Feng Shui – The Original Green Lifestyle

Renewable or sustainable energy, climate change and environmental pollution are in the headlines daily. Are you considering a shift to a greener lifestyle and making changes in your home to bring it into more harmony with the environment? Is it time to take action on your thoughts? Should you invest in a green lifestyle and eco-friendly products?

Whether you agree or disagree with everything you hear and read about the greening of America, you can definitely agree upon the fact that a lot of time, money and effort is being dedicated to this endeavor.

Defining a Green Lifestyle

I am sure that every person has their own definition of the greening of America and what living a green lifestyle would look like. And, sometimes those definitions are vastly different and totally at opposite ends of the spectrum. My rather simplistic definition of a green lifestyle is: people who support and replenish their environment and an environment that supports people through providing life giving atmosphere and resources in order that they both can flourish.

The second way I could describe a green lifestyle would be to live a Feng Shui lifestyle. The original Form School of Feng Shui is all about creating your home and life to be in complete harmony with your surrounding environment.

If you think about it, Planet Earth some 3000 years ago was in perfect balance. To be somewhat simplistic, Earth experienced day and night, heat and cold, wet and dry over a yearly cycle. It had oceans and land masses, mountains and valleys, barren land and crop supporting land. The earliest civilizations learned to work with their environment and to manage the resources.

The Ancient Chinese civilizations lived in harmony with their environment. They altered their environment by cultivating the land and building homes so as to survive. But when they learned to position their homes in harmony with the energy forms provided by the environment such as trees, hills, rivers and sunshine as noted in the Form School of Feng Shui they began to thrive.

Feng Shui Tips for a Greener Lifestyle

Since we cannot turn the clock back 3000 years nor do most of us wish to, there are a number of things we can do today, right now to live in better harmony with our environment. Rather than think about the environment from a global perspective which is out of reach for most of us, look around your home to find those things which are within your reach, you can control and do something about right now.

o Recycle everything. Most people recycle the obvious such as bottles, plastic items, bags, newspapers, boxes and the like but take a closer look at things like electronic equipment, cell phones, computers, tools, books and appliances. Many areas now offer places to drop off electronic items and libraries love to receive new books that have been read only once. See what is available in your area.

o Donate all useable clothing and household items to charitable organizations so they can be recycled to those in need.

o Check in with local organizations like those dealing with domestic violence to see what items they regularly need that you may be ready to part with. Keep that list handy for future use and to share with others.

o Remove your name from as many catalogue and flier mailing lists as possible to reduce the amount of printed mail you receive and toss. If you like certain catalogues but are receiving duplicates be sure to notify them to remove the extra name from the list. Encourage all of the catalogue companies you purchase from to print on recyclable paper.

o Use canvas, cloth or mesh shopping bags to bring home your groceries. This will lower the number of plastic bags clogging up the environment plus save on the use of petroleum to manufacture them.

o Get in the habit of using old towels as rags for some of those simple cleanups and spills throughout the house and garage instead of grabbing for the nearest paper towels. Old towels are easily recycled by simply washing and disinfecting them whereas paper towels add to landfills.

o Use as many eco-friendly soaps, detergents and cleaning supplies as you can find. They are better for you to use because they are less toxic and are better for the environment because they are bio-degradable.

There are easily thousands of other things you can do and products you can buy that lend themselves to a greener lifestyle. However, you may have a question at this point, what does all this have to do with Feng Shui.

It has everything to do with Feng Shui. First many of the suggestions above are about clearing the clutter out of your personal environment which provides you better energy. Second, you’ve recycled a lot of your stuff which provides the environment more positive energy rather than having to deal with more waste. Third, you’ve improved your quality of life and that of the environment by using more eco-friendly products.

When it comes to the environment, everything you say, think and especially do, does matter.

