Logotournament.com

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Fábio Costa

As my blog starts to build, I need a logo, and design that identifies my brand. About a year ago I found a site called LogoTournament.

The name of the site is almost all the self description it needs, which is very good when you want to find the name of your own brand. So LogoTournament is a outsourcing site, where you insert your basics of the idea of the logo that you want, or even the description of your brand, what it should represent, what kind of brand it is, who is it targeted to, if it’s sensible or aggressive, what colors do you want to use, and a lot of other aspects of your idea. You also need to decide what’s the budget you want to spend. You have the entry fee just to post your project of 50$, and the minimum amount for the logo is 275$, so when you start, you’ll pay the minimum of 325$ for you first logo. You also need to set the timeline for the logo to be ready. This is the process of you posting your project.
After this, the designers step in. And there’s thousands of them ready to work on your logo. Not all of them will, considering which aspects of your project will seduce them.
So they take what you posted in your project, and start their logo submissions. You’ll be notified by email when new submissions have been posted, and then you can check them out. This is where you start to rank them. You can leave some logos in the green section, where the logos that you like stay and where they need to be ranked by you, and you can send the logos that you really don’t like to the red area, where they are not ranked. Anyway, if you’re not sure, you can always pick the ones you want from the red area and put them in contest again. It’s all changeable before the contest is over.
But after this, ranking the logos is not enough. LogoTournament requires that you send some feedback to the designers, either to say you want something changed in the logo that the designer made, either to congratulate him that the logo is perfect. You’re not obliged to do so, but it’s recommended, because you’ll have better results at the end, because you say to the designers what you want and what you don’t want, even when you’re not giving feedback. When you rank a logo down or high, you’re saying to other designers what you like the most, and new designers come up with new designs similar of what you like. Also, if you don’t give a lot of feedback, it will show on your project that you don’t interact a lot with the designers, and the new ones won’t be interested in working on your project. So, top advise, give feedback, even if it’s only to say: “Thank you for your logo submission!” . They will like it, your feedback is given, and if you believe or not, saying “Thank You” to someone might change that persons day. These designers are hardworking people, and they trying to make a living doing this, which is making maybe 10 logos for you each, when they can’t be sure that they’ll be the ones winning, because there can only be one winner. The winner take the 275$ that you deposited with your project. So, work with them, talk to them, say what you like and don’t like, they can also add some experience to their next costumers.
When the timeline closes, and you ranked your logos, only the top three logos that you chose will be in the deciding timeline, which is seven days from this point. You can only talk to the designer that made the logo you ranked in first place, in case you want him to make some changes, but you can still change the ranking of the three logos before the seven days end. Also, you can speed you decision. In those seven days, if you think you have made your decision, you can choose the winner entry with one click, and it will be done.
After this, the designer sends the files to your email account, and it’s all done! You have a logo!

I personally have my logo made recently in this site, which is already in my blog header as you can see. In my contest, I had almost 200 logo entries, with the minimum 50$+275$. It was hard to pick one, but I think I chose the most professional one. Here it is:
36843 medium Logotournament.com

