:Clear Skin Blog

OK, I wake up and check the sales like usual. All looks well. I login to my hosting control panel for Acne-Vitamins-Shop (where our shopping cart is hosted separately from Acne-Vitamins). Low and behold, there’s a brand new GUI staring at me. It actually looks good - more streamlined than the old interface, with less pointless graphics and more information at my finger tips. So far so good. Next I login to the admin control panel for our shopping cart, and then it happens (dun dun duhhhh…), it’s not loading. Stay calm, I repeat to myself. The cart eventually loads, but the records of our customers and orders are not showing up, just the heading and a blank space underneath. This is bad. The status bar on my browser window mocks me with the message: “done”, even though I know the page has not really loaded. I try to search for a specific order number. Yes! It comes up, so the database is still intact, I just can’t see the data anymore! What is going on with Netfirms!? After an angry and panicked email, the data suddenly starts loading - just long enough for me to finish printing out the day’s orders - and then the problem repeats. Wonderful!

Obviously, there must be some kind of major overhaul going on at Netfirms, but it sure as heck is inconvenient. I’ve had a number of customers today who tried to order and received time-out errors due to their clogged servers, so they better get their act together fast. This server update has seriously shaken up their usually reliable speeds. You know it’s serious when you can’t even load your customer data from the admin area. I know Netfirms is one of the biggest web hosts on the net (over 1 million sites hosted, businesses of all sizes), so an update from them is likely to take some time, but I really hope I don’t have to go through all this again when I wake up tomorrow.

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Our next acne treatment product is getting closer to release, and I’m pretty excited about it. Last week I helped finalize the label design, so hopefully I will get the proof for signing soon. Then it’s just a matter of waiting for the new shipment to arrive (and then doing a bunch of tedious site re-designing). The new product is a basic upgrade to All-in-1 that addresses a lot of the improvements that customers have told me they would like to see. It will eventually zone out All-in-1 entirely and become the main product for Acne-Vitamins, but I will be keeping our current product in stock as well - as long as there are still customers that want it.

The new acne tablets will be about half the size of our current ones, so as to be easier to swallow (there will of course be twice as many in a bottle), and will feature a bunch of supplemental ingredients that will aid the effectiveness of the formula, and more directly, lessen the chances of any side effects for users. I will reveal all our new ingredients in the coming weeks, but I’ve already mentioned that Biotin will be an important new addition to the formula. With the amount of Biotin in our new pills, your chances of developing a Biotin deficiency will be close to zero (I’ve previously mentioned the relationship between vitamin B5 and Biotin, but to summarize, high-dose B5 users who have been going at it for more than 4 months may benefit from a Biotin supplement in order to keep your Biotin levels from being reduced by the B5). If “new acne treatment product” sounds a little vague, that’s because I don’t really want to reveal the name until I’ve trademarked it and finished the new website graphics. It will not be called All-in-1, but rather something totally different. I’m rather fond of the new brand name…

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It seems that Google is showing some major changes is its search results recently, with a lot of pages jumping up and down in the serps. Apparently plenty of other webmasters are noticing this as well. It’s hard to say whether what we’re seeing is a long-awaited “Google update” or not, but Acne-Vitamins seems to be benefiting in any case. Of course, the jumps I’ve seen with the site may simply be due to the new inbound links I’ve picked up by means of writing that B5 acne treatment article (I’ve got to write more of those! The article is now showing up on 150 different pages according to Google, and is outranking my main site for all similar vitamin b5 and acne search terms - at least it’s bringing some extra traffic.). Links are still the most important ranking factor for Google, and all those I’ve gained by writing that article are one-way incoming links, which always helps.

Acne-Vitamins is now showing up on page 2 of the results for both “acne vitamins” and “vitamins for acne”, and that’s a lot better than before (I was previously jumping between page 8 and 15). Am I out of the sandbox? It certainly looks that way with regards to some of my search terms. You usually don’t get to page 2 with a sandboxed website. However, the fact that I’m still not even in the first 100 search results for “vitamin b5 acne treatment” leads me to believe that I’ve still got a little longer to wait before my site is really listed naturally without the handicaps. There’s a chance I still have some kind of penalty dating back to when the site kept fluctuating between the www and non-www versions, but I’d imagine that filter should be lifting soon if this is the case. Oh well, any improvement is a good thing. Maybe in a few more months I’ll actually make the first page!

For anyone out there considering starting their own e-business, take my advice: Don’t expect traffic from Google in the first year! It sounds crazy, but this is a reality that you should be prepared for. Newer sites will not rank well for anything but the most obscure keywords. It’s taken this long for Acne Vitamins, and my keywords are not exactly very competitive. Focus on MSN and Yahoo when starting out, as you can usually get somewhere in these engines a lot faster. Just don’t cross that ethical line of trying to fool the search engines, or you may end up banned.

