Health knowledge made personal
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(best rant EVER!)
Hey all, I need advice 
. Here is the deal I have been running a hardwood flooring company for the past 8 years since leaving the military, and it has been good. No real complaints, decent customers, a few steady accounts, I can pay my bills, and thank goodness no machine or vehicle issues. Have 1 truck, 2 machines and I'm planning on buying another truck in September. World keeps on spinning. Right?
Here is the part of the my situation that is ticking me off. My advertising!
When I first started out, it was straight bootstrapping. Church flyers, word of mouth, small publications, Penny Saver (thank heaven for Penny Saver), Star Ledger, Asbury Park Press, you get the idea.
Then in 2008 I signed up for 2 Yellow Pages phone books and also the Yellow Book. They Promised the Moon, Stars And Mars! "Tons of calls", they said, "Business out the wazoo", they said and till this day. I have received about 20 calls in 2 years!!! WTF! I did full color and the whole 9 yards, two headings in each book with coupons.
I have been paying this beast since the beginning, cause I needs me credit
. The few calls I got were for quotes, price checks, and a few small jobs. Now before, I continue I will say I am a good salesman and closer. I landed about 12 of those for contracts.
Also, don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with free estimates, quotes and price checkers. On my other cheap-o-ads its cool and anticipated. Folks should be price conscious right? Of course, BUT WHEN I AM PAYING $2,200 BIG FACES...A MONTH. I need SOME GOOD JOBS. I like to eat lobster, steak and shrimp. I need to eat good. Right?
And it wasn't the ad either, phone number on the top, message displayed big and in color, not crammed etc and I had a special call tracking 800 number and a tracked local prefix number.
Lastly, to end this Yellow pages rant the book just dropped and they are already asking for a renewal commitment for 2011. I still see unwrapped books in some apartment and condo complexes. It makes me sick to my stomach.
(Takes a breath) Since, that is out of my system. I ask you all this, I have made a website with Dreamweaver. It looks good, search engine optimized, the whole bit.
But, I need a professional internet marketing company to hook me up with some good SEO, search engine marketing, and pay-per-click ads, so I can get up there nice and high on Google and Yahoo. I have a friend who uses adwords and he does fantastic. So well that he has dropped all his yellow pages and news papers. He kept a few small publications that really work, just to keep his name in the local public eye.
That being said, I have narrowed it down to
www.websitenj.com and www.groundzerowebdesign.com. Both seem to be on the up and up. I researched each online and they both offer similar services.
But, Websitenj.com has something I like, their prices are right there online for the world to see. No hiding and beating around the bush, I hate that. And they have gotten some good reviews online.
Has anyone done business with either of theses companies? Or can someone recommend another search engine marketing company that you may have dealt with in the past?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks 
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Once again I have received the damned Yellow Pages Phone Book. I do not want these books - I have not used a phone book in nearly five years. Ever. Not even once in five years! Usually I toss the old book – which is still in pristine condition - in the recycling bin annually and accept the useless new book. But this year I have chosen to do something different – RANT!
Yep, I know I rarely rant, but this time it’s personal. Several times a year I receive pounds and pounds of unwanted phone book on my front door step. Because most of my referencing is done online, I find it a tremendous waste of paper. There are some people who might need or want the annual Yellow Pages distributions – but my preference is the distribution of phone books should be consumer driven. In other words, we should be able to opt-out of receiving this junk mail or better yet, if the books are wanted, they should be requested individually on an opt-in basis.
Think about that – how many people would actually take the time to phone the phone book company and request a free book? Seriously. Not a single person I know. This is surely why the program does not exist. IT IS A MONEY MAKING SCAM!
According to the Yellow Pages Association, consumers reference print Yellow Pages directories more than 12 billion times per year while Internet Yellow Pages sites receive 4.6 billion references each year. My question is where do these statistics come from? NO ONE HAS EVER CALLED ME FROM THE YELLOW PAGES COMPANY! EVER!!! Are they out there dialing up everyone in the United States to get a truly accurate number instead of an estimation?
Information from www.stopthephonebooks.com really puts the phone book scam into a green perspective:
Creating 500 phone books takes:
TREES -- according to a study in California 17 to 31 trees- depending on how much is new paper and how much is recycled paper .
ELECTRICITY – 4100 kwh (a 3 bedroom house in Colorado uses about 600 -1500 kwh per month-- so that about 3-6 months of electricity)
WATER -- 7000 gallons of water (that’s about 14 gallons of water per book - Gee, I thought we were trying to cut back on wasting water).
GAS – ???? -- how many gallons of gasoline for the delivery trucks? Gas for the trash trucks? Gas for the recycling trucks?
So-- how much did we use for 615 million phonebooks ? -- Well, that’s about 1.23 million times each of the numbers above -- in just one year (and we are not even including the electricity and water it takes to recycle these products yearly). Also, guess what? Only 15% to 20% of the phone books created are recycled annually.
Of course, that’s an estimation, right? It’s just my opinion, but according to the Yellow Pages Association website, it’s okay to estimate, right? That’s how they got their 12 billion number. Apparently estimating how many people are actually utilizing their phone book product justifies how much of our natural resources we are destroying. With this mindset, estimating is a great way to justify tricking businesses into advertising in a useless, wasteful, out-dated, resource-sucking product also.
My thought is this is a SCAM to take money from business owners and is an utterly useless and ridiculous piece of advertising SPAM which we do not want. It’s time for all of us who agree with the this rant and opt-out of this insanity and do something kind for the earth.
I phoned the below phone book businesses today and tried to opt out but could not. ATT/Yellow Pages was impossible. I tried to opt out, repeatedly, but no one ever answered the ATT number so that I CAN opt out. I will try again tomorrow.
— ATT/ Yellow Pages: 1-800-479-2977
— Verizon: 1-800-555-4833
— DEX: 1-877-243-8339
— Yellow Book:1-800-929-3556
In my opinion, it’s part of the SCAM – they avoid you on purpose so opting out is not a consumer choice – how unprofessional. But then again, businesses which build scams really are not very professional are they?
Here’s the reality - most of the directory companies do not offer telephone menu options which include opting-out. It would be great if they provided an online way to opt out – I guess that’s just asking way too much from a bunch of scam artists!
This is an issue we should be contacting our government about. Contact your local representative and tell them you want something done about this outlandish scam built to steal good businesses money!
Please help come up with additional ideas to make a difference. Leave a comment below and let me know what you think -
Do you feel this is a giant underhanded SCAM like I do?
What can we do to stop this unprofessional practice from phone book company’s around the globe?
Shawna Coronado says Get Healthy! Get Green! Get Community! www.thecasualgardener.com, The Green Blog - www.gardeningnude.com, or The Garden Blog - http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com