Matt Trostle - Dabbling in Business, Philosophy, Art & Science

Do You Track Your Potassium Intake?

Matt Trostle — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 01:52:25 +0000

I’ve been tracking my food off and on for years using tools like Livestrong, Lose It, and, currently, MyFitnessPal. I usually only pay attention to my macro nutrients but recently started looking more at my micros. I can get pretty much all of my vitamins and minerals in my food and supplement with a multivitamin. Sodium is, obviously, super easy to get, making sure you stay under in the hard part.

But Potassium… You need 3500 mg per day, and that ain’t easy! Potassium has a whole slew of benefits: it is good for your nervous, cardiovascular, and musculoskeletal systems as well as helps regulate your metabolism, break down carbs and build muscle.

So I researched the foods that had the highest % RDA and it’s pretty abundant in some fruits, vegetables and beans. I added a potato and banana to breakfast along with my spinach for lunch and broccoli for dinner I was doing ok. Hitting somewhere around 2000 mg a day.

Curious how much was in my multivitamin, I was kind of surprised to find NONE. What?! So I went in search of potassium specific supplements. The highest dose I found was about 90 mg – around 3% of the RDA. There must be some conspiracy! Being the research junkie I am, I found the answer!

In short, it’s because it can kill you! Yeah, that’s a pretty good reason not to take in high doses, eh? Ever heard of Potassium Chloride? It’s the stuff in lethal injections. Apparently, the same systems that it is good for, it can also be bad for in high doses. If you use NoSalt, or some other salt substitute, be mindful that the sodium is removed and replaced with Potassium – essentially another type of salt. That stuff has 650 mg of Potassium!

Conclusion, stick to getting Potassium in your food and forget the supplements. It’s safer and you won’t find enough in them anyway.

Geek Tip: Folder Name Character Count

Matt Trostle — Sun, 12 May 2013 05:59:00 +0000

I wanted to create a rather long folder name so I’d remember what was in it – Windows 7, btw. The name I needed fit so I thought I’d see how far it would go. Answer = 180

The Heisenberg of Photography – Kenny Onufrock

Matt Trostle — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 01:14:50 +0000

A photog friend of mine does some amazing stuff with pixels and light. I’m always bugging him with questions about gear and techniques – and he has some awesome gear, freakin Canon EOS 5D Mark III for starters, gah! This dude was even published in Surfing Magazine, how cool is that!

Anyway, wanted to give a shout-out to the Heisenberg, Kenny Onufrock. If you’re in the Wilmington, NC area, hit him up for some shots. I’m sure he won’t turn down a paid gig at the next surf comp in Bells either though.

Ghost Surfer

Cape Fear Live Oak

Photo shoot with my homie Carlton J Trill James

Quote

Matt Trostle — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:57:35 +0000

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” – Douglas Adams

Wireless Mouse on White Background

Matt Trostle — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 04:51:40 +0000

One of my very first attempts at isolated photography. Learned a lot in the process. Lighting is key!

Wireless black and gray mouse isolated on white background.

Wireless Mouse Isolated (361)

Build Awesome WordPress Landing Pages

Matt Trostle — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 19:27:21 +0000

Landing pages are tricky.

Get them right, and they become one major piece of a booming business online.

Get them wrong, and, well … *nothing* happens.

And that’s just the writing part.

If you’ve ever tried to *build* a landing page in WordPress, you know it can get very frustrating, very fast. The basic idea is to strip all the extras away — on that page only — so your reader focuses on the action or product you want them to focus on.

So, away you go…

Remove the sidebars. Change the header. But don’t change the header on all the other pages of your site!

PHP. HTML. Javascript. CSS. Tracking down the right images and graphics.

Play with color, add an opt-in form (one that actually looks good). Add video, add audio, and on and on and on.

Unless you’re a developer, this stuff can drive you crazy, and waste a lot of your time.

Here’s one we built for a client of ours:

Here’s the thing, the Premise for WordPress landing page software was built to solve all these problems for you (and more).

Premise is a plugin for WordPress that takes all the hassle out of building effective landing pages that get results.

And it does it all, right from inside WordPress. Check it out here:

http://GetPremise.com

Beyond page building and design, you also get copywriting advice (right from inside WordPress), plus copywriting and conversion optimization seminars — all at no extra charge.

Premise for WordPress is the total package when it comes to getting people to take the action you’re looking for, without wasting hours trying to get your page just right.

Here’s a quick look at what you get when you buy Premise:

- Unlimited landing pages you can create
- Unlimited domains you can use Premise on
- Copywriting and conversion seminars
- Specific copywriting advice inside WordPress
- 1,100+ custom graphics library
- Technical support and updates

Anyway, if you want to take all the hassle out of building landing pages for your WordPress site, you should check out Premise right now:

http://GetPremise.com

Using My Desktop Calculator as a Handheld – No Photoshop

Matt Trostle — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 03:52:17 +0000

I have broken the code to the Matrix. I can now interact with my computer in three dimensions. Ok, well not really. Here’s a cool photography trick I learned from Evan Sharboneau’s Trick Photography ebook.

