Deep thoughts by bigtime lawyers...

Nearly everyone in the technology sector, especially those focused on the Internet, have een talking about the Stop Online Privacy Act and the Protect IP Act. We’re not here to debate the finer points of combatting intellectual property theft on the internet — the “SOPA Blackout” has done a fine one-sided job of that. (If you’re interested in a very in-depth look at the whole saga, try Forbes’s information dump.) This “Blackout” has all the right components of a perfect case study of SEO, technical site architecture, viral marketing, and the nature of the internet.

As a preface, President Obama has basically said SOPA in its current form is a no-go. Similarly, by 8:30am, SOPA was losing supporters in the Senate. Whether by virtue of the Internet’s rage or by simple practicality and a realization that the legislature was in over its collective head, SOPA and PIPA seem to be sidelined. Similar bills are waiting in the wings, but will likely not see the light of day until months later.

Full Blackout

Imagine a World Without Wikipedia

Two sites led the initial charge for the Blackout, and they did it almost completely. Reddit and Wikipedia have nearly completely blacked out their sites, both seemingly using JavaScript. Wikipedia has done this by hiding all the content on the page, then adding a content block using jQuery. As soon as this happened, some found a way to hack around it using a browser console, but most users will lose access to one the most-trafficked pure information sites on the Internet. Wikipedia’s method likely has no SEO impact, but is effective at getting the user to do what the site wants — ponder life without a user-generated information source like Wikipedia, and use their already-extant legislator search to find the right person to bug about the issue.

What if I want a news link?

Reddit, on the other hand, is serving a totally different page for all links to the site. Not only is it providing information and calls to action to call a representative or sign a petition, but it also provides a list of compatriots who have also “gone black.” But both of these full blackouts highlight a major problem for a business site — what if someone is looking for your site? Looking for your content? Looking to buy something from you?

Man, I hope they meant to do that...

One of Reddit’s brothers-in-arms is the game Minecraft, which is a for-pay game that’s been a bit of a media darling for its bizarre gameplay. But today, if you’re trying to find out about the game, all you can find from the site itself is that they’ve shut down the site in protest of SOPA. And that’s the gamble with a full takedown of your site — are your users aligned with you enough to understand or even support a totally unusable site? Is Wikipedia going to lose share to About.com or another mirror of the encyclopedia? Will Reddit lose share to i-am-bored.com?

The answer is, not really. Barring some shocking numbers come tomorrow, even any lost traffic today will be forgotten tomorrow. In addition, the kind of domain-level link-love and social clout that will be showered upon these sites may override any short-term losses. Essentially, we won’t forget that Wikipedia still has solid information about every Pokemon, that Reddit is the nouveau-garde of social sharing, or that minecraft.com is probably a trusted source for information about the game.

Blackouts for Smaller Sites?

But for personal sites, small businesses, and other smaller sites without the kind of instant recognition, the loss of a sale might be too much. While we’ve talked about the general level of knowledge of website owners, nowhere is it more evident than when this kind of blackout goes bad. WordPress has been shilling its “SOPAstrike” plugin, to be used by website owners to serve an SEO-friendly “503 Service Unavailable” error and redirect to yet another page to contact someone in charge. It’ll even bring your site back whenever it’s done!

Here’s the code for the suggested plugin:

function sopastrike()
{
	if(!is_admin())
	{
		if(time() > 1326862801 && time() < 1326934800)
		{
			header("HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable");
			header("Location: http://sopastrike.com/strike");

			exit;
		}
	}
}
function phone_home()
{
	$url = get_bloginfo('siteurl');
	$name = get_bloginfo('name');

	$context = stream_context_create(array(
	  'http' => array(
	      'timeout' => 1
	      )
	  )
	);
	$content =
	file_get_contents('http://extrafuture.com/code/sopastrike/track.php?url='
	.urlencode($url).'&name='.urlencode($name), false,  $context);
}

Notice that phone_home()? The plugin description does mention that it will add your url and name to a petition automatically, but with all the vitriol and pushing, who has time to read all of 15 sentences? In addition, you’re trusting this author to not say, publish your link to a bunch of “bad neighborhoods” as SEOmoz likes to call them. It’s a security hole, even if it’s one with someone you think you can trust. Can your business handle that? Barring technical issues, will your business be able to lose that traffic and still make your daily sales? Certainly one bad day even if you have no sales shouldn’t wreck your profitability, but will one day of actually being down and then a few more days until your site has been crawled again? What if you forget something and are still serving the wrong kind of page?