I hope I helped! Cheers! icon wink Logotournament.com

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Midnight Toughts

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Fábio Costa

So here I am, alone in a club in Versailles, named Pacha Club. I’ve been here before, but in a saturday. I had a good time, was in the time that I was arriving to France, I still had home in my mind (not that I don’t think about home every single day).
Today is sunday, it’s a hot flight girls night! The barmaids are very sexy and well dressed for the ocasion. Maybe too well dressed… icon smile Midnight toughts and the rest of girls aswell (costumers). This club has very good criteria of costumers entry, so the people are very well dressed, good looking, and mens also. So if they let me in, that’s a good sign I guess…
But sadly, I don’t feel that way. I feel like I can never reach hot girls. And you might say: a girl being hot does not mean she’s a good person for you. I confirm, but the trouble is that we never know if a hot girl is a nice person until we meet her, right? Sure there’s some techniques to evaluate a girl: the way she walks, the way she talks to others, how she smiles, if she smiles by the way, if she has a ring, how she dances, how she relates with others, the way she looks to someone, etc… Sadly, I evaluate all this things in a woman, and I know that most of the time I won’t find a girl that fits my requirements. And when I found one that does, it’s the time for my shyness kick in… I can’t talk to a girl unless she starts talking to me. I’m too shy, I’m afraid of embarassement, of a NO! In that part, I’m as fragile as cristal. A NO is enough to take me down to a level that I need a week to recover.
Apart that this is a real problem, I believe it’s a part of my way of being. I’m almost sure that I’m special, all my life I came across with people that are different than me, less caring, less comprehensive, less a lot of things that I find essential. And when it comes to girls, I’m the one that sends flowers when they less expect, I’m the one that remembers the little details, all the important dates, I’m the one that makes sure she is happy, that respects her, that understands her womanhood, that try to understand what she’s thinking to best please her. I’m not saying this just to impress, and most of you won’t be impressed because you know and I surely know that there are more men like me, or better! I’m just trying to say that I feel that I have so much to give but I can’t reach someone who to exercise my way of being. I feel so frustated.
And one my big faults is that I love hot girls… And now in France feels like paradise, and this club is filled with hot girls!
So, how can I reach these girls when I can’t talk to them? I try to make them talk to me, right? And how can I do that?
Perhaps look hot! Which means I would have to find unfound strength inside me to go to the gym… And believe me, I’ve been trying to get courage to go, but it’s hard when you have low self estime.
But I guess this post means that I’ seriously thinking on going. And I will! It all starts in one moment like this one.
In the end of the day, the sad truth is that people judge you by the way you look, so I’ll go along with this, maybe it will make me feel bettet, more confident, but I’ll always know that that’s not the most important in life. But we can’t deny our instincts aswell.
This may be a sad post, but I just wanted to spill it out.

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Thinner, Bigger, Faster, Stronger?

Posted on April 2, 2011 by Fábio Costa

“Does history record any case in which the majority was right? by Robert Heinlein”
This is a quote that’s right in the beginning of the book. Robert Heinlein was a science fiction movie writer. We can see that this book begins with the principal that what you’re used to see, to know, isn’t always right. That’s something an entrepreneur would say, which Tim Ferriss, the writer of this book, is.
In his books, Tim regularly uses past events to help explain his point. However, I’ll try to summarize my articles about this book to the most important content.
So, I picked the straight forward phrases used:
“I’d dropped from 11,9% to 10,2% bodyfat, a 14% reduction of the total fat on my body, in 14 days.
How? Timed doses of garlic, sugar cane, and tea extracts, among other things.”
“Want to extend the fat-burning half-life of caffeine? Naringenin, a useful little molecule in grapefruit juice, does just the trick.”
“Need to increase insulin sensitivity before bingeing once per week? Just add some cinnamon to your pastries on Saturday morning, and you can get the job done.”
“Want to blunt your blood glucose for 60 minutes while you eat a high-carb meal guilt-free? There are a half-dozen options.”
“But 2% bodyfat in two weeks? How can that be possible if many general practitioners claim that’s impossible to lose more than two pounds of fat par week? Here’s the sad truth: most of the one-size-fits-all rules, this being one example, haven’t been field-tested for exceptions.”
“You can’t change your muscle fiber type? Sure you can. Genetics be damned.”
“Calories in and calories out? It’s imcomplete at best. I’ve lost fat while grossly overfeeding. Cheesecake be praised.”
“I had just finished a 10-minute workout following a double espresso on an empty stomach. It was a new experiment That would take me to single-digit bodyfat with two such sessions per week.”
“I’ve flown to rural tea farmers in China to discuss Pu-Erh tea’s effect on fat-loss.”
“Overfat? Try timed protein and pre-meal lemon juice.”
“Undermuscled? Try ginger and sauerkraut.”
” Can’t sleep? Try upping your saturated fat or using cold exposure.”
This phrases are just a tiny bit of what’s in this book, and we can see that they are pretty specific, straight to the point, not general talk here. Specific talk. Backed up by research and opinions of several world experts in the area, doctors, bodybuilders, etc.
Watch this trailer to better see what I’m talking about.

