Free from 9 to 5

(Disclaimer: Affiliate links throughout this post, but I have actually bought, used and like these products. I shouldn’t have to mention this fact, but some people get uptight that I may possibly make a buck off their clicks without telling them.)

Why did I buy the Yahoo Store Profits eBook when I’m not using Yahoo Store? 2 reasons:

1. It contains a lot more information than just how to use Yahoo Stores; a lot of the information pertains to any online store. I couldn’t have known this for certain before buying it, but the description on their sales page along with their 90 day, 100% money back guarantee convinced me to give them a try.
2. Chris Malta, the owner of the Drop Ship Source Directory, recommended it. I already saw how useful his drop ship directory was, so I took his word that Yahoo Store Profits was worth it. After my purchase, I did come across a questionable you-rub-my-back-i-rub-your-back agreement in that Yahoo Store Profits eBook mentions using the Drop Ship Source Directory, and the Drop Ship Source Directory website recommends Yahoo Store Profits, but in the end, I feel the products are worth the money spent despite this perception of backroom bartering.

A lot of the information contained in Yahoo Store Profits can be gleaned from various sources on the web for free. I knew about even some of the more advanced techniques mentioned in this eBook through my own independent research, but having everything in one place does save a lot of time and doubt. It saves doubt because although I knew about the techniques, I didn’t know if they were effective or not. Yahoo Store Profits casts away some of that doubt. And it would have saved me hours of research if I had bought and read it from the start.

I’ll mention a very basic technique for finding the right product to sell online (mentioned in Yahoo Store Profits, but can also be found elsewhere):

1. With a product in mind, gauge the demand for the product by going to inventory.overture.com to see how many people searched for it last month.
2. Gauge the supply of the product by looking at number of Google AdWords ads, Google results, Overture bid prices, etc.
3. Determine the demand/supply ratio for the product. Some products have too much supply for you to easily sell well; others have no supply to be seen, but no demand either.

You want to find a product with decent demand and not too much supply. I know… very obvious, very vague and it’s easier said than done. But this is where it gets tricky because there is no right or surefire way to decide this.

Chris Malta’s Market Research Wizard tries to automate this process for you, but in the end, to my inexperienced eyes, it comes down to educated guessing, constant re-evaluation and a dash of luck. Yahoo Store Profits gives you techniques to quickly eliminate hard to sell products and contains hints and tips for advertising, but, just like in the offline world of retail, you still have to do your homework and legwork.

Once you think you’ve identified the right product(s) to sell, there’s really only one way to find out, and that’s to give it a go. With drop shipping suppliers and eBay/Zencart/Paypal, your start-up costs are minimal, so if you decide to go down this route of selling online, there really are no excuses for not trying. With its wealth of information, Yahoo Store Profits is a good place to start.

Business models that depend on hostage taking really irk me.

Last week, my fiance and I took studio portraits for our wedding later this year. I got a package that contained 2 portraits, a big album, 2 small albums and various other sundries, but I could only choose 30 photos out of the 150+ that were actually taken that day. All the photographs were great; it was hard to choose 30. After 90 minutes, we got it down to the final 30 that would be professionally touched up and used in our package.

We felt these 30 were the best. But I still would have liked digital copies of all the others, but the studio charged up the nose for each additional shot. $40! To get the other 120 would cost $4800! Granted, that would have included professional touch-up, but the studio refused to consider releasing them to me untouched-up. I asked for low resolution copies, so that I would have to come back to them for the high resolution originals in order to print them out properly. Refused, as well. I asked for a proof sheet where each photo is a tiny 1″x2″ on regular white paper. Refused again.

I understood the package I signed up for, but what are they going to do with the other photographs of me and my fiance? Annoying your customers like this is apparently the status quo among photography studios. But as Dan Sherman has also experienced and written about before, there is a business opportunity here.

Update: I totally agree I should have negotiated more upfront to get the original digital copies of all the photos. Lesson learned.

A post by Dori Smith about lack of women in the IT workplace and lack of interest in working in IT by women. But in the comments, there is also an underlying theme of companies not hiring anyone who’s not male, 18-25, and willing to work insane hours for beans, not just females.

This just makes more timely and relevant the “Moving on to post-corporate life” series that David St. Lawrence at Ripples has been writing recently.

In addition, for me, IT work environments are particularly hostile in terms of intellectual one-upsmanship and verbal sparring. The need to always defend oneself against egotistical know-it-alls grows tiring, as is the inevitable deathmarch when a deadline approaches. If I wanted to argue or work insane hours, I would be a lawyer. At least the pay’s better. I can understand and don’t blame women for not wanting to work in IT.

In researching drop shippers for my wedding accessories website, I paid $69.95 for access to Chris Malta’s Drop Ship Source Directory (Disclaimer: this is an affiliate link). This directory is amazing. It contains listings of drop shippers for almost any product you might want to sell. This is where I found drop shippers for the wedding accessories you see on www.elegantweddingshoppe.com.

I can imagine using this directory to create multiple retail storefronts for multiple streams of income. Even if each site only earns $500 a month, with 10 sites, that’s $5,000 a month! Almost enough for me to quit the 9 to 5 job.

I’ve learned how to use Zencart to the point where I can get a storefront up and running in less than a day. So between this directory, Zencart and PayPal, it is almost trivial to get an Internet storefront up and running. In fact, I already have another retail website in the works.

