:Clear Skin Blog

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve gone two days without blogging at all. I ended up having to leave town to go help my parents with a few things, so the weekend was not exactly as productive as I hoped, not that I’m in any rush.

Our new acne vitamins product is officially on the way now, so hopefully I’ll receive the first shipment by the end of the week. Our inventory is actually running pretty low at the moment, so I’m really in need of this new stuff. Last month was especially busy. I may have to just turn off our pay-per-click ads for a while to quiet down the demand. Being that we still rank nowhere in Google for searches relating to acne and vitamins (or anything at all, for that matter), a large part of our traffic currently comes from Adwords.

One page update that I will probably take care of today is the wording in our shopping cart when going through checkout. It’s occurred to me that the checkout process might confuse some people due to our credit card processor, Authorize.net, being labeled as “Authorize.net.” I guess being surrounded by internet junkies I didn’t realize that this wording might confuse people that don’t religiously shop online, and so I’ll be changing the text to simply read “credit card” for customers who want to pay with Visa or MasterCard. It’s just one of those small things that I never bothered with before. Who knows, maybe it will actually make a difference in conversion (although I doubt it would be big enough to notice). I’ll be making other updates to the acne-vitamins-shop site along with the main site when the new product gets in, but it will most likely be next week before everything is ready to go.

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Alright, here’s another important ingredient in our latest treatment from Acne-Vitamins.com.

Folic Acid, or vitamin B9, is an essential ingredient for the production of DNA in cells. It is needed for cell replication and growth. Rapidly regenerating cells, such as red blood and immune cells, have an especially high requirement for this coenzyme. It happens that folic acid is also one of the most common vitamin deficiencies in the US.

Being an essential element for cell growth, folic acid is especially important during pregnancy. Deficiencies in folic acid have been linked to birth defects, and conversely, supplementation with folic acid can effectively protect against a wide range of complications during pregnancy. Many doctors and health care professionals recommend supplementing with 400mcg of folic acid if you are pregnant, or plan to be in the near future.

So how can it help acne? Well, folic acid works together with beta-carotene and vitamin C to enhance metabolism, particularly of amino acids. Folic Acid also works together with essential antioxidants in eliminating toxins from the body. A deficiency in folic acid can lead to acne, and supplementation, combined with other antioxidants such as vitamin C, is known to purify the skin and clear up acne.

Because folic acid aids in the metabolism of amino acids, it helps reduce hazardous homocysteine levels and can help prevent heart disease. Studies have also shown that folic acid is important for the prevention of colon cancer, as well as other cancerous diseases.

Folic Acid is water-soluble and has no adverse side effects. It can be found mainly in raw green vegetables and citrus fuits (it is present in meat, but not if you cook it). In order ensure you get a sufficient amount, it’s recommended to take a folic acid supplement or multivitamin that contains it.

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With tomorrow being a federal holiday (Veterans Day), the postal service will be taking the day off, meaning that I will be doing the same. Well sort of, anyways. I always take care of customer service questions and stuff like that just about every day of the week, so the only difference is that current orders will not be going out until the next business day - Monday in this case. When the mail stops moving, there’s not much I can do about it. To keep my weekend from being too pointlessly relaxing (I can only take so much of doing nothing), I’ll probably get started on the Acne-Vitamins.com overhaul. Changing brand names means I have to tediously replace every reference to All-in-1 with my new name, so that will be barrels of fun. The new name is officially trademarked now, but I’m afraid that I’m going to have to keep you all in suspense until I actually update the site. I’ve got a bit of graphics editing to so as well, but it should look nice when it’s done. Granted, it’s mostly small things that are changing, the general layout of Acne Vitamins will remain the same. Maybe I’ll even get started on the new acne products site if I’m feeling particularly industrious.

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At long last, I’ve finally managed to get Blog-Links.org up and running. It’s taken a bit longer than expected simply because of my recent Acne-Vitamins workload, but the site is now on the web and, for the most part, functional (although since no one is on the forums it may not be very helpful just yet). Over the next few days I will be streamlining some aspects of the forums and adding a little content, but there’s no rush as I doubt anyone at all will even find the site unless they happen to be reading this blog. Blog Links is more of a personal project that will hopefully fill a valuable need in the future, rather than something that’s in high demand right now. I already have a number of ideas about how the site could grow and expand its role (I have plenty of those for Acne-Vitamins also, but they cost more money…), so we’ll see what happens.

Next up is my acne products and reviews site, which will be more affiliate-based (I’m thinking Amazon or DrugStore.com) and simply target a search engine niche I would like to fill. It’s a bit more competitive than “acne vitamins,” so if the site generates traffic it could be a good way to drive customers to this site as well. I’ll be talking more about my acne products site soon, but chances are it will be a little longer before it goes up, mainly because I have a bunch of redesigning to do for our new Acne-Vitamins brand, which you may see as soon as next week (yay!).

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It seems that Sony has decided that they will not bother with setting up a unified online service for the PS3. With all the other high-tech, cutting-edge features that this system is packing, I have to wonder what they heck they were thinking when this decision was made. Is Sony really that blind to ignore the growing potential on online gaming?

Individual companies will be able to host online servers for PS3 games, as they do now for the PS2, but let’s be honest - this is not an answer to Xbox Live at all. The online scene for the Xbox has thrived because any company can program online elements into their games and let Microsoft bear the burden of hosting everything. As the PS2 has shown, very few companies bother with internet features at all if they have to cover the expenses of setting up such services themselves. Moreover, a unified system is simply a lot easier on the customer, as they have access to everything over a single account. No one wants to be paying a dozen different companies for their online subscriptions, and even if some of these offer this for free (only the ones with the deepest pockets), it’s still inconvenient to have to keep track of your different logins. Live is just much more accommodating to both users and developers.

