All Gone

I received a Living Social Escape e-mail last week about an 8-day trip to China. The price was $1,199 which sounded like a pretty decent price for a land tour, but who has the time and money to that far away. It was about a day later that I went to look at the fine print and noticed that the price included hotels, quite a few meals, AND airfare from New York city. I couldn't believe it and when I went to see what round trip airfare alone cost, this trip seemed to be a great bargain. Airfare alone to China could cost over $1,200.

The downside was that the trip had only 3 dates in November and December. So there wasn't much time to get your affairs in order to go on the trip, like getting your passport and visas. The other downside was the trip was only 8 days long. I had gone to China once before and it took a day to get over there. Jet lag didn't seem to be a problem when I was there but trying to get the most out of China you really need more time.

Well to make a long story shorter, by the time I made up my mind, the trip was sold out. They sold 120 tickets in about 2 days. I guess some of these trips you have to jump on really quick. So far this is really the only one that really caught my eye, but it looks like Living Social is really pushing to get into the travel business and are having offers daily. But some escapes are definitely better bargains than others. I mean which is the better bargain, $1,200 to go half way around the world or for 1/4 the price stay 2-nights in Missouri, transportation not included.

Brazilian War

If you live in the Boston Metro area, you can participate in a Brazilian steakhouse war on the cheap. Two steakhouses, Rio's Steakhouse and Midwest Grill are both offering $30 vouchers for 50% off at DealFind.com and Groupon.com respectively. Rio's has two locations and their voucher is good at their Quincy and Plymouth restaurants. The Midwest Grill voucher is good at their Cambridge and Saugus locations.

Both restaurants specialize in rodizio, in which the meat is served and carved at your table. The servers go from table to table carrying large skewers of meat. At your request they will carve off pieces onto your plate. The skewers can contain barbecued meats such as steak, pork, sausage, chicken, chicken hearts, lamb, etc. Some even serve roasted pineapple.

Besides being a vegetarian's nightmare, they both offer a buffet table on which there are hot and cold dishes and even a few without meat. Both are pretty casual restaurants with Rio's being a bit more casual as the building is a former IHOP.

I have been to both and they are both very good. Lots of choices and the barbecued dishes are quite tasty. Though I must say that after a few rounds the meat start tasting the same as they are basically seasoned the same way. From a value standpoint, I would select Rio's as their dinner price is $15 as opposed to $25 for the Midwest Grill in Cambridge. The Midwest Grill location in Saugus is cheaper at $21. But if you go for lunch, their prices are all basically the same around $14-13.

If you are interested hurry, both offers can be purchased through October 23rd or until they run out. The Midwest Grill seems to be the more popular with close to 1,000 vouchers being sold. But the Midwest Grill voucher expires on March 1, 2012 while the Rio's voucher never expires.

Special Offer

ToYou.com is offering their first promotional offer for a very short time only. We are giving away a ToYou.com penknife (pictured on the right) for people who register on ToYou.com. The penknife measures 2 1/2 inches long and consists of one blade, a nail file, a pair of scissors, tweezers, and a toothpick.

To get one, register on ToYou.com and enter "blogger" in the promo code. We will confirm that you are a winner with an email before mailing it out. Hurry supplies are very limited!

Offer is limited to Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island addresses only.

History: In the Beginning

ToYou.com first started out as a website directory for businesses that delivered or came to your home or office. We envisioned businesses like restaurants, florists, groceries, doctors, barbers, office supplies, hardware, etc. would be listed. This way people could shop on the Internet without leaving their home or office.

The domain name was part of the slogan, "When you can't get it yourself, have it delivered ToYou.com". Pretty cute, right? Too cute. The first thing that we found out that people had a hard time remembering the domain name. Sure it was short and the catch phrase was easy to remember, but people could not figure out how to spell "to you". They would ask is that spelled with the number 2 or with the letter "u" or is that spelled with 2 "o's"? And this was before texting became big where people short-hand everything.


Other problems arose with getting the content or listings. At that time not a whole lot of businesses had websites and when we offered to build a simple site at nominal cost they would say that they don't have Internet access. We tried explaining that people could order over the phone but very few people would hear of it. Plus most businesses that could be listed were mostly restaurants and Chinese and sub shops at that. We wanted a more robust listing but it was almost impossible to find barbers or doctors who made house calls.

There were a few minor successes. We got a few listings as being a top website by somewhat dubious organizations and we did score big being named one of the top 120 websites by Boston magazine.

Unfortunately this business model didn't work out too well and while we tried a few promotions it never did really get it off the ground. It doesn't help when most staff knowledge is technical and none in marketing.

Next: Marketing Campaigns, Not as bad as New Coke but not a whole lot better.

Why China?

There are so many statistics and metrics that are available from a website using Google Analytics. It is a free tool that Google offers so you can collect all of these numbers. They give you some snippet of code that you place on your webpages and viola!, instant numbers.

Of course trying to figure out what all those numbers mean is not so easy. There are the usual statistics like how many visitors came to your site, from where did they come from, what keywords they may have used to search for your site, and even how long they spent on your site.

One statistic that they provide is quite easy to understand but I am not sure what to make of it. That statistic is what country are these viewers from. Now for a site written in English and targeted to the United States, one would expect the United States to be number 1 with possibly Canada number 2, and any other english speaking nation after that.

But no! For the past few months the number one country for visiting this site is China! The United States is a distant second, followed by Viet Name, Thailand, and Brazil. Now it doesn't seem that anyone outside the United States has registered on the site so all of these other visitors are not looking for 1/2 off certificates. But what are they looking for?

Maybe "toyou" means something else in Chinese or even Spanish but I haven't been able to figure that out. If it means something pornographic, maybe I should change the site's content to cash in...