Man, and I liked that game...

If you’re not going to use the recommendation and use something like Wikipedia’s javascript content, a small business oftentimes doesn’t have enough resources to consider the SEO implications of what it has done. The team that is making the game Overgrowth didn’t. This is a snippet from their site, a first-page result for the term [sopa successors]. While their splash sure is pretty, do they want such unrelated search traffic? When will their site be crawled again before Google thinks the home page is highly related to SOPA?

And what about the plugin they used? All programmers are not SEO whizzes. While it’s easy to slap your forehead on such a boneheaded move, you can’t assume that even a popular plugin will be the right way to create your protest. Again, the simple solution for small businesses is not always the safest for their search rankings.

Porn and Other Easy Fixes

Of course, blocking out your site or even worrying about if your content is being crawled is not on your radar if you simply change your images a little. Matt Cutts, Twitpic, Google, and some of your Facebook and Twitter friends have used this method to show that they do not support the bill. This easy change usually has little SEO effect, but you could get some interested search if you use image alt tags intelligently.

Porn Companies Care!

But it’s not just the highbrow ivory-towered linkerati who are protesting SOPA. Porn companies are doing it harder. One of the industries most impacted by SOPA could be adult entertainment. Many sites are user-generated, falling under the same licensing and piracy issues that YouTube would have. These companies have largely installed banners or JavaScript “click to see your content” splash pages.

Viral Call to Action

Moving from porn to an almost-related subject, the virality of the SOPA blackout has provided a killer case for organic lead generation. A lobbyist group like the Electronic Frontier Foundation can easily get a list of supporters and possible wallets to back their efforts, simply by being the recipient of a large amount of blacked-out links.

What a Gorgeous Landing Page. What do you think they want you to do?

This page is a beautiful example of how to get leads. The opt-in for the newsletter makes the user feel like it’s solely to make a stand, sign a petition, and publicly project your feelings. But even if a user doesn’t click that box, demographics, cross-referencing with social networks for deeper information, and simple numbers of responses allows the EFF to better target its marketing efforts online. The EFF could also (but isn’t, in line with their ideals) grab referrer data or other tracking information to further hone their form submissions.

Finally, these form submissions would never have happened without truly viral support. Random people are linking to the EFF, because they believe in the cause that EFF is championing. They touched a true part in many internet denizens’ hearts, and have reaped the benefits. This kind of authentic sharing is at the key of this blackout — even as most sites have maintained some kind of functionality to their content. It’s not about the action here, but the message, and as sites from as many industries as can be get behind the message, maybe we’ll see the lasting search and marketing effects of the action as the week plays out.

SOPA Blackout Roundup

What is Lethal Commission? From its trailer it is dubbed as the world’s first full-length Internet marketing movie. In actuality it is the most meta-tastic and downright embarrassing way to sell a product I’ve ever seen. To save myself some keystrokes, let’s just bypass the incoherent plot (involving a portly Indian spy stopping some sort of third-world Paypal thievery) and get into the meat and potatoes of what Singal is selling this time around.

Lethal Commission is the latest version of Singal’s affiliate marketing software. For those of you not in the know, affiliate marketing is a form of revenue sharing that pays commissions for referred business. I personally don’t even care if the software (which promises to help you get thousands of new site visitors and large sums of money) works – the effort to make a movie this gauche for it is so astounding I find it all perfectly acceptable.

How could I not? He’s an online “multi-millionaire” who swindling Internet-savvy autistics out of their disability checks through self-glorifying movies that would make the Troma guys wince. It’s pure malevolent genius. I honestly envy Singal for thinking outside of the spam box. Though based on his previous attempts at sell his software (see Commission Domination, Profit Jackpot, and numerous others), I suspect he had help pimping out his software this time around:

Oh don’t get me started on the various accolades which Singal presents as “proof of concept”. When he’s not flashing his 2010 tax returns, he’s boasting about the number of indexed pages which mention him. I swear dude should have just said “Google me” – because Google is now the authenticator of all things true on the Intertubes. It’s just too bad he didn’t Google himself or Singal would have realized the third result on the page indicates he is admittedly “so full of $#!+”.

