:Clear Skin Blog

It’s been a hectic last few days without my main computer, but we’re still updating despite it all. I just made some changes to the Acne Vitamins home page, swapping graphics and what not to get the right feeling. Back when I discovered vitamin B5 acne treatment, I felt like my skin was finally “normal” again. Before that, I would stand there in front of the mirror, washing my face with the latest system of cleansers for the third time that day and wondering what it must be like simply not to have to worry about my face - to have naturally clear skin.

I knew that my friends with clear skin never needed to bother with washing so religiously, so why did I? I really wanted to find something that acted like a real cure to acne, not just a temporary fix. B5 acne treatment was a huge discovery for me. It really made me feel like I was back in control of my skin at last, and after a while (as the number of pills I needed went down) I found that I finally had the “normal skin” that I always wanted. I didn’t have to worry about using cleansers (I basically just rinsed my face with water in the morning and night, and didn’t need anything else at all), and even if I skipped my B5 doses occasionally my acne still stayed away. It was only when I would take a long break from B5 that it started to creep back, but a few extra pills would fix it in no time. It was easy, and it was carefree, so I couldn’t be happier.

I guess that’s the type of feeling I’m trying to go for with the new text on our front page graphics. I know everyone’s experiences are different, so I’m not sure if this message will have universal appeal, but it definitely sums up my vitamin B5 acne “conversion experience”. I had normal skin like everyone else at last (actually, a lot better skin than many people), and that was the selling point for vitamin B5, even if it meant a truckload of pills in the beginning. Thankfully, newcomers don’t need to deal with such a large barrier, since our time-release formula makes taking B5 a lot easier.

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Man, everything was going well with the launch of Clear5 and the site redesign of Acne-Vitamins, and then out of the blue my hard drive crashed this morning. This was for my laptop that I happen to do most of the graphics work for the site on, so it’s quite a bummer. Luckily this happened after the new graphics got uploaded and not before.

Since then, I’ve been meticulously backing up everything to make sure no such catastrophes happen again, and you can bet I’ll be investing in an external hard drive once I get my laptop fixed. Funny how a single faulty piece of hardware can make your stress level go through the roof. Time to take some extra vitamin B5 (it is called the anti-stress vitamin, after all).

Much of today has been spent on the phone with Dell (on hold for an hour), figuring out what exactly went wrong and how I need to fix it. One of the service guys at Best Buy has told me that they may be able to back up the data on my damaged hard drive, and that would really save me a heck of a lot of trouble. Business shouldn’t be affected (at least not in any major ways), so no worries there. On a positive note, I’ve got some more great feedback to add to my testimony page in the next (overdue, I know) acne testimony update.

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Well, it’s finally done! The new brand name for our vitamin B5 acne treatment is called Clear5, and it includes a number of upgrades over our previous All-in-1 tablets. I’m really excited about the new product, as my own experience with it has been very good so far. Besides the new name, there are some pretty big changes to our formula, as well as the long-rumored smaller pill size. Our product now includes vitamins B1, B2, B3, and B6, as well as Biotin, Folic Acid and OptiZinc. Every ingredient plays a role and is present to a strong enough degree that each one actually makes a difference. In particular, the 2mg of OptiZinc can really help those with acne resulting from a lack of essential antioxidants (with the higher absorption rate of OptiZinc, this is not insignificant at all), and the 500mcg of Biotin (more than any other B5 for acne supplement!) enhances the metabolic actions of vitamin B5 while also promoting stronger growth for your hair and nails. The other B-vitamins also help ensure that you don’t have to worry about B-vitamin deficiencies while taking high doses of B5. Overall, these are some great changes that should make our product both more effective and easier to use.

I know a lot of customers were unpleasantly surprised with the size of our former pills, so we cut the size down be about half. The actual size may in fact be a little less than that due to compression technology (the new tablets are even smaller than typical 500mg gel capsules). In any case, they’re extremely easy to swallow compared with most pills, and each bottle now includes 100 tablets instead of 50. The drawback of the smaller pills is that you may have to take twice as many, but 4-6 tablets per day is still next to nothing when compared with the 20 per day that vitamin B5 typically requires. Also, the more frequent intake results in faster acne relief for most users. I would recommend spreading out the tablets for the fastest results, but you can still get clear skin with just 2 in the morning and 2 at night if you prefer.

The other big change involves Acne-Vitamins’ new holiday pricing, but it’s getting late so I’ll talk more on that next time. If you’ve been on the fence, now’s the time to try vitamin B5 acne treatment! And if you’re a long time customer, I think you’ll find Clear5 to stop acne with even less effort than All-in-1 took. A single bottle may last you longer as well. So try it out, and let us know how you like your results!

