We’ve just launched a fun little tool that interfaces with the online finance tool called Wesabe. It takes your live income data from your banking info, via Wesabe’s API, and ranks your income compared to other users of the system. Those of you worried about privacy, it’s a non-issue. We don’t store the actual numbers. We just look at the rolling total of income for a 30 day period and then rank that total compared to all other registered users of RankMyIncome’s service.

If you’re a blogger that blogs about money, it’s a cool tool to see where you rank compared to your friends or other bloggers, without actually seeing their income or revealing your own income. It even has a widget that will allow you to display your worldwide rank, on your own site or wherever else.

We JUST launched, so we’re in a public beta phase. Please go and sign up so we can start populating the system with actual rankings.

RankMyIncome.com

This fun online service that I launched a while back has been revamped and is now relaunching. The major difference is now each award is free for the electronic version. So, if you think you’re the biggest "something" on earth, claim your spot now. We do give you the option to upgrade to a hard copy in addition to the electronic copy, when you sign up. You receive these via snail mail. They have a gold seal and look very official. Suitable for framing, I like to say.

Check it out. 

Terrorists love to do things on dates that are memorable from a number standpoint. You can’t get much more memorable than 7/7/07. Will we have an attack today? It’s a little after midnight now… we’ll see, I guess. Hope not!

Meanwhile… some updates on all the projects I’m working on:

MegaSticky.com - This is my over sized sticky note business, that sells 1 foot by 1 foot sticky notes. It’s coming along nicely. We just recently got some mention somewhere since business has picked up dramatically. Right now, it’s doing about $100 to $500 a day in business.

LetsFax.net - Prepaid faxing service. This was just launched a couple weeks ago. Very slow since no one knows about it yet. I need to do some press releases…etc. Income is negligible.

BiggestOnEarth.com - We’re in the middle of revamping this site to offer the awards free of charge, with an upgrade option of buying a hard copy certificate. So, the site is non functional right now. Once we get it back up and running, I suspect it’ll start slow and build. Maybe $20 to $100 a day in revenue.

Great American Collectibles - This is one of my businesses that has languished, when it comes to my efforts to grow the company. But I will be putting more effort into it in the coming months. We’re going to be coming out with a new line of miniature carved collectibles. The characters will only be 1.5" tall and will be just about as cute as you can get.

Right now we have the following lines of collectibles… Uncle Sams, Old World Witches, Old World Santas and a line called "Flatys".

EbookPrintouts.com - Without even trying hard, this company is doing about $40K in annual revenue. I need to flesh out the infrastructure more to facilitate more clients and this could easily grow to well over $250K a year within a 12 month period.

Sticky123.com - This is one of my businesses that is too labor intensive to grow. So I’ve allowed it to stop growing. We still get an order every once in a while, but my plan to automate it has fallen through. I was going to get some help from a Chinese outfit, to perfect my methods of getting stickys printed through a more efficient method, but I can’t find a company that can do it to my specifications.

Twitmoney.com - This is an exciting project that is not completed yet. So, there’s nothing at the site. But it’s one of my most promising ideas (in my humble opinion) and I can’t wait to launch it. Can’t wait. Stay tuned.

I have other business ventures that I don’t mention, only because of business confidentiality. But they are all going along smoothly.

You just gotta start small and work each and every idea that comes to you, to at least some degree or another. But be discerning. If an idea is not fleshing out to be potentially profitable, drop it like a hot potato and move on.

Watch your back today. Don’t go to a major city and if you live in one… get up early and take a drive into the country. Never hurts to be too careful. 

Update 5/2/09 - This service has been closed down. 

Haven’t posted to my blog for a while. Too busy making money!

I have just finished the development of a new, very unique, online faxing service. It allows you to pre pay for incoming faxes, without having to pay a monthly fee for your own fax number. It’s really cool. Here’s how it works.

Everyone uses the same toll free number to receive faxes. It’s 877-LETS-FAX. The only thing you have to do is make sure the person faxing you puts your email address somewhere on the fax cover sheet. It can be hand written or typed…whatever.

