The Green Mall got a major boost on CSRwire.com on 11/4/09: go to
http://bit.ly/DjKkJ to see the whole story!

We’re launched and we’re officially a full-time business, promoting the products and services of  120+ sustainable/eco-friendly/fair-trade businesses.

Membership is FREE until 12/1/09; then it will be a modest $9.99/month per business to join. That will allow The Green Mall to put on special promotions and do PR for its members at every level, while maintaining a quality site.

Take a look: we’re at http://shopgreenmall.net.

And join us today!!

For those of you who want to make your lives and businesses eco-friendly, fair-trade or sustainable — or if you just want to add green bookmarks — this is the site for you!

TomatoDesign.Net announces the launch of The Green Mall (http://shopgreenmall.net)!

We have everything from baby clothing to rain barrels: and much more in between!

Check us out today — and let me know what you think!

Cheers!

— Nancy L. Hoffmann

E: nancy@tomatodesign.net

I recently did a direct mail promotion (2 postcards), because no one else is doing it in this economy. As I wanted to use a “green” printer, I went with IndiePrinting, a full-service printer based in L.A. (I’m in NYC.)

They not only provided me with prompt, professional service; but they laminated my cards (both sides!) with a biodegradable laminate that dissolves in the de-inking process during recycling. I’ve never seen anything like it!

I highly recommend their services: Frankie and Wayne are the best!

I’m giving them the Green Tomato Award for great performance!

It doesn’t seem to stop raining this June, and now I even seem to have a touch of the flu (normally a March or November pastime.) What to make of it all?

1) On the theory that lemons can be turned into lemonade, I have placed a green plastic bucket on my building’s roof in Chelsea. What can I get out of that? Well, it occurred to me that I could water a small veggie plot (planted in a large planter or clay pots), and provide myself with truly organic, healthy food for the summer. Home-grown tomatoes seem particularly appealing right now. So do strawberries!

The flavor is gone from these treasures in all stores, it seems, so they can be safely shipped. “No one told the breeder that flavor was important to the consumer, so they left it out” (according to Dr. Bruce Chassy of the FDA Food Advisory Committee, quoted in Metro, 6/18/09.) I yearn for the Jersey Belle strawberries of my childhood that our neighbor grew around the Fourth of July; or even the beefsteak tomatoes I could get at farmers’ markets in New Jersey when I lived there in the ‘80s.

2) As a kid (eons ago, it seems!) my dad built us a tiny summer cottage with a system to collect rainwater from the roof into a large tank for washing. (We carried out drinking water in another tank from the village 5 miles away, or filled it at friends’ houses.) We also found that fresh, soft rainwater made fabulous coffee! We took great care not to waste it, watering the cedars we had planted to the north and west of the cottage as a future windbreak with our dishwashing, body-washing, clothes-washing and toothbrushing water after use. Those seedlings are now over 50 feet high and growing!

3) You could use the water you catch to water indoor plants, too (I’m not sure about what comes down with rainwater here in the city: but you could try a soft-water bath and see how that works out!) Save enough, and you can wash down the sidewalk in front of your building; clean your “tar beach”; or scrub your own floors. You could wash a car or give it to the super for the hall floors.

4) Think of the water you could save in the reservoirs in the Catskills! (I don’t know what that comes to now in dollars; but given the extreme water shortages in most of the Western USA, it will be a fortune in a very few years.)

5) At the end of the day, you would have a totally new respect for rainwater, and might even begin to enjoy taking walks in the gentler showers we also are experiencing. If you take a camera with you, you will also find that wet objects have more intense colors than dry, sunlit ones, and that your photos (especially of plants in the parks) will have more contrast and vividness than you thought you could achieve.

As a former Chicagoan, I miss the drama of tornado season, and the (very rare) thunderstorm here is still a big treat for me. There are so many shapes lightning can take! Also, if you count “1Mississippis” or “1elephants” (for seconds), you can determine how many miles away the storm is. (It’s about one mile for each second between the flash and the thunder.)

6) The shoe stores are featuring fabulous “wellies”, and if you indulge in these colorful boots — plus a fabric-rose-bordered umbrella like mine, (incidentally available for $19.95 at www.signals.com) — you can really have fun splashing through puddles and defying the thunder, just as you did when you were a kid.

If you have other ideas, please feel free to contact me at e-mail (below), and I will post comments on my blog.

