I thought this number would be higher than it is. Here is an excerpt from the article and a link to it.

WATERTOWN, Mass. –(Business Wire)– April 29, 2004 — 60.5% of Internet Users Identified Natural Search Results as Most Relevant to Their Query - 39.5% Selected Paid Search Advertisements

iProspect(R), the Original(R) Search Engine Marketing Firm (http://www.iprospect.com), today announced more results from its recent Search Engine User Attitudes Survey that indicate the majority of search engine users find natural search results to be most relevant to their queries.

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2004/Apr/1036746.htm

I’m returning to Burley, Idaho to teach an Internet Marketing Class to interested students and parents from my Alma Mater, American Heritage Academy. I feel like it’s a wonderful opportunity to give back to the community. Sometimes I look at my home community and think, “they’ve only ever known agriculture and the farms are consolidating and even dissappearing.”

There is so much opportunity in our world and, though I haven’t mastered things on the Internet by any means myself, I think I can open their eyes at home to whole new possibilitiles. It’s the least I can do after others have openned my eyes for me.

I’ll either record my notes here or set up an ATutor system to teach the course.

I’m returning to Burley, Idaho to teach an Internet Marketing Class to interested students and parents from my Alma Mater, American Heritage Academy. I feel like it’s a wonderful opportunity to give back to the community. Sometimes I look at my home community and think, “they’ve only ever known agriculture and the farms are consolidating and even dissappearing.”

There is so much opportunity in our world and, though I haven’t mastered things on the Internet by any means myself, I think I can open their eyes at home to whole new possibilitiles. It’s the least I can do after others have openned my eyes for me.

I’ll either record my notes here or set up an ATutor system to teach the course.

Wow, I found another Neal with a blog. His name is the same as mine. I guess I’m not the first. Good for him.

After discussing same sex marriage today with some friends, I realized that they felt indifferent on the issue. I fear that too many just feel indifferent and would grant government incentives to same sex marriage licenses. I can understand that others feel that it isn’t fair to grant marriage licenses to men and women and not to men and men and women and women. In a country that values equality so much, this seems like a natural outgrowth. Here is a paper that presents an argument about why giving Same Sex marriages the same rights is not equal.

Unequal Rights

The gay marriage debate rages on the airwaves and in the court rooms. It is fought on the premise of equal protection, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. The misconception is in thinking that gay unions are equal to heterosexual unions and that opposition to gay marriage is equal to the discrimination of race. Even films such as Remember the Titans, a movie picture about American football and racism, throws in a clip of a young quarterback kissing one of his unsuspecting team mates in the locker room creating an underlying parallel between racism of the 1960s and homosexuals in the late 90’s. Throughout several months I have watched closely the unfolding events, mostly interested in the opinions and views of the country as they began a battle that may not end in this life time. It is a subject that is stirring our country to its very foundation???the family.

Patrick Henry, one of the founders of the United States of America, wisely said, “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.”(Henry) The ceremonial covenant of marriage historically precedes government involvement. Marriage ceremonies have always been religious in nature, Christian, Jewish, Islamic or Pagan alike. There have always been sexual or physical lovers where marriage has no part. Though romantic love is most certainly a desirable part of marriage, marriage is not, and never has been at its roots, about romantic love. Marriage at its core is about commitment, lifelong love, and most importantly posterity.

The primary thrust of the gay agenda is to redefine marriage as simply a committed relationship between two romantically in love individuals. Then it simply becomes an equal protection issue and the gay couple argues they are being discriminated against for a relationship that they claim holds equal commitment and value to the heterosexual relationship. This argument breaks down because it ignores posterity and procreation. Children, in the eyes of history and the eyes of the state, are what differentiate the marriage arrangement from all other consensual adult arrangements. The state has always had a keen interest in the bearing and up bringing of children. Indeed that is why the state got in the business of registering and recognizing marriage in the first place. You don’t see the state registering and giving state benefits to boyfriends and girlfriends or to cohabiting couples. The state does, however, afford special benefits to single parents. In both marriage and parenthood the central interest of the state is the same???children. Now the gay community will argue that they can raise children as well–or better–than the next couple. They will hold up “poster child” examples of gay couples in supposed happy and financially secure situations raising children. I could go into studies illustrating the psychological and social damage on children brought on by gay parenting, but I will focus on the legal and historical aspects of this subject.

The very point, both legally and historically, is that the natural family would continue whether the government or science got involved or not. On the other hand, the gay family can only exist as a product of government and modern science. Children, the primary interest of the state, come to gay families only by means of legal adoption (a function of the law and state) and by artificial insemination, or some other form of surrogate parentage combined with adoption. These means of formulating the gay family are only realized through science and the law. It is very clear that there is no natural procreative ability between homosexual partners. The procreative ability between heterosexual couples is by contrast perfectly natural, and dates back to the start of known history. Thus, we see that a gay relationship is not naturally equal to a heterosexual relationship.

