Despite my best efforts to get in my own way, I finally managed to write a book (well, report really I suppose; it’s only 11 pages including the cover and rights page). I’m using it as part of a bonus package for eBay ebook purchases. It has suggestions for tools and resources that I’m finding useful in building my business, and, yes, those links are affiliate links.

Just about all the recommendations are for free things: ebooks, newsletters, some stuff about eBay itself and their tools. If a reader decides to upgrade or buy a product, then I make a little bit of money. 

Drat! I just realized that I didn’t add a signup form to the book. There are links to this page and to www.smilingpartners.com, where there are opportunities to sign up, but I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have put a form in the book. Have to ponder that, especially since I’ve revised the darn thing several times as it is. Let me tell you about this particular ebook writing experience.

I used eWriterPro, the product I told you about that works something like Word and then lets you save your work as a .pdf file. It is a relatively easy-to-use program, but you really do need to play around a bit with it. One of the annoying things are the tabs you have to maneuver between to change your font or insert tables or links. For my small report, it worked fine. I have to do a little more work with it to see whether it’s going to be adequate when I actually write a “real” book.

Writing the book itself only took a couple of days. It would have been less time if I’d been better organized. I had my links and affiliate information for some of the items, but as I wrote, I found myself deciding to add more (an outline might have been a good idea!), so I’d have to stop writing, go hunt down the information, more often than not get a little lost in reading something new, then come back and continue writing.

Even with those detours, the book writing itself was pretty straightforward. My problem came with trying to figure out an ecover. I certainly could give the book away without a cover, but I want it to be distributed a bit. I’ve included both giveaway and resale rights. If someone did think they could sell it, having a cover with it could be handy.

So, I looked through my accumulation of ecover information and tools. The tools I have do generate a cover, but I can’t figure out how to add an image that doesn’t take up the whole cover area. I made one with an eBay logo on it, which I’d also included on the title page of my book. It looked okay, but then my lawyer brain kicked in. I don’t know what eBay’s policy is on using their logo. I could do the research (and I will someday soon), but I know that would add a significant amount of time to my project, because I’m sure I’d get lost reading policies and law and forget about my book.

So I decided to change the cover. Using the simple program, I came up with a simple cover. Put book and cover together, zipped it, and uploaded it to my server. Checked the links, took another look, and found that the cover change really meant that I’d have to change the cover page of my book. Otherwise, it looked like the cover had no relation whatsoever with the book. Downloaded everything, made the changes, regrouped and rezipped, uploaded again. Check. Oops, this time I forgot to put the .pdf version of the book in the folder, adding the word document instead. Download, regroup, check, check, and check again, and finally upload once more.

I’m pretty sure it’s what I intended now. If you want to take a look and add the book to your own collection, you can get it here:

Information Product Auction Tools and Resources - catchy title, right?

Then, of course, I had to change all the thankyou/download pages for the books I’m listing on eBay. The whole point was to be able to get something viral out there that might make me a few cents and get some new subscribers. I’m finally done with all that, and I’m once again ready to start adding new books to my eBay listings.

Next time I’ll give you a full rundown of how those listing efforts are going.

I got an email the other day asking me to verify my eBay information. I might not have given it a second thought, except it was to an email address eBay doesn’t have. Luckily, that triggered my suspicions and made me look more closely. I shudder to think what might have happened if the alarms hadn’t gone off. Since I’m trying to spend my time actually doing work and not going through emails, I often don’t look at my messages until late at night,when I’m tired and not paying that close attention. I needed this little slap up the side of my head!

Anyway, the alarms did go off. I do know that eBay doesn’t ever send these kinds of emails. Neither does any other reputable business. If they need information from you, that request will show up when you log onto your account at the actual eBay webpage. Another clear indicator was that when I hovered my mouse over the link and looked to the bottom left field over the explorer toolbar, the web address that showed up was clearly not eBay. It was something like www.ebay.bogusaddress.com/somethingorother. It’s always a good idea to do this little exercise before clicking on a link you’re not sure of.

I did report this to eBay by forwarding the email to spoof@ebay.com. You can find out more about spoofing and phishing at eBay’s site: http://pages.ebay.com/education/spooftutorial/

This isn’t a problem just for eBay, of course. I’ve received “account verification” emails that appeared to be from Bank of America, Sears, CitiBank, etc. What is important to remember, when you get an email like this is NOT to follow their links. If you think it might be a valid request, enter a url you know is valid into your own address bar (google the company if you need to find the valid address), then look for messages or log onto your account.

The damage these crooks can do to your credit and even personal life is enormous. And they are very talented at making their emails look official. Just remember to be very, very careful, even suspicious, and you’ll be able to protect yourself. And pass this information on to everyone you know.

As I’ve written before, I’m on a lot of lists and subscribe to a lot of newsletters. I probably should unsubscribe from the ones that don’t deal directly with eBay marketing, but I think it’s important to keep up with what the rest of the internet marketing world is up to. From the good newsletters I receive good information that will be useful as my business grows, I get an occasional free and useful item, and, of course, I get notified of all the giveaway events.