When the document(s) is faxed to 877-LETS-FAX, the system will sort and forward the fax via email to whoever’s email address is noted on the cover sheet. It arrives as a PDF attachment.

The system keeps track of your prepaid balance and the cost is a flat 25 cents per fax AND 20 cents per page received (remember, this is a toll free call to the sender, too!) Compare this to Kinkos or any other publicly accessible fax machine and you can see how inexpensive and convenient this service is.

If you get a fax and you haven’t deposited any money into your prepaid account or you don’t have enough to cover the incoming fax, you’ll get an email from the service telling you that you need to add money to your account in order to receive the incoming fax. You can also check your balance anytime you want by clicking on the "Balance" link on the front page of the site. 

This system isn’t for everyone, of course. You can get a toll free number that can be used to call you AND act as a 24 hour fax line as well, for as little as $2 a month plus per minute usage charges. Many people would do that before using LetsFax.net. But for those that don’t want any monthly financial commitment and only receive 3 or 4 faxes a year, or less, LetsFax.net is a great deal.

It’s also a great way for businesses to be able to fax something to a customer without the customer having to figure out how to gain access to a fax, since they can use one prepaid account to fax something to a multitude of customers over time. The customer just receives the fax as an attachment to their email. Nice and simple. Customer doesn’t have to do anything.

It also allows you to use your fax machine as a scanner to scan documents into a PDF format. Just fax it to 877-LETS-FAX and have your own email address on the cover sheet and it’ll show up in your email as a PDF attachment.

Again, this isn’t for everyone. But it’s a good little niche’ product for those that need it.

Update to this post below.

I just recently came across a very cool calling card that entrepreneurs like me could definitely use. In my example, I have several businesses, all of which have their own toll free numbers so I can know what business is being called before answering the phone. Each has their own voicemail…etc. I use this toll free phone service. You can choose your own vanity toll free number and each can have their own voicemail. Among so many other options. I even have all my calls recorded so I can take an order while I’m on the golf course and then when I get back to the office, listen to the call again and transcribe the call.

My problem is when I call a customer back, their caller ID sees my cell or home phone (whatever phone I’m using to call them back on) instead of my toll free number associated with that particular business. With this very unique calling card, I can choose what number they see on their caller ID. That way, if they use the number on their caller ID to call me back, I will be able to answer the right way, enabling me to answer with the name of the business…etc. If I call back a customer on my home phone, which I do a LOT, they could be calling me back on that phone number and my wife could be answering and just saying "Hello"…etc. This way, I keep all my businesses and customers on the right lines and I don’t have to worry about mixing things up.

It also allows you to choose a female voice for your listener to hear when you talk, disguising your voice. (Or a male voice, if you are a female.) I have no use for that, but it is a COVERT calling card, so I guess that’s one of the covert features. It also will record your call for later playback, if you wish.

Anyway, check it out if you have multiple businesses, or just a need to disguise the number you are calling from. It’s a pretty nifty thing to have around when you need it. (Oh, and they have an affiliate program! This could be a door to door sales item, easily!)

Update June 2007

There’s a better way to mask your outgoing phone number than covert call, mentioned above, now. The best way to make a call to someone now, and have their caller ID show a different number than the phone you’re actually calling from, is to get a toll free number (for your business, of course) from this service and then do the following. When you want to call someone and have your toll free number show up on the caller ID of the party you’re calling, dial the following: 18004889999 then dial your toll free number without the "1". So, if your toll free number is 888-555-5555, then dial that. Then enter your PIN. Then dial 5 and then the number you are calling.

To make it easier, I have the following put into a speed dial on my phone. The "P"s are hardcoded pauses that most address books allow you to use when inputting speed dialed numbers. The "X"s should be your own toll free number and the "pin" is your 4 digit PIN that you have set up in your toll free number service control panel.

18004889999PPXXXXXXXXXXPpinPPP5

After the "5" at the end you enter the number you are calling. One thing nice about this service is you can dial ** at the end of your conversation and then just dial another number without having to hang up and do the whole thing over again. So, you can group your call backs in one session and save some time. 

