Top Boat Sites: Our top 100 boating sites website

I had to make a change to Top Boat Sites today to help curb spam on the site. So I decided to write about the site and give an general explanation of what a Top Site is.
http://www.topboatsites.com/

Top Boat Sites is a top 100 site. Top Sites are websites that have links to other websites. Usually the sites are related by content. This Top Sites theme is Boating. The links to the different sites are displayed on the page ranked by unique incomming clicks. The more unique inbound clicks the higher the site is ranked on the page. Next to the In bound clicks is how many outbound clicks the site has had. Also displayed is a banner going to the site. I've added a neat feature to Top Boat Sites, at least I think, the ability for a site to display their Top Boat Sites rank on their site. Here's what it looks like.

Top 100 Sites

Hopefully this site will rank better in the long run. :)

So to sum up. Top Sites usually are great generators of traffic for both the site itself and the other sites that are listed on the Top Site. Top Sites also help with search engine ranking and ranking of the Top Site itself. More incomming links gives the Top Site a better Page Rank. And since the Top Site links to the other sites. It helps to improve those sites Page Rank also.

What can you make a vid of on a boat?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080725152417AALiu2a&r=w&pa=FZptHWf.BGRX3OFPgDNWVOALjOHPpC7aXphxVIhI_41SLHKNrQ--&paid=answered#NbUvWza0UjP5nm_ftzGc

Well I was looking around on Yahoo Answers yesterday and found someone asking the question.

"I'm going on a cruize with my friend, and we don't know what to make a vid of!"

And I answered them with the following.

one of the cool things about boating is that anything can happen at any
time. this however presents a challenge to taping video because:

1. You won't necessarily know when to have the camera on
2. You might not have enough space on your video tape.
3. Your battery might run out of power.

A few months ago I went out on my friends dads boat. And we saw a sea
turtle. I wanted to take a picture of the turtle but didn't have my camera out
to take a pic of it in time.

So a few rules to follow:
1. Action can happen at any time. Have your camera ready to tape.
2. Get extra batteries or if the boat has a power hookup. Get a power
cord.
3. Bring extra storage or video tape.
4. Tape your friends and or family when they are doing something. You never
know when you might catch a classic moment.

I guess to sum up. Just have the video cam on you. make sure you have
enough power for a few hours of taping. And bring enough video tape or video
storage for a few hours of video.You will never know when or where something
interesting will happen that's worth you taping. So just be ready.

Writing effective articles

Today at work our boss asked me to write some guidelines on how to post articles for everyone who works here at eBoat Loans. What follows is the email I sent out.


A few tips on writing articles.
Your title should be "Keyword Rich." The first 3-4 words of your TITLE determines the success of the article in terms of how much traffic your article will generate...so choose the first 3-4 words wisely.
Example of a Bad Keyword TITLE:
Top 9 Ways to Acquire Fractional Jet Ownership
Example of a Good Keyword TITLE:
Fractional Jet Ownership - 9 Strategies to Help You Acquire Your Private Jet

Standard articles have anywhere from 200 words to no more than 5,000 words. The article should have a keyword density of about 2 to 8 percent. That’s roughly using the keyword once or twice per paragraph.

Your article should be informative/opinionated and concise. You don’t want to bore the reader. If you want you can put most of your information in the first paragraph and then expound upon that information in the following paragraphs. Most article writers have learned that if you put the meat of the article in the first paragraph readers are more apt to read the rest of the article.

If your grammar is not the best, you can always write your article in word first and then copy and paste it into your blog.

It’s ok to use quotes from other articles and or pictures and youtube video in your blog post. You can comment on the article and or pictures or youtube video.
For example you can do your post on your customer’s new boat he or she sent you pictures of and how he or she likes it. Maybe even ask the customer to send you some video of their new boat and upload it to youtube.
Basically try to make your post fun and interesting to people.
People that surf the net are out there to either be entertained or to look up the answer to a question they have. If your posts fall into that category they will be popular.

