Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook

Need new eyeglasses? It’s easy to buy them online! Check out zennioptical.com. We’ve ordered from them and have been pleased with their incredible low costs and great quality. There are a ton of frames to choose from, including the most popular styles available today.

Zenni Optical eliminates the middle man, so you save. You will need to know your prescription when ordering (get the stats from your optometrist’s office). You may need to adjust the glasses to fit your face when they arrive, too. My husband was able to do this easily with a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers (the tiny screwdrivers that you can find at any Dollar Store or department store). We’re impressed with Zenni Optical. We saved about $125 dollars by ordering from them!

Do you have your own blog on your own domain, or manage a website? I have to admit, for a long time I was in the dark about ftp and such. I actually am still learning the ropes, after finally taking the leap into my own domain several months ago. I use a variety of ftp programs, but tend to like SmartFTP more than FileZilla. For the longest time, I had no idea what I was doing! a lot of what I have learned has been trial and error. Emphasis on the error, lol.

I found, by pure accident, some excellent tutorials for SmartFTP users. They are flash movies, and are really good. So if you use SmartFTP, or are even desiring to learn the ropes of ftp, these tutorials may help; they are here.

We seem to be getting more telemarketing calls than usual these days. It is unusual to get them before 9am, after 9am, and on Sundays, but we do. Because we screen our calls through our answering machine, I rarely have to talk to them unless I am foolish enough to answer the phone. Sometimes I do it when I am expecting a call from someone else. Those poor telemarketers probably lie in wait, for days, for those moments when people accidentally answer their phones.

Anyway, I find it quite strange to get the calls on Sunday. And what’s even weirder is that we get one after we arrive home from Sunday church service. Right after. We do not come home from church at a regular time, so it is a very strange occurrence, as if we’re being spied on and then go the phones! I know that’s not happening, but between the constant barrage of spam I get for drug treatment and the constant calls about credit cards and cruise packages, I’m a little punchy!

Anyway, I dialed *69 this time, to see if it was truly a telemarketer, a prankster, or someone we know. The phone number calling us was 202-552-1972, a Washington, DC., number. I did a little searching (I love the Internet) and discovered this number is on a known telemarketers’ phone number list. I was so amazed that a list of telemarketers phone numbers exists, that I have to share it with you! It’s here.So if you dial *69 and need to see if the number is coming from telemarketers, check out this list!

I’m small-time blogger. I make a few bucks here and there, blogging reviews or adding some text links here and there. I’ve heard all the stories about bloggers like John Chow, who boasted recently of his $30,000 income for one month. One month! Incredible. I’d like to earn that. Who wouldn’t?

Running websites and blogs is becoming very high-tech. I’ve been trying to pay attention to my stats and search engine results, but I admit I am a real cheapskate– I use a little free web tracker. It only gives me information and stats for the first 500 visitors. I don’t think I’ll ever go “big time” for this blog, but stranger things have happened, so who knows! However, my home improvement blog and my travel blog are very popular. I am hoping that someday these blogs prove to be very successful. Lord knows, I spend enough time at them all day long!

So, I’m paying more attention to stats and information. Big-time webmasters use something called hosted web analytics. Now THAT’s what I’m talking ’bout! This is stat counter in hyperdrive!

Track and monitor the activities of every individual visitor to your website, web statistics, visitor system information, advertising campaigns, conversion tracking, and graphical statistics with the fastest growing web analytics provider in North America and the U.K. Knowing what your web page statistics are is the key to successful online business.

Iwebtrack is the best web traffic analyzer on the internet. Webmasters know that about 1/3 of Internet users block cookies, so stat counters aren’t always accurate. Iwebtrack uses javascript code to fix this problem. They also have a whole fully-loaded arsenal of other tools.

Thorough and detailed website and traffic monitoring
Analyze between PPC (pay per click) searches and natural results
Export reports to email or other formats
Affiliate program

Here’s a demo screenshot. Whoa!

Someday I hope to be able to get this successful. I do watch my stats and I do pay attention to what brings visitors to my blogs. If you have a blog and you either want to increase traffic and/or make money from it, this is a crucial component of blogging. Blogging is more than plunking down your personal thoughts and opinions; it’s become much more sophisticated, and if you want to rise with the tide, you have to branch out a little. Either that or hire a webmaster and expect to shell out tens of thousands. :-p Better to use cool tools like Iwebtrack.

I love Clark Howard! I’ve been listening to his radio show for a few years now. He has a huge website with a terrific forum. I’ve been getting his e-zines every other week, and they are getting better and better. Frugal Hackers, if you like saving money (and we all know we do!) Clark Howard is one of the better guys to listen to. Check out his website.

Just thought I’d share a quick link to a great new website I’ve discovered, Centricle. It is an encoder/decoder. You can post html code within your blog post using this tool. If you didn’t encode the html, the html would “work” within the post. When I am posting a tutorial about html coding, I don’t want the html to show you the results of the code- I want to show you the actual code in plain text. Centricle encodes the code! Neat!

I got in my Kim Komando newsletter a great piece of information that I thought I’d pass along. It’s a website that helps you to opt-out of all those junky catalogs in your mailbox (your real mailbox, by the curb). The website is Catalog Choice. It looks heaven-sent. (You do have to register to use the system.)

We get a ton of junk mail, and even then, I know we get far less than our neighbors. This is a great site to put an end to all the trash flowing through the mail system.