Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Back to normal
Things are pretty much back to normal again after the replacement of my dying hard drive and the reinstall of my software. Granted, I still have a lot of the specialty software to reinstall and I still have to take time out occasionally to reconfigure some things to get my preferred settings back. But, overall, it's beginning to feel like things were (except with a much more stable hard drive!).

I got far enough along to get this Sunday's newsletter ready to go. This one features the following articles:

• Part 2 of a 3-part article on how to set up your webpages to best match the way that studies have shown that people view webpages
• Review of the ebook WordTracker Magic, which changes the way most people do keyword research with tips and tricks to help find keyword opportunities that most people overlook
• Review of the ebook Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay, an ebook I feel is a must read for anyone serious about selling regularly on eBay
• A special guest article by Silent Sales Machine author Jim Cockrum in which he evaluates one eBay seller's auction and describes what that seller did well and what that seller could improve—a very enlightening article

If these articles interest you and you haven't already signed up for my newsletter, I invite you to sign up at:

http://www.onestopwebsupport.com/newsletter-signup.htm

Or check out previous newsletters at:

http://www.onestopwebsupport.com/newsletters/nl-archives.htm

With each newsletter I do, I find I enjoy it more. I hope you find the same.

Jeff

Back online
I'm baaaaack.

Everything went amazingly smoothly with replacing my hard drive and reinstalling all the software and files.

Except one thing. Somehow, we got totally disconnected from the Internet. Nothing worked to get us back up. We finally had to get a service rep in from the cable company to figure it out. I still have no idea what caused the problem, but whatever it was, it's fixed.

Two and a half days without Internet sure shows you how dependent you are on it! It also shows how distracted you can get by it. Our three kids at home, who are usually fighting over Internet time, read, watched videos, got outside, and generally found their daily routine to be an entirely different experience than usual.

My wife Joanne got a lot more things done around the house. And I found myself realizing constantly how dependent I am on access to the Internet. Questions that came up or tasks I needed to do for work were constantly cut short as I realized, "Oops, I can't go online to check this out."

But we're online again, and things should be back to normal until Monday, when we head off for Joanne's parents to deal with their admission into a nursing home after her Dad's latest hospitalization.

Yes, life remains on the unusual side for us.
Jeff

Reformatting we will go
I finally did the inevitable today and got my business computer ready to reformat the hard drive. Crashes were getting more and more frequent, so after putting it off as long as I could, I started the deed today. The main computer is reinstalling the operating system on the business computer as I write on the family computer.

So time to get back to watching the green bar advance on the install. What fun.
Jeff

Monday Haiku


Funny, how even when you set your own schedule (mostly), Mondays have a way of transforming themselves into the most disagreeable day of the week.

Monday has become the day of putting together the pieces from the previous week—pulling stats from a multitude of reports and then reorganizing them, stretching them, squeezing them, pinching them and trying to get them to squeal out some kind of insight.

And usually feeling that the results are more unconnected fragments than actionable insights.

But then again, what can you really expect of a Monday?
Jeff

Oops
I just realized that I had promised to run a weekly feature of my favorite weblinks in each Sunday's entry. I guess that this week, Father's Day trumps special feature. I'll be back with that next week.
Jeff

A Different Father's Day
Nothing to say about business today. It was definitely a family day, and a great one at that. Tradition was decimated today and made for a very surprising and enjoyable day.

A typical Father's Day at our household goes something like this. A couple of weeks before, my wife Joanne asks me to write up a list of what I want. I know from experience not to put anything that costs more than $30 on it, so I usually list a few DVDs, a few CDs, maybe a couple of clothings items or a couple of books.

Then on Father's Day I open packages that come straight from the list and take the family out to a nice restaurant (at my expense).

This year, about a week ago, I said to Joanne, "I don't know what to put on a list this year. I'm so wrapped up in getting this business going that I still haven't watched the DVD's I got for Christmas, I'm usually too engrossed in work to slip a CD in the computer while I'm working, my closet is overstuffed with clothes, and I have five books on the shelf I haven't read. Plus, with income still in the 'growing but uncertain' stage, I don't think we can afford our usual nice restaurant.

Jo smiled slyly and said, "If you can't think of anything for a list, I think we can come up with something on our own."

So today they surprised me big-time. One thing I've wanted to do for several years is to replace our old, battle-weary grill, but always put other priorities ahead of it. So the kids all pooled their money and did just that for Father's Day. Plus, they put together enough to pay for a meal to our favorite pizza place and to take me to finally see the latest Star Wars.

Then it was home to try out the new grill and, later, to hear from the ones who are off on their own now. A great day overall, largely because it was truly from their hearts and not just our old, traditional approach to the day. I truly feel blessed to have the children—and the wife—God has blessed me with.
Jeff

Progress on many fronts
It feels good tonight. Over the past two days, I've made a big update to the One Stop Web Support site. Newsletters I hadn't yet archived, articles I'd written, but never gotten around to putting up. The site is now up to 78 pages, which is gratifying considering that two months ago I re-launched it at 25 pages and three months ago I was at 6 pages that had been up from a long-interrupted attempt to start the site over a year ago.

I see progress, too, in the growing response to the site every day. I watched a short video from James Martell (of James Martell's Affiliate Marketing Handbook fame) that I posted on the site today. He made a comment that one of the things he found most surprising when he started was when he actually started to make sales.

He found it strange. After all, he had been working for months with the goal of making sales. Yet once they came in, it took him by surprise. A part of him wasn't expecting that it would really happen.

I'm experiencing much the same thing now. The sales, the newsletter signups, all are humbling, knowing that I'm helping people in some way toward their goals. I've started gathering the names where I can see them to remind myself that what I'm doing isn't just dumping electrons into cyberspace, but helping individuals work toward their dreams.

I want to keep living up to that trust that people have placed in me.
Jeff