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Sherry Tingley

Why Take a Vacation in Hawaii?

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vacation in Hawaii

Vacation In Hawaii

My recent vacation in Hawaii was so utterly relaxing and uplifting, I just had to share a few photos with you. It’s hard to imagine that a place can be so beautiful and although I spent my first 18 years of life in Hawaii, vacationing there is another story.

As our plane prepared for landing at the Honolulu airport, the flight attendant announced over the speaker, Welcome to Paradise. That awareness was the real beginning of my vacation in Hawaii.

Let me also share with you that I felt extremely reluctant to go on this Hawaiian vacation because I didn’t want to be away from my affiliate marketing business and away from the students that I coach on a regular basis, but it turns out that with the help of Tim Ferris (author of “The 4 hour Work Week,” one of my favorite books) I was able to sign up with a website that allowed remote access to my home computer. That site was a blessing. http://www.gotomypc.com

One of the greatest benefits of being in affiliate marketing is that it allows you to do business from anywhere in the world. You can take your laptop with you and when you have time, process email and check on your affiliate businesses. I had fun logging on to my own pc from my hotel room and not missing any emails or any affiliate marketing questions at all.

I am going to share some beautiful photos with you that I took on my vacation in Hawaii and hope you enjoy them as much as I did. If you ever want to get away from your day-to-day activities, change the scenery a bit and give yourself a fresh start in life, go on vacation in Hawaii.

vacation in HawaiiThis is the beach at Waimea Bay and is absolutely heavenly. Sometimes there are no waves and when you swim there it feels like you are swimming in a pool because you can see to the bottom of the ocean.

vacation in Hawaii Makapu beach is famous for body surfing and the colors of the ocean are just what you see here. The blues and greens are breath taking.

This is the Honolulu Tabernacle Reflecting Pool. This is where my parents met each other in Hawaii back in 1946, after World War 2 ended.
vacation in HawaiiThe yellow hibiscus grows abundantly in Hawaii and blossoms year round. The colors are so brilliant that they stand out for miles.

There are three good reasons to take a vacation in Hawaii.

  1. The temperature is always above 70 degrees.
  2. The environment is absolutely amazing and relaxing.
  3. The ocean provides peace, recreation and endless fun.

Hope you enjoyed the Hawaii Vacation post!

Where do you like to vacation?

Ten Tips For Cyber Monday Shopping

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Cyber Monday is the Monday after Thanksgiving. It is well known to internet shoppers and designed to kick off the beginning of the online Christmas holiday shopping season and offer deeply discounted items for sale on the Internet.

It is much easier to shop for Cyber Monday deals rather than fighting the crowds for Black Friday. More than 80% of the online retailers are planning to offer discounts on Cyber Monday, December 1, 2008.

Some interesting Cyber Monday shopping statistics

  • 2007 Cyber Monday Hit Online Retail Spending Record of $733 Million
  • 2007 Cyber Monday Online Sales Were Up 21 Percent From the Year Before
  • 2007 Cyber Monday represented an 84-percent jump from the average daily online spending totals during the preceding four weeks.

Tip #1 – From Google – Check your budgets, and consider increasing them. You’re likely to see increased traffic and you won’t want to exhaust your budget early on a day when there are so many potential buyers.

Tip #2 – From Google – Give customers peace of mind about shipping times. One of the most stressful parts of online holiday shipping is not knowing if a present will make it in time. Be up front about delivery dates and let customers know ordering deadlines for gifts to make it in time for the holidays.

Tip #3 – From Google – Promote any special offerings in your ad text. If you have a holiday special that differentiates you from the competition, be sure to showcase it in your ad.

Tip #4 – Offer Free Shipping. Customers will be doing searches for items with Free Shipping.

Tip #5 – Check over 500 website deals at once at Cybermonday.com. They report on deals from KMart, Macys, Sears, Banana Republic, Walmart, Cabelas, J.C. Penney and hundreds of shopping sites.

Tip #6- Up To 50% off on Your Business Checks, Order Direct at Coolchecks.net

Tip #7- Check Ebay for CyberMonday Coupons

Tip #8 – Circuit City has a one-day only coupon this Cyber Monday, for those looking to buy a TV or Home Theater system. You can save an additional $100 on TV orders over $1,700 with coupon code YEA2M45AGJ

Tip #9 – Target is offering free shipping on orders over $50.

Tip #10 – Check out CouponChief.com for the latest in Cyber Monday coupons.

10 Easy Steps to Conquer Stress

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Christine McFadden, a veterinarian from Merced, California went for her morning walk on March 26, 2002, leaving her four children, ages 17, 15, 14 and 5 sleeping peacefully. She had no reason to suspect something was wrong that day, but she would soon come back to her home to discover that her husband had experienced so much stress that he had taken a gun and killed all four of her children and himself.

