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How To Select Eyeglasses Everyone Will Love

If you decide to wear glasses, you’re in good company. Eyeglasses have been around for centuries. Historians believe that they were first made in Pisa, Italy, around 1290.

While most people wear glasses to correct their vision, there are many other motives to wear them, too.  Let’s look at a few reasons why you might decide to wear glasses.

Choosing Glasses to Protect Your Eyes

Every year millions of Americans injure their eyes in the workplace when they don’ wear safety glasses. If you need to work in an area with airborne particles, fuels, fumes, vapors, or chemicals, be sure to wear safety glasses.

If you happen to wear prescription glasses, then choose to wear prescription safety glasses. These not only protect your eyes while improving visibility, but they also make you look good. If you don’t have the time to go to an optician, you can always shop for glasses online.

Selecting Glassed to Correct Your Vision

If a distant object, like a sign you see when you’re driving, appears blurry, then you’re nearsighted or myopic. Since the image you see is focused on the front of your retina, you need concave lenses to correct your vision.

If, on the other hand, objects look fuzzy up close, say, when you’re reading a label on a jar, you’re farsighted or hyperopic. Since the image you see is focused behind your retina, you’ll need convex lenses to correct your vision.

Picking Glasses to Look Smart

If you want to look smart to get ahead in life, perhaps to seem geekier in college or to be taken more seriously at your professional job, then don’t resort to using big words and flowery language. This is such an obvious ploy to grab attention that it usually fails to impress. But something you may want to try is to wear non-prescription glasses.

Since glasses were first invented, poor eyesight has been associated with someone who reads too much under poor lighting. It’s the proverbial story of the bookworm burning the midnight oil. Since thick-framed black glasses trigger a stereotype boost, use this positive bias to your advantage.

Wearing Glasses to Make a Fashion Statement 

Non-prescription glasses are also used by people who want to make a fashion statement. But unlike glasses worn to impress people in school or at work, fashion glasses serve a different purpose—they’re used as a light-hearted way to express one’s idiosyncratic personality.

Since wearing glasses for a flippant purpose is fun, you can wear different frames every single day. The rule of thumb is to be bold, colorful, and outrageous. So, consider wearing purple cat eye frames, periwinkle blue lightweight glasses, and stern tortoiseshell patterns. You might even want to try on some Apple green aviators to mix things up a little.

Accessorizing with Glasses to Protect Eyes from Sun Damage

Although you know that some sunshine is good for your skin while too much can cause skin damage, did you know that too much sunshine can also damage your eyes?

Although often considered as a fashion accessory, sunglasses help shield your eyes from ultraviolet (UV) rays. So, protect your eyes by buying wraparound sunglasses that block UVA and UVB radiation.

Excessive exposure to UV can cause serious eye problems like cataracts, macular degeneration, or pterygium. Cataracts are caused by the lens of the eyes clouding, macular degeneration is caused by damage to the retina, and pterygium is caused when tissue growth over the white surface of the eye alters the curve of the eyeball, resulting in astigmatism.

How to Choose the Best Glasses for Your Needs

While selecting the right lens will enhance your vision, choosing the right frame will enhance your appearance.

First, decide on the features you want in a frame. For instance, frames vary by material (hypoallergenic vs. plain), by weight, color, durability, and price.

Next, choose frames based on the lens you need. If you’re myopic, you can choose any frame or size because your lenses will be thicker toward the edges. But if you’re hyperopic, the lenses will be thicker toward the middle, so avoid thin or rimless frames and choose smaller, sturdier frames.

Finally, choose frames based on the shape of your face. The type of frame you choose should match the shape of your face. After identifying the shape of your face (round, oblong, etc.), select the frame that works with its features and proportions.

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5 Old School Strategies To Improve Your Marketing

The greatest lesson you can learn about marketing is that it can take many different forms. Over time, you’ll figure out which ones work and which should work but don’t deserve any more of your attention.

Still, although you may find a few ideas that work remarkably well, this doesn’t mean that you should quit exploring new possibilities. You may find a few new delightful marketing techniques that will serve you well.

When it comes to what works today, digital marketing can easily be ranked as one of the greatest marketing inventions in the history of the world. In fact, no marketing plan can be considered complete unless it has a digital component.

What’s more, digital marketing works even if you’re selling tangible goods.  For instance, there’s no reason why you can’t sell clothing from a website. Shirtspace.com, for example, which sells Gildan shirts wholesale, offers bargain-priced shirts to screen printers by leveraging the power of online shopping and dropshipping.

When developing a digital marketing plan, be sure to include organic search, statistics, content, social media, and mobile strategies.

Revisiting Old School Marketing

Despite the proven benefits of digital marketing, there are several old-school marketing ideas worth investigating as well. Some of them, after testing, you may want to add to your panoply of winning strategies.

For instance, it’s tempting to believe that direct mail doesn’t matter anymore because nobody bothers to read snail mail.  Yes, landing pages, sales funnels, and graphics-rich digital sales copy are highly effective, but they are not the only way to reach customers.

