Internet Marketing Tips and Freebies

With Childhood obesity and diabetes at an all time high and since I lost 35 pounds in the past 6 months and I don't want to be tempted by candy.

I decided to put on my thinking cap, do some research and come up with some alternative treats to the traditional candy for this years goblins.

To turn this into a Marketing opportunity. Attache a business card, or wrap your items and attach your business card with black and orange ribbon.

Print you name, company information, phone number on the bottom of the activity books (courtesy of...). Use this opportunity to introduce yourself as a real estate professional. Dress up as a Realtor to give out your treats.

I have assembled a list of 85 items food and non food. Some ideas are better than others and I bet you all have some to add to the list so here goes... 

 

Food Alternatives to Candy at Halloween

Crackers and Peanut butter snack packs

Cheese and Cracker snack Packs

Juice boxes

Fruit roll-ups (if healthy)

Fruit snack mix (Trail Mix packs). Stay away from ones with nuts many children are severely allergic to them.

Cereal Bars (healthy ones stick with the fruit ones and make sure there are not nuts)

Fruit cookies or ginger snaps in small packets

Small bags of pretzels

Small Boxes of healthy cereal

Hot Cocoa mix

Popcorn (microwave bags)

Dried Fruit individual packs or snack size boxes

Small bags of baked chips

Mini boxes of Animal Crackers

Sugar Free - Drink Mixes

Small bags of Gold Fish crackers or Oyster Crackers

Graham Crackers

Turkey Jerky

Pudding snacks

Small containers of applesauce

Small containers of sugar-free Jello

Pretzel sticks with cheese

Yogurt covered raisins

Cracker Jacks or Carmel Corn

 

Non-Food Alternatives to Candy at Halloween.

Stickers

Rubber Creepy Critters (snakes, worms, spiders, skeletons)

Crayons

Pencils

Markers

Puzzles - jig saw, plastic puzzles or printed puzzles

Nerf toys

Small games

Glow Sticks (they usually have these for Halloween and the kids can use them right away)

Small flashlights

Bookmarks (use wide craft or Popsicle sticks and decorate them in a Halloween motif)

Coloring books or coloring book pages and crayons or markers

Halloween Word Find puzzle 

Colored pencils or fancy pencils

Paint brushes and paints

Bubbles

Balls (super balls)

Jump Ropes

Stuffed Animals (small ones)

Pencil toppers (look for a Halloween theme)

Plastic Jewelry (bracelets or rings or crowns, spider or skull rings)

Small plastic cars or planes

Temporary Tattoos look for a Halloween theme

Anything that makes noise (Whistles, noise makers)

Harmonicas

Sidewalk chalk

Parachute men

Balsa wood planes that you put together

Paper Dolls or small party favor sized dolls or doll babies with bottles

Pirate treasure (bag of fake money or other booty)

Mini Frisbee

Pony Tail holders or barrettes

Wax teeth or lips

Pinwheels

Jacks

Marbles

Yo-yo

Paddle-ball

Water guns

Note pads

Write on rub off boards for drawing

Spin tops

Fake glasses and Noses

Masks

Trading Cards

Charms

Plastic Animals

Small Craft packs (make a packet of enough craft items to make a bead bracelet)

Mood Rings (yes they still sell them)

Pins (or create a craft packet for a butterfly pin or skeleton pin or bat pin)

Silly Putty

Finger puppet

Sock puppets

Bat, ghosts or pumpkin magnets

Comic books

Stamps and stamp pads

Construction paper packs

Halloween Stories (type up some Halloween stories and make them into small books and give them out)

Halloween Jokes (same thing type them up, add some clip art and tie them together with some black and orange ribbon and give them out.

Activity books - Kaboose has some you can print

Miniature games or make your own such as a tic tack toe game Kaboose  has some you can use and give you directions on how to make them.

Face Paint

 

This list should give you a lot of great ideas for treats that are sweet but not candy!

For puzzles visit Kaboose Printable puzzle pages. 

For some craft ideas for the kids visit the Kaboose Halloween Crafts page.

Clip Art was downloaded from Kaboose

 

  

“Fences” by Stardock  is a free desktop management program for you desktop shortcuts. If you have to spend time looking for things on your desktop, you have way to many shortcuts and should consider downloading Fences.

One way to better manage your shortcuts is with an small app called Fences.

Here is my desktop before fences. I don't have a lot of icons but I like grouping my icons by use.  Which is exactly what Fences allows you to do.

Perfect!

Fences corrals your icons into windows on your desktop making things easy to find.

Fences are just windows that you create and label to keep your programs, documents and other shortcuts organized.

Transparency settings allow you to make the borders seamless, so the desktop looks neat and is organized the way you want it.

You can choose from an existing fences layout (there are several)or create your own as I did. This appealed to my sense of design.

To create your own use your right mouse button to create new fences. On the desktop, depress the right mouse button, drag it to draw a rectangle and release this creates a fence.

Then select create fence and give your fence a name. Then drag your Icons into the fenced in area. You can edit how your fences look (color, text and transparency). You can also select which fences to hide and which to never hide.

This is my desktop nice and organized!

If you want to hide your fences double click on the desktop and they disappear to make them reappear double click again and they return.

If your icons don’t fit in the fence you created, the fence will put a scroll bar so that you can scroll through your icons. If you need a scroll bar, maybe you really do have too many shortcuts.

The desktop background is a photo from the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton New Jersey taken early this spring.

On my wish list for improvements;

1. I wish it took less steps to create a fence.
   
2. I wish that you could create rules that would allow you to add certain shortcuts or program icons to fences you have already created without dragging them.
   

Stardock are you listening? 

Otherwise I really like this little program and recommend it to help contain desktop clutter.

You can download it from the Stardock's website or download.com.