Little Steps: 2011

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Christmas Greetings

Merry Christmas To All My Readers!

From Our House To Yours!

Happy Holidays!

Season's Greetings!

We Wish You A Merry Christmas!

Joy To The World!

May you have the gift of faith, the blessing of hope and the peace of His love at Christmas and always.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

My Homesteading Journey Kindle Edition

Thoughts of a simpler life?

Recently I have added my eBooks to the Kindle store on Amazon. This means they had to be formatted for the kindle. I managed to do it and so far, no complaints. I am hoping it works out, as I like selling there. My book, My Homesteading Journey, of course, is written for "modern homesteaders" in mind. It is my story or journey of how my husband and I came to live here and this lifestyle.

My Homesteading Journey

As anyone who knows me or that is a member of the Homesteading Today forum, I have told many times before, that I did not live this lifestyle before. Growing up we always lived in the country except for the brief time that we lived in Flagler Beach, FL, where we were a mile from the beach. Other than that, we never lived in the city limits. But my parents both worked at jobs and were not into a self-sufficient lifestyle, even though both of them were raised that way.

I can't tell you how to do it...........just how I did it. It is different for everyone. But I can encourage you be self-sufficient and provide for yourself and your family. This book is the first in a series of books I am working on. I didn't put the gardening part in this one. That will be a whole other book on its own.

Our three horses!

Some topics in my book may be of interest to anyone wanting to learn how to become self-reliant in this crazy world. I don't have all the answers. But these are the things that have worked for us. As you know, we don't raise animals for food. We may get a flock of chickens in the future, but that would be the extent of raising animals.

Gardening For Food!

This is a list of some of the topics I have written about in this book:

Homesteading In The Forest
How My Solar Energy System Works
Heating And Cooling Your Home
Heating With Wood
Transportation
How We Got To This Point In Our Lives
Buying Your Homestead
1. Finding The Perfect Realtor
2. Making Your Offer
Foraging For Wild Foods
The Pantry & Root Cellar
Building The Barn

Fencing

Cutting Your Electricity Costs

The Water System

Refrigeration

Buying A Wood Cook stove

Cooking On A Wood Cook Stove

katlupe's Favorite Recipes

The Gardens

Composting

Decorating Your Homestead

To Prepare For Self Sufficiency In Times Of Emergencies

If you purchase my book for your kindle and have any questions about homesteading or any of the topics, please feel free to contact me here. I am planning another more detailed homesteading how to book that will be not so personal. More instructional. Your questions will give me a better scope on what is needed for anyone starting out. And if you purchase my book, I want to give you a big Thank You, right now! I really do appreciate it!!!

Kathleen Lupole's Author Page

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Learn To Put Your eBooks Into Kindle Formats

When everyone started talking about book readers, I wasn't interested. Of course, I like eBooks since I write them myself. But I liked reading aloud at night when the power system is shut down. At times we don't have much light depending on what time of the year it is. I would always say that I could read eBooks on my computer.......but for reading, I love holding the physical book! That has changed..............

One of my friends from Facebook got me interested in the Kindle Fire. I read all the information about it on Amazon. I started thinking I could use it at night without the need for a book light (the last one I bought hardly lasted). So I decided to save up all my Swagbucks to buy Amazon gift cards to buy one. Then, my husband surprised me.......................

with a kindle fire!

I have found many books for free on Amazon. Yes, you heard me right.....FREE! I like reading old cookbooks, historical and biographies. But I also discovered there were business books and books about money written in those old days too. They were thinking exactly like we think now!. Thoughts about how times were bad and the worse was on its way. I will post some of them here as I read them. You can download books on Amazon even without a kindle or other such reader. They have an app for you to use for reading books on your computer. Believe me, Amazon covers all the bases!

