–> Market Your Book with a Postcard, Part 2 of 2
What Should Your Postcard Include

–> How to Get Grassroots Marketing for Half-Price
Over 300 pages of solid information on lowering your marketing cost and boosting your return.

–> Hear and Meet Shel, August Through September 2008

–> Which of Shel’s Books is Right for You?

–> Friends and Colleagues Who Want to Help

• Read Mark Joyner’s New Book For Free–A Year Before Publication
• Train in Person with Jay Conrad Levinson, Founder of Guerrilla Marketing
• Master speaking coach and media trainer TJ Walker is doing another program to train you as a professional speaker
• Your Chance to be in the Movies

–> A No-Cost Way to Connect with Reporters Seeking Stories
My friend Peter Shankman, a very well-connected PR guy in NYC, has started a no-charge service called Help A Reporter Out. He sends queries from reporters a few times a day, and if there’s a good fit, you answer the journalist. And he gets some leads that never make it to Profnet/PR Leads. This should be a no-brainer–but don’t abuse it. Only answer if you’re approrpiate for the query, or else you’ll spoil it for yourself and everyone else . If you get one good lead in a year, it’s worth it. He has passed on leads from the NY Times and Washington Post, as well as lesser venues. Sign up at www.helpareporter.com

–> Finally–An E-Book Site Puts Authors’ Needs First
Writers: Mark Victor Hansen (of Chicken Soup fame) has just launched a very author-friendly e-book/multimedia content distribution site at http://www.youpublish.com/referredby/shelhorowitz. No fee to set up, no fee to upload your files (wide range of types), 50% commission.

–> Facebook Teleseminar with Mari Smith
If you’re not on Facebook yet, you may be missing valuable business opportunities. If you are on Facebook, are you getting the most out of it for your business? Recently, The Blog Squad grilled Mari Smith about why you need to be on Facebook and how to use the social networking site to be smart about building your business. Now you can get access to the audio program from the live teleseminar for an investment of only $20.

–> You’re invited to join Foundercontact
Christophe Poizat, founder and chairman of the International Network of Social Entrepreneurs (INSE) has invited you to receive a free membership with Foundercontact. Foundercontact International Ltd is a web 2.0 online marketplace designed to bring entrepreneurs into contact with 3500 investors for seed, early stage, or growth capital. With members from 5 continents and 93 different countries, it opens up international business opportunities for entrepreneurs. Sign up at http://www.foundercontact.com/user/register

–> Latest Additions to the Websites

–> Administrative Information
Subscribe, unsubscribe, back issues, etc.

–> Don’t forget to play our games, at the top of any page on FrugalFun.com– no fees to play, prizes to win, and you help me continue to bring all this good information to you.

Published monthly since July, 2007 by Shel Horowitz
16 Barstow Lane, Hadley, MA 01035 USA
413/586-2388

Shel Horowitz’s Book Marketing Tip of the Month, Volume 2, #2, August 2008
Market Your Book with a Postcard, Part 2 of 2
What Should Your Postcard Include

Front side:
Your gorgeous book cover, in full color (Note: companies like Modern Postcard, Tu-Vets, and VistaPrint make this easy and cheap. VistaPrint will even accept back sides done in MS Word.)

Back side, left

• Title and author
• Brief enticements such as endorsements, review quotes, awards, mini-synopsis
• Ordering information for individuals
• Ordering information for bookstores and libraries
• Adequate whitespace and font size for easy, comfortable reading

Back side, right
Blank space for personal or stickered message and address

(Shel Horowitz’s latest book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, is his third in a row to win an award. Order at http://www.grassrootsmarketingforauthors.com/ )

–> Positive Power Spotlight: Valhalla Organic Macadamia Farm
The first words out of Lawrence “Lorenzo” Gottschamer’s mouth were “I’m a guerrilla in the eco-war. Everything we do here is to repair the planet.”

–> Another Recommended Book: Ethical Markets by Hazel Henderson
So many books about the need for change are nothing but doom-and-gloom. Focusing on the successes, Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy by Hazel Henderson (with Simran Sethi) (Chelsea Green, 2006) is fundamentally about hope.

–> How to Get Grassroots Marketing for Half-Price
Over 300 pages of solid information on lowering your marketing cost, boosting your return

–> Friends and Colleagues Who Want to Help

• Read Mark Joyner’s New Book For Free–A Year Before Publication
• Train in Person with Jay Conrad Levinson, Founder of Guerrilla Marketing
• Master speaking coach and media trainer TJ Walker is doing another program to train you as a professional speaker
• Your Chance to be in the Movies

–> Hear and Meet Shel, August Through September 2008

–> Which of Shel’s Books is Right for You?

–> Latest Additions to the Websites

–> Administrative Information
Subscribe, unsubscribe, back issues, etc.

