#i'll come back and edit the sale stuff out once the sale is over

[amythystraine]

Contracted Work for the Writer ~ this is how it's done

I am very pleased with how all of my books are doing, how they've been received, and most of the reviews and endorsements that have come in for them. I do notice that I can tell which books were published by publishing companies and which books were published independently by me through Amazon, because I don't have access to a publicity team, so it's much harder to gather reviews, and these books just don't get the same exposure that the other books get.

I've been quite amused at some of the comments that have come in for a couple of these books: Green Witchcraft Grimoire: A Practical Resource for Making Your Own Spells, Rituals, & Recipes and The Essential Guide to Wicca for Beginners. These books were contracted work. This means that I was approached by a publishing company that already had an outline for a book, a very specific outline, down to the word count for each section, and I was offered this project for contract. Once I accepted this project, the contract was received and signed, and it's very clear what's expected from you and when.

This type of work is very hard and fast. It's on a very tight schedule and it's a marathon writing project. This also includes a rigid publicity schedule for the author 4 to 6 weeks before the book is released and four to six weeks after its release. This schedule, an actual schedule, comes with pre-planned release posts that are either a "fill in your book title", or suggestions for what they want done that day, such as "make a video", or "do an author-copies received" post, etc. You get the picture. This publicity work is all included in your contract and it comprises part of the work you do for the pay that you receive.

The contents for each section of the book are created entirely by the author who was contracted for the work. There's also a lot of editing done with your editor, a couple zoom or skype meetings, a couple telephone conferences, and a back and forth editing process with our beloved Microsoft Word. It's a process, and it's a meticulous process. The company wants this book to be as pristine as possible for it's world debut.

All in all, I enjoyed my experience, and the paycheck for this type of work is excellent, although the author does not retain rights to the manuscript. Once you write this contracted book and send it off for production, it is no longer your property and you will not receive any royalties from future sales. It's a one-time payment for your work deal, and it can actually be quite substantial and a much better deal than waiting years for small amounts of royalties to roll in.

If you don't like to work under pressure, or under deadlines, you may not like this kind of experience. It was grueling at times, but it also taught me that I can get a LOT more done than I thought I could.

Also, with contracted work, the publishing company doesn't act as most employers do, where they withhold taxes for you and all that usual good stuff that goes with the business end of a paycheck. You are responsible for paying the taxes on the money received for this work, and it can be substantial, depending on your perspective and your project. This was a big drawback for me. The year I had to claim this work, the taxes were paid on this income by the government simply claiming my $1400.00 stimulus check. Which sucked, but at least it was paid.

What I found amusing was a couple of quirky reviewers that didn't like some of the spells included in these books: "I'll bet she just wrote these spells up and never tried them out."... Well, ya, some of these spells I did just that using my own spiritual practices and experience, and with a deadline for the material snapping at my heels. But there were a lot of spells that I have personally worked and these spells and rituals were included in these books as well, coming from 40-some years of experience. There's probably over a hundred+ spells and rituals between these two books.

The only aspect of this type of work that I had negative feelings for were:

1) coming up with 40 or 50 people for potential reviews and endorsements, including emails, and this was a required task... this just didn't seem like my job. I felt like I was doing someone else's job for them. I don't know if this is standard procedure, and I suppose it might be, but coming up with those names was very stressful, and then publishing a second book the same year, well, you can only ask so much of people. I didn't' want to contact the same people twice. And it might not seem like it, with all of the social media pages I have up, blogs and websites, YouTube channels, etc., but I'm actually a very reclusive introverted person in real life. I don't interact with more than a small handful of people on the internet, so this task was much harder for me than what you may think.

2) also, I didn't like a new stipulation coming up in the process, where I was asked to make screen shots of the stats for my websites and blogs, giving a report on my traffic, etc. I thought this was slightly bizarre and way out of line. And no, I didn't do this, I passed on the project I was being offered. This was too invasive for me, considering I'd already published two books with this company. This also did not feel like my job, it's my opinion that there's a sales analyst or someone else out there who should be doing this stuff.

Anyway, for writers out there, either published authors or those who are still working towards this goal, here you have it. This is one way to get published and to support yourself as a writer at the same time.

