Ah, autumn. The kids have gone back to school and you may have a little more time on your hands. Sure, the holiday rush is coming but it’s several whole months away. There’s a slight chill in the air that makes some of us want to snuggle under the covers with a good book.

For many of us, no matter how long ago school days were, there is still that feeling of Back to School when the weather gets chilly. We remember the smell of new pencils and notebooks and that feeling that anything was possible. We may even feel a strange desire to work harder and to settle down into those things we put off all summer. Instead of shrugging off that feeling, why not use it to better your business?

While you can literally send yourself back to school by signing up for a class (either online or off), there are many wants to tap into the back to school mindset and put yourself on the path to learning without having to go anywhere or spend any money.

Upgrade your reading to upgrade your business
Instead of reaching for the latest novel when you snuggle under the covers, why not read something to help your business? Maybe a book on marketing, branding, customer service or blogging might give you the insight you need to push your business to the next level. Even if you are successful at something and consider yourself an expert, it never hurts to get someone else’s take on a subject and you can learn a lot just from hearing another perspective. A quick trip to the library and you’ll find a wealth of information available in books an magazines without your having to spend a dime. Making some of your leisure reading informative non-fiction can make a big difference.

Not a big reader? Audiobooks and podcasts can give you a wealth of info through your ears.

Do your homework
You may already take the time each day to read a few blogs, but what about all those that look too technical, too much to digest at the moment? Take a few extra hours a day and set aside some time to seek out and carefully read articles that can better your business and will keep you up to date on what is happening in your industry.

Create your own research paper or project
You always wanted to learn WordPress (or podcasting, or marketing with Google Adwords, or CSS, or whatever you’ve always wanted to learn but have been putting off) but you never had the time. Assign it to yourself a research project this month. Commit to finally learning whatever it is by doing not only reading about it in books and blogs but by also applying what you learn directly. There’s no better way to learn podcasting than to actually start a podcast while doing the research, no better way to apply what you learned about WordPress than to start a WordPress blog, etc. Even if you promise yourself it’s just an experiment, it’s much easier and faster to learn something when manifesting what you learned in a hands on way.

Better yet, as you digest the information and learn about the topic, write about it as you would in a research paper. You can post this info in your blog for the benefit of others, sell it later as an ebook or simply keep it for your own notes. Either way, taking the time to write out what you just learned is a proven way to make sure you understand and remember the lesson.

Give yourself due dates
One of the biggest problems with real life is that, unlike school, there are no deadlines. Things are never due so it’s tempting to put them off year after year. While you may not be able to motivate your adult self with gold stars, giving yourself deadlines and pushing yourself to meet them will help you not only to get more done, it will also help you to check off those things on your list that never seem to get done.

How else could we apply the back to school mindset to our businesses?

Collectibles are a tricky. I should know, I’ve been selling them on eBay for a little over 13 years now. Collectibles can be a volatile market: their value can change widely based on current events or popular culture, they can be difficult to research and easy to mis-list and, perhaps worst of all, no one can seem to agree if they are spelled collectibles or collectables.

But whether you just started selling collectibles or have been selling them for years, there are three very important things you need to remember to be successful. Handily, they each start with the letter R!

Research
Thorough research is the collectibles seller’s best friend. Before you price or list an item, do your homework and not just on value. If there isn’t a price guide or website available, ask around on message boards. What’s the history of this item? Are there features of this one in particular that increase or decrease its value? What terms do the collectors of this item use to refer to it? This has to be the biggest mistake newbie collectibles sellers make. When you fail to research your item before selling, you both cheat yourself out of profit and mislead your buyers.

Reality
Let’s say it takes you three hours to clean an item, then another two hours to research it and then an hour to photograph and list the item on eBay. Then, once it sells, you have to pack it up and ship it out which takes an hour because it’s fragile. It sells for $50 which seems great (you only paid $5 for it after all) until you start to think about it the fact that, broken down in terms of those 7 hours of work, you only made $6.43 an hour. Less than minimum wage and I didn’t even take eBay and PayPal fees (or the fees of whatever you platform is these days) into consideration in that calculation. When choosing collectible items to sell, be realistic. Take not only final sale price but also research and prep work into consideration when deciding if it’s worth it to sell.

Repeat business
Never under estimate the value of loyal customers. If a certain type of item did well in the past, make sure to keep stocking similar items. If they got good service from you in the past, you’ll find that some buyers are willing to pay more for the same item from you than from another seller because they know what to expect from you. Some collectibles sellers assume the rules about branding and customer service for sellers of brand new items don’t apply to them but this couldn’t be further from the truth. This doesn’t mean you can’t sell whatever comes your way, but it does mean that you should keep a supply of your most popular items to help build up some “regulars.” It’s the secret to sustainability in the collectibles business.

To my readers that sell collectibles, what would you add?

Steve, here, writing for The Whine Seller…

I’ve been performing a lot of computer repairs lately for family members and this time around, I had to replace the power inverter for a laptop screen’s backlight. A brand new part would have set me back about $45, so I went straight to eBay. Bingo. $4.99 with free shipping from seller ny-citi-com.

Then I notice the following line in the seller’s description:

IMPORTANT! Please compare your current inverter to the one pictured since there are several different inverters that are used within these models and they might have different screw hole alignments.

Huh, I didn’t even think about that… One peek at the photograph and I realize that this part won’t fit. I eventually locate the part I need, albeit from a different seller.

The moral of this simple tale? Even if it doesn’t generate a sale, a complete, accurate, and honest description, especially when the listing is a used item, generates good will with buyers. Specifically, a note highlighting a specific misconception about your item can be very useful, but it can also be a pitfall.

What sets this example apart form other sellers’ attempts, is the clarity and the tone. The auction formatting is very clean, and this particular note is set apart form the rest of the description, not buried within a paragraph of gibberish. Perhaps more importantly, it is a very polite and positive message. What do I mean?

Let’s compare the example above to another example from a different seller who shall remain nameless:

***Warning*** This Item Is NOT FUNCTIONAL & It Is Being Sold FOR PARTS ONLY!!! Please Read the Item Condition Section Closely. Item Sold AS-IS – No Returns Possible!!

Basically, I’m insulted. I don’t like the word “warning” or the double exclamation points.

Did I mention it was repeated 3 times? And again in Spanish? Moreover, the whole tone of the message is that I’m probably too stupid to be buying this item and I should expect trouble when it arrives.

OK, sellers, I realize that most disclaimers like this are reactionary – the seller has processed too many returns for the same reason and decided to add a note to warn off ignorant buyers like me. You need to protect yourself form the uneducated hoards who click without reading the fine print…or reading any of the print. I get it. I live with The Whine Seller, so I’ve heard plenty of war stories.

Let me show one more example to illustrate a well-crafted description. Below is part of the description for a used, broken cell phone. Ignore for a minute the layout and graphics and focus on the words. This is professional…just the facts, and I am left to make my own decision based on them. (Click to make it larger.)

