Free Content

Posted by on 10 Mar 2017 | Tagged as: blog

Free Content

I think this is overrated.  In fact a ridiculous idea.

Let me explain.

A number of years ago I was selling an air pellet pistol using Craigslist or KSL Classifieds.

A young man from Salt Lake City called and we arranged the sale.

He said he sent a check.  I didn’t wait for it as I had enough money for postage, so I sent the gun.

I called him a couple of days later and he had received the gun and was delighted with it.

He asked if I had received the check.  “No”, was my reply.

“Well it should get there in a day or two”,  he said.

It never came.  I called back and the guy had moved and changed his phone number too.

I was out of the gun and the postage.

He had gotten free content.

Yesterday I came out of the bank and a man had a pickup full of fresh oranges.

The money I had was to fix a truck tire.

“I’ve got no money”, I said.

He was cutting an orange and gave me part of it as a sample.

“Maybe next time you’ll remember me,” he said.

That was a sample to let me know how good the product was not a whole orange and certainly not a whole bag.

Today I was awakened by the dog barking to announce a lady in the yard.

She had come to pay me for some dried cut bamboo that she had got from me a week ago.

She had also got some earlier.

She paid me $10 more than our agreed price with, “The extra is for trusting me.”

I gave no sample to her for her to buy my farm produce.

No free content nor had the street vendor given more than a sample of free content.

So why must I give free content online?

Explain that.

What business sense does it make to only give things away?

This has been my experience.

__________________________________________________________________________

An update 3/11/2017

I wrote a comment about it on a forum.

I said:

“I don’t like the free content idea.
I may give samples but if I give everything away for free then,

I don’t sell any donuts, can’t pay the bills, have to close my store.

The internet should be no different.”

One man replied:

“Here’s a free copy of a small e-book I wrote:

Wiz’s Ten Steps to Staying Focused On Your Objectives

I could privately send you a link to where you can buy it on my website

or Amazon but I bet you I get more mileage from giving it away for free then

I would from promoting its sale here.

I sell enough of them to have made it a project worth doing in and of itself,

but I have earned many times more from giving it away for free. Go figure.”

My reply:

“That’s great for you but I never got paid for giving my stuff away for free.”

 

Then I thought about Amazon, perhaps the biggest online marketer in the world.

Does Amazon give away “free content”?

I signed in and found this:

AmazonSmile
Want Amazon to donate to your favorite charity (at no cost to you)?
_________________
No cost? Don’t I still have to pay for products and shipping?
I typed in “free” and got some e-books and books and the like that looked like trash novels, or junk, or  porn to me that were free online but cost for paperback.
Then I typed in “free stuff”.
I got some jewelry that was 1 cent to 98 0r 99 cents and higher.
but not free.
What about free content?
Well if I want to read some of a book I can look inside for free.
I tried a free e-book “Best Jokes 2014” Inside were 2 photos ads for some book with naked people displayed and nothing about jokes.
So much for free.
They do have:

Order with Free Shipping by Amazon

All orders of $35 or more of eligible items across any product category qualify for FREE Shipping.

Or free prime:

About Amazon Prime

Receive all the benefits of Amazon Prime including FREE Two-Day Shipping for eligible purchases, unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Prime Video, and the ability to borrow books from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library for $99 a year or $10.99 a month. We also offer a Prime Video membership for $8.99 a month that only includes Prime Video as a benefit.

So this free actually does cost.

I typed in “free content” and got this page:

https://goo.gl/KOObKn

 

Some things on this page weren’t free.
Free?  Is anything really free?
Remember the old adage “You get what you pay for” ?
Meaning if you want something of value you must pay for it.
I’m not talking about “gifts” nor “loss sales leaders” (A loss leader (also leader) is a pricing strategy where a product is sold at a price below its market cost to stimulate other sales of more profitable goods or services. With this sales promotion/marketing strategy, a “leader” is used as a related term and can mean any popular article, i.e., one sold at a normal price.-Wikipedia)
______
Free content.  Why pay for anything if it can be had free?

It’s still blowing in the wind.

Posted by on 07 Sep 2013 | Tagged as: blog

 It’s still blowing in the wind.

I was going to the street mail box yesterday and my next door neighbor says “Hi” to me. He’s holding his little 2 year old daughter in on arm and with the other a spray wand attached to the spray tank strapped over his back.  He’s spraying the green intruders in his front yard rock landscaping.

President Obama is very concerned about chemical warfare being used in Syria.  He wants to blow the place up while most Americans don’t want to.

Are those war chemicals so bad? What about the weed chemicals?

What is worse?   With a quick Google search I found weed poisons one can get at Lowes, Home Depot, Amazon, Scott and hundreds of other places on 10 pages.

I did find a link to a “Home made” Organic from Daily Green

http://www.thedailygreen.com/green-homes/latest/homemade-weed-killers#slide-1

No expensive chemicals needed.  And they even advocate learning how to pull weeds again.  Why?  Because these chemicals linger for “Decades After Use in Homes and Gardens”.


Read more: Homemade Organic Weed Killers – How to Kill Weeds Naturally – The Daily Green
Follow us: @the_daily_green on Twitter | thedailygreen on Facebook
Visit us at TheDailyGreen.com

One commenter really gave a good explanation of  the matter.  Here is her comment:

Colleen Marie Gray

 

“Roundup from Monsasnto is highly toxic to the environment , animals and humans! Doesn’t even come close to a safer alternative mixture of vinegar and salt!
1 out of 6 Americans today suffer from Asthma and allergies! You have to question if this could be from all the chemicals we’ve been exposed to today.
Anything we can do to live a cleaner healthier lifestyle without exposing ourselves to more chemicals is the way to go! Monsanto has poisoned enough people with all their dumping of chemical waste in our waters. What they don’t have to disclose in the US today is the truth of what’s in their ingredient line up.
Big companies can have just a few chemicals listed on the package but there may be as many as 7 or 8 toxic chemicals that they don’t list. It’s not required by law! And the companies hide behind the line of “it’s proprietary”! No….it’s just how they can use down, dirty and cheap chemicals to accomplish their goal without considering the ramifications to human, animal life and our environment. In other countries such as Europe they do require full disclosure on their skin care, cosmetics and cleaning agents.
Keep up the good work! Doing it naturally is always the best solution!”