Yippee!

Let it pour, let it pour, let it pour!!

— Nancy L. Hoffmann

TomatoDesign.Net
In the Red? We $ee Green!

T: 212.691.1445
E: nancy@tomatodesign.net
URL: http://tomatodesign.net

TomatoDesign.Net is proud to announce our NEW page of GREEN LINKS: 40+ of the finest green American businesses, featuring high quality, eco-friendly, fair-trade products and services:

http://tomatodesign.net/greenlinks.html

This month’s features:

• Jalima Coffee: The best-tasting coffee in the world! (And I’m not prejudiced!) All the proceeds from their fair-trade products go back to the farmers in Chiapas, Mexico (where I used to live and drive a jeep as a wetback for the Mex. government, in the Selva Lacadona jungle!) For more information, go to: http://www.jalimacoffee.com/index2.html.

• Holy Creations: Superb Palestinian olive oils, made the old-fashioned way, in Nablus. They also feature exquisite olive-wood carvings: both products at a fraction of what you’d expect to pay for such high quality. For more information on their fair-trade and eco-friendly products, go to: http://holycreations.com/.

To get in on the action, contact us at: nancy@tomatodesign.net

This article appeared in my e-mail, courtesy of Debbie LaChusa. Enjoy!

“When marketing online, one of the first rules is to set up a system on your website that enables you to build a relationship with new prospects, vs. trying to sell to them on their first visit.

To do this, you offer visitors the chance to get a “free gift” from you in exchange for their name and email address.

This is nothing new, and it’s always the very first marketing strategy I work on with my clients. We set up a lead generation system on their website so they can build a list of their ideal clients. This way they have a solid foundation to build a strong, long-lived business on.

But one of the first challenges they often face is getting people to their website so they can then get them onto their list.

Now there are lots of ways to drive traffic to your website, but we want to make sure we’re driving qualified traffic – that is, ideal clients, not just any Tom, Dick or Harry!

Here are 10 quick & easy ways to attract your ideal clients:

1. Article Marketing
Write articles in your area of expertise and post them on online article directories likewww.ezinearticles.com. This positions you as an expert and drives people who are interested in your topic to your website.

2. Teleseminars
Do teleseminars for other people’s list. Find other solo-professionals with the kind of clients you are seeking, and offer to teach a free class for their audience.

3. Joint Ventures
Find other solo-professionals serving your ideal clients and find ways to partner, promote each other, or even feature each others articles in your newsletters.

4. Reciprocal Links
Find other websites that your ideal clients would be interested in and post links to them on your website. Then ask those websites to return the favor.

5. PRWeb
Publicize your business by posting a press release on www.prweb.com. This gets the word out about you and drives people who are interested in learning more to your website.

6. Social Networking
Network with other solo-professionals on sites such as Facebook. This is a great way to share what you’re up to and connect with potential joint venture partners.

7. Google Adwords
Buy your way onto page 1 of the search engine results for your top keywords and start driving traffic to your site immediately.

8. Advertise in Other E-zines
Find e-zines that reach your ideal clients and if they sell advertising, buy an ad and promote your free gift to build your list.

9. Affiliate Programs
Use a shopping cart system like www.10stepcart.com with a built-in affiliate module to enable your happy clients to get paid for spreading the word and promoting you.

10. Offline Networking
Don’t forget about good old fashioned networking events and conferences. Attend them on a regular basis and hand out business cards with a call-to-action for your free gift on the back.

If you’re not getting all the traffic you want to your website, pick 3-4 of these activities and start implementing them right away. If you do them consistently, you’ll see your traffic and list start to grow and you’ll be on your way to building a solid foundation for your business.”

© Copyright 2009 Debbie LaChusa
Debbie LaChusa created 10stepmarketing to help solo-professionals and small business owners market their own businesses more successfully. Debbie believes creating a marketing plan is the first step in building a successful business. Don’t have a marketing plan? You can get a marketing plan template to help you create one when you subscribe to “The 10stepmarketing E-zine” at http://www.10stepmarketing.com.

My roommate, Brigitte, and her friend, Alix, had a bake sale to raise cash today, January 2. Here are the photos of their enterprise (they had fun, but nearly froze their noses!) They also made a decent profit, considering that it was late on a very frigid Saturday afternoon.

It’s my turn next! Anyone want to join me?

Here come$ the money!