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Paypal

Posted on March 27, 2011 by Fábio Costa

If you want to do any business in the internet, either purchasing, selling or just receiving money online, Paypal is an essential tool.
You can use Paypal as a mirror of your credit card, where you can pay in sites that accept credit card, or you can use it as a bank account. As simple as that. You can top it up or you can withdraw as a bank account, but all online. Let’s say you receive 500$ from someone by Paypal, you can then withdraw to your bank account, wich is associated with your Paypal account, and it takes 2 or 3 days for the money to be available in your bank account. For paying with Paypal, is the same, but in the other way. You can either use your credit card to pay, or use your Paypal balance, but not all sites accept Paypal balance when you want to purchase something, they only accept Paypal payments but with the credit card associated. That’s one of the reasons this blog isn’t what I want yet, because I need services and products that are only purchased by credit card, either with Paypal or not. And because I just arrived in France to change my life, to get a new job, my credit card hasn’t arrived yet, so I can only use Paypal balance for now.
To start, you sign in with your email account and a password, like any other normal log in site.
I advise you to use your gmail account to handle your Paypal account, or if you have your own site and email accounts, like my email: fabio@fabio-costa.com, you can use it too, because it’s safer. Don’t use hotmail accounts, yahoo accounts. Use a serious and safe email account.
You connect your credit card to your Paypal account in one operation, and then you can use your Paypal account to buy or sell online, without touching your card numbers again, because they are safely hidden. I’m not saying that every site that requires your credit card data is unsafe, but when you mix online hackers with people with low knowledge of web safety, sometimes your ear some sad stories about “my account as been hacked” or “I had a virus in my hotmail account” or similar. Well, they hack in your mail accounts just to find in your inbox if there’s any valuable data, any passwords, any codes, anything that as worth. Even your existing or future Paypal account.
But, with the right knowledge, you can prevent this situations, by choosing a strong password. How can we do that?
We use the caps lock, numbers. This is an example of a strong password: yL80A6mf4R9009. Mix the numbers, the letters, don’t make a predictable password like f12345ghjkl. This might seem difficult to hack, but believe me it ain’t if your a good hacker.
Just to finish, Paypal has the monopoly of the web for online currency, as Google has the monopoly for web research, as Redbull has the monopoly of energy drinks, so they rule the business segment they’re at. It’s an important tool, and you will need it!

So go ahead and register your new account!

Sign up for PayPal and start accepting credit card payments instantly.

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Domain and Hosting

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Fábio Costa

Well, a domain is for example my fabio-costa.com . It’s the name of your site, the name that will go on the url bar, and it can end on .com, .net, .org, and so on.
I tried fabiocosta.com before this one, but it was already taken. So use this way of though when you want to choose a domain. The domain name is the first thing that will identify you or your company, and it’s important that the domain name is original and catchy. For example I chose my name because I want to make my name as a brand, and if I’m original enough form here to the future, this name will stick and be known not just for the name, but for what I do.
The .com is the more used, so it’s the one that have more demand, but in practical terms is almost the same as a .net and others. It’s just a thing of trend I guess.
The cost of a domain name is normally no more than 10$.
So, if you want to start choosing your domain name for your website, there’s a lot of places to start, but I would recommend companies that supply you the domain name and the hosting in one operation.
Now the hosting is the physic space where your site will be, the hard-drive, the database, all content of your website, email accounts, everything. It’s where your website will be loaded from when someone visits it. There’s a lot of companies, and everyone of them allows you to buy your domain name with hosting included. I recommend BlueHost.

For 7$ a month, you have one domain name free, and you have unlimited space to upload, and unlimited broadband. I’ve been using it for all my sites, and it’s all working good!

