Through years of Sunday School, I have been taught many lessons about the basic steps of repentance (feeling remorse, confessing to God, asking forgiveness, rectifying the problem, forsaking the sin and receiving forgiveness). However, I don’t remember ever hearing a lesson about the steps of forgiveness.
I clearly understand the importance of forgiving and I want to forgive. I know that Jesus Christ expects us to forgive everyone, whether or not they have repented, and if I do not forgive others, a greater sin is upon me than whatever the other person did (D&C 54:8-9). I know I need to keep forgiving others even if they keep hurting me (Matthew 18:21). I know I will receive forgiveness only to the extent I forgive others (Matthew 6:12) and that to become worthy of the atonement of Jesus Christ and to be forgiven of my sins, I must forgive others (Matthew 18:23-35).
I know that holding on to offense and not forgiving can rob me of happiness and the light of Christ, and that the path to the greatest joy and peace in life includes frankly and immediately forgiving others. However, I don’t remember any Sunday School lessons teaching me how to forgive. Read more…
Posted on June 2nd, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Faith, Jesus Christ, Life Lessons, Relationships, Self Improvement | No Comments »
I just watch an online video clip of a speech given by Paul Collier, an economist and the author of “The Bottom Billion”. Paul advocates four steps that we can take to help the one billion people who are trapped in poor or failing countries. He calls this group the “bottom billion” and is working to close the gap between this group and the richest nations on earth. Read more…
Posted on June 1st, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Charity, Giving Back, Global Orphan Crisis, Innovation, Microlending, Poverty | No Comments »
Ward Andrews recently asked me which ad networks are the best to maximize revenues for website publishers. The following blog entry is a modified version of my email to him.
First, selecting the best ad network often depends on the niche of your site. For example, if you have developed a classic cars site that caters to men, Gorilla Nation (which focuses on selling ads for men’s websites), might be a great place to start. I’ve heard of niche ad networks for health, dating, travel, blogs, women’s websites, financial services, social networks, mobile devices, etc. Search engine ad networks (such as Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network and Microsoft adCenter) provide targeted advertising generally related to the content of the page. Targeted ads generally sell for a lot more than untargeted ads, and it can be difficult to break into new niches, so finding an ad network that is already selling ads targeted in your niche is very important. Read more…
Posted on May 28th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Advertising, Internet Marketing, Mergers & Acquisitions, e-Business | 1 Comment »
Paul Allen recently asked me to identify the best solution for accepting micro-payments. The problem is that websites like LDSaudio.com, which sell a large number of products for a small amount, are charged very high minimum credit card processing fees. This makes the transactions almost impossible. For example, if LDSaudio.com sold a digital song for $1 through PayPal, PayPal would charge them $0.30 plus 2.9%, or 33.29% of the purchase price. For a site like LDSaudio.com that also has to pay royalties, this transaction fee makes the $1 micro-transaction cost-prohibitive, and so LDSaudio.com has implemented a $5 minimum purchase. However, the $5 minimum purchase has driven away customers who only want to buy one song.
So, today I detailed for Paul some of the solutions available to solve this problem of micro-transactions. I am posting a modified version of this email to share with others, and to get your feedback about micro-transactional solutions.
At the end of this blog entry I also recommend a new online financial service called Revolution Money Exchange which allows members to register, add money, share money and withdraw money FREE. They are even providing a $25 sign up bonus for all new members. Revolution Money is backed by heavy hitters, and I believe it is superior to PayPal and has a legitimate chance to replace PayPal if it can achieve critical mass. Read more…
Posted on May 17th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: e-Business, e-Commerce | 1 Comment »
It appears that as investors have pulled their money out of the stock market that Internet acquisitions have become popular again. We’ve been inundated with news Microsoft’s attempted purchase of Yahoo, Yahoo’s bluff, Microsoft walking away, and most recently billionaire Carl Icahn’s purchase of 50 million Yahoo shares in an attempted hostile takeover of the Yahoo board of directors. I think that Microsoft’s purchase of Yahoo is inevitable. Microsoft has made it very clear they want to win on the Internet. They have not been successful on their own and there are very few acquisitions of the magnitude sufficient to get the reach they need to succeed with their advertising platform. No acquisition is a better fit than Yahoo in helping Microsoft to win with its Internet strategy, and the value of that victory far surpasses what Microsoft will need to pay to acquire Yahoo.
