Ok, it’s time to vote. Watch the video and look at the entries, and vote in the poll below for your favorite picture. The winners, who will be the top 5 vote getters, will each get a $100 Zappos.com certificate to buy anything they want on Zappos, even more mandals!

Yes, you can vote for yourself and you can encourage your friends to vote for you. I would! Voting will end at Noon on Thursday, September 4th. Vote!

Remember to follow @zappos on Twitter and join the Zappos affiliate program.

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A few weeks ago I got to spend a day and a night hanging out with Gary Vaynerchuk of Winelibrary.tv as he was in town for a book signing. The full video experience of my time spent with him will come later, but for now, I have a video about a person I met who was in Gary’s entourage… Marianne Frantz of the Cleveland Wine School.

The video below is an interview I did with Marianne about the Cleveland Wine School, with a funny impromptu appearance from Gary V in a few places. Pretty funny. The video was shot at lunch after a live taping of the Thunder show with Gary in Cleveland Browns Stadium (personal video on that to come later). Go watch, great episode.

Why am I posting this video about a regional company when my blog is read by thousands of people who don’t live in Cleveland? Well, it’s a perfect example of how anyone can make a video commercial for their company with a simple inexpensive camera. Something I encourage all businesses to do. Tell me this isn’t a video you’d like to show to your customers to educate them about your business?

The whole thing took me 10 minutes to edit, and by using the Flip camera, easy to record. Why aren’t you doing video yet? Give me a ring so I can help you get on it, or sign up for my free Online Video Toolkit for some free advice.

Here’s the video on Youtube if you wish to view it there.

Shmuly gets it. He’s taken a traditional piece of Jewish headdress called the Kippah and combined it with current trends, in this case the Presidential election here in the USA. Check out his product at VanityKippah.com. Pretty smart.

In this video I talk more about how smart marketers like Shmuly know to take their product or service and combine it with current events or trends to make more sales and get publicity. It works. You can do it too.

Take a moment and think about how your product or service relates to what’s hot right now. Sports (the Olympics?), entertainment, politics? You get the point. Now make the connection and do something creative. The press will eat it up.

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Music on video from http://cantorgottesman.com/chazzan-first-cd.htm

Nina Frye had an idea one day to create an ecommerce store (LTDChix.com).

The problem was, she was a mom who had never done it before and had zero idea how to get it done. Fast forward now to years later and now Nina has a fully-functional, successful store. So, how did she get there? What lessons did she learn along the way?

If you’ve ever thought about starting up your own online store, you MUST listen to this podcast of me talking to LTDChix.com. Nina gives all of her lessons and advice on how she got started, as well as mistakes made and tips. She dishes it all. GREAT interview and you will learn a lot. Please leave feedback in the comments.

Here are the show notes:

The story of how we got started. Moms overwhelmed!
Target a niche!
How did you start the site? Steep learning curve.
Worked with Score. Did a test market first. Found local place to print, spent $2500. Took to a local fair and test marketed to moms. Sold out!
Sent out press release to local newspaper. Simple news release.
Signed up to mom blogs and pitched them. Giveaways work! 2 or 3 or month.
It’s expensive to run a website. Find a good local web guy/gal who you can trust.
Startupnation.com helped a lot. Gave me media lists, help me find a pr person. Got on MSN.com through contest.
Go to retail stores. Promote that on your site. Cold call them. Looked to see where your competitors are, and called the stores they are at one by one.
Setup a wholesale price. Setup a sales sheet, not your website, an order sheet they can fill out and send back.
Use coupon codes. Make shopping cart easy to buy. Use authorize.net for merchant account.
Google Adwords and converting at 60% sometimes.
Learned how to be an ecommerce expert by reading.
Cafepress.com is a great place to try out custom artwork sales.
Going to license artwork for overseas sales. Mom humor on all kinds of products.
We went to show in NYC and found licensing companies to approach. Pitched them. Got a lot of no’s.
What would you do differently now two years later? Spent too much doing website the wrong way first time.
We copyrighted the images using us trademark government.

Last week was the Affiliate Summit in Boston and I had the pleasure of being the MC again for the show. This time I got to introduce special guest performers The Blue Man Group, who then introduced keynote speaker Mayor Corey Booker.

Below is the footage I grabbed right after I got off stage. It’s part of the Blue Man shtick and part of Mayor Booker’s speech, which, by the way, had people’s eyes watering. Great speech. Here is some more footage, and remember, the entire speech will be shown at AffiliateSummit.tv so go sign up.

