A friend of mine,  Detroit People Photographer Blake Discher, explains it very well on his Blog.

Basically, blog platforms, including Word Press (the platform on which my blog is posted), are set up so search engines will not “count” any links on that blog as they are crawling the internet.  This is known as a “no-follow”.

Fortunately there are plug-ins that turn off  “no-follow”, allowing you to post comments with links that will be found!

I have disabled the “no-follow” command in wordpress.  Your comments are welcome!

Joe and I went on a twenty mile bike ride from Temescal Canyon to Marina Del Rey and back.  At the Marina, we had a long dinner and some bloody marys to get us going.  On our way back we had just enough stamina to stop in Venice and steal a few candids.

Inspired by Tom Kazuba’s “Shooting from the hip” series, I shot a few from the hip, or more like from the ground while sitting, and a few while looking through the viewfinder (Mother and daugter and Sunset).

It was a blast trying to capture the skaters without looking through the viewfinder and hard to do!

He was never (hate to say it) the sucker who wasted 6 hours at the dealer.

He was always armed with knowledge and came out on top of the game.

Up until now, since I got my license, he had put me into three leases with amazing deals.

Four years ago, shortly after putting me into my G35, he passed away.

As my lease termination date began to get closer, my biggest fear was not knowing what to do, and how to get into a good deal like my Dad did.

I remember him saying I should never put any money down for a lease.

To understand why, Read the section on “Down Payment” here.

I also remember a few times when my Dad made a deal with the sales manager on the phone, but when he showed up at the store, the sales manager would not honor the deal…forcing my Dad to walk out.

I was worried, that as a woman, I would face even bigger challenges.

But I figured I’m a big girl, and need to finally do this on my own.

My plan was to lease a new car again.  Here’s a little read on Leasing vs. Buying.  I tend to like new cars.

I naturally turned to the internet and read all that I could find on leasing at Edmunds.com.

I read the “Leasing Quiz” section, the “10 Steps to Leasing a New Car” section, the “Leasing Glossery”, and much much more, all listed here.

Edmunds also has a wealth of information on Car Buying here.

Although Edmunds was very helpful, I knew that in order to be fully armed, I was going to need something a little more than what their articles provided me with…after all Edmunds has nothing but sponsorships from car manufacturers on their site.

How much are they really willing to reveal about the secrets of getting into a great deal?

Even the amusing little article titled “Confessions of a Car Salesman” didn’t give me the insight I felt I needed, in order to “win” at the dealership.

Since I’m a Consumer Reports subscriber, I knew that they had their own version of car buying advice, in a booklet called “The Consumer Reports New Car Buying Kit”.

Since Consumer Reports accepts no sponsorship of any kind, and is purely a publication paid for by consumers, I trusted it to be a reliable source of information and was prepared to purchase their booklet.

However, during my search for a good book on Amazon, I stumbled upon a book I consider to be, just as the book’s title suggests, the car buyer’s bible.  After reading the “Car Buyer’s and Leaser’s Negotiating Bible” by James Bragg, I no longer felt the need to order the Consumer Reports New Car Buying Kit (sorry Consumer Reports).

I read this book inside and out, highlighted the most pertinent sections, and re-read them.

As suggested in the book, fifteen days before my lease was up,  I also ordered my information package from James Bragg’s website called FightingChance.com

Since the book is three years old, the purpose of the information package is to give you the most current information on Dealer Holdbacks and Incentives, including the latest CarDeals report as it applies to the specific manufacturer of your choice (if you’re lost, don’t worry, it’s all explained in the book and package).

The best advice in the book, which you’d think would be obvious, is to buy or lease your car at the end of the month when dealerships are trying to hit their number targets.

So as the end of the month neared, I took four days off from work to wheel and deal.

On April 30th, I leased my 2008 Infiniti EX for $1,374 under invoice…and no I’m not exaggerating.

To summarize, here’s what I did, as per my instructions from the book:

1. I test drove the car of my choice (a few times and longer than for just 5 minutes)
2. Waited until the end of the month to make my deal 
3. Since new cars are a commodity, I got dealerships to bid for my business all from the comfort of my own home
4. On the last day of the month, I went into the dealership, signed my papers, and simply drove off with my brand new vehicle!

Yes it was that easy.

Here’s the “Bottom Line” according to James Bragg on FightingChance.com

• “New cars are just expensive commodities — the same vehicles with essentially the same pricing structure at every dealership selling that nameplate.
• You’ll always get the best price on any commodity — including new cars — if you make several suppliers bid competitively for your business.
• There is no “dealer who always gives the best deals” in any market. This month’s low bidder may be next month’s high bidder, depending on where the dealership stands vs. its bonus targets.
• In today’s retail auto marketplace, walking into a showroom and making an offer by “bargaining up” from a “real price” is a terrible idea if your objective is to get the best deal available.
• Any automotive information source that isn’t telling you this either doesn’t know it, or doesn’t want you to know it.”