All I ask as a buyer, is that you strike a balance with you descriptions. Give me the details; don’t treat my like a child. I want to feel like I’ve just been offered a friendly piece of advice. Not easy, but I promise you, it is appreciated. You efforts may boost my confidence and generate a sale. Maybe I’ll realize a mistake before placing my bid and save you a headache. Maybe I’ll appreciate it so much, I’ll blog about it.

Note: I can’t personally vouch for ny-citi-com, that’s what feedback is for, but I feel that this seller deserves a mention for saving me time and money.

Tomorrow is July 2nd which is the exact middle of the year. On that day, there will be officially as many days behind you in the year as ahead of you.

People tend to have two reactions to this news:

• That’s all? We’re only at the half-way point?
• Holy crud, really? I thought we had so much time left!

Either way, the middle of the year seldom feels like the middle of the year.

But knowing when the dead center of the year is can actually be a really useful tool and a great opportunity to give yourself (or your business) a mid-year performance review.

Remember those goals you set for yourself on New Year’s Eve? Even if you didn’t call them resolutions exactly, everyone has plans for how things will change in the new year. Instead of crying into your champagne next New Years Eve because you didn’t manage to meet all your goals, the middle of the year is the ideal time to take a look at the goals you’ve set and tweak them to give you a better chance of a happier New Year’s Eve.

If you are still on pace to meet those goals, great! You should still take a hard look at them. Are you meeting them a little too easily? Could you maybe add a few more goals? Push yourself a little harder?

If you’re behind, it’s time to reevaluate. What you reevaluate, however, is up to you. Take a hard look at your goals and what you accomplished so far this year. How much of what you planned have you actually done? How far behind are you really?

If you are just about almost hitting those goals, stay on the course. You just a little bit of effort away from being on pace.

If you think you are working at your absolute maximum capacity but are really far behind, then you should reevaluate your goals. Maybe you just set them way too high or put unreasonable demands on yourself. It’s OK to ratchet them back a little in the face of realism and it will make for a happier you for the second half of the year.

If you are really far behind but have to admit that you’ve been slacking off, then maybe its time to reevaluate your work habits. Could you work smarter, more efficiently and get more done? Sometimes, knowing how much time is left exactly can be the cold water to the face to kick-start your work ethic.

Either way, set aside some time tomorrow to take a look at the half-a-year that has passed and the half-a-year yet to come. Better to do it now when there is still time to adjust then let a whole year go by with no adjustment.

One of my favorite websites is the humor site Cracked which may surprise you since they are the website spun off of a girlie skin magazine but, what can I say, they amuse me even if I’m not their intended demographic.

That said, I wanted to take this one little piece of a recent post, The 10 Most Important Things They Didn’t Teach You In School, and do a blog post around this one quote:

All of those successful people you see around town, with their convertibles and huge televisions? Approximately 100 percent of them got where they are because they had three things. All three are absolutely essential, but one of them is almost never mentioned. They are:

* Talent
* Hard Work
* Randomly Meeting the Right People and Not Pissing Them Off

If you read my post What advice would I give to an entrepreneur that is just starting a new business? then this post may seem to fit under #2 (Be a nice person (aka don’t be a jerk).). But I want to take this a little further.

There is an element of luck to any success story. No matter how much you feel that you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps all by yourself, you can’t deny that someone, somewhere along the way helped you out. No one is an island and people help us every day in small ways that often have big consequences. There is nothing wrong with that. It is a natural part of being successful and other people play a part in every success story, no matter how some people play that element down.

But, it stands to reason, the more people you know and are friendly with, the more chances for you to have that luck and to meet those people that can help you succeed. So, as I said before, don’t be a jerk. When you meet people, regardless of whether they have “the right person to help your career” tattooed on their chest or not, be nice to them. If you meet the right person but totally turn them off by picking a fight with them or otherwise being a jerk, then they aren’t going to be of help to you.

Let’s look at another quote:

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” -Thomas A. Edison

We all know about hard work, right? But let’s mutate Edison’s quote a little.

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed just like another person and doesn’t immediately look like a good contact.” -Hillary DePiano

The people who are going to help you the most in your life aren’t going to be wearing a big neon sign that says so. It’s not going to be apparent from a glance that they are that dream contact you’ve been waiting your whole life for.

Maybe you scoff that it’s too hippie to say, “Be nice to everyone.” Then let me rephrase it. Even if you have no moral sense of why you should be nice to other people, look at it this way: Every person you tell off, insult, anger or otherwise are a jerk to is someone that may have been able to help you towards success. You aren’t going to know beforehand who these people are. You aren’t even going to know after-wards that you missed your big chance. So operate under the assumption that everyone is a potential help to you in some way and that everyone has something to contribute that will help you.

Is it a selfish reason to be nice to other people? Yes, somewhat. But if the impetus is selfish but the end is good, I’m OK with that.

The point is, there is an element of luck to any success story. Don’t let your attitude and prejudices towards other people close yourself off from that luck and opportunity.

Was there a lucky meeting that helped you (or a friend) realize success? Share it with us below.

I’ve been looking for an easy way to do this for ages so I’m really excited to have found an option that actually works how I need it to.

There are plenty of applications that let you automatically update your Facebook profile status with your Twitter updates but updating the status of your Facebook page was a bigger challenge… until now. The biggest problem was the most apps out there that had the capacity to update your page status would also update your profile status at the same time which I did not want. I wanted it to update my Page status and ONLY my page status.

On top of that, I’m the admin for 6 different Facebook Pages and 8 different Twitter accounts. I needed a way to have the correct Twitter accounts update the right Facebook Pages all while leaving my profile the heck alone. A tall order, right?

Check out the slick Facebook app called, appropriately Smart Twitter for Pages. It lets you easily import multiple Twitter accounts to multiple different Facebook pages. Set-up is simple and just works perfectly which is really all I ask.

Take a look at how it works on my Facebook Page below. Look at the gray text beneath each update. The ones that say, “via Smart Twitter for Pages” are coming directly from my Twitter account.

Advantages of Smart Twitter for Pages:

• It works!
• Free and easy!
• It works independent of your Facebook profile.
  
• Lets you match multiple Twitter accounts with multiple Facebook pages.
  
• Only imports relevant statuses. Meaning, it filters out all the messages that don’t really translate on Facebook. Which means retweets, any post with a hashtag or any post that mentions an @name automatically doesn’t post. I really like this feature. It takes out all the clutter that doesn’t make sense to Facebook only users and only posts the normal statuses. No Follow Friday or Facebook chats clogging up your Facebook page.

Limitations:

• Only allows one Twitter account per Facebook page. (I don’t personally have a need for this but, if you do, this cannot do it so I wanted to mention.)
• Only imports relevant statuses. Didn’t I just list this as a plus? Well, to me, it is a plus but I noticed a lot of people complaining about it as a minus. If you want it to import retweets and hashtagged posts, you are out of luck with this plugin. In the future, it would be great if the ability to filter was opt-in but, of now, the app filters whether you like it or not.

When I was in school, I had a friend, let’s call him Ralph because that is a hilarious name. Ralph got very poor grades. We’d all sit around in the cafeteria and talk about classes and he was always very distressed, very worried about his grades.

