I’ve been spending a great deal of time lately reading about landing page optimization. What to do, what not to do, various factors, etc. Based on my research, here are a few factors to keep in mind when working on designing and improving your landing pages:

1) Keep Focused on Your Primary Objective
When writing your copy, laying out your landing page and considering multiple call-to-actions, keep your primary objective in mind at all times. You want to avoid placing strong emphasis on any secondary calls-to-action that draw visitor attention away from the primary objective. In addition, multiple call-to-actions (e.g. offers) can confuse visitors and lead to high drop-off rates.

2) Choose a Clear and High Visibility Headline Placement
Not only is it important to carefully craft your headline, it’s also important to select a highly visible location for your headline on the landing page. Always keep the headline relevant to the primary objective and connect the main text and headline to what visitors are specifically seeking. Don’t make it difficult or too metaphorical. Simple typically beats crafty.

3) Present the Call-to-Action Clearly and Vibrantly Right on the Landing Page
If your primary objective involves filling out a registration form or any other information gathering/search-related call-to-action, place the form clearly on the landing page in a prime real estate location. Draw attention to it via color, images and text. The use of white space is critical because you want visitors to feel at ease with completing the form. Don’t make it feel like a burden with long forms and with information fields that don’t appear relevant to the visitor’s main intent for being on the landing page; You can always get other information later on if you really need it.

4) Reduce Navigational Links
In most cases (e-commerce sites may be the main exception) the less navigational links the better. If you do use navigational links they should be call-to-actions that take the visitors to a second page with a new registration form (or related call-to-action) and some additional detail directly related to the alternative call-to-action link. These links keep the visitor on track with fulfilling your primary objective and help provide some research (e.g. customer insight) about what your main landing page content should focus on.

5) Use Crisp, Eye-attracting Images
Creating highly effective landing pages can be time-consuming to design and develop because of the high-quality images they employ. Landing pages that use crisp images, excellent visual hierarchy and strong relevant photos connect quickly with visitors. Relevant means being directly related to the visitors’ reasons for visiting your website in the first place.

These are just a few landing page optimization factors. Just like designing any new creative, it takes time and knowledge to get it right in a way that produces powerful results. Remember, always be sure to test potential factors to see what works best for your visitors in achieving your primary objectives.

Good luck to you on your landing page optimization!

On Tuesday July 10th ScanAlert will be releasing its latest research report regarding consumer conversion cycles. I have yet to look over the full report, but from what I’ve gathered thus far it looks like consumers are taking longer these days to convert—80% longer, in fact. According to the report, consumers are now taking an average of 34 hours and 19 minutes to buy products they have found on ecommerce sites, up from 19 hours when the same study was conducted in 2005.

This is surprising news to everyone in the ecommerce industry and should definitely be considered by anyone who is currently measuring their conversion rates according to immediate sales; that kind of instant gratification shopping seems to be a thing of the past and does not give a full picture of one’s sales success. Online shoppers are getting smarter and savvier these days and ecommerce sites need to step it up if they wish to lessen the time gap between first click and sale.

With competition only a few clicks away consumers are now doing a great deal of comparison shopping, and they’re not just looking for the cheapest deal anymore. Studies for the past seven years show that price is rarely the main deciding factor in making the sale. Shoppers are more interested in factors such as shipping speed, guarantees, on-site merchandising, merchant name-brands, and trustworthiness to name but a few.

There are many things you can do help prevent conversion delay. Anne Holland, Content Director of MarketingSherpa.com suggests becoming more human to potential customers. The importance of merchant brand cannot be stressed enough, so it’s wise to place “about us” sections in conspicuous places, and not just on the site’s homepage; with good SEO and SEM, the homepage is often bypassed completely. I suggest placing drop-down menus with the “about us” option on all pages so that it can be accessed from whatever pages are initially clicked from the search engines. Make it personable. Be smart. Be funny. But whatever you do, be memorable.

Really stress the reasons why someone should buy your product or service as opposed to that of your competitor. Do you have any big clients worth noting? Did your company receive some kind of special recognition in the past that might impress potential customers? It’s also wise to include photographs of your company in action because, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Also, pictures provide tangible evidence of a real, thriving business which can be helpful in this day and age of rampant internet fraud. Alleviating consumer fears by creating an environment of trust is key and can ultimately lead to quicker conversions.