The hard part, though, is choosing products that sell and the marketing of the website. That I still have to work on. I bought an eBook, Yahoo Store Profits, that addresses this issue (Disclaimer: also an affiliate link). This eBook is also excellent and although I’m not using Yahoo Store, I will write about it and why I bought this particular eBook in another posting shortly.

My project at the Corporation is over. It was completed about a week and a half late but the bigwigs still seemed satisfied that it is done. I move on to a new project next week, and look forward to having new fodder to blog about. I can already tell I will be dealing with a micromanager, albeit an affable one. I have already put out feelers in my network for job openings and have my resume circulating out there.

My network is not as strong or wide as it can be though, because I’m just not a very sociable person. My saving grace is that I am connected to 2 or 3 people who do have strong and wide network of contacts that I can draw upon. That’s how I’ve gotten my past 2 jobs, but I know I should develop a better network of my own. ( Does anyone in my blogging network need some programming work done? ) And simply sending out a resume is one of the most ineffective ways to find a new job.

Besides networking and resume sending, what else is there? You can try to make your own living, which is what I’m trying to do with my microISV and wedding accessories website. One other tactic I can see is becoming a known expert on a subject matter through blogging. People like Robert Scoble, Dan Gillmor and Jeremy Zawodny seem to have solidified their expertise on a subject matter through blogging, and would have no trouble finding a job ever. Something to consider.

Update: Coincidently, after publishing this post, I ran across this post over at Slacker Manager describing how he applied for (and got) a job in an industry he didn’t have much experience in. A very creative first. Congratulations!

Neville Medhora has a very insightful post about the down sides of trying to be free from 9 to 5 by owning your own business. Unless you think hard about the type of business and the lifestyle you want, owning your own business may not actually free you from 9 to 5.

This article entitled “Recipe for Simplicity”, by Linda Breen Pierce, really resonated with me. Simplify your life and you will be closer to being free from 9 to 5.

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Copyright 2000, Linda Breen Pierce. You may reprint this article, provided you include the byline at the end of the article.

“Simplify, Simplify…” More than a century after Henry David Thoreau uttered these words, his plea for simplicity has more significance now than ever before. We work hard and play hard, filling nearly every moment with activity. Most families believe they need two incomes to pay for a standard of living that has doubled in the last 50 years. But do we? Based on my three-year study of over 200 people who have simplified their lives, I found that we can work less, want less, and spend less, and be happier and more fulfilled in the process. Here are ten suggestions to simplify your life. Don’t try to simplify your life in a few weeks or months; most people need an initial period of three to five years to complete this transition. Small, gradual steps are best.

1. Don’t let any material thing come into your home unless you absolutely love it and want to keep it until it is beyond repair. Too much stuff - it’s suffocating us. Purchasing, maintaining, insuring, storing and eventually disposing of our stuff sucks up our precious life energy.

2. Live in a home with only those rooms that you or someone in your family use every day. Create a cozy home environment that fits your family. You will find this is much more satisfying than living in a museum designed to impress your friends. Spending time and money to maintain a home that is larger than you truly need diverts these resources from more fulfilling endeavors.

3. Limit your work (outside of the home) to 30 hours a week, 20 if you are a parent. To live a balanced life, we need “down” time - time to daydream, to relax, to prepare a leisurely meal, to take a walk. If we surround our structured activities with empty spaces, those activities will become more productive and meaningful.

4. Select a home and place of employment no more than 30 minutes away from each other. Commuting time is dead time. It nourishes not the body, the mind, nor the soul. Preserve your energy and money for more rewarding life experiences.

5. Limit your children’s extracurricular activities to one to three a week, depending on age. Otherwise, you will exhaust yourself and your children will grow up addicted to constant stimulation.

6. Take three to four months off every few years and go live in a foreign country. Living in a different culture fascinates, excites, and vitalizes us. It teaches us to live in the present, a core practice of simple living. We gain perspective when we experience a foreign culture. We learn how much we have to be grateful for.

7. Spend at least an hour a week in a natural setting, away from crowds of people, traffic, and buildings. Three to four hours of nature time each week is even better. There is nothing more basic, more simple, than the natural world.

8. Do whatever you need to do to connect with a sense of spirit in your life, whether it be prayer, religious services, journal writing, meditation, or spiritually-related reading. Simplicity leads to spirituality; spirituality leads to simplicity. Cultivate a practice of silence and solitude, even for 15 to 30 minutes a day. Your spirituality will evolve naturally.

9. Seek the support of others who want to simplify their lives. Join or start a simplicity circle if you enjoy group interaction. Living simply in our culture can be a lonely journey. Your friends and family may still be on the work-and-spend treadmill and are unlikely to give you support. Participating in a study group will give you support and validation for your choices.

10. Practice saying no. Say no to those things that don’t bring you inner peace and fulfillment, whether it be more material things, greater career responsibility, or added social activities. Be vigilant with your time and energy; they are limited resources. If you say yes to one thing (like a job promotion), recognize that you are saying no to something else (perhaps more time with family). Live consciously and deliberately.

Linda Breen Pierce is the author of Choosing Simplicity: Real People Finding Peace and Fulfillment in a Complex World and Simplicity Lessons: A 12-Step Guide to Living Simply. She can be reached via email or at (831) 626-8486 (Pacific time).

Dan Sherman calls himself a remarkable entrepreneur. His blog contains tons of unconventional business ideas, some of which are quite wacky. I suggest you start from the beginning and just read his posts. Some of his ideas may not be for you, some are outrageous, but they all provoke thought and more often than not, you can’t help but think that they just might work.