He was trying so hard, he always insisted, and was still getting bad grades. He said this so often that mutual friends would echo it, “Poor Ralph, I don’t understand how he’s doing so poorly. He tries so hard!” His professor must hate him! There must have been a mix-up with his paper! Ralph was a really great guy, we all felt really bad for him and were looking for any excuse.

He was one of those people that really sweated and worried about every grade. He wasn’t getting bad grades because he didn’t care, he did care, very much.

Some of us pitched in to try to help Ralph “helping with papers” (which usually meant mostly writing them for him) and double checking his homework like we were his parents (who we learned had helped him with school work heavily in high school which is why his grades had been better there). You may call us suckers for helping but if you knew Ralph, he really cared about his grades and we cared about him and didn’t want him to fail out of school. He was always so embarrassed to ask for help, we felt we owed it to him no matter how much work we had ourselves.

One time, he was taking a class that I had taken the year before. Same class, same professor. But while they were the same on paper, you’d never know it to hear him talk about it. The professor was sadistic, the class impossible. I’d found the class an easy A and the professor a total push-over the year before so I couldn’t understand why he was having so much trouble. After all, he assured us that he was working so hard. But I hadn’t even found that class to require hard work. I’m not bragging or saying I am smarter, it was a joke of a class that didn’t require a lot of work.

One year, this friend and I were on the same hall and we would all get
together and do homework together. He and I were in two different sections of the same class (same professor taught both) so we would often study and do homework together. We had a big test and were studying together for it. He studied for 30 to 45 minutes with me and then said he couldn’t take anymore and left. I assumed he was taking a break but he never came back. I studied for several hours more and finally went to bed.

Weeks later, we got our grades back and I did well and he did very poorly. Ralph was really upset. “But I studied so hard!” he protested. He turned to me. “You saw how hard I studied.”

Then something became immediately clear as he kept talking. That 30 to 45 minutes that he had studied with me was the only time he’d spent studying for the test. As he complained how unfair it was that my grade had been higher when we’d studied together “for hours”, I realized that he didn’t realize how many more hours I had kept studying after he took off or how short a time he’d actually been there studying with me. If he cared so much about his grades, I wondered, why hadn’t he done more studying later like I did?

A few weeks later, we had a project due in the same class. Again, I spent many hours on it and get a good grade and he spent most of the week playing video games and the work he did do on the project the night before he got help from our friends with. I loved Ralph but I was getting ticked. For all his repeated claims, he wasn’t working hard at all! This went on all through school. He’s spent much less time on any given project or test than the rest of us and then by mystified when he didn’t get the same grades.

So now we are all in the real world now. Ralph hates his job. He doesn’t understand why he doesn’t get promoted when he works so hard, he doesn’t understand why he can’t find a new job when he looks so hard and he doesn’t understand why he can’t profit of his hobbies when he works so hard at them.

Now you may think that Ralph is lazy or that he expects everything to be done for him. And while I think that is a small factor, I don’t think it’s the whole story. Understand that I have known this guy for many years. He isn’t a jerk, he isn’t the sort of guy who wants something for nothing.

Instead, I think the issue is that he simply has no concept of what hard work actually is. After all, he never had to work very hard before, his parents did the work for him in high school. If you’d only heard about the concept of hard work without having actually done it, maybe you’d assume as soon as things got hard, that must be the stopping point. He got bored after half an hour of studying and assumed that meant he’d studied really hard and stopped. He genuinely did think he’d worked hard on his projects that he did in a single night with help from friends. I think he heard the rest of us talk about all-nighters and assumed we, like him, we playing video games for half that night instead of realizing we genuinely worked all night.

He heard us talking about working hard and instead of thinking, I should work harder, he was getting upset. He saw himself as working just as us and us doing better for no reason. He simply could not conceptualize the concept of what hard work was or how much longer or harder the rest of us were working, it was like a mental block. In his mind, we were just lucky.

I think some people are Ralphs when it comes to running a business, doing marketing, writing or promoting their book or other work. They do a few little things and figure they worked really hard because they simply have no idea just how hard you really need to work to be successful. As soon as they start to sweat or feel overwhelmed, they quit or take a break. They don’t understand why other people are succeeding when they are working just as hard.

Probably because I have a friend like this, I’ve always been especially aware of this. Every time I think I’m working as hard as I possibly can, I stop, step back and try to look at it objectively. Am I really working as hard as I could be or am I slacking off in little ways? How can I work harder and smarter? Where could I fit in a little more work to push myself towards success?

It’s amazing how many times I’ve done this and come away realizing that I could get more work done if I just did things this way instead of that or realized that this one activity was a waste of time. There are lots of times I’ve felt like I was working hard only to realize I wasn’t working as hard as I could be. Successful people work hard and, if you aren’t finding success, maybe its time to step back and ask yourself, am I really working as hard as I could be? Is this person over here really just luckier than I am or are they simply working harder than I am?

I was making small talk with a friend at the gym and mentioned a friend (Let’s call this person Friend A) of mine. Friend A has a job which would be very helpful for Friend B and, overhearing, she jumped over and asked me for a favor. Would I please tell Friend A about Friend B as it would really help her career?

Friend B is a customer as well as a friend so I say, OK. She comes back a moment later with a scrap of paper with a URL on it asking me to pass her website over to Friend A.

So, a few days later, I go to email Friend A. I take out the scrap of paper and pull up Friend B’s website. It is the most busted website ever. Literally, not a single link works. I actually manage, though guess work, to load a couple of the pages by guessing at what the links *should* say but its totally useless. A few pictures, no mention of what she does, pretty much nothing on the site but a few under construction links and pages you can’t get to anyway because the links are broken.

Broken links are bad. Busted websites are bad. But you know what is the worst? Nowhere, anywhere on the site is their contact info. Not an email address, not a phone number, not even a snail mail address.

This is this person’s business and they are using their website as their main point of contact. After all, she gave me that URL to pass on in favor of an email address or phone number. That website not only isn’t doing her business any favors, if anything its turning away potential customers. They arrive, see the site is broken get annoyed and leave, never to come back.

Now, I’m going to run into this person at the gym again and give her a heads up so she can fix it. But I’m the exception. 99% of her visitors aren’t going to say, “Poor lady, her website is so busted” they are going to just walk away.

If you are setting up a website for your business, your contact info is the most important thing. Before you make it pretty, before you add in bells and whistles, make sure customers can contact you. And, above all, don’t actually send people to your site unless it’s in at least basic working condition!

This was not only a website design and networking FAIL, this person called in a favor from me and basically blew it. I don’t want to pass her onto my friend now because I am viewing her as an amateur and passing her on can make me look bad with Friend A. So she basically called in a favor from me and wasted it.

So consider this my warning. Before you send someone to your website, make sure it’s worth seeing.

It all started ordinarily enough. . .

I got an email yesterday from a prospective Trading Assistant. It was very short, just a few sentences and said he had a garage full of mint in box toys that he is looking to sell. I was very excited. This sounded like an ideal situation. It combined many of the things I like most in a Trading Assistant client. Namely:

• Mint in box items (easier to list, nothing to research)
• Toys (the sort of toys he had were the same sort of things friends of mine collect so I was interested in the items. I love listing items I’m interested in anyway, makes it more fun!)
• Lots of stuff (meaning this could be months of work and therefore lots of money)

So I email him right back and ask him for more info. I really thought, at this point, there was nothing this guy could say to deter me from this contract. Then it got interesting..

