Kiva.org is one of the companies that is up for nominations for the Crunchies awards under Causes. I have visited this site before, but never really read and spent much time on it. And while browsing the nominees, I came across it again.

This site is amazing on many levels. It connects potential entrepreneurs in developing nations to be successful, make a living and support their families. The great thing is that they do not require thousands of dollars, and you do not have to empty your bank account. You can donate a few dollars and that adds to the donations by other donors like you, which adds up pretty quick.

For example below is a donation profile for a Karina Villaney Garcia Vidaurre. According to her profile, Karina sells mens and womens shoes, and she has been doing it for the last 4 years, so it is not really a fly by the night operation. She has found a new location in a new market, which requires more merchandise due to increased sales. She has received loans before from Ceprodel, a Kiva.org partner, and has repaid them each time.

Currently there are 11 entrepreneurs that are listed on Kiva, from places such as Tajikistan, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Pakistan that are in need. The site stats also show 5219 former borrowers who have paid back their loans, and 14 that have defaulted. That I would say is a pretty low number of defaults.

This site I will tell you is the worlds answer to Grameen Bank.

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Today we have launched our new Header, and our long awaited Mascot!  Give me your feedback.  What do you guys think?  The theme layout has been in use and I have been tweaking it for the past week, and am satisfied with it finally.

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Yesterday I was attending a good friend’s bachelor party, at one of the local strip joints.  I am not much into strip joints, but had to be there to support my buddy   I like to observe the dancers, and have a few drinks, and catch up with some old friends. We were having a great time there in our private room, but decided to get the party out in the main hall.

Of course, a lot more choices for us to “observe” and in no time, noticed this extremely shy dancer, on one of the side stages. She did not seem comfortable there at all. She kept trying to cover herself, and not really dancing, but rather just smiling, and moving around. I have to admit, she was extremely attractive, and most guys really didn’t care that she was not revealing most of her assets. She was getting more dollar bills than the girl on the main stage. I was fascinated, and happened to mention this to my buddy, the groom, who was a regular at this club. He just smiled and said, “Dude! That’s her thing. She has been working here for the last 2 years, and that’s her gimmick, the shy, girl next door. She probably makes more money than 5 top girls combined”. WOW! I had to talk to this SOB(???)

My buddy, the groom, got me in touch with the manager, who in turn made it easier for me to actually approach and interview the dancer. After some small talk, I told her that I will definitely be writing about her in my blog, and all she asked was to please not mention her name or the club’s name. Fine. So here we go:

Me: So I hear you have been working here for 2 years? Is this a career choice?
Her: No way! I am also a full time nursing student on full academic scholarship, and that would be my career.

Me: And you do this to get over your insomnia?
Her: (laugh) Yes. No, this is just easy money. Since I am in school full time, I really can’t get a day job, and survive at the same time.

Me: So how much does an average dancer clear a month over here?
Her: Couldn’t tell ya…I am below average (laugh)

Me: Not what I have heard. I hear you do pretty ok.
Her: I do ok. In the last 2 years, I have bought my parents a house, which is paid for. I have bought myself a condo, which is almost paid for. I drive a fully paid, 2007 Corvette. I have a money in the bank. And I pay my taxes, so I don’t have to hide anything.

Me: Nice! You are a Rockefeller in the making. So why is that you make more than most girls here? I know you do, because I have witnesses (she laughs) who will swear by it. Yes, you are beautiful, and so are many other girls, no offense.
Her: Hmmm. OK. Don’t laugh if I tell you this. My first week when I started to dance, I really was extremely shy, and just couldn’t have myself show my body in public. The funny thing was, the guests didn’t seem to mind. I knew, that I was getting more money than most girls here. Even in private dances, I could get away with the “shy” “innocent” little girl, and not really have to do much dancing, and instead get some hefty tips. Yes, this act can get old, but lucky for me, since we are right by the airport, we have a lot of out of towners, and that keeps my act fresh (laughs). What’s even stranger is that some old timers, and regulars, who by now should have guessed that it is an act, don’t seem to mind.

