I know, I know … what the heck is RiffTrax? Well, I didn’t have a clue either but something about the name made me click on it while I was updating banners for the affiliates on our Freebies site. Imagine my surprise when I found myself looking at a reincarnation of Mystery Science Theater 3000! For those that don’t know MST3K, it was a television show that ended in the late 90s that featured a guy and his robot sidekicks watching bad movies while making fun of them the whole way through. My husband and I loved that show, we watched it all the time, and it still comes up at our house every once in a while and we both wish they still had it on tv. Needless to say, I immediately signed up to be an affiliate!

RiffTrax.com offers mp3 downloads for you to listen to in sync with a movie. Here are just a few of their titles:

You can find a link to RiffTrax on our Freebies site and banners that rotate across the top of the pages. So, remember HAI when you want to sit back and enjoy a little movie “ripfest” or relive your love of MST3K and help support our freebies and the cost of hosting so many free graphics!

Here’s a new game for you to play! Mission to Mars drops you off on the red planet and sets you to the task of finding energy and a key to move on to the next level. There’s a mystery to solve and the levels get harder and harder. As with all our games, it was tested and approved by my son David. I admit to playing it, but haven’t been able to get past the third level. If anyone has a hint for me, let me know by leaving a comment. I really don’t want to ask David as he already thinks Mom’s not up on the latest video game moves and we just can’t have that! It is even available as a free download so you can play it offline whenever you like.

High Aspirations, Inc. is happy to report that we are now Duluth Trading Company Affiliates. You can find a link to Duluth on our Freebies site and banners that rotate across the top of the pages.

Here at the Lukan household, we love Duluth and have to thank our best friends, the Pratts, for getting us hooked on their products. Over the summer, I purchased a huge laptop bag for my husband so he can haul his laptop and all the other “stuff” he needs to survive his long commute and he loves it. The quality is great and the only problem he has is that it’s so big and has so many compartments to hold things that he carries more than he should!

So, remember HAI when you want to make a purchase from the Duluth Trading Co. which will help support our freebies and the cost of hosting so many free graphics!

Note: Duluth has discontinued their program for New York based affiliates and while we are no longer affiliates, we still like their products and recommend them. Liz 05/30/08

I cannot even count the number of conversations I’ve had about how to help a site get higher rankings in the search engines. Now, we’re not talking about paid advertising as that’s an entirely different subject. Today, we’re talking about getting your site to rank higher in search engine results. I’ve heard search engine results called a lot of things: regular, natural, organic, pure, untainted, the list goes on. Personally, they are just search engine results. One of the first things I ask is “when was the last time you added new content to your site?”

Most search engines have robots that visit the sites in their database on a set schedule, that schedule changes based on how often you update your site. If you haven’t updated your site since you put it live, then why should a robot bother to come back for a visit? And if you can’t interest a robot, how are you going to draw the attention of a human being? However, if you update your site every month, then those robots are going to come back as often as they can to get your new content into their databases and from there into the search engine results and before you know it, you’ve got higher rankings.

No, it’s not as simple as adding new content but that is one solution to the “problem” of getting higher rankings in the search engines. Now, let’s assume for the moment, that you are a commercial site and you are selling a service. You want your site to show what an expert you are at your job and since you are such an expert they should hire you immediately. How do you get that expertise across? Detailed descriptions of your service, it’s uses, your education, experience, and so on are all wonderful things to include on your site. However, that information doesn’t change all that often. At least not often enough to satisfy the search engines’ thirst for new content.

One solution? Write an article! Yes, you can write an article! Just like I’m writing this one to pass along my experience on the subject of search engines, you can write an article to show your expertise on your subject. As you write your article, incorporate all those magical keywords and keyword phrases that you think your potential customers will be using to search for you. Your article should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 to 1000 words. You want to write it using plain English, avoiding a lot of technical jargon because that limits your audience. You want it to be informative without giving away all your secrets because then the reader won’t need to hire you.

OK, so you can’t write an article. Well that’s what copywriters are for and if you don’t have one, we can refer you to one.

Now you have your article but what do you do with it? You publish it of course! But how? Well, wait for part two and I’ll tell you…

Here’s a new game for you to play! In Detonator you have to help Walter blow up all the bombs. As with all our games, it was tested and approved by my son David. I gave it a test play (or two … or three) and found it hard to get used to controlling Walter but once you do, it’s actually not too bad a game to waste time on!