[vanilladaises-rp]

So with both the Playstation and Xbox showcases having wrapped, along with a few others, I thought that I should share some gaming news:

Star Wars Outlaws

I seriously did not expect this game at all. And it looks phenomenal! I'm thrilled that they're turning away from the usual Rebellion-Empire, Jedi storylines that we've seen recently and are going towards a gunslinger, smuggler point of view this time around. And from the gameplay shown, this is basically Red Dead Redemption 2 in Star Wars form. The only concern is that this is developed by Ubisoft, which has a reputation for downgrading their games after post-production and hasn't done a lot of innovation in their latest games.

Starfield

I know there is a lot riding on this game, especially for the current Xbox generation. But this game isn't going to make me buy a new Xbox any time soon, mainly because this game looks and feels generic at best. And it has the same game mechanics as No Man's Sky, a game that you could get for 50% when it goes on sale frequently. Or if you just want a Space RPG, then just get The Outer Worlds for $20.

I honestly don't know why people preordering this game in droves, particularly because Bethesda has released really buggy games while also having absurd microtransactions. But since Microsoft owns them now, I'm also having my doubts since one of Microsoft's studios just released perhaps one of the worst disastrous launches in gaming history a little over a month ago. Also, it's locked at 30 frames per second, so if I get a Series X, it's not going to take advantage of the hardware. So, I'll wait until the reviews come in, or at the very least, it goes on sale.

Xbox Series S Carbon Black

It's simply the Series S, just in black. However, it has 1TB of storage instead of 512GB. And it only costs $350. So $50 more for an extra 500GB? This is a really great budget deal in my opinion if you want to upgrade to the current generation of consoles without breaking the bank.

CRKD Nitro Deck

So this is a Switch accessory, but if you want to make your Switch look like a Steam Deck, this is it. However, you don't have to worry about stick drift, it has reprogrammable back buttons, and you can customize the joysticks.

Also, it comes in a limited edition Gamecube colorway, which is really nostalgic for Nintendo fans.

Im gonna be honest i don’t know either game so i hade to research lol 😂 but they both do look really cool I’ve only every played Star Wars Fallen Order but outlaws looks pretty fun, i would definitely like to check it out. Star Field looks sick!! Omg the graphics, but from the trailer it looks like a shooting game am i wrong? I don’t play games like that anymore i used to play stuff like gta san andres or cod in high school but i wasn’t v good tbh 😂. Auto aim is my bestie is all I’ll say haha. I don’t know much about game mechanics or frame rates so i can’t say much there sorry. You can educate me if you want lol. Also I’ve heard of a steam deck and seen it idk what it does? I looked up the nitro deck and i love the gamecube skin, i still have my gamecube and controls 🥹 once i know what it is ill think about purchasing it lol

[csmeaner]

Clearing some stuff up Regarding the co-owning situation with Saphir, she didn't fucking "whine and beg" for the chow back. The chow in question is Blueberry Boba.

That chow was with her through 2 different owners, first to Lotus, who offered co-ownership of some of their chows to various ftos, including Blueberry Boba to Saphir, and then went to StudioCute, who agreed to continue to co-own with her. StudioCute posted an ad for resale stating explicitly "Please note there is a co-owner on this sylph" (the sales post was deleted after), and sold them to cryptidcreep, at the time called voltsoda, or "Lune".

However, Lune did not enjoy the idea of co-ownership, and literally the first thing they messaged Saphir was about they wanted to try and make Saphir's design and story of Astrid (chow's name) a seperate oc out of chows, then sylphlings, and said they prefer "a sylph with a clean slate". However, according to the chow rules, once a redesign is made, even if it's one for fun, they are bound to that character and you cannot void a single design.

This almost got Saphir banned for even trying, so Saphir had to use Astrid privately and not share them anywhere anymore. Because of the lack of co-ownership rules in the server, the mods did nothing to help despite Saphir having been with them and developing them for months before StudioCute needed funds.

The server still hasn't implemented co-owner rules, and I think this incident has kind of stopped most co-ownership cases as they pretty much seized until one case popping up recently with someone else outside the server.

So Lune carried on with using their character but eventually started putting them in a sales channel complaining they couldn't connect, to which Saphir's friends, without Saphir's knowledge, approached them asking for what kind of things they were looking for in trade.

