It’s still transition time with LDSFriends – the web site Paul and I acquired this year. We work on it when we can and have a contractor doing the development. We have a lot of strong partnerships and we are slowly implementing our plans (none can be seen on the site yet, which is essentially as it was from the beginning – 1995 I believe). Slowly is the key word here. It’s a part-time venture like all of ours are. Being marketers, we’re always coming up with ideas and plans. We test things. The drawback is that we need a developer each step. And the site goes down. It’s a gradual implementation. Too gradual.

This is a stage that is probably common. You’re not ready to devote full-time energy to your side businesses. You keep the day job or the contract work. Your business is fit into weekends or when you should be sleeping. You put the money you’re making back into your other ventures. You don’t want to burden startups with your salary requirements.

I see it in the eyes of a lot of entrepreneurs, that lack of sleep phase. I’ve been better about sleeping but that means slower on seeing progress on the businesses. I have added a product to my ecommerce store every day except Friday. I did however do many more than that the day before (that’s my justification). I’m slowly learning Shopify. I tend to dive in first and then look at the directions later.

Here’s a lesson I learn in my business and in my life several times: you always pay extra for taking shortcuts. You hire someone cheap in India and you end up having to pay to get the site redesigned (until you find a good contact or maybe you get lucky, but in my experience I work with someone I know, is local, or referred to me). In my case the colors were strange and no matter how clear we were about what we wanted, it wasn’t ever worth more than what we paid for it – which isn’t much.

Sometimes people think they can buy a web site and they’ll just make money on it. Even though that web site is almost exactly like everyone else who bought into the scheme. The colors might be different or the products arranged in different places, but you can’t change the meta tags or other elements of the site. If you are going to buy a site, work with a business broker or find one that is making money already.

Maybe you’ve learned this lesson – that shortcuts can cost you a lot. I seem to have to learn this in various ways every once in a while. I haven’t ever bought template sites, but yesterday I remembered the bad decisions I’ve made when in a hurry. This post was spurned by having someone fix my bumper of my car. He was nice enough but in the end it was a half-baked job. Sure it saved me time and money, but now I’m out both and have to start again with a new bumper. Did I tell you I have animosity for cars? If I never had to deal with car repairs I wouldn’t.

As it applies to business, you often won’t make quick money if you try to get rich quick. You’ll waste money AND time. At least if you learn to do something well you’ll be out time and money but have something worthwhile to show for it. You can just count on things taking more time and effort than planned the first time around. Later, it does get easier and faster. The worst is when you put money into something and have to scrap it and start over.

My colleague Brandon made a video on how to use Shopify. Shopify is the ecommerce platform I’m building my site on one product at a time. This video is an introduction to Shopify but there will be more to come. I recently blogged about how I wish someone would do this.

He used Camstudio (a free open source program that helps you create tutorials using screenshots – it’s similar to Camptasia).

He hosts the video on veoh – which is higher definition than YouTube or Google Video. You can actually see the mouse movement and details on the screen. This is necessary if you’re trying to teach something.

Thank you Brandon for your work and for the sacrificed sleep. He’s an excellent designer and more technical than most too.

I found this post about starting an online store. If you have a web site or blog (here is a shopping cart plugin) you can easily add products that complement what your site or blog is about. Since I teach people how to build and market their own online stores, I have some opinions to add.

My first dropshipping site is www.cot-tents.com. I actually prefer content sites but they can take longer to build and this is my focus right now. Creating an online store is a good place to start.

First, there are directories of dropshippers on sites like WorldWideBrands or TheShipper. I’m not a fan of Doba unless you need products and a site built before other companies will work with you. That’s because your relationship with a dropshipper is important and if you can never access them you have cut out a very important part of your business. You can always negotiate better prices or terms once you start making sales. Also, the more middlemen the less the margin you will get.

If you want to spend a lot of time, go straight to the manufacturer – look them up on ThomasNet.com. Call and see if they will let you sell their items on your web site and if they will ship the item directly to the customer for you.

Another way to find a business willing to drop ship product for you is to think of people you already know or work for who have access to products at wholesale prices. Most people overlook this important part of business – networking. Just by letting people know about my online store they suggest products I could sell. Also, think about relatives or friends who may have access to products you could sell.

Whatever you do on your store, make sure you don’t just copy exactly what your product supplier has written about the item. Often the text is stilted and isn’t well written. Also, search engines won’t index or rank your page highly if it is a copy of the same information found on another site. Look at what others have written about the products to get ideas. Research each item on your own and put things in your own words. Make it yours. Be creative too. That wedding favor could actually be a party favor or a gift that goes along with the theme of your site.

I’ve made a goal to add at least one product to my web site each day. I started today. I’ve decided to stay with Shopify. They charge 3% of each order but you don’t have a monthly fee. I’ll let you know how it goes. I’d like to see more documentation or tutorials – especially videos to explain how to customize the shop and how to use the site.

A lot of this is review of what I’ve gone over before. I will write about ways to market your online store. I also like to talk about ways to build trust (testimonials, seals, a toll free phone number, etc). I’d like to get your opinion: how do you build a web site? what tools or sites are invaluable to you in the process? How do you find product to sell? Any tips or insights welcome.

One of my favorite stores is MyWeddingFavors and this video that goes along with it by the owner of this site Brad Fallon.

