In a Biz op or doing Affiliate Marketing? 5 SHOCKING REASONS why you aren't getting any leads.

By Sandi Hunter

1.  You are promoting a website and not a Landing Page, also known as a Squeeze page.

To generate leads you need an eye-popping landing page. It's exactly what it sounds like. You promote your landing page, people LAND on it, see your offer and provide you with their contact info so they can get more details on what you offer. Your standard website simply can't accomplish this effectively, usually websites are too busy, to generic, too "professional." In contrast a landing page SCREAMS benefit! It tells readers what they will get (SOMETHING AWESOME) but they must act now!     Landing pages are FILLED with benefits, short punchy copy that gets attention. Landing pages include a limited time offer, they include a form that needs to be completed in order to get the offer. Guess what you are doing with that lead form? YES! You are generating a LEAD, and getting the follow up info you need to provide the requested material/product, then follow up, and build your house list for sending future offers to that person.  Did you catch that last part about list building? I slipped that in an the end, but it is IMPORTANT.  A Landing Page must ALWAYS   ALWAYS give readers the option to SUBSCRIBE to your newsletter/or future offers.  You've worked hard to generate that lead so do your best to offer them the chance to receive future offers or mailings from you.

2.  Your promotional copy is boring.

In case you haven't noticed you've got oodles of competition out there. The web is filled with gizmos and gadgets. Your copy needs to get noticed or it will die a quick death in the email trash folder. Whether your offer is an email offer, or a landing page, or an online post, you have got to lead with a powerful headline, and follow that up with copy that keeps people reading.  Most affiliate companies provide you with excellent copy or banners for promotion. Don't try to rewrite something better if that is not your strong suit, use what they provide, copy, paste send.  Simplify.        

3. You haven't made an offer.

If you want to get leads you MUST, MUST, MUST make an  offer.  Whatever  your pitch is REWARD the person reading it for taking action - NOW - TODAY - in the next 24 hours! Instill excitement and a sense of urgency. You've got a great product or offer  right? You don't want people clicking off any moving on to something else. You want and MUST get people to read and RESPOND to your offer. Give them reasons to do so.    Don't know what to offer?  Check for online products and affiliates that include Private Label and  resell rights, if they do you can use those as leverage in your offers.  By adding these you can convert a luke-warm offer into one that is HOT, HOT, HOT.

4. You aren't marketing in the right places to the right people.

A lot of  people new to online marketing make the mistake of spending money on advertising or leads that never produce results.  Taking shortcuts and buying mass leads or mass lists simply doesn't work. I am going to say that again. If you think you will generate QUALITY leads by buying mass lists, visitors, subscribers or hits, stop right now. Sorry to tell you the harsh truth, but building an online business means finding the best places to advertise that target YOUR market.  Hint: Google is NOT the place to start if you have a small budget.  In the business opportunity market you will want to look at Safelist marketing, Traffic Exchanges, Solo Ads, Ad Swaps, and email marketing providers like Aweber and GetResponse.  Your budget for online promotion doesn't have to be huge but you will get the best results with paid ads at reputable sources.  Do your homework.

5. You are so busy copy, pasting and promoting you have forgotten one of the most important rules in business.

Personality can make all the difference.  Connecting with people is the key to making sales.  In your zest to build your online business, don't forget to be a REAL PERSON. Include your name, email address, skype number, facebook etc on your ad copy to provide people with assurance that you are more than a promoter, you are an online business owner.  Anything you can do to stand out and separate yourself from all the other offers out there helps.  

 About the Author: Sandi Hunter is the Director of Website Development at Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today.

 Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com

'Pardon the witches of Connecticut', say relatives. 'Cause there's no nicerwitch than you.' Some thoughts.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. It all happened a long time ago, in 1663 in fact, but some of the good citizens of Connecticut just cannot let it go. And it's easy to understand why. After all, it was their ancestors who were burnt, hanged and otherwise mistreated because their anxious neighbors deemed them witches and were adamant that their property values would plummet if they didn't take Immediate Action and get rid of these noisome influences immediately.

This is the story of how it happened, why it happened, and how it is that His Excellency Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy is spending so many of his waking (and perhaps sleeping) moments dealing with the matter, trying hard to find a formula that will accommodate everyone and end this matter once and for all.

Such a subject, you'll agree, needs an appropriate tune to put you in the mood for what follows. So I've selected Frank Sinatra's sultry 1957 song "Witchcraft". It was composed by Cy Coleman with lyrics by Carolyn Leigh. Go find it now in any search engine. Watch out! Its seductive sound and smooth words are designed to entrance you, "Cause it's witchcraft, wicked witchcraft/ And although, I know, it's strictly taboo".

"It's such an ancient pitch."
Admit it, we're fascinated and repelled by the idea of witches, gals who like to spend their time boiling the body parts of particularly disgusting creatures; turning them into potions, philtres, unguents, incenses, elixirs, oils and other loathsome concoctions all easily found in their handy grimoire, the textbook of white and black magic. Such people, hair uncombed, stinking and unwashed (my particular aversion) gathered deep in forests, there to summon their Boss, known hereabouts in New England as Old Scratch. They liked being able to summon him. It made for a really festive evening. He was such a cut up and his tricks with fire were mesmerizing!

However, I've got a hunch Scratch didn't  much like hanging out with such a motley, reeking crew, but since a guy's got to take his followers where he can find them, he no doubt made the best of it, as we all do. Besides I have it on excellent authority that Scratch particularly favored their preserves featuring hard-to-find eye of newt. He could always position himself to avoid their more gruesome features. And as for the smells... he could always sit upwind and use his brimstone cologne.

