On second thought, nursing mothers should not donate breast milk to Haiti. I earlier posted that some groups were calling for donations because the infrastructure for delivering it was now in place. Apparently, it isn’t. It turns out that “a bevy of United States breast-feeding advocates may have unleashed a well-meaning but misguided flood of mothers’ milk to the earthquake-shattered nation, one that aid workers in Haiti say was not requested — and is not needed,” reports msnbc.com’s JoNel Aleccia.

“Tell them not to send it,” said a spokesman for the American Red Cross.

The Human Milk Banking Association earlier issued “urgent” call for breast milk. Now, the Emergency Nutrition Network has asked the association to retract that call.

Donations of breast milk could create logistical problems in Haiti and create an “unfeasible and unsafe intervention” according to the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance in a statement.  

It appears that the Human Milk Banking Association, along with others such as the La Leche League, may have jumped the gun. Nevertheless, the Milk Banking Association’s executive director, Pauline Sakamoto, says that the group ” was just trying to fill a need,” Aleccia writes. Sakamoto also said that donated milk will not be wasted, even if it doesn’t make its way to Haitian infants.

Aleccia writes: “While representatives for aid agencies such as the American Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and World Vision said there never was a need for donated milk, some agencies said they heard from workers at orphanages in Haiti who indicated that babies were going hungry.”

No doubt. But if sending milk is going to cause more problems than it solves, it shouldn’t be sent. And as well-meaning as the groups might be, they really should check with disaster-relief officials before issuing such calls.

And: ” ‘This was very grass roots,’ said Amanda Nickerson, executive director of the International Breast Milk Project,” according to Aleccia. That’s also great. But there are reasons that the “grass roots” aren’t put in charge of disaster response.

The Human Milk Banking Association and the other groups had said that they arranged for donations to be transported to a U.S. Navy hospital ship off the coast of Haiti. But now the staff of that ship is holding the milk because of the concerns that have been raised. 

Alan Kohler writes for Money

Look out for Alan Kohler’s new column on ninemsn Money – starting this Wednesday.

Australia’s top Stock market commentator, Alan will be providing expert insight every week. Alan Kohler, Australia’s top business and finance commentator is starting a weekly column for ninemsn Money.

Alan kohler joins ninemsn Money

Starting Wednesday August 5, Alan will file weekly for Money giving his expert take on the markets, the economy and business. Alan kohler  also has his own website Eureka report and Writes for Business Spectator. He is also a regular  stock market update presenter on my favorite section of news “ Stock Update” in the 7pm Abc News In perth.

Check out – > Alan Kohler in wikipedia

Join Alan every week on Money and make his insight part of your knowledge portfolio.

There is not the slightest doubt that Reciprocal Links have a major role to play in increasing your link popularity, securing a high page rank and bringing in traffic. Though Search Engines consider one way links superior to reciprocal links, the fact remains that we do need them. The biggest problem faced by new webmasters is that their request for reciprocal link exchange is often turned down by webmasters with high page rank websites because the new site often is PR0.

This often causes disillusionment and disappointment in the ranks of new webmasters who had spent many hours researching the internet and identifying the related high PR websites.

By following these steps systematically you will soon be on your way to achieving your objective and be happy enjoying your work.

Step 1. Complete Construction of Website:

First and foremost your website should be complete. Your website should have excellent content and be related to the theme of your website. The site should be optimized for your chosen keyword or keywords. Remember content is king. Search Engines love them, so too will your website visitors.

Step 2. Submit to Search Engines:

Submit your website to Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista and to all the leading Search Engines. Do not submit “under construction” websites as they will never be indexed and could further delay future indexing.

Step 3. Submit to Directories:

Submit your website to Directories such as Open Directory, Yahoo, JoeAnt and to other leading directories. There are three types of directories. (a) Those that accept free listing without reciprocal linking. (b) Those that accept free listing but require reciprocal linking. (c) Those that have only paid listing. Some do have a combination of all these. Since submitting to the paid directories could be too costly to the newbie, the best option would be to start submitting to the free submission directories that have a high PR. This will make your site visible in the internet world, increase its overall importance and bring you several one way links and reciprocal links.

