L5 Weekly Reflection

This week has been good. I enjoyed refining the layout of my website Intangience . I have a tendency to allow things to become too busy so at times I may go overboard with too spare. Finding the “just right” is the trick.

In our reading I was reminded to keep things simple with two colors and not more than four. Limiting special effects is good too. A scrolling video is cool but seems more suited to photography, travel or a destination like a hotel or restaurant. My business is editing the content of books such as plot and characters. That service does not really lend itself to video or flashing content.

Being aware of how easy it is to read is something I am working on, I really like my header picture and I really like the white font, but some readers find it hard to read…that makes me sad because I really do not want to change it. I will play around with the font and other features to see what can be done to help with that issue.

Above all I need to make my content attractive. I am selling books through Amazon as well as stationary. I personally like it for myself since the things I want are already singled out. So I made a purchase through my own link – now hopefully I can drive traffic there filled with people who think the same way.

Mastery over anything we do takes time – let’s hope we enjoy the journey.

L4 Weekly Reflection

I am not doing so well with keeping up with my work. I am generally an A student. But sadly this term I am doing poorly in both of my business classes due to poor organization of my time. I have had children get married and move out – children moving to England who have to move out of their house and stay with me until time to leave – previous married child moves back in with wife – finally children/grandchildren leave to go to England (boo hoo/yay) -orthodontic appointments for a child – and a new church assignment to work with the young women with attendant meetings and planning meetings. Whew! And college classes. It makes me sad when I overlook an assignment. Getting an F or a C really stinks! (And you can quote me on that.)

This week in my B250 class in which we are learning how to create a working website we studied hosting sites and site builders. We used a formula to help us see the strengths and weaknesses of various sites. It is nice to have an excel page programmed with weighted categories so we can use it for a variety of decisions.

I have learned that in some aspects all the sites are very similar and in others they are quite different. I already knew and reiterated through this week’s scouring of the internet that I prefer drag and drop programs. I also like variety and good pictures or graphics. I chose to go with Weebly as my host as well as my site builder. Here is my site in a halfI like the ease of use and the lack of difficulty…although, that being said, I did have an issue with some text not posting properly this week. After some trial and error I was able to get my words to stay where I put them.

I do love creating websites my creative side really enjoys designing and choosing colors and laying out the pages. As time goes on and with consistent use I am sure I will have a smooth running operation going on.

Whether it ever earns money is an entirely different matter.

L3 Weekly Reflection

This week in my business class we have been exploring the differences between affiliate marketing and drop shipments. We were given an assignment to weigh the value of each model. We then had to recommend one over the other. I eventually chose the affiliate model because it is less hassle. One can set up their page and let it do its thing. Of course traffic still needs to be funneled to the website.

Personally I never like being limited to only one choice. For my own website I would want to do a mixture of the two. I am enjoying looking over the various sites in order to find what will work for me. Being that my theme is books and publishing that knocks out a lot of retail — which I must admit it looks fun to try selling those as well.

So knowing my penchant to want to have it all. I really need to work at remaining focused on my theme; to keep it narrow and not make a mess of my website.

Additionally we studied how to find brokers, manufacturers, and wholesalers. It turns out most items are made overseas, in case you didn’t know. A person could have dreams of becoming a broker and warehousing all this stuff here in America to allow for faster delivery times. But it would require a large amount of money and is not a feasible option for someone just stepping into retailing without friends willing to back the operation fiscally.

I have never wanted to do inventory which is why I gave up the dream of a craft or fabric store long ago.

As for ice cream. . .  The items needed for inventory are relatively few so I still entertain that dream.

Hm makes me want to go and explore what kind of wholesalers there are for ice cream and accompanying products. Sigh.

The hardest part of this week’s assignment was getting the Rank feature on my excel page to work correctly.

It took me several tries over three days to finally figure it out. I think I have it down now. I do see the value of weighing the criteria of various aspects of each site. Price alone is not the only thing to consider. Some of my classmates were concerned with shipping times, others wanted “Made in America,” as for me I wanted quality products at a reasonable price and wanted to trust the company. Of course, those things are hard to really know until one gets the product in hand. But I made my judgments based on their ratings from other customers as well as their revenues and how much was sold in North America as opposed to other places. My assumption being that if other Americans consistently bought the products then the importers must be making a good profit from the companies I was looking at. Like most things in life trust is essential.

