eAction

While my American friends are pausing to count their blessings and consider the goodness God has brought into their lives, I’m in a pensive, weighing some pros and cons mood too today.

There are times when I wonder if the people on the mailing list for this (Ezine Edition) of the eAction are really getting to see each issue and whether they are reading them. Would anyone but my number 1 fan notice if I cancelled this effort?

(I confess that I have most of the ezines I’ve subscribed to filtered automatically into a folder, and I haven’t had time to look in there for a long time - I bet others are doing that too).

Then I recall, on the other hand, that I started this so I would have a block of time ready and the habit in place for helping my growing downlines when it would be time to coax and guide them along. It happens that I expect to burst my downlines wide open in another month or two, so this is the wrong time to quit. I need to hang in here for the sake of a future situation.

Do you ever run into this too? You must! You can think of several reasons to quit something, but then you remember WHY you are doing it, and you know deep down in your conscience that you would lose rather than gain by quitting. So let’s hang in there!

It’s time to talk about MyPowerMall again. Ginny Dye’s enthusiasm is very catching. I know she’s not a perfect human being and probably has some ways that rub me the wrong way, but it is that enthusiasm and her grand and generous ideas that are causing the program to take off. Just yesterday she went back to the restaurant where she gave birth to the idea, to celebrate the first anniversary. And celebrate she should! Look at what she’s accomplished in just one year!

She’s founded a new online business that is harnessing the power of consumers to shape their own economy - and eventually it will shape it on a national and global scale. Already there are over 78,000 members in 206 countries. More and more of them are shopping in over 1000 stores she has lined up to work with her mall. The flow of cash all over North America is picking up momentum!

But if you listened to her “call” (even the delayed recording on the site, as I did) this week, you will know that starting in January things are going to EXPLODE with MyPowerMall! She has found a company who will set up in-house debit cards in conjunction with MasterCard. All members can be paid promptly by direct-deposit into those debit cards. These cards can be used in off-line shopping too, such as at your local grocery store or gas station, etc. Every use of your debit card will bring you more rebates and commissions.

On top of that, if you convince more merchants to come onside with MyPowerMall (at no expense) YOU will gain a percentage of all business done with them through the MPM debit cards by members. Can we even fathom what that will mean?

How many years ago did cell phones first come on the scene? A big of digging, and I learned it was invited in 1973 by a Martin Cooper who worked with Motorola. It still involved a suitcase full of batteries back then. These handy pocket phones have only proliferated in the last five years or less. In the same way, online shopping has been around for quite a while - at least a decade or more - but it is about to bust wide open, like the cell phone. People are going to shop online as fluently and commonly as they flip open a cell phone to call home.

If you had known five years ago what we see now with cell phones, and someone had said, “For 10 bucks you can have a share in the company that makes the phones,” would you have snapped it up?

Well, guess what. We now have such an opportunity to buy in on the “online shopping” that is going to grow like a huge snow ball and sweep the world. In January, Ginny is going to cut down on deadwood in the membership by asking us to buy at least one dollar’s worth through our malls every month, or we forfeit our mall. I think that’s only sensible. Else her system might break down. But it is - and she says always will be - free to join and get a PowerMall in your own name.

If you just want good deals and great rebates, sign up for the Personal Mall, but if you want to multiply your streams of income over the next 2 to 5 years many times over, then it is sheer stupidity to ignore this. I mean there may be some good reasons to decline on personal or moral issues, but speaking generally signing up is the obvious choice.

Then resolve to at least do a few things to insure your benefits. 1. Learn to shop online through your mall
2. READ Ginny’s training lessons that come by email the first 30 days.
3. Make some business cards or postcards or flyers to hand out as invitations to others.
4. Make sure your mall URL address is on them all, and you give it out at every opportunity.
5. Don’t nag or bother people, just keep handing out invitations cheerfully.

