I have received a number of inquiries from subscribers to my periodic newsletter requesting more

I will start with the commercials and then move to the helpful hints.

MY NEW DISPLAYS.....

In the area of fossils and minerals I have some real beauties - many in the $20 range. Among those are 5" x 7" framed displays of 12 different fossils, 16th century birth stones, gems and minerals of the Bible, and some outstanding individual fossils - giant trilobites, orthoceras plaques, fossil fish, etc. They can be found on my web site at: www.hotlinecy.com/fossils.htm.

In the area of miscellaneous displays, I have created displays of fragments from the U.S.S. Constitution (Old Ironsides), Lincoln’s law office, the Old North Church, and Andersonville Prison.

I have been somewhat delinquent in putting together new Civil War relic displays, but I do have a few - including an 8" x 10" display of 18 different Civil War bullets, and 5" x 7" 7-bullet displays from a half dozen different battle areas - including Antietam, Gettysburg, Shiloh, Corinth and Fredericksburg.

As far as other militeria, I have a new display that contains some of the actual sand from Iwo Jima’s "Green Beach," as well as displays that contain items from Napoleon’s battle at Waterloo, musket balls from the Battle of San Jacinto, displays containing crossbow and longbow points from the 14th century, and a new WWII display that contains a relic and a small amount of sand from the beaches at Normandy.

I have added many outstanding Hero Autograph Displays. I am in the process of creating some 2,000 different ones of Medal of Honor recipients, UK Victoria Cross recipients, German Knights Cross recipients, and even several of WWII Japanese heroes. My other similar displays range from movie actors who served in WWII, Navajo Code Talkers, aces from around the world, and non-military heroes such as discoverers, astronomers, medical inventions, and more.

HERO AUTOGRAPHS...

My German partner, Bernd Poser, and I have a huge inventory of hand-signed photos of WWII German Knights Cross recipients, U.S. Medal of Honor recipients, and a few UK Victoria Cross recipients. I have been spending much of my time creating new album pages for these items and updating the US website. Our US website (www.hotlinecy.com) contains primarily postwar signed items and our German site has primarily warsigned items (www.heroautographs.com).

As many know, fossils and minerals are not my area of expertise. I fell into an outstanding opportunity and took advantage of it. Years ago when I was on the board of directors of the Museum of East Texas, I met and established a rapport with a wholesaler who called on our museum gift shop other museum gift shops and rock shops across the country. I’ve always been fascinated with fossils and minerals and occasionally bought a few from Danny when he came to Lufkin. Upon my retirement we came up with an arrangement that worked well for both of us. Danny does no retail sales. He has no regular showroom - only two strategically placed warehouses where he stocks his mobile showroom when his stock runs low. We got together where he refers any potential retail customers to me and I refer potential resellers to him. It has been a great relationship. I maintain a fairly decent inventory of more popular items and draw from his warehouses when necessary. The problem with including these items in my catalog is that the inventory constantly changes. I can picture similar items, but the item pictured may or may not be available. Also, there are always new items. Anyone interested in fossils or minerals are invited to send me their wish list. We have everything from tumbled stones to very expensive museum quality fossils and minerals. Since I have no storefront and a minimal stock, my retail prices are not much more than a reseller pays for the item and substantially less than their retail prices.  Two of my favorites are displays containing authentic hair from a pre-historic Woolly Mammoth and another companion display that contains an authentic fragment from a Woolly Mammoth tusk.

I would suspect that most subscribers, like I, receive a large amount of .junk. email or .spam.. There are many ways you can cut down on spam and rather than going into those techniques, if you are interested you can find links to a number of anti-span sites at http://spam.abuse.net/others/sites.html.

I will receive over 150 email messages each day at my main address. Much of that is spam. However, some of that spam may appear interesting, so I forward it to my free Hotmail address. I do not respond from my main address, nor do I asked to be removed from that address. By responding, you have made your address more valuable to spammers because now you are a confirmed address. I simply hold down my control key and go through my downloaded email scanning the subject field. It is pretty easy to determine most of the spam messages (though some are getting rather creative). I then click on the ones that are obviously spam and after I've scrolled through and highlighted all of the spam, I simply hit my delete key and they are gone. On my Hotmail address there is rarely any information worth keeping other than the message(s) I forwarded, so I scan through the inbox to make certain, then delete all of the messages. On the messages I forwarded to my Hotmail address, I will respond to and ask that they reply to another free email address I have on Yahoo. Generally, the only messages in my Yahoo inbox are personal responses from the spammer I replied to. If I start getting new spam to that address I simply delete that address and sign up for a new one. It sounds time consuming but it actually takes very little time to go through this routine.

You can have one of the most professionally produced web sites on the Internet but if you do not spend the time to get new visitors to your site it does you no good. I use a newsletter like this as well as including my URL in every piece of mail that goes out of my office and every piece of printed material I hand out. In addition I use an outstanding and inexpensive service I found - http://www.trafficzilla.com. There are many similar type sites on the Internet. I test drove several of them and selected Traffic Zilla because they had so many features I liked. My favorites are Pay for Position, where I bid on keywords with the search engines. I pay between $.02 and $.05 per click through to get listed at or near the top of search engines and it works. I also like FFA Blaster, Classified Ad Submitter and Press Release Blaster. The FFA Blaster enables me to automatically send my URL and a one-line description to thousands of free link sites. The Classified Ad Submitter is a semi-automatic utility that enables me to submit classified ads to hundreds of free classified ad sites. The Pres Release Blaster enables me to automatically send my press release free to thousands of media outlets in almost 100 categories, increasing my chance of getting my release into the hands of the proper editor. There are many other features, but these are the ones I use most. This does work because since I have been using the service I have seen an increase in both traffic and sales. I'm not getting rich off it, but every promotional tool I can use helps a little.