I’m happy to announce my latest online business. Without further ado… I give you BiggestOnEarth.com. It’s a site that ranks you (highly unofficially) among dozens of fun, serious and heart warming categories.

The site is currently doing a soft launch. There might be a bug here and there so if you catch one, please let me know. Use the contact form on the site to let me know.

Right now, it’s just a fun site but we’re adding features that will allow you to advertise your own business or endeavor (whatever it might be) on the URL that is given to you for your particular award. 

So what number are you and in which category are you the biggest on earth? 

Update: We’ve changed the pricing on each award and you can just buy an electronic version without getting the hard copy sent via snail mail.

Update: Here’s our press release.

Here’s a really cool marketing/office/home product. They’re called Genius Pads and are finally available in the US. Basically, they’re huge sticky notes that measure about 1 foot by 1 foot. I can’t tell you how many uses I can think of for this product. I’ll be writing about some as time goes on.

Oh, and I forgot to mention… I’m the one selling them. Yep, that’s my site at megasticky.com. I saw this product about 6 months ago somewhere on a blog. I went to the site selling them and realized they were ONLY available in the UK. I paid $65 to have a pad of 300 shipped to me here in the US.

Spotting an opportunity, I arranged to be the US distributor for the product with the original manufacturers, and viola! MegaSticky.com was born.

Spot an opportunity, formulate a plan and implement. It’s called Entrepreneurialism.

More about uses for this product as time goes on. Watch this space!!  :-) 

Just when it was safe to think that pretty much the entire left has gone off its common sense rocker, Hillary says something sane.

I certainly hope she goes back to saying looney stuff to garner favor with the anti-American, hate filled left, so I can get back to the real world. Appreciating the comments of Hillary Clinton is just not something I’m used to. Between that and her sporadic support of the Iraq war, what’s a die hard Republican to do? 

Got a message from Dane Carlson, regarding Chuck Huckaby’s suggestion to send a business book to a prisoner. What the heck… why not? I have about a million of them and if it can motivate a person to make something of their lives, it’s postage money well spent.

Find a business kind of book and send it along to:

L.Haddock
Pre Release Program
South Central Correctional Facility
P.O. Box 279
Clifton, TN 38425-0279

Cheers!

Dan 

It says it here, so it must be true.

Just something to think about. Does anyone find it timely that Iran has told Hezbollah to start a skirmish with Israel at this particular time? I don’t think they would have done that, if they didn’t have a deliverable nuclear weapon already developed and ready to go. Everyone knows the President of Iran is looney tunes. It is my opinion that they would never have started something resulting in Israel defending themselves with a vengeance and risk escalation to a regional conflict without having an Ace up their sleeve. They’re crazy, but not brain dead. They know that Israel would outright trounce any opponent in a conventional war. This, coupled with the fact that Ahmadinejad’s convinced he will usher in their 11th Iman… I mean, come on folks. All this is riddled with the obvious. Iran has nuclear capability NOW. Not later, but NOW. And they fully intend to use it, to usher in the 11th Iman.

Update: And now I read the following from the Drudge Report (this link will expire soon, as it normally does, so I’m quoting it below):

WSJ: Scholar Warns Iran’s Ahmadinejad May Have ‘Cataclysmic Events’ In Mind For August 22
Tue Aug 08 2006 10:22:35 ET

In a WALL STREET JOURNAL op-ed Tuesday, Princeton’s Bernard Lewis writes: "There is a radical difference between the Islamic Republic of Iran and other governments with nuclear weapons. This difference is expressed in what can only be described as the apocalyptic worldview of Iran’s present rulers."

"In Islam as in Judaism and Christianity, there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time — Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be defined."

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the US about nuclear development by Aug. 22," which this year corresponds "to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to ‘the farthest mosque,’ usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1).

"This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind."

Developing…

All I gotta say to this is… Holy Armageddon, Batman!

I wrote about this idea a long time ago. Since then, backup services have become cheaper and cheaper. They are now so cheap, it really doesn’t make sense to rely soley on an inhouse backup system that is susceptible to theft and damage during natural disasters, along with the main computer.