The opening statement of the Constitution proclaims that people are endowed with certain unalienable rights, and among these are “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness” (Constitution). The great enlightenment thinker John Locke called this natural law. He believed that natural law was not a creation or product of the state, but was to be protected by the state as these are the natural rights of all men inseparably connected to being human (Locke). Accordingly, without need of a secular description, it is boldly inscribed in our courthouses, on our currency, throughout our capitals; as also it is clearly written in the Declaration of Independence, Pledge of Allegiance, and the Constitution; including its oration by the vast majority of the Presidents of the United States, that we are endowed with these rights by God. Homosexuals may argue that they are in the pursuit of liberty and happiness; yet there is no logical means by which they are naturally in the pursuit of life. Indeed we may argue that the gay movement by its very nature is a movement in pursuit of death, its own extinction, for without the intervention of the state and modern science, homosexuality results in the termination of posterity. Thus, from the perspective of science and state we can see that the union of man, women, with their resulting children, and the gay union are polar opposites both in origin and fruit. Any argument to the contrary is hollow and irrational sophistry. The married union and the gay union should be treated unequally because they are unequal. What the homosexual cause is essentially arguing is that they should be given special preferences. They are debating for equal benefits where their relationships are unequal in importance to the future of society.

Inasmuch as posterity is of sufficient importance to the future of the state, the government has always made efforts to encourage the creation of natural families. The bearing and upbringing of children is, by its own nature, economically inefficient in the rules of commerce. If someone has less children they have more time to produce and can consume more goods, more vacations, more cars, more toys, and more clothes with much less effort. Having a family does not have a commercially quantifiable reward. Many place the argument that having children increases responsibility and denies individuals material comforts. This is true, and within the strict terms of money, it is more beneficial to not raise a family. The government has always understood this and has architected policy to counterbalance the natural disincentives to bringing children into life. They did this by getting in to the marriage business and creating special tax break incentives, public education, inheritance laws, and other mechanisms to encourage the responsible upbringing of children. In other words, the upbringing of our future.

The gay marriage movement is demanding the same perks and benefits and the same recognition as the natural family, even though they have no direct natural connection to the benefits that the natural family provides to the state. In effect what they are asking for is plainly benefits with no responsibility to shoulder the cost. On the whole the gay community does not raise children; those that do are the exception and not the norm (Dailey). The gay lifestyle is an individualistic lifestyle and as previously illustrated, by its very nature does not work to create families. We soon understand President Bush’s concerned statement on marriage, “After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence, and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization. Their actions have created confusion on an issue that requires clarity.”(Bush)

And so we have a real quandary and problem in that the positions on both sides of the argument, when distilled, can never be reconciled. Most of those against gay marriage have more traditional morals and find at the seed of their thinking an unwavering belief in God. In short, they believe homosexuality is sin. If the gay marriage movement succeeds, there will be no place for this type of religious adherent in public life. Because gays have radically and erroneously framed this debate as it were a repetition of the civil rights movements, once the right is gained, there will be no middle ground. If little Johnny goes to school and tells his teacher during health class that his dad and mom told him that for a man to be with another man is a sin abhorrent before God his parents will be labeled as intolerant and hateful bigots. Then the “open minded” officials of the system would be required by law to recognize and teach Jimmy that gay unions are normative and healthy as an alternative to traditional marriage. If the state recognizes gay marriage the secular responsibility of the government will be to socialize and shape the opinions in the minds of its citizens, particularly the children.

Legally and logically there can be no compromise. This is in fact the very objective of the gay movement, to overturn years of “prejudice” just as the civil rights movement did 40 years ago. And yet this has nothing to do with civil rights. It is about destroying a person’s notion of evil. It is about overturning all sense of right and wrong; and for most no discussion about good and evil in America can be separated from God and religion. I believe a successful gay marriage movement will logically bring about, in time, the greatest period of religious discrimination in the history of our country. The costs to society of recognizing gay marriage are frightening and incalculable. It will only bring about minimal and unwarranted benefits to only a fraction of the people in this country. In fact, one might argue that it will not ever benefit the gays, in that it will only perpetuate the culture of victimization and seek to undermine the power of constitutional law. I ask two questions: are you ready to pay the social and cultural price? Are you ready to see the expansion of benefits for a few rip at the fabric of freedom? For all of our sakes, I hope not. I will not pay that price.