And what are those chemical ingredients?

How Does Roundup work? See:

 

 

 

 http://home.howstuffworks.com/question357.htm

I’ll quote some from the article:  Glyphosate-based herbicides all work on the same biochemical principle — they inhibit a specific enzyme that plants need in order to grow. The specific enzyme is called EPSP synthase. Without that enzyme, plants are unable to produce other proteins essential to growth, so they yellow and die over the course of several days or weeks. A majority of plants use this same enzyme, so almost all plants succumb to Roundup. 

  • most people react badly to glyphosate (and other chemicals mixed with it) when ingested or applied to the skin, so you want to avoid any contact with the chemical.
  • Roundup will kill almost any plant, including aquatic plants, so you want to be sure to avoid spray drift onto other plants or into water…

About 100 million pounds of Roundup are applied to U.S. farms and lawns every year, according to the EPA.  What are the cumulative effects?

So What does the manufacture say about it?

Read for yourself:  http://www.monsanto.com/products/Documents/glyphosate-background-materials/back_history.pdf

Not harmful? Scientific American had the following article about Roundup @

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=weed-whacking-herbicide-p

It’s the inert ingredients that don’t have to be listed in combination with the main ingredient that cause the havoc to humans.  The comments have some great information.  Be sure to read them too.

What is agent orange?

 Agent Orange or Herbicide Orange (HO) is one of the herbicides and defoliants used by the U.S. military as part of its chemical warfare program,

Read more about it and other chemicals used to deprive the enemy of their food supply @  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange

Many of these chemicals are “known to be a human carcinogens

And does this stuff ever go away?

Of the two herbicides that make up Agent Orange, 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, the latter is considered to be less biodegradable. While degradation of 2,4,5-T with a half-life on a scale of days can be achieved by adding bacteria of a special strain, “no substantial degradation” was observed in the same soil without addition of bacteria. The half-life of dioxins in soil is more than 10 years, and that of TCDD in human fat tissue is about 7 years.

And when combined with other chemicals?  Tests haven’t been conducted on most of those things in combination.

I wrote a post last year that fits this discussion. I am including it here in it’s entirety:

Blowin’ in the Wind.

 06 Apr 2012

 

Many people get ill in the Spring, I even had a chest infection(bronchitis) last week.

Why?

Well I believe the answer is blowing in the Spring breezes.  Let me explain.

The grass and quick growing spring vegetation starts growing and the towns, cities, counties and home owners, not wanting to work and abhorring green, start spraying poisons of all kinds all over, day after day. These chemicals are not only poisonous to plants but to man and animal alike.  And with the winds are blown every where when applied and when outgassing in the sun.

The people breath this stuff in and then become ill and the illness is just blamed on “it going around”, “I’m old”, “I’m run down”, etc.

The sprayers are waging a chemical war on the world and the weaker people get ill, and the yet weaker ones die and the weeds live on and on.

Part of an article talks about weeds, I’ve only included one paragraph and a link to the rest of the article.

After New York unleashed Operation Ragweed–spraying 200 to 300 gallons of the toxic brew on each acre treated–other communities joined the fray. Although they bought into the idea, as Zalck puts it, “that killing ragweed with herbicides would produce new vegetation, cleaner air, and healthier people,” that’s not what happened. After soaking its landscape with over eight million gallons of 2,4-D, New York City threw in the towel. Worse, and consistent with the contemporaneous blanket spraying of DDT, phenoxyacetic herbicides worked their way up the food chain, compromising air and water quality, and public health.”  http://www.kcet.org/updaily/the_back_forty/commentary/golden-green/roundup-thinking-about-weeds.html

Most of the weeds sprayed, just dry up and leave the dried remains to be a fire hazard.

Another article about weed killer points out  ”Americans just race to fix one problem by replacing it with a potentially larger problem.”

http://www.safelawns.org/blog/index.php/2011/01/80-percent-of-canadians-protected-by-pesticide-laws/

As I describe  in my book “The Canaries are Dying”, the weaker people get their immune systems weakened to the point that they develop disease and die due to exposure to the chemicals in our environment.  And like the Monster of Dr. Frankenstein, science becomes a menace to society because mankind attempts to improve on God creations.

The best way to get rid of the weeds you think are so harmful to your health, is to dig them out.  Then no one is harmed but the weed.”

So Chemical warfare.  Who’s waging it?  Will it harm us?

A book might be helpful.

 Silent Spring   http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Spring-Rachel-Carson/dp/0618249060

Handbook-Natural-Methods 

 http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Natural-Pesticides-Methods-Practice/dp/0849336511/ref=sr_1_26?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378606656&sr=1-26&keywords=herbicide+handbook

 Let’s stop poisoning the world.

Some resources:

 

Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature
Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature

Learn more

 

 

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(Leave a relevant comment and not just a self promoting one.)

Writers have warned of the dangers of unbridled chemical warfare on the world for years.
Here are some more books and prices.

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Congressman Abraham Lincoln

Posted by on 17 May 2013 | Tagged as: blog

With all the movies and interest in the 16th President of late,  people sometimes don’t get the true facts about him. The thing to do is look for something in Biographies & Memoirs?

 

Congressman Abraham Lincoln

Congressman Lincoln
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