–> Don’t forget to play our games, at the top of any page on FrugalFun.com– no fees to play, prizes to win, and you help me continue to bring all this good information to you.

Published monthly since September, 2003 by Shel Horowitz
16 Barstow Lane, Hadley, MA 01035 USA
413/586-2388

The first words out of Lawrence “Lorenzo” Gottschamer’s mouth were “I’m a guerrilla in the eco-war. Everything we do here is to repair the planet.”

Lorenzo owns the aptly-named Valhalla, an organic macadamia farm a few miles outside of Antigua, Guatemala. In 1976, he came for a three-day visit, and never left. Now he employs about 25 people on three sites, living in a beautiful forest, harvesting nuts from the trees he planted in 1978, and removing a pound of carbon from the atmosphere with every pound of nuts he produces.

The nuts fall to the ground when ripe, and are very easy to harvest. He built a sheller out of a spinning tire and some rebar, and built an equally simple but equally effective size-sorter (it looks kind of like one of those toys where marbles roll downward through a maze) so that processing plants are willing to take his crop.

The trees themselves create hundreds of new varieties, no grafting required. And Lorenzo conducts meticulous research on the properties of the new varieties.

Lorenzo is a giving kind of guy. Visitors are welcomed with a personal tour from him or one of his co-workers (in English or Spanish, as appropriate), free samples of chocolates, nuts, and the macadamia-based cosmetics he sells to companies like Nivea, even free facials. His outdoor restaurant serves macadamia butter laced over fresh
fruit and pancakes, herbal tea, and more, all very reasonably priced.

And the proceeds go to his reforestation and sustainable economic/agricultural development work with indigenous people. He has donated over 200,000 new trees, and is involved in numerous development and reforestation projects. Much information can be found at the Valhalla website, http://www.exvalhalla.net

So many books about the need for change are nothing but doom-and-gloom. Focusing on the successes, Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy by Hazel Henderson (with Simran Sethi) (Chelsea Green, 2006) is fundamentally about hope.

Mind, there’s plenty of information in these pages about the world’s problems and the consequences of doing nothing. And lots more about the way government and business collude to skew the system in favor of the traditional model (such as unsubsidized solar and wind energy having to compete against heavily subsidized oil, coal, and nuclear, and lifecycle costs such as disposal transferred from the manufacturer to the consumer). But the book profiles dozens of entrepreneurs in both the business and service sectors who have found a way to help humanity address that raft of problems. If the entire world adopted the solutions modeled and piloted by these visionaries, it would go a very long way toward reversing negative climate change (a/k/a global warming…reducing poverty…creating economic support systems that lift up not only the middle class but also the very poorest–and do so without government handouts.

Henderson, whose many websites include EthicalMarkets.com, has been taking a leadership role in the environmental/activist/ethical investor sector for decades (I have a book of hers that was published in 1978; this book is based on a PBS TV series she produced.

The ultimate message is that we, not only as consumers but as citizens (yes, there is a difference!) can impact the world of business and shape it away from the rigid single-bottom-line, profit-at-all-costs model popularized by economists like Milton Friedman, in favor of a more humanistic triple-bottom-line approach that is shaped to benefit all stakeholders, not just those who happen to own stock.

Ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, socially responsible companies tend to perform better. As I discuss in my own award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, and as Henderson points out over and over again, these companies are better managed, they’re not embroiled in costly lawsuits, and they’ve made strides to reduce their own environmental footprint in ways that actually lower costs.

And Henderson tracks probably hundreds of ways that this attitude has filtered from the hippie pioneers of the 60s and 70s into the mainstream business world–not only through the successes of companies that were built from their founding on social and environmental responsibility (e.g., Greyston Bakery, Grameen Bank), but also in how this ethic is slowly spreading into even the largest of traditional businesses, even to the likes of auto companies, oil companies, General Electric, Wal-Mart, and so forth.

The book is wide-ranging, with chapters covering not only the obvious (energy, environmental impact, fair trade) but also the pervasive areas of society that need to–and are starting to–shift (health and wellness, joy at work, investing). Henderson identifies four pillars of socially responsible investing (a field where she has had major influence through her work with Calvert and other organizations): social and environmental screens, community investing, shareholder activism, and socially responsible venture capital. She also wants us to place economic value on “the love economy” (work done for free, in the home or as volunteers).