If you really want to make it big, use free advertising online, and if you can afford it go for paid ads too, both on and offline. Even if you are not good at math, you should catch on that the bigger your downline of real shoppers the greater your income will be.

Yet, important as that is, I think it is better to teach people how to shop online and then sign them up, than to persuade them to sign up for all the money they will make them, and you. Even though that’s what I’ve just done here.

My excuse is that I want to show you that this is you-can’t-lose business op because that’s why you are reading this - you want to do business online in such a way that You can have God involved and blessing your efforts.

Now if you haven’t signed up yet - go hear Ginny tell you all about it in one of the short audio movies here; MyPowerMall

(Incidently, not quite 100% have a cell phone yet; I don’t).

I’m re-discovering AdlandPro for advertising these days., as I’m going back to place more free classified ads. Anyone can go place up to 20 free ads in the system. If you tire of them, delete them and place new ones. AdlandPro

They do slide down the classifieds pages though as new ones are placed, so you have to devise a schedule when you will “edit’ them or “post new ads” so they show up at the top where they will be read again.

If you want to write scads of ads, you should at least join as an affiliate. Then you’ll need to place a link or banner to AdlandPro from your site, but that gives you the privilege of placing as many ads as you want. AdlandPro Affiliate You’ll still need to edit or replace them to keep them fresh and visible.

But if you start paying for your advertising at AdlandPro you get better services. Your ads are automatically renewed for you, and sent out to larger databases of classifieds sites. Become a Gold member, at Gold Member at AdlandPro and get ALL the advertising deals for $24.95/month.

Note: Lots of other Classifieds sites, like Craigslist, and Kijiji do NOT allow you to advertise affiliate programs. AdlandPro does.

I’ve had another personal experience from which to draw some good advice.

At our Canadian Thanksgiving my brother announced that he had bought himself a new computer because the old one had died. It would only go as far as BIOS and that seemed to indicate he had no hard drive any more.

Well, I’d been thinking of replacing a hard drive in my own computer but since I’d never done it before I was a little hesitant. Suddenly I had an idea. If Tom’s computer was now garbage I could take it home, find some cheap, second hand hard drive and try installing on that computer first, before I bungled up mine. If it didn’t work out I would not have lost anything but some time.

I took his old box and keyboard home and eventually had time to fire it up and see. Sure enough, BIOS didn’t seem to know it had a hard drive any more. It must be toast.

Another day, walking home from downtown I stopped in at a computer store I had not been to for years. They seemed to have used ones to sell. I was able to get a used 8 GB hard drive for $25. A little steep if hard drives are suppose to be less than a $1 per GB these days, but I decided to take it.

When I got to opening up Tom’s computer I discovered that the cable plug had fallen out of the old hard drive. Hmmm! That might explain a lot. I plugged it in, and found room just above it to slide in this one I had just bought right above the old one. I got them both plugged in and turned the computer on to see what it would do.

Well! Now it complained that the Master drive had failed, but in BIOS it appeared to know it had two drives.

I went back online in my own computer to research this, and was pretty sure it had to do with Master-Slave settings. It took another day or two to find the right diagrams for those little tiny caps you put over two pins. I learned that yes, when you have two drives, they can’t both be master. One has to have first rights to kick in, and the other takes second fiddle.

The first couple of setting configurations I tried still gave me that “master drive has failed” message. Then I learned online that if I set both of the drives to “Cable Select” then the hard drive plugged in at the end of the ribbon cable would be the Master. That would work, I decided. The newer 8 GB drive would be at the end, so if the other drive wasn’t working right, I could still check it, but not need to count on it. (Tom had hoped to get some email addresses off the old drive).

I decided to try installing a Linux Distro, so I could partition and format the drives. It seemed concerned about mounting a Win96 drive, which threw me off a bit, until I remembered that the used drive I had bought had come out of an old Windows computer. In the partitioning stage I was able to change the setting so it would be formatted as a Linux drive. Presto! Then things began to roll forward!

