So here I am, wondering around the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands and I come across this open air market in the city of Los Llanos. Turns out to be the same market where my friends Alex and Lilly who run MamiTunas Restaurant (one of WorldLightASP's newest websites) shop for their produce. I start to become aware of how impactful, frech, locally grown produce is to our diets. I've been living on this island for 2 weeks at this point and I feel great! Avacados are growing for free in the moutains here but I can't wrap my brain around that yet so I buy them from the store. Anyway, without further ado, here I am wondering around the market making myself very hungry. If you are going to watch this, have a snack on hand.

I am really truly pleased and proud to announce some of WorldLightASP´s first international websites.

Turns out that people in the Canary Islands and Canada need affordable, effective, easy to use websites as well.

My friends who run MamiTuna´s a vegetarian friendly restaurant in the city of Los Llanos, on the Island of La Palma in Spain needed a website to publicize their business. Turns out they are some of the first ones on the island to do so.

Check them out

http://www.mamituna.es/

Also, Yannick Malo runs a language translation service in Montreal, Quebec. Yannick has stared his WorldLightASP website to promote his service.

Check out Yannick´s website here:

http://sites.worldlightasp.com/?sitename=adlibtraduction

Having watched the creation of these two amazing new websites I felt inspired to give the same treatment to my personal Yoga website

http://yoga.RajaAfrika.com

Do you have international clients who are looking at your website? Why not internationalize. Now with WorldLightASP.com it is possible!

Progress, Love and Light,

Raja Afrika

So, I´m in the Canary Islands on the Island of La Palma and thinking very seriously about living here. It is in very many respects, a paradise. Being a typical American, I´m been uni-lingual most of my life, even though I studied 2 years of French in the 7th and 8th grades and 4 years of Spanish in High School. turns out, no matter how much you study, if you don´t have anyone to speak to in those languages, it doesn´t do you any good to study them.

I had the experience a few times on annual visits to Montreal, quebec (I REALLY like it there in the Summer-time) that my grade-school French would come back to me. I´d hoped the same thing would happen here in Spain. Turns out it has (well, sorta). One week in and I am able to communicate at a VERY rudimentary level. For example, I could not say that last sentence in Spanish :-) Atleast not yet.

What really facinates me about the entire experience is the subtle disconnect between our ability to speak and our ability to comprehend. Sometimes I find myself respnding reflexivly (and correctly I might add) to something asked of me and then realizing that I have no idea what I just said. Almost as if the neural pathways for Speech are not directly connected to those for understanding.

Mostly what I find facinating is my attachment to the idea of being Uni-lingual. I think that as Americans we´ve been conditioned to believe that if we haven´t learned a second language by the time we are adults that it is too late for us. I can tell you first hand that this beliefe is false. I believe anyone with a sincere desire to learn a language and the courage to immerse themselves in a differnt culture and the paitence to plod through frequent mis-understandings can and will learn a differnt language. :-) We can be bi-lingual... Stepping down off of my pedestal, here is my really horrible Spanish with some of my new friends on the island.

So, after a few weekend  hours spent working on WorldLightASP I took off downtown to catch what I could of the Rose Festival.

I feel like I was guided right to this thing. I took the train to Old Town, China Town in Portland and thought "hmmm maybe I should get off here."

I almost walked to the Portland Saturday Market but I saw these tents off to my right toward the Perl district. The funny thing is I almost didn't go. Gay Pride is here in Portland and even thought it looked like a party... well, it gave me pause to consider. It was the beat that pulled me in.

As I turned a corner an old gay man smiled at me and said "they're real!" I didn't know what he meant... until I got to the end of the next block and then I laughed out loud. The very beautiful Samba dancers on stage were indeed real :-).

I only got about 5 minutes of this on tape using my cell phone (awesome that you can do that btw) but these guys and gals were rock'n when I showed up and continued to rock, hard and non-stop for the next 45 minutes. If the cameria is jumping up and down a lot, well it's impressive that you can see anything at all because I was dancing until I almost passed out! I have not seen anyone rock this hard, this long my entire time in Portland, Oregon. My hat is most definetly off (litterally, I was so sweaty from all the dancing) to The Lions of Batucada.