Check out this $5, unlimited online backup service.  That’s right… unlimited backup for $5 a month and it’s continually secure from theft or damage because it’s on the web. It’s also VERY automated and very hands off. Set it once and never worry about backing up again. It’s truly remarkable that computer storage space has gotten so affordable.

But the nice thing is, they have an affiliate program. They pay up to $3 per lead that you bring to them. That means the customer only has to enter their name, email address and download the software. That’s it. You get $3 for that. (This is because I can’t imagine someone not continuing the service after the trial and I’m sure they have an extremely good retention rate.)

But read my original computer backup idea and then apply it to this new program. Just go door to door, with a nicely done business card that just says, "Unlimited Online Backup - $5/month" then the URL to your own site that forwards to your affiliate link. On your site, offer to help them if they have any problems at all (giving your personal number and email address.) If no one is home, leave it at the door. Or just leave it at the door without knocking. Whatever. If you could manage to get 25 people a day to enter their email address and name and download the software, you’ll be making $75 a day. I would imagine you’d have to pass out about 500 cards a day to do this and with business cards being so cheap now a days, it’s doable.

If nothing else, you should get it yourself. 

I never thought, in a million years, that there would ever be a link from this blog to the blog called "Huffington Post." But here it is, below… one of the most persuasive arguments for a point that I’ve read in a very long time. If you’re a conservative, you’ll enjoy this article. If you’re a liberal, I HOPE you’ll enjoy it. (And if you’d like to comment, please use civil language or your comments will be deleted.)

The article. 

I’ve been receiving emails from readers of my blog asking when I’m going to post again. This blog is near and dear to my heart, but it’s so easy to let it slip because of how busy one can get. I like to think that if an entrepreneur has time to post to their blog, they aren’t working hard enough or spending enough time on their ideas. Haha!

We’ve also just had a new baby. Here’s our new daughter, Zoe Belle Sherman. (This drawing was done from a picture taken when she was about 10 days old. Yep, she’s that hairy!)

She was born on May 16th and is healthy. Now we have two girls and that’s it. No more for us. :-) 

Meanwhile, in case you’re interested, here is an update on all my businesses:

Sticky123.com - Going good. I’ve neglected it a bit only because the logistics are not set up to do MAJOR sales with this business yet. However, I’m changing that and so I’ll be able to ramp this business up a bit. Current annual revenue from this business is about $3000.

Gr8American.com - This business is still solid. Just finished this year’s line of Old World Santas. I think they’ll be great sellers this year. (New guys aren’t posted on site yet.) Current annual revenue from this business is about $175,000.

EbookPrintout.com -  Gang busters. I’m working on an add on to this service, for author’s of ebooks that will make it even more appealing for them to use our services. Amazingly, the site isn’t even live yet and we already are making about $25,000 a year off this business.

AboveBlack.com - My book is still selling. It’s been out now for 9 years, so sales have slowed of course. But we just printed our 6th print run and we’ve now sold over 10,000 copies. Annual revenue is about $6,000. But this revenue is essentially all plowed back into advertising. I wrote the book not as a money maker but as a tool to educate the public as to what is going on in certain circles of the US government.

PurpleStreet.com - (The site is a template right now… we’re doing development on it so what is there now is nothing like the actual final site.) This is a new site I’ll be launching soon. It will be a service for micro businesses that have one or two products to sell and don’t want to spend lots of money on an online store, getting approved for a merchant account…etc…etc. With this new service, they can upload their product to this ecommerce enabled website, in their own category, and then just link to the cart from whatever one page sales copy they have on the internet. The cart is REALLY professional looking with the ability to track orders, process payments, do sales tracking, ROI…etc. This kind of service is way over due on the net. I don’t know of one place on the net like it for real goods. It’s all inclusive. All you have to have is an inventory of products and a picture of the product. Now that’s simple ecommerce. :-)  Estimated annual revenue by December 2007: $250,000.