"I've got no defense for it/The heat is too intense for it."

Of course the participants want their little soirees to be discrete, private, secret. Equally, people who want to know will move heaven and earth (there's a potion for this) to find out. And in due course, they do... and, man oh man, are they ever shocked, not least at the smell, for remember these are Puritans where cleanliness is next to Godliness.

In short order, the fat is in the fire and the Witch Problem commences. Witches are suspected, identified, charged, tried, found guilty and done away with as quickly, publicly and painfully as possible. Their remains are often left to be seen, to warn others that witches are real, are evil, move amongst us... and that if you ever see anything odd to summon at once the authorities, the purest of the Puritans, who can take action and return the community and all its residents to God's strict, unalterable tenets. Hallelujah!

Sadly, to achieve the desired results, a few must be extinguished but since these are always low-income, low status, completely powerless women, the Godly divines go forward, sure that the sweeping removal of such undesirables is beneficial, their mere existence in the community being outrage enough to justify even the most heinous deed.

"My Grandmother Mary Was Hanged."

This time the problem was discovered by 82 year-old Bernice Mable Graham Telian. She was researching her family tree when she discovered that her seventh grandmother, Mary Barnes of Farmington, Connecticut, was condemned as a witch; then dispatched by the gallows at the site of the old State House in Hartford. This happened in 1663.

"You won't find Mary's grave. She and all these people who were hanged were dumped in a hole. Their graves aren't marked," said Telian,a retired university administrator who now lives in Delhi, New York.

This discovery so shocked Telian that she spent the last five years writing a book entitled "My Grandmother Mary Was Hanged." She was immediately recruited by other outraged citizens with ancestors charged with witchcraft and executed. For you see, Mary Barnes was only one of 11 Connecticut residents so charged and executed between 1647 and 1663.

What would you have done? The most difficult question of all, information, empathy, due deliberation required.

Since Connecticut and the other colonies of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Virginia assigned those believed to be witches to death, our view of God, evil, Satan, witches and punishment has changed dramatically. Thus we, with our progressive view on the matter, imagine that had we been present we would surely have saved the ladies from the gallows. But I argue this view is naive, merely another opportunity to praise ourselves and assign virtues which are at best spurious. I am not saying that these executions were right; they were not.  However, are they understandable? Can you see how otherwise reasonable people made such decisions under the stress of the moment?

They believed in sin, in the devil and that the devil's disciples, some called witches, actively moved amongst them. They did not just think this as some intellectual parlor game. It was an essential element of what they believed and how therefore they arranged their lives in every aspect. And so, given their viewpoint they made decisions of the greatest gravity, ending lives because by so ending they saved and preserved the community of the Godly they had established in the New World. All this is overlooked, forgotten and pooh-poohed by those who, in an instant, condemn the perpetrators without understanding, their judgements sweeping, emphatic, final... and wrong.

"Cause there's no nicer witch than you."

Of course you can't ask Bernice Telian to accept this. It's her ancestor who was charged, found guilty and executed for witchcraft. That ancestor, Mary Barnes by name, deserves absolution, pardon, her name entirely cleared. The descendants of the other "witches" entirely concur, and they are now inundating Governor Malloy with postcards reading "I am a Pagan/Witch and vote. Clear the names of Connecticut's eleven accused and executed witches."

Malloy is in hot pursuit of a way to accommodate the aggrieved but he lacks the constitutional ability to pardon while the state Board of Pardons and Paroles doesn't grant posthumous pardons.

Still, I feel sure they'll find a way of resolving the matter to the satisfaction of all, "Cause there's no nicer witch than you."
 About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com
 

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‘The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, the answer is blowin’ in the wind.’ Waiting for Hurricane Irene in Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 28, 2011.

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. Whether it is because of the unsettling information we have received minute by minute over the last few days; whether it is because of the ominous predictions of so many knowledgeable authorities; whether it is because it is just 5:48 a.m. and it is still pitch black, the moment of the day when night fights its ouster and will not cede to the light, I cannot say… but this is a moment of apprehension, disquiet…even dread.

This is the moment we remember the power of a Nature we so often forget and so regularly outrage.
Now this Nature has reminded us of where true power resides… and of what it means when we talk of an “act of God.”

For now, this very minute, amongst the treasures and securities of my comfortable life, I await the advent of the manifestation of unrelenting power, a force capable of disrupting this cherished life in an instant, leaving me, and millions like me, bereft, shocked, lamenting.

This is the tale of an act of God, called Irene by mankind; this is the tale of one man in storm’s path, waiting, waiting, every daily occupation and thought now set aside while we await the capricious judgement of this mighty storm.

We ask ourselves and carefully scan our multitude of information sources for answers to these insistent queries:

When will it hit?

Where will it hit?

How long will it punish us?

What will it take… what will it leave?

These are the questions of the hour… and we have only the fallible devices of challenged mankind to answer them… and so “the answer is blowin’ in the wind…” Thus I selected “Blowin’ in the Wind” for today’s background music. You can easily find it in any search engine. Find it now and listen carefully.
Written by Bob Dylan in 1962, it became the anthem of a restless generation… which wanted answers… and got none. Now I want answers, too, and renewed securities and peace of mind…. But none but God Himself could reassure me at this moment when even the coolest hand of all craves confidence to be reinforced, restored.