The end of the year and the holiday season brought a lot of giveaways. I almost always sign up, although I’ve found myself downloading fewer of the products. However, I’ve picked up some good stuff, either to learn from or to sell on eBay, which means I’m subscribed to a few more lists. I don’t keep track of what gift led to which newsletter; I just watch to see if I get any value from the new ones. Which leads to today’s customer service commentary.

I’d been noticing for a few weeks emails from “mailing list.” At first I thought it must be spam, but the email return address had what sounded like an internet marketing theme, so I decided to see what it was. I did see that the sender didn’t include a signature line or address, or unsubscribe information (by the way, required by CAN-SPAM), so I figured it was a newbie trying to build a list and using their own autoresponder. Okay, I’ll see what it’s about.

Nothing really stuck to my mind as any sort of good information; then I got an email saying that if  I didn’t submit my gift to the giveaway, I’d be deleted from the list. Oh, ummm, I know very well I didn’t sign up to be a giveaway contributor, because I’m still working on getting an IM product ready. Hmmm, well then, I’ll be deleted. Again, nowhere in the email was there a reference to what the giveaway was or even a link to where I was supposed to submit my contribution.

Except that I didn’t get deleted. So, the next email I got, again without any specifically useful information nor any unsubscribe information, I replied with “unsubscribe me.” That bounced, so I went looking to see if I could find this person. I did find him and found a valid contact email. I asked to be unsubscribed and mentioned that he’d probably want to comply with the law by putting an unsubscribe method in his emails (in what I thought was a helpful tone).

This person’s reply to me was that he’d unsubscribe me, not just from this particular list, but from all of his “more than 30″ newsletters. Not only was I unsubscribed, my email address would be banned from those lists! What?

I have no idea what those lists are, and I’m not feeling any great loss that I won’t ever do business with him. It’s just that this strikes me as being a really stupid way to do business. He doesn’t know the first thing about me or my buying habits or whether I have a huge list of my own that might be helpful to him in his business. There was no sorry to see you go, what can I do, or any other sort of attempt at customer service. His loss, certainly not mine!

Enough of that rant. The point I’m trying to make is that this is a horrible example of how to treat customers or potential customers. I can’t imagine this marketer is going to be able to build much of a business with this kind of attitude. The lists I stay with and the people I buy from (some of the very big names) are always helpful and treat me with respect. That’s probably why they’re the big guys.

Now, onto your gift.

If you’ve been reading along, you’ll remember how excited I was to find Open Office for writing and converting documents to .pdf. It is a great program, easy to use, and it probably has more features than I’ll ever even know about, much less use. The only problem for me is that the program is HUGE and it would only install on my c drive. A very real problem with my old, small capacity, laptop.

But I learned about a new program that does, at least for now, enough of the same stuff that I’ll be able to produce pdf’s on it that will be well-formatted. It’s called ewriterpro. You may have seen emails about it; it’s being sold for about $10 all over the net. However, one of my nice marketers gave it away! So I’m paying that forward. Download your copy here:

EWriter Pro

It also comes with master resale rights. I’ve only just started playing with it, and I’m getting excited again about getting something written and ready to sell. There are also some bonuses for you to look at.

That’s it for today. Good Sunday to you.

A new year and new determination to build my business into a powerhouse! How about you? Are you feeling the energy and putting it to use?

I’m making some progress on getting my eBay store in shape. I was able to add the SmilingPartners logo to it, and I set up some categories for my ebooks. My to-do list for today includes finishing the upload of a bunch of books to the store. I have at least a couple dozen in various stages of being ready. Have to complete things like making the thank you pages and getting them uploaded to the site, adding the books to SmartDD (the digital delivery system), loading the books into TurboLister, uploading to eBay, then sorting them into the categories I’ve set up. All nit-picky work that has to be done.

I had some help in getting the store logo set up. I found a chapter of an ebook called How to Set Up A Successful Automated Ebook Business on EBay. The “leaked” chapter deals specifically with setting up your eBay store, and it was spot-on easy to follow. The book is now on my wish list. I’m not buying it yet, because I’m following Joel Comm’s advice, as posted last time, about using the stuff I have before I go after shiny new things. I don’t think I have anything as thorough as this book seems to be on getting everything set up for complete automation, but I have to look.

I’ve uploaded the leaked chapter, so you can download it here (right click and save as). There are links throughout the book to his sales page, naturally, so go take a look. I’ll add this to the resources page, as well, in case you want to come back for it. If you’re setting up an eBay store, it’s very helpful.

I’ve also been dinking around with www.chefjudi.com and www.smilingpartners.com. Here’s my experience working on ChefJudi:

I used to wonder what online folks meant when they said it “only” took them 5 days to get a site up and running. I mean, how can it take that long? Can’t you just type up some stuff, add some products and upload it?

How silly and naïve was I.

Somehow I had it in my mind that doing web sites was just a little trickier than working on a regular word document, only with pictures and links. Especially with the availability of wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) html editors, it had to be easy, right?

Let me tell you about my day.