Christine McFadden was miraculously able to recuperate from that tragic experience and move on with her life, eventually remarrying and having a set of twin girls.

Stress can ruin lives depending on how we deal with it. There are some easy ways that you can manage the stress in your life constructively and make good progress towards the goals you have set for yourself.

Tim Ferris, author of The 4-hour Work Week”, a New York Times best seller, a Wall Street Journal best seller and a Business Week best seller, has some basic advice for people about time management and dealing with stress.

In a nutshell, Tim Ferris has laid out a plan for people who are working from 9-5 and feeling like they can’t get everything done that they wished for during that time. His golden nugget of time management is to create a business working plan that is automated, where the you in the picture is completely replaceable and the money comes in regardless of the way you spend your time in any one day.

Tim Ferris recommends cutting out any time wasters and to look at your list of things you have to get done and make some cutbacks.  If you had to eliminate one of your daily activities because you need an extra kidney, what would that activity be? His book is full of brilliant ideas about dealing with life.

I have compiled a list of 10 ways for you to effectively deal with stress in your life.

  1. Write down or keep a mental list of the environmental stressors that make you feel like pulling out your hair.
  2. During the day, rate each situation that is causing your stress on a scale of 1 – 10 with a 10 being you are ready to jump off a cliff.
  3. When you have rated your stress a 10, ask yourself what you can do about it in the present, right now.
  4. If you can’t do anything about it right now, decide when you can do something about it and make a plan to accomplish it.
  5. The world is programmed to solve problems between 9 and 5 whether you have a job that requires your presence or not. Can you take care of this level outside of the normal 9 to 5 time slot?
  6. Use the alcoholics’ anonymous concept – Grant me the wisdom to know when I can do nothing about this situation.
  7. Pick one person that you can calmly and frankly discuss this stressor with.
  8. Ask yourself how a three year old would handle this situation and then compliment yourself for not doing that.
  9. For every stressful situation that causes you a level 10 experience, find 3 things that you are extremely grateful for.
  10. Remember that people who have no stress are dead.

How do you deal with stress?

Zoobie Pets Sales Over One Million Dollars

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Reed Smoot and his brother JC had a great money making idea that led to creating a line of products called Zoobie Pets that are sold in more than 30 different countries and over 1,000 stores. These brothers noticed that the toddlers in their family liked to carry blankets and pillows with them everywhere they went and so they used that idea to create cute fuzzy zoo animals that each has a blanket inside of it. So toddlers can carry a cute animal toy that is also a pillow and blanket.

Reed, 29, and JC, 26, of Provo, Utah, started the company with Ryan Treft, 26.  They became extremely successful entrepreneurs. The first year of sales for their Zoobie Pets reaped over one million dollars in revenues. Who would know that catering to the toddler community could be so lucrative.

What made them successful?

  1. They had a clever product that was unique and appealing.
  2. They attended a Toy trade show in 2007 and received orders from over 100 stores as well as signing up several international distributors.
  3. They limited their sales to high-end stores like FAO Schwartz and Harrods.
  4. They only allowed purchases in container loads so that the distribution system was controlled.
  5. They adhered to safety rules in manufacturing their products
  6. Reid Smoot actually moved to Shanghai, China to oversee manufacturing of their toys.

These Zoobie Pets sold well last year and are predicted to be very popular Christmas presents for 2008. What a great money making idea by some very young entrepreneurs.

How to Maintain Good Credit

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Good credit is sometimes difficult to achieve. Even when it is achieved often times it’s hard to keep your credit score in a decent range. One of the main credit factors that determines your credit rating is whether you pay your credit card bills on time or whether you frequently forget to send out that payment.

People have so many reasons for not paying their bills on time.  Some of them are due to plain neglect and some are due to loss of a job or inability to work because of illness. Regardless of the reason, the credit card companies can report you to the credit bureau if you are over 30 days late on your payments.  If you are just a few weeks late, they can make your life miserable by fining you huge fees.

When you find that you have gotten behind on your payments and your late fees are accumulating, you can always call your credit card company and ask for them to work with you on perhaps lowering your fee or eliminating it altogether depending on your reason for missing the payment. You’d be surprised how many fees can be eliminated by doing this.
If you are over 30 days late on your payment, you will have to find out whether you have been reported to the credit bureaus.  If they have reported you, then this is where your credit score will start to go down. It will take a while before that negative ding will go away.  The more times you are reported to the credit bureau, the lower your credit score will go.

You can contact the credit bureaus by calling these numbers:

  • Equifax (800-685-1111)
  • Experian (888-397-3742)
  • Trans Union (800-888-4213)

Maintaining good credit will help you in your efforts to attain financial security. Financial security is defined as the comfortable feeling that your finanical resources will be adequate to fulfill any needs you have as well as most of your wants.  Doesn’t everyone deserve that?

Maintain good credit by paying your bills on time and keeping track of what is going on with your credit report before any big problems arise.