I will never be surprised by the lengths people will go to get rich. There are hundreds if not thousands of people actively trying to sell the public useless junk online (my personal favorite is Sheryl “NO FEAR Millionaire” Walker). If anything, this is a cautionary tale for Internet entrepreneurs – don’t drink your own Koolaid. If you are hoping to get rich off the Internet through gullible dreamers, you should really take a look at the B-roll footage first.

Thanks to American rapper, actor, and television host, Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner for appearing in this post.

It’s obvious that my attention span on the Internet can be severely limited at times. And why not? There’s barely any reason for one to even type in words, just a lot of pretty pictures to click on. Heaven forbid I forgot the name of some obscure reality television star, but if I do the answer is instantaneously at my fingertips. The Internet experience of today is different than it’s ever been before. Websites create a far more intimate and immersive experience than just 2 years ago, and are in a completely different arena than 10 years ago. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and they need to be when one only has 140 characters to elaborate on major personal news and global current events.

While many years of information are archived in cyberspace, much of its utility is focused on the right now. Breaking news happens and a network of millions set to debate, coming to instantaneous conclusions. The people unite and use their freedom of speech to make a stand, but is this a good thing? Can the immediate evaluations made by web junkies actually be harmful?

In the case of Netflix, popular web opinions have been shown to have a powerful influence over the productivity of the company. In July, the California-based company raised the prices for their various streaming and DVD rental plans. Since the price increase went into effect, July 13th, Netflix’s stock (NFLX) has decreased 36% and has lost 800,000 of their nearly 24 million customers. Aside from the tangible effects, Netflix has suffered far worse in the court of public opinion. Users across the net threw their arms up in a rage when Netflix announced that it would be dividing its business into two entities, one specifically for streaming and the other, Qwickster, for DVD’s by mail. The plan to split the company has since been scrapped due to the public outcry.

Is what has happened to Netflix in the last four months a good thing? Netflix is a tech company and should rightfully be judged by its tech savvy clientele, but technological Darwinism is a shaky field to venture into as a for-profit company. Is the customer always right? Sorry America, but the answer is no. While the almighty dollar may empower individuals to sway decisions of major companies, it does not mean that consumer pressure always leads to the right outcome. In the case of Netflix it is entirely possible that a month from now the once-glorified media company could be trading for pennies on the dollar and begging Hulu or Amazon to buy them, and everyone could dub Netflix a failure. This is all possible, but it would not necessarily make the actions of Netflix wrong. The immediate conclusions of the Internet-savvy can severely hinder companies’ ability to make improvements to their product, because one or two of those alterations rubs consumers the wrong way. My advice to consumers: take a breath, don’t jump to conclusions, quit sweating the technique and just give products wiggle room to evolve. Who knows — you might even like it.

When it comes to the world of SEO and general web technology, some of us are so jaded we think we’ve heard of everything. Phones we talk to? Check. Virtual reality? Won’t be long until we’re standing on the holodeck. And as far as SEO, everyone and their mom is on deck calling themselves “social media experts” and promising they can make your business blast to the top of the search results.

No matter how out-there the current trends are, I feel quite sure that nothing compares to the hard, cold fact that MC Hammer has just announced he will be launching his own web browser, which will be focused on “Deep Search.” No disrespect, Hammer, but before you get busy on that search engine you might want to hire someone to make your blog look less like a Blogspot nightmare. Just sayin’.

Anyway, I’ll keep the dissin to a minimum, since it’s clear that Hammer’s too legit to stop at ministries and lifestyle clothing lines, so why stop at SEO? The search engine will be called WireDoo (I’ll leave that there for you to make cracks your own) and is about “finding the relationship beyond just the keywords,” as Hammer put it on stage at his presentation at the recent Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. He also claims that Google and other big-name search engines are not as skilled at connecting keywords to related topics. So is this the magic that WireDoo claims it will be able to perform?