If your blog has a tags feature, use it. Tags are basically keywords that are apart from the article but still on the page and they help with search engine rankings.
My suggestion is to write the article first and then use the google keyword tool and then edit the article and input the tags.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal






Follow the link, click on the website content radio button. And put the direct link to your single article not the blog homepage. Click the Get keyword ideas button.
After you do that google will generate some keywords for you. Use the keywords that best fit your article. Use maybe 10-20 at most.

The links below are good ones on writing articles.

http://www.ezilon.com/articles/articles/530/1/Checklist-For-Writing-Effective-Articles
http://ezinearticles.com/?Article-Marketing-and-Copywriting-Secret:-How-To-Make-Your-Article-TITLE-Sell&id=20000
http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/
http://www.searchenginecollege.com/articles/2007/11/how-keywords-affect-your-rankings.html
http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/online/articlewriting.htm
http://www.isitebuild.com/article-writing-2.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=writing+effective+articles&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLJ
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-us%3AIE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7GGLJ&q=how+to+write+an+article

Used US boats selling well in Europe

Now this is very interesting. It seems that even though the boating industry here in the US has been hit hard by the economy. Used boat sales, especially those boats that have been used in freshwater only, are doing well via overseas buyers.

Since the dollar has declined vs many european currencies, many buyers from europe are now finding that they are able to get more for their money by buying used american boats. The article says.

The upside of the weak U.S. dollar is that American goods look better and better
to foreign buyers. Five years ago, 20,000 euros would have bought a boat worth
about $17,500. Today, it buys a boat worth more than $31,000.

This of course is great news for boat dealers that are being hit hard by the economy. It's pretty amazing though that almost half of some dealers business is now going overseas.

Rick Fulmer, vice president of sales and marketing for Cadillac-based Four Winns
boats, said about 40% of his company's sales are going abroad, including
various sizes of boats shipped to Canada, and larger models to Europe and
Australia

It seems that the week dollar is producing a boating boom not just amongst the wealthy but also the middle class. I just hope everyone can survive the economical slump and stay in business.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080727/NEWS06/807270553&imw=Y

OMG it's the biggest Bass I've ever seen.

Wow this fish is so big it doesn't even look real.
It's probably a 550lb bass. Not a world record but pretty close in my opinion.
I don't even know how they got the fish inside the boat.
Watch the vid it's cool.

Kevins boat loan blog

Kevin is eBoat Loans CTO and he just started up his own boat loan blog.
Go check it out and see what he has to say.
http://weblog.xanga.com/friendlyoutdoors

Maria's Boat Title Answers Blog

Maria is our Title & Registration Specialist here at eBoat Loans. She handles getting our customers title's, registration and coast guard documentation. She has started a blog about what she does. Head on over and take a look. Boat Title Answers

Maria has written a really good article on how to decipher a Boat's Hull Identification Number. It goes indepth and explains how to read a boat's hull id.

eYacht Loans Window Graphic

After testing out our eboat Loans window graphic. And seeing how good it looked. We decided to add on the other side a window graphic for eYacht Loans.

As you can see the eYacht Loans window graphic looks great!

And they both look good together at night.

Eboat Window Graphic

Now that we have our office up in Fort Lauderdale with a great storefront on US-1. We decided to put a nice window graphic on the windows that face the street.


Here is the finished eboat window graphic.








And here is a shot from the street.

Miami Beach International Boat Show

We had a good time going to the Miami Beach International Boat Show.

The boats looked great as usual. The people were friendly and we got to see alot of cool things. I especially liked the floating boat lifts.

Here is a shot of our eboat loans flag that's on our booth.











Here's our eboat table cloth. It looks great in person.











Here's a shot of the yamaha boats area in front of our booth.

And here's another shot to the right of our booth

Home Despot

Since I've been dealing with Home Despot lately I've decided to repost what happened to me several years ago.




My trip to Home Depot where multiplication isn't their thing.