6:25 a.m., first light.
From the window of my study I look out upon the usual early day scene. There is rain in the air… and a light breeze blows the still-green leaves, not yet touched by an autumn now just days away. It is quiet now… no living soul to be seen. This is my world… and at this moment no man alive could say what its condition will be just hours away. But we know, in every fibre, that what is present now will somehow be different, great or small; storms, even as they weaken, make sure of that.

6:48 a.m.
Like millions I scan the news services, not so much for a history of this storm’s destructiveness as for clues and prognostications of what my future holds in the hours ahead. Fallible though even the greatest storm authorities can be, I nonetheless examine their predictions with care; my life, my future, perhaps my very existence on this planet is here foreshadowed. Whether the news be intoxicatingly good or the very worst it could be, I must know…

While scanning my sources, gleaning every fact, I note the condition of my dining room; my storm command center. There are crumbs on floor and table, this room with its historic paintings on the wall not as pristine and well ordered as usual…. and there’s the open pizza box, a certain sign that last night’s meal was eaten in a rush, gulped down while listening to the latest storm coverage. People facing grave disruption, even extinction do not concern themselves with dirty dishes and wayward crumbs. They have graver issues at hand than where crumbs have fallen and what to do with last night’s congealed remains. Normality is when these matters regain our notice with broom and dust pan at the ready. What seizes my attention now is battlefield intelligence from this fast- moving war zone.

9 of my fellow humans, quick and alive just hours ago, now dead. Irene has cost them everything while robbing us of the necessary time and mental state essential for mourning. For now, the dead must take care of the dead; the living have other priorities.

Item: Millions of people from first battered North Carolina north have “at this hour” (as only t.v. newscasters ever say) no electricity… It’s loss drives home their vulnerability and submission to the storm. To be without power is to lose the vital moorings of life. To lose power is to be removed at an instant from every essential service of the 21st century. We feel its loss keenly, for the loss of power is crippling, humbling, demoting us in an instant to the primitive realities of our ancestors who lived with the reality that it is better to light just one little candle than curse the darkness. Do you have your candle ready for just this moment? I do…

8:01 a.m.
The news reports are coming in thick and fast now as sleepy journalists file the day’s first reports. Outside the windows the trees now bend low before a wind not so gentle as before. The light of early Sunday morning is greyer now and obscured by the rain, now heavier, harder falling. Is this a worrisome portent of what we may expect as Irene moves toward us… or is it but the kind of storm that irritates and inconveniences but does not disrupt or kill?

While I wonder, the great cities of the Eastern seaboard are shuttered, quiet, watchful; it’s inhabitants chary, anxious, hopeful that they and their world will survive intact, this incident to be forgotten, not the day of dread remembrance which may still be their fate. They cannot know if their roofs will hold, they cannot know if they will suffer and lose all; they cannot know if dear friends and neighbors will die. And they cannot know in these hours before impact if they will live… or be nothing more than a statistic, dead, so brought to oblivion by Irene’s thoughtless puissance.
Its winds now 115 miles per hour.
Its wingspan 500 miles.
Frothing the sea with waves of 7 feet.
And the most important statistic of all: 65,00,000 million people directly impacted, prisoners of a remorseless presence, disregarding the people of this land, their lives and occupations. Storms care nothing for these; their movements, their actions; in everything they do explicable only to themselves and answerable to none.

8:30 a.m.
Darkness now covers the land, the day now awash in heavy rain from a darkening sky. Except for a few daredevils, impacted humanity is now inside, hopeful, a nervous prayer on their lips and quiet words to God for deliverance. My shutters are beating now against the glass… the chandelier above my head has now flickered and flickered again. Thus does the great storm announce its movements and threaten our already threatened equilibrium.

It is said that there are no atheists in a fox hole. Neither do such disbelievers abide in storm zones and catastrophes. In such times prayers come as easily as breathing. As the stormy sea rises, as the seas rush in to threaten and drown our realities, this is my prayer, for myself and my beleaguered fellow travelers now facing the fate that great Irene carries through the surges for us all:
“O Eternal Lord God, who alone spreads out the heavens and rules the raging of the seas, receive into your protection all those who go down to the sea in ships and occupy their business on the great waters. Preserve them both in body and soul, prosper their labors with good success, in all times of danger, be their defense, and bring them to the haven where they would be, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Let God hear this our prayer for we are all mariners today, threatened by Irene’s great wind, roiling the seas around us… and so now we wait… prepare… and pray,, our Lord our sure redeemer now and forever.

About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Dr. Lant is also a syndicated writer and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com

Michael Jackson The Experience 360 (Kinect - Required).

Source: astore.amazon.com via Ruth on Pinterest

At a lunch counter in Harvard Square. A place of friendly people and tasty meals; a dinosaur en route to extinction. Some thoughts.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note.  We've been having a lot of rain lately here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's the kind of rain that all locals greet with amiable forbearance, saying even to total strangers (especially if they are grumbling), "We need the rain." It makes us feel important when we say it; as if we were trained agronomists advising farmers on the matter of rain, when, where, how much. Of course it also needs to be said that when we hear other people say it, we regard them as conversation impaired, offering up such banality with such seriousness.

Ordinarily, weather doesn't interest me very much. Rain or shine inside a penthouse where the shutters in my office are always closed, no exception; looks much the same, as do day and night. Others may not like such a situation, but it suits me and my pursuits perfectly. It's not only where I do my writing but where my daily webcasts and running commentaries take place. The shutters and two fine verde mare marble columns once in a French palace constitute the elegant back drop to subjects discussed which may be anything but.