That’s all we know for now — that and that Hammer’s team has been working on the engine for the past two years. It can’t be denied that the rapper has come up with some ingenious ideas in the past — not to mention those cool 50 million albums he sold. But, you have to wonder what he’s got up his sleeve at this point. Taking on a beast like Google takes some serious balls, but as Hammer has repeatedly proven in the past, he’s got the cajones to try anything. And hey, he has well over 2 million Twitter followers.  He’s got to know something about how to make people listen to him … right?

It is striking that Google seems utterly unfazed by two government commissions investigating it for its aggressive vertical integration into niche search and social media.

PittPatt marks the hundredth merger by Google, the sixteenth this year. For comparison, the slightly older and smaller Yahoo has acquired 64 companies and the more traditional technology company Microsoft purchased 144, both with only two acquisitions over the past seven months.

Google seems to be almost thumbing its nose at both European and American investigators. Not only are they explosively expanding and refining their social tools, they are reinforcing use of Google properties on Maps and de-emphasizing other sites’ role in local search. Google is even boasting its wide variety of overt technologies by giving the user everything they could love (with a layout ripped from a Mahalo demo video) even as they take away a line of customer interaction with the company.

Of course companies change, and to be mired in chasing the FTC algorithm would be much more likely than and as damaging as wrongdoing being found by the inquiry. Even more important is that these acquisitions allowed Google to provide a wide range of products, most of which were cobbled together from multiple targets’ technology. But is Larry Page’s aggressive business strategy going to engender the company to the FTC during the Google Antitrust case?

Check back tomorrow for an informative infographic from SI’s own Joe Luft on the situation!

Flash forward to now — I’ve had a whopping year of intensive exposure and training in Internet Marketing: found out what Facebook is really for; why Google might not even find the site I’m looking for; what Google is doing in my status bar, even if I typed in the url; how Google’s ads knew exactly what I typed; that Google’s rankings are always in a state of flux; and even how I like to see the pages I visit. In short, entering this job totally changed how I look at the web.

And I’m happier for it. Sure, people are always trying to create some kind of “Google is Watching You” zeitgeist, whether through their use of AdBlock and Ghostery, or by bringing up the problems Google’s had with European trade officials, or how much Google’s search results have changed since the last time they noticed. People seem to be concerned that someone’s watching their online habits specifically. But I’m now the person who’s watching, and I know how and why I’m doing it.

Is this who's looking at your browsing habits?

To be fair, everyone who’s “invading” privacy is watching online habits. It’s easy to say it’s on a “macro” level, but it’s harder to convince some people that it’s more like an ant farm than an investigation. For internet marketers, not only is it simply not profitable to look at the individual, but it’s becoming less feasible and less legal to do so.

Firstly, targeted marketing based on internet behavior isn’t an unregulated free-for-all on your personal information. 2009 brought a proposal from the FTC for seven “Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising,” outline in this Interactive Advertising Bureau report. But for this discussion, it’s important to note that the regulations do not affect collection of data “solely for [the website’s] own uses,” or for contextual advertising like Adwords, “as it delivers advertisements based on the content of a Web page, a search query, or a user’s contemporaneous behavior” — the two main ways marketers use your data online.

What most marketers are concerned with are those non-regulated uses. Google Analytics, found 39 times more than the “average” tracker on the web, is largely for the company’s own use. Google, still the top dog for internet searches, puts its contextual ads right next to its search results — a strong source of revenue for its advertisers.

Analytics, despite privacy advocates’ concerns, is nothing to be afraid of. It’s only to make sites more responsive to their users. One of the greatest tools for the company owning (or managing) the site is to know how people actually use their site. Certainly, most hosting packages do this in a rudimentary way, but few have the immediate gratification of being able to see the site alongside what links are clicked.

Conversions from a Contact Page in Analytics

Landing Page overlaid with In-Page Analytics

The In-Page Analytics shows the percentage of clicks to the various pages in little pop-ups next to each link. Of course, it’s only tracking links to the page, so you have to take it with a few grains of salt if you have contextual linking on the page, but it gives site owners and especially ad campaign runners an idea of how to make their choices more relevant to browsers. The page below shows that almost 2% of visitors hit up the contact page from here, and another view shows us that a fifth of the people visiting the contact page complete a form — whether that’s good or bad is for the marketer to decide, but that information is certainly useful. Should that information not be in the hands of small businesses? The 12000 people searching for “block javascript” in Google think so.