In short, despite the mess we’re in, many, many trends are positive. She even finds support in the writings of those two writers whose works have often been used to justify the worst aspects of the corporate oligarchy: Adam Smith, 18th-century author of The Wealth of Nations, and Charles Darwin, 19th-century author of The Origin of Species.
A few specific examples of positive change among the many she cites:

• Socially responsible investments in the U.S. and worldwide now total $2.3 and $5 trillion, respectively
• Socially screened companies outperform the S&P 500 and similar indices around the world–and that may have something to do with why socially responsible mutual funds grew 156% in five years (to $32 billion) while that market as a whole grew only 22%

• In Brazil, about 1/3 of the nation’s GDP is accounted for by companies that have joined an ethical-principles umbrella organization–and the country’s celulosic (i.e., not from diverted food sources such as corn) ethanol production has made it energy self-sufficient
• Fair-trade coffee consumption in the UK multiplied 400% from 1998 to 2005
• Green venture capital is growing at 36% per year; wind power is growing at 29% per year; solar grew by 63% from 2004 to 2005, and countries such as China are becoming major players (very hopeful for those of us who worry about the environmental disaster that would happen if China adopted traditional, polluting, resource-hogging technologies to achieve Western living standards)
• At least some clothing companies have rejected sweatshops in favor of production that is certified under the Social Accountability 8000 standard (mentioned in a profile of one of those companies, Eileen Fisher)
• Technology exists to supply all the power California currently generates with traditional powerplants, just by switching four percent of the state’s vehicles to fuel cell power
• Shareholder activists have achieved numerous victories, from switching McDonald’s off polystyrene containers to getting Home Depot to carry sustainably-forested wood

–> SEO Copywriting, Part 1
What’s the biggest difference in writing copy for the Web versus writing for direct mail, printed ads, or other media? Simple–when writing for the Web, you have two very different audiences: the reader, of course, but also the robots that spider your site for Google and other search engines.

–> How to Get Grassroots Marketing for Half-Price
Over 300 pages of solid information on lowering your marketing cost, boosting your return

–> Friends and Colleagues Who Want to Help

• Read Mark Joyner’s New Book For Free–A Year Before Publication
• Train in Person with Jay Conrad Levinson, Founder of Guerrilla Marketing
• Master speaking coach and media trainer TJ Walker is doing another program to train you as a professional speaker
• Your Chance to be in the Movies

–> Hear and Meet Shel, August Through September 2008

–> Which of Shel’s Books is Right for You?

–> Latest Additions to the Websites

–> Administrative Information
Subscribe, unsubscribe, back issues, etc.

–> Don’t forget to play our games, at the top of any page on FrugalFun.com– no fees to play, prizes to win, and you help me continue to bring all this good information to you.

Published monthly since September, 2003 by Shel Horowitz
16 Barstow Lane, Hadley, MA 01035 USA
413/586-2388

SEO Copywriting: Shel Horowitz’s Monthly Frugal Marketing Tip, Volume 11, #4, August 2008

What’s the biggest difference in writing copy for the Web versus writing for direct mail, printed ads, or other media? Simple–when writing for the Web, you have two very different audiences: the reader, of course, but also the robots that spider your site for Google and other search engines.

And these two audiences have very different needs. Human beings want copy that flows, that leads the reader through, engaging both emotions and logic until that reader is ready to purchase.

But search engines look for things like keyword density, exactness of match with a search query, and other robotish attributes.

It’s a delicate line. If you want to get the search engines to return your page in a results page, you have to have a page that appears to conform very closely with the search string–but keeping that page readable and comfortable for human beings can be a challenge! And we’ve all seen those dreadful web pages that are written so much for the search engines that they’re really awkward to read.

Here’s how you can learn to create pages that work both for search engines and for human beings. Karon Thackston is a copywriter who has built her whole career on writing SEO-friendly pages that are also human-friendly. Her stuff is a whole lot less stiff and more flowing than most SEO-optimized pages. It was Karon who taught me years ago that you could break up search engine phrases with punctuation.

And that’s the first of many tips in her newly-revised and updated e-book, Writing With Keywords. If you want to bring traffic to your web pages, and you want that traffic to stick around and read what you wrote, you’ll want to get your hands on this.

Price is usually $39, but if you use my affiliate link, and do it before 5 p.m. Eastern this Friday, August 8, it’ll only cost you $29. Do it. Satisfaction guaranteed.

–> This Month’s Frugal Fun Tip: 10 Ways to Make Driving Vacations Affordable
Despite the sharp upsurge in gas prices–and, by the way, the U.S. still has some of the lowest gas prices by far–a driving vacation is still usually a lot cheaper than flying, and has lower carbon impact as well. Here are a few ways to keep it affordable.

–> Latest Additions to the Websites
Fantastic new articles this month, including:

• Antigua, Guatemala: Colonial Elegance and Lots to Do
• Haight-Ashbury in the Guatemalan Mountains: San Pedro and Lake Atitlán
• Guatemala City: Where Are The Crowds?
• Back to School Quality Time Without Spending a Dime!

–> Parents…Are You Set Up Properly if Something Happens to You?
I’ve had a look at Wear Clean Underwear by Alexis Martin Neely, and I’m very impressed by her clear writing and her words of warning to parents: If you want a good outcome for your not-yet-adult kids in the event of your death, you need to prepare…NOW!