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A recent email has me rethinking the way I word some of our material on Acne Vitamins, namely defining two bottles of All-in-1 as a “2-month supply.” Naturally, the disclaimer that dosage varies for different skin types is obvious enough, but I can see how the skeptical visitor might take this the wrong way. For me, it never occurred that labeling each bottle as a month supply would be a problem, as for the average user this time span is about right (25 days at 2 tablets per day). However, not everyone that purchases at Acne Vitamins is the “average user”, and I have a growing number of customers who require 3 tablets per day when starting out. For those who now have mostly clear skin, a single bottle can go well over a month, lasting as long as 50 days. It’s just that I shouldn’t really need to have a bunch of disclaimers and explanations about how long a bottle will last in different circumstances, and so I might as well just change the wording, thus saving myself the trouble and being as transparent as possible to my visitors. When my updated product line arrives in a few weeks, I guess I’ll simply state the selection as a “2 bottle supply” instead (I’ll be making a bunch of other site changes as well with the new product line, but I’ll save those for a later blog…). So there! One email can make a difference.

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It’s funny when the people at the UPS Store know what you want as soon as they see you walk in the door. I’ve become famous for buying tons of 6-cube and 9×5x5 boxes on a regular basis for Acne-Vitamins, even though I know I’m wasting money that would go a lot farther if I bought them in bulk online. Of course, the vast majority of the boxes Acne-Vitamins uses are purchased in bulk from online shipping stores such as uline.com, but there’s always the odd-size order that doesn’t necessarily justify needing 500 boxes on-hand for. For these I just drop by the UPS Store and pay 5 times as much as I would online (seriously, boxes I pay 40 cents for online cost $2 at the UPS Store, but I do it anyways!). Why do I do it? I don’t know! At first I thought it was the simple convenience of having the store nearby and not needing to stock a bunch of boxes that would be taking up space and hardly being used. However, these irregular orders at Acne-Vitamins are becoming more and more regular, and I really should just start stocking up.

Why can’t I break the habit? I think I’ve figured it out. You see, at my particular UPS Store they always have this pal of Jelly Belly jellybeans just sitting there, daring you to taste the many flavors. And the workers encourage you! “Please, help yourself.” “Take as much as you want.” “They’ll just go to waste otherwise.” The temptation is just too great to resist, and with so many colorful flavors, I could spend every day at the UPS Store just trying to taste them all. It’s an evil and ingenious marketing plan that I am defenseless against. So what am I supposed to do? Maybe if my loyal customers start sending me Jelly Bellys…^_^

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With my recent entry about HD TVs and their essential role in the next generation of gaming consoles, you can probably tell I’m a little excited about the upcoming systems (all of them, actually). There has particularly been a lot of buzz about the Xbox 360 lately, mainly because it is closer to launch and has shown off a lot more demos and footage than the few teasers we’ve seen from the PS3 (and even less from the Revolution). While some not-so-bright gamers feel that the graphics jump offered by the 360 is only slightly above the current generation of systems, I feel confident that this sentiment will disappear once people see this machine for themselves. The first-person-shooter Gears of War has garnered the most attention from graphics aficionados, but for me, the real reason to own the system is the upcoming Bethesda RPG - Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (pictured), which may finally convert me over to being a fan of western-style RPGs (I’ve always been a fan of Japanese RPGs such as Final Fantasy, but it’s getting a little tiresome rehashing the same formula again and again).

The Elder Scrolls series has always had a cult following of fans due to its extremely open ended go-anywhere, do-anything design. While exploring a vast world where you can choose your own destiny sounds fun, I was never too impressed by the look of previous titles (the style of the graphics didn’t exactly portray a world that I wanted to explore), and the rather stiff combat system kept me from bothering. I have to say, Oblivion looks both amazing and mysterious, and from the videos I’ve seen the combat appears to be much more natural than the stand-and-swing-away battles I remember seeing my college roommate slug through. Despite very positive outlooks from reviewers who have spent some time demoing the game, there’s still a chance the final product will fail to deliver. However, after the latest demonstration videos (up now at gametrailers.com), I’m seriously doubting it. There’s just so much detail that has gone into this presentation, with even minor NPCs dynamically leading daily lives and even learning skills, it’s hard to imagine a huge oversight in the production. It’s ambitious games like this that push the boundaries of what defines a video game.

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Sometimes when I’m browsing acne message boards, I hear the popular sentiment that acne can be cured by “total body health,” which usually means a balanced diet and plenty of exercise. Now, while “total body health” no doubt sounds like a good thing, judging from my personal experience and research, acne generally has very little to do with what kind of shape you’re in, or what you eat for that matter. And anyways, achieving “perfect health” is going to be a LOT more difficult than simply stopping acne (good luck….).

