The easiest and least costly way to build a swimming pool is simply to hollow a hole in the ground. You can make your pool as deep as you want, but the key is to make sure the sides slope, which will prevent cave-ins and offer easy entrance and exit. The ratio should be a 1-foot vertical drop for every 3 horizontal feet.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.Tying your news to major or minor holidays like Christmas, Valentine's Day and Mother's Day can help you generate for your business, but it means competing against other businesses that are doing the same thing. Instead, choose a date on the calendar, anoint it as your own holiday, and use it to publicize your business or a special event you're sponsoring.American Express, for example, celebrates between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It encourages people to shop locally. Participating small businesses celebrate, too, with special sales and other promotions.
American Express even gives them free marketing packages with logos, banners, signs and social media templates.But your day doesn't have to be that grandiose or far-reaching. You can limit it to your own community. BookPeople, an independent bookstore in Austin, Texas, has National Bookstore Day this year on Saturday, Aug. That's when patrons can enjoy a poetry-a-thon, learn about new authors, and come for lots of giveaways including cake, champagne and free books.Related:Instead of creating only a holiday, you might also create your own week of the year and month of the year so you have a bigger window of time for others to promote you.If you want international recognition, submit your holiday to, a giant reference book of special days and celebrations. It's found in most libraries and used by journalists who are looking for story ideas, particularly on slow news days.
Go to Chase's website and for free. The deadline for inclusion in the annual print edition is the previous April 15, an easy date to remember.You can also register your date at the site.A month or two before your special holiday, you can start promoting. If you're targeting national magazines, promote six months in advance because some publications plan that far ahead.Related:The secret to generating great publicity is to piggyback an idea, an event or helpful content onto your holiday. The owner of a chain of dog grooming salons wouldn't email a journalist and explain that Nov. 2 is 'Hug Your Husky Day' and expect a lot of publicity. Instead, she would add tips, like a video series on how to groom Huskies, or a list of grooming tips along with before-and-after photos of a Husky the salon has groomed.Here are some promotion ideas to get you started:Sponsor a contest. Announce the winners on your holiday.
Offer a valuable prize to encourage entries, and use social media to promote it.Create a special event that ties into your holiday and submit it to online calendars. You'll find dozens of free services like,. There also paid event promotion services that will distribute your event listing to dozens and in some cases hundreds of newspapers, websites, radio stations and email lists for a fee, if you want to save yourself time.Pitch local media. Fun, wacky holidays attract lots of media attention. If you have visuals, your local TV stations will be more interested.Related:Create pithy or funny quotations related to your holiday or use quotes from famous people. Dress up the quotes with a graphics program like or and share on Pinterest. Link to your website where visitors can find more information.Write a press release. Send it to targeted media, post it at your website, upload it to a free press release site, or use one of the paid press release distribution services.Tie your holiday to the date of your book launch. This works for fiction and nonfiction.Create YouTube videos.
A series of short videos on the topic of your holiday, optimized for the search engines, will continue to pull traffic all year.Ask for proclamations. Local and state governments, and even the White House, issue proclamations for a variety of important and unimportant holidays and events.Tie a holiday, week or month to special sales. Include coupons in newspaper and magazine ads. Offer coupon codes for online shopping.Create a series of free tips on your topic during your special month. If your month relates to financial fitness, for example, let people opt into an email list and receive a daily tip delivered by autoresponder, every day of the month.Tell us: Do you have your own holiday? If so, how do you promote it?Related.
Why Early Access?“We are a development team of only two and Early Access will allow us to incorporate player feedback into the process so that we’re not developing a game no one wants to play. It is really important to us that players help shape the game, sharing their opinions about new features.
In our opinion, it’s vital to the growth and success of the game.”Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?“It’s hard to establish a concrete timeline. However, we plan to keep the game in early access for as long as it takes to reach the point where we are happy with the content and gameplay. Hopefully that will be around a year, but if players are asking for more features, we’re going to keep developing to reach those goals.”How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?“You can expect larger maps, more biomes, more items, multiplayer and a huge emphasis on AI behaviors and intelligence. We know it’s very ambitious, but at some point we’re also planning to incorporate planetary travel into the game.However, we hope that a large part of the game and its direction evolves naturally based on player feedback.”What is the current state of the Early Access version?“Currently, the game offers a single player experience with many of the core features already in place. Some of these core features include: Base Building, Crafting, Quest System, Farming, Animal Husbandry, Trading Outposts, Hunting, Human AI and much more.”Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?“Pricing will reflect the current state of the game and enjoyment players get from it. The price is likely to gradually increase as we add major features.”How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?“It’s been said many times before, but it’s true. For us, by far the most important part of the development of this game is the community.
As we work towards multiplayer, we want to make sure that the features included come from community involvement. Players will shape the game and drive us to work harder. You can count on us to be extremely present in the community with frequent updates to the game as a result.We are gamers first and developers second, we know the importance of what players have to say and we can’t wait to hear all the great suggestions.”.
About This Game What Hold Your Own is About:This game is about finding yourself stranded on an island and fighting the elements, gathering resources and seeing if you have what it takes. You might encounter hunters and animals that you'll have to fight with to claim resources and expand building capabilities.
Since launching, we've added quests in single-player and a NEW multiplayer mode without quests.We wanted to make a survival game that’s not about feeling like you are on the verge of dying, while fighting off and defending your base. In Hold Your Own it’s easier to find food and water, but AI is harder to kill and coming after you. We want players to have fun, build their base so they can spend their time on fun quests and killing AI. Key Features:.
Single or Multiplayer mode. Character Hunger, Thirst, Body Temperature Mechanics, weather systems. Base Building.
Ferry Mechanics to travel from one island to another. Hunting.
Crafting Items. Food Cooking Mechanics. Power/Electricity Mechanics.
Gathering Resources. Mining and refining of ores. Quests. Trader. Arms Dealer.
Kill AI Enemies. Animal Husbandry. Farming. Day/Night Cycle.
Weather CycleThe graphics and quality of the game are our most important priority during Early Access. We know that all the features in the world can’t attract players if the game keeps crashing. So while we’re starting in single-player, our goal is to keep evolving and strengthening the systems to be ready for multiplayer eventually.We’re ready to launch and will be putting out regular updates and any unforeseen bug fixes. Important Disclaimer: We are a small team of 2 and working hard to get Hold Your Own out into the world, but its important to mention that a lot of features we're planning aren't there yet. So only support this game if you are willing to bear with us (and want to kill bears as well) and believe in what we're trying to accomplish.
Which is to say that, at the end of this long road ahead, we're going to make a game that is a different take on the whole survival genre. We will be depending on the community to give us feedback about what's working and what's not, and thank you in advance for giving us a shot!