People were pissed at Lune, and a bunch of people knowing Saphir's situation started offering in response, but Lune was really picky and back and forth with the ones talking to them, even going to try and make a huge trade chain with people in the sales channel before some people said it would make it confusing and uncomfortable. They were only really interested in 2 chows, one of them was 400euros (Snow owl, named Polaris at the time), and the other was Lilypad who was more on par of the value; blueberry boba was around 180 euros at the time.

Saphir's friend decided to do it anyway and in turn gifted Blueberry Boba back to Saphir as a surprise. chowlingspecies.com /character/C-128/ownership you can see the ownership logs here. I will also submit screens to prove as much as this as I can considering some things were deleted. Hope this clears things up.

PMs to Saphir

Lune's Sales post

Others upset at Lune's selfish behaviour, names hidden for their own privacy, taken from an old side server made by some chowling community members

Only salvage of StudioCute's sale post

Discussion with Lune for trades

Proof Lune/Voltsoda is Cryptidcreep

ill be real im about to go to sleep so this in on the queue and i did not read it because i didn't get any of the screeshots to try sending it again and i'll get to it when i wake up maybe

update: got the screenshots so ive edited this post to include them. im will admit i don't remember the initial 'side' people were on for this but I will be reblogging this with the proper screenshots so people can look them over and come to their own conclusions.

[the-firebird69]

Okay more like this is your chance to shine Chinese motorcycles are coming in they run real well they're fast enough for you to carry weight and extra stuff you're for sale now and they're cheap in Texas is going to be embroiled now so I got neutral zones so much so many people buying them and son says we're going to send eBay tons of them anyway which handling is going to compete and the only thing is and way Chan Lin is going to compete so we've got the noise maker it sounds like a powerful electric motorcycle so tons of them are going to flock to us

Thor Freya

We want those bikes too the enduros not the e-bikes you idiots can buy those the only like 40 miles an hour although they go for like a thousand miles or some stupid thing

Tim Doyle

You thought about it too the noise thing works real well some people like it cuz you hear you coming most people don't because it would bother the e-cycle business

Thor Freya

We're on it we're going to go buy them all up

Cork

We needed this we needed to drive something if anything we can get around a little bit just enough to see what's going on

Bja

Better than being plastered on the wall this is it though this could be a gaggle of bikes around here maybe he says I don't think so but we need to because all these fleas will bother them and I'll go get rid of the fleas we get that

Mac

I'm excited we have Harley-Davidson what do we do he said you have to have a big rally and celebrate the new ownership and semi retirement of Mac, not prove that in rally a great way cuz you do all sorts of stuff at rally

I think we should do that too like a sales promotion and note that the bike is redesigned again and we can look at the EVO motor cuz they did a different kind of introduction and we're going to look at how they did that and try and remain within the culture even though it evolved a little LOL. And I can call it evolution II and my daddy approves it since he had an idea like that once since we like it it's a good idea I'll have to send him a stipend. They're not bringing side cars back no. Their trikes and that's good enough. This is good Mac knows how to set it up it's going to ask him to and to be rallies all over the world and we're going to set a date and all that stuff we're going to meet and it's going to be all of us

Hera Zues

All of this means all of us and we're going to send all the higher ups and that's us they're going to meet and we're going to have a good time I'm going to figure out what to do so I'm making a special edition Harley Davidson car and he says truck and I mean that and it is a SUV and it is for Ford cuz I work there a lot and take after her a lot but I take after him too sometimes more him we appreciates it and it's going that one

Abomination and she abomination

It's tired because he didn't sleep as well as he should even though he got a whole bunch of hours in and he didn't sleep till like 6:00 or 7:00 it's like 8 or 9 hours still tired

Olympus

[topicprinter]