Yesterday, however, the rain lifted and even I, the ultimate urban dweller clueless on the rhythms and rhymes of nature, thought descending from my ideally appointed space capsule was in order. I grabbed the Harvard cap one of my visitors had forgotten and left behind; took an umbrella that another of my visitors had forgotten and left behind. I was ready for an excursion, lunch in Harvard Square was indicated...

"The Square", isn't.

Irregularly shaped and sprawling Harvard Square is one of the half dozen places on Earth every person of consequence, real or imagined, visits at least once in a lifetime. It is a place of human flotsam and jetsam; of people who come to move up (including future presidents of the Great Republic) and those who are down on their luck, street dwellers who solicit those who feel generous for giving a buck or two, which will probably end up amongst the blood-stained profits of one Mexican drug cartel or another. But Mexico and its hecatombs and legion of hapless victims are too far away to worry about, especially as so many of its leaders were schooled at Harvard, which is just the way it's supposed to be.

Down Massachusetts Avenue, the brick sidewalks muddy and wet, passersby smelling like a dog left out in the rain.

I am walking to lunch on the sidewalk along Massachusetts Avenue; "Mass Ave" to the cognoscenti who are past masters at making people like you seem unsophisticated, unhallowed, unready for the world Cambridge folk are imagining and inventing this very minute. These multi-degreed paragons are the planet's movers and shakers. They want to be sure you know this about them instantly, so that they may then exhibit the modesty for which they will one day be so renowned despite so many momentous achievements. But this is now... and so they regard modesty solely as a trait for those who have much to be modest about -- that would be you.

Labor Day Week-end, 1969.

I am in my stride now passing one Harvard-owned property after another. Here the lavish donations of long dead alumni are put to current use, fully rented out generating still more money for The World's Greatest (and already Richest) University. The kinds of shops tell you much about the place and its inhabitants: bank, ice cream parlor, smoke, ice cream parlor, bank, Harvard insignia, ice cream parlor, bank. Get the picture? The Square has more banks and ATMs within a few blocks than many cities as well as untold tons of ice cream.

Because Harvard students are the most privileged people on Earth, strident calls for world revolution and sweeping change rarely have much presence either in the Square, or in Harvard Yard, the heart of the place. People who like the status quo are hardly likely urge its destruction. Yet John Reed '10 did so urge. "Red" Reed is buried in the Kremlin's walls. Even that dubious honor needs must go to a Harvard man. We wouldn't want it any other way, even though he was Red; at least that's a shade of crimson.

Even the homeless like the situation as it is, idling life away, supported by those who can only imagine having so much free time since they do not, and never will. Thus instead of earnest young people, grim faced and determined (at least until winter arrives to chill their resolution), there are boys with pony tails selling designer ice cream to undergraduates who will one day (and not so distant either) rule the world and reap its benefits. They already regard each day at Harvard as the best years of their lives; Harvard likes it that way. The more they think like that, the bigger their alumni contributions over the many years to come... and so memory and remembrance help Harvard wax richer. 

I arrive. 1246 Mass. Ave.

About 10 minutes from the time I entered the elevator, I am at my destination, a place of importance for two reasons: first, this is my first memory of Harvard; the moment I saw Harvard and the Square for the first time; Labor Day Week-end, 1969. And because I remember everything about that epiphany, I clearly remember Mr. Bartley's. That's where I shall lunch this day... but not because I am nostalgic about food, but because the food is good and, for once, I am really hungry.

A hole in the wall, a dive, a joint.

Bartley's opened its door (it has but one) in 1960, just 9 years before I arrived in Cambridge to start my graduate work. I cannot tell you how many times I've gone, but dozens seems conservative. What's more, more times than not I order what I always order because I like it: large raspberry lime rickey (to be refilled); Burger Supreme medium well, onion rings, extra dill pickle. If I ate this same meal every day, I might be thought to be in a rut, but going just two or three times in a year to order and devour this specialite' of the house makes me a connoisseur; I insist on the description.

Uncomfortable, packed like sardines, chairs too low.
Let me be plain with you; if you are not willing to overlook its inconvenient aspects, if you insist on every amenity, then you will never be happy at Bartley's which in an astonishingly small space packs in an astonishing number of chairs, booths, human and machine food cookers, waitpersons, the raspberry lime rickeys that I crave and can nowadays get nowhere else -- and the lunch counter.

Bit by bit you see just how much is going on in this compact space. The walls are covered with clever sayings, double entendres, pictures of film stars, pictures of politicians, and accolades for its signature "burguhs". You want to get up to see these better but chances are you'd be tripping over a few people to do so; unless you come right at opening there is no chance you'll get to do this. You'll have to return. After over 40 years I still have not seen it all.

The first time a waiter screams "Burguh Supreme" at the cook, you'll be startled, but pretty soon you're screaming your comments and conversation at the top of your voice, like you've been coming for decades, and here the sheer proximity of other hungry humans, from Kansas, Greece, or Timbuktu works its singular magic.

Forced to be close to them, you make your choice, a choice with universal implications. Either you decide to ignore your very near neighbor, or you talk to them, like our fathers and grandfathers used to talk... up close, personal, direct, often humorous, even hilarious ... but talk... to the astonishment and discontent of the young, who are at first often affronted and monosyllabic when an adult like me offers a comment, an introduction, an opening to the wonder of people meeting each other and actually conversing, not just texting some inane, impersonal drivel. Bartley's works because the food is good and, if you're lucky, you've made a new friend...