Me: I don’t know what to say. I am surprised that you picked nursing and not marketing as you major. Hey, I know your time working is valuable, and I don’t want to keep you away for too long. I really appreciate your time, and would you mind giving me another interview, if your act changes?
Her: Absolutely. And my pleasure. Take care.

Not sure If I should file this post under social networking category also or not?

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Yes, we are not very politically correct over here.  None of this Happy Holidays crap.  Say it the way it is, Merry Christmas to all.

I am back from my short sabatical, so watch for the next post… very interesting one.

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I try to keep politics and religion out of my blogs, but this I have to say it. Time magazine, as far as I can remember, even as a kid, was a real American Icon. In my mind as a kid, people who read that magazine, “were really smart people”.

Today, Time magazine announced their annual Person of the Year, and they picked Vladimir Putin for 2007.

So lets see his track record:

• So here we have a President, that does not want to give up power by throwing his political opponents in jail
• Rigging the elections so one of his pawns gets elected, who in turn elects Putin as a Prime Minister, who once again is set to become the head of the country, incase something happens to the Prime Minister
• Countless human rights violations and not allowing freedom of speech
• Supplying trade embargoed countries with backend support

The list can go on, but I am too pissed to really get into it.  Time magazine, out of the 5+ Billion people in the world, you had to pick Putin?

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My younger 3 year old is an SOB in the making. I can already tell the way he can out maneuver and outsmart my 7 year old. It is amazing to see how easy he makes it seem.

1. If Mom won’t give you Candy, Raise Hell!: If you have been into running websites for a while, you are probably used to being denied by Ad Networks. But, most of us will just give up, and try to apply for the next ad network that shows up on our list. Have you tried to email them and ask them why they denied you? A while back when I was starting a website, and applied for Valueclick, I got denied. No reason given. Just denied. I did my research and sent an email to every honcho in Valueclick, and raised hell. I had nothing to lose. What were they gonna do? Deny me again? Soon enough got got an email that my site was accepted.

2. You are younger, so you get hand-me-downs: Nothing wrong with hand-me-downs, since my older son was the first child in our family, he got the expensive crap – designer clothes, ridiculously expensive toys etc. Same way, visit high value blogs, and start commenting on them, and get the hand-me-downs ie. you will see that the users from that site will very likely click on your username, linking back to your site, if you have something sensible to comment about.

3. Don’t Step Out Of The House In Your House Clothes: This is all about the first impressions. Don’t start your site half-assed. Make it presentable. That was so web 1.0 when you could get away with an animated gif that said page under construction. You want your visitors coming back, make your site pretty.

4. I Don’t Have The Vocabulary Yet, But I Can Get Still Talk: You don’t have to be a prolific writer to be a successful blogger or webmaster. But please don’t have a site or a blog with just pictures. Flickr has been done already. Mind your “their” and “they’re” since that does not take much mind juice to get it right.

5. My Older Brother’s Friends Are My Friends Too: Network with other bigger, successful bloggers and webmasters. You can never have enough names in your Rolodex. Network. Network. Network. And I don’t mean make friends on Myspace, or spam the hell out of other bloggers. Visit webmaster forums. A nice little “Hey, good luck with your site, love it” and don’t be fake, mean it! Case in point, I happened to catch John Cow in one of the chat rooms, and did just that. I know I have a lot to learn, and I probably learnt something new from John too.

6. Sometimes You Just Have To Beat Up Your Older Brother: If you are a blogger, you know what I am talking about. And if you are like me, you visit tens of different blogs every day. There are some blogs that you visit more than once a day, and follow religiously, and there will be times that you just don’t agree with them. It could be a favorable review of a product or site, that you know is not what it is hyped up to be. Call them on it. You just can’t play nice all the time. Your SOB radar has to be up all the time.