I’m using Nvu as my editor (and obviously need to learn more). I have the basic structure of the 4 measly pages I want to start with. I’m not dealing with a header, because I can’t find one I like (I’m going for free here, so that limits things a bit), but I did have an idea of using a font I liked and color and keeping the whole thing pretty simple. My first problem arose with the font. I really like it, but in Nvu it seems I’m limited in how big I can make that particular type. So, I played around with that for awhile. And here’s one of the lovely things about working on web stuff. The way things look in the editor is not necessarily how it’s really going look. So, you save the page, in this case as index.html, then open the saved page in Windows to see how it really looks. This is pretty close to how it’s going to look online, but not exactly the same. Change the file around in Nvu, save it, refresh the open Windows page to see if it’s anywhere close to how I want it to look. Do this several times as I try to figure out how to get my font bigger. Nothing works. Finally decide I’m just going to have to live with it.

Okay, I already have my left column listing my pages and my newsletter signup form in the right column, so I save what I have 4 times: index, contact, cookbooks, and kitchen stuff. Oops, I forgot to link the listing to a poster store on the site. Do that and save the pages again. Okay, we’re going now.

To the contact page and add a note and the contact information. On to the other pages to add a welcome note, asking for the signup, and promising a real web site “soon.” Have enough sense to copy the message to add to the other pages. On a roll and ready to upload the pages. I use FileZilla for my ftp (free and really easy to use), so I open that up, connect to my server, and upload my pages. Close FileZilla.

Now I open my web browser to check on how the site really looks. Click the links to other pages and realize that I’ve changed the name of two of the pages, so the links don’t work. Aarrgh!

Back to Nvu. Open each page and fix the links. Almost forgot to save my work, but caught it. Back to FileZilla, upload the pages, and all’s well. So far. I still need to find stuff to put on the pages and stuff to sell, but at least I now have the framework.

I’ll be lucky if the whole thing only takes a week.

I did finally figure out the problem with the header - I’d been trying to make it using just text instead of using a graphics application (Irfanview is what I use). It is better than it was, but still needs something prettier. I’ll just deal with that later. The important thing is to get it started, not wait for perfection, right?

Well, I guess I can’t avoid the fact that all those books are waiting to be dealt with. I’m keeping a written list of each day’s goals. I hate the idea of moving one on to the next day, because I didn’t get my work done. And there’s a great feeling of accomplishment when I can check a task as done.

Well, 2008 is here, a brand spanking new year just waiting for us.

I have to own up to the fact that I didn’t make as good use of 2007 as I might have. I don’t have the kind of business going I envisioned, but I did finally make a start. That’s a better place than I was at the end of 2006, so I can take some comfort from that.

I have been looking at goal-setting today. It’s not something I’ve been very good at doing. Sure, I form vague thoughts about doing “better” in various shapes and sizes, but I don’t think I’ve ever spent any significant time at it, nor put any real thought into writing exactly what I wanted to accomplish. This is the year that happens; I’m committed to having a good deal of it done and written down before I go to bed tonight.

Another of those obnoxious truisms: Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.

On that theme, I have a list to share with you. It comes from Joel Comm, a very well-respected internet marketer and best-selling author. He’s responsible for an amazing Adsense Secrets program, and this year developed “The Next Internet Millionaire” program. Check his website at www.JoelComm.com.

Here’s the list he included in his newsletter today. It’s personalized with “I” and meant to be repeated out loud, with feeling!

1) I will clearly define what I want my Internet business to look like in one year and set specific attainable goals to make it happen. (You can’t get where you are going without a roadmap, so chart it out.)

2) I will follow those who have succeeded, emulate their successes and learn from their mistakes. (We all need mentors. Be sure you are following people who have honestly and ethically found success.)

3) I will stay focused and not get distracted by all the “bright shiny objects.” (Just because an ebook, course or software product is great, doesn’t mean it is going to help in your specific business. Be discerning!)

4) I will use the product I have purchased before buying anything else. (Do you have unread ebooks? Read ‘em! Unused software? Use it! Unwatched DVDs? Put them in the DVD player!)

5) I will prioritize networking relationships with others in my industry, as it is people and not websites that make my business successful. (This is the secret to my success…)

6) I will make every effort to attend at least one Internet marketing live event in 2008. (And this is where I discovered the secret to my success!)

7) I will wisely invest time and money in my business. (If you aren’t willing to make sacrifice, you probably aren’t going to achieve your goals.)

8) I will THINK BIG! (The opportunity is seemingly endless. Don’t be satisfied with small successes… go for it!)

9) I will not give up! (Nothing happens without action. Never stop taking action.)

10) I will pay it forward. (It is more blessed to give than to receive, and I’ve found that when you help others it always comes back to you with good stuff.)

Again, that’s www.JoelComm.com. Sign up for his newsletter; he has some great stuff. (See #2 above.)

I also read today that somewhere on the magnitude of 10,000 new computer users will have logged onto the internet today. Internet marketers say that January is the very best month for them because of all the new computers given as Christmas presents. The opportunities are huge - and they’re growing. Let’s all resolve to make the best use of all of this!

Here’s to a great 2008 for all of us!