PREVIOUS POSTS & CLIFFS - Skip if you've been with us the whole journey!Part 0I'm going to start a dropshipping e-commerce website with a large number of items & a (hopefully) unique value proposition. I'm using this as a test post to see if you guys would be interested in taking the journey with me.Most importantly: I'm not now, nor plan to, sell anything or benefit from this directly by any means. I won't be posting my website, linking to my blog, or offering a course at end (if I start making money). The reason for these posts will be: to gather my thoughts into words, to regurgitate what I'm learning (teaching is the best way to learn new concepts, etc etc) and most importantly to get input from you guys. I'm hoping people may learn from what I do, mistakes I make, things I read/summarize, etc. and that I can learn from your guys' experience.My rules for myself & my customers - I won't use dropshipping from overseas as an excuse for lack of quality. I will only put up items that I have faith in because of reviews, orders, and vendors. I will spend the time to make sure my customers are not "fooled" - upfront on shipping times, easy returns, etc. I will not con people for the sake of making a sale. With transparency & honest interactions I hope to limit my returns/problems & keep recurring buyers as well as take pride in my products & websiteQUESTIONS ANSWERED:I have a question. I've seen some dropshipping sites based on franchise merchandise. Harry Potter, Disney, etc. Are there legal risks? Is there any risk of being shut down or sued?Question - if you ship from aliexpress, how long does it take for your customers to receive the product? A week, a month?How will you address the fact that most customers will probably feel cheated when they order something from your website and then it turns up as a package from some "random" Chinese retailer ?Part 1First and foremost: thank you all for your kind support in this thread... not only the responses, but the dozen+ messages. Some of you just wrote to say you're interested, some even offered to help out. I'm grateful and hope you all keep along with me on the journey - rain or shine.The idea: I debated whether to get specific with you all or not, but.... here goes. If you can do the idea better than I will, congratulations :) The website will be a variety of items curated into collections for gift giving. For example - a curated list of items for college graduation for someone who is into automobiles. This custom curated list will include car tools, unique car items (one real example: an anti-glare sun visor), maybe a battery charger, etc. This gives me two target markets - for the gift giver, and the gift getter. It will have a request feature ("wishlist") but will be marketed towards gift givers ("hey sister of a college graduate, no idea what to get your brother? check out what our staff recommends"The problem(s): it's broad. But what's the biggest problem I forsee? Gift giving isn't always thought ahead of time. It's not something you plan a month in advance (because, you know, dropshipping). Shipping times, shipping problems, shipping times, shipping problems. We'll tackle it. Our marketing will have to be top-notch.Marketing PlanApps & ProgramsChoosing ProductsFinancialsQUESTIONS ANSWERED:Newbie here. Question for you: why did you start your business with shopify? Why not sell your product on amazon first, build up some sales $, then expand into your own webspace? The way you're doing it seems very daunting to someone who has never done this before (me).How do you decide on product pricing ? Do you have a formula you use ? Does it take into account the possibility of returns and the upfront cost of purely the operating cost ? Id love to know more of what kind of margin you shoot for and how you take everything into account to come up with a price.I have a question about how drop shippers become successful at all with the shit turn around time. Unless it's a really niche item I can't get anywhere else I would close any website so fast if I saw 20 day shipping time.Part 2The Website: is more or less finished. I have about 20 products left to finalize (choosing pictures, editing description, etc.) & finalizing some of the categories.The Legal Stuff: This is the major sticking point before I'm ready to launch. A lot of you guys mentioned that my idea of using an LLC & a DBA was overkill and I looked into it further. I decided on bypassing the LLC for now, and just starting as a sole prop w/ a business bank account & credit card and using a DBA. When/if we start making some money, we can move to an LLC (not a single-member one though because it's pretty useless, as far as I've read). I decided against an LLC due to the tax, record keeping, etc. & the fact that in my state the fees for an LLC are about $500 minimum.The Marketing PlanQUESTIONS ANSWERED:Will you reach the merchants from aliexpress before placing an order or you will just place the order without contacting them directly? How do you know they are up for dropshiping? If a client want a refund, they will send the item back to china, you get to pay them (the client) then you ask for the money from the merchant? I really want to know how refund works in this business.How do you know that your customers won't realize you're drop shipping and then order directly from your supplier for a cheaper price?I have a question about how drop shippers become