The Benefits of The New Economy

A lot of us are struggling financially. As the old way of doing things implodes many of us have been forced to find new ways to make a buck.

When I first started to transition from my "day job" to working on WorldLightASP full time and helping yoga teachers and studios get their website up and running... well, lets just say it was a shaky transition.

But here is the thing. So many of us were really unhappy with the old way of long hours in thankless environment enriching others.

Since I've had to "tighten the belt" as it were and recover and re-learn from the end of my cubicle days I've had some really amazing, eye opening, humbling and inspiring experiences.

The first thing was that I was forced to reach out to friends and family for help (which I'm really bad at) to get WorldLightASP going. I figured, helping people who are making positive causes to promote their business with $99 websites was a good idea and a good cause in and of itself. Slowly, that is proving to be both true and worth while.

Since the end of cubicle days I've

begun eating better. Turns out that fresh produce is cheaper and better for you than the veggie burger junk food that I've been living on for years now.

I spent more time with friends.

and (perhaps most importantly) I do A LOT more yoga.

This morning, as I was walking the two miles from my house to the Lotus Seed School of Yoga where I teach, I remarked on these thoughts. How much more I was walking, how much more I was outside rather than inside now, how much more quality time I was spending with friends and family and most profound, how much happier I was.

In a surprisingly inspiring video blog from Bob Parsons owner of GoDaddy he really illustrates the benefits not of the recession but of the new economy. I found that I really resonated with his message: "Now is the time!"

Now is the time to take a chance

Now is the time to try your dream job

Now is the time to try that idea you been sitting on for years

Because of the new economy you have greater access to resources because EVERYONE is charging less

I am really excited about WorldLightASP because it makes creating a website for your dream accessible to the masses. $99 for a website that you can update yourself, without having to wait on a programmer or a designer is really powerful. Many of my clients don't understand how powerful it is until new clients begin showing up.

I get really excited watching new business grow in this new economy.

Let's succeed together!

Call Me

Raja Afrika

http://yoga.worldlightasp.com

(503) 453 - 6689

WorldLightASP

 

I like to take my camera everywhere. My camera became my constant companion in 2007 when, stumbling home late one evening around xmass time I ran into a mob of drunken Santas stumbling in the other direction.



After that I immedietly concluded 2 things.



1. I LOVE Portland, OR



2. Always keep my camera on me because you a weird whacky town like Portland, Oregon you never ever know what you'll stunble across.



With this in mind my trusty side-kick and I went to the Portland, Art Hop. We weren't dissapointed.



The following are photos of friends, random personalities and members of the Lotus Seed School of Yoga where I teach.







 



 



  








   



 



 



 



I thought this band was awesome even though I didn't quite catch their name. They did the best Price cover that I've heard to date!



After watching this step show I think everybody wanted to be a little Black girl.



I've said it many times and I'll say it again. Only in Portland, Oregon.



Oh yeah, there was also this random parade. Don't even know what it was.



It was a busy weekend. We went to Pioneer place after can caught some incredible performances



Until the next randon thing,



Raja Afrika



Yoga.WorldLightASP.com

In a word: Keywords



Keywords are words or phrases that people will search for when looking for YOU on the internet. For example, if you are running a Pilates studio in NE Portland, OR you want to make sure that your page title includes the phrase "Pilates Studio On NE Broadway in Portland, Oregon."

When search engines crawl your site they are searching for:

- The title of your website

- The title of your page

- Keywords in the contents of your page

So it is really important to make sure that you have good keyword density in your web pages. About 10% of the text in an average webpage should contain the keywords that you think the public will search for.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization

All World Light ASP websites are created to facilitate SEO. As long as you have good key word density in your site title, page title and in your page content Google and Yahoo will find you. This type of SEO is known in the industry as "Organic SEO." Organic because you are using your content to rank on Google and Yahoo rather than paying for a service like Google AdWords.

