Best Razor Blades For Men?

Posted on 6 July, 2014 in Personal Care

Gillette Proglide

Is ProGlide #1?

Attention all men who use razor blades to shave their faces! Are you looking to replace your razor because your tired of nicks and razor burn every time you shave? Well I am here to help you make the best decision that your face will thank you for! I’m going to discuss three razor blades I’ve used and tell you which blade gives you the best bang for your buck.

First off, we have Schick Quattro Titanium. As the name infers it has for blades that are coated with titanium which supposedly increases our chance at the coveted “close but comfortable shave”. As an added bonus, the Quattro Titanium is equipped with an edging blade to help you to get to those hard to reach spots (and believe me they are difficult to reach). The design of this blade also includes a relatively stylish and comfortable handle. Now the truth of the razor is far from it’s hype. For one that close comfortable shave isn’t achieved. I don’t know if it is the blade positioning or if you just have to shave harder. The edging blade is hard to use properly and if you aren’t careful you can nick you. The style of the razor isn’t really any more stylish than its counterparts either. So I would definitely stay away from the Quattro Titanium at all costs!

Next up we have one of the oldest brands in the business with their “premium” blade, the Bic Flex. It has three blades that move so you can get a “close and comfortable” shave (apparently every blade manufacturer is going to tell us that anyway). It also has a guard bar to help you to stretch the skin and an aloe and Vitamin E strip that supposedly makes the razor move more smoothly and comfortably across your face. Finally, we have a pivoting head that allows the blade to adjust to the contours of your face for an easier shave. If you are on a budget and quality isn’t the most important thing to you, then you might be a Bic man. I do credit Bic for sticking with their trademark all these years and not being sucked in to the number-of-blades war that was started courtesy of Gillette. I believe that’s because they are intended as the “cheap disposable blade on the shelves” and to this day, even it’s most premium blade would fit into that category. Three blades and aloe strips are nothing new and for me, the Bic Flex just leaves me that grizzly faced feeling. When it comes to razors, it seems the saying “you get what you pay for” has true meaning. But we still have one more blade remaining…

Ever since the revolutionizing Mach 3 by Gillette, they have established themselves as the #1 blade manufacturer in the world. I don’t know what it is, but somehow they keep doing it so much better than everyone else! One of their latest products is the Gillette Fusion Proglide. Before the Proglide, I remember thinking to myself, Gillette could stop creating new blades today and I would be satisfied with their selection for the rest of my life. But in typical Gillette fashion, they outdid themselves… again. Proglide has certainly upped the ante yet again. The razor begins with five blades that have been re-engineered so you don’t have that horrible tugging and pulling on your skin. It also has a swiveling head that helps to get everywhere on your face. Another benefit with this razor is that all the Gillette Fusion blades will fit on the razor. I really like the style and colors that Gillette has used for this razor and it sits very comfortably in your hand while you are using it. So like the commercials like to say, “Gillette is the best a man can”. It delivers what it advertises and then some. I would never use any other razor and whenever Gillette comes out with improved models, I am one of the first to get it. So if you need a new razor, I recommend the Gillette Fusion Proglide.

Local SEO WordPress Themes Review

Posted on 2 June, 2014 in Internet Marketing

From Elder Scrolls Online and Playstation 4, we take a sharp turn off course into the world of Local SEO, a world that I am very fond of, as it’s full of profits and opportunities. It’s also the reason I was able to start working for myself and living my life the way I think it was intended to be lived. So today I am going to review three premium WordPress themes that are all geared towards Local SEO. Unfortunately, none of these themes are free, but as they say, “You have to be willing to spend money to make money”. And after a couple years of thinking I could get by with using Free tools and resources to make money online, it wasn’t until I was willing to spend (wisely) that I found out why I couldn’t achieve as much as I wanted to. For one thing, I don’t think there are any Free themes on the market that are designed specifically to build websites for local businesses.

Theme #1: Rockstar Lead Theme

lead theme

I’m very fond of this theme because it’s the first premium WordPress theme I had ever purchased. The funny thing is, this theme is built to pickup leads and that did not even apply to what I was doing at the time, but the Rockstar duo is just that good at making a sales page and whether they are selling their own products or someone else’s, they are probably five times more likely to reel you in than the next guy.

For its time, the Rockstar Lead theme was both popular and effective. It remains their most popular theme to date, and they have launched 4 of them so far. The other 3 themes are actually more sophisticated than the Lead theme, but once again, it was groundbreaking for its time. Similar to Rent-A-Serp reviewed below, the Lead theme setup process could be completed within 20 minutes and the result was a simple and clean website ideal for small businesses that immediately draws the visitor’s attention to a large Call to Action form on the right.