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I’ve been really busy with the Acne-Vitamins site overhaul, as well as normal business, but once the new pages get up we’ll definitely be updating the testimony page with our latest batch of customer feedback. A number of the comments I’ve gotten recently (some of which are not even related to the free offer) have been really great. I seriously couldn’t write better stuff myself ^_^.

It’s funny to hear when people tell me that our product should be more well known, or when customers complain that we don’t do enough advertising. Hehe, I’m working on it, believe me! Gradual growth is a lot more manageable than fast growth, although if I had a bigger advertising budget I would no doubt do some more mainstream advertising. Right now though, our small size makes it easier to determine what customers like and don’t like, and to continuously improve our product - as has already been done with the new brand name we will be launching tonight or tomorrow. I’ll especially be learning a lot from the positive and/or negative reactions that will come with the new acne product launch. It makes me both excited and a little nervous to make big changes like this.

Unfortunately, despite lots of good feedback, we’re still lacking in the before-and-after pictures department. I know that no one likes to have acne pictures of themselves up on the internet, but since we block out your eyes it’s really not that bad. C’mon people, do it for the free stuff! Oh well… I did receive one new set of pics. However, the picture quality is pretty bad so I’m not sure whether they will actually go up or not. Of course, I could always use my Photoshop skills to doctor them up a bit (*insert evil laugh here), but I’m not that desperate. In any case, stay tuned for a testimony update shortly after the new acne brand launches.

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Happy Turkey Day to all those celebrating it! I’m still stuffed four hours later… Usually my family follows dinner by putting up the Christmas Tree, but it seems as though I wasn’t the only one who got hardly any sleep last night, so we cut the festivities a little short. No sense driving home is a sleepy haze. I’m gonna cut my blogging short as well tonight since I’m getting that full-stomach sleepy feeling right now, but there will be some pretty big updates across the entire site in the next day or two. Obviously, orders didn’t go out today (with USPS being shut down), but everything will be sent first thing tomorrow. My sisters are actually planning to wake up early and start shopping first thing…craziness. Well, good luck to all those who will be braving the jam-packed stores tomorrow, and on a more serious note, keep all our soldiers out there away from home in your prayers.

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Well, after a few days I’m not totally sure whether the upset stomach I felt at first had to do with starting again on B5 or the extra zinc in the tablets (probably the zinc, as I’ve never been able to take normal [~50mg] zinc supplements without some discomfort), but either way, I haven’t felt any discomfort since then. The adjustment period for people with sensitive stomachs seems to be very fast, at about 2-3 days for the new pills, which is basically the same as normal B5, so rest assured that any stomach irritation will go away quickly (not to mention that most people won’t feel this anyways). Now I don’t feel anything when I take the pills at all, and I really like the smaller size.

I don’t have acne to comment on, but the results are still as dramatic as before with regards to oil reduction. In fact, after just 4 days I’ve been able to reduce my dosage already and still keep very smooth, non-oily skin (being 100% Italian, this is certainly not the norm for me). It was natural for my skin to start to dry around this time up north (when I was at college in Ohio), but here in Florida it’s 70 degrees outside and my skin pretty much stays the same all year. Right now, it’s really like a night-and-day difference after taking the pills. Any skepticism I had about updating the formula is officially gone, as this stuff works great!

As far as the Acne-Vitamins.com site updates are going, it’s a little more work than I expected. I managed to get all of the graphics editing done today, but still have to go in and update the html, swapping the name All-in-1 for our new brand name, and changing text where needed (such as the ingredients page). There are actually a bunch of pages that I want to add some new content for, so it may be another two days before you see the new Acne-Vitamins.

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With the impending site updates to Acne Vitamins, I’ve gone ahead and turned off our online advertising for a few days, and it sure makes a noticeable difference. I’m always skeptical about pay-per-click advertising, partly because click fraud is so common that it’s hard to tell how many real potential customers you’re reaching, but one thing is for certain - it’s still the easiest way to get traffic fast.

It seems that about 2/3rds of my traffic currently comes by way of Adwords, and unfortunately, sales are right in line with that figure. When I first got into using Adwords, I experimented with the typical bottom-scraping tactics that most “experts” tell you to use - bidding low on hundreds of terms vaguely related to acne in order to maximize low-price traffic. However, experience has taught me that the best traffic comes from those clicks that are closely related to your target audience. This traffic tends to be worth the extra cash, as these are the people that will actually buy your product. You may not make money off new customers, but if you’ve got a good product, repeat business over time builds up and turns into profit.