This is the way America used to be and now so little is, for along the way we have lost the ability to talk with our neighbors about everything, about anything, about nothing in particular. Now we want what Greta Garbo wanted, "to be left alone." And then when we are, we text message wildly in a vain attempt to conjure the kind of relationship text messaging can never supply.

So, now a newly minted old age pensioner of 65, I shall keep going to Bartley's, where I shall inform everyone (especially the staff not one of who was then born) how long I've been coming, like old codgers do. I shall ask for help getting into and especially out of the blue plastic chairs which always make me feel older than the hills. I shall greet the only senior on the staff and will politely turn down the offer of a menu. I know what I want. And I shall say something like this to the person sitting across from me, "You look like Ernest Borgnine." "Oh, yeah, didn't he just die?..." I am on my way to acquaintance with all its myriad of possibilities.

And while I wait for the best burguh on Earth, I will wonder how much longer Bartley's will last, its price for burguhs being the highest in the Square, each increase a nail in its coffin.

However for now I intend in my small way to help keep them alive, a place of good food and the chance to connect with another human or two. And so I have selected as the music for this article, the 1964 tune by the Newbeats "Bread and Butter". It's a peppy little number, completely foolish and inane, about his food and his woman. "She don't cook mashed potatoes/ She don't cook T-bone steaks". No, she secretly gets them at Bartley's... where she also found her new boyfriend, a man who really appreciates "her" cooking! Find the story in any search engine... and enjoy. 
 
About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com

How would you like to have an opportunity to recommend “Pet Protector” - the best anti-parasite product in the world to millions of pet owners and be payed for that?

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And that’s only the beginning... Our highly profitable compensation plan allows you to generate even more, from all the further recommendations to an unlimited level.
We have provided everything you need to generate income and build a successful career:

• The best pet product to recommend - Pet Protector
• Welcome Bonus of minimum 100$!
• Profitable Compensation plan with the infinite binary system and the highest bonuses in the networking world
• Fast International delivery
• Safe and secured international money transaction services
• Additional Titles and bonus rewards
• Most advanced online affiliate marketing system
• Complete tools for your online business
• Online trainings and support
• Your personal web office with complete, real-time statistic for your business
• And much more...

Join our team - we'll help you grow your business.

'... before the darkness falls.' Thoughts on my father's last home, changing places and the pains that make us human.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. It is 3:07 a.m. here in the East. It is not so much that  I cannot sleep. Rather, it's that I don't want to. I am thinking about my father as I often do. He is undoubtedly asleep now, has gotten safely through another day and will awake in due course to the promise of another. In other words, he is being well taken care of, and I don't need to worry, the Number One Son in Massachusetts; he in California. But I do worry...

"Jeffrey, let me ask you..."

He called me the other day, with that note of concern I've come to know and which bites me so. "Jeffrey let me ask you..." and so it started. Another chip to the father-son relationship which defined and guided us for so many years, now as ancient as the hills. Things between us, once well defined and wary, are changing now; changing, changing... we neither of us like it, but the realities of living always pulverize our mere wishes... and because we are living, we must still live, no matter how painful that may be. And it often is...

He asks.

"Jeffrey, you've never had a house have you?" "No, Dad, I never did."

"You've always lived in an apartment, haven't you?" "Yes, Dad, I have."

"You like it, don't you?" "Yes, Dad, I do."

"Why's that?" "Well, for openers I don't have to take out the garbage... or plant the flowers... or paint the fence... " And the list goes on.

"You used to hate doing those things, didn't you?" "Yes, Dad, every minute, every single one. I wanted to read. You wanted me to wash the windows." There is more than a little bit of asperity, accusation and unresolved irritation in my voice. I am 65, it all happened a half century ago and more; it shouldn't matter, but it does. Memory makes the long ago the active and unresolved, still on my agenda of things compelling attention. I might wish it doesn't matter, but it does.

"I do not plant or reap."

Now the benefits of apartment living pour forth. I discover I am defending my choices, as children of any age feel compelled to do from time to time. To live the life I want takes teams of people taking care of me. I am used to this and rely on them to do the necessary. This is how the privileged classes of history have lived; it is how I always wanted to live; it is how I live; it is how I want him to live; it is how he should live in this his too fast dwindling of days.

But he is of a different time and place, a time of self-reliance, where if you wanted warmth in winter, you chopped fire wood and so warmed yourself twice. I hated this work... and I hated all such things... things that obstructed the life I wanted; the life waiting for me, beckoning me, insinuating itself into every thought. "I am what you want, what you must have," and I couldn't wait to seize it. The myriad versions of chopping wood were important, but they were never imperative, like the dream that enthralled me. And thus there were problems and a battle that waxed and waned, but never stopped.

However he is not criticizing, judging, he is seeking something perhaps only I can give: confirmation that he has done the right thing, for with assisted living, without responsibilities, comes an avalanche of doubts, uncertainties, and the kinds of anxieties which force one to sit bolt upright in dead of night... and wonder...

"Jeffrey, I don't like not having a home anymore."

But he does have a home. It's in a wonderful facility that looks like a college campus or place on a golf course. He and Miss Ellie, his wife, did not rush their choice. They looked at the full range of possibilities, moved with due deliberation, not haste. Visited, revisited, discussed, revisited. There was no rush about it, though it was apparent to both a decision must be made and made while they were both entirely able to make it.

He recalls each house he has ever owned.