Over the past day or two, several new acquisitions have been announced to help illustrate this trend; some are a lot wiser than others: Read more…
Posted on May 15th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Mergers & Acquisitions | No Comments »
Recently ABC News ran a story in which it featured the reporter using the ParentConnect.com website. Humorously, ParentConnect.com is not a real website. It is a domain name “parking page” that the domain name owner is using to generate income from his or her domain name which has not yet been used to build a traditional website. This example illustrates how parking pages have attained such a higher level of quality that they can easily be mistaken for a destination website.
I have used several domain parking services over the years to help monetize unused domain names. Recently, I read an article about Sedo winning the Domain Name Wire survey as the best parking service, for the second year in a row. In the survey, about 48% percent of the responding domainers voted that Sedo is the best domain name parking program. That percentage is up from 32% last year. Read more…
Posted on May 14th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Domain Names | No Comments »
Bill Gross is the founder of the IdeaLab business incubator, with sales exceeding $435 million. It is one only tech incubator that survived the dotcom crash in its original form. IdeaLab has built many different ventures, such as:
· GoTo/Overture (became Yahoo Search Marketing) – paid inclusion search engine that was renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing after it was purchased by Yahoo to compete with Google AdSense.
· CitySearch – local city guides, acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp. Read more…
Posted on May 7th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Business Management, Entrepreneurship, Giving Back, Innovation, Leadership, Social Enterprise, Web Content, e-Business | No Comments »
The movie Amazing Grace is based on the true story of William Wilberforce who was elected a British MP (Member of Parliament) at the age of 21, and spent the rest of his life working as a reformer to end the British slave trade.
The Song “Amazing Grace”
When William Wilberforce was a child, his pastor was John Newton, the author of the song “Amazing Grace”. John had been the captain of a British slave ship, and had transported tens of thousands of slaves in abominable conditions. He later became a priest to atone for his sins, but lived with thousands of ghosts “haunting” him for his deeds of the past. The first time Wilberforce visits Newton in the movie, Wilberforce is contemplating becoming a pastor instead of continuing with politics. Newton encourages Wilberforce that he has an important work to do. Newton finally confesses his role in the slave trade, possibly as a result of Wilberforce’s outspoken position against slavery, and then Newton writes his memoirs which helped Wilberforce to document the atrocities of the slave trade for his political battle to abolish slavery. During Wilberforce’s last visit to Newton, he discovers that his friend who wrote the words from Amazing Grace “I was blind but now I see”, is now himself blind. Read more…
Posted on May 6th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Ethics, Giving Back, Leadership, Movie Reviews | No Comments »
More than 15,000 hours were put into the Good to Great project by author Jim Collins and his team. In the research, they identified companies that had been following at or below the standard market performance for at least 15 years, and then had a huge increase, dramatically outperforming the market over a 15 year period.
One of the most surprising results of this research was the finding that virtually all of the companies which experienced this “Good to Great” transformation had a different kind of leader at the helm during the key transformation years. Read more…
Posted on May 5th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Book Reviews, Business Management, Leadership, Self Improvement | No Comments »
The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption took effect in the U.S. on April 1, 2008. As such, the United States now partners with 75+ countries around the world in this convention to facilitate international adoption.
The U.S. implementation of this Convention has been the catalyst for many changes in the international adoption process. Some of the most notable changes are the following:
- Adoption Service Provider Accreditation & Approval - Adoption service providers are now under the oversight of the Department of State, for the first time in U.S. history. As such, they are accountable to the designated accrediting agencies, such as the Council on Accreditation (COA). Adoption Service Providers must now meet requirements such as ethics, fee disclosure, records retention, training for families, and qualifications for agency staff. Read more…
Posted on May 2nd, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Adoption, Charity, Ethics, Global Orphan Crisis | No Comments »