–>Finally–An E-Book Site Puts Authors’ Needs First
Writers: Mark Victor Hansen (of Chicken Soup fame) has just launched a very author-friendly e-book/multimedia content distribution site at http://tinyurl.com/4kpp9h This link will take you to the page here my books are set up. From there, just click on “Register” in the upper right. No fee
to set up, no fee to upload your files (wide range of types), 50% commission.

–> A New Way To Have More Frugal Fun–No-Cost Games on FrugalFun.com
Want to win cool stuff? Tired of surfing through content and want a break? Here’s something you’ll want to look at. To play, go to any inner page of FrugalFun.com (not the home page) and click on the game banner at the very top.

–> Which of Shel’s Books is Right for You?

–>Administrative Information
Subscribe, unsubscribe, back issues, etc.

Published monthly since May, 1997 by Shel Horowitz
16 Barstow Lane, Hadley, MA 01035 USA
413/586-2388

Despite the sharp upsurge in gas prices–and, by the way, the U.S. still has some of the lowest gas prices by far–a driving vacation is still usually a lot cheaper than flying, and has lower carbon impact as well. Here are a few ways to keep it affordable:

1. If you have a gas hog, swap. Find someone with a car that gets 30 MPG or better, who isn’t going to be doing much driving. Pay that person $100 or so, and trade cars for a couple of weeks.
2. Lower the cost of lodging: join a homestay organization such as Servas (real, in-depth visits, http://www.usservas.org in the U.S., or http://www.servas.org elsewhere) and/or Couchsurfing.com (crash space), and spend some of your nights with members of these organizations. Plus you’ll meet great people!
3. Lower the cost of lodging again, by camping. All you really need is a decent tent that’s easy to assemble and stores in a small space, and a good sleeping bag (get the zip-together kind) and foam pad for each person. For two people, even if you have to buy all of that new, you’d make up the cost by the fourth night, if not sooner–and you’ll have this stuff for years to come.
4. Drive efficiently. Keep tires properly inflated, change the oil regularly, fill your tank in the early mornings when the gas hasn’t expanded, back off on the accelerator when you’re going to need to slow down for an exit or stoplight or tollbooth, avoid jackrabbit starts. Set cruise control for 55 miles an hour; it’s a lot more gas-efficient than 65 or faster, and you won’t have to worry about the very expensive speeding tickets and the even more expensive insurance surcharges they bring. Plus, you’ll actually get to see the scenery.
5. Put a sunshade across the windshield when you park, so you’ll need less air conditioning when you get back on the road.
6. Once you get to your destination area, get around by bike and/or public transit and leave the car where you’re staying.
7. Limit yourself to one restaurant meal a day, and picnic for the rest.
8. Use member discounts on attractions: AAA, AARP, your union…or take advantage of the numerous free or discounted choices you’ll find in every area, if you know where to look.
9. Don’t buy stuff you don’t need, just to have a souvenir. Take digital photos instead.
10. For a whole $8.50, buy a copy of my e-book, The Penny-Pinching Hedonist: How to Live
    Like Royalty with a Peasant’s Pocketbook. It includes specific techniques for many of these tips, as well as a great deal more. For instance you’ll learn several ways to locate free or cheap attractions and entertainment, slash the cost of dining out, find cheaper places to stay, and much more.
    280 pages of great frugal fun advice! Learn about the book at http://www.frugalfun.com/pphtoc.html, and buy it at http://www.frugalmarketing.com/shop.shtml.

Global Travel Review

• Antigua, Guatemala: Colonial Elegance and Lots to Do
• Haight-Ashbury in the Guatemalan Mountains: San Pedro and Lake Atitlán
• Guatemala City: Where Are The Crowds?
• Midwest Book Review’s Travel Bookshelf

Down to Business

• The Myth of Focus
• Midwest Book Review’s Business Bookshelf

Frugal and Fashionable Living

• Back to School Quality Time Without Spending a Dime!

Global Arts Review

• Midwest Book Review’s Theatre Bookshelf

Good Business Blog

• Does Fox’s Acceptance of Paid Product Placement Slant News Coverage?
• Shel Encounters the President of Guatemala
• Whatever Happened to “Uniter, Not a Divider”?
• Colby: Protect Writers Against Theft-Through-”Orphan Works” Legislation
• Strategic Alliances go Far Beyond JVs
• Ostriches of the Ultra-Right: Carbon Belch Day
• Well-Fed Peter Bowerman on Self-Publishing
• A Zero-Carbon City? In the UAE?
• Republicans’ Head-In-Sand Energy Posturing
• Bravo! Kucinich Moves to Impeach Bush
• Obama Clinches With Class; Pit Bull Hillary Won’t Let Go
• Good-bye to the Hummer, Finally?