Publish Your Kindle Book On Amazon

Not only am I reading books on the kindle fire, but I read a book, Amazon Kindle Freebies by Ron Taylor, that inspired me to format my eBooks into kindle editions. The very next day I was able to work on my book, My Homesteading Journey and put it up on Amazon in their kindle store. Then yesterday, I did the same with my Breads and More cookbook. I am so excited about this! I should be, I have three more eBooks in my computer that I have been working on. Soon I will have them up there too. If you have books just sitting in your computer, learn to format them for the kindle and put them for sale there. It is a very big market, especially with so many people getting them for gifts this year!

Friday, November 11, 2011

Don't Give Up!

Selling books is not as easy as it looks!

I may have told you before that I have stopped selling books online. Only certain books that are rare and hard to find are worth selling, for me at least. One book I sold on Amazon for about seventy dollars. It was a book on a business and I paid a lot for it myself. But not as much as I sold it for! The secret to that book was that it was not available anywhere anymore. Not even at the site I bought it from. I think the trouble is that you can buy books for a very low price everywhere. So it is hard to make a dime on it.

That does not mean I have given up selling online though. Nope! Not by a longshot! It is my only way to have an income. I sell guitar strings on two of my websites. The other site, LupeShop was a puzzle to me. I wasn't quite sure which way to go with it. Now I have found my direction, due to a very good friend of mine, Paula. I am making it into a site for selling eBooks. I like eBooks myself and that makes it fun for me doing the listings and all.

The other stream of income is selling on eBay. Now I am not selling books, though I may occasionally stick one on there. I am mainly running auctions of vintage items, collectibles and other items I come across. Now I am actually making sales! So must be it was meant to be.

Times are hard, but there have been harder times in the past. I think it is everyone's survival instinct that will prevail. If you have a don't give up attitude, then you will find your path. We may not be getting rich selling online, but we are able to pay bills and buy food. If I can do that............then I am content.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Little Steps On Wordless Wednesday

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Change Of Plans

I have stopped selling my books on eBay and Bonanza. Right now I only have my eBooks for sale there. I am using the time to create more of my own eBooks. My books would sell a few at a time, and not fast enough for me. I wanted them out of my house. So I offered them on Freecycle and when I boxed them up, I had 10 big boxes! Luckily my husband was able to pack them into the lady's van who came to pick them up. She seemed very happy with her bounty!

This has given me the time and space to make an organized area to put our inventory of guitar strings. Plus, I have a table up there that I am going to fix for packaging up the purchases. We have needed an area like that and now with no books on the shelves, we can keep the strings there for easy access.

I think maybe too many streams of income is not a good thing. Too many products to try to sell means that you are not giving any of them 100 percent. So I am going to be concentrating on my blogs, my eBooks and my homestead life. Maybe someday, I can get the guitar strings store producing a good income so I can sell it. It is not something I want to be doing for the rest of my life.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Fall - Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Choosing A Product To Sell

I have three awesome websites. The only trouble is that selling guitar strings on two is much more difficult than I planned on. For one thing, the first thing I thought of when considering selling them was the fact that there are millions of guitar players world wide. I mean how many guitar players do think live in your city or town? Or how many do you think live in New York City or Houston, Texas? Or in Rome, Italy? More than a few.

The other factor is that my husband is a musician and plays the guitar. Now he is VERY critical of his strings. But since selling strings and learning about them, I have found that not all guitar players are like him. In fact, a family member who plays his guitar all the time, didn't even know about the different gauges or materials they are made with. Then I found out that many guitar players who buy a new guitar just use that set of strings that came on their guitar. They will replace them with the same brand and gauge instead of trying something else. Or they NEVER change them!

Plus, one of the best reasons I liked guitar strings was that they are small and easy to package up and ship. Shipping costs for most items is very high and eats into any profit you can make. Buyers don't understand why they have to pay for shipping. or especially why they should have to cover our cost of the bubble mailers, the labels, the ink and the transaction fees. But if the sale from them doesn't cover that and allow us to make some sort of profit.........what is the sense of selling to them? Just for the fun of it? Hardly!

