Archive for the 'business' Category

How to reduce your junk mail

Published by Tristan on November 28, 2008 in business, environment, media, products and shopping. 0 Comments

Indianapolis weekly newspaper NUVO has a terrific article this week about how to reduce the amount of junk mail you receive. I’ve noticed that, since we moved, we’re getting more junk mail than ever - crap advertisements from RedPlum, Shop Local (a grave misnomer - read NUVO’s story about junk mail to find out why), Value Pack and more. We get one of these almost every day, and read/use NONE of it, so NUVO’s tips are much appreciated.

I’m pasting the most important part of their article here because it’s buried at the end of the story on their site, sans hyperlinks.

How to cut your junk mail down by 95 percent in 30 minutes

1. Call The Indianapolis Star at 317-444-4517 to stop the weekly ShopLocal advertisement.

2. Go to DoNotMail.org and sign the Do Not Mail registry petition. Then use the junk mail opt-out tool. It will ask you for your name and address, and all of this information is then automatically input into 18 separate pre-written and addressed letters, which you can simply print off and then mail. This will stop a vast majority of crap from clogging your mailbox. A brand-spanking new septic system, if you will.

3. Submit your name and address on Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org and be automatically removed from every local phone book vendor’s hit list.

4. Go to Catalogchoice.org. After setting up a simple account and using their database to find the catalogues you’ve been receiving, they will contact them on your behalf to discontinue them.

5. Recycle all those hulking Christmas-time ads (and everything else, for that matter) at any one of the thousands of free public recycling depots in Marion County, handily listed on Paperretriver.com. You will have a hard time spitting in any direction without hitting one of these; there is probably one at your grocery store, kid’s school, your work … everywhere.

6. Fill out and mail U.S. Post Office Form 2150, “Prohibitory order against sender of pandering advertisement in the mails,” if there are any specific brochures, catalogs, or items that you do not want to receive, or do not want your kids to see.

7. Stop the coupons

Val-Pak: Just enter your address at: www.coxtarget.com/mailsuppression/s/DisplayMailSuppressionForm.(Note: This is a cap sensitive Web address.)

Money Mailer: There are many ways to get rid of this coupon book.
Mail: 12131 Western Ave.
Garden Grove, CA 92841
E-mail: jlimon@moneymailer.com
Phone: 714-889-3800
Fax: 714-889-1590

Valassis: Either call 1-888-241-6760 or www.advo.com/consumersupport.html.
Allow five to six weeks; will suspend it for five years.

RSVP Indianapolis: 317-844-7787

8. It is not the right of any company or person to keep sending you mail that you do not want. Contact any mailers that continue to leak their garbage through to your mailbox and ask them to stop. Most of them will be agreeable to your request. Otherwise, you can use the pre-paid postage envelopes they send you to stuff with anything you want (minus dead animals, bombs, etc., don’t be an idiot) and mail it back to them. Urban legend contends that you can attach these envelopes to a box of any size and mail them old tires, bricks, roof shingles, a screenplay … the most expensive parcel you can find.

FreeWebPR.com:: Great resource for P.R., writing and general business tips

Published by Tristan on July 29, 2008 in Indiana, Indianapolis, business, media and nonsense. 0 Comments

Last week while I was preparing to write a press release, I somehow came across a terrific website, Free Web P.R., run by fellow IU School of Informatics New Media alum and Hoosier media arts guru Neal Moore. Having grown up in central Indiana, I often saw him on Indianapolis CBS affiliate WISH-TV, my family’s go-to station for local news when I was younger. Growing up, I trusted what I saw on the station, and now as a discerning adult, I’m pleased to see that Moore’s still a positive influence in Indiana, and I was happy to discover the wealth of business-related resources on Moore’s site.

Neal Moore

I checked out some of his posts and recommendations regarding public relations, writing, and media in general, and was fortunate enough to meet Neal (pleasantly, no “Mr.” required) at an alumni event a few days after I discovered the site. If you’re a student, starting a business, looking to improve your media-related skills, or even if you want to make it big in the music industry, you should check out the site.