MegaSticky.com - (Site not functional yet.) I will be selling sticky note pads that are just like 3M’s Post-It Notes, but BIGGER. Perfect product for schools and businesses alike. Imagine having a 1′ x 1′ (that’s "1 foot by 1 foot" folks) sticky pad in your sales arsenal or in your day care or in your classroom. Estimated annual revenue by December 2007: $750,000 to $1.5 Million

OrderDept.com - (Site not functional yet.) I’m building a database system for small businesses. Most small businesses get orders and fulfill them. They don’t think much beyond that. Most can’t even begin to imagine actually pulling data from their database and doing follow up marketing based on certain criteria…etc. Of course, everyone has differing levels of competency with database manipulation…etc, but for the most part, small businesses do not even come close to optimizing their current customer base the way they could if they had an easy way to do it.

With the system I’m building, a small business can simply forward their cart’s order notification emails to us and we’ll store their customer’s order data, just off that notification email. Then, we’ll have an online interface they can log in to at any time and it will provide an EXTREMELY easy way for them to extract lists from their customer base, from selectable criteria. The cool part is, we’ll be compiling this data into one location. A lot of small businesses may have several different systems going at one time. They’ll use one cart for one thing and another system or cart for another and to get all that data working together is a nightmare. We put it in one location, regardless of what cart system they are using to collect the info. They can even move their entire operation to another cart system and not worry one bit about all their historical customer data. It’ll all be safely tucked away into our system. Once they start up at the new cart, they just continue forwarding order notifications and everything continues like they hadn’t moved at all.

Also, it’ll help small businesses keep their database "clean". Meaning… let’s say you have a customer order a Widget X and then right after that, they discover Widget Y and they order that. With all the data going into our system, we’ll recognize that customer as already having ordered another product and just add this new purchase to their existing customer record. So, when you go to query the database, you’re not going to duplicate your mailing by sending something to this same customer twice and you’ll know that they ordered both of these products without having to compare your product purchases against each other for duplicate customer records. Of course, if you have a cart that requires registration and for the customer to have an account, that won’t happen. But MOST small businesses don’t have carts like that. Estimated annual revenue from this business as of Dec 2007: $25,000 to $50,000.

Mystery Business - I have one business that I’m reluctant to discuss in detail. It’s too sensitive to competition and right now is our biggest money maker. So it would be silly of me to expound. But I at least wanted to let you know that it exists and definitely makes money. Projected 2006 revenues (not profit, revenue): $500,000. 

ForSaleByColor.com - (Template right now.) This is a new blog I’m having designed at the moment. I’ve alluded to this business in the past. Yes, it’s a blog. So why create another one when I don’t have time to add to this one… right? Well, it’s because ForSaleByColor.com will actually make money (butt loads of it.) Plus, my assistant, Francy, will be doing much of the actual blogging, I think. At least once it gets rolling. So, keep an eye out on that one. It might get some high profile attention when it launches since it will be a faily new take on the blogging concept. Estimated annual revenue as of Dec 2007: $50,000 - $150,000 (Lot of "what ifs" on this one.)

CarSticky.com - In early stages of conceptualization. Not much to report at the moment.

DanSherman.com - This blog actually used to make money with AdSense, but about a year ago or so, they started serving crappy public service ads ALL THE TIME on the site. So, I just removed them. So, DanSherman.com used to make about $1500 a year in just AdSense revenue, but it doesn’t any more. Perhaps I’ll rethink my monetization plan for this at some point.

Various Affiliate Links - Over the years, I’ve signed up with affiliate programs and displayed them on various sites of mine. (Some of them I haven’t even visited or worked on in over 4 years.) I just get checks in the mail every so often for these programs and for the most part, I have absolutely no idea how I made the money. Annual revenue: $1000

So that is the status of the Sherman Empire such as it is. Every day is another challenge. But challenges that I cherish and wouldn’t change for the world.

Be different and never give up. 

This is by no means a prediction based on any particular information. I’m just pointing out that they love to pick memorable days to do their evil upon mankind. The date of 5/5/06 is obviously a pretty memorable date. So is 6/6/06 that’s coming up next month. Of course, since that’s the mark of the beast in Christianity, that would be fitting since their ideology and beliefs are of the devil.