Survivor: Trading Assistant Edition

We get a reply from him that is also only a few sentences long. It just gives a little more info about the type of items that he is looking to sell but contained this interesting sentence:

I have over $10K worth of inventory. I have contacted a few Ebay Trading Assistants in the local area, and would like to try listing $500 worth of items initially. I will then continie to hand out $1K lots to the best Trading Assistants.

Now, once we translate that from client to English, we know that his items are probably not worth anywhere near 10K since every owner thinks their items are worth more than they are. But what’s that second part? He wants to contract with several TAs at once and make them complete, handing out additional items only to the “best” of them? Do the sellers that don’t meet with his standards get voted off the island?

Either way, I reply to the rest of his email about selling his items, etc but then say at the end:

I must confess, if you want to do it competition style pitting TAs against each other as it were, we will respectfully bow out. If you want to hire us to sell the items, we’d be more than happy to help you out but we are not interested in doing this service competition style.

I thought that was a fair statement. If you want to hire us and just us, we are interested. But we are not interesting in going all reality show about it. His items would be competing against themselves as they were all being sold by other sellers and it would be a stressful contract because he would constantly be pitting me against the other TAs. No thanks.

So I “respectfully bowed out” and was “not interested in doing this service.” So I said no, albeit conditionally. My answer could still be a yes if he wanted to hire us and only us but if he wanted to go with multiple sellers, we were not interested.

We figured he would either say, OK, I’ll go with only you or say, OK, no problem, have a nice life. Instead…

Sane Email Writing: You’re doing it wrong

He sends me back a very long email (easily 2 to 3 pages). The gist of this email is roughly about how great an eBay seller he is and how experienced he is and how he would sell these items himself but he is an artiste (photographer) and cannot lower himself to waste his time with selling on eBay. But then he got into his rules:

• I had to sell his items in lots (even though any collectibles seller knows his sort of items does better one at a time)
• I was only permitted to take a single picture per item (What the hell does he care how many pictures I take?)
• I have to only start the auctions on one of his pre-approved days or times (micromanage much?)
• He will box the items and number each lot because that is his system and I have to use it. (Which would be anal but OK except) And I have to ship everything in a flat rate Priority Mail box. (Which would be like twice as expensive as mailing it using the non-flat shipping methods I normally use, imagine the DSR damage!)

At this point, my spidey sense is tingling. It is telling me, no matter how good this sounded at the start, to walk away. This guy is VERY OCD and is already trying to tell me how to do my job and we haven’t even started. He’s going to be a huge pain to work with and will insist on my doing things basically that are contrary to what I know from running my business all these years.

But here’s the kicker: He mentions that he has been through many TAs but that he has to keep finding new ones because “they get burned out and take breaks.”

Now the spidey sense is going nuts. I have lots of clients with tons of items. It’s not uncommon for me to have a client with lots of items for years as we work to sell off all their items. I have no problem keeping a client for a very long time. The only time I drop a client before all their items are sold is if they are a huge pain in the ass. Well, coupled with the list of “rules” above, I realize that all these other TAs got “burnt out” rather than work with this nightmare of a guy.

So I’m going to walk away. I write back:

I know I’m the seller you are looking for with your items because I have a lot of experience with exactly these items you describe but I have to confess that your admission that you “burn out” TAs coupled with your “directions” below has raised some red flags for me. Do you think your TAs get burned out because you are micromanaging them? After this email, I know my gut reaction is to walk away. I don’t think any Trading Assistant wants to be told to list things the way the client likes them, especially when (in the examples you gave below) they amount to the wrong way. I don’t mind long term clients, I have had clients whose items took years before all their items were all finally sold, I really prefer contracts like that myself, but I will walk away from anyone who is more drama than they are worth which sounds suspiciously what you are describing.

And as I re-read that, it was a little bitchy. I didn’t mean it to be. I was trying to turn the guy down but also gently explain to him why he’s having so much trouble keeping a Trading Assistant. But no matter what I was shooting for, it came off as a pretty solid “No, thanks” with a bit of an insult in there. You’d think the guy would be like, “OK, have a nice life!”

So I send that email and immediately start second guessing myself. He did have a lot of items. Sure, he was a pain but maybe it would have been worth it to deal with him anyway for the money. My husband agrees but my spidey sense insists I did the right thing. There was something about that guy that was just… “off.” But still, I wondered if it was the right thing to walk away.

Mr. Spock, please switch us from “off” to “Crazy Warp”

I have now told this guy “No, I will not sell your items” twice already. In the last email, though I wasn’t trying to be, I was kind of an ass about it. You think he is deterred? No way! He sends me even a longer email detailing in even more OCD detail his rules for listing. He passive aggressively says I don’t have to follow his rules if I don’t want to but that they are the best and my way must not be as good. He includes the following sentence (which is never a good sign), “I really don’t want to scare you off”

He goes into a detailed description of the day of an average Hot Wheels collector to tell me exactly what time I should list the listings. Because, you know, there aren’t time zones or anything. It is just the same rules as his past email but much, much more detailed and, well, insane.

But 99% of the email is him begging me to take my items, he promises to be the “easiest customer you’ve ever had” and that I will make lots of money. But his pleas are coming too late.

I like money. You’d think that the first rule of business is to never turn down money. But that isn’t true. An insane person taking years off my life with stress is not worth any amount of money he could make me. That is the most important thing you learn in business, when to say no.

So this guy has wasted most of my day with his very long emails and I have already told him “no” twice but, what the heck, three time’s the charm.

I write (and this is the full content of my email):

We have a large number of clients right now and would probably not be able to give you the individual attention your items would need. We will pass on your items at this time.

Now, this is not a lie. We actually have 10 active TA clients right now and several others that have contacted us recently so we are very busy and a client would have to show up with some pretty awesome stuff to tempt me to take them on when I’m this busy. So while I thought the guy was a crazy person, I was honest and polite in my reply.

But, of course, I was still second guessing myself. My husband insisted I should have just taken at least a single batch of his stuff to see if it was worth it but my spidey sense wasn’t buying it. Luckily, the guy decided to let me know I’d made the right decision.

You can’t fire me! I quit!

So I’ve told this guy, a full three times now, that I don’t want to sell his items. I have had to endure all his very long emails to my very short replies all day and he has been a colossal waste of my time. But my reply (and my third assertion that I would not be taking him as a client) was polite.

This is what he replied:

You have less than 200 auctions listed right now and you are too busy?
You got burned out before you even started… I can see from your emails that you would not work out.

You are wasting my time.

He could see from the emails where I told him (three times!!) that I would not be selling his items for him, that I would not be a good fit to sell his items for him. The man’s power of observations are astounding.

