Posts Categorized: Marketing

The Ultimate Marketing Lesson

What, exactly, is marketing? I was a panelist at a writers’ conference marketing seminar when someone tossed that question at me. I gazed at the sea of 300+ faces and my mind went utterly blank. “Uh…marketing is all the stuff you do to help you sell your product or services,” I stammered. Not an academy […]

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Five Tips for Becoming an Expert at Your Craft

Whenever people learn that I’ve written three books, they respond: “Oh, I’ve always wanted to write a book about ________.” (fill in the blank with the topic you’ve dreamed of writing a book about) I’ve heard that: 81 percent of Americans feel they have a book in them. 10 percent of that 81 percent actually […]

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How to Set up a Gravatar

What is a gravatar and why do I need one?

A gravatar is a Globally Recognized Avatar – your avatar is the thumbnail image that appears when you comment on someone’s blog.

If you have a Blogger profile, the image that accompanies your profile is posted whenever you comment on blogspot.com blogs. But that avatar works only for blogs hosted by Blogger. To make your avatar show up on WordPress (and other) systems, you’ll need to create a gravatar… a universal avatar.

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New Luxury Airline: Weigh Less. Pay Less.

derrie-air.jpgHave you heard about Derrie-Air, the new “green” luxury airline? They tout themselves as “the only airline that plants trees to offset every pound of carbon that our planes release into the atmosphere.”

They expect their passengers to help protect the environment, too. Because it takes more fuel (i.e., more carbon emissions) to haul heavy planes from point A to point B, Derrie-Air has developed unique, sliding scale ticket prices:

The more you weigh, the more you pay.

A ticket from Philly to L.A. costs $2.25/lb. So, for instance, if you (and your luggage) weigh a total of 150 pounds, you’ll pay $337.50 for a ticket.

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HTML-to-PDF Converter – A Handy Tool

Here’s a slick little tool that converts a Web page into a PDF document. It’s called HTML to PDF Converter. I love this because: It’s free. You don’t have to register. I’m constantly making screen shots of Web sites and blogs I create, but I always have to edit the screenshots to remove the toolbars. […]

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When—and How—to Compress URLs

Have you ever received an email with a super-long link in it—a link so long it was unclickable? I certainly have. Enter the amazing URL shrinker, a handy tool that shortens lengthy URLs (web addresses) to 25 or so characters. There are several good uses for URL shinkers: E-newsletters: many services require you to write […]

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