Monday, March 23, 2009

The Jury Process


The Jury Process, originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.

India is 19 this year and has to jury into the Oregon Country Fair in order to sell during public hours. I rigged up this simple light box to get some decent photos of her "gnomies".
This photo is before I really got started. The actual finished slides look pretty good. Cross your fingers for India.
Even if she doesn't get in this year, she can still sell after hours, which is when she's always done best anyway. Actually, we didn't get in our first try! But our slides weren't so good as hers will be.

Thursday Night Fiesta


Lee and Dave and Krista., originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.

Last Thursday the playgroup headed over to Rick's house for a pizza party. We took turns making pizzas and devouring them. It was fun.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Milk and Honey


Milk and Honey is a lovely store in Sebastopol, California, whose original owner Jill once grabbed Krista by the lapels and said "You have to get cards made!".
We did. That was about ten years ago and Milk and Honey was our very first account--and has always been one of our best stores. Last week we took it up another notch.

The new owner Alyx agreed to let me install a dedicated card rack, with 24 of Krista's best cards. Every month or so I'll take inventory and bill them on whatever sold. A true win-win situation, and a relationship we've had with the Santa Rosa Community Market for almost two years.

I'm so glad we'll have an ongoing presence in this fantastic shop. Doubly so since Krista has a number of original paintings hanging there right now.

So if you happen to be in Sebastopol, check out Milk & Honey at 123 North Main Street.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

I've Been Busy

I've been working day and night on a big project for the past few weeks. I'm writing an "ebook" on traveling to Thailand (and Chiang Mai) to save money on dental care.
I'm just about done with the writing part--although I haven't had anyone else read it yet. Meredith tells me I need an editor, and of course she's right. It's so easy to imagine you've explained something clearly, but it makes no sense to anyone else.
Last night I put in all the hyperlinks. As you might imagine, there were quite a few links I wanted to put in there. Unfortunately, since my version of Word is so old, and/or crappy, I had to enter in the addresses by hand, instead of copy and paste. Damn. Some of those addresses were quite long! Stupid Word.
My next task is to choose photos to go with the text, re size them in photoshop, and fit them in. Since I've got over a thousand photos to choose from, this is another major job--but a fun one!
After it's all done, I'll convert the whole mess to pdf format and submit it to Clickbank for approval. They help you publish and find "affiliates" to sell your book. They claim to have over 100,000 affiliates.
The idea is that since it costs nothing at all to sell a copy of your ebook, the author can afford to be very generous with commission--usually between 50 to 75%. That gives the affiliates a huge motive to find good books to sell.
And because the internet makes it so easy to find exactly what you're looking for, books that serve a niche audience can actually generate excellent sales. I first heard about Clickbank from an article about one of their success stories--a book on attracting humingbirds to your backyard feeder. This ebook earned its author $500,000.
My niche within a niche is Saving Money on Dental Costs by Travel. Sort of a triple niche.
Who knows, maybe I won't make a dime. But I've been enjoying the project, I wanted to share the information anyway, and maybe I will make a little money.
I love the idea of getting something set up on the internet and that's it. Passive income stream from then on. I'll keep you posted.
Anyway, that's why I haven't been posting here lately. I've been completely obsessed.