I can only suppose the time of his I wasted was by forcing him to write out very long psychotic emails begging me to sell his items after I said no and writing out his insane rules. Of course, none of my time was wasted, I was enriched by the experience of his correspondence, especially as he kept writing me long emails after I freaking said “no” already.

And yes, I do have only about 200 auctions going right now. On one of my accounts. And, not for anything, but does he have any idea how much work 200 auctions at once is, especially while you are prepping hundreds more? I forgot what a huge eBay expert he is, I’m sorry. But does backseat driving other people as they do eBay really count as eBay experience?

But he was right about one thing. He did manage to burn me out before I even started with him. I feel so bad for those other Trading Assistants that actually took him on as a client. The man is exhausting.

The point of this very long story? Trust your seller spidey sense. Even if the facts on the page look great, if you have a vibe about something, don’t be afraid to say no. Your stress level is more important than any commission and sometimes turning down a detrimental job can leave you open for something better. Sometimes there are very nice people who would be lovely to work with
but their items just aren’t worth it so I turn them away because I could be using the time I’d spend on their items doing something more worthwhile. You need to evaluate every job and see whether its worth it in your given situation.

Full disclosure: I was going to write this post up after the second email because I knew at that moment that I was walking away. The man degenerating with increasing insanity was just a bonus. But even when he was still being polite and writing normal length emails, I got the vibe that something was off. The fact that he turned out to be totally insane just made me feel like I was right to say no.

Back in early ’09, I did the following post as a guest post for Henry over at http://www.publishandsell.com. I wanted to take this opportunity to reprint it here so that it can reach a different readership. You can see the original post here.

I’m Hillary DePiano, best known for being the author of the play The Love of Three Oranges, though I have written several other works of fiction and non-fiction. I have also, like Henry, worked as a service provider helping other authors to market and promote their books and used to teach some workshops on marketing and distribution for first time authors. I came by to share with you a little bit of what I have learned in these last 7 years in the word of print-on-demand, writing and publishing.

My position is somewhat unusual in that, as someone who has been running an online business since 1997, I have had experience with a lot of different marketplaces and companies giving me a different picture of the business of publishing from the author’s standpoint. What I wanted to share with you today is the distillation of all that experience.

Namely, the 5 most important things I have learned about self-publishing.

1. There is no such thing as too many proofs (or proofreaders).
2. You’re going to be judged by your cover.
3. Price your content backwards.
4. Never underestimate the power of giving away free copies.
5. Know when to take the author hat off and when to leave it on.

Henry is fond of saying that I tell it like it is. What can I say, I used to work in NYC so I’m not use to beating around the bush. Let’s go through these one at a time, shall we?

1. There is no such thing as too many proofs (or proofreaders).

With alarming regularity, I hear authors complain about ordering proofs. “But I only changed ONE TINY THING,” they whine. “I don’t WANNA order another proof.” This is a ridiculous way to think. Proofs are an author’s very best friend. When I am working on a book, I do hundreds of proofs. Some I just print out on my printer; some I get printed and bound from Staples and Kinkos so I can see how the pages look facing each other and I order as many as I can from the printer I am using to make sure everything looks right. I don’t care if the only thing you changed was one word on the 78^th page, any change, no matter how tiny, can affect the entire rest of the book so you have to make sure it still looks good.

To balk at the cost is utterly ridiculous. This is your dream, your big product, your ultimate presentation for the world. If you don’t want it to be the absolute very best that it can be you shouldn’t bother to publish it at all.

The same idea goes for proof-readers. I don’t care how many times you have gone over your work, I can assure you right now that there are still typos in it. Get every friend, family member or stranger you can get to go over your book with a fine tooth comb. Hire an editor if you can to make sure to polish it up. An “eh, it’s good enough” attitude is the surest way to kill any chances your book had.

2. You’re going to be judged by your cover.

We all know the cliché, never judge a book by its cover but, for an author, this is a very big thing. If there is any element of the publishing process that you may want to spend money on, getting a professional looking cover is one of the biggest leg-ups your book can get. If your book looks unprofessional on the outside, almost no one is going to take the plunge and read the inside.

And, if I may be brutal, unless you have or you know someone with significant design talent, please don’t try to make the cover yourself. I see hundreds of self-published books that have great content with horrifying covers that kill any chance they had of doing well. A stretched-out, grainy picture of yourself or your dog should not be your cover. A doodle your kid made on lined paper should not be your cover. You people know who you are. If you’ve never seen something like what you are putting on your book cover on the cover of a bestselling book, do yourself a favor and don’t put it on your cover.

There is a time and place for taking risks. If you are an unknown author trying to market your self-published book, you are going to have enough challenges without making your cover part of the problem.

If you don’t have the means to hire someone to do your cover and you don’t have the talent to do it yourself, simpler is better. You are far better off going with solid color book with the title neatly written out or even a pre-made template such as the covers in the Lulu Gallery than something busy and awkward that you made yourself. Better have a plainer but functional solid color cover with no images than a busy nightmare that scares buyers away.

Lastly, and you’d think this one would be obvious but you’d be amazed how it isn’t, proofread your cover. Not just the book blurbs on the back, proof read your title, subtitle, website, etc. A misspelled word right on the cover just screams unprofessional product.

And for the love of god, don’t make up reviews.

3. Price your content backwards.

This one can be the hardest to wrap your head around but it is very important. Most authors start out by saying, I would like my book to cost $5. Then later, then find themselves at a loss because they cannot make as much as they want or cannot offer enough of a discount to bookstores, etc. This is why you need to price your content backwards.

I’m currently working on the second edition of The Trading Assistant’s Assistant which is a book about starting an eBay business. Before I even think about what I would like to charge for it, I need to start at the end. I need to figure out what the print costs for the book are when I order them (and possibly shipping for a single copy for when I’m out of stock). I need to figure how much I will pay in eBay fees if I plan to sell copies on eBay. I need to figure out how much of a mark-up over wholesale I will need to offer to bookstores in order to make the book attractive for them to stock. I need to look at all the “worst case scenarios” for ordering my book so that I can still make a minimum profit even in these cases.

First I figure out all these fees, expenses and mark-ups and add them to the production costs of the book. Only then, once I have an idea of all the costs and bumps down the road, do I think about how much I want to make. Then I can add together the fees, costs and other expenses along with my desired profit and start to figure out what the cost of the book should be.

4. Never underestimate the power of giving away free copies.

Another rookie mistake I see is people making their friends and family purchase copies of their book. I’m not saying that you should comp everyone you ever met but your parents and close friends should never have to pay for a copy. These are your very best sources for word of mouth, positive reviews and other marketing benefits and if you irk them by making them buy a copy, you are shooting yourself in the foot.

If you are about to cry about the money you’ll lose in royalties by giving copies to your family and best friends, save it. If those 12 copies represent a big enough portion of your sales that they are worth crying about, your book is in much bigger trouble than copies to your family can save you from.

If the cost of handing out printed copies is beyond your budget, offer your closest “future fans” a free ebook or audiobook version. For that matter, consider making a free ebook or audiobook version of your book available for anyone. After all, you are an unknown author. With this first book, your number one goal is getting your name out there and making some fans and giving our freebies is a really quick way to make fans.