And what about those 12000? How can I know that? Because Google “betrays” its users privacy and gives vague estimates of how much people search for various keywords. Again, this helps small businesses without walls of supercomputers to better gather data so that they can garner a little bit of information to better serve their customers.

Drilldown of Referrals from Other Sites

Finally, what about pages you visit that aren’t part of the site you’re on? Why would a site owner want to know that? Surely, they couldn’t want to know what page you were on before this one! But the internet is the ultimate word-of-mouth; “Who referred you?” becomes “From where were you referred?” and unfortunately, people just don’t pay enough attention to notice effectively on their own.

So instead of ineffective tools and sheer guesswork, the visitor loses a little privacy to help small business owners understand how people came to their site and make it better for those visitors by tailoring the content and design. And this is the mindset behind any loss of privacy for the visitor. Marketers like us aren’t trying to figure out who specifically visited our site and did what — if we were, we’d use other tools that can’t be so easily blocked, and would only be used for malicious visitors.

While some might call it “drinking the Kool-Aid,” I’ve understood more deeply why losing just a little privacy and not trying to circumvent analytics and other tools are a boon for the whole Internet — making it more valuable to the visitor, so that sites give to the reader what they really want. Stop worrying, and support your small businesses on the web.

The biggest internal debate I’ve had with myself is which one to trust.  No doubt you’ve noticed by now the vast difference in the keyword values that it displayed. Many wonder what is the cause of this. Now that the legacy tool is gone, I am even more curious, as I previously simply ignored the other tool’s existence. After digging through blogs and forums, I finally found “Google’s Answer” to this question. AdwordsPro shares this in the Google Help Forum.

“If you use both the previous and updated versions of the Keyword Tool to search for keywords, you may notice differences between the tools for statistics on Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches. This is because the previous version of the Keyword Tool provides search statistics based on Google.com search traffic and traffic from search partners, while the updated version of the Keyword Tool provides search statistics based on Google.com traffic only.  We’ve updated these statistics based on user feedback, and hope you find them helpful for keyword selection.”

User feedback showed they wanted less data instead of more data? While many SEOs, myself included, tend to use Google as the tool by which we measure all, I still don’t want to ignore the other engines. In addition, as with any research, I’d rather have data coming from a larger sample than a smaller sample, so we can get a bigger piece of the pie.

While now we don’t have the luxury of choosing which one to trust, we’re just going to have to stick with what we’ve got.

Google Adwords Keyword tool is a hot-button topic around here at Search Influence. In fact, as I write this, I received a ping from collegue Melanie Aleman: “Is the Google AdWords tool working for you?” While I knew it was likely giving her some sort of error in this case, I thought to myself how many different ways I could take that question. No, in fact, the Google AdWords tool doesn’t seem to be working for me, but working against me.

Another issue with the keyword tool that I have yet to even mention in this post is the disparity between numbers when you are logged in vs. logged out. Stay tuned for a post that digs deeper into this question, if we can ever get to the bottom of it, that is, as the answers posted on forums don’t quite seem to be right on the money.

I found this question and answer in the sidebar Help section on the new keyword tool.

“Why do search traffic statistics vary between keyword tools?

Search Traffic Variations

The Keyword Tool combines search data across Google.com and all affiliated search properties. Data from the tools may vary due to the ad group you’ve selected to research, or whether you’ve accessed the tools from outside of your account. Numeric data between the tools may also differ due to rounding.”

But why…

“Data from the tools may vary due to … whether you’ve accessed the tools from outside of your account.”

I attempted to do a quick test to see just how different the numbers are displaying today, but currently Adwords is returning an error and I’m unable to even log in.

So while we may have the answer to why the new tool displays different results than the old, the question remains if it’s going to be beneficial, and only time will tell.

Thanks to Caitlinator and BenedictFrancis for the great photos!

Google Gears Does Work with Chrome? You don't say!

That is Google’s tagline for their open source project that stores data locally for web applications and runs Javascripts in the background. But as anyone who has used Gears will tell you, it’s buggy, especially when being used with Google applications.

For instance, Google Chrome comes pre-installed with Google Gears, however out of all the browsers that currently support Gears, it crashes the most. I’ve used Firefox and Internet Explorer with Gears and even though I still experience time-outs when downloading web app data and frequent Javascript slow downs, with Chrome I just get the “Aw, Snap! Something went wrong…” message practically every time I do anything Gears related.