PPC is especially important for Acne-Vitamins simply because our page is still fairly new (less than a year), and thus still ranks rather poorly with the big G. On the bright side, it seems the site has made a jump in the last week in the natural rankings. Google now has me on page 3 (instead of page 35) on a search for “acne vitamins.” I don’t exactly want to celebrate just yet though, as this has happened before, only to see the site plummet back down into no man’s land. If Google started ranking me as well as MSN and Yahoo, chances are online advertising would be a little less important, but it’s never smart to depend on search engines for revenue, especially with how unpredictable the major engines are these days.

The new acne product brand will be on display in a few days, but until then I’ll be setting for less traffic and a slightly higher profit margin. With the great improvements out new line will offer, I expect our rate of repeat customers should go up, and that’s really the most important factor. Plus, you can’t buy better advertising than word-of-mouth.

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Wow, our new stuff is really strong! I’ve been off B5 for a while, as my acne has more or less subsided. However, I still get oily skin. I decided not to use anything other than a multivitamin until we got the new product got in so that I could try it out on myself. After starting with 5 tablets yesterday and taking 3 more so far today, I can tell you this stuff really works.

With standard vitamin B5 capsules it always took me at least 4 days to see any results, but here I am 24 hours later and I can really see and feel the difference. I know this sounds like I’m hyping my own product here, but I’m really, honestly surprised at how fast and dramatic the change is. Actually, it might even be too dramatic! If other people get the same results I’ve noticed so far, they may end up needing less than the 4 to 6 tablets we recommend as the starting dose (good news for them, but I need to move merchandise here!). Also, vitamin B5 acne treatments tend not to cause dry skin, but I’m a lot more dry than normal, so I may need to lower my own dosage… Only downside is that my stomach is fairly sensitive to zinc, and I can feel the 2mg of OptiZinc still. It’s nowhere near as harsh as taking a straight zinc supplement, but my stomach (and likely people similar to me) will need a few days of adjustment before I can take the pills without noticing it. Hopefully first timers with touchy stomachs will not get discouraged because of this.

Even right now as I’m typing this I can feel how the skin on my face is tighter than before. I’ve had pretty much immediate pore shrinkage (so much that I can actually tell when looking in a mirror), and that’s also extremely unusual. Over the next few weeks it will be exciting to hear if other users are seeing the same kind of results. Acne relief may be faster than ever if this is any indication.

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The latest shipment under our new acne product brand just arrived today! I’ve got a whole lot of boxes of the new stuff, and I’ll be taking pictures and updating the website this weekend. The new bottles are bigger, each containing 100 time-release tablets (each with 500mg of vitamin B5, plus some supplemental ingredients), and the pills themselves look a bit different from our current ones. The new tablets are much easier to swallow, due to their smaller size and a smooth coating. They now appear yellowish rather than pure white (The increased level of Biotin is partly responsible for the color change), and also have a bit more of a “vitaminy” smell (pure vitamin B5 doesn’t have much scent). I have a new pricing strategy that will be going into effect when I update the page as well, so hopefully I can get some useful customer feedback on the new product quickly. With these changes, our new product should be the most effective vitamin B5 acne treatment ever, and also help keep those type of customers happy who were upset by the rather large size of our present tablets.

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Besides my normal exercise routine, every Wednesday I go to martial arts. Yeah, once a week sounds kind of lazy, but since it’s an hour away I’m not easily able to make it more often. The style I’m currently taking is an Okinawan martial art called Isshin Ryu. While I’ve taken a few other styles in the past (I actually already have blackbelts in Tae Kwon Do and Tang Soo Do), I’m currently about greenbelt level here, and studying under my father, who is a 4th degree blackbelt in the style. Despite Isshin Ryu being in the family, when I was younger I prefered having a large class of kids at my age, so I’m only really starting to study this style now. Isshin Ryu is definitely one of the more serious styles I’ve taken - more about actual combat rather than flashy moves - and there are a number of things that I think more styles should pick up (the vertical punches and palm-in blocks are far more effective than those in Tae Kwon Do, for example). Of course, it’s always great exercise.

My dad is able to give some very unique angles on many of the moves we practice due to his knowledge as a doctor. It’s quite funny to hear exactly how and why a certain motion will break a joint or otherwise cause intense pain. He only teaches twice a week due to his real job taking up all his time (as well as six kids - luckily half of us are out of the house now…), but it’s more of a passion than anything else for him, as well as for myself I guess (I have been doing this since I was 5, after all). Wednesday night is usually sparring night, and while my favorite sparring partner is out of town at the moment, some of the other guys are getting a lot better. It’s always a good class when you have some nasty bruises to show for it the next day ^_^.

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