Oh yeah, people are discussing it over here on Affspot forums so join in.

Are you planning on coming to the Blogworldexpo in Vegas this fall? If so, or if you’re on the fence, believe me, you want to attend. All the biggest name bloggers (Problogger, Copyblogger) are going to be there, and you’re going to socialize with them, and learn from them.

And hey, if you register now and use my link you get 20% off. But it doesn’t last long.

Still not convinced? Watch me embarrass myself by singing a song about the show below in video form. I’m performing for your attendance! Hope to see you there and we can hang out.

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I use Tubemogul to upload videos all of the web. My friend Steve coined this term on our online video podcast as promiscuous posting. Pretty clever, eh?

So is this spam? Does Google consider this spam? And should you continue to do this? Should I? What’s the long and short term strategy for me and you? I talk about it in this video. I’m very interesting in your opinions and thoughts.

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I’m starting a new mission to sing happy birthday to anyone who asks. So here’s the deal, watch the video below, if you or anyone you know is having a birthday and you want me to sing to them, I will, no cost. Why? Well, why not!???

Want me to sing to you or someone else you know?

Send email to jim at jimkukral dot com & include name of person/business/whatever you’d like me to sing to. I shoot these videos every Monday and post them on my blog for the world to see. Subscribe!

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Not yet anyway. This video talks about why people like Jason Calacanis and Shoemoney are now all of a sudden trying to build emails lists. Is it because they didn’t before, or because they’re just trying to be different? I don’t know.

It all just seems a little silly to me. Again, I’m not saying email is dead, yet. I do think my kinds won’t have email. My niece in college doesn’t “email”, only Facebook. What’s your take?

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Ok, last reminder. If you want to win $100 from Zappos, watch this video get your feet moving, literally. It’s soooo easy to win. Just do as I say in the video. As I said in previous posts on this.

You like shoes, no? Well, you will like this contest I’m having with my friends over at Zappos.com. Five people will win a $100 Zappos.com gift certificate to buy anything they want on their site. And all you have to do is… well, watch the video. It’s easy to enter, believe me.

Click here to see all the current entries at Flickr. Yes, ladies, you can wear flip-flops to enter. :)

Look at Shoemoney. It’s pretty horrendous how terrible he is with grammar and spelling in his posts. Ok, I get it. He doesn’t try to spellcheck by his own admission for whatever reason, but it looks really bad… the poor grammar too. Makes him look like a severe amateur.

This isn’t a pick on Shoe (although he’s a poster-child for this post and should be called out for it), but rather a video post about how you are going to ruin your future career by having poor grammar and spelling. Your blog is your resume. Your digital footprint (comments, threaded discussions, photos, etc…) is your legacy. Right now, today, every smart recruiter on the planet goes out and looks at everything you’ve done or said online.

You really think that a professional organization is going to hire you if you can’t spell? You really think that you’re ever going to be taken seriously if you write like YouTube commenter in d00d-speak? You really think you’ll ever get a consulting gig or be asked to speak anywhere by anyone over the age of 30?

You won’t. Clean it up. Wise up. Lecture over.

The fish kill at Aurora’s Sunny Lake on Tuesday seems to have been a success. City workers are cleaning up thousands and thousands of dead carp floating along the shore. The average fish that was killed was a 12 inch carp. There are a few suckers, some small catfish and some 4 inch crappie and bluegill. In adition a bout 20 large Amur are among the dead. I don’t feel these fish had any value to fishermen.
Cool weather is aiding the city employee task.  But they are a muddy mess, wading along the shoreline, gathering the fish for disposal. Where’s the “Dirty Jobs” guy?

The outlet of the lake is closed for about a week to allow the poison become inert before releasing the water downstream to the Chagrin River. The fish kill used a method approved by the EPA.

The lake will be restocked with sportfish.

I like motivating people. I’m no Tony Robbins, but when I get on stage or in a room of people I really enjoy getting people revved up and inspired to be successful.

So I decided to have a guy on the Daily Flip by the name of Noah St. John. from Successclinic.com. He’s a motivational guy that helps people get their foot off the brake and lose the fear holding them back.

We talked about a bunch of topics, like fear of success and motivational tips and “secrets”. Also about how to reduce stress and a bunch of other things. This podcast should motivate you, please enjoy!

Oh, and feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you thought of the podcast and how you’ve overcome your fears.