© Pat Heydlauff, all rights reserved 2008

How to Increase Your Sales Using Video Marketing

A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend of mine who owns a small business in the neighborhood. He was telling me about different ways he uses to advertise his business both online and offline. He talked about how much video marketing has made a huge difference in his business and has really increased his sales. He said that video marketing has changed his business over night and he could not believe the increase in sales he had as a result of having a simple video created and distributed to different video websites such as YouTube, MetaCafe, DailyMotion, and many of the other video websites online.

I myself have been doing video marketing for a few years now and I can see how videos can bring a lot of targeted visitors to my business and e-commerce website. Currently, Video website referrals represent more than half of all of the visitors to my e-commerce website.

Video marketing and advertising outweighs everything else in the results it produces. More importantly, the percentage of visitors from video websites convert to a sale at about 25% of the time. The average conversion for the visitors from other sources is about 2-10%. This shows that using a video is far more effective towards making a sale and leads to a better conversion rate. I have also noticed an increase in conversion rates on my website by about 200% when I added a video to the sales page or the front page of my website. Video Marketing has been a Pleasant Surprise for me.

At first, I did not expect that video websites were going to be such incredible marketing medium. The videos I submitted were re-posted by many other websites and shared throughout the world. This experience transformed many small businesses overnight and transformed the way we looked at video websites.

One of the videos I created for a client went viral and that causes him to be flooded with orders. He had so many orders at such a short time that we was out of his product and shipping boxes. When he finally caught up with the orders he had sold over 4 years worth of products in just 3 months and he had many other offers and interest for future sales.

Video marketing on has become an integral part of my entire business and marketing strategy. Ever since that first video I have been improving different ways to create videos and test these videos to see which ones convert better and get more views and visitors. Many of our videos have well over one hundred thousand views and even if they are not huge hits they still bring visitors to my websites. It is always a good idea to keep creating videos and upload them to YouTube and different video websites because you never know what might take off later.

For example one video that was submitted to YouTube nearly 2 years ago for one of my websites is now having huge success. In the past 3 months it has jumped to almost 500K views and sales are way up as a result. But in the previous one and a half years the video only had 2 thousand views combined.

You should try to put up a video every two or three weeks. Staying frequent is important, but if you do not know how to create videos or you just don’t have time you can always use a video creation and distribution service. but relevance is

Here are some tips For Driving Sales with Video Marketing:

Viewers who go to video websites are not out there specifically for shopping, so consider when you are creating the video that You have to present your website or product in a fast and engaging way. This video should be an opportunity to develop an awareness of your product and your brand.

Video creation and marketing is a great cost-effective way to increase your clients and sales while building the message for your brand. With the shift of online content going to heavily into video and the eventual merging of online and traditional TV press this is a medium that your company should definitely be involved in.

Africa – Finding Jobs, Employment

Employment in Africa is concentrated in working volunteer programs or Internships with an NGO, a non-profit or not for profit organization. Internships and volunteer programs cover a wide gambit of fields including; women’s rights, environmental sustainability, refugee aid, ocean and marine life sustainability, economics, and helping to gather general country statistics (e.g. census reports or wildlife statistics).There are some great volunteer programs out in the world and they offer people a way to travel and do some good at the same time. Most programs don’t have a time limit and are happy if a person can stay and help for an extended period of time (at least 3 months or more). Although volunteer positions are unpaid, most programs offer free housing and food so your only expense is the plane ticket and spending money. I’d suggest defraying those expenses by teaching private English lessons on the side to make your spending money.There is one unique job opportunity, outside of working an internship or being a volunteer; that is becoming a Safari guide leader. In our research, we stumbled upon this adventure-based opportunity and explored exactly how you would become a guide. You have to go through a short basic course, which teaches you; how to handle groups out in the field, setting up a safe campsite, information on the local plants and wildlife, as well as how to examine signs that wildlife is in the area like paw prints and droppings. Upon completion of the course, you are eligible to obtain a Guide license and work for a huge number of tour operators (mostly in Kenya and South Africa). They are always looking for English speaking Guides.