Works Cited

Henry, Patrick. “Give Me Liberty or Give me Death”. Liberty Online Index. 1999. 1 Feb 2004
“The Constitution of the United States of America.” Legal Information Institute 14 Mar. 1993. 1 Feb
Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. NY, Hackett Publishing, 1990
Dailey, Timothy PhD. “Homosexual Parenting: Placing children at risk.” Orthodoxy Today 14 Mar. 2004. 5 Feb. 2004

“Bush calls for ban on same-sex marriages.” CNN 24 Feb. 2004. 24 Feb.2004

A lady in Redding, California lost 7 years of family history work. Very sad. She’s 81 and can’t recreate what she has done. I can see why folks want to preserve their family history in a safe place. This is why John’s advocates using FamilyLearn as a place to preserve genealogy and family history records.

I didn’t write this, John did when I missed our Internet marketing class. There are a ton of good links here and I want to record it.

Internet Success Kit

John from BackcountryStore.com spoke at Paul Allens e-business class at UVSC. He was amazing. He spoke about how to make money on the internet and about how very few people realize how cheap and easy it is to do. He gave us a piece of paper on it with a bunch of links that he called a "Kit", or, a recipe for creating a successful business online. Actually, what it is is a bunch of websites that are tools and reference points for setting up a successful business. I liked what he said so much that I’m posting it.

Here’s what he had on the paper:

"Poor people have expenses
Middle class people have liabilities they call assets
Rich people have income producing assets that pay for their liabilities"

-Robert T. Kiyosaki
Paraphrased from Rich Dad, Poor Dad

(I happen to be a huge fan of Rich Dad, Poor Dad)

Websites in no particular order:
www.backcountrystore.com — My Site
www.browserecam.com — Excellent web business
www.abestweb.com — affiliate community
www.cj.com — affilate network
www.webmasterworld.com — hardcore web geeks
www.notesfromtheroad.com — excellent affiliate
www.overture.com — pay per click advertising
www.google.com/adsense — get paid for pay per click advertising
www.skiersjournal.com — my affiliate site
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/?mkt=us — a way to search for good markets
www.wordtracker.com — pay per click word universe tool. Difficult to master.
www.amazon.com — Top affiliate company in the world
www.nureal.com –reasonable multi site hosting
www.websidestory.com — Hitbox professional reasonably priced web analytics
www.atomz.com — inexpensive ecommerce search
www.oscommerce.com — open source ecommerce web store
www.elance.com — programmers bidding on doing web work

Our efforts to optomize FamilyLearn are finally paying off. Though Google still seems to be settling their results for the month, it looks like we moved up to a pagerank of 6. John and I are so excited about this. All of our other sites are moving up as a result because I placed a link on the FamilyLearn home page to the FamilyLearn Management page which has links to www.utahrealestate-1st-time.com, www.albionvillage.com, www.jonasfam.com and more. They all went up as a result. I think FamilyLearn’s jump occurred because of the sitemap and a link from each inner page back to the home page. In addition, we did the 301 redirect from www.familylearn.org to www.familylearn.com and captured all those links. Finally, we picked up some more links. Plus the interconnection of all the sites must help in some way. It’s legitimate link building. This is great.

Google has only ever offered a toolbar to see your pagerank. Top 25 Web has created a page that returns your pagerank. I think they just released it last month.

Do’s

1. Do 1: Good presentation that addresses
   • Market Risk - The TAM (Total Addressable Market) should be at least 1 billion for VCs to pay any attention to you.
   • Product Risk - Why your product has the qualities to capture the market share you claim it will.
   • Execution Risk - Why your team can execute.
   • Financial Risk - That’s what the VCs are for.
2. Do 2: Have firm grasp on valuation
   • DCF - discounted cash flows
   • Training 12 month revenue - In technology, 1 million revenue trail makes the company worth 3-5 million.
   • Projected revenues 1-2X value.
   • Acquisitions - In the same industry with similar characteristics and revenue capabilities.
   • It’s best to ues a triangular approach to valuation - Use 3 of the possibilities.
3. Do 3: Nail the revenue! Understand your business projections because your reputation is on the line. You have to deliver or you lose credibility.
4. Do 4: Smart Money - If I win, who else wins? Go for money from the companies that will benefit as you are successful.
5. Do 5: VCs have two motives (Greed and Fear) - Use one or both. Always work with more than one VC firm at the same time and let the other know that you have options.

Don’t’s and Common Mistakes

1. Don’t resist managment changes. “If someone can make me money better than I can make me money, why should I complain?”
2. Not understanding valuation. You don’t want to lose more than 20-30 percent on the 1st or 2nd round. - “Pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered”
3. Not paying attention to the capital table. “If cash is King, equity is Queen.”
4. Not growing/hiring the right team.
   • Know when the founder should step down
   • A players hire other A players and B players hires C and D players so that they aren’t challenged.

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About

My name is Neal Harmon and I write here so that I don't forget what I learn. Hopefully, a few others can learn as well. More about what makes Neal tick.

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