People that are only interested in playing games alone (or with friends physically present) will not care so much about this, but there’s no denying that Sony is really missing the boat here. Even for single-player games, online compatibility means the possibility of new downloadable content, modifications and other bonuses. There’s just so much potential.

The future of games needs to be more than just pretty graphics. It’s a little strange that even Nintendo is preparing for this, while Sony is sitting stubbornly in defense of the status quo. It’s kind of like Nintendo’s decision to not bother with HDTV. Sure, not everyone will take advantage of it, but those that do will greatly appreciate it - and these people are a quickly growing demographic. I might still pick up a PS3 for the latest Metal Gear and Final Fantasy, but it’s clearly Microsoft that is really leading the market forward.

PS: That pizza was pretty good, and I’m glad I don’t live in France right now.

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Knowing that pizza does not cause acne, now is a good time to express my love for a good pizza. Unfortunately, finding a good pizza in Florida is a daunting task. Now to be sure, I’ve most certainly been spoiled when it comes to my pizza experiences. I was born in Buffalo, NY - home to the greatest pizza and wings in the world. I’m sure you’re thinking that everybody says that about their hometown local pizza joint, but you have to understand that this is not some sentimental opinion, but a scientific fact. Buffalo has the best pizza and wings, period.

These days, Buffalo has become quite famous for their wings. The phenomenon of “Buffalo wings” has been something I’ve watched grow over my short lifetime, to the point that it’s now a common phrase that everyone has heard. This was not so 20 years ago. While this is a good thing, the negative side is that Buffalo pizza, which is equally good and really an essential compliment to the wings, has had no such luck. Instead, the poor masses still suffer under the tyranny of mediocre pizza chains, and they honestly don’t even know any better. What can be done??

While I would love to start an authentic Buffalo pizza parlor in the spirit of Bocce’s or Leonardi’s, what with that perfectly pasty sauce and those high-quality pepperonis cut thick so that they curl up at the ridges - pizza that goes to the edges of the dough and leaves little room for conventions such as “crust” - well, the fact is I’m just not up to that amount of work, nor do I posses the culinary skills. It’s a shame the pizza around here so very much pales in comparison, but perhaps there is hope. I’ve recently received news of a new pizza parlor with a founder who just arrived from Buffalo, and apparently the pizza shows some important signs of its origins (well at least I’m told the pepperoni curls up ^_^). So tasting this pizza is my mission for this weekend. Wish me luck!

PS: I was going to have Blog-Links.org go live today, but my host has been a little slower than I expected in sending me login information, so it will have to wait for Monday. It’s going to be a busy week.

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Well, I’ve decided that when the new product shipment gets in and I go about updating Acne-Vitamins, we’re going to start offering single bottle orders. It’s been nagging at me for a while that $30 may simply be too much for some internet browsers to make the jump, especially considering how many acne products there are on the internet, and selling by the bottle simply allows me to offer a lower introductory price without killing my profit margin.

There is a drawback to this approach - mainly that vitamin B5 can take longer than a single bottle to kick in for some acne sufferers. However, the fact is that the people who the lower price is aimed at are people that would probably never try it at all at a higher price range. Repeat business is very important for a company such as mine, but I expect that people who actually read through the site will opt for a 2-bottle supply, or at least reorder after a single bottle. After all, most users will get results from their first bottle, and I can’t bend too far backwards trying to please everybody (note: trying to please everyone is almost always a sure way to go out of business).

Besides the single-bottle option, Acne Vitamins will also start offering a discounted rate for six-bottle orders, as a little extra incentive and a means to save a few bucks for our regulars. Our new price structure is not set in stone, and I could always change it if it simply doesn’t work out, but hopefully everyone should benefit. Even as things are, a large percent of our customers simply do not use the product as directed, and so there’s really no way to turn everyone into a B5 fan, but at least the single-bottle option may persuade a few people who were on the edge to take a chance. I expect most of them will be pleasantly surprised with their results.

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If any of you have tried to search for Acne-Vitamins using Google, you’ll have noticed that we’re not there. In fact, we’re nowhere within the first 500 pages for any of our key terms (ack!). This could be the result of any number of stupid reasons, but Acne Vitamins is not at alone in dropping into the Google neither world over the last few weeks, and the prevailing sentiment is that this is due to Google’s latest update entitled: Jagger.

Jagger has had an effect similar to re-sandboxing many sites that are less than 3 years old, and although there is no doubt more to it than that, no one is really sure why else they have gotten buried by this update yet. It’s been one of the longer updates, and according to Google’s Matt Cutts it’s just getting started, so we can look forward to whacked-out Google results for a while yet to come. On the bright side, Acne-Vitamins is still indexed properly (I haven’t been banned…), and so there’s still hope for the future. I’ll just have to make due without any traffic from the big G for longer than I already have. At times like this I can’t help but root for Microsoft…Go Bill Gates! Release IE7 and dominate the search market! Yay!

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Not much going on today. So far my acne products article has done ok, but not as popular as the last one. I’m thinking I should stick to reference based articles rather than practical purchasing advice (I’ve never been very practical anyways).

I’ve got a ton of candy left over from last night, and there’s no way I can eat it all! My little sisters will be getting some of the spoils when I drop by to visit the family tomorrow. I was actually surprised that I didn’t get more trick-or-treaters, but I made sure the few who did come by took extra heaping handfuls. Did I mention that those Crest whitening strips work really well?

Biggest news is that my new product line is finally ready to go! It’s taken a little longer than expected, but Acne-Vitamins will have a brand new, well, brand! - and I’ll be telling you all more about it soon (as well as updating all the main pages, ung…). The final check goes out tomorrow, then I just have to wait patiently for UPS to show up with a truckload of boxes.

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