Anyway, watch and wait tomorrow (the 5th.) God only knows what they have up their sleeve.

My prediction has come to pass. An 8.0 earthquake would be comensurate with the level of sounds I heard which led me to the prediction in the first place.

In case you’re keeping track, that’s 2 for 2 on my predictions. Two public predictions and two massive quakes.

Yes, you can argue that anyone can make a prediction about an earthquake happening at any time and they will be correct much of the time because of so many earthquakes happening around the world. But consider that both my predictions were for the massive kinds of quakes. There are only an average of 1 "great" quake on earth per year. A "great" quake is 8.0 or better.

In an update to this post, on April 21st, I said the following:

Update 4/21/06: Very large quake happened in Siberia. Remote area but quakes of this size do not happen very often. Watch the next 3 or 4 months though. I think there will be a bigger one. At least based on my experience with the auditory signals I get preceeding seismic events.

I realize many people are skeptical, but I’m batting 1000 with my last two predictions (read about my first public prediction that came to pass here) and I’ve batted 1000 with many more previous to that. I just haven’t announced them in a public forum like this. However, I will continue to post my predictions here as time goes on. Maybe I should start a separate blog predicting seismic activity.

I just came across an article regarding something mysterious that scientists are baffled about. It correlates well with what I hear prior to earthquakes. I would be interested to know when they have been sensing these "tones" and see if it correlated to my latest prediction.

I just read one of most assinine things I’ve read in a while. Evidently, the mayor of San Francisco has decided, in his infinite wisdom that SF will not abide by any laws passed by congress if it has to do with enforcing the prevention of illegal entry into the US.

This guy is amazing. I hope it does pass so that he is arrested and charged with whatever it is that you are charged with when you don’t uphold the rule of law as an elected official. Such an ass. It’s okay to have an opinion, but to break the law in the course of your official duties is just amazing.

Here is the article. 

Here’s an idea. Why don’t we lock down the CA border? Then allow them to admit whomever they want into CA. They can just fling open their border to Mexico. It can become Mexico north. When it gets so unliveable that they start rethinking what they did, we’ll just have to tell them that our borders are tight and you can’t move to the rest of the USA. You made your bed, now lie in it… in other words.

Think about this folks… Mexico has been around for much longer than the US. They’ve had WAAAAYYYY more time to make Mexico a great place to live. A country that you wouldn’t want to leave. Why is it that they haven’t gotten it right? What makes them want to come to the US? I’ll tell you why… because our values and culture have made our society desirable to live within. So, if we allow unchecked immigration into our country, by people who make up a country that is NOT desirable to live in… WE SLOWLY BECOME A COUNTRY THAT IS UNDESIRABLE TO LIVE IN AS WELL. Think!!!! Mexico isn’t undesirable to live in because of the dirt there. The dirt is the same as here in the US. It’s not undesirable to live there because of the beaches… heck, the beaches are nice. Let’s see… what is it that makes it undesirable to live there…. hmmm… let’s think REALLLLLYYYYY hard… maybe it’s the sun… it’s too hot. Nope. It’s hot in Arizona, but Arizona is a great place to live. How about the houses there. No, you can build a really nice house in Mexico, too. Just like here in the US. Hmmmm… still thinking… hmmm…

I know… ding! It’s the PEOPLE!!! Now, don’t get me wrong… there are nice people everywhere, including undesirable places to live. But it’s their culture. It’s their every day standards. It’s the way they choose to live in their cities… from the planning of their cities, to their corruption…etc. But all that stems from the people. The people make a society. Not the buildings (people make the buildings), not the weather, not the food, not the location in relation to any other country… it’s the PEOPLE. So, if you extend that logic out. If the same people that make Mexico an undesirable place to live, move to the US. What happens to the US, slowly, over time?

Bingo!

It doesn’t take rocket science here, folks. We should have controlled, legal immigration, from all nations including Mexico. But ONLY if they agree to and have a desire to assimilate into our way of living. If they cannot do that, and they feel their own culture should be brought with them, then why don’t they STAY in that culture if it was such a great culture that you must cling to it when you enter into another country.

