I saw a lot of great comments and discussion on the topic on the website Palmetto Scoop, but one really stuck out. I’ve attached the comment below, very much worth the read. And here’s the original post: http://www.palmettoscoop.com/2010/02/17/bill-would-ban-federal-currency-in-sc/

I understand where both sides of this discussion are coming from. But most people are commenting without knowing and understanding the history of currency, in the US and internationally. But this guy gets it:

Posted by Goldigger on 02/18/10 at 7:57 am
“Vast Variety in post #5″ obviously doesn’t realize gold is global. Today, gold coins are still highly desirable as a trusted store of value and as a recognized medium of exchange. Additionally, gold bars are held by central banks to assure their ability to make international payments.

Gold is highly liquid, has few geographic boundaries and can be bought, sold and stored in most parts of the free world.

Because of its global market, the price of gold cannot be easily manipulated by any single nation or borrower. On the contrary, gold is widely thought of as the foundation of the world’s monetary system. In a world where other assets, such as currencies, are depreciated by high inflation or interest rates, gold acts as a superior hedge against inflation.

Gold and silver coinage has been used as a medium of exchange and a store of value throughout recorded history. That’s why it seems funny to me that some of you view the idea as some new and crazy way of exchange. Lol.

From Abraham in the Old Testament to your grandfather, they all understood that gold and silver coins are “real money”. As in “Vast Variety’s post #6″, Perhaps that’s why America’s Founding Fathers designated gold and silver coins as the only “tender in payment of debts” in Article 1 Sec. 10 of the U.S. Constitution. So if South Carolina chose this path they would be the only one’s obeying the U.S. Constitution wouldn’t they? Can that be wrong?
Gold coins were removed from circulation in the U.S. upon Franklin D. Roosevelt’s issue of the Presidential Executive Order of 1933. Under this order all circulated gold coins and gold bullion had to be surrendered to the Federal Reserve Bank.

As far as printing our own money, it’s not as illegal as we thought.

Last year, two Detroit tavern owners were sitting at the bar, sampling their beverages and bemoaning the local economy — no one in the city had cash, and when they did, they spent it in the suburbs. Then the pair hit on a solution: Print their own money.

It is, after all, perfectly legal for anyone to issue currency, as long as it doesn’t look too much like a U.S. dollar. Thus was born the “Detroit cheer”, a local scrip accepted by a handful of city businesses.

Residents in tiny North Fork, Calif., just launched the “North Fork share”, and folks in Piedmont, N.C., spend the newly issued “the plenty”, a currency depicting local flora and fauna like the ever-popular turkey vulture. Brooklyn, N.Y., is preparing to launch the “torch”, while South Bend, Ind., is set to print what it calls “MACs”.

Susan Witt, the executive director of the E.F. Schumacher Society, a think tank devoted to decentralized economies, says she gets calls daily from towns across the nation looking to join the movement.

Read it here. http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/BetterBanking/struggling-towns-printing-their-own-cash.aspx

Gold’s Value is a Safety Net

A common example is the saying that an ounce of gold could buy a quality men’s suit at any point in history. In addition, in times of political and economic uncertainty, gold’s value traditionally rises.

The King, stamping gold coins or bars with his personal heraldic device, made gold his king dorrys “coin of the realm” or “legal tender.” During the following 2,500 years in the evolution of world trade and commerce, gold emerged as the preeminent global currency as thousands of gold coins were minted by many countries.

The U.S. dollar was originally backed by gold. Meaning if someone gave you paper money, it was an I.O.U. this amount in gold. In 1971 Nixon was forced to close the “gold window” and the U.S. dollar was no longer redeemable in gold. Now paper notes are I.O.U.’s for nothing. Imagine in one hand, you hold an unprinted piece of linen paper and in the other you hold an unstamped piece of gold. Which has more value?

“The destiny of a currency determines the destiny of a nation,”
according to Dr. Franz Pick, a noted free market economist. With
today’s dollar retaining a mere three cents of it’s original buying
power as a century ago, (Between 1915 and 2008 the dollar shrank to just 3 cents!) it’s easy to see why the world sees the U.S. as
a nation in decline. Reversing the dollar’s decline seems remote,
given our debt and deficit addictions. Gold is now the world’s only
currency that has retained a store of value over time; buying
roughly the same goods or services today as it did three centuries
ago.

Would you invest your life savings in a company with a track record like the U.S.
dollar?

