law of gravity, the law of attraction never slips up. You don’t see pigs flying because the law of gravity made a mistake and forgot to apply gravity to pigs that day. Likewise, there are no exclusions to the law of attraction. If something came to you, you drew it, with prolonged thought. The law of attraction is precise.

“You create your own Universe as you go along”.  — Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

The Key

Prosperity is your birthright, and you hold the key to more abundance — in every area of your life — than you can possibly imagine. You deserve every good thing you want, and the Universe will give you every good thing you want, but you have to summon it into your life. The Secret is that you have the key. The key is your thoughts and feelings.  And you have been holding the key in your hand all your life.