In addition to having a decent “about us” section, it is also a good idea to collect consumer email addresses as soon as possible rather than at the typical time of checkout; if the consumer doesn’t make it all the way to that point, chances are you’re too late. You can’t rely on consumer memories to get them back to your site. Even if they try looking at their browser history they can easily confuse you with some of your competitors that research shows they’re definitely looking at. And you certainly don’t want them to re-do the search in some engine and click your sponsored link for a second time when you’ve already paid for them to do it the first time, especially when grabbing their emails in the first place is so easy to do. Perhaps you can entice new users with special discounts via email through a DHTML overlay, that way they’ll have a link to your site in their email inbox along with specials that make you stand out. As Anne put it, “If you wait to ask for email permission until the actual checkout, then you’ll miss the opportunity to promote fleeing shoppers.”

It is also a good idea to have some worthwhile content on each of your pages. While not every shopper reads all of the product information provided on an ecommerce site, it’s still wise to provide it. This is especially true if you’re selling big-ticket items; people don’t want to spend a ton of money on a product they know nothing about. The key is to give more information than your competition gives, and this can be anything from product reviews to shipping/in-stock data and everything in between, but don’t rely solely on data feeds from the manufacturer. This is usually not enough information to create conversions. In this case, more is better—always. Even random trivia can do the trick. You can also provide consumer forums where your potential customers can get real, honest product reviews from your past customers. They’ll probably appreciate the honesty which will contribute to that warm, fuzzy atmosphere of trust I spoke about earlier.

Another way to get a leg up on the competition is to offer unique extras and specials that are exclusive to your company and to your website. For example, you might consider offering free gifts to those who purchase a certain amount of your top-selling product, especially if you’re in the business of selling a product that truly can’t be found elsewhere. According to Anne of MarketingSherpa, the “extras” can be as simple as providing PDF format eBooks that have some kind of practical and/or entertainment value to them. Some examples include how-to guides, simple recipes, or expert advice. The trick is to provide gifts that won’t add to your shipping costs (hence the suggestion of downloadable eBooks.) You can also offer up coupons and discounts for subsequent purchases, or anything else that extends your brand. Get creative for the best results.

These are just a few things to think about. Surely more will come up for you when you get a chance to read the full report by ScanAlert when it is released tomorrow. If you have a better understanding of eConsumer behavior, chances are you’ll be able to win the battle against sluggish conversion rates, if not the war.

This has absolutely nothing to do with wholesale, marketing or even the internet, but I feel that it must be said: When you end up playing phone-tag with someone (namely, me) and you are merely returning a missed call, don’t leave a voicemail saying that you’re calling me back. I already know that you’re calling me back from the little message on my phone that says “1 missed call.” Not only is it ridiculous and redundant to leave such voicemails, it’s a waste of my anytime minutes, not to mention my precious time. I know I can’t possibly be alone on this one. It’s like walking into a public restroom and announcing your intention to tinkle. It’s asinine! Don’t do it! Thank you.

More so than any other product introduced by Apple, the iPod has changed the company and the world of music and entertainment. Before its inception, MP3 players were in the realm of small companies with limited budgets that were unable to provide content. After the iPod, the entire industry has evolved and grown to the point where the largest computer companies in the world have major interests in the music industry.
Due to the popularity, many companies including Apple, produce and distribute a large assortment of accessories designed for iPods. This market is referred to as the iPod ecosystem. These accessories add more extra features than most music players offer, such as sound recorders, FM radio tuners, wireless remote controls, external speakers, and protective cases/films to personalize your iPod.

Just For Five is your one stop shop for all iPod accessories and offers a wide selection of items including iPod speakers, iPod cases, iPod headphones and anything else you can imagine to personalize your iPod.

Whether you have a small chain of stores, or whether you distribute to the retail market, Just for Five / iWholesaleiPods offers it’s customers the best prices, the best quality, and the best margins on all its products.

Go to JustForFive.com
iWholesaleiPods.com

Microsoft offered its version of the future of online advertising this week at its third annual Demo Fest, a two-day gathering at Microsoft’s Redmond campus.

The event focused on showcasing the digital advertising tools developed in Microsoft’s adCenter Labs. The tools represent nearly 60 technologies at various stages of development, including keyword technologies, consumer orientation technologies, video display technologies and many others.

