Today I opened another business venture, this time to help businesses make their websites work better.

"Work better" covers a lot of ground, sure. But after toying with the idea for over a year it seems like a good time to put my technical knowledge of search engine marketing and conversion to good use.

The final push was when I met some local business owners last week who had established websites that were making money..yet one had a site where every page had the same page title. Another had no idea that meta descriptions were a key sales tool - they had none.

Basic stuff.

I realized then that even though I spend my time in forums with other geeks and experts in online marketing there were plenty of people who just didn't have the time - or desire - to learn all this. But they did have the ability to hire someone to help them.

So, duh.. I bought a domain and threw a site up. It's at www.HelpYourSite.com and I'm going to focus first on local businesses in the San Fernando Valley and surrounding area. That way I can meet with them regularly, in person, and I think provide a better level of service.

Wish me luck!

My latest website is www.ResistAttack.com - a site dedicated to educating people about how to keep themselves and their families safe, and sell them the products to do it.

Obvious products like stun guns and pepper sprays, but also hidden surveillance cameras too - even dummy cameras. There are some related products too, like hand held metal detectors that are popular with security firms, police forces and prison authorities. We have sold quite a few of those already.

Open since June, there is a long way to go, but i'm patient and know what I'm doing so in a year or two it'll be another successful website closer to retirement :)

My two latest ideas for small niche ecommerce sites: www.resistattack.com and www.sharpenem.com were setup on the server last night. It'll be an interesting next step after the success of the other ecommerce sites we've started.

It won't be without risks though - Jerry said that one of the niches was going to be a lot of work after looking at the NicheWatch results. Time will tell!

For a variety of reasons this blog will be leaving the Royal Tiki site permanently in the next few days.

It will reopen on my personal website in March when that site is updated.

See you on the flip side...

You may not have heard of a donkey jacket in the states, but I've always loved them since having one as a teenager in England. A few years ago now!

Anyway, I got inspired by all the recent talk of car club jackets on the HAMB so I tracked down someone who imports them over here. I could only find one importer, and luckily he was only 45 minutes away in downtown Atlanta!

I just picked mine up early this morning (gotta love that 7am traffic) and thought some of you might be interested. It's thick wool with PVC on shoulders and top of back.

Best part? $65!!!

I was looking at my YouTube favorites this evening and found an old gem that I still love. Taken from the Nicolas Cage movie Gone in 60 Seconds - I think it was on the DVD under special features - you can find the music video here on YouTube.

Looking on iTunes came up empty though, and although Amazon lists it, it's out of stock.

Of course, Google is now completely overrun by spam-like sites that display the lyrics of songs so little joy to be found by searching for the name.

Does anyone know if it is available somewhere?

Sorry about this folks, but starting tonight (Friday, January 18th) I am going to be renaming the categories on the site.

Inevitably this will cause some broken links for a few days. The site itself should be fixed up overnight, but Google will update its links "in due course" as always.

I know this reflects badly on us, but it's important enough that I felt it should be done sooner rather than later. In the big scheme of things, it's no big deal. As I get older I'm trying to not stress the little stuff. That said, I wanted to at least post an apology for those of you that hit a missing page.

To try and distract you, here is a picture my kid drew..

Yes, it's that time again - join us at the Southern Skillet on Sunday at 9am. We'll be the bunch of guys at the back talking hot rods...

Read more on the HAMB

Continuing on my journey through tiki world, today I am listening to the syrupy tones of Vegas Vic in his Tiki Lounge podcast.

I use iTunes to listen to music while at work, so I simply subscribed to the podcast using this iTunes link and got all episodes.

I'm currently on episode 3, back from June 2005

Believe it or not, I've only just joined at the Tiki Central forums. I've been there before of course, but only quickly and never to linger long enough to read much. 

Too much time spent on the HAMB I guess.

Last night I jumped on and introduced myself. One question came up quite quickly - is music on web sites more acceptable nowadays? Obviously myspace is the big fish and every profile page plays music. So the kids are used to it. It was always a laughable offense to put blinking text and music on web sites - but now I'm not so sure about the music.

Many tiki and hot rod sites play cool music now. I visited www.thehukilau.com and loved the music!

What do you think? Tell me below.. cos otherwise the next time you visit you might find music here..