The dealership that gave me the best deal was an hour and a half away, but the drive was worth the savings.

To find out how to get dealerships to bid for your business, and to get the best possible price on your next purchase or lease, reading the “Car Buyer’s and Leaser’s Negotiating Bible” is a must!

Thank you James Bragg for providing such a wealth of information, and for giving me the confidence and skills to negotiate the price of the car I wanted, the car I didn’t think I could ever afford.

I’m so thrilled with what I learned from this book, I just had to share.

I hope it helps you too!

Self portrait with car

Back in March of ’08, on the recommendation of a friend, I decided to sign a 12 month contract with a company called 121Limted.

This is what they sell:

A keyword, or keywords, that (once purchased), upon being searched, will land you on the front page of the sponsored results of any search engine (that you pay for) every time that keyword is typed in.  Once you purchase a keyword, no one else can purchase that keyword from them.

I’m not making it up folks.  They even put it in writing in their binding 12 month contract.

For Example, say you purchase “professional photographer”, and say your keyword costs you $50 a month to land on the first page of sponsored results for google.  Say you decide to pay another $50 a month for yahoo as well.  So now you are paying a total of $100 a month for the word “professional photographer”.  121Limited promises that every time someone types in “professional photographer” in either Yahoo or Google, your ad will land on the 1st page of the sponsored results.

How is it that they can do this you ask?  I asked the same thing.  Their claim was that they have a “special” relationship with the search engines because they send them volume.

See google’s SEO info for what google says about companies that make such claims.

I bought my keyword for a $100 a month!  I thought WOW, this is too good to be true.  To land on the first page of a sponsored search result with google analytics CPC would cost me more like $1500 a month.  I tried to do some research on this company before I foolishly went forward but to my surprise nothing on the internet popped up.  Since the person who referred me was using them and was happy with them, I figured that no reviews were better than bad reviews.  WRONG.

The first couple of weeks, I had to check and make sure my keyword was working. Indeed it was!  Unmistakably, 24-7, whenever I typed in the keyword into the google search engine, my ad would be right there on the 1st page.  Pretty soon my incessant need to check the keyword daily dropped off, and I forgot all about it as 121 limited  automatically deducted $100 every month from my account.  Eight months later, business being slow, I thought I’d check to see how the ol’ keyword was doing.  To my surprise, my ad was no where to be seen.

Needless to say, I was furious.  I kept checking to no avail.  So I decided to take screen-shots of my results daily, at least twice a day.  A month later, after compiling enough evidence, I contacted my lawyer.  The conundrum was that there was no way for me to know how long my ads had not been showing.  We wrote a letter to 121 limited stating this breach of contract and saying we’d like out of the contract and that we would like a full refund or we would pursue the matter in court.  121 gave me a call and denied any wrong doing.  Despite the evidence I had that my ad was not showing up on the 1st page, 121 claimed that they have done nothing wrong and that their software shows that my ad is showing up and getting hits.   The issue of the 1st page was conveniently sidestepped.  They continued to charge me for the following month and later they wrote a letter to my lawyer saying they have let me out of the contract but that if I pursue this matter in court, they will send the balance I owe them to collections!  The gull.  At the time of writing this, I haven’t had a chance to consult with my lawyer, but isn’t that kind of retaliation illegal?  Only a company that is a SCAM like 121 Limited is, would bother making threats rather than try to resolve the situation and keep their reputation.  I have since disputed as many charges as the bank allowed me (3) and reported them to econsumer.gov

The worst part is, that these guys are in Canada.  It’s impossible to go to small claims when dealing with a company that’s out of the country.  In short, you can not serve a company out of the country.

So now I’m mulling over my options.  More than likely, they will see me in court where they’ll not only have to give me a full refund but pay me for loss of revenue and lawyer’s fees as well.

Buyer beware:  Never deal with an out of the country company that you can not find references on.

I’m doing my duty as a consumer to report 121 Limited as being a SCAM!  STAY AWAY!

My theory is that 121 limited operates simply by bidding on words with google CPC as you and I would.  Only by scamming volumes of people, they are able to place really high bids on keywords at the beginning, insuring they land you on the 1st page, but later drop their bids and place high bids on other client words.   My guess is that the only reason why some words show up more frequently (like my friend’s) is because they are words that don’t get high bids from other CPC advertisers.