Heather in BC… & Beyond! 'Living the Baby Boomer Life in BC… and Beyond!

What could top off yesterday’s Olympic win?

SWEET emails, posts and tweets waking me up this morning saying I’d won $1000.00 in the affiliate.com T-shirt Blogger Contest!!!

I wasn’t the only winner though – the Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund will receive $1000.00 as a donation in my name from affiliate.com. That is an awesome gesture that makes me feel great. I love helping other people and truly appreciate affiliate.com’s support for the Haitian people who are enduring such trajedy and loss.

Thanks so much to Scott Richter of affiliate.com for hosting the contest and Tom Wozniak for sending me the T-shirt so I could take part in the contest. I wore the shirt to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic games and out to John Chow’s Dot Com Pho lunch, then wrote and submitted a post about my experiences. John videoed the lunch and here is the result:

You may read the other 4 entries – they were steep competition!

Affiliate By Night
Joe Tech
Blog Fully
Stog Blog

Thanks to the judges, Missy Ward, Murray Newlands, Zac Johnson and John Chow. After reading the other entries by the above bloggers I know they had a tough decision – the posts were definitely very creative & fun! I’m shocked and awed, and absolutely thrilled that my affiliate.com Goes Olympic was the winning entry!

I love sharing great sites like Business 2 Blogger with my blogger friends, and if I can help someone earn money at the same time, it’s even better!

Business 2 Blogger is very new on the scene and in my opinion, it’s the perfect fit to connect bloggers and businesses resulting in ‘from the heart’ promotion of products and services by an untapped market of huge influencers. B2B simply connects businesses looking for promotion to bloggers looking for opportunities to earn money or to be paid in products, for their opinion – and the best part??? It doesn’t cost either side of this promotion any money to hook up.

Once a business signs up requesting promotion, an email is sent out to a huge list of bloggers outlining the bare bones of the offer. It’s not a spammy type of email which promotes businesses – it’s simply a connection so bloggers may respond and be hired by the business, on their own terms. If the business doesn’t feel the bloggers site is a good fit, they don’t hire – equally, if a blogger doesn’t wish to promote a certain product they needn’t apply.

I joined Business 2 Blogger immediately after reading through their site. The three entrepreneurs are witty and timely with their self deprecating humor, offering an honesty and openness which is refreshing.

If you are business with a product to promote, give it a try. Bloggers are coming into the limelight as an influential group – not only as trusted reviewers but as consumers with a lot of clout!

Bloggers, sign up to start getting offers delivered to your inbox – and tell Business 2 Bloggers that I sent you

I think Sara Anderson from Clickbooth hit the nail on the head with her recent post about marketing to women in the 35 -55 age group. She discusses the demographics of this largest group of online buyers, categorizing them as: Single Mothers, Stay at Home Mothers, Working Mothers, Married Women without Children and Single Women, not Married, without Children.

Sara shows a great example of the correct way to market to women. You must speak their language if you intend to create a successful marketing campaign. Sara used this example to highlight the ‘correct’ way to engage a woman:

“The 6 step business program empowered Renee to take control of her financial future, and thus the needs of her family.” Feminine – relates to target market. Good.

“The 6 step business program gave her the power to take control of her financial future, and thus the needs of her family.” Masculine – relates to men. Bad.

You’ll see in my title I used the word “Power”. I intentionally used that rather than the word “Empower” because it’s a masculine word and I wish to see if it attracts more male than female viewers to read this post. I also hope you will ALL take the quick IQ test above to see how smart you are – and be sure to leave your score in a comment

I’m really looking forward to Sara’s post next week titled, “How do I increase conversions?” I think there are many women in the 35 – 55 age bracket that want to know exactly how to become successful affiliate marketers, and they have the connections, support and authenticity to market to their peers.

I’m not sure how I missed out on attending this FlashMob on day one of the Olympics, but now that I’ve watched it I have to share it. Imagine taking part in these fun fundraising projects that provide primary education for all children in Ethiopia, Africa. Please watch the video and be sure to leave me a comment. I think you’ll LOVE Imagine1Day!

Folllow them on Twitter.

Pop uses his electric scooter nearly every day to get around outside. Thank goodness for mobility products so he’s not stuck inside day and night.

Beautiful British Columbia has really been showing off the past week for our Olympic visitors and we’re enjoying it too! The temperature today reached 64 degrees on our porch. Pop and I went out to work in the sun for a couple of hours, and it was warm and lovely as long as we were in the sun. I think I got a good start on my farmer’s tan.

Pop is still able to work, at 96 years of age, thanks to his scooter for mobility! And, he likes to work to stay active and to keep himself fit and mobile. He works about 2 hours per day on odd jobs and the rest of the time he watches TV, talks and makes plans for the next day, next week, next month and even next year.

I know we’re going to have to look into more mobility care for Pop as his knees are giving out. Not bad for 96 years of hard use, huh? He doesn’t like to admit it of course, but I work on him slowly letting him know we’ll look at motorized wheel chairs when he’s ready. Right now he uses a walker inside but has ’spells’ where he’s extremely weak and I worry he will fall.

We take every day as it comes and will deal with whatever happens as it does. People often ask me, ‘What are you going to do about your “Pop”? My answer is always the same, “I’m going to encourage him to live a quality life doing what he wants to do.”

Here is a fabulous 360 Aerial View of Vancouver in case you didn’t make it the Olympics. Enjoy!