Well I went to Home Depot on the night of 3-17-04 looking for materials to make shelving with my mom. And things were going well; I found a good parking spot close to the entrance.
I walked in, went to the lumber section and found the wood I was looking for.
I got 5 pieces of board 16? x 42? x ?? board for 4 dollars a board. Plus some wood to hold up the boards 12 pieces of 16? and 4 pieces of 24? long wood at 80 cents a foot.
I even met Oscar who nice enough to cut all my lumber to the size I specified. Plus he even wrote down on a little piece of paper all the wood lengths for the person at the register.
I also met a very helpful guy that helped me get dry wall anchors, 2? screws and a level.

Now up to this point things are going swimmingly well and the only hurdle left is the register. Of course this is where all my problems start.
So I get to the register I hand the girl there (Catherine?s her name) the level which she scans. No problem.
I hand her the screws, dry wall anchors and some other small items. Still cool at this point.
Now we get to the wood. She looks at the boards rummages around for the UPC code and finds it. Ok still good.
Now here is where things get interesting. The small pieces of wood seem to baffle the register girl.

Before moving along just to clarify things. This wood costs 80 cents per foot. I have 12 pieces of wood that are 16? long and 4 pieces of wood that are 26? long and the measurements and quantities conveniently written down by Oscar to help facilitate the person at the register. Ya?ll with me? Good.

Ok so at this point Catherine starts to get agitated. She seems to be having a problem trying to figure out how much she should be charging me.
She looks at me and asks me who cut this wood for her? Oscar I tell her. She then grabs the phone and pages for Oscar. Oscar calls her and she has a short conversation with him.
At this point I just know that I?m in for at least a 10 min wait.
I look behind me and see this poor guy in line. I?m like better find another line this is going to take a while.
So I turn back and Catherine is now complaining to herself about how the person who cut the lumber should have put down how many feet of wood I am getting. Since of course the wood is sold by the foot.
Catherine is now thoroughly frustrated with this weighty problem. She can?t seem to figure out how many feet of wood is in my shopping cart. Even though Oscar wrote everything down for her. Giving up she starts to look for help and calls over a supervisor.

At this point I?m beginning to get annoyed and start stroking my beard. But I keep the faith and hope that the person coming will solve my wood issue.
Unfortunately Kelly didn?t seem to have a clue either about how to find out how many feet of wood I should be charged for.

Finally I?ve had enough and I ask Catherine what?s the problem. She starts to complain about how Oscar didn?t write down how many feet of wood I should be charged for.
So I look at the paper Oscar gave me and I say ?What do you mean? The answer to your question is right here. You just have to do a little math to figure it out.?
BLINK BLINK
?Oh that?s too complicated?, says Catherine .
?No it?s not.?, I say.
?Yeah it is. It?s too complicated to figure out.?, says Catherine .
Ok so now I?m started to get agitated myself.
So I give Catherine the Greg Sherwood look that says, are you really that stupid?
?What do you mean it?s too complicated to figure out? This is third grade math here.? I say rather loudly.
Now both Catherine and Kelly look at me. And I don?t give a fuck what they think I just want to go home already.
So I ask Kelly for a calculator and Catherine for the paper from Oscar. I then begin to show them how you figure this out with a calculator.
I?m like. Ok we got 12 pieces of wood that are 16? long that?s 192 inches. And we have 4 pieces of wood that are 26? long that?s 104 inches. Now we take 192 and 104 and add them giving us a total of 296 inches. Now we take that amount and divide it by 12 why? Well because there are 12 inches in a foot. Giving us a total of 24.67 feet. So you need to charge me for 25 feet of wood.
So problem now solved in less than a minute I might add Catherine starts ringing me up.
My mom looks at me and says, ?Are you sure you did that right??
And I say ?Sure I did mom, this is like 3rd grade math it isn?t complicated at all.?
So with that we pay and get out of there. But not before I get Catherine and Kelly?s name for this story.

end of week function for the previous week

I needed a PHP function that would give the date for the end of the week for the previous week.
Here's what i came up with.

function endofweek(){

$thisdate = date('Y-m-d');
$dayofweek = date('w', strtotime($thisdate));
$sunday = date('Y-m-d', strtotime("-$dayofweek days"));
return $sunday;