Do you think the trillions in U.S. government bailouts will strengthen or
weaken the dollar given that we are facing trillions of dollars in national debt?

What’s really at risk now is the dollar’s role as reserve currency. Unless foreigners continue to buy dollar-denominated assets, the exploding US trade and budget deficits threaten to sink the US dollar.

When paper money eventually folds as major world economies begin to devalue their currency and the others must follow in a race to the bottom to keep their goods affordable for export. So then what will shop keepers prefer in payment for goods and services, gold or that phony IOU-for-nothing paper money? You tell me.

Also check out these stories worth reading:

• Struggling towns printing their own cash
• India Buys IMF Gold to Boost Reserves as Dollar Drops
• Japan and China Stop Buying US Debt
• Top Chinese Economic Policy Advisor Says: Buy Gold, Sell Dollars!

Share on Facebook

I was FIRED!

Yeah, after doubling the boss’ numbers for an entire year, becoming a guru in the industry and a leader, coaching others, leading seminars, and doing the impossible… my thanks is a pink slip.

But instead of getting mad, taking it out on someone, getting revenge, or being depressed, I’ve decided to go to work on my own business. One that I can only fire myself from.

I know how to do it, but it’s still best to do work as a team, so I want you to join along. There is going to be an INCREDIBLE amount of content given away in this 21 day challenge. Content like:

• Daily audio training
• weekly webinars
• step by step how to set up a profitable lead generating website
• step by step how to market for free via social media
• Daily encouragement from the team
• Daily video marketing BLITZ
• One-on-one coaching
• And everything you need to succeed!

If you go through this challenge and don’t succeed, there’s no excuses! You will be given every tool you need from an internet marketing master on how to generate leads for free and on autopilot for ANY business… I do did this full-time professionally for the automotive industry, and became known as one of the top people.

Now It’s YOUR Turn!

Check out this video, then head to the site to fill out the application:
http://www.williambryant.info/21daychallenge/

The challenge starts next week, 2/7

Share on Facebook

This is YOUR opportunity
YOUR new chance
YOUR new resolutions

What are your resolutions?

This year, I resolve to spend more time with my family, and more one-on-one time with my daughter, Molly. I resolve to progress my health further this year than last. I resolve to take my team to the next next level.

I know that’s not the typical, start the gym/acai diet/book club thing.

What are your resolutions? And how can I help YOU achieve your resolutions for this coming 2010 New Year? Write them below!

Share on Facebook

December 25, 2009

Dear XGoPro Members,

We live in interesting times… It seems that today we are to shy away from celebrating the true meaning of the very holidays that have defined who we are as a civilization. It seems that political correctness tells us what is authorized (convenient ?) to do. Who defines political correctness anyway? Would political correctness even exist, unless men and women bow before its altars of fear?

So, for a day, allow me to step away from political correctness, and even at the risk of irritating the potentially offended few…. I call upon you to honor truth, for without truth, it is easy to take men’s freedom away.

First of all, the word “holiday” comes from “holy day”. And whether our “holy days” originate from Jewish or Christian traditions, they do have their roots in deep faith based beliefs.

During this season, it has become customary for Jews to celebrate Hanukkah. And  although Hanukkah is not one of the High Holy Days (as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), in the Western world, it has grown into a major Jewish holiday because of its proximity to Christmas. The root origin of Hanukkah comes from the Hebrew word for making something sacred. The Temple in Jerusalem was defiled by the King of Syria Antiochus several centuries B.C.

When the Maccabees regained control of the Temple, there was only enough sacred or holy oil for the eternal flame to burn for one day in the Temple. But through a miracle from God, the oil burned for 8 days, which was the time that it took to manufacture more oil (by pressing olives), and then consecrating it. Jews celebrate this miraculous intervention of God by lighting 8 candles on the Menorah on 8 successive days. It was decreed by Judah that this should be observed every year. This year, it was from December 11th  until the 19th.

According to the Talmud, a Jewish woman (Hannah) as well as her 7 sons were tortured and murdered by the Syrians for having refused to worship an idol, and for having stayed faithful to the One, True God until their death. Their sacrifice is commemorated during the days of Hanukkah.

Oil was the symbol of being chosen by God, of something holy, to be respected and revered. So it’s interesting that for Christians, the birth of Jesus the Christ (Christos is Greek for “the one anointed with oil”) sets Jesus apart as the Chosen One whose presence on this earth was designed by God to be sacrificed on behalf of all of us, so that we may be redeemed of all of our faults, and be made free from our past. The Evangelist John says it in the following manner: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

So, if we’re Jewish, let us not give in to the growth of falsehood in our society and not forget the sacrifice of Hannah. Let us proudly keep on lighting the candle of hope, not only during Hanukkah, but through our actions, every day of the year.