“The technologies showcased at Demo Fest will help create unprecedented opportunity for developers and search engine marketers like the Keyword Services Platform,” said Tarek Najm, engineer and general manager of Microsoft adCenter at Microsoft. “KSP is a service that provides a framework for researchers to plug in advanced algorithms in the form of building blocks to be consumed by developers for building sophisticated advertiser applications.”

Below is a sample of the new adCenter Labs technologies that can help provide a good advertising experience for users, advertisers and developers.

Keyword Technologies
Keyword technology plays a vital role in paid search and contextual ads by allowing advertisers to reach consumers interested in their products and services based on the terms entered into a search query box.

Commercial Intent Detection: This advanced keyword analysis tool helps differentiate consumers ready to purchase online from consumers searching for information about products or performing other tasks. The tool provides a probability score indicating the likelihood that a keyword or phrase is part of a search with commercial intent. This can be used to track user progress through the conversion funnel, or to determine that the user is not looking to buy.

Query Entity Detection: This technology detects the best way to break down a multiword query. For instance, if a user searches for “real estate agent,” this tool can tell that “real estate” is one phrase and “agent” is another. This tool helps determine the meaning of a query term, improving the relevance of search results.

Keyword Services Platform: This will enable developers to build more intelligent applications for online advertising. It provides a set of web service APIs related to keyword technologies such as keyword recommendation, forecasting, categorization and monetization. To quote James Colborn, product manager for adCenter Labs, “We’re making it an open network by publishing and sharing the algorithm. We’re excited to see how our partners will build on the KSP.”

Contextual Advertising: This technology classifies web sites and keywords into a hierarchical taxonomy. This helps increase the relevance of contextual ads by ensuring the categories of publisher sites are relevant to advertisers’ products and services.

Consumer Orientation Technologies

When placing online ads, marketers must consider the idiosyncrasies of different consumers audiences.

Sensitive Content Detection: This technology can help detect when web pages contain content considered objectionable by the general public, such as pornography, crime or terrorism.

Large Display Feedback: This vision-based technology creates interactive public displays that can measure audience size, track audience gestures and estimate demographics.

Content Classification: This technology will help increase the probability that ads displayed during web searches are relevant to consumer queries. The technology does this by accurately analyzing and matching the web pages included in search results.

Video Display Technologies

Online video gives advertisers a powerful medium to connect with consumers, particularly when the video includes interactive and other advanced technology.

Social Video Sharing: This tool allows users to highlight and comment on information within a specific area of a video frame. This allows users to participate in meaningful, social interactions on specific topics within the video. Users can discuss how the umpire just made a bad call on a pitch, or ask questions about a step in baking instructions.

Video Hyperlinks: This stand-alone tool allows marketers to embed video hyperlinks within online video ads. The hyperlinks can be associated with specific products in the video, leading consumers to web sites where they can get additional information or purchase products.

Search marketers have using Microsoft adCenter for a few months now and are generally satisfied with its targeting capabilities. The major shortcoming is traffic volume, due to ads displayed on limited inventory. ContentAds is expected to help expand inventory.

You can view the Press Release here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/newsroom/msn/factsheet/adCenterBreakthroughsFS.mspx

I’m sure you’ve all heard about the Net Neutrality issue and how AT&T was fighting this legislation tooth and nail but then made a concession not to pursue two-tiered pricing on the Internet in return for getting FCC approval for it’s lucrative ATT-BellSouth merger.
However, this concession by ATT does not mean that the legislation is going to be passed. Republicans have historically opposed it while Democrats are in favor. Recently, two senators, one a Democrat (Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-ND) and the other a Republican (Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-ME) have introduced a bill to guarantee that Internet service providers do not discriminate against content providers with two-tiered pricing policies. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-MA), head of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet, plans to hold hearings on a newly introduced Net Neutrality bill later this year.
Both House and Senate refused to pass Net Neutrality legislation last year, and it could also be an uphill battle this year. The very nature of the Internet is threatened if Net Neutrality does not pass. It will no longer be a level playing field for all comers if two-tiered pricing is allowed to prevail, abandoning both free speech and commerce.
We at JP Communications support this legislation. Net Neutrality will guarantee that all companies and individuals, large and small, will have the same access to consumers on the Internet. This democratic principle lies at the foundation of the Internet and should remain intact as we go forward.

