Posted by Jason on March 6th, 2007 — in Society
Last year the government decided to start a highly visible campaign to get people to pay their duty when returning from lands far away. It seems with the incredibly weak dollar, record numbers are flocking to the US to buy their clothing, iPods, and other goods which cost a fortune here. I of course wouldn’t do such a thing as get my iPod for half price 
.
Anyway, I travel back and forth between Dublin Airport and JFK on a regular basis and I have never seen a Customs Officer even once. Well maybe I am telling a slight fib as once I saw one chatting up a Customer Service girl. I always figured that maybe the rows of scanning belts you just walk by didn’t swing into operation until later in the day. Obviously with the big budget advertising campaign the government put together, surely they checked the occasional bag for an evil pair of Jimmy Chou Shoes (I admit I have no idea what those actually are but I heard they are popular) or a dangerous iPod.
Well today the figures were released from Customs on the number stopped and those required to pay fines. The period was the extremely busy holiday season so get ready for some giant numbers. After all, according to the Governments own reports, the period from Nov 1st to Dec 31st is when most of you scammers of VAT do your evil work.
So here they are, presented in alphabetical order for clear viewing:
People Declaring Goods and Paying Duty/VAT voluntarily: 24
People Stopped, Found to not have declared, and charge Duty/VAT: 4
I decided against the pie chart to make it easier to understand. 28 people paid VAT!!! That is a crackdown!! It seems it cost the Government a couple of million to claw back around €100
Makes you wonder
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Posted by Jason on March 1st, 2007 — in Zany / Off Topic
I was reading a story in which a police dog got a college degree from the same place the Chief of Police did. The dogs name was Rocko but it said John I. Rocko on his diploma (apparently you can’t register for college with one name which I am sure is the reason Maddona never got her doctrate). Anyway it came to light because some lawyer wanted to call the college educated dog to the stand to testify about the qualifications of the Chief of Police.
As funny as the story is, it made me want to add to my educational alpabet soup and maybe go for my doctrate. I went to the educational site in question and it had a list of degrees. I read a testimonial there that really got me excited:
Associate, Bachelor, Master/MBA, Doctor/Ph.D.
Dear Sirs,
I am impressed and delighted with the results of my investment as I have just received my Bachelor of Science degree in Nuclear Science. The transcripts exceed my expectations, my employer recognized the entire course curriculum as almost identical to his own traditional college transcripts. His initial skepticism about distance learning schools immediately disappeared when he got to verify the copies of your governmental registration papers that were included in my credentials package. Your program must be the fulfilment of every professional’s dream. Thank you so much for this fantastic opportunity.
-Francis D.
I RECEIVED MY CREDENTIALS TODAY AND WAS AWESTRUCK TO THE PROFESSIONALISM!!! Thank you so much!
-Betty L.
Forgot for a moment that the government in question above (when they say “His initial skepticism about distance learning schools immediately disappeared when he got to verify the copies of your governmental registration papers that were included in my credentials package”) is Liberia, I still really want a degree in Nuclear Science.
The Bachelors is less then $500 but the real deal is the Doctrate which is a bargain at $999. I get my diploma in 20 days (depending on the US Postal Service). Thats not bad considering it takes other people 12 years.
Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, here I come!
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Posted by Jason on February 28th, 2007 — in Forums, Online Business
Anyone who goes to Google to search for information these days probably ends up at a forum at some point. I have covered many times the power of forums when it comes to promoting a business and the funnel effect you can achieve for conversions.
On a related topic, I am currently auctioning off a spot in my signature at a major forum called Digital Point. For those not well versed in what a signature is, it is the small bit of sales copy and links that appear under every post made. What I suppose is signifigant in this case is that my signature appears on nearly 14,000 posts.
This translates into two things in my experience. The first is publicity or promotion. If you offer a service that would appeal to the target market, you can convert at a decent rate. I know for instance many people who submit sites to directories or sell articles that do quite well advertising in signatures. The other aspect is that sites listed in signatures with that many posts will always get fast indexing and benefit from deep crawls. I have routinely gotten new sites indexed within hours by throwing them into my signature and had “problem sites” with only a few pages indexed jump to thousands after placing them.
The last area a signture link may help is with SEO. This is to a much lesser extent however. It seems to boost PR especially with new sites however it doesn’t do a whole lot to help rankings. I can usually get a PR5 in the first update using my signature but again, this has never been a sure thing.
So, if you are interested in bidding, the auction is on until Friday and the money is going to a charitable project so bid away. All of the details are in this thread:
Check Out the Signature Auction
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