Unfortunately I had my back turned, facing my own computer when the first CD was done, and didn’t get the second on in on time, so the installation was interrupted. I needed to get on with some other work, so I’ve left it. But now the extra Distros I had ordered from ShipLinux have arrived, and I’m hoping to try installing Ubunto over lunch today on Tom’s old computer.

If I can salvage those email addresses for Tom he’ll be a happy camper, and I’ll have a spare computer for an internship plan I have in mind for the new year! That makes two happy campers here!

Moral for you: old computers can be salvaged and yes, you can install a hard drive yourself!

I’ve had so many good things happen for me this past week or two, that I’m almost babbling. Let me just tell you one exciting thing that happened just this very hour!

I just saw a car skid on the freshly fallen snow, right to the spot where my car stood until late Monday afternoon!

My house is second from a busy intersection, (yes, in a residential area). People often come whipping around the corner because our street jogs half a block north before it continues east. I had my car parked in front of my house but have thought from time to time that it would be safer for the winter if I could park in the back yard. Only my gate was sagging from one hinge and really needed to be replaced. As did most of the back fence to make my yard more secure.

It wasn’t happening, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. Then last week, my good neighbours, Joe and Penny, invited me to come along to Home Depot to buy the hardware parts for my back gate, and a new 9′ gate post. (the old one had been weak and then was mowed down by a big truck delivering a garden shed). On Monday I came back from lunch to find Joe and Arnold, the 79 year old Director at our mission, working on my gate. By the end of the afternoon they had it done. Including the hardware for a new padlock.

I raked up the debris and then went to get my car. I drove it around the corner and into the alley and through my gate. I locked the gate, and was delighted. One goal accomplished!

So now when I saw that car skid to the spot where I used to park on the street I just knew that the Lord in His great mercy had prompted Joe to push get my gate replaced on Monday!

When you run your business with God involved in every aspect, I am SURE He does things like that for you all the time too.

Sometimes we need to do something over and over a few times to develop a productive habit that we can start using in other areas too. For me, I’m discovering that an approach I took with selling tangible goods for my sister who is out of province and unable to look after the sale of these items is showing lots of promise.

At first glance you might think my example has nothing to do with you, but let me describe it first, and then help you find a principle that you can adapt for yourself.

Here’s the background. My sister Elsie had left things in storage at Dad’s house when she moved to the west coast in 1995. I promised to look after her stuff, but earlier this year after Dad died, I knew that I’d have to find myself a new place, and I wouldn’t have room for all of her things. We discussed it, and agreed that I should try to sell some of her things at Dad’s estate auction. That didn’t go over too well, and some things didn’t even get a bid. Now what?

Well, I got permission to store some of the larger furniture pieces in a vacant office, with the promise that I would advertise and sell them as soon as I could.

From what I’d learned in the past, just from reading online, I knew I could take photos and probably sell them on e-bay, etc. I was especially concerned about the stereo credenza and large speakers. As I researched them for the most effective keywords to use in my ads, I saw that this was not quite old enough to be an antique or collectible. Hmmm…! Antique dealers didn’t want to hear from me for another 9-10 years, but I needed to sell this suite. So I pressed on.

I took photos and cropped and carefully choose the best ones. Then I created a web page on my business site that would describe and show it off to best advantage. I decided against e-bay because I wanted to get my sister at least $500 for it. Once my web page was about as good as I could get it, with the most sought after keywords to describe this vintage credenza stereo, and I had described it as something to snap up now and store for 10 years and then make a profit - that’s when I wrote a classified ad very carefully.

Next I logged into Craigslist.org, the most popular classifieds site on the web, and placed my ad, including just a couple of my photos with it, and the URL to my special web page for more details.

I’m happy to say that after a few weeks the $500 is on the way to me!