And if we’re Christian, let us not forget the reason for the season, and let us celebrate the birth of Jesus by remembering the ultimate Gift from God, the gift of Redemption that began a little more that 2,000 years ago in a stable in Bethlehem. Let us show ourselves worthy of that gift, the true gift that keeps on giving… but only if we pass it along, only if we pay it forward…

And to those who would tend to disbelieve what I have just shared with you, those who have either chosen to disbelieve or who have never been touched by the “Hand of God”, let me just remind you that you too have greatly benefited from Judeo-Christian beliefs. Indeed, wherever and whenever these beliefs have flourished in the world, in due season, prosperity has grown. Wherever and whenever these beliefs have waned or disappeared, freedoms and prosperity have diminished.

So, it is with no shame at all, but with the pride that only a Holy Cause can trigger in a man, that I wish you a Happy Hanukkah and a very Merry Christmas.

And may the love of God be with you during the coming year, and may It shine through you for all to see.

John Godzich

Share on Facebook

The extensions I’ve been really missing from Firefox are the SEO addons that make searching and optimizing your sites easier. I will sometimes go back to Firefox just for these. But I really love Chrome and find myself going right back to it.

So, I came up with my list of the top 6 Google Chrome SEO extensions, in no particular order. To be honest, there aren’t many yet!

1. META SEO inspector – This is one of my favorite right now. On every page you enter it inspects the viability of that page. The developer claims it is still being vastly developed, and I hope so. Because it’s a very promising extension!
   

   This extension is mainly aimed at web developers that need to verify the description tag of their site to follow the Webmasters’ Google Guidelines, SEO, or even to who is curious about page contents that are usually not visible, but can reveal interesting site properties.

2. Xmarks Search Tabs – This one enhances the your search results page by bringing up related searches in tabs on the Google results page. Very cool! It will give you an idea of how to broaden your search terms.
3. Kuber Pagerank Checker – Everyone wants a pagerank tool in their toolbar. This one will tell you the Google PR, plus the Alexa ranking, links in, and allow you a quick whois link. Very useful.
4. GooglePreview – A simple tool, does just as its name says. It gives you that ever-fun thumbnail preview of the web page in your Google search results. I’ve never really figured out why this is helpful, but it sure is cool!
5. Chrome SEO – This one looks promising for the future. For now, it allows you one-click easy access to every day SEO sites. The Google Chrome SEO extension provides easy access to Search Engine Optimization Tools that can help you with Competitive Analysis, Keyword Research, Backlink Checks and other daily SEO tasks.
6. Intersect – A little more social media than SEO, but Twitter does have an effect on our daily lives. This is a really cool tool that will tell you, on other people’s Twitter profiles, what friends you have in common!

Chrome extensions still have a little ways to go yet as far as development of some solid SEO and webmaster extensions like Firefox has now. I’d really love to see SEO Book make a Chrome version of their extension. But this is enough to wet my appetite for now!

Go Chrome!

Share on Facebook

Get The Rest Of The Goodies

Just put your name and primary email address below and hit submit, and you will be
redirected to the next page with all the important focus tools and info there!

You Will Receive

(Your information will never be shared)

Share on Facebook

A lot of people ask me about the best format for their videos to be the highest quality on YouTube. This has changed a lot over the last year, as YouTube has introduced HQ videos, and now 16×9 HD videos on YouTube.

But YouTube has also since released a relatively helpful section in their help center about how to optimize your videos for YouTube. They leave some holes, though, and I’ll try to fill them here.

Recommended Resolution

What sort of resolution does YouTube recommend for the highest quality? Well, their HD is based on 720, the minimum for HD. So your videos should either be: 1280×720 for widescreen format, or for high quality SD 640×480 or higher is still recommended.

If you have your video in a higher resolution, YouTube will just re-encode it into a 720 — but — the less times you encode the video the higher the quality will be sustained. So don’t re-encode your video into 720 just to get it to YouTube quicker. Let them do the work, so you don’t lose quality.