Those who advocate charging more for rich media delivery content are the big telcos (AT&T and Verizon) and the cable companies (Comcast). They propose a two-tiered pricing model that would allow companies who can afford it to pay more for getting their rich media pages loaded faster. Convenient for them, but not for everyone else.
Note that these opponents claim regulation of the Internet is unnecessary and will stifle investment, innovation and creativity. However, Net Neutrality is not about regulating the Internet. It is about regulating the carriers.
We need to keep the barriers to entry low on the Internet. This position is held by Net Neutrality advocates such as Google, Yahoo, Amazon and eBay, to name a few. Many of today’s Internet giants did not even exist in the early ‘90s. It was only because of the Internet’s low-entry barriers and ability to connect consumer with marketers that these Internet companies are worth billions of dollars today. This will never happen again if Net Neutrality legislation is not passed. If you work in any Internet marketing channel, I urge you to support Net Neutrality. I urge you to support Net Neutrality by contacting your Congressional Representative and Senators to let them know how you feel.

Jason Prescott

On Tuesday January 10th Apple made its much anticipated move into the mobile phone business, unveiling a new device that’s controlled by touch, plays music, surfs the Internet and runs the Macintosh OS operating system. To stress the company’s move into consumer electronics Steve Jobs then renamed the company to “Apple Inc.” Dropping the word computer from their title. Kind of sad really, like the end of an era.

The new phone is called, not surprisingly, the iPhone, and will have a starting retail price of $499. The phone will “reinvent” the telecommunications sector and “leapfrog” past the current generation of hard-to-use smart phones, Jobs said. Although I must say that I never heard anyone complain about the difficulty of using their phone and reinvent is a term we hear all too frequently. But given the amazing success of many of Apples projects, iTunes and the iPod spring to mind, it is quite possible that electronics retailing might never be the same.

Unlike other smartphones, the iPhone will have no keyboard but will have a touch-sensitive screen from which users will be able to type messages, launch applications, dial phone numbers, and perform similar tasks.

“Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” he said during his keynote address at the annual Macworld Conference and Expo. “It’s very fortunate if you can work on just one of these in your career. … Apple’s been very fortunate in that it’s introduced a few of these.” The iPhone will be available in June in the U.S. but won’t be available in Europe and Asia until 2008.

Jobs set forth the rather modest goal of selling 10 million phones before the overseas release date. Assuming they meet this goal it will represent only 1% of the total cell phones sold in the United States this year.

Jobs also unveiled a TV set-top box that allows people to send video from their computers to their televisions. With the rise of online video downloads and similar media this device is likely to be a boost for the company. He announced a Feb. 1 ship date for the TV box.

Investor were certainly excited by the new venture, Apple shares climbed more than 6 percent on the announcement.

Business and professional users searching for work-related information on the web are not finding needed data through general search engines like Google and Yahoo. A 2006 study by Outsell reported a search failure rate of 31.9 percent among business users when searching from major search engines. With one-third of the B2B and professional business queries producing unsatisfactory results on Google, this presents an opportunity for vertical search engines (VSEs).
Another study by Convera conducted in December 2006, shows that professionals in virtually every industry cannot find important work-related information on the major search engines. Convera surveyed 1,112 professionals in publishing, advertising, marketing, healthcare, finance, government and other industries. Results show that B2B professionals using general search engines do not find queried information quickly or easily.
One of the problems is that Internet search engines were not designed to be used as business tools. Another reason is that most industry professionals are not trained in research practices. As a result, only 4 out of 10 professionals are very satisfied with search results on general search engines.
· Only 11 percent always find what they are looking for on the first attempt.
· Only 43 percent always find what they are looking for after several attempts.
· Only 21 percent feel their query is always understood.
General Search Engines Work Well for Consumers
General search engines rely strongly on the popularity theory that rewards sites with authoritative inbound links. Website popularity and keyword relevancy (among other variables) help determine rankings. The relevancy model works well for consumer search, and consumers usually find what they are looking for on page one of search results. For instance, a search for Toyota Camry brings up 2,630,000 results on Google and 6,740,000 on Yahoo (at time of writing). So there is no scarcity of information on Google and Yahoo when consumers are looking for product information.
Professionals, on the other hand, get a mixed bag. They are used to instant success with their consumer searches, but when it comes to looking up business information, it’s a different story. Here’s what generally happens with many business searches.
When several business searches fail, 93 percent of professionals will enter a similar term into the same search engine hoping for better results. (This is the same result found in other studies on search behavior.) Some of them (53%) will try a different general search engine. When these searches lead nowhere, 52 percent will turn to a vertical or topic-specific search engine. A third may give up altogether; however, 41 percent will make 6 to 10 search attempts before quitting, and another 47 percent will try up to 5 times.
Sounds like work, right? So it’s no wonder that many of these professionals report getting lost or distracted. Here’s what professionals do when they don’t find what they need, and they don’t give up easy.
· 17 percent quit before 5 minutes
· 42 percent continue up to 15 minutes
· 24 percent continue up to 30 minutes
· 17 percent continue more than 30 minutes
So it’s no surprise that 70 percent of the professionals surveyed reported that they get sidetracked during the search process. Of that group, 68 percent end up on sites they did not expect to visit and are not relevant to their work.
When the search process fails, 52 percent believe the data they seek exists but they just can’t find it. Only 23 percent are very confident they’ve covered all the bases. About one-third admit to making decisions without all the needed information.
More Relevant Search for B2B