Once upon a time I thought anyone could use Flickr images for their site with no thought about it. Kelly & I discussed how she’s heard from a few of the people whose images she has posted on her blog. I haven’t but there are some things you should know if you want to use Flickr images on your web site or blog.

Thank you to Rich Brooks at Maine Today for this tip – he’s the internet marketing columnist. No I’m not jealous. This is his suggestion for an easy way to find out if that Flickr image is OK to post on your blog or web site.

1. Start at the Creative Commons web site and search for images by keyword.
2. Be sure you choose the ones that can be used for commercial purposes.
3. Choose the tab for Flickr and find images.
4. Read the part that says “some rights reserved.”
5. Follow the terms, as in if they say to link to them, link to them.

You use SnipShot (save as a web shot) to get a URL, FTP the image to your server, or link directly from Flickr. I think there is an SEO reason for that. I’ll have to ask Mat.

Paul and I got some more work done on LDSFriends yesterday. Nothing you can see yet, but we are slowly making progress. We bought the web site a few months ago. We have both always wanted to own a social networking site. Now my dream is to buy 2 other web sites that are making money (buy an income stream). They are in a related market – LDS jewelry. I need some capital – I have not raised money before. I also need capital to travel. I crave international travel.

My own web site is slow go. I decided to take it off SiteCreatorPlus and try Shopify. This makes me wish I knew CSS. I get by. I will need to hire someone to help me with the design.

This is the first ecommerce store I’ve done on my own. I randomly decided to sell baby things because I didn’t like anything that started with the letter A. I got to B and thought, ok, this will do. It’s an experiment. But as I went I started to have fun doing it. I went to Ikea that just went in by my house and saw some paisley wallpaper. I’ve always loved paisleys so that is why I named it Paisley Babies. I’d link to it but my projects are always slow and come last, so it is unfinished, which is ok for now. It won’t always be that way.

I haven’t been blogging much for my own blog. It’s been more of a time of action than reflection. For years I could never read enough about internet marketing. Now I just want to implement and so I read much less.

Here are my confessions from a professional blogger. It seems to be almost an article – so here I go again! I haven’t been keeping up on blogs because I’ve been writing them – for other sites. I blog about music the most. Writing about hip hop music is a pill I’ve got to swallow. I schedule the posts in advance so I don’t have to think about it too often. This is like my dose of pop culture, something I normally avoid or don’t have time for. I especially hate crude and obscene pop culture, it’s not my style.

Thankfully I’m not living in the projects somewhere as a single mom. I live in one of the most conservative towns in the country if not the world. So I’m not often around blaring rap, sirens, and beggars. I’ve taken to a song I blogged about by the albino, blind, Muslim rap singer who was raised by black parents – Brother Ali as part of my 4th of July themed posts. Even the title of the song is a swear word but it’s so passionate. The lyrics run through my head a lot: “Welcome to the United Snakes, home of the free and land of the slaves.” I have that crusader in me that really responds to this song. I feel like I should stick in the YouTube video right here, but you’ll have to look it up.

So it’s about to the point where my blogging can support me professionally. I keep wondering if it’s time to redesign my blog but then don’t have the time to follow through. I have a hesitation to blog full-time that I can’t quite get over. It’s that it’s so isolating. I really like working in jobs where I talk out loud more and more importantly where I can listen. I learn the most by listening and repetition. I’m around people talking about the things I love and that is hard to resist. But I love to write too, so that’s my dilemma. Doing both is a bit taxing.

Here are some pointers for you from my experience:

How to Survive Large Quantities of Blogging – a Formula
One thing I’ve learned about blogging for other people that I don’t do on this blog, is you have to use formulas. When I start out that’s what I’m trying to do – establish my method.

If you notice my friend Kelly at Startup Princess she does this well. She covers a topic about how a women entrepreneur has succeeded. She sums up the post with a “magic wand” – a tip that summarizes the main point. That’s her formula – and it’s a very popular one.

Give your Opinion
Another thing that sets you apart in blogging is your opinion. Same with your web site. If you use an authentic voice and write how you really think or feel people respond. That’s what gets readers and what can make a good blogger. There is no one who sees the world like you do.

Wrap up and a Thank You
I also know that so far I’m still better at blogging than teaching blogging, but I’m getting better. I want to thank people who have purchased hosting and other services on my blog lately. Each time I see progress I’m closer to my goal of making all of my income 100% online. That’s my ultimate goal.

Wikiversity has a lot of free tutorials and that’s where I found a site that has open source web site design templates.

Once you have free web site design template, you might need some free images to add to it. Wikimedia Commons has copyright-free images by subject, license, or author. I didn’t see that there were loads of pictures to choose from but what is there is gorgeous.

I love the one pictured (edited in SnipShot but I love Wiredness too)

There are also some odd videos you that are also free. They also have sound files.

Paul Wilson and I were going to develop this into a voting web site. Basically it was going to be a site in which anyone in the world could register to vote on who they would like to be the future president of the United States. You see, we want to market everything AND the kitchen sink.

But, being slightly ADD, we’ve overextended ourselves. We’re still working on two ebooks, Scholar.ly, and our dating web site (which is being redesigned right now). We realize this can be a great domain – www.myfuturepresident.com for someone else.

For more info, look at our listing myfuturepresident.com on Sedo.

Pretty soon we will also sell another political domain name: political.ly – I really love this one because it’s so web2.0 and unique. It was an adventure registering it. I’ll link to it when it’s through the verification process.