I can attest to the effectiveness on the CTA because I have installed the Lead theme on sites with relatively small amounts of traffic and yet I was able to produce several leads with this theme, so it is excellent as far as converting visitors to leads which is the ultimate goal.

There is also an upsell that gives you a header image creator which would allow users to easily create the Header image from within the theme itself. Since I knew I was pretty good with Photoshop, I passed on the upsell, and stuck with the Lead theme itself. I will still consider using the Rockstar Lead Theme when it’s time to build another website as it is still one of my favorite options particularly because it is both user friendly and effective.

Theme #2: Rockstar Service Theme

service theme

I am enamored with the layout of the Rockstar Service Theme which was released in 2013 and I believe it is Rockstar’s most attractive WordPress theme released so far. I would describe the Service theme as being full and loud. If that doesn’t make sense, take a look at the demo and you will see what I mean. At a glance, it may seem like it would be difficult to reproduce a site that looks like the one shown in the demo, but it’s incredibly simple, and your visitors will be impressed. It’s also important to have a YouTube video embedded on the front page of your website, and this theme allows you to do that smack dab in the center of the home page where it will draw the visitors attention and when they are done watching, they will be drawn to a clean and custom Call To Action form directly to the left. You can also place a Map of the business and the Phone Number is included in block letters as well, however, I generally prefer the phone number to appear around the top of the theme as opposed to below the center area and again at the very bottom of the page. In the end, I believe the Rockstar Service Theme is a good addition to your premium WordPress theme archives if you build Lead Gen sites or websites for small businesses.

Theme #3: Rent-A-Serp

rent-a-serp

This is the baby of the group. In fact (and this is going to sound a little weird but I’ll say it anyway) Rent-A-Serp is still a fetus waiting to meet, greet, and take over the world! That’s because I am writing about Rent-A-Serp in May, but it actually does not become available until June 9, which is right around the corner. But since I guess you could say I am privileged, I was able to get my hands on this WordPress theme in advance, hence the reason I am able to review it today. Speaking of that, if my description of this theme interests you, I would recommend going to Rentaserpbonus.com since it has the most in-depth review of Rent-A-Serp that I’ve seen thus far. In addition, he is giving away an incredible free bonus with each purchase. Alright so before we dive in, I will tell you right now that I appreciate and enjoy the Rockstar Lead and Service themes, but ever since I discovered Rent-A-Serp, I haven’t gone back. One might argue it isn’t good to stick with just one theme, and they are probably correct, but I can’t help it!

There are 4 main things that come to mind when talking about this theme: User Friendliness, Efficiency, SEO, and Silo. And these are the four things I’m going to discuss about the theme. I am going to go out on a limb and tell you that I think this is the most User Friendly premium WordPress theme that I have worked with of any theme. One of my biggest frustrations with premium WordPress themes is that I’ve found many of them look incredible in the developer’s demo version of the theme, but when you purchase and install it, it looks nothing like the demo at all! That’s because you either have to setup 20 different options to make it look that way or it’s because the developer tricked us by using a static front page that was highly customized with code. With Rent-A-Serp, as soon as you install the theme, it will resemble the exact theme from the demo that made you want to buy it and you do not have to struggle to keep that theme in tact.

User Friendliness and Efficiency kind of go hand in hand because user friendliness allows efficiency. But at the same time, a user friendly tool can be inefficient when it might be easy to use but perhaps there is an endless number of steps and options in the configuration process. That is certainly not the case here either. Local SEO webmasters need to be able to create several websites for local businesses, so efficiency is arguably the most important thing for us. Each website that I created with Rent-A-Serp took me no more than 20 minutes to build. Furthermore, each of these sites looked complete and highly professional. I might be biased, but I couldn’t find any sites in the top 10 search results that looked more modern and attractive than the sites I made in under 20 minutes. That speaks volumes towards efficiency.

Google recently released Panda 4.0 which is the first major algorithm update of 2014. Like every other algorithm update, the mere announcement of this update scared my pants off.  But one of the things I love about all of the recent updates is that Google is truly leaving it up to the webmasters to decide whether they want to simply follow guidelines and be rewarded or try to cheat and get penalized. Google likes unique websites with unique content. They also like websites that integrate themselves with social networking. And they also like websites that structure themselves with SILO. Rent-A-Serp includes Silo 2.0 with each and every site you create. The Rockstar themes I mentioned do not have this feature, unless you want to add it to your site manually with separate plugins. Rent-A-Serp is also integrated with over a dozen social networking sites. In short, this theme is doing everything that Google asks of webmasters.

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