Overall it was an enlightening week filled with good information.

So yeah, dare to dream . . . but then act on it too.

 

L2 Weekly Reflection

I am taking a class at BYU-I which is designed to help me create a working website. I am excited to learn the basics in an orderly fashion. I have played around with various website builders doing hands on learning by doing. [Note this site is one such site I have played around with. I have found I really don’t like WordPress very much.] It will be nice to have a systematic approach. And even nicer is the fact that even though it is systematic there is still plenty of room for creativity and choices.

I am also taking a class about being an entrepreneur (ah I spelled it right the first try!) I like this second class class because it inspires me to be bold in my website class. Being an entrepreneur requires one to think about what they really want out of life.

Creating a bucket list is an interesting challenge which we did in that second class. I went to the my50.com site. I spent time entering all 50 goals and then found I did it wrong. It only took one goal, so when I have time I will return and add them in. But the point I am trying to get at is that I then went and looked at other people’s goals and they wrote down very detailed goals…seemingly more like things they did while on vacation, giving them 100’s of bucket list posts. Whereas I said I would like to go to Europe as a single goal one person I looked at described going to each city, each beach and each local drink and menu item. I personally don’t count those as bucket list items as I understand the term. Writing out my dreams made me stretch and think harder, because honestly I only have perhaps 10 major goals that I REALLY, REALLY want. The rest are just nice.

This relates to my website class because I need to ponder carefully what I want to spend my time doing, and if I am to take advantage of this class by creating a working website, then it should be a site that relates to something that I love.

And what I love right now is writing. ~ Kari Barr

 

 

Kindness

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” ~ Aesop

il_fullxfull.675931200_kxct

Several years ago I was on a writing site and a young woman asked me to participate in an Operation Beautiful campaign. I of course needed to know more, so I did my research. The idea was founded by a woman named Caitlin who is the owner of the site http://www.operationbeautiful.com/ She firmly believes that we all need to accept our own kind of beautiful.

After looking up the site I agreed to help the young woman in her campaign. It wasn’t much but as Aesop said, no act of kindness is wasted. All we did was visit other members on the writing site and tell them they were beautiful. Based on my experience of such kind words being thrown my way, I am confident the little messages brought smiles.

So what will you do today to help another?

Use the comment box to tell me things you have done, or things you intend to do soon.

 

To What End?

stripped ~ exposed ~ uncovered

~ a flower embraces the sun’s full light ~

mocked ~ betrayed ~ devastated

~ the heat of the day scorches ~

seeds scatter

The idea here is that pain allows for new growth. We need to learn to enjoy that moment when we bloom, and know that it can never last. And yet  the cycle will continue, bad things in life will happen, but beauty will come of it. Revel in the  light and rejoice in the the good that can be found. New seeds will fall after the scorching trials that life throws our way. Reminds me of the song Scatter Sunshine.

Beauty is Fleeting

 

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express. ~ Francis Bacon

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oofSnsGkops

Beauty is not static, what is beautiful today may not be beautiful to me tomorrow. Yet, certain memories stand out as having been stunning displays of perfection and awe-inspiring moments of beauty.

I have enjoyed sunrises, albeit very few, as I am not a morning person. I will share in another post a moment relating to a misty morning in which a group of horses surprised me with suddenness as they galloped up the beach to disappear once more into the mist, probably the most beautiful event I have ever witnessed. But today I will describe a brief moment of beauty which  came to mind as I pondered on the beautiful things I have seen in life.

It was so fleeting as to have hardly been noticed. I was seventeen and watching a young adult co-ed softball game. I cannot even recall names as it happened thirty years ago, but the fiance of a girl was up. He swung and hit with that classic crack that sent the ball flying. That was not the beauty, no the beauty was the grace with which he ran…I have never seen such grace and form in my life. He was a college level athlete, but now I cannot even recall what sport.

His legs stretched out, but not excessively long as one might see in racing, he was simply swift.  The way his hands were held captured me, so casual and open not clenched as in extreme effort and his feet were so sure, precise. Truly the only words I can think of is graceful. Honestly I sighed at the sight, and felt a pang of jealousy for the blonde gal who had captured his attention.

So it may not be the most beautiful sight, but it is one I have treasured in my heart with gratitude for having seen it. Truly less than a minute as he ran from base to base, but an inspiration to last a lifetime to be sure.