But now I’m doing this over again with Elsie’s quilt-rack, and I’m about to do it once more with a course of binders for developing a business. I’m sure Elsie paid about $300 for this box of jumbo binders full of information, so I should have no trouble selling it for $50. But as I am going through these paces all over again, I realize that I’ve found a pattern for selling tangible goods that is working for me.

Now, do you see the principle or outline of steps you could take to sell something?

1. Get to know the product or items very well. Research the most effective keywords to use. What would someone looking for this item call it?

2. Take good photos and resize them so they load quickly.

3. Use the photos and your keyword list to write a winsome web page describing the features, but also the benefits of owning this product.

4. Write a good classified ad, with a link to your web page, and include a photo or two. Then place it on Craigslist and any other classifieds sites that you think will be useful.

You can do all of this without spending a penny!

Devotees of the SBI web business suite are so excited they are producing videos to brag on their SBI. Some of these are so touching, and others absolutely hilarious. If your computer allows you to see U-tube videos you can see these here

I’m one of those enthusiastic devotees too! I’m up to Day Four in following the steps in the Video guide and though they hold you back from ordering your domain until you get to Step or Day Five, already I’ve seen the tremendous value in using this SiteBuildIt! process to build not just a site but a profitable web business!

Listen, you can go see those videos for yourself and do as much as you are able just from the lessons. You only get to login to BrainstormIt! if you have paid up, but all the work is demonstrated for you. Go here to see the video series. Take time to follow the instructions… You’ll be amazed! Demo of SBI Action Guide.

I was going to go on with the lessons on using command line commands in the shell, but I’m pressed for time so I’ll just share another personal experience that may be of help to you.

I’ve had a problem the last few weeks with doing my regular Saturday update to my Suse 10.1. I suppose mainly because I’ve learned NOT to try to update the kernel. The Yast Updater doesn’t want to let me update the files I’ve marked because I won’t proceed on certain other files where it finds discrepancies.

What to do?

Well, I went online to see what reviews and news there was about Suse 10.3 now that it is out. Does it have the same problem with the Zen Updater, or is that fixed? I was happy to see that is not a problem any more.

So then to find a place to get this Suse 10.3. I could, of course, download the ISO file and burn it to CDs or a DVD. However, I’ve tried that in the past, and found it took hours and then was not always successful in the burning the ISO to disk. I’ve ordered from online stores which do the burning for us, and sell the disks at very reasonable rates. They are lightweight and easy to send in the mail.

Linux is always free, but people can charge you for the physical disks and the mailing, and any special services they give you. You do NOT have to pay large sums to put any Linux distro on your computer.

Sigh! I could not find the budgetlinuxCD site I have bought from before - he must have taken down that site.

So I did some Google searches, and compared prices. I settled on the site, shiplinux.com for their lowest prices and the chance to get several distros at once. The Suse 10.3 DVD was only $2.99. If I spent $10 I would get free shipping. So I clicked on three other distros, Mandrivia 2008, Fedora Core 7, and Gentoo Live CD. (only $1.49)

However, I discovered a problem with the shopping cart. I was required to register and check my email to use the shopping cart. No email arrived to confirm my registration, but I decided to try to make my purchase. Before I got to the payment step, it stalled with a message that my choice for shipping, US mail, was invalid. Yet I had not made a choice.

There was an area to attach a note to my order. I tried that and explained what had happened in case that would go through to the site owner. No go.

I waited until Monday in case the owner was out of town over the weekend. (Though a shopping cart is suppose to work even when unattended). I tried again on Monday, and still came to the same blockage. So I went to the Contact page and send a message. When I checked my email later in the day I had one from the owner, saying the problem had been fixed, and I should try again, and for my trouble he would throw in an extra distro free of charge. I suggested Centos 5.

Now I’m waiting for them in the mail. I’m thinking they should be here early next week.

The moral here? Shop around, and if you run into a problem with your purchase have the patience to report it, for you will likely get extra for your trouble.