This whole topic irritates me. Liberals yell discrimination when people say the things I just got done saying. But facts are facts. It has nothing to do with discrimination. It has to do with protecting our culture and our borders. If we want to become what Mexico is… just keep allowing the flood of illegal immigrants in and see what happens.

Hello everyone. Let me first say, I hate when bloggers open their posts with an apology for not posting to their blog for "x" amount of time. Like they’re God’s gift to blogging and somehow everyone’s life has stopped because they weren’t getting new posts from this particular blogger. So, no apologies since I’m sure you’ve been fine in my absence. Ha!

However, I will tell you why I’ve been away for so long. Busy!!! I just don’t see how consistent bloggers find the time to add to their blog on a daily basis. Yowza!! I’m actually trying to find a full time assistant to help out with my businesses, but I can’t seem to find one competent enough to take the wage I’m offering, in this competitive job market. Woe is me.

But I needed to get this post written in a timely manner since I think it’ll be important to document this. As many of you might know, if you followed my blog in 2004, I made a prediction regarding earthquake/seismic activity, which culminated in the Indian Ocean earthquake and subsequent tsunami. I won’t repeat all the details here about how I can predict seismic activity…etc. If you need a refresher, you can read what I said in the past and then come back here.

The thing that happens in my ears is happening again. I woke up this morning with I’d say about 30% to 40% hearing loss in my left ear. Not quite as bad as what happened leading up to the Indonesian earthquake in 2004. But it’s definitely the second worse I’ve ever seen it. I usually get this thing in my ear for perhaps 30 seconds or so and then it goes away. That is usually good enough to precede a pretty sizeable seismic event. So, when it lasts this long (it’s already been about 3 hours since I woke up and it’s persisting), I can’t help but think we’re in store for a VERY sizeable seismic event soon. The one preceding the Indonesian event lasted for days before my hearing was back to normal.

I wish I had a scientist interested enough to test my hearing and try to reproduce what it is that I hear before seismic events. Sure would be interesting. But meanwhile, all I have is this blog to communicate to the world what happens to me before such events and when they actually happen. Unfortunately, I can’t pin it down to a time or a location. With the Indonesian one, the thing with my ears happened a full 4 months prior to the event (although there were two 7.0 earthquakes in Japan within 24 hours of my post that detailed what was happening with my ears.)

Anyway, there you have it. It’s down on "paper" so to speak. Now let’s see what mother nature has in store for us.

Update 4/21/06: Very large quake happened in Siberia. Remote area but quakes of this size do not happen very often. Watch the next 3 or 4 months though. I think there will be a bigger one. At least based on my experience with the auditory signals I get preceeding seismic events.

I just read on Drudge that the opening receipts for King Kong were the 21st best Wednesday opening in history. It didn’t even do as well as the Pokeman movie when it was released on a Wednesday.

I had to laugh. Only because I was reading all these glowing reviews and how it might become the biggest blockbuster in history…etc. All the while, I had absolutely no interest in it whatsoever, myself and I couldn’t imagine many people having an interest in it either.

The days of big monster movies are gone. We waved goodbye to that era when “Apple” was only something we ate. Jurassic Park was an exception only because they were monsters that actually roamed the earth. They were real, which lended a certain curiosity to it.

Just because you spend a LOT of money on a movie doesn’t mean people are going to want to see it. Even if it does have a compelling story and critcs fawn over it. It doesn’t matter. If the public in general doesn’t have an interest in the overriding subject matter (large apes), it’s going to flop.

I’m adding some ecommerce capabilities to my blog here. My first batch of products will be these EXTREMELY cute keychain type of hangy bobber thingys (to the right in the sidebar.) We’re working on the cart system to take orders for them as I type this. It should be done soon so if you want one, check back soon. They will be $13.95 each with free priority shipping.

Update 12/30/05: As you can see, I still haven’t gotten around to implementing the ecommerce stuff. Anyway, I took down the keychain images as they looked awful against that different colored background.

