What's New - Good eCommerce News!

Normally, we don't have - what are often referred to as the hot "dog days of summer" until later in the end of July and eary August. This year I hear that sections of the USA are having a great heat wave with tempertures in the range of 100+ F!

This is happening in Canada too. We were warned last week that a high- dome heat wave was coming in from the north, and north-west. It started in B.C. and has already rolled over Alberta and now in Saskatchewan this week. Our temperatures are about 35+ Celsius.

I heard on the radio that a small place, called Littleton, BC, has had temperatures in the high 40s Celsius and broken some major Canadian and North American all-time records. The next day they broke even that new record of the day before!

(Personally, I think the whole earth is groaning for the coming of the LORD, to redeem all of us and fix this earth!)

I have been blessed with a window-box air-conditioner that I bought when I first moved in here, with a gift of $100 from Uncle Bill in Toronto. Normally, I just run it for a few hours and when the kitchen is cooled down, I turn it off. But this week, I've got it running all day, and a fan in the middle of the living/ office room is forwarding the cooler air under my desk. So I'm quite comfortable all day long.

I do turn off the A/C in the window and the fan for the night, and I manage to sleep fine. But when I get up I know it won't be too long before I'll have to turn on these whirly-gigs again to keep things cool enough in here.

How about you? Have you got ways and means of keeping cool during the heat-wave?

Things are to come down a few notches on the thermometer this coming weekend, so I look forward to more normal summer days soon.

I did decide yesterday that it was time to eat sandwiches instead of cooked meals. I may stick to that and my raw apples and oranges for a few days.

I do have some good news to share though. I've made some progress on my eCommerce goals. I've told you of a site called Ecwid, which offers a polished "kit" for building an eCommerce site, with many special features, but the best one is that one does not have to struggle with technical details. If you have any problems you can notify Support and they will step and take care of it for you.

They offer a free forever account, which is a great way to try out their system, but that has some limitations. You can only put 10 products up for sale at one time, and a lot of the helps for marketing via social media, etc., are only available if you decide to upgrade to a paid account.

Since I already have websites, I don't need their free "insta-site." All I do is choose or create a shopping cart page on one of my own websites, and past in a code of about 2-3 lines, in the codes in the hidden part of the page. Presto, when visitors come to that page, they can click under the items they want to buy and then click the "Buy Now" button. You can connect ahead of time your accounts with the payment gateways that you choose, and also the shipping gateways, and the customer chooses from those options, but Ecwid controls the techie aspects, without further involvement from you the Business owner.

I had already set up a free account and put my 5 ebooks from my genealogy and family history website as my products. Of course, I'm suppose to do the marketing to bring in the customers. I was watching this though and began to see that this would work for my much bigger plan to sell those diecast models I had promised my brother Tom I would sell, and see that his two estranged daughters from his broken marriage, would each get 50%.

I had told him that my method would be to sell them globally via a website, but I'd have to learn a lot of about eCommerce first. Well, yes... I've spent a lot of time researching, and then trying out a site on a free WordPress system, which I was able to install myself. But when I started seeing popup windows saying sternly, "YOU are not authorized to see this!" I decided this was not the route to go. I switched over to a static site and installed a free OpenCart software system, but that gave me so many techie details all this year, that I decided to give up.

Well, I started corresponding with Ecwid Support to ask some questions, because it appeared that I could run several different stores on different sites, all under one account. I wanted to make sure that was true. The person who replied by email last Friday, assured me it was.

They have three paid account levels. The lowest one is $19/mon.US$ But they were having a Black Friday sale, so if I signed up right away I could have the first month for 72% off. That worked out to $5! Of course, I signed up.

Now this Venture level is for 100 products as a limit. But when I reach that point I can upgrade again to the next level, which costs $39/mo. but allows me up to 2500 products.

I finished last night polishing up the sales pages I had already prepared for 115 diecast models. But it may take me a month or two to get those all connected to the shopping cart. then I can upgrade to that next level. Having experienced how easy it was to set up those 5 ebooks, I think this will start to roll over the next few weeks (My Monday and Tuesday night project) and hopefully take off in the new year.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I can insert a line of code in my Facebook, and other social media accounts, and cause select products to show up there with a "Buy Now" button. Hmm.!!

<*> TIPS & SOLUTIONS: <*>

Do NOT Fear Learning Curves

Some friends marvel at the many things I've learned to do. I have always enjoyed learning new things. My solution is to take on new learning curves when something comes up that I've never done before. The secret is to learn first how to find information.

That used to mean a trip to the public library and coming home with a shopping back full of books. Then to buckle down to studying them. Now - all it takes is to switch to an open browser window online and type in a question or a few words to indicate what you are looking for, and in just minutes - or sometimes hours and even days or reading - eventually you do find the answer. Because you had to hunt for it, you have less chance of forgetting it.

Of course, the best memory help is to try out the advice that makes the most sense. If you succeed, try that again and again a few times.

There! Now you have a skill you can get paid to do for others if they want it enough.

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