Are Services like Google AdWords Worth it?

That is the subject of much debate. What services like AdWords do is ask you to specify your key search terms and then when the public searches for those terms, you appear at the top of the list on Google and Yahoo.

Awesome! What's the catch?

You will pay Google for each person who clicks on that link that appears at the top. Fees can be $1 or more per click depending on how poplar your key search words are.

So Which Should I Use?

The first thing you should do before deciding is to go to Google and perform a search that a real person might use to find your product or service. You might find yourself on Google if you search for your name or the name of your business but regular people searching for a Pilates studio are unlikely to search for your name before they know you exist.

When you enter a search on Google notice how many results are returned. If there are 3 million hits, then that is the number of websites that you are competing against. For the biggest Organic Search bang for your buck (so to speak) specialize. "Green Pilates Studio in Portland" is A LOT better than just "Pilates Studio."

If after narrowing down your search terms to something realistic and usable you still get 3 million REAL hits (meaning all those hits are really for that service) then consider paying for an AdWords campaign.

As always, we are more than happy to advise you on ways to increase your web traffic. Just call us or fire off an email message.

Happy Searching!,

Raja Afrika

Owner

www.WorldLightASP.com

(503) 453-6689

raja@worldlightasp.com

This morning I woke up feeling great. I'd had a deep, restful sleep and woke up feeling refreshed.



This past weekend I attended the Body, Mind Spirit Expo at the Oregon convention Center http://www.bmse.net. I'd never been to the Convention Center before; it was a huge cavernous space with incredible presence. I went to the expo planning to hand out business cards and talk to holistic professionals about using World Light ASP websites to get the word out about the work they are doing. What happened instead is that over a two day period I was swept up in a whirl wind of positive energy, really informative, heartfelt, conversations and more than one peak experience.



I had a really fun time talking to Michael Brein The Travel Psychologist who patiently sat and listened to me rattle off my tales of adventure in Kathmandhu and was fortunate enough to meet Tahwakeena Kaye who is offering a Native Drum making and Native flute making class that I will probably take. Jacob Carter gave me a sample of Jus that had me flying high all day Sunday.



I think that perhaps one of the coolest guys in the whole place Jerry Norris who had very cool key clips and custom wallet chains on offer. We chatted for a while about tattoos and as a matter of fact his son Corry Norris (no relation to Chuck) was recently written up for his tattoo artistry in Flash Magazine!



I had one experience that I thought was really quite remarkable. During a really cool lecture by Roberta MacKrill a Hawaiian elder rose to speak, and spoke to the audience about the changing times in which we live and how now was the time to act and the importance of forgiveness. During this elder's speech, she very literally began to glow her aura was so bright and compassionate. That was remarkable but what I thought was really most remarkable was the generous, open and compassionate way in which Roberta Mackill shared her space with this elder. It exemplified a type of grace that I don't see every day. The coupe de grace was receiving Jyorei from the Shumei Society at the end of which I felt really light and peaceful.



I woke up this morning and began walking to my office. I stopped at Starbucks for a Soy Chai and ended up taking a detour to Grant Park. I tried to make my steps slow and mindful enjoying the sunshine and laughed out loud when I realized something: It was Monday morning and I was smiling and feeling fine. Now that's really something.



- Raja

They say the proof is in the pudding. I started working on WorldLightASP 3 years ago in an attempt to create an easy, affordable way to create websites for business first here in Portland, OR and later everywhere.

A year ago, I made my personal website MartinWelch.net a World Light ASP website. I'm a vetern web developer but I found it so much easier to update my website with World Light ASP that I have not once looked back since making the change.

SEO is the big web topic today and effect SEO and website "stickyness" requires keeping fresh, relevant content on your website and constantly tweaking keywords on your website to draw the hits that you want. Well if you Google "Martin Welch" I'm #4 and if you search on Live.com, Yahoo.com or MSN.COM I am the #1 hit for Martin Welch.

After seeing the results I decided that it was time to make the move to make World Light ASP a World Light ASP website.

I'm liking it better already :-)

Raja