The surprise bonus to giving away copies? Relatives and friends are often so taken with your generosity they turn around and buy copies anyway for themselves or for friends. They talk your book up with more vigor than if they had paid for it, basking in the glow of your generosity. And strangers who get the book for free are just as powerful allies, sending out messages on their blogs or telling friends and giving you the best marketing you can ask for: word of mouth.

5. Know when to take the author hat off and when to leave it on.

You march into a Barnes and Nobel with a fake name and tell them that you are the head of an exciting new publishing house representing this amazing new author… you! They politely dismiss your offer.

Now instead, you walk into the next Barnes and Nobel and tell the truth. “Hi, I’m a local author. I have my first book out and I was just wondering if you would be interesting in doing an event of some kind. . . “ The clerks fact lights up and suddenly doors start to open for you.

You see, a self-published author plays many roles. You are your own agent, manager, editor, etc. But it is very important to know when to wear your author hat and when not to. In my experience, most bookstores have had it with pushy publisher reps, managers and agents but they still get that tiny star struck thrill when talking to an author. “I’m a local author” is a powerful phrase that can open up interviews in local news, book signings, readings at the library and more so don’t do yourself a disservice by “improving” the truth and pretending to be more than you are.

But there are times when you need to take the author hat off. When you are writing a press release and doing most of your marketing, you need to be objective about who your audience and target demographic are and how good your book is and, as the author, you just can’t be. For times like that, you need to take off your author hat, divorce yourself from the book and market it like it’s someone else’s product.

This is also helpful to keep in mind when you get bad reviews and bad press. If you are wearing your author hat, you are going to take it personally and it is going to hurt but if you look at the issue as if you were your agent or manager instead, you can take the criticism more objectively.

Maybe you’ve seen the preview links next to your favorite books and wished you could have a preview sent to you even though you don’t own a Kindle. Or maybe you want to take advantage of one of the many free books available on right now for the Kindle, many of which are new releases by bestselling authors. Or maybe you love ebooks but you aren’t ready to commit to a device yet with the Apple Tablet iPad coming out and the eBook reader wars just getting started.

Newly released books are often free for a limited time when they first come out and I like grabbing them to read later or at least peruse. I also like to request previews to see if I will like the whole book, even if I’m only going to take it out of the library. I do this frequently and yet, I don’t own a Kindle.

Luckily, you don’t actually need a Kindle to read Kindle books. So if you want to pop over to Amazon and download all the free books while they are free, you can and still be able to read them. If you later decide to buy a Kindle, no problem, you can still sync any books your download now as well as bookmarks and notes you make on them to your Kindle if you want to.

How do I read Kindle books without a Kindle? Well, you have a few choices.

Kindle for PC
By far the easiest option, this simple and free download just takes a click and then you can access the entire Kindle library on your computer. Hundreds of free and cheap books are immediately available for your perusal and you can read them all on your computer screen. The best part about Kindle for PC is that you can use it on multiple computers and it will sync all your notes and bookmarks between them all. I like this because I can read a chapter of a book at lunch time at one computer, say, at work, and then later at home continue from where I left off. Lots to like there.

Kindle Apps for your cell phone or music device
While a Kindle Android App is still in the works, there is already a free Kindle App for your Apple products and Kindle for Blackberry which means that if you have any Blackberry or Apple phone including the iPhone or any other Apple enable device such as the iPad, iPhone Touch or similar, you have access to all the features of a Kindle there too. Amazon has been pretty committed to getting a Kindle app on every major cell phone or hand-held device with app support which is a very good thing because it lets you carry all your books in your pocket. While reading on your cell phone may not be your eye’s top choice, your cell phone or music device is the item your most likely to have handy at all times which makes this a very useful option.

Of all the new platforms and marketplaces out there, the one that caught my fancy the most recently was eCrater. The biggest selling point is that they are 100% free with no fees. Think of them as a craigslist style posting board that looks and feels more like an e-commerce site like eBay.

Unlike a lot of new marketplaces, they actually had a lot of people buying and selling the exact kinds of items I usually sell (collectibles) so that was a big selling point for me as a buyer and seller both. Then I got really ticked at the platform because of a security flaw so I deleted my account entirely before I really got to give it an honest try. (In the interest of clarity, this was about a year ago so they have likely fixed this security flaw by now, I haven’t checked. It also may be something that normal people would have considered a minor thing and I may be a diva. No one can say for sure. )

But I still thought the marketplace had a lot of potential and I wanted to find out more about whether it was worth starting up a presence on eCrater. So I have enlisted Stacy Anderson (on Twitter as @itsmestacy) who has found success selling online on both eBay and eCrater to give us a review from the perspective of someone who has used eCrater extensively. Selling clothing out of Fort Worth, Texas, Stacy has been selling on eBay since July 2000 and on her own eCrater websites TheCheapSkirt.com and TheUglySweaterShop.com for a few months now.

I’d really like to thank you for joining us on the blog today to share your experiences. First thing, can you tell you a little about yourself and how you got started selling online.

I started selling just things I had but no longer needed around my house 10 years ago. I was amazed because back then you could put a pair of used Levis on eBay and get $20 for them, without even having a picture. This was about $19.50 more than you’d get for them at a garage sale. Back then, auctions were the only way to buy on eBay and it was exciting starting something out at a penny and seeing the price go up. (That doesn’t happen very often on eBay in the clothing categories anymore, I’d say not for the past 5 years or so.)

I was living in Wisconsin at the time and had access to a lot of Green Bay Packers related items, and breweriana (everyone had beer signs in their basements up there), so I did sell a little of both in addition to clothing, but after I moved to Texas 3 years ago I began to focus primarily on clothing, shoes and accessories.

Was the move to eCrater motivated out of anything specific that happened on eBay or were you just trying out other things?

EBay’s price changes were a bit like the story of the frog and the boiling pot of water for me. A little increase here, a little increase there, I thought I could take them in stride.

But as the fees went up for me, search visibility went down as did sales. I found myself doing more and more advertising and legwork to bring in customers. Auctions would end with only one bidder, if that. Store items were difficult for buyers to find in search. Once Google stopped accepting individual feeds to Google Base (which was my main source of eBay store traffic), my sales were nearly at a standstill.

I decided that if I were going to to do the legwork to bring buyers to my items, it wasn’t worth it for me to pay eBay. I’d looked at their “job” as my advertising, and when it came to store items, they weren’t doing their job.

So I moved my store items to TheCheapSkirt.com at eCrater. And on that particular store, I can safely say that I haven’t sold any more or less there than I had been selling out of my store at eBay. So I wouldn’t call it a success, other than the fact I’ve saved on fees for those items that have sold.

However…

Sort of on a lark, around Halloween I opened TheUglySweaterShop.com, another eCrater store, primarily as a resource for people who needed something truly awful for an Ugly Sweater Party.

I’d blogged an “ugly sweater of the week” for a while and got a bit of a response, so when I’d see one when I was out on an inventory run, I’d pick it up. Pretty soon I had quite a “collection”, and I started listing them.