"Aw, Snap!"

I find Google Gears especially painful to use with Google Adwords’ local storage feature.

I understand why Google decided to integrate Gears with the Adwords dashboard- instead of loading data from Google’s servers several times a day and eating up their bandwidth, it allows faster use of Adwords and saves Google’s a couple of nickels (which will most likely go into yet another failed Google Labs project). The problem is Gears crashes 9 out of the 10 times I’ve tried to use it.

I thought Google Gears would be improving my web applications, but unfortunately that has never been the case. It stalls, it freezes, and it crashes Google Chrome every chance it gets (In fact as I was in the middle of typing this very paragraph Google Gears crashed Google Chrome. Ironic?).

I may come off as a hater, but that simply isn’t the case. I love Google. My first job out of college was as a creative writer for the first Google Adwords reseller and since that day I have faithfully (blindly?) downloaded, purchased, and used every Google product that was applicable to my life. However, as technology grows and other companies are finding ways to make their technologies more user-friendly (I’m looking at you Apple and Microsoft), Google seems to be just developing technology and hoping they work with existing Google apps. It confuses me that they waste resources on failed social media tech, like Google Wave and Google Buzz, while ignoring glaring problems with their flagships.

I know for a business to grow it needs to make changes and take risks but if those changes are negativity effecting your loyal users, aren’t you just hurting your bottom line? #kanyeshrug

Thanks to Sam Harrelson for the first image.

Imagine you are a new hire for a company.  Your boss schedules your first work day-trip for an important meeting with a client – and even better – it is to New York City (oh…and you have never been there before!)  You are so excited and ready to show your boss why he/she hired you!

The night before your 7:00 a.m. flight, you create the meeting agenda for the next day.  You get your briefcase packed.  You iron and lay out your outfit.  You take your shower.  You set your cell phone alarm clock for 4:00 a.m.  You are set and ready to go, so you head to bed.

6:08 a.m. your spouse wakes you up from a deep sleep frantically saying, “Do you know what time it is?!”  Your first thoughts:  “WHAT HAPPENED?!  Why am I not sitting in the airport waiting for my flight to board?!”

This is a true story.  This exact situation {unfortunately} happened to me.

“What did I do next?” you might be asking yourself…

The very first thing I did was call my boss and let him know right away what happened and what was going on.  He seemed pretty optimistic that I would make it to the airport on time (even thought I live a half hour away from the airport on a good day.)  I brushed my teeth, tossed my makeup bag into my briefcase, threw on my clothes and ran out the door to my car.  I sped all the way to the airport (I am not promoting speeding.  I am only giving you a play-by-play report of exactly what happened.)

After parking my car and running all the way into the airport, I arrived to the airline’s check-in counter at exactly 6:50 a.m. (panting and sweating profusely, of course.)  The not-so-friendly man at the counter pretty much told me that there was no way in hell I would be getting on that 7:00 a.m. direct flight to NYC.  The last text I got from my boss before the flight (that I was supposed to be on) took off read something like “Do whatever you have to do to get there.”

Ok.  The pressure is piling on.  Next, I begin running to every airline counter (in heels) begging to let me onto a flight that will get me to NYC in time for the client meeting.  From one wing of the airport to the next, I am having no luck.  {This is a scene straight out of a movie, if you ask me.}  There are airport employees rooting for me and trying to help me out.  Finally, the last airline left (who’s workers were not at the counter until now) agrees to get me onto a flight that has one layover.  At least I will be getting there at a decent time.  Things are looking up!

Until I realize that I have no cash, no debit card, and only one check left in my checkbook.  In the hectic rush I was in this morning, I must have left my debit card at home (and I never carry any cash on me, ever.)  Luckily, the airline agreed to take my check!  Little did they know, I did not even have enough money in my bank account to cover the check!  However, I was aware that my boss graciously planned to reimburse me for any of these unnecessary expenses that I was incurring because of these desperate circumstances.  I planned to deposit the money into my account before the airline could even cash the check.  (I later found out from my hubby that this act is considered a felony – so please do not try this at home!)