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Doesn’t it suck when you have a new site and no one visits? I guess if you build it and they will come does not affect new sites anymore. Remember the days when you could make a site and just submit it to Yahoo (for free! Yes Yahoo once upon a time let you submit your site for free in the category that you wanted, and most of the times, your site would be listed in days) and the traffic would start trickling in? PR really was not a factor. Most novice web browsers just used type ins and if you had a domain name with a word from dictionary, you would get that traffic – look at cellphones.com

Here are a couple of tricks that I have been using for quite sometime to get hundreds of backlinks, traffic and pr juice for my sites. It is legal. It is not banned by Google. It is easy. It is free. But, it will take time and persistence.

Step 1. - This one is quite obvious, but get a press release or if possible, press releases. If you have just launched your site, toot your horn. Send out a press release. If you have reached a milestone of 10 rss subscribers, toot away. If you had Shoemoney comment on your blog, by all means… TOOT your horn.

A well written press release will do wonders for your traffic and pr. How you ask? Let me tell you. First of all the PR (press release) site will give your a bit of the traffic if you have submitted it to the right category. And also, if you submit it to the right PR site, your release will get picked up by the Big G in minutes. Don’t believe me? Try this. Go into Google News, and do a search for any topic that interests you, and you will notice that if not on the first page, you will probably find a press release on the 2nd or 3rd page. I just did a search on Google News for internet marketing, and below are the results.

Voila!!! My search result showed a PR site on the 1st result, and the 2nd result, and that release was submitted 16 minutes ago. Not just that, the 3rd, 4th and 5th results were also press releases. You do realize that Google indexes its own sites – be it Google News, or Google video pretty regularly and faster. If it is showing up in Google News, you know that the news rss feed will show your site’s release on other syndicated sites as well. This will bring in traffic, backlinks and page rank.

A well written press release can do wonders.

Here are few resources for submitting your press releases for free:

www.pr-usa.net <— This one is free and Google uses it on the Google News for syndication

www.pr.com <— Once again, Google uses it for Google News

www.prweb.com <— Google uses it for Google News

Step 2. – This one is not used as often as it should be used, because it really does take time and persistence, and some extra effort. Commenting on the blogs. No, I am not saying spamming or be a troll. Most webmasters and blog owners can spot a spammer. I am saying, find blogs in your field, and add a comment in the posts that you can contribute in. Most blogs allow comments, and they also allow you to add your domain name, which is then hyperlinked. Once you become a regular commenter, you will see traffic trickling in. I had to post this trick here because I read on John Cow about a software that allows you to find blogs that allow comments, and do not have the no-follow tag. For those of you who are not aware, the no-follow tag in any link will not provide you with PR (page rank in this case) juice. However, there is another way to find those sites, without downloading the software. Visit this site DoFollo.com and enter the keyword for the type of site or blog that you are looking for and it will give you a list of them. Visit them, find a post that interests you, and make a sensible comment.

These methods are not some magic pill that will get you the attention and traffic and pr and backlinks. You just have to keep at it, and subscribe to the RSS Feed for this blog to be successful.

You don’t have to be an SOB, just think like one and have fun doing it.

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Today is the day that we were supposed to pick the winner for Photrade Invite and $50 contest.

I used Photomatt Random Number Generator to pick the winning commentor, and the lucky number was “7″ with the winning comment from BT. He was also an RSS Subscriber, so he also will get $50 via paypal. BT, I am sending you an email regarding this. Congratulations.

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I just got my haircut at Visible Changes in our local mall. Got there for my 8:30 appointment. The shampoo girl escorts me for a shampoo. She did a great job with the head massage etc. Satisfied, gave her a $5 tip.

Jacque my hair stylist was ready. She got to work on my hair at 8:40 and I guess time flies when you are getting a haircut because she done in about 10 minutes. Cool. Give her a $10 tip and head to the cashier.

Get my total for the haircut – $29. Pay it and leave.

My total spending there – $44 for approximately 15 minutes of work. Which means I paid at a rate of $176/hour. Probably more profitable than most doctors with a degree that cost them 100s of thousands of dollars and years of studying. What do you think?

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This got a laugh out of me. Thought I would share it with you guys.

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