I realized that with a relatively new web presence, I wouldn’t rank high in Google searches, so I turned to social media instead. I started Tweeting about these ugly sweaters. I started a Facebook Fan page. I listened to my customers: they would lament that the sweaters on eBay were always too expensive, and I listed mine for less. I posted links to Ugly Sweater Party charity events. I retweeted pictures people had posted on Twitter of themselves modeling their own ugly sweaters. I became involved in the “ugly sweater community”, as it were.

Within 2 weeks my page views had skyrocketed. In the 6-week peak “ugly sweater” selling season, I had over 30,000 page views and had sold more than 75% of what I had listed, with emails and tweets asking for more. I couldn’t keep up! I was so unprepared for the success! And 75% of those page views came via Google (eCrater uploads a listing feed to Google Base 2x a week automatically for all of their stores–they became a Product Search Marketplace Partner with Google in November of 2009).

In comparison, I had one tacky Christmas sweater listed on eBay as a fixed price listing for a month. Only 40 page views. In an entire month. AND I was a Top Rated Seller at the time.

I moved it to TheUglySweaterShop.com and it sold within 24 hours and I had emails asking about it from others who also wanted it and missed out.

I know I brought you in to talk about eCrator but you just gave us some fantastic examples of using social networking to build a business that really should be highlighted. I want to go back to your great ideas there in another post for sure but for now, let’s move on to … What sets eCrater apart from the other selling platforms out there?

Well, it is free. Free is good. And it is simple–there is no HTML in the listings (some may see that as a drawback, but I’ve seen so many poorly-formatted eBay listings that I find a text description to be very easy on the eyes).

They are a Google Product Search Marketplace Provider which, as I stated before, had a great bearing on the amount of traffic my eCrater stores have been getting. They have a fully integrated Google Checkout, so there is no fiddling with buttons/waiting for Google to approve your site, etc.

They are responsive to user requests. In the past I’ve asked them to add categories in their store structure, and they were added within days. They were very responsive. I’ve also requested an erroneous feedback be removed from my account, and they were quick to address that as well. Worlds apart from eBay in that regard!

I think eCrater is a great place to get a feel for how it would feel to sell somewhere other than eBay if you’ve only sold there. I learned all about Google Checkout via eCrater, including coupon codes, promotions, etc.

Some people I think confuse eCrater with eBay in that they think they can list things there and just “sit” on them, and the traffic will come in. It doesn’t work that way. Yes, people can shop all eCrater stores from the main eCrater.com page (think of that as an online mall of sorts), but the majority of traffic comes from people finding you from somewhere else. I’d say less than 1% of my traffic comes directly from eCrater, and those most likely are from postings on their message boards.

What do you feel like eCrater could improve on?

I’ve asked them to look into issues I’ve run across: I can’t seem to get some of the calculated international shipping options to work properly, their USPS Express Mail service states it is 1 day shipping time, which can be misleading to customers who are in areas where it takes 2 days for Express Mail (I asked them to switch it to 1-2 days after I refunded a disappointed customer who lived in a 2-day area who needed an item for a party and it arrived a day late).

Also if two people buy the exact same thing within minutes of each other, it can show as “double ordered”–had that happen a few times during the peak of “ugly sweater season” because traffic in my store was *that* brisk!

Although I’d like to see some more “customizability” (is that a word?)[Ed note: It is now! ] in my store (layouts, the look of the landing page, etc), I realize it is a free site and the more bells and whistles they add, the more support they need and that costs money. I’m glad to see they put the focus on supporting the functionality of the site, rather than on making it prettier. If your core functions don’t work (like we’ve seen with eBay’s search), then it doesn’t matter how pretty something is if nobody will see it.

Where else have you sold? How do those other marketplaces compare to eCrater or even eBay?

I was a very early member of Bonanzle, but stopped selling there once they implemented a fee structure. Initially I was drawn to them the same reason I was drawn to ecrater: the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) approach they had to the site with no HTML in listings, ease of use, etc. Then with the fees they also started to move away from that, and since I hadn’t gotten any traffic in a few months, I didn’t feel it was right for me.

I have and still sell books on Amazon.com, but from my own personal stash. I love to read!

I used to sell on Half.com but since they merged their feedback in with eBay’s, I became concerned, as people are more likely to leave neutrals there and just one or two bad ratings can put my selling status on eBay at risk now that I’ve gone from a Powerseller to a small volume seller.

I used Auctiva to list on eBay and prior to eCrater, had considered getting one of their off-eBay store packages, but then they had that nasty situation with a virus that I didn’t feel was handled well, along with the way they implemented their fee increase (fee schedules changing almost daily, pressure to “lock in” a rate before it changed–total hard sell) and I no longer felt comfortable entrusting my business to them.

Putting your loyalties as a seller aside, which is your favorite online store to shop at and why?

Amazon.com, hands down. Mostly because I’ve talked my family members into making wish lists, so Christmas shopping is a breeze! They all live across the country so I just click, pay and have it shipped out!

With a depressed economy and all the changes in retail happening all the time, where do you see your business in 5 years? How are you adapting?

I don’t see myself as an online clothing magnate in 5 years, or anything so grand. I just feel fortunate to be able to do this as my primary source of income for the past two years. Despite our current economic crunch, I truly believe that by working for myself, the only thing that could be holding me back from more success is myself. That is why I’ve continually reassessed my business model and make changes, rather than pine for “the lost days of eBay”, a rut I see some of my fellow sellers get stuck in.

I’ve been recently starting on yet ANOTHER business model, this one ironically going back to using eBay as it will be auction-based, rather than fixed price. I don’t see it supplanting my other two stores, rather it will supplement them. I’m finding diversification makes me feel safest–not keeping all my eggs in one basket, so to speak.

Before next fall, I may move TheUglySweaterShop.com to its own space with its own shopping cart, as I feel it may have outgrown eCrater. I’d like to be able to better integrate my Ugly Sweater blog at uglysweaters.wordpress.com with the sales portion of the site, as well as make it more visually appealing and fun to shop. Another former eBay clothing seller, ShopNastyGal.com, is a great inspiration for me, she seems to have transitioned VERY successfully from eBay to a stand-alone site and has a great social media following. I think social media is a very inexpensive way to market and to keep in touch with what people really want.

I honestly see Google as the key to getting buyers in the future, as long as eBay is more and more cumbersome to weed through. I think it will matter less where your items are, and more than they are found by buyers. I actually searched for something on eBay today, and got a message that “Your search could not be performed at this time. Please try again later.” I tried it again later, and got the same message. I found what I was looking for on Google instead.

—

I really want to thank Stacy for taking the time to answer my questions. I wanted to be able to give the platform a thorough review and evaluation and am very glad she was able to stop in and give us the in-depth perspective of someone doing some selling “in the trenches” as it were.

But what about you? Have you sold on eCrater? What were your experiences with the marketplace? Has Stacy convinced you to give it another try?

Someone you follow on Twitter sends out a tweet that says only, “This annoys me” and then a link. You like this person so and are bored at the moment so you click the link. It turns out to be a really helpful, informative blog post. Let’s say it’s about PayPal charge backs and how they affect eBay sales for the simple reason that this will be easier to talk about if we have an example. But there was nothing in the tweet that preceded the link that would have given you any idea it was such a helpful article.