I had a small milestone the other day in my entreprenuerial journey. This may have occurred before, but a few days ago is the first day that I actually noticed. I had sales from 5 of my businesses all in one day. That’s 5 streams of income that are actually bringing in money. Of course, the challenge is to do the things necessary to grow them all.

I was watching a special on Leonardo Da Vinci the other night and it quoted from one of his notebooks, wherein he said something to the affect of:

To create an idea from nothing is noble but to carry out the idea into practice is servitude.

I’m VERY much paraphrasing here, since his was so much more profound, as you might imagine.

I’m diligently working on my biggest project to date. Technical details are holding us back (I absolutely despise the crappy details of establishing an SSL secure server for taking orders… despise it, I say!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I can’t wait to reveal it to you to get your opinions and of course, your business, as each and every person that has access to the internet in the US and other western nations could use my new website at some point. Talk about a target market, hey?

I think I’ve touched on this before, but not this particular idea.

Why not take an ad out in your local paper or even go door to door (”we’re in the neighborhood” kind of thing) and advertise your services to set up a computer backup system for people so they won’t lose any of their data if their computer goes down? You would be absolutely AMAZED to know how many people do not have their computers backed up. Almost every single house you go to is a potential customer.

Take a cool looking hard drive with you when you go door to door. Use this one. It’s very cool looking and if you happen to get a Mac household, you’re a shoe in. Tell them you’ll set up the hard drive and ensure their data is being backed up every night at 2am (or whatever time they want) and they’ll never have to worry about it again. Their data will always be backed up.

The hard drive comes with backup software so you can just install it, tell it what to backup and you’re done. Tell them they can get it done now for $250 (which includes the hard drive and backup software and your services to set it up) or if they want to schedule another time, it’ll be $275. You can use that price difference to close the deal. After some talking, etc… just say, “You know, I’ve got some other installs in this area on that date, so I’ll do it for the $250 if you can commit to X date.”

You get the drift. The drive cost you $200 and you just made $50 for maybe 20 minutes of work, if that.

Be sure to choose neighborhoods that might have $250 to spend on backup solutions and it would be a very good idea to take credit cards for your payment.

Carrying the actual hard drive with you will give the customer something to lust after. When you get to the door, hand it to them as soon as they open the door and have them hold it while you talk. It keeps the door open and gives them something to start desiring. Add in your sweet talking about how they absolutely NEED to backup all those MP3 files, pictures, word documents, emails… etc. They know they’ve been putting it off and so many will just say, “Yeah, okay… I need to get this done and I’m never going to do it if I wait for myself to do it.”

Congrats. You are now a career backup technician. Of course, now that you have a relationship with them, give them your card and tell them what other services you do or partner with a tech in the area to give their card to them for a share of the profits in the future… or something like that.

Go forth.

I did an interview for the entrepreneurial site over at solo tees.

I hate when bloggers say stuff like, “Sorry for not posting… etc” but I feel like I should give an update. I have been sorely lacking on the posts because my main business is holiday related and I’ve been busier than you can imagine. Plus, I’m trying to get my new blog developed. The one that should be changing the landscape of internet retail and blogging forever. (Of course, in my ever so humble opinion… haha!)

So, keep me in your RSS feeds. Much more wonderous stuff to come from DanSherman.com. Be patient.

There has been much press recently regarding the decline of readership for newspapers. I’ve been tracking this for a while now. Even had a blog dedicated to it (until the reality of lack of time hit me in the face!)

I just got a call from our local rag called the Oregonian. We recently subscribed to the sunday paper for the ads. (My wife promised that she’d use the coupons… um, yeah, okay.)

So, I get a call from an ENTHUSIASTIC lady who wanted to let me know that because of my being such a good customer (been one now for about two months, mind you) that they were going to GIVE ME the daily paper for free. Gee. I sure was lucky, huh?

I told her to PLEASE not send me the daily paper. It was a complete waste of time and resources to send me the daily newspaper.

Guess what I had in my driveway the very next morning? And it wasn’t Sunday.

This industry is just about done. Put a fork in it.