Quick Bio..

I was reminded recently that I do not have a bio on my website. I suppose this is close enough..

My name's Rick Carruth... and I'm a country boy..

I was born and raised in Landrum, South Carolina, (Spartanburg) at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains. A really nice little town, with antique shops and cafe-lined streets, Landrum has the second largest concentration of horses and equestrian centers in the United States, just behind Louisville KY.

I attended Limestone College to advance my tennis game.( hey, it seemed like a good reason at the time..)

Afterwards I went to work at Palmetto Dunes Resort on Hilton Head Island, managed at the time by Rod Laver and Roy Emerson. Stayed there awhile and then moved on to Red Fox Country Club in North Carolina as their tennis pro..

Knee injuries and adult-itis moved me on a couple of years later. I took a position in law enforcement with a large government agency. Absolutely loved the work... but couldn't deal with the 'politics' necessary to advance to the very top...

After twelve years, including a couple of years with the Federal Government, ( Had the pleasure of working around very powerful people, including President Reagan, and even managed to go aboard Air Force One a time or two...) I decided it was time to go out on my own.

I was just a little too independent to succeed in a regimented format.

Too many Wussies....

After a couple of interesting detours, I am now the owner of Carruth Contract Carriers. We contract with five different pharmaceutical companies to deliver 'drugs' to medical care facilities around South and North Carolina nightly...

Oh... and did I mention that I am a magician? I've had a life-long interest in magic, resulting from having a cousin who was a professional magician, and who use to make quarters, and an occasional glass of water, come out my ear. (Great stuff when you're a kid)

I spend as much time as possible trying to educate both myself and others. I have never strayed beyond my regional area, performance-wise, but I would love to find the time to travel. Oh-well....

I spend endless hours working on my web site, trying to get it optimized and in all the search engines. I am not happy with the current content of my website.. aside from the eMagic Deluxe newsletter.. and will be slowly turning toward original material as I make time to develop it...

I am also an editor with a large online directory. I edit - what else - magic related sites ! I spend more time editing than I should, but I figure this is my way of contributing something back to the magic community........

My lovely wife, Carolyn, is a nurse. We have six children.. Buddy, Scotty, John & Jamie (twins), Leslie, and Lauren. We are STILL in Spartanburg County, but spend a lot of time in the mountains a couple of hours from here.. (Gatlinburg, Tn. )

Later...

Magic Site Optimization

Hello All...

Been working on website optimization all day. Really hard stuff when you are technically challenged to begin with...

One site I ran across that was helpful was http://www.1-hit-com . They have a handy little tool called a ' load time analyzer ' that clocks the load time of your website and makes suggestions to cut your load time down. This, and many others, are free for all to use...

If your website can't load in a reasonable length of time, you will lose a percentage of your visitors because of their impatience. Of course, if I were on a slow dial-up I would probably be a little less patient ...

My main site, StreetMagic.info , loads in eleven point three seconds. That is just above the recommended ten second maximum... but I'll have to live with it...

Their other free tools include:
Bookmark maker scripts, cloaking check, WHOIS tool, Google activity detector, html cleaner, keyword analyzer, meta tag generator, page ranking checker, robot.txt generator, search engine simulator, spelling checker, and a site that lets you see what your page looks like on different screen sizes. Among other scripts...

I build my sites with Site Spinner , a web authoring tool similar to Frontpage... but easier to use, in my opinion. This is the beginning of building your website. You can install Site Spinner on your computer, and even if you are, as I mentioned above, technologically challenged, you can STILL develop sites with a fair degree of sophistication without really 'knowing' what you are doing !

I can use the systems built-in FTP to make changes to my website, which I do daily, and almost-instantly publish my new or re-worked page (s) to my website. I had a web host at one time that had a built-in WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get ) editor. I worked hard to get my little site listed well near the top in chosen search engines. I had the number one ranking in Google for David Blaine Secrets and David Blaine Secrets Revealed.. among other keywords.

And.. after months of inching my way to the top, I was working on my site one night about Two AM ( I normally work on my sites late at night ), and, because I had my site open and had the directory open using the wysiwyg editor.. my site was down.

Guess who came by.... a little Google spider. And, when he found my site down, my ranking IMMEDIATELY dropped out of the top one hundred for ALL my keywords.. It took me another couple of months to get my ranking back, and in the process, I learned NOT to mess with sites that allow online authoring...

Everything I do on Site Spinner is off-line... and then I upload in a half-minute or so. I will talk a little more about Site Spinner, and particularly my web host, next time....

Later folks..

It's a New Day.... Thank Goodness

Just finished mailing a new issue of eMagic Deluxe. I also have it posted in the archive section of this website. ( Issue# 11 ) I began a new series of interviews in this issue, and I hope you find it interesting.

I also sent out a special mailing to my subscribers detailing a new free ebook. Actually, it's not a complete ebook, but a 'preview' edition of Astounding Secrets.

It contains about ten different tricks and gives the readers a good cross-view of the book. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that by downloading the ebook you get an additional five dollars off the full version of Astounding Secrets... This is NOT some over-priced ripoff. I urge you to check it out for yourself and at least download the free version... After all, it's like.. free...
Click Here

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Also, if you have an interest in card magic (tricks) . as I do, I want you to check out MJM Magic. Just ask for Jeff, and he will be glad to help you find just the right bit of magic...

Click Here

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Getting ready to begin a general discussion of web site promotion, obtaining traffic, web site optimization, selecting the proper keywords, and other related subjects for those of you who have magic-related websites... I am going to direct you to a wealth of free online services to help you maximize your sales, traffic, and search engine placement...

Stay tuned... there are companies out there charging Big Bucks to disclose what I'm about to reveal for free.. These techniques will work with any website... not just magic sites.... so check back in a couple of days. Gotta go rake some leaves... The're everywhere.

New Stuff...

For those of you who enjoy forums... in particular 'Magic forums', I have just installed on on my website. I need posters... It looks a little bare at the moment. Look for the link near the top of my homepage ( in the nav bar )...... or........ Click Here

Getting ready to publish a new issue of eMagic Deluxe.. (the in-house newsletter) . I've just completed a very interesting interview, and will publish it on Nov. 16th. If you're not a subscriber, (and if you're not - I don't know why - after all... it's FREE ) you can visit www.streetmagic.info and sign up on the homepage -or- click on the Magic Tricks link on the far left of the nav bar and a little java script will take care of subscribing you... check it out.

Later...

Two Days..

It's taken me exactly two days to get this 'blog' up and running on my server. I pay a premium to have a web host with 24 hr. emails, 24 hr. online chat, and 24 hr. toll free calling... and I won't 'stop and ask directions' for nothing.... It's a male thing...

NOW... I can, and will, start posting something with content. My newsletter, eMagic Deluxe, is entering a new phase. I am going to concentrate on interviews with working magicians from around the world.. and will publish them bi-weekly.

I will use these pages to pass on 'other' info that I find useful, but don't have the room to publish in my regular newsletter. After several years of marketing online, and publishing another newsletter related to internet marketing, I realize the 'problems' spam filters present to publishers like myself.... You work hard on a substantive ezine , mail it out, and... it's gone.

That's one of the primary reasons why I re-post all my newsletters on my website - www.streetmagic.info . If you get a chance, check 'em out....
Later.....

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Make yourself at Home...