successful at all with the shit turn around time. Unless it's a really niche item I can't get anywhere else I would close any website so fast if I saw 20 day shipping time.1 - WE ARE LIVE, LADIES AND GENTLEMENThe website launched earlier this week, once I finished up all my paper. Here's a cliffnotes on what I did before launch -DBA: Registered DBA instead of using an LLC or starting a new company. We're gonna start as a sole prop and see where we go.Mailbox: I purchased a 3 month plan @ the local UPS for a large sized box for returns, paperwork, and to be able to register for official paperworkBusiness Bank Account: I went with Chase. Easy and smooth. I'm even considering moving my personal accounts over because I liked the experience so much better than my ~15 years of experience with Wells Fargo.Business Credit Card: I applied for and got the Spark Business Card from Capital One. They offer 2% cash back and $500 cash bonus. Got a $10k spending limit off the bat. Thank you Dad for teaching me about maintaining good credit @ 16 years old. I did however run into one problem with Capital One.... they made me go to visit a branch in person to be able to authorize my card. They're only open 9am-4pm on weekdays, and the closest one to me is 50 miles away. That was a shitty day. Totally unncessary... but I guess fraud protection brings about weird things.Sales tax: Did a little bit of research, talked to a few friends, shit is confusing. First filing date is next year, so we got some time to work it out. For right now, Shopify is taking care of determining the sales tax for customers in my stateAliexpress account created, all social accounts made, products finished & updated, and the website framework is complete.2 - What the Website Looks LikeHomepageHomepage2CategoriesProduct PageTracking PageAll the pictures are free use stock photos from https://unsplash.com/3 - Wait - we have sales?Of course we have sales! Unfortunately.... they're all from family :( During the first few days of launch, I wanted to work on the tracking pages, practice ordering from Aliexpress, looking at the e-mail templates for ordering/shipping/payment, etc. We have a variety of outcomes....Order 1: 2/3/17 (2 items)Item 1: Processed (purchased on Aliexpress) 2/4/17, shipped 2/6/17 from China, arrived in USA 2/9/17, expected delivery 2/11/17 = ONE WEEK TURN AROUNDItem 2: Uhoh. Processed 2/4/17...... quiet. Quiet. Nothing from vendor. Where is it? Messaged vendor 2/7/17.... bummer. Cancelled. I've heard about some vendors who put ePacket as an option but do not actually offer it. This company had TONS of orders & good feedback, as well as the top star rating, but still had this issue. Kind of scary. For the future, if this comes up again I will tell the customer that the item is backordered and the ship date will increase, and ask them if they prefer to receive a refund or accept the increased shipping time. I will then be removing the vendor and all their products off my list.Order 2: 2/5/17 (1 item)Item 1: Processed (purchased) 2/5/17, shipped 2/6/17 from China, arrived in USA 2/9/17, out for delivery 2/10/17 = FIVE DAY TURN AROUNDSo....Ordering via Aliexpress using Oberlo is a BREEZE. Orders easily, uses customers address, pays easily, leaves pre-written note, attaches information to Shopify when order is placed, and easily updates tracking. All done via the Chrome extensionUsing three different vendors, I had three vast experiences. The first item processed & shipped reasonably. The second item I heard NOTHING until I reached out, and then had the epacket issue. The third item, I got a message from the vendor very quickly saying they received the order and will be shipping soon - processed quickly and no problems.4 - Wait.... wtf is this Merchandise section?You may have noticed in the screenshots of the new MERCHANDISE section. I know this T-shirt Dropship Thread by /u/W1ZZ4RD got lots of hate on this subreddit (the people on /r/juststart were much nicer....) but I ran across it and I was inspired. I see why a lot of people are skeptical - he's selling his b2b software, he's not talking much about how to actually MAKE the sales, and he seems to have an invested interest in teelaunch. I looked into it heavily and here's why I decided to pursue a similar (if not same) approach to add to my website:Yes he's promoting his b2b program. He doesn't shy away from it. He answers all the questions in the thread, and knows what he's talking about. I can appreciate the honesty, and I definietly appreciate that he's still answering questions 1 month laterThe biggest hiccup people will have is finding a designer - I already have one. My best friend is a designer, and we've decided to work on it together. He designs on his spare time, and we'll split up profits from merchandise. I don't need to do any work on that end.The biggest deal for me: my products felt sparse. I had ~230 products at the moment from Aliexpress, but each of the categories felt light because it's spread so thin. I found this opportunity to be a GREAT way to increase my inventory list easily - and without maintaining a huge 500-750 product list from Aliexpress.The fulfillment & following up could not be easier using teelaunch. I have found their customer service & information lacking, but as long as they follow through with their promise of fulfillment I have found it great so far. I've placed one test order for myself, and the