Customers (at left) eye the goods, while Brigitte (L) and Alix (R) prepare to grab their dough

The goods!

As we head into 2009, the “Bernie Madoff Fire Sales” continue (see image above), and pretty well sum up the greed and financial meltdown of 2008. So much to change; so little time.

We are also up to our eyeballs in yet another Middle Eastern war, where (in W. B. Yeats’ words) “ignorant armies clash by night.”

I have just taken on a wonderful new client, a Palestinian-American who sells fabulous olive oils, intricate wood carvings, and other goods at excellent prices [see his beautiful site: http://holycreations.com]. He lives, of all places, in a small town in NW Wisconsin, with an office in nearby Minneapolis, MN. Surrounded by deer hunters, he’s managed to blend reasonably well by being (in the past) a cop, among other occupations.

Now you’d think his major problems would come from the Israelis when he travels to Palestine to buy his goods (and he has had a couple of brushes with them.) But the real problem seems to be New York Americans!

For example, he recently imported 10,000 bottles of top-grade extra-virgin olive oil and had it in a warehouse in Minnesota. Somehow, a customs office from NYC managed to show up on his doorstep, informing him he “couldn’t sell” his oil, because it had the word “Palestine” on the label, a country that “doesn’t exist” (according to the official.)

Abe protested: Palestine had been recognized by everyone — including Israel — since the Oslo Accords. However, the man was adamant.

When Abe asked what would happen if he didn’t change the 10,000 labels, the guy told him they would confiscate the shipment and send it back to “where it came from.”

“How could you?” Abe sensibly asked. “Palestine doesn’t exist!”

At this, the official became very threatening. So Abe and his friends held a “relabelling party” and changed all 10,000 labels to exclude the forbidden word.

How can we move into 2009 with this kind of ignorance running our government behind the scenes? And how can we avoid future wars in the Mideast if we don’t work hand in hand with these people, learning who they are and what the overwhelming majority of them really want (i.e., peace and prosperity, even as we do)?

Apart from this, we have to work together as Americans to get around the stupidity that seems to be victimizing all of us. Dr. Phil just had a program on amnesiacs, for example, and one of the men said he had contacted Social Security explaining he didn’t really know who he was in the past; but that he had been cleared by the FBI and was ready to work. When he asked for a new SSN, he was told that he could only get one if he claimed to be an illegal alien! As his accent has been solidly identified as being from the Indianapolis area, there’s no way he can regain his civil rights as long as he insists he is American!

I have stories of my own which, if space permitted, would demonstrate that the US government has arranged for me to die in the street, no matter what I do, unless I immigrate to another country and renounce my US citizenship. Yes, they are truly working for all of us!

However, that said, we can make a difference in this new century and this new presidency, and perhaps even turn around some of the circumstances that have made the past 8 years so terribly destructive for our country and our people.

I am looking forward to finding new ways to do business and new ways to provide us with carbon-free energy, as well as boost up others who want to get on their feet and build successful businesses and careers.

Let’s do it! This could be the year we really come together!

Aquent got off to an early start Thursday with a knock-out Halloween party, complete with spiderwebs, a DJ and great food. Here are some of the costumes (including Yours Truly as a Devil-ess):

The A&M Twins

Space-whatsis

Devil-ess

Hanged nurse

Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters2

Spray those bats with Raid!!

Me in Red & Black

Friday night (10/24) was the best night I could ever imagine: and all thanks to Brenda! She got me a gig at a terrific party at Cipriani Wall Street, whereby we could eat fabulous food, drink as much champagne as we wanted, AND get paid $200 an hour (for 4 hours) for doing quick portraits of the people at the party. What a great way to meet wonderful people from every conceivable corner of the earth!

Brenda and Steve were in the “Blue Zone”; Zito and I had the “Red Zone”. We each had our own “living statue” watching as we furiously scribbled away. There were shadow dancers, sand artists, and character actors who impersonated “artists”. Famous paintings were projected on the ceiling, and a giant palette with crossed brushes was at the door. There was a lively band and lots of dancing (the statues were briefly replaced by dancers on pedestals to get everyone going.) And, of course, there was US! The photos below tell the story:

2 "Statues"

Artist Actors

Swedish Couple

English Model

Blonde2

Shadow Players

My Station

"My" Statue

Ceiling Dome

Steve & Brenda

Chandelier

Steve @Work