He is remembering now and my role is clear. I must hear what he says, completely... and I must pledge (though he doesn't say so) to remember. And so a chant begins; of houses built or bought; houses turned into homes and profits; a lifetime of patient acquisition and certain return. "I have always made money on every house we ever lived in." And he recites them now, not to brag, but so that he is sure I know and will remember. My memory is tenacious; he knows that, and so the litany begins... from 4906 Woodward Avenue, which he built with his own hands (and partly mine)...

His eyes are closed now and as he recalls, he recites; my eyes are closed, too, and I am remembering with him... and these, his memories of being a good father, chary of his resources, patiently awaiting the results he foresaw and planned for, are clear, poignant, bittersweet. And triumphant.

For he wants me to know, and to sear into my mind that he made money enough for his family, enough for himself and Miss Ellie so they would burden no one, and something for the next generation, too. He was proud, as he had the right to be; not arrogant. He knew what he was due... and knew that I would give it, full measure. We who had often engaged in combat and dispute fully understood each word now, each recollection, each and every nuance, delivered with sureness and finality... for on this subject there was nothing more to say... and we were both glad he had done so, so well, every word apt, every description complete and accurate.

He was tired now. So was I.

It is often said that as parents and children age they reverse roles. But this is not entirely true. Instead a situation infinitely more complex and difficult emerges; a situation where the parent may remain the parent as well as the child and where the child may be in an instant not just one but both, thereby dramatically increasing the possibilities for confusion; things clear to one, misunderstood by the other. It would be easier, far easier, if a simple role reversal  took place, clear to each, but this is not the way it is for either party. And so, before the darkness falls, we need to learn, again who we are, who they are, what they need and must have, what we have that we may give and give still more. In short, we must at their end begin again, new roles to learn and urgent, too, for the darkness is nigh and there is much to learn and do before the end.

Thus one of the most important, revealing and timely conversations of my life ended; we were weary and needed rest. The meeting, by phone, ended as easily as a sigh. We had done what needed to be done.

But I had one more thing to do, one more thing to listen to, to ponder. Bruce Springsteen's 1982 evocation "My Father's House." And I went to a search engine to play it. I urge you to find it now... and ready yourself for a melody and lyrics which cut deep and place an unrelenting memory in you.

""Last night I dreamed that I was a child... I was trying to make it home... before the darkness falls I ran with my heart pounding down that broken path... I broke through the trees and there in the night My father's house stood shining hard and bright the branches and brambles tore my clothes and scratched my arms But I ran till I fell shaking in his arms."

Now I can do as much for him... and must.

 About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com

Did he or didn't he? Thoughts on whether Jesus married or not.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. I am writing today where I write every day; from my eyrie hard-by the Cambridge, Massachusetts Common, across the street from Harvard University, my alma mater whose motto -- "Veritas" ("Truth") -- is everywhere apparent.

It is important, particularly for this article, that you understand something of the history of this venerable place, the city of Cambridge itself, its designated mission, what the Puritans aimed for, and whether they achieved it.

The first settlers to Massachusetts (arriving November 11, 1620) underwent the greatest possible travail and difficulty. They endured their acute miseries, even welcomed them, because they insisted upon their view of God and their direct and personal relationship with Him.

In their new land, there would be no bishops, no cardinals, no fathers Holy or otherwise ... just a man, his Bible, his vision of God, and no overweening, dictating authority. On this basis they divided their new home into two parts; Boston was designated the administrative, governmental and commercial headquarters. Cambridge (then called Newe Towne, until 1638) was designated the theological center, including schools; most importantly the most celebrated educational establishment ever created, Harvard.

From its very first moment, it was clear that Cambridge and Rome would be the axes of two fundamentally different views of God and how men should regard, worship, and honor Him. Each side spoke well of the other when necessary, but each regarded the other as capable of any outrage. How could it be otherwise when one claimed infallibility and the other believed no man and therefore no human institution was infallible, a state reserved for God Himself.

From time to time the tensions, always latent, flared. My brilliant classmate Professor John Boswell (1947-1994), though a zealous convert to Roman Catholicism, was one who rocked the boat in one seminal study after another on the Church, its long, early acceptance of openly gay priests and same sex marriage.

Discerning people knew at once with the publication in 1980 of "Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality" that here was a clear, new, lucid, learned voice on some of Rome's greatest problems. His National Book Award in 1981 was just the first of a cascade of honors. His tragic death from complications of AIDS was a huge setback for tolerance and a way out of Rome's Gordian Knots. It was rumored then and after that the Roman Catholic Curia breathed a sigh of relief at his death, sotto voce claiming it was God's will. So the Vatican acknowledged Boswell's importance and the Veritas that was always his objective. 

Now Harvard offers Rome Professor Karen L. King and the now celebrated text suggesting that Jesus was married... his wife being (a) Mary but as yet unclear which one; (there are three mentioned in the Bible). Even the possibility that the Son of God was married has generated a tsunami of controversy, learned (and not so learned) commentary, and knee-jerk reactions of every kind. 

Now it is time for me to weigh in, on the principle that fools rush in where angels fear to tread, a phrase written by English poet Alexander Pope in 1709. It became the title of a well-known 1940 song, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, music by Rube Bloom. Bing Crosby, himself a fervent Roman Catholic, added it to his string of hits. You'll find it in any search engine. I like the sultry version by Mildred Bailey.

Recognized scholars confirm the document is genuine.

The two essential questions: is the document authentic? And is what it reports about Jesus and his wife accurate, thereby proving the case for what would then be the most important marriage in all history?

