Entries Tagged 'blogs' ↓

A friend of mine, Ben Steele, host of the late podcast SodOff Radio, contacted me yesterday inquiring about the best way to sell photos online. Initially, he was going to design a static HTML website and add the photos in manually when he uploads him. I was quick to mention that his probably wasn’t the best way to go about things.

Even with Dreamhost’s One-Click Installs, I was able to come up with a pretty decent solution. First, I installed Wordpress. This will allow him to interact with his customers through a blog, and show the latest photos. This will also provide him with the ability to make commentary on the photos. Additionally, I felt that a blog would be a good way for him to market his website. With all of the associations and networks available to bloggers, it is easy to get your blog noticed if you have the motivation to do so.

The next task was to get all of the photos into the same place. To accomplish this I deployed an install of Gallery 2.1, which was also available through the Dreamhost One-Click Installs. This is a very customizable piece of software that I’ve really enjoyed working with so far. It will allow Ben to organize all of his photos in to albums and then his customers can purchase single photos, or entire albums.

The final component was selling the photos. To achieve this I used a service called Digibug Pro. This is a service that will allow Ben to set the prices for his photos, and then they will print the and ship them to the customer. By using this service, Ben is able to keep 85% of the profit of the sale. The great thing about Digibug Pro is that it integrates right into Gallery 2.1, which means that Ben only has to upload his photos into one place.

Right now this seems to be a fairly good solutions. What do you use to sell photos online?

Well, simply put, writing an analysis of one is a terrible way to spend 6 hours on a Sunday afternoon.

On a more serious note however, it is WLU’s way of trying to help us understand problems in the business world. In reality, every case they give us takes place in Newfoundland and the only logical step seems to be to move the business to Ontario, because you’ll have a bigger market and your business won’t completely and utterly fail.

It would probably be more beneficial to analyze one every week in more detail rather than trying to cram two into every week. With everything else going on, some of it seems to just go right over my head.

The one thing that they do provide is practice for writing business reports. Although writing a business report may sound fairly easy when you first look at it, it can be quite the task. Some people find it very difficult to be very concise and keep their ideas flowing smoothly. I’ve never really had any difficulties with it but sometimes it just feels easier to write everything like an English essay.

Being a computer consultant in my spare time, I have quite a few clients that I have to keep track of. In the past few years I’ve found this somewhat tedious, as a simple Excel spreadsheet or random word documents just don’t cut it. Since this whole new ‘Web 2.0′ boom on the internet, I’ve run into quite a few websites that have made my life much easier.

Probably the most significant in the past month or so is called SideJobTrack. This is a Web 2.0 site designed to help ease the stress of part-time consultants by helping to organize all of their side jobs. This website lets me organize by clients, projects and jobs. Once I have a specific project or job completed, I have the option of sending an invoice straight to that client, or printing one out to give to the client. The great thing about the invoicing feature is that the invoices are very detailed, which most of my clients greatly appreciate.

I strongly suggest checking this site out. What sorts of tools or websites do you use to keep track of your side jobs?

I’ve recently started using a Google Personalized homepage as opposed to the plain old search box. I find this very useful for little news snippets and quite comical quotes. By default, however, it enables a horoscope module, which offers me such insights to my day as “turning on the charm today isn’t quite as effective as you wish.”

I’m also greeted with this ugly picture when I launch Firefox.

I’m more inclined to follow my horoscope’s advice when it tells me things such as “You should put off all of your responsibilities today”

I was recently listening to the RandomShapes.com podcast and something to the extent of “People in business are usually good looking, that’s why people listen to them”, was said. At first, this comment made a lot of sense to me. It wasn’t until a little bit later that I got to thinking about it. I went through the list of the world’s richest people, who all happen to be in business, and I realized that this statement is not true at all. Let me exhibit some of the world’s richest people and let you see for yourself.

Bill Gates

Larry Flynt

Warren Buffet

Donald Trump

The Sultan of Brunei

The Pope (Yes, he runs a business)