SEO technique: name your children uniquely

Published by Tristan on May 12, 2008 in asides, business, family and nonsense. 2 Comments

As the administrator of a handful of websites, I’m often learning new techniques about SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Basically, SEO is all about using web-savvy techniques to move your site’s ranking up in search engines like Google. So, for example, if I was starting a company to sell widgets (which I’m not, because - face it - who needs widgets?), but there were already 10 widget-selling companies on the first page of Google when you search for “widgets,” it would take an awful lot of work (and good content on my website) for my new widget company to even show up in a Google search result. So SEO is basically a mysterious set of quasi-scientific methods designed to help people find your site more easily by increasing the likelihood that it’s seen in a prominent space on a search engine.

Some say SEO is dead or dying, which likely enrages many who’ve built careers on it. This belief is built on the premise that Google, Yahoo et al are becoming better and better at filtering out worthless content and finding what’s truly good, whether it’s optimized for search engines or not.

At any rate, I have a proposition for those looking for more SEO techniques in the wake of Google’s continual evolution: name your kid something unique! Seriously: “Tristan Schmid” isn’t the most difficult search engine term to get a high ranking for (of course, now that I say that, people will probably try to knock me out of relevant searches just for kicks), and if I were to create a company called “Tristan Schmid Widgets Inc.”, all it would take would be some simple traditional marketing, and people could find my company online. Or not, since my name doesn’t have the additional T on the end that so many people would likely type.

Anyway, people like Lindsay Lohan’s mom have been cultivating their children to make them money for quite awhile, so it’s inevitable that someone follows my advice and names their kid Buydietpills.com Jones. Or not.

Beautiful 100% Recycled Business Cards from Natural Printing

Published by Tristan on March 21, 2008 in AdoptAnAnimal.org, business and environment. 0 Comments

Natural Printing logoI received an order of business cards for Adopt An Animal the other day from Natural Printing, and they look great! (Check out the design below.) This is the first time I’ve designed and ordered business cards for myself, and I’m quite pleased with the final product. I originally thought about using a service such as VistaPrint to get free cards, but they didn’t offer 100% recycled (as far as I could tell), and I couldn’t quickly figure out a way to simply upload the custom card I designed myself instead of using their templates (such was the case with similar free-business-card sites.) I found a few other places online offering recycled cards, but most required huge orders and were considerably expensive. Natural Printing allowed me to order a relatively small number of 100% recycled cards (don’t be fooled by the rather unattractive example) for a relatively cheap price ($60.) Sure, it was more expensive than VistaPrint’s free cards, obviously, but with Natural Printing, I got exactly what I wanted, quickly, and supported a small business at the same time.

This being my first business card design, I was a bit apprehensive that I may have set up the printing layout incorrectly. Natural Printing’s website gives guidelines on how to set up your design’s layout so it prints correctly, and though the directions are easy to follow, Mark from Natural Printing let me know of a minor problem shortly after I submitted my order - the version of Adobe Illustrator I was using (CS2 12.0.1) was too high, even though it’s a few years old. So I saved the design as a PDF, sent him the update, and quickly heard back from that my design was good to go. About a week and a half later, the little box showed up, stuffed with perfectly aligned little cards.

I chose to use a one-sided design. I originally thought about including Adopt An Animal’s services on the back of the card, but I realized that many times when people give me business cards, I write notes on the blank side about the organization or the person I met. I could’ve used lighter ink on the card’s backside had I used it, but chose to go the simpler one-sided route. I also figure that it’s a good idea to use matte printing, because glossy cards are virtually impossible to write on.

The one minor issue I have with my order is that the heavy-duty, pure-white cards say nothing about being 100% recycled, which I think would be a nice feature and selling point for Natural Printing. I’ll probably let Mark know about this and see what he says, but in the meantime, if I order more cards, I might just put a small watermark on the bottom mentioning this fact. It might look a little self-congratulatory (”Hey, I use recycled products!”), but with so many business cards floating around out there, people may as well start printing them on recycled paper!

Adopt An Animal business card