Small Business Marketing Strategies

Matt Trostle — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:15:08 +0000

Think about this question for a moment. What is your business?

Did you answer “Marketing Business?” Well you should have. That’s right; you’re not in the chiropractic business, real estate business, coaching business or whatever happens to be profession. You are in the business of marketing your products or services.

You see, without marketing, you don’t have a business at all. To be successful in business, your business needs to be based around your marketing. To fully grasp this concept, I highly recommend checking out The Duct Tape Marketing Complete Small Business Marketing System.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Probably the #1 question I get asked is, “how do I get found on the search engines?” Most of the time, it’s just a matter of researching the right keywords. Learn how to organically position yourself in the search engines.
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Pay Per Click (PPC)

Where SEO is organic or natural search engine marketing, PPC is the paid sector of SEM. PPC advertising can be a highly effective and quick way to get targeted traffic to your site. You can also blow your whole marketing budget if not done correctly! Find out how to build a profitable PPC program.
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Postcard Marketing

Postcard marketing may seem a bit antiquated with so much emphasis on the internet today but postcard marketing, when done right, can produce excellent leads and sales.

Social Networking

Social networking is basically socializing online. This can be a very effective, and fun, tool in your internet marketing arsenal. Find out how to incorporate social networking into your business.

Email Marketing

The importance of having your own email list cannot be overstated. Virtually every visitor that comes to your site the first time is not going to buy anything. You worked hard to get them to your site, doesn’t it make sense to capture their contact info so you can try to sell to them again? There’s really only one thing you need to do to get them to hand over their email address.

Relationship Marketing

Social networking and email marketing are essentially list building tools, but what you do with your list is what counts. Cultivating strong relationships is key to building a strong sustainable business. Learn how relationship marketing can transform your business.

Multiple Revenue Streams

Matt Trostle — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:10:08 +0000

As a small business owner you’re always strapped for time. You want to grow your business but you don’t have the time to take on more clients. Here are some great ways to increase website revenue without even one more client!

Affiliate Programs

My #1 recommendation for everyone who runs a business is to incorporate affiliate programs as a secondary source of income. You can even build a business based solely off of other people’s products!

Creating Info Products

One of the most profitable ways to increase your income is by taking the knowledge you already possess and turning it into an information product. Ebooks, audios and videos can make very profitable info products!

Hard Goods/Dropshipping

Another good income source is through dropshipping actual physical products. There’s more overhead than affiliate products and info products but if you find a good supplier, it may be a good fit.

Ad Publishing

This is one of the easiest methods to making extra cash online. If your website or blog has decent traffic, you could benefit by publishing ads on your site. Google, for example, will then pay you for every click your site generates for them!

Network Marketing

Network marketing, or MLM, is becoming more mainstream as the industry is becoming more legitimized and regulated. There are literally thousands of companies to choose from and one may be in alignment with your business.

Coaching/Consulting

If you’ve been in your business or industry for some time or are naturally a good teacher, you could supplement your income by coaching others. Spend some time mentoring a newbie or up and coming. They’ll love you for it and and you’ll feel amazing being able to help someone in a profound way!

Website Content Development

Matt Trostle — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:09:46 +0000

Now that you know what people are searching for, it’s time to write content around those keywords. When you plan out your content, each page should be focused on one keyword – called keyword focused content pages. Then sprinkle a few “long-tail” keyword phrases in your content.

Ok, let’s take the “wilmington nc storage” example from above. I want to build a page that targets the big number which happens to be “wilmington nc storage.” That’s what most people are searching for so that’s going to be our main keyword or keyword phrase. Then I want to take 3-5 supporting keywords and add them to the content.

My keyword focused content page plan may look something like this:

I’ve got my main keyword and 3 supporting keywords for my one page therefore capitalizing on not just the potential traffic of my main keyword but of 4 others as well. Properly optimized, that one page could show up on the first page of Google 2,850 times a month! That’s just ONE page. Now what if you had a hundred or more content pages on your site?

Are you starting to see why content is king?

You may be wondering if there is some magic ratio of keywords and actual content. Short answer is no. Back in the 90’s you could stuff your content full of nothing but keywords and you’d rank at the top. But search engine algorithms are so sophisticated these days that they can smell a spammy site from a mile away.

So when you’re writing, write for the human reader first, the search engine spiders second. Don’t force a keyword to fit where it just reads unnaturally.

In the storage example I’d probably write about 300-500 words with the main keyword showing up 3-4 times including the title, and each supporting keyword just once or twice.

Other places your keyword needs to show up are in the URL, title tag, and the H1 tag in the HTML of your content. Here’s a diagram illustrating how keywords can show up in your content and the other areas outside of the content that I recommend you add your keywords.

Here’s the HTML of that same page so you can actually see where those HTML tags exist.