I’m actually a fairly good case study for this premise, as I’ve been a health and exercise nut since grade school. I’ve been involved in sports since I started school, and have always been in great shape (and I’m really modest!). Starting in high school, I would get at least an hour of rigorous exercise just about every day - lifting weights and running. I’ve always eaten healthy, I basically only eat at meal times (my family never stocked much in the way of snacks), and I drink almost exclusively water all day (sometimes OJ or milk in the morning, I very seldom drink cola). In all honestly, there were very few other kids in school who were in better shape than me - And all I can say is that it made absolutely no difference! I still got bad acne, even though I was very healthy otherwise. In contrast, I’ve known many friends who had great skin despite their fast food diets and lack of exercise.

Now, I’m not saying that exercising can’t help your acne, but chances are it’s not really the exercise that’s helping (at least not directly). There’s a decent amount of evidence linking acne with stress (some people appear to be more susceptible to stress-related acne than others), and it’s well known that exercise is a great means of stress relief. Therefore, if you suffer primarily from stress-related acne, there’s a good chance that a regular exercise routine may help you out. Exercise is certainly an excellent way to counter the negative effects of stress. Best of all, the effects of B5 in lowering stress levels has been documented (well before the use of B5 for acne, actually), so it can also help if your acne is related to stress.

A few tips to avoid making your acne worse if you exercise:

1) Wash up right afterwards. Sweat can help bacteria build up, and you don’t want that.
2) Watch out if combining lotions or makeup with exercise. As you sweat, these products can seep into and clog your pores. Make sure products you use are noncomedogenic and only apply them lightly.
3) If you have trouble with body acne, make sure to wear workout clothes that let your skin breath and do not trap sweat against your body (tight nylon is really not the best). Try to change out of your sweaty clothes soon afterward.

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Ha! It’s ranking better than my main page!

The article I wrote a few days ago has been published by all the article sites I submitted to (ezinearticles, goarticles, and searchwarp), and has already starting showing up in the search results. While Acne-Vitamins is still sandboxed and nowhere to be found in a Google search for “vitamin B5 acne”, my article is already coming up in the top 5 results! Hey, I’ll take whatever traffic I can get! I honestly didn’t expect the article to actually draw traffic from search engines, but a few of the sites that picked it up are important enough to get me listed, so that’s a pleasant surprise. Google is current showing over 30 results in an exact search for the article title, and I expect that will increase with time (article sites allow for their content to be freely distributed and republished on other sites, so when you write an article it usually shows up on numerous pages across the net).

So if anybody out there has a new site (new being a very relative term, Acne-Vitamins has been up about 8 months and is still considered quite new) and would like to get a head start on traffic without having to pay for it, I have to say articles are looking like a good solution. Of course, it all depends on how competitive your search terms are. It’s going to be a lot easier getting noticed for “Vitamin B5 Acne” than it will be for “New York Lawyer” or some other more competitive term.

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If you’re planning on investing in one of the next-gen video game systems, then the answer is definitely yes. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are right around the corner and are optimized for HD, meaning you will be missing out on all the high-res, widescreen action if you go without. Just take a look at the latest demo video for Metal Gear Solid 4. . . .now that looks a LOT better than anything you’re currently playing. For gaming, the super clean, crisp visuals of HD will finally allow the consoles to stand on the same level as what you see on your PC monitor.

Now personally, games are the only real reason why I would consider picking one of these up. I could care less about all the mindless programming that’s on TV 24 hours a day. For me, cable is more or less a waste of money, as there’s really nothing worth watching 90% of the time (cable internet, however, is rather essential). With the nature of my work, I spend enough hours sitting in front of the computer as it is, and trading one screen for another is not how I want to spend my time off. At least when I fire up a good game I get the feeling that I’m doing something. Maybe it’s my entrepreneur mentality, but I feel like a bum unless I’m getting something accomplished, and when I’m off work blasting aliens fits the bill just fine ^_^.

So for all you gamers out there, even if you care as little about TV as me, I’d recommend going high-definition if you plan on picking up one of the new systems. It’s going to make a big difference when you fire up your next-level gaming hardware.

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Well, I finally got around to writing my first acne article. The title is “Approaches to Vitamin B5 Acne Treatment”, and it basically details the different methods of supplementing with B5 (such as standard pills, B5 powder, and time-release pills) and gives the positives and negatives of each. I submitted to a few article hosting sites last night, so hopefully it should be appearing on the net pretty soon. I’ve been meaning to start writing articles for a while, as it’s a good way to build both some extra traffic and links, but there’s no denying that it takes some effort. This first article should serve as a good tool for me to measure the benefit of article submission, and determine whether it’s worth the time that goes into it. Judging from what other have said though, writing articles seems to be one of the most underrated means to promoting your website. A good article can be reprinted hundreds of times on the net, leading to tons of one-way backlinks. Also, well-written articles will drive interested visitors to your site, and can sometimes even rank well in the search engines themselves, working like a legitimate doorway page to your site (rather than spam doorway pages that will get you banned). I’m excited to see how this strategy works out, so I’ll be sure to update you on the status of what will hopefully be the first of many clear skin articles I write.

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