Wear the Same Shoes as Your US Olympic Team

The link from this article can be found by clicking here. Here is the text from an article that appeared in the Franklin Park Herald Journal today:

Family raising money to benefit charities

July 2, 2008

By CATHRYN GRAN cgran@pioneerlocal.com

Jackson Pape is one of the lucky ones.

The son of Jeff Pape, member of the Franklin Park Rotary and the Franklin Park/Schiller Park Chamber of Commerce, benefited from an operation to fix a cleft lip.

"You wouldn't notice it now, but when Jackson was a year old, he had a fat lip," Pape said.

"But the scar has healed. It's hard to notice."

Jackson is 4 years old.

Through the newly-founded Pape Foundation, Pape wants to help more children.

The Pape Foundation golf outing will be held July 29 at White Pines Golf Course, 500 W. Jefferson Ave. in Bensenville. Proceeds will benefit the Smile Train.

"We learned about the organization from Jackson's doctor," Pape said. "The Smile Train operates on the 'teach a man to fish' theory," Pape explained.

"They give instruction to local doctors who then go to the patients. These are families without means of transportation."

"We were lucky," Pape said.

"My wife, Nancy, was working for a Fortune 500 company so we had good insurance. All we had to pay was the deductible."

That surgery can cost thousands of dollars.

The Smile Train is a nonprofit organization that provides services and programs in more than 60 countries, including the United States, and has helped provide free surgery for thousands of children as well as free training and education for more than 15,000 surgeons and medical professionals, according to information provided by the organization.

The Pape Foundation is working to improve that number through its golf outing.

Also benefiting from the foundation's first event will be the Illinois chapter, National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

Pape, who owns a wrestling gear company, also sponsors wrestling clinics for area youth.

"Our committee of about 10 people have been working hard to put together our first event," Pape said.

"The golf outing is coming together nicely with lots of raffle prizes and goodie bag items."

The fee is $125 per golfer if registered by July 15 and $150 after that date.

"Some of our top raffle prizes include a barbecue package -- complete with a Smokey Joe, small table, and barbecue equipment," he said, "or a complete ice cream-making system."

Visit http://www.thepapefoundation.org/ for more information

Just like any of these marketing techniques I am talking about - just go ahead and start using them. You will not be an expert when you start using them, but as you go along you'll pick up a thing here or a thing there on how to better use them.

I think that is a key in your marketing efforts - there is no way you can attend a class or study marketing or read a book and implement 100% of the items discussed. Pick one or two of the more interesting ideas or one or two of the ideas you think will work and go with them. Try them out and see if they work. If they work, keep them and try a few more ideas. If they don't work, don't use them and move on to something else. I find the key though is to have something in place so you can track your marketing efforts.

Okay now back to readers, again I am no expert. I have been using my reader for just a few months now. So feel free to post a comment and as long as you do not swear in it or post a comment that is spam (e.g. a bunch of links to your site that is not on topic), we'll keep your comments up here.

So I use google reader, it's free (I like the price)...and it seems to work well. Also, how can you go wrong with google. You know the product will be around for a while which is also something I like. If you use sbc.yahoo for your internet access or probably many other large internet providers - chances are they provide a reader for you to use for free.

If you have Internet Explorer 7.0 or higher, they can manage your feeds as well. So there is a way to get your feeds through IE. For IE, you use your favorites and just flag it as a feed instead of a web page in your favorites. On the tool bar there is a star and plus sign in front of a star. If you goto a page with a feed set up like this one - http://www.thepapefoundation.org/atom.xml you just click on the plus sign in front of a star and it will add you to your list of feeds. The one thing I do not like about this is there is no way to mark the item as read and it does not appear to have as many options to organize it as other options do. Upside is you probably already are using IE 7 and it's free so those are two good reasons in my book to at least look at this option.

Now will talk about google reader and others similar to it. For the most part this category of readers all have similar features, so what I say about google reader can most likely be applied in your reader. To add a subscription, you can go to the feed page like the one above - http://www.thepapefoundation.org/atom.xml , highlight the url, copy it and go to your reader. There is a hyperlink to add a subscription, click on that and paste your hyperlink in there. You can add a couple more refinements to your listing and there you have it you are subscribed.

Not many wrestling websites have what I am going to talk about, but they probably will in the future so I'll mention it. The University of Illinois Wrestling team I am proud to say (being an alum) appears to be more advanced them most. I have not been to every DI wrestling site, but I have been to all the major National wrestling sites and very few have this feature. I guess with U of I being the birthplace of Mosiac (the browser that started browsing as we know it), it would make sense they are at the head of the curve as far as technology goes. They have a rss feed page set up so all you have to do is click on a button and they know your reader - follow this link and you'll be able to add their rss feed to your reader very easily - http://fightingillini.cstv.com/rss/rss-index.html

That's it for now, this blog posting was a lot longer then I'd thought it would be. I'll cover more on RSS feeds next month...

For now here are some blogs I subscribe and some of my rss feeds to that you can add to your reader and play around with...

http://www.thepapefoundation.org/atom.xml 

http://wrestlinggearcom.blog.com/atom/

http://illinoiswrestling.blog.com/rss/

http://fightingillini.cstv.com/rss/rss-index.html

Jeff Pape
Owner/President
WrestlingGear.Com - Wrestling Shoes