Very few people are going to click on your friend’s link. The message he or she tweeted was so generic, the clicker would have no idea if the link is going to be a link to a YouTube video of a song the tweeter hates or a horrible picture of dog abuse or something. Whereas quite a few people might have been interested if they had realized the article was about eBay and PayPal charge backs.

Firstly, if you are the person tweeting things with generic introductions, you need to rethink that practice. You are cheating yourself out of clicks in a few big ways. Not only are even your existing followers unlikely to click a generic message that gives no indication if the link is worth clicking, by not using any of the keywords from your post, you cut yourself off from new followers which may find you from the keywords alone.

Secondly, if you are the re-tweeter, you want to provide value for your followers. Your followers wouldn’t be served by that generic headline anymore than the original poster’s followers were.

So whether it is a post of your own or a link you are retweeting, don’t feel like you have to keep the original article title when you send the link out on Twitter. Rewriting a tweet can help you not only provide more value for your Twitter followers but also bring you new followers with the keywords you use.

So if I want to retweet this:

JaneDoe: This annoys me [LINK]

If I just hit the retweet button and change nothing, I get this:

RT @JaneDoe This annoys me [LINK] 

This still doesn’t do anyone any good. OK, yes, my followers know that I thought it was worth retweeting which gives it a little more street cred but it’s still something the majority of people are unlikely to click.

Instead of a straight retweet, why not do something like this?

Are PayPal chargebacks are ruining eBay? [LINK] (via @JaneDoe)

I took the idea of her article, the keywords, and rewrote her headline for her. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed I even do this with my own headlines. You may get “Rewrite that retweet! Fixing generic tweets with keywords & a better headline to provide more follower value” from me in the morning and then “I’m not going to click your Twitter link unless you tell me what it’s about first!” later in the day. Both will be links to the exact same article. But by taking a different angle each time, I’m going to get a different set of eyes on the second tweet than I did on the first. I reuse a lot of rejected headlines as rewteets because it works.

Just be sure to still give credit to the original tweeter after you fix up their tweet (unless its yourself, obviously). Not only is it fair to give credit where credit is due, it helps the original poster to learn which improves the Twitterverse overall. Many a time a friend with just as many followers tweets a link and doesn’t get a nibble but after I rewrite and retweet, it gets passed around to several people.

Either way, your helping to contribute to the usefulness of Twitter as a whole.

While we are on this topic, you may want to review this popular article from the archives: How to be a better Twitter user: Tweet to be Retweeted

Want to experiment with this? Find an old blog post that didn’t get many comments when you first wrote it that is still timely. Rewrite the headline and retweet it out on Twitter. See if you can find a more effective way to get people to notice what you wrote by only changing the title.

If you are really stuck, post your link below and between the usual Whine Seller readers and myself, we’ll see if we can help you out.

Back in May ’09, I wrote up a post on getting organized centered around one of my favorite quotes of all time “Most clutter is really decisions you haven’t made yet, and by getting current with yourself you can become more whole.” -Sunny Schlenger

One of the things I talked about in that post was the fact that things tend to pile up (literally and figuratively) because we are dreading doing them but often, when we force ourselves to do it, it isn’t nearly as bad as we built it up to be.

I know personally, this has always been a big problem for me. I get in my head that such and such a task is going to be a lot of work or unpleasant or whatever excuse I come up with and I put it off again and again until I am downright dreading it. And just about every time, when I force myself to finally do this task I have built up as a horror in my mind, it turns out to actually not be that bad.

So my plan in the New Year (not quite a resolution) is to take whatever I am dreading doing the most and do it first.

I have been doing it already since January 1st and it has actually been working really well. If I find myself thinking, “ugh” as I write something on my To Do list then I stop right then and force myself to do that item first. Not only does it mean I’ve been getting a lot of things done that have been languishing on my To Do lists for ages, it also gives me a feeling of satisfaction to finally get these things out of the way.

The advantages to this strategy are many

• when you get that thing you’ve been dreading out of the way, it makes the rest of the day/week/month that much more pleasant
• most of the time, it will turn out to be far less awful, much less work, and much easier than you were hyping it up to be so when you finish it, you’ll feel a bit silly for having put it off
• the more of these dreaded tasks you manage to accomplish, the bigger feeling of accomplishment it gives you, keeping you from getting overwhelmed and frustrated
• as you start to find that these dreaded tasks aren’t so bad, you start to stop dreading them (or at least, that’s the theory )

If you don’t have the self-discipline to notice which tasks you are dreading, enlist a spouse, co-worker or family member. I told my husband about my plan and now every time I say, “I’m really dreading doing x” he says, “Well I guess that’s what you are working on next.” (With vindictive glee, I might add!) A friend or outsider will be able to tell you what you keep putting off better than you may be able to tell yourself and that can be a huge help.

I’ve found that doing what you least want to do also gets you into a better work frame of mind. If you start off your day with something you were looking forward to doing, it makes it that much harder to get to the stuff you are dreading. But if you know you have that thing you were looking forward to waiting you once you finish the annoying task, it really helps to make the work go faster.

Do you have this same problem with dreading certain tasks? How do you handle it?

If you read this blog on the actual Whine Seller site (instead of through an RSS reader) you may have noticed a few new features on the sidebar. One of these is the long overdue links or blogroll section towards the bottom of the site.

I wanted a way to showcase all the blogs I read without making the list of links in the sidebar ridiculously long. Enter the free WP Social Blogroll  plugin (previously called Feed Reading Blogroll). Similar to the way Blogger shows your blogroll, this plugin lets you limit which links show on the blogroll based on how recently they were updated.

For instance, I have mine set (for the moment) on the top 3 most recently updated blogs. This way, all the blogs I follow get a chance to have their blog show on the sidebar as the list changes whenever someone posts a new post. It also gives a bigger boost to the blogs I’m reading because, in addition to just a link to their site, it also pulls the title of their most recent posts from their blog’s RSS feed and lists the time of their last post. If you want to see what this looks like, just take a look at my sidebar where you can play with it. 

The main reason I wanted to add this feature was that I noticed that when other friends had a similar RSS based blogroll, my site always got more click-thrus from those dynamic blogrolls than a straight links list and I wanted to be able to do the same favor to my favorite bloggers.  My hope is that it also provides more value for you, the reader, to see what items are new on other, similar sites.

My blogroll is divided into two sections: “From the source” which is the RSS feed from all the websites we cover here on The Whine Seller. So if any of these sites have a new announcement, you’ll be able to see it there. The second “Other whiners” are the other blogs that I read. Those categories are pulled directly from the WordPress links structure so if you already have your links set up in categories, install should be a snap.

The other nice thing about this plugin is that, in most cases, it auto-detects the RSS feed of the sites. Sure, there are a few you’ll have to input manually but overall it converted my already existing blogroll into a dynamic RSS based blogroll in a snap.

I had been on the search for a long time for a solid plugin that could do all the things I wanted and I highly recommend this one if you have similar blogroll needs.