I’ve been tagged by Christine, so I decided that I would play the game. At least it will tell you readers a few things about me (I can’t guarantee that they will be things you wanted to know, though). I’ll be back tomorrow with a “real” post.

THE RULES:
1. Post these rules before you give your facts.
2. List 8 random facts about yourself.
3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names (linking to them).
4. Leave them a comment on their blog letting them know they’ve been tagged!

So here we go… eight random facts about me:

1. I started my first business when I was 14.
2. My family did not have or use a computer until I was 15.
3. I can un-focus my eyes and rapidly wobble them.
4. I’m not squeamish about what I eat: I’ve eaten everything from octopus to racoon, and everything from fried tofu to vegetarian hamburgers made with oatmeal.
5. I almost joined the US Coast Guard Reserve, but am currently in the USCG Auxiliary.
6. I’m a musician – I play piano, hand drums, celtic whistle, and sing.
7. I hope to move to Chilliwack, British Columbia next year.
8. I have gone swimming in a pool filled with 38 degree (F) water.

OK, I’m going to tag:
TheLinkNinja
The Change Engine
Paul
Olaf
Mark Wilson

“Did you see my News Paper Ad?”
It’s now a question you can ask your clientele. Google has officially rolled out its news paper advertising interface. You will find it under the “Print Ad’s” Tab in your Google AdWords account. I have not yet personally run any Google Print Ad’s as of yet. Or for my clientele. I did go through the process to get some ad estimates for my local newspaper that has 179K circulation monday thru sat and 200K+ on sundays. The per day issue price desired from Raleigh News and Disturber…oops…I mean News and Observer is about $800 for week days and about $1,000 for sunday. The cool thing about the google interface is it allows you to place your bid for the ad spot at a percentage of the premium request cost desired from the publisher. So you can say “Im willing to pay 75% of the price the publisher is asking.” and you might just get that, if they don’t have others lined up and ready or if the other bidders are not as high as you. It’s a great set up. Very user friendly as always with Google standards. They even have a section to hook you up with ad designers to help you create the ad you want to run. You can also select the size from really small to full page. I recommend you get in there and price out your local Publisher or the publisher in your target market. Maybe even try to run one for 10% of asking price and see if you get it….You never know, Especially with it being so new. From first impression still looks like the print ads are for marketers with deep pockets.

OH YEAH! Google radio advertising is finally here. And sooo affordable. I am currently running ads for Raleigh and Charlotte NC for around $3.00 per thousand impressions (estimated). I have had Curtis media, a local radio station call on me before. With minimum commitments of $1,500.00 per week for multiple week commitments. With Google radio ads you can edit your bid’s. Get up to date estimated impressions information. How many air plays you have gotten. Pause and resume with one click. You can target time of day, Age, other demographics, music genre. I am very impressed with Google Audio ad’s. And for the price it is definitely something I will tell my clients about! My first ad got rejected for being misleading and trademark infrengement. I got it cleared up and resubmitted. My man Chris Hooked me up over @ www.provoiceusa.com with a great voice over and music. Chris is very fast, great communication, and does a great job. The google ad creation marketplace hooked me up with him. Also I will be credited back for the audio ads I do up until the end of July. Needless to say im pretty excited about it. For me and my clients!

I’m going to depart a bit from the normal topic of posts to briefly review a book I read recently. While at first glance this book is not directly related to internet entrepreneurism, I think it is related.

The book I’m referring to is Beyond The Summerland, the first book in the Binding Of The Blade series, by L.B. Graham. The books take place on the continent of Kirthanin, in a parallel universe. Most of the characters are in the book are 18-25 years old, and they are all on a mission, so the characters are easy for us young entrepreneurs to associate with.

I strongly believe that good fantasy stories should be designed to teach lessons about all areas of real life. Beyond The Summerland does exactly that. The characters are very realistic, and the book is packed with tidbits to be learned, on topics like:

• Following your calling
• Using your gifts
• Obeying the rules
• Playing fair
• Courage
• Honesty
• Love / Romance (duh, it’s about a bunch of single young people! )
• Friendship
• Betrayal
• Team building
• Leadership
• etc.

The entire series of books is written from a strongly Christian worldview, but it is written in a parallel universe, so the religion is not actually Christianity.

Beyond The Summerland seems to me to be written to appeal specially to young people, and as such young people especially can learn much from the characters. The characters in the book are vibrant, especially the hero and heroine. As I said on my personal blog, “Joraiem [the hero] I could happily emulate or have as a close friend. Wylla [the heroine] I could happily marry.”

It takes a few chapters to really get into the book,but then it gets rolling and keeps going, right up to the shocking surprise ending.

I borrowed the book from a friend, but you might be able to get the book from your local library. Enjoy your visit to the amazing land of Kirthanin, and we’ll soon be back to the world of internet business!

~Adam

Stealing website content is no laughing matter – if your content is reproduced on other sites, not only are your competitors gaining from your work, but your site could be penalized by the search engines for duplicate content.

Here are ways that you can prevent people from stealing your content, and also ways to prosecute people who have stolen your content.

Step 1: Discourage People From Stealing Your Website Content

The best thing you can do to discourage people from stealing your content is to put a copyright notice on each page of your site. It could be something simple like “Copyright my Company, 2007” or it could be more complex, like “All content on this site is Copyrighted by My Company, 2007. You may not use, distribute, or reproduce anything from this website without written permission.”

Step Two: Detect People Who Have Stolen Your Content

The best way to find websites that are using content stolen from your site is CopyScape. Just enter your site url and it will show you sites that may have stolen text from your site. You may want to consider using their paid service CopySentry, which is a great help.

Step Three: Contact The Site Owner

Once you have found a site that has clearly stolen content from your site,. You can just contact the site owner. (You can get their contact details by going to http://www.whois.sc and entering in the domain). Politely inform them that you believe that their site is using your copyrighted content, and ask them to take it down from their site.

Step Four: Send Them A Formal Letter

If you can’t contact them directly, or they do not comply, you can send them a legal cease and desist letter. You can find a form letter you can use at http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/contract/cease.htm Include a print out of their website with your content highlighted so they know what content to remove from their site.

Step Five: Send Their Webhost A DMCA/Copyright Infringement Notice

If the offending website owner has not removed your copyrighted content after the period allowed in the letter, you can notify their webhost. Each web hosting company has a different procedure for copyright infringement claims – try to find out what their host’s policy is and follow it. (If you don’t know what their webhost provider is, you can find out via http://www.whois.sc)

Basically the way this works is that you notify the webhost that the domain in question is hosting content that infringes on your copyrights. The webhost will either remove the content, disable the domain’s hosting account, or demand that the site owner remove the content or justify their actions.

Step5b: You can also file notices with Google, Yahoo, and MSN requesting that they remove the site with your content from their indexes.

Step 6: Initiate Legal Proceedings

If for some reason filing a infringement notice with their webhost did not work, you have one option left – take the website owner to court. This can be very expensive and you may not want to proceed with this step. If you do decide to take the website owner to court, consult with a lawyer skilled in copyright issues first.

Conclusion:

Website copyright infringement / content stealing is a serious issue and you should fight it relentlessly. I have successful fought dozens on infringement cases, and I’ve never had to proceed past step 5a.