Everyone has something to share that others may find valuable. Over the years I have published scores of these self published booklets and some continue to be excellent sellers years after I first wrote them. With today's Internet and low cost equipment, it is easier than ever to get into. All you need in the way of equipment is a computer, a decent laser printer or copier that will duplex (print on two sides) a table-top saddle stapler, a scanner, and a high resolution color ink-jet printer to print your covers (like an Epson Stylus Color 777). In addition to the equipment you will need one or two software packages. I prefer to use Word as my text editor and PageMaker to do my page makeup, but there are less expensive applications. I felt I could justify the higher-end software because I was familiar with it (that's the software I used before I sold my printing company and retired in 1995) and it makes me a lot of bottom line profit. Let's take my latest booklet as an example - Creating Profitable Displays - An ideal home business that can be started on a shoestring.. This is a 32-page booklet plus cover and it is a tutorial covering every aspect of the creation of my displays. This is a new booklet and I have sold several hundred copies at $9.95 each. You can get a free Acrobat PDF file of this booklet free on my web site at http://www.hotlinecy.com/displaysbooklet.pdf . Note that if you decide to take this route, you should share all of the information you have on the subject. There is nothing more frustrating to a buyer of a how-to book or booklet than to purchase it and find that critical information is omitted. Your booklet should be a complete tutorial - not a tool to entice individuals to purchase your product. In this case, your booklet is your product.

As most of my subscribers are aware, online auctions can be a great source of income. For many, it is their sole source of income. Others look for outstanding bargains for personal use. When it comes to selling online, keep in mind that regardless of how unique you feel your item may be, there may well be many similar items offered. Before posting an item, search the auction to see if anyone else is offering a similar item and what they are offering it for. If you decide to post the item, spend the time to write the best description you can and include a good picture. Your starting price should be what you hope to get for the item. That way, if you get just one bid you are happy and do not dump a nice item at a very low price. In the case of books, check out the book search on my web site at http://www.hotlinecy.com/searchbooks.htm. Look for your book among the 15 million or so available titles and see what others are offering that book for. I always start my books at the average price. Buyers should do the same. If you are looking for a DVD, I always steer away from foreign sellers - especially those in the Eastern countries. Those low priced DVDs are generally lower quality counterfeits. What I look for are sellers who offered used DVDs. After all, a copy of .Saving Private Ryan. that is factory sealed and one that has been viewed once is about the same in most cases - except for the price. When searching for an item, look at those that are about ready to close and have no bids. My daughter gave me a list of 10 DVDs she wanted for Christmas. I've found 5 of them so far on eBay, viewed, and at less than $10 each. Online auctions are almost as good as garage sales in finding items you can make a profit on. Whatever your area of expertise or interest is, search for those items on your favorite auction site. Again, look for items that are getting ready to close and items that have no bids. If you are the successful bidder and want to resell the item, once you receive it, write a better description and post the auction with a better picture(s). Give added value to your purchase. My baby daughter has gotten me interested in .heroes.. I've built a huge collection of heroes from various countries for her and have enough autographs and other info that I can create really nice displays for sale for many years. Take a look at my http://www.hotlinecy.com/moh.htm. I can turn a $10 autograph into $29 by giving it added value.

I live deep in the heart of beautiful East Texas and unfortunately many of our citizens, though wonderful people, are dumber than dirt. Our local newspaper has a daily .Sound Off . column and that column is filled with letters from these mentally challenged citizens who feel that our President's proposal to stimulate the economy is nothing more than another .perk. for corporate America. It should not take a rocket scientist to realize that it is corporate America who creates jobs. Back in the Reagan days when we had one of the largest tax cuts in history, I owned a small printing company. Reagan's tax cuts and investment credit program enabled me to add two employees and still increase my bottom line profit. Granted, Reagan's tax cuts increased my profits, but at the same time I was able to add two new employees with the result of adding even more to my bottom line. It is business that creates new jobs and sparks the economy, not those individuals who stand in the unemployment lines. It is those standing in the unemployment lines who benefit most from business tax cuts. That is what is known as the free market system.

Those who tend towards the liberal persuasion believe in larger government and more government benefits, while those who lean towards the more conservative view, prefer a smaller government with the citizen being more responsible for his/her opportunities. The conservative believes that those individuals who are capable of providing for themselves should do so and those who are not, should be looked at on an individual basis locally rather than a one-size-fits-all. If you are capable of supporting yourself and elect not to do so, the citizens owe you nothing and you should sleep in the bed you have made for yourself. However, if you are not capable of providing for yourself, you are relegated to the politically incorrect status of a 2nd class citizen and it is the responsibility of the productive segment of our society to assume that responsibility of supporting you.

We are approaching the annual period of gift giving. I have many new items on my website that may fit in with your giving. Please visit my site at www.hotlinecy.com and see if there may not be a unique gift in one of the areas on my 250+ page site that might just what you are looking for. By December 1 I will have a special gift area on my site. All orders entered by December 14 will have a guaranteed delivery date of that magic day.

Till next time, God bless you and yours...

cy