The past year has seen a number of new VSEs targeted at professionals. These resources offer options that allow professionals to tailor searches according to their own requirements. The most significant trend is that of trade publications developing their own online vertical search destinations for their professional communities. These customized search engines will provide a more relevant search experience for B2B users. When asked about their expectations for these new vertical search resources, nearly 90 percent of professionals indicated they believed such search engines would offer more relevant contact.
· 86 percent said VSEs would locate content more quickly.
· 85 percent believe VSEs would offer access to content not indexed by popular search engines.
Vertical Search in Wholesale Merchandising
Because the current general search options do not meet the needs of B2B and professional users, vertical search is becoming more important than ever before. Both vertical search engines and customized search engines are making it easier for professionals to find the data they need.
If you are in the wholesale general merchandising industry, the following VSEs put buyers and sellers of wholesale merchandise together:
TopTenWholesale is a B2B wholesale merchandise search engine offering pay-per-click, banner and promotional marketing to wholesale companies.
Wholezilla is a B2B wholesale product comparison search engine and the only wholesale search engine on the web that lets retailers compare pricing and product information from wholesalers. Wholesalers can submit their data feeds at no charge.
OffpriceNetwork is the only wholesale directory for the Off Price Apparel industry. Wholesalers can add their websites to the directory (6 sites for a $249 listing fee). OffpriceNetwork caters to the wholesale apparel and fashion accessory industry, offering over 80 categories, blogs, classifieds and forums.
WholesaleU is the most mature directory of wholesalers on the web, offering access to wholesale companies at no fee. Wholesalers can add their websites to the directory (6 sites for a $249 listing fee). Catering to the general merchandise, closeout, and dropship community, WholesaleU offers over 80 categories, blogs, classifieds and forums.
Vertical Search Meets the Needs of B2B
Today, it appears that general search engines do not adequately serve professionals, leaving them with unmet needs. The advantages of vertical search will go a long way toward providing professionals with relevant business results.

Last week I wrote on this blog regarding a situation were Amazon.com and McAfee.com were both bidding on Top Ten Wholesale’s domain name and trademarks. We were appalled both by the fact that huge companies, such as those two, can drive up the costs of doing business for a smaller company, such as, well us and how little in the way of cooperation we received from them in correcting this violation of Google Adwords terms of service.

As I said before we contacted Google and got seeming encouraging activity from them but were also told to attempt to fix the problem with McAfee and Amazon ourself. Not surprisingly, they were of little help. They returned neither phone calls or emails.

However, in all fairness, we wish to report that Google has taken action and made tremendous steps towards rectifying the situation. We received an email from them saying that they agreed that McAfee’s “ad text was unclear” and that McAfee’s ad would no longer contain our trademarks and domain name. We greatly appreciate their speedy action.

Although Google didn’t mention it in their email we they seem to have removed Amazon’s ad from our trademark as well. They also promised that we would here from their trademark department as well once they had fully reviewed the situation.

We inquired if there were further punishments other than simply removing the offending ad and they said that “I can assure you that repeat violators are suspended from our advertising program. We do not tolerate repeat malicious violations of our policies.”

We do not expect much to come from this but I must say I fail to understand how a trademark violation can be anything but malicious. It simply isn’t possible for this to have been a mistake. Putting a bid on some ones domain name is a conscious act and requires planning and forethought. It doesn’t happen by accident, it happens because a company wants to crowd a competitor and harm their business.