As for the authenticity of this inelegant document, smaller than a business card, written in a coarse hand with a pen well worn and past its prime, one recognized scholar after another has been sought out by Professor King. Tellingly each and every authority who has seen and scrutinized the actual document has endorsed its authenticity; as the actual thing it purports to be. Exhaustive testing and analysis by the world's leading experts have failed to produce a single dubious element, feature, or aspect. In short, there is not a single "red flag" to be had, although there are still plenty of doubters.

Professor King, historian of the early Christian church, did her work well, and shrewdly. By her outreach to her peers, she kept her worldwide colleagues in the loop, giving them no grounds for criticism. She shared what she had.... and in the process covered herself, too, in case later analysis yielded doubts not present now. Should such a day ever dawn, Professor King would not be the only one with egg on her face. It would be generously shared with every poobah in the field.

Is the text accurate?

Thus King cleverly dispensed with the lesser query, getting comfortable shared responsibility while ensuring her name would be forever linked to this epochal matter. Now she must go to a far more difficult and controversial place, for the truly essential question is: "Is the message history, true, or merely tittle-tattle in the Coptic language?" And here, to date, there is not only no agreement in general, but little desire to stray beyond the verities of papyrus and pen. And so it's time for this fool to rush in...

Fate? Accident of history? Conspiracy?

Why is there so much hubbub in the world, both amongst theologians and historians and people on the street concerned about their immortal souls and the Good News that is Jesus, regarding this text specifically and the subject generally? It is because for hundreds of years all manner of people have speculated on the man called Jesus and every aspect of his world-altering career.

Every aspect of his known life matters to us, and so both believers and non-believers alike have made it a point to study and master "The Greatest Story Ever Told"... a story that rivets our attention not least because it so closely touches the matter of our souls and our eternal place in the firmament.

Thus in studying the story of Jesus, we study, too, what may happen to us, individually and species. And because the matter is so significant, we must approach each new development as the greatest of lawyers would have done... with minute scrutiny, wariness, doubt and dubitation; the matter is too significant for us all to warrant any other approach.

Advocates for Jesus' marriage must ask and answer such piercing questions as these:

1) Is it likely that such a crucial event as his marriage would be found and solely communicated to us in just one document, and that unclearly written in an ungrammatical and uneducated hand?

2) Is it likely that the marriage of Our Saviour would be treated as silently and unheralded as to appear in but one text?

3) Why are the Prophets predicting the advent of Jesus universally quiet on the matter of the help-mate who would partly share his life and lighten his excruciating load?

4) Given the fact that such a spouse presumably out lived Jesus, why is there no document proved and incontrovertible that mentions her in any of the stringent activities and customs of her Jewish widowhood?

5) Why is there no document, authenticated or not, that mentions seeing, visiting, embracing or listening to this spouse, even being given by her any of Jesus' effects, each of which would have immediately become the holiest of artifacts?

6) And what of the Pharisees and of the Romans? They had each been apprehensive of Jesus when alive and so might well have monitored his widow and any cult of her husband, which she might well have been expected to bolster and grow.

Why is none of this and the thousand related queries not mentioned in the texts and documents which constitute the Bible and related texts? A good sleuth must be forced to conclude they are not there because there was no wife, no help-mate, no spouse, thereby proving yet again how much the Son of Man forfeited for us. And yet....

Where the definitive answer probably resides and three dates.

There has been, so far, a huge hole in the debate, and I suspect that within this hole is the solution to the married Jesus conundrum. This hole is the most lavish, ostentatious, and palatial library ever created, suitable for the men on whom God built his Church. This place is the Vatican Library and it is here, amongst its 75,000 codices and over 1.1 million printed works, that the likely answer is to be found. Yet neither Karen King nor any of the many publications and media sources following this story have even mentioned this absolutely vital resource and its importance for elucidating the matter at hand.

Did Professor King seek to get access to either the general collection or the all-important Secret Archives? If so, why has she not said so, reporting what she may have seen or was not allowed to see? Or did she fail to ask for admission, thereby leaving an enormous gap in her research? For make no mistake about it: the most likely place to find what will solve the matter is amidst the documents of those who have the greatest vested interest. All roads lead to Rome as they have from the days of the Caesars, and to the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana.

476, 1202,1475.

Three dates are significant to the work of any Biblical scholar, theologian or historian in hot pursuit of Veritas. 476 is when the Roman empire of the West finally fell. Thereafter the greatest library of the world and repository of Church documents was to be found not in Rome but in the Eastern empire, in Byzantium -- until April 13, 1204 when during the Fourth Crusade the Christian crusaders sacked the greatest of Christian cities, dispersing its riches, including the riches of its great library; carrying back to Rome masses of crucial Church history. From this emerged in 1475 the library of the Holy See. And it is likely there, Professor King, you will find the answer to the matter at hand, an answer one way or the other, for as Mildred Bailey at her loveliest sang, "Though I see the danger there/ If there's a chance for me /Then I don't care."  
 About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com
 

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'Give me that old time religion,' implores the Pope as the world ponders the possibility and importance of a married Jesus. Wow!

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. When was the last time, you saw a major secular publication give a banner headline to the latest development in Biblical studies? You probably can't think of that time... which is why the front-page coverage in The Boston Globe of Wednesday, September 19, 2012 (and following) is so important, epochal, for on this day the possibility of a married Jesus made a quantum leap, moving beyond mere speculation (as in Dan Brown's 2003 run-away best seller "The Da Vinci Code") to something plausible, conceivable, even likely.  "I ,Jesus, take thee...."