Bit Rate and Frame Rate

On bit rate, YouTube doesn’t give any suggestions. They say “Because bit-rate is highly dependent on codec there is no recommended or minimum value.” Which is true, but I’ll give you what’s worked best for me and others I know. Anything over 3Mbps has worked well, although it’s best to upload it’s original. If you do need to edit and re-encode, I’ve used 3Mbps video in WMV format and that always works very well.

On frame rate, YouTube does have some suggestions.

The video frame-rate should be the same as the original where possible – up-sampling from a 24fps original can cause judder artifacts for example. For film sources a 24 fps or 25 fps progressive master yields the best results while videos that have had a re-sampling transfer process applied – such as Telecine pulldown – often result in a lower quality video.

I have always used 29.97 without any problems, but just as long as your video looks fine when it comes out the other side of your encoding.

Codec

As I mentioned before, I use WMV for all my videos — I get the cleanest videos at the smallest file sizes. I have tried MPG and MPG4 without much success, it tends to lose a lot more quality, but YouTube does prefer it. They also prefer H.264, which is native to many HD cameras (like the Creative Vado HD) but I haven’t been able to edit and re-encode it in that same format.

Aspect Ratio

If you want true HD, it will need to be 1280×720 for a 16×9 aspect ratio. This is what YouTube recommends. You will need to make sure that when you encode the video file, it remains in a 16×9 aspect ratio. Take a look:

16x9 original 1280x720 is what YouTube likes

The standard definition aspect ratio is 4:3 — if you have a high def video, do not encode in this ratio! But if your video is not widescreen, this is native HQ for YouTube. See below:

Follow those guidelines, otherwise your video will come out in 4:3 aspect ratio when you meant for it to be widescreen 16:9, and it will look like this on YouTube:

Don’t let wrong Aspect Ratio happen to you!

test, Test, TEST!

There’s no redo on YouTube, once you upload it to YouTube and you see it’s wrong, your only option is to delete it and start over.

Final Thoughts…

My final thoughts… you HAVE to see this video called “How to make your YouTube video 720p HD widescreen (and keeping it that way!)” — it’s awesome!

William Bryant
http://twitter.com/wbryant

Share on Facebook

But here’s an excellent tutorial showing you how to move from Blogger to Wordpress without losing any of your Google rankings! Check it out, I think it’s worth it.

Migrate from Blogger to WordPress without Losing your Google Search Rankings

Share on Facebook

I did this video for a person on YouTube who requested it, so I thought it might be useful for everyone. I demonstrate the two best ways to upload your files to Bluehost.

The easiest way I think the upload your files to Bluehost. There’s two different ways here. The first is FTP, and the second is my preferred method, using the webdisk.

Let me know what you think or if you have any questions!

Share on Facebook

I think sometimes we get very wrapped up in this idea of “internet marketing” and what it means to get high google rankings, lots of links, video marketing, and so on. There’s so many things, that we often forget that for hundreds and hundreds of years, businesses were making sales and marketing withOUT the internet.

In fact, we have offline marketing, direct mail in particular, to thank for most of the copywriting and other marketing that we do online.

And we often get on this thing about not having to pay for marketing, that video marketing, social media, articles, etc etc are free and thus are better ways to market ourselves.

But now that I’ve started making some real money online, some money that I can live on and reinvest to make even more cashflow, I’ve started to think of what I do online as a real business. I mean, a REAL business — one that could have employees, a street number, and cubicles. Okay, maybe not cubicles but you get the idea. And I therefore began to think, how would a real business market itself? This is a question that, even though we are primarily marketing online, we should ask ourselves.

I’ve always been told to treat what I do online as a real business. And I’ve always said I would. But I’m coming to realize, that I haven’t been. Until now. Now, I am open to any type of marketing that will make me more money, even if that means marketing offline.

So, let’s get creative for a moment.

You have a website. Great, that’s a good place to start. But it’s only a start. Now, we have to market that website and drive traffic to that site. Next, we’ll have to convert that traffic into leads and then into sales. Easier said than done.

The secret is targeted traffic, and finding targeted traffic that converts can be the tricky part. Finding 5,000 targeted people to come to your site in a 5 day period (that’s 1000 people per day) can be very difficult online. What if I told you, that trying to do the same thing offline might be… dare I say, easier?

Okay, so what in the crap am I talking about?

I’m doing some creative experiments, using the techniques that direct mail marketers have been doing for centuries, and are STILL doing to make loads of money, and driving that traffic to a website to generate a lead and or sale. I will be letting you know the results of this experiment in the coming month. Stay tuned.

Share on Facebook