Here’s the paradox: since online marketing conversion techniques have become so successful, consumers have become a little jaded, which makes direct mail something of a novelty again. For instance, customers know from experience that the low price they pay for an online offer will be followed by a series of one-time-offers once they’ve entered a sales funnel.  As a result, most buyers defensively scroll to the bottom of the page without bothering to read the sales copy or watch the sales video. This way, they know they won’t be tempted to spend more money than they had planned.

Ironically, a direct mail piece with a simple coupon may convert better.

Here are a few other methods of offline marketing that you can use in conjunction with your web-based efforts.

1. Add the personal touch:

A natural assumption that you may have arrived at is that direct, person-to-person contact is an old-fashioned way of doing business.

While it isn’t necessary to meet customers, investors, and service provider face to face to conduct a business transaction (because you can communicate just as easily via the phone, email, or a collaboration platform), it’s certainly a good idea to get out and meet people.

Talking to someone in person is a quick way to build rapport and establish enduring trust. While it’s probably less expensive and time-consuming to interact digitally, an in-person connection might allow you to benefit from the relationship in more ways than you could imagine.

2. Renew your appreciation for the value of print advertising.

The interesting thing about print advertising is that it appeals to a higher-income demographic. Just as $2.99 e-books have not made $17 paperback books with the same information obsolete, so too, blogs have not made glossy magazines outmoded.

Luxury magazines have a nostalgic, old-world charm that still makes print advertising a highly effective medium. They are also known to be expensive. Seeing your advertisement will tell the viewer that you are successful enough to afford this type of advertising.

3. Enhance your business reputation through speaking engagements.

No doubt, a well-written long blog post of 2,000 + words does build your niche authority, but public speaking is still alive and well and it continues to be a distinctive way of establishing thought leadership.

Sharing your knowledge in person remains an invaluable way to woo an audience. Speaking engagements can also lead to back-end product sales and wonderful networking opportunities.

4. Leverage the benefits of networking.

Networking may be a business practice that dates back centuries–but it still works! While you can converse with people at length on Facebook while dressed in your pajamas, it’s not quite as effective as getting dressed and attending a conference.

The Power of Inclusive Thinking

Don’t think in terms of either digital marketing or traditional marketing; rather, think about the synergistic benefits of digital marketing AND traditional marketing.

This inclusive approach to marketing will have a positive impact on your business success.

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Writing a Synopsis of Your eBook

A well-crafted summary of your book can serve many different purposes. Whether employed as a descriptor for potential agents and reviewers, or as a product description on an ebook site, writing a synopsis of your title is an essential aspect of generating interest. Typically the first exposure any reader will have to the work, nailing it is vitally important to the reception of your effort.

Here’s how to get it done properly.

Read Your Book

Yes—read your book. And right about now you’re saying, “This is ridiculous advice; I wrote it, I know exactly what’s in it.” And, well, you do. However, you know what’s in it from a writer’s perspective. To write a good synopsis, you need to get to know it from a reader’s perspective. This will enable you to speak in terms that will help generate sales. You want the synopsis to give someone just enough information to stimulate their interest, but leave them wanting to know more so they’ll pick up the book. As you’re reading, make note of “hooks” you can use to accomplish this.

Get Others to Read It Too

Enlist the services of someone you can count on to be objective. Ask them to tell you what they feel are the most significant aspects of the tome. Seeing it for the first time, they may have a different point of view. This gives you an opportunity to pick up on details you might have missed. You can also ask them to provide a testimonial to use if you’re considering how to sell ebooks on your own website.

Write a Draft Synopsis

You’re now ready to compose your first draft. Write in the tone your ideal reader tends to employ. This you will have gathered from your efforts to get to know your audience before you wrote the book. You want to get inside their heads so they can relate immediately and be intrigued. Employ three to five of the best hooks from the book—but again—being careful to not give away too much. The idea is to feed them just enough to get them to want more. Write with economy. Condense ideas into short, punchy sentences to ignite the reader’s imagination and compel them to read the book.

A Call to Action Is Essential

Your efforts will be wasted if you fail to include a compelling call to action. Always end your synopsis with a one- or two-sentence summation telling readers to buy the book. Be careful to avoid huckstering. You’re working to appeal to the sensibilities of an individual who loves to read. The best approach is with a sense of dignity appropriate to the audience of the book.

Read the Synopsis Again

Go back over it looking for embellishment opportunities. Punch up the language where appropriate. Expand upon ideas where you can and above all, make sure it fits into the format of the places it’s likely to run. For example, Amazon limits them to 4,000 characters—which works out to be roughly 1000 words. Frankly, that’s a bit on the long side. You want it short, punchy and to the point. Make sure the focus is the book and that the copy flows smoothly from idea to idea.

While it might sound like a simple task, you’ll want to approach writing a synopsis of your ebook in a very methodical fashion. You want to make sure every element is the best it can be. After all, this is the first exposure readers will have to something you’ve put a lot of time, expense and energy into producing.

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