Revolution on a scrap of fourth-century Egyptian papyrus.

It's a tiny little thing, smaller than a business card but it packs the wallop of a punch to the solar plexus for the Bishop of Rome and his Catholic Church. Here are the exact words discovered and minutely scrutinized by Bible scholars under the leadership of Harvard University Professor Karen L. King, historian of the early Christian church.

1) "not (to) me. My mother gave to me life... 2) The disciples said  to Jesus, 3) deny. Mary is worthy of it. 4) ... Jesus said to them, 'My wife... 5) ... she will be able to be my disciple... 6)  As for me, I dwell with her in order to"... 7) (an image).

"The Gospel of Jesus's wife."

The text is crude, scrawled in a Coptic hand. King provocatively calls her potentially seismic find, a translation from a Greek text written two centuries earlier, "The Gospel of Jesus's wife."

The most important woman in history.

As King points out,"The entire question about whether Jesus was married or not first arose only 150 years after Jesus died in the context of Christians discussing... whether Christians should marry or remain celibate." In other words, this discussion, with the implication Jesus was married, took place as close to the actual events of Jesus's life as any of the major early Christian texts. This increases its importance and similarly the importance of the woman who would be, if proven, the most important woman in human history; the woman selected by the Son of God to be his lawfully wedded wife, Mrs. Jesus.

This likely woman is known to history as Mary Magdalene or Mary of Magdala, and the reasonable likelihood is that she is the "Mary" referenced in the text as Jesus's wife. After all, she was one of Jesus's most celebrated disciples and the most important female disciple in Jesus's movement. He had cured her of a serious illness described as "seven demons". It is known she became one of his close friends. But was there more?

Consider the ways in which this Mary is referred to in the Bible...
Item: She remained at the cross of crucifixion alone after all the male disciples had fled. Is this the act of a dear friend, or loving spouse?

Item: She was present at his burial. Is this the act of a dear friend, or loving spouse?

Item: She was the first person to see Jesus after his Resurrection. Is this the act of a dear friend, or loving spouse?

Conservatives, defenders of the status quo, must argue for friendship and loyalty; progressives, now bolstered by the suggestive new evidence, will argue for more, much more, thereby positioning Mary, possibly wife of Our Saviour, as the most important woman in human history, a woman we long to know better and in copious detail.

An e-mail brought the Good News.

A man unknown to Professor King wrote to her as an expert in the field. The man wanted to know whether she could help him translate the text. He told King he had an inkling that it might say something about Jesus being married. Perhaps the good professor could assist? King looked at the document and her heart beat faster. If it was authentic it would immediately rank with the most important early Christian texts, from the days when the verities of the gospel were being discussed and determined. "If"...

The owner quizzed.

Being a professor, investigator, researcher means emulating such great sleuths as Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey or Miss Jane Marple. Thus, Professor King. understanding how gleeful and smug her opponents would be if she erred, moved carefully. Check, recheck, check again. The man who brought this find to her attention was, it seems to me, of little help. He knew what its previous owner had told him about the text in question being about Jesus and his wife, but he knew (or would say) nothing more... except for one thing: he wanted to sell the document to Harvard as part of a collection of Greek, Coptic, and Arabic papyri. Recent worldwide publicity about this text could only increase its value and desirability. Harvard remains silent on the matter.

King, wanting the informed opinion of her colleagues worldwide, systematically sought them out; starting with the doyan of such experts, Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and professor of ancient  history at New York University, who helped King authenticate the papyrus.

Most but not all thought this messy, inelegant text, written in thick, badly controlled strokes, by someone with a very poor pen, was authentic. Importantly, every single expert who actually saw the artifact deemed it real; the doubters only saw low-resolution images, murky and  unclear.

The experts who did not see and would not share: the Vatican library.
King took her dog and pony show to Rome, to the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum for the International Association for Coptic Studies' Coptic Conference. But though she and the document were at that moment just across the street from the Vatican library, its great doors were not open for Professor King.

Yet where is the greatest number of such biblical texts likely to be found? 
These celibate guardians, in charge of access and more usually denial, will follow Professor King's researches with the greatest possible interest. But, as what she is about challenges the millennial usages of Rome, their enthusiastic and practical assistance especially if they know (as well they might) Professor King is on the right track, will never be forthcoming. Never.

Probably not that Mary.

Meanwhile, King and her adherents operate in an environment of enthusiasm and doubt, happiness and the greatest caution, even unto who "Mary" might be. Mary Magdalene, says Professor King, is unlikely to be the "Mary"  identified in her text as the wife of Jesus. That would be another Mary, as yet unidentified. She has her reasons, but I suspect "Occam's razor" works here: "other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one."

And so the wheels of academic research grind slowly, oh so slowly; the more slowly because the great doors of the Vatican's palatial library remain closed to anyone seeking anything even remotely inimical to the doctrine and practices of Mother Church, for whom truth is not always or even mainly its invariable objective; unlike Harvard, whose motto is "Veritas", Truth; its researchers have no special interests to protect or axes to grind.

Thus I give you the music for this article, a tune for which the Vatican has most assuredly developed a penchant, "Give Me That Old Time Religion," written in 1873 and included in a list of Jubilee songs, perfect for camp meetings. Find it in any search engine and belt out one of its new lyrics, "If it was good for Pius XII, it's good enough for me..."

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol <a href="http://WorkingAtHome101.com">http://WorkingAtHome101.com</a>.