I have my new (one-way) ticket, made it through security and I am in the sitting area waiting to board my flight.  Now I am noticing that my cell phone battery is close to dead.  So, I am emailing my hubby and my mother to let them know what is going on.  My mom insists that I cannot go to NYC with zero cash.  So she took a collection of cash from her charitable coworkers and got her boss to (once again) speed her to the airport.  She jumped out of the car and went up to the security guards near the exit of the terminal.  She asked if she could give me the cash, and the security guard took it from her, inspected it and then handed it over to me.  What can I say?…My mom is the best!

Now I am really all set to make it to the client meeting!  I had never flown alone before.  And I actually really enjoyed it, once all of the running and worrying was over with.  I turned my phone off for the flight (because they make you and because my battery was dying.)  Once I landed in NYC, I turned my phone on and had a text from my boss with a phone number and confirmation number to a town car company.  The driver knew exactly where to take me.  My boss said that once I got there, to call or text him and he would come down and pay for the fare.

The whole ride there, the driver was pointing out landmarks to me and explaining the 5 Burroughs of the city.  When we were nearing the client’s building, I began calling and texting my boss.  He wasn’t responding.  Thank the good Lord for my mom!  If she had not rushed me that cash, I would have had to sell my soul to get out of that town car!  I finally made it up to the meeting and all went well. What a day!

Thank goodness for:
A) My hubby for waking me up when he did.  I still have no idea what happened with my cell phone alarm and why it did not go off.  And, maybe it did, and in my sleep I turned it off…who knows?!
B) My mother and her coworkers and boss for donating and rushing me some cash.
C) My boss for being completely understanding and admitting that he has gone through similar circumstances.  He reminded me that no one is perfect and that it can happen to the best of us.
D) And, last, but certainly not least, God – for getting me through the whole fiasco!

In the end, this was a great experience because I learned a lesson.  Here are some tips so that you do not have to learn the same lesson I did…

1. First of all, if you know that you are not an early morning person and it is in your control to choose when to take your flight, do not choose an early morning flight that requires you to wake up at the break of dawn.

2. Set 2 alarms – Give yourself enough time to arrive at the airport about 2 hours in advance of your flight.  If your flight leaves at 7am and you get to the check-in desk at 6:50, they are not going to let you on the flight. Airport security can take a while to get through, especially if it is an early morning flight.  Think of rush hour on the highway.  The same concept applies to flights.

3. Ask someone to give you a wake-up call, who you know will already be awake – a parent, a friend, or even a coworker that you may be traveling with.

4. Get to bed early so that you are not tempted to hit the snooze button on your alarm.

5. Take your shower the night before.  It takes me a solid 40 minutes to blow dry my hair (I know – high maintenance.)  Can you imagine if I had not taken a shower the night before my flight?

6. Have everything laid out for you ready to go in the am: Your outfit, briefcase, etc.

7. Make sure you have enough gas in your car the day before so that you do not have to make a stop in the morning before your flight.

8. Make sure you go to the ATM the day before so that you do not have to make a stop in the morning before your flight.

9. Check-in online or on your smart phone.  According to Delta.com, “Mobile check-in saves time at the airport by letting you check in and get your eBoarding Pass right from your PDA or web-enabled phone within 24 hours of your departure. It’s the fastest, most convenient way to check in.”

10. Have all of your identification and tickets in a handy place so that you do not have to spend time searching through your things.

*If you do happen to miss your first flight of your round-trip ticket, do be aware that some airlines will cancel your entire itinerary.  This means – do not try to purchase a 1-way ticket to your destination, assuming that you can still use your original ticket back.  Check with the airline first.  You may need to purchase a whole new round-trip ticket.  (I discovered this important piece of information on my way back to New Orleans from New York City.

**Know where you are going once you get to your destination airport.  Waiting for a taxi may add to your late-ness.  Have a list of phone numbers on-hand to local town car services.  These companies sometimes cost less than cab fare.  Call and make a reservation before your flight takes off.

I hope that these tips come in handy for you.  Have you had a similar experience?  Do you have any additional tips?  Thanks for reading!

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PHOTO CREDITS:

• Alarm Clocks
• Take Off
• Late for Work Again
• Denver Airport Security Lines
• Boarding Pass
• Sleeping on the Bed
• Gas Station
• ATM
• The Big Apple