}

Leave a comment if you find this useful. :)

Do not ever go to wendy's on biscayne and 79th street in miami

Holy crap does this wendy's suck the big one.

normally I'm very fond of wendy's restaurants. however this wendy's was horrible.
it took about 10 minutes for them to help each customer. each!
and there was this one lady that asked for coffee and kept on getting the same nasty ass coffee that was sitting there for like the past 5 hours.
apparently that's a flaw with wendy's don't ever buy coffee there unless you absolutely sure it's fresh. that and for some reason they mix their coffee and tea sometimes and you get cofftea. pretty nasty shit.

so in any case stay away from wendy's on 79th and biscayne. lousy service and horrific coffee.

Crappy service

Well looks like this weekend service in miami was crappy as usual.

I went with my girlfriend to have breakfast at the Latin American cafeteria on Lejune road by hialeah hospital in hialeah.
The people were nice there and the food was good however a few things sucked. Don't ever order the orange juice there. They use a juicer that smashes the oranges and the oranges aren't peeled so you get to taste the rind and it totally ruins the taste of the OJ.
I also ordered my eggs with american cheese and of course I got swiss cheese in my eggs instead. It wasn't what I wanted but it tasted pretty good so I didn't send my eggs back. Also tell them to go easy on the butter when they do your cuban toast or tell them to toast your toast some more.

And also later that night I ate at the Pollo Tropical on Lejune and 36th street.
Very crappy service. I ordered a chicken tropichop & fries. The guy at the register got my order all wrong.
I asked for a tropichop with white rice and they gave me just white rice.
then i told them i wanted what was in the picture up on the board and they proceeded to add black beans. I told them uhhh... just like the picture up on the board.
they got that right but then they forgot my fries. so i just stood there looking at the chick that gave me my food and she was confused as to why i was still there. I told her you forgot my fries she gave them to me and then I asked for ketchup. OMG! she told me she didn't have any. I had to ask the manager that was right there for some ketchup. got it and left.
:(

Naaachoo!!!!!!!!!!

I saw Nacho Libre today.
Jack Black is definately one of those guys with alot of talent and no idea of where to focus it.
As expected the movie was stupidly funny.
Check it out when you get a chance.

Websafe colors

I made a script that will display websafe colors. rather than running around and looking for a color chart i made my own.

$values = array('00','33','66','99','cc','ff');

$endval = "6";
$endval2 = $endval - 1;
for($a=0;$a<$endval;$a++){
echo "<table width=\"900\"><tr>";
for($b=0;$b<$endval;$b++){

for($c=0;$c<$endval;$c++){
$bgcolor = $values[$a].$values[$b].$values[$c];

echo "<td bgcolor=\"". $bgcolor ."\">".$values[$a].$values[$b].$values[$c]."</td>";
if($c == "$endval2"){
echo "</tr>\n<tr>";

}
}
}

echo "</tr></table>\n";
}

Link cleaning

I was working on some of our sites today.
http://www.anythingboats.com/
http://www.anythingrvs.com/
http://www.anythingmotorcycles.com/
http://www.anythingplanes.com/

I was cleaning out some of the crappy sites that put links on our link pages.
I'm reading that linking to spammy sites might not be the best thing to do.
and I removed people that signed up to the forums just for the links to their websites.
alot of russians seem to be looking for places to put their links.

Alberto Solano - Try to take over the world!

Alberto Solano - Try to take over the world!

I made a cool php function that will display the current roman year on a webpage for you.
It can easily be modified so you can pass it your own year value.
Cool if I do say so myself. =]

Alberto Solano - Try to take over the world!

Alberto Solano - Try to take over the world!

I created this very cool script in php that tells you when a search engine crawler is crawling your website.
googlebot, slurp, msnbot etc.

check it out.

Boat Financing, Yacht Financing and Boat Loans. BFO, marine finance made easy!

Boat Financing, Yacht Financing and Boat Loans. BFO, marine finance made easy!

Did some optimization of keywords today to this website.
I upped the keyword count hopefully it will do better in the search results.