Justin Germino Ramblings

The first winery we toured while in Napa was the Del Dotto winery where they had a great barrel and cave tasting tour.  My wife and I were taken into the Del Dotto building and after being given a sample of wine were taken into the hand dug caves where you can see pick axe marks and barrels of wine lining the walls up and down.

We sampled 12 wines directly from the barrels via a wine thief and were able to taste and compare wines from the same vineyard and with the same French oak barrel but with different clones and compare how they taste. 

We just had to buy a bottle of the Mo/Fo Cabernet Sauvignon which wasn’t being bottled until Fall of 2012 and they will ship the bottle to us when it is ready.  We also bought an incredible Zinfandel / Syrah port wine that taste like liquid gold poured on to the tongue.

It was great learning about the French Oak barrels and the toasting of the barrels to impart different flavors into the wine.

If you are in Napa Valley, Del Dotto is a must visit place and the cave tour and barrel tasting was unlike anything else.  It made for a great adventure and honestly after tasting 12 2oz portions of wine in the span of 90 minutes or less I was a little buzzed.  (I don’t drink often (maybe 1 drink every 1-2 months, so can’t hold my alcohol well).

-Justin Germino

So on July 4th, Independence day which happened to be my 13th Wedding Anniversary my wife and I partook in the Napa Valley Wine train brunch which was from 11:00am to 2:30pm (took off at 11:30am).

The wine train travels 18 miles or so North through the wine country and gives you views of the vineyards and estates from the rails, while you are served a fine mail in the car and go to another car to have dessert.

Now, if you have ever been on a dinner cruise you know what to expect, it is a nice relaxing meal you enjoy while traveling along the rail.  When I talked to my private car driver the following day she had informed me that many people had complained about the Napa Valley Wine train and the biggest complaint she had heard is that they don’t do any stops of the vineyards to let people off and partake at the vineyards but this isn’t the point of the whole Napa Valley Wine train and we enjoyed it and knew exactly what we were getting into.

It is just a breeze through so you can see the estates up and down CA 29, and Saint Helena and know what you are passing and what is out there.  It is more about the dining, drinking and watching the scenery from a reasonable speed and distance rather than stopping and visiting the actual wineries.

Well, if I was going to have a 7 day vacation driving 13 hours from San Diego county to Napa and then back then I figured it would be good for a series of travel posts here on my personal blog.

I can tell you that if you take only the I-5 freeway from San Diego to Napa Valley you can probably do the trip in 9.5 hours without traffic (more like 10.5 with light traffic).  If you take the Big Sur, which is the route that has you spend much of your time on the US 1 and US 101, then the route takes you 10.5 – 11 hours without traffic and it my case it took me 13.5 hours total.

I was caught up in traffic in both LA, and San Francisco (Morning Rush Hour leaving Encinitas at 5:30am, and hit San Francisco about 5pm and hit really bad rush hour traffic on the outskirts there).

The Big Sur is worth taking though at least on the way there, this is because you get to see some really nice cliffs where the ocean just meets the rocky cliffs on the edge of the highway.

Probably one of my favorite spots along the Big Sur is the reserve where you get to peer at Elephant seals basking on the beach and there are dozens if not hundreds of them swimming, baying, fighting, sunning and kicking sand up all over their gargantuan bodies.

Here is my honest feedback about commenting commitments and systems, I used to comment on 100+ blogs per day 3 years ago when I was a newbie blogger. 

Commenting for reciprocal comments and backlinks reminds me of the "Entrecard days" where you drop to receive a drop and sure I did 300 drops per day and got 300 views/drops back per day in return.  The same rule is with commenting, you eventually can’t keep up the momentum and risk burnout.  Let’s say you write 100 comments, at 70 words per comment.  This is 7,000 words, and you could have written 14 (500 word posts) and those 14 posts would be SEO indexed articles showing up in Google SERP which STAY there.

The REAL way to get audience is from Google Search and SERP, not from referrals from blog comments, this can produce spikes but is very temporary.  The original http://theinfopreneur.net, which is now http://theinfopreneur.tv/ owner was a good example, he originally commented on 300-400 blogs per day and in 30-60 days of starting his first blog, he had lowered his Alexa from 4 million to 23,000+ and had over 1,000 visits per day just from his massive commenting routine.  He eventually sold off his site, new owner did not keep up momentum and site plummeted in Alexa, visits and overall changed direction.