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Zeitgeist

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Fábio Costa

I love the Zeitgeist movies. They allow you to understand how the society really works from its core. Sometimes it can be scary to watch, because you ear things that you have afraid to think off.
One thing’s for sure! Our world will be gone if we don’t take action to change our way of thinking about our life. The opinions of the scientists, the commentators, all people that makes part of Zeitgeist movies and principals, are 100% sure that Money is what’s killing our society. But you may think, well, Fabio is talking in his blog about making money, and at the same time he confirms in his opinion that money is the greatest problem of our world! Isn’t that confusing? Well, it is confusing, but I’ll get an excuse for that.
I believe that, until the world isn’t changed in a way that money won’t rule everything, or even completely dissapear, we need to make everything we can to spread the word of change of habits, and not just this, living, making our life better, wich sadly envolves having money. So let’s say we’ll use the spell against the sorcerer, ok? icon smile Zeitgeist
I know I sound like a dreadful human being, with the will of making money, and yes, I am a human being, but I also believe in sharing, in contribution, in helping the ones that can’t help themselves. I take a bit comfort that besides my acts as one the human beings that are destroying our planet, I know that I’m trying to do what I can to help change the world, and I will talk here about sharing, about contribution, about donations, about helping others. And I take great comfort that I’m writing this post, because I’m spreading the word of Zeitgeist, wich means I care about the planet I live in, besides my other 985365120 actions that say otherwise.

Check this website, and prepare to be blown away! icon wink Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist Movement

Inside the website, they SHARE the movies they made, and they don’t mess around, the movies have more than 2 hours. You don’t need to buy the movie, you just download it, for free, in the same pirate sources that you probably download your media stuff (who doesn’t?). So right in the beginning you see the sharing starting to work.
There are your specific country area if you want, and there’s gatherings, summits, info everywhere, even a project already engineered to make life on Earth sustainable without the existing of money.
The biggest problem is how to convince people, specially the most rich and powerful, to let go money. But without making one step first, you can’t make the other.
I would be here all day writing about this, but I’ll let this issue go for now, because it takes a lot of your thinking percentage, and oddly, that’s exactly what the big guys with the money want you to do, to let go the issue. Scary isn’t it?

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Create a Google Account

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Fábio Costa

Ok. Most of you don’t know, but a Google account is more than an email account. It’s your acess to the Google universe. You probably have a Gmail account and you don’t know what I’m talking about.
There’s Google Adsense, where you can earn money by placing advertising in your website.
There’s Google Adwords, where you can make publicity to your company, with a wide range of price plans.
There’s Google Webmaster Central, where you can check the statistics, the visits, the ranking, how to improve your site to get more visitors, lots of useful stuff, but a bit hard to use. We’ll get here!
And there’s more, but let’s focus on the ones I mentioned.
Let me add one thing here. If you remember, when Gmail was launched, it had a 1GB storage account, wich was a lot better from the competitors (AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo), but the key thing they did was that you needed to know somebody with a Gmail account to have one. If you had a friend with one account, either that friend sent you a invite to register, or you asked him for it! In my case, I received an invite. This don’t sound much, even that now you can get a Gmail account with no invite needed, but this is one of the top marketing strategies used by our society! We’ll get more in this in another post, along with other marketing strategies, but remember this one, and think what you can do with it.

So you just need to go to: Gmail
Now, the desired login name is important, because you can say that a Gmail account is more of a professional email, and you won’t be taken serious if you have an account named windowdestroyer@gmail.com for example. If your name is Katy Perry, you use katyperry@gmail.com, or if it’s not available, use katy-perry@gmail.com, or katyp@gmail.com . Don’t be afraid of associating your name to the email name.
The rest of the signup is easy, but if you have any problems or doubts, leave a comment and I will try to help as I can!

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First Post

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Fábio Costa

My blog starts! I hope I can make this work, now that have more free time.
In this blog I will talk about me, how I built this blog and how I’m managing it, how I’m making this blog earn money, how my emigration experience is going, I’ll talk about women and men, about cars, everything that I find interesting!
As you can see, the blog looks like it’s been just installed, and that’s true. No logo of mine, no picture, just this post and some advertising.
It doesn’t look like much, but I already had a lot of work doing it as it is. It’s hard work, but it pays, and advertising is just a tiny part of the earning money part.
For now I can say that I needed to do: create a google account, get payment methods to buy what it’s needed, find a domain name, get a hosting account to host the domain and the website, install wordpress (blog script), setup the wordpress blog, install plugins in wordpress (plugins that go from automated keyword creation to banners for advertising placement), create the categories I want, write this post, and I’m sure I’m missing something to mention, so you can see how much hard work this is.
My next posts will be me explaining how I arrived to this point of my blog, or I may write about something else, just because I’m not always sure of what I will do!
See you back soon! icon wink First post

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