This is not a wholesale blog. Nor does this have anything to do with , seo, sales tips or advertising. This is a blog about how I decided to change our company culture yesterday morning while having having breakfast in Chicago awaiting to hear a seminar at the Search Engine Strategies Show.

During my breakfast, I was reading the USA Today. I’m sure you all know this is very big national newspaper that focuses on mainly national and international news. I was sipping my coffee, and a headline struck my eyes “Pop Warner player tackles bone cancer” . This was a stroy about 13 year old Trey Jordan, from Kansas City, MO , who was diagnosed with osteosarcoma back in May. Since May, Trey has been going through chemotherapy and had to under go surgery to have a prosthetic knee and titanium rod inserted in his right leg.

As I was reading this story, I felt as if Trey were starring me in the face. I had an overwhelming feeling of sadness overcome me and a numbing sensation that will forever change the way I, and JP Communications gets involved and utilize our resources and values for others.

We had planned on giving all of our customers holiday gifts and recognition. As a standard corporate practice, this is an act widely accepted as customers expect to be appreciated and thought of. Well, with in seconds of reading about Trey Jordan, I knew what had to be done. Gifts and cards for customers were instantly cancelled. A decision to allocate the resources for customer gifts was going to be used to help Trey and his family. JPC, and on behalf of all of our customers who make it possible to give, needed to go a different direction.

I contacted the editor of the story , Christopher Lawlor. He was kind of enough to spend some time with me and give a back ground of Trey’s story. After speaking with Chris, I placed a call to Bob Collins and Trey’s mother, Chanda. Chanda, a single mother of two, told me an amazing story of Trey’s passion, courage, and will to fight. Chanda was recently a contractor for Sprint, working 40 + hours a week, almost 75% finished with her initial contracting period to become a full time employee. Chanda made a decision to spend time with her son while he underwent chemo, and Sprint made a decision to end their contract with her. I wont say anymore on that; I’ll let you be judge of that. Bob is Trey’s coach, and father of seven. Bob is with Trey’s team right now in FL at he Pop Warner Super bowl and those young have been playing their hearts out for Trey, who is undergoing chemo as I write this. Below is the text from the USA today story that Chris wrote:
“Trey Jordan exudes inspiration. He has become a touchstone for his Park Hill Panthers junior midget football teammates.

Jordan, 13, wishes he could suit up at the Pop Warner Bowl this week. Instead, he continues chemotherapy after being diagnosed May 1 with osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer.

Jordan, who played the previous four seasons as a defensive tackle and tight end, attended three games this fall, donning his No. 73 jersey as the honorary captain.

“He never gives up,” Panthers coach Bob Collins says. “That’s what Trey is about on and off the field.”

According to medical website kidshealth.org, osteosarcoma is the most common type of bone cancer. In most cases, it affects male teens during growth spurts.

Jordan, from Kansas City, Mo., first felt pain in his right knee last spring, and within weeks of the diagnosis he began chemotherapy. In August, he had limb salvage surgery, when a prosthetic knee and titanium rod were inserted in his right leg.

Jordan’s inner strength is fueled by an indomitable spirit: “My goal is to play next season.” He currently walks with crutches.

The Pop Warner Super Bowl is an annual week-long event held in December at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The event consists of 64 teams from eight regions playing in four age-weight classifications — Junior Peewee, Peewee, Junior Midget and Midget.

Park Hill (13-2) lost Tuesday afternoon in the Division II junior midget national semifinals against the Waterbury (Conn.) Patriots 35-8. Friday’s third-place game will conclude the postseason run. ”

I realize that it is up to us, and corporate America, to lead and show others how to be involved and make a difference. It is my believe that making a difference starts individually. Being involved, locally, nationally, and globally and helping individuals will shape the way they in turn act towards others. This holiday season, instead of being so concerned about the gift you are getting, or the amount of gifts that you must buy for others, or the new upgrades in your kitchen…..Think about giving back, and letting someone know you care. That’s a gift that truly will keep giving.

Happy Holidays,

Jason

Chanda, Trey and Jayda: I hope to see you all in San Diego soon. Trey, your an inspiration. You and your family will always be in our prayers. Merry Christmas.

Chris and USA Today: Thank you. Thank you for providing me and JP Communications the information that will forever make a difference in our culture.