So when you pick a product to sell on your site, eBay, Bonanza, etsy, or Amazon, what are the factors that help you decide what to sell? And how do you figure the shipping into your product? Then how do you price it? These are all questions I am pondering these days. Leave me a comment and tell me what you think.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Selling On Various Sites

I have been away from this blog most of the summer. My work of gardening and canning has had to be my priority most of the time. That is not to say that I have been lax on trying to improve my many streams of income. That is also an area taking up much of my time. In between my garden harvests, I have been trying to sell various products online.

The last few months I have gone back to selling on eBay. Plus Amazon. Selling books on Amazon is very easy since you don't have to do a listing or photos. Just fill in some blanks and you are all set. As soon as I listed some, I got sales. Quite a few and pretty close together. That is surprising to me since nobody ever leaves me feedback on there. I have 2, compared to other sellers who have over 100,000 and some even more than that! I did get some sales though, so maybe everyone doesn't pay that much attention to how much feedback you have.

I must spend hours scouting eBay trying to figure out why some things sell and some don't. What makes everyone bid on one item and the others don't even get a view? I study the listings, the pictures, the payment and shipping information. I work and work at it, but doesn't seem to help. Sometimes I get the sale. Sometimes not. Luck? Who knows?

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Selling On Bonanza

Don't have to drive to work!

Working at home on the internet has many perks. I love working at my own pace and working whenever I choose. It is a very slow time for on line sellers. We have no choice if this is the way we make living, but to keep working at it. I know it is not like a job and having a regular paycheck. Sometimes sales can be good and other times very bad. Right now it is very bad.

I sell books on bonanza!

I have tested the waters once again on eBay and on half.com, but I really don't feel comfortable on either one. The thing about eBay, is that if you frequent their forums, you will come across the posts of the buyers also. They just can't wait to give negative feedbacks to sellers. They will post asking if this seller should get a bad feedback. I always look at the seller's feedback before I purchase off ebay. Many times the negatives don't seem as if they deserved them. Many times it comes from a new buyer, with few feedbacks.

On Bonanza you don't have to worry about that too much. For the most part, unless my sale is from a seller, I don't get any feedback. That is okay with me. They come from Google searching for a particular book, and choose one of mine. That is feedback enough for me!

Just one of the many books I sell!

I keep adding more products. Now I am adding some other items, as well, as more books. I keep busy doing that, and hopefully, the buyers will come. If you have time, please go to my booth and "fave" me. I would appreciate it very much!

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Improve Your Listings To Sell Online

I have been running some auctions on eBay and of course, I sell on Bonanza also. I have two booths there. There is more to selling on these sites than just listing it. I found a site that I can use for free to make templates for my listings. I love doing that and it has made the process of listing more fun.

Another thing that is handy is using the search engines to research information about whatever you are selling. Sometimes you can find a niche market for a certain item being used in a different way. So when you are checking prices, be sure to check why people would want to buy your item. What can they do with it? Or learn from it (if it is a book)?

Make your listings jump out so the buyers will click on your item rather than someone else's. Be sure to put extra keywords in the title for that purpose. I try to make it sound different than everyone else's listing of the same item. It is VERY competitive out there and you can claim the buyers if you work at it.

On Bonanza, you can put up six photos and they encourage you to do so. So you can write up some beautiful listings there. Of all the selling sites on the internet I feel they are really the easiest to work with and I have fun on their site......whether I am selling or buying!

I am an affiliate marketer, as well, as a blogger. This means that I receive payments or gifts from a company for writing about a product or service on this blog. Or for having a banner or button displayed along the side, such as the Amazon ones for my eBooks. If you go to those links, I receive a commission for anything you buy on Amazon by using my link. I will not endorse anything I do not think is a good product or service. Many of my affilate links are to products I use myself. My readers will always come first.

Pages