Step 4. Writing and submitting Articles to Article Directories:

While you are in the process of submitting your site to the directories you should commence writing articles on the theme of your website or related themes and submit them to article banks, article directories, and article distributors and to related high PR websites that accept articles. Your articles should be of good quality, helpful to the audience and display to the internet world your knowledge and expertise. If you don’t have the ability to write articles the other option is to obtain the services of a ghost writer to write a few articles for you.

The purpose of writing these articles is to obtain one way links and also traffic to your website. Hence it is important that you have a resource box at the end of your articles with your website link embedded in them. Article writing is one of the best ways of obtaining one way links and you are bound to get dozens in quick time. The more number of relevant one way links you obtain, the greater will be your chances of improving your link popularity and climbing up the Page Rank ladder.
If in the meantime you get requests for Reciprocal Link exchange from good relevant sites you may accept them.

Step 5. Posting at Forums and Writing Testimonials:

Post your expert comments and advice at related discussion forums with your signature file and URL
Write testimonials about the products that you have used and request the webmaster or vendor publishing your testimonials to display your site URL when he publishes the testimonials. These can all bring you one way links to boost up your link popularity.

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The above systematic approach will propel your website to PR2, PR3 or even PR4. You are now beginning to be recognized by the search engines, and also by other webmasters who have read your articles and forum posts.

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Wise and experienced webmasters can identify such websites and will find it hard to reject your reciprocal link exchange request. In fact you will find quite a few webmasters who would like to be associated with you by either publishing your articles or accepting your reciprocal link request.

Conclusion:

The rejection, the consequent pain of mind and disappointment unfortunately kills the enthusiasm of some of the newbies. Though it might appear difficult initially but writing articles and posting in forums are much easier than obtaining a reciprocal link from high Page Rank webmasters.

By following the above method systematically, Link Exchange becomes a more enjoyable and rewarding experience. bringing in its wake heaps of Reciprocal Links, One way links, high Page Rank, increased Link Popularity and Targeted Traffic. What more do you want?

We are delighted to have been selected to be highlighted (RSS feed) in the Commerce page of globalpost! According to John Wilpers, Global Blog Coordinator, they had a hard time finding really good global business blogs, especially about global small business, and ours really stood out.

globalpost is a new international news organization that launched on Jan. 12. They have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, MSNBC, MediaShift on PBS, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Online Journalism Review, and many more. Here’s what else they told us:

By appearing on Global Post’s exciting new international news website, your words, viewpoints, and pictures would gain worldwide exposure. In barely two months, we have had 250,000 unique visitors and 1.1 million page views. Our readers have come from every country in the world except North Korea, Chad, and Eritrea!

Your posts would not only appear instantly on globalpost.com but also possibly on the sites of our partners, including the Huffington Post (7.8 million U.S. and 9.7 million global monthly unique visitors) and other news and information websites.

We are thrilled to be a part of this exciting consortium of international news sources.

Take a peek when time permits.

For some reason, this article really brought home today’s economic reality. The article presents results of a recent survey of small businesses. Essentially, it talks about how concerned small businesses are with the state of the economy. It reiterates how the economy has had a huge impact on this sector, in particular.

The survey found that 66.4% of small business owners have been affected for
the worse by the recession — and that a full 80% see the economic crisis as the
primary mandate for the new government.

Small business is the backbone of the U.S. economy representing 99.7% of all employer firms, and generating 60 to 80% of new jobs annually over the past decade, according to the Small Business Administration.

Perhaps this news, in particular, resonates because my small business has also been negatively impacted by these trying times. RRW has a focus on providing direct marketing solutions to financial services firms–an industry definitely hit hard by this economy. Our business has suffered.

You know what? I’m mad. I’m sad that I lost a business partner and feel for some clients who’ve either had their marketing budgets cut dramatically, have laid off a good portion of their staff, or (in the extreme) have gone out of business entirely.

Yet, I cannot even imagine thinking that someone out there will magically appear and throw money at RRW. As much as I’d like to, I cannot think that there my fairy godmother will show up with her magic wand and a purse full of clients with huge budgets.

So, hearing about huge companies looking for their fairy godmother in the form of our tax money simply irks me.

OK, I’ll get off of my soap box and start the day. I’ll get back to work and come up with a value proposition, a direct marketing idea that one of my smart clients will pay for. Isn’t that the way this country works?