Even if you are lucky enough to attract the attention of 10 bloggers per month, with social media audiences totaling 10,000 per blogger, and get 100,000 retweets/shares from audience, you are still talking about an average of 1-2% click rating which brings you 2,000 views per month.  Negligible compared to fine tuning SEO, capturing trends and really writing outstanding quality material that brings people in via search.

Always visit and comment on other blogs, this is a great way to network and leveraging DropMyLink.com and BlogEngage to find other blogs to comment on and follow are great.  However, don’t do it as a method for building your own site traffic/content, because the moment you stop the momentum you will lose that referral traffic faster than you can imagine.  Leverage it as a networking tool and to gain a little more attention and notice, but SEO/SERP and content is truly king. 

If you had to choose between doing 100 comments and 7,000 words (70 words per comment) or 14 500 word blog posts, I would choose doing the 14 500 word blog posts every time as being a better benefit to the site overall.

Another item, it is great to have blogs you love and follow, but for expanding your site influence, traffic, Alexa rating, you must comment on unique domains, only 1 backlink from the same domain ever counts for Alexa, and if you comment on the same sites you will only ever be seen by the same audience (generally) you need to keep expanding and reaching new audiences.  As much as I like commenting on smaller blogs too (which I do), I got more referral traffic from 1 comment on Problogger.net than I did from commenting on 100 smaller blogs.  So don’t rule out leaving a really useful and baiting comment on some of the big sites, you can get far more traffic than you think from them, comment early, the first people to comment get the most reads, nobody really reads comment #78 – #100 in a 200 comment articles, they read either the first few or last few mostly. 

Agree, Disagree?  Share your thoughts, I want to hear from you on your commenting strategies and what works, doesn’t and what you would or do actively do.

-Justin Germino

I was reading this article from the Casa Grande Dispatch, reprinted from Associated Press about the average pay for a CEO of a publicly traded company equates to 9.6 million dollars per year in cash/stock options combined.

When compared against the average U.S. salary of $39,300 last year, it would take 244 years of working at this average salary to reach a single year earnings for the average CEO of a publicly traded company.

You can’t help but read that earnings difference and want to buck the trend somehow right?  I mean, who will honestly say they want to slave away at a cubicle for 30 years to make 1/100th as much as a single year salary?

The American Dream is to find your own way and carve your own path, entrepreneurialism is really the only way to cut past the system unless you work in an abnormal position and field where salaries and earnings are drastically higher.  High End Corporate Lawyer, Private Doctor, Hollywood Actor…etc.

I was reading in a similar article how within 10 years few people will be able to support themselves on single or even dual household incomes and nearly every working American will have to have supplemental income on top of a "regular 9-5 job" in order to make ends meet.  This would mean everyone needs a side income, a 2nd part time job or other efforts to bring in the bacon as they say.

Well in this respect, I am ahead of the curve with having my online entrepreneurial efforts but I am not counting on them overtaking my primary day job as a source of income ever likely, more like supplemental to help pay the bills and provide some fun money.

Speaking of jobs, there was yet another related article talking about the jobs that aren’t able to be outsourced and will always exist.

These include:

• Nurses
• Manicurists
• Cosmetologists
• Specialized Physicians
• Veterinarians and Vet Assistance

Pretty much any major job where you have to be working with customers or patients in person and that can’t be done over the phone or remotely will likely remain a non-outsourcing position.

-Justin Germino

With me taking a lot of vacation in June 2012 it was a bad month for some of my writers to put in notice that they were dropping from the site.  This happens as I mostly employ teenagers/young adults who only have a few hours per week to spare between studies to submit articles for the site.  Writing part time freelance is a good way to earn a little extra side money but by no means is it going to be able to pay the bills, and I don’t expect it to.

When I hire part time writers for DragonBlogger.com typically it only takes 1-2 hours per week to meet the commitment of 2 articles per week, so I am only hiring somebody for 1 hour typically per week.

What I look for are people who are articulate and have passion in their writing, I want someone who can not only write about technology, gadgets or whatever their passion is but also share their thoughts, opinions rather than just reprint the latest product specs on a new gadget about to come out like the Google Nexus 7 or Amazon Kindle Fire 2 for example.

If you are interested in being a part time tech, gadget, TV Show reviewer then feel free to fill out an application: http://www.dragonblogger.com/writers-join-dragonbloggercom-team/

-Justin Germino

My kids love Adventure Time the Cartoon Network show where every episode is a story full of adventure and fun.  When I saw that Victor from Metallman.com was giving away Adventure Time Season 1 on DVD, I had to enter the contest and see if I could win a copy for my kids.  It would make a great present!

[easyazon-image-link asin=”B007Q0JJHC” alt=”Adventure Time: Complete First Season” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41PeMWoURNL.jpg” align=”center” width=”427″ height=”500″]

If you are a fan of Adventure Time, hurry up and enter the Adventure Time Season 1 Giveaway from Metallman.

-Justin Germino

[easyazon-block asin=”B007Q0JJHC” align=”center”]

13  years ago today on July 4th 1999 my wife and I married at the Phoenix Zoo, we have always had a tradition of taking a getaway vacation each and every year to celebrate our Anniversary and this year is no exception.  While the previous years we have been out of the country taking cruises, this year we decided to go to Napa Valley and do tours of the vineyards and partake in the famous Napa Valley Wine train experience.

Stagg Vineyards is the one my wife is most excited to visit and see their cellars but I have a few other tours planned as well.  I wound up renting a private car and driver so we can tour the vineyards and sample the wines without either of us having to worry about driving (considering we are doing a 10.5 hour drive to Napa Valley from Encinitas).

Have a happy 4th of July everyone!

-Justin Germino

As I realized that I now have a mix of audio book playlists and music playlists, one peeve about Spotify is that it has no ability for me to switch from an Audiobook playlist to a music playlist and back resuming where I left off on my audio book.  It has only pause/resume for the one playlist you are on and is overwritten by any other playlist you visit.

I also think Spotify can be more audio book friendly and am hoping it will increase it’s library of audiobooks as Audible.com and buying audio books is just way too expensive, I would even pay $14.99 per month for Spotify (up from $9.99) if it actually added audiobooks into it’s library that readers can listen to or download in "offline" mode to their portable devices.

Despite this I love Spotify and it is my only music app I use on my iPod touch and my PC anymore.  I used to use Winamp, as my PC music client and iTunes on iOS.

I still have an occasional issue where some of my local songs won’t sync to my iPod touch (maybe format issue or DRM?) one iTunes song I purchased and then converted to an MP3 will play on Spotify on the PC, but I can’t sync it to my iPod Touch for Offline mode, the song looks like it syncs but never plays.  I haven’t been able to figure this one out.

-Justin Germino

In this age where technology rules and there really are no limits to what the computer industries can bring to our consoles and computer screens at home, the average gaming age has changed from 15 a couple of decades ago to 35 years of age in the last couple of years. The landscape has altered dramatically, and now there really is a gaming experience for everyone, from kids to grandparents and everyone in between.

The Gaming Family

You only have to have the TV switched on for a while before you see a Nintendo Wii advert where the entire family are playing Wii Sports together and having a great time. One advert has Harry, Jamie and Louise Redknapp playing on the Wii together. It’s a little surreal, but the point is clear: The Wii is a console that the whole family can enjoy. There are a number of family orientated games out there, and Wii Play and Wii Sports are the two most addictive. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a family member in their fifties try to get a strike on Wii Sports’ bowling game. The technology has advanced so far now that games like Fifa 2012 are so realistic it’s as good as watching the real thing, and certainly the closest most people will get to playing for Manchester United!

The Gaming Couple

The Xbox Kinect is unbelievably good fun and enable the user to dance, play sports and keep fit without using controllers and going to the gym. You can control the gaming experience with your voice and your body, and there are great times to be had. Couples don’t have to just chill out on the sofa, they can do a Zumba class together in front of the sofa instead!

The Gaming Geek

There’s a gaming experience for everyone, but not every game experience has to be at a computer. The ultimate gaming experience for the geek is a to explore worlds thousands of years into the future and fight epic battles – all at their desk! Warhammer has been around for over thirty years and shows no signs of slowing down, giving geeks the world over the chance to build their armies and conquer fantasy worlds. War has never been so much fun.

The Gaming Sportsman

There are a huge range of games that are of a great help to sport types. If it’s raining outside or the gym seems too much of a trek to get to, the Wii Fit board can help you burn some of those excess calories with the multitude of workouts that the game has to offer. It’s no substitute for the real thing, but it’s a great alternative.

About the Author

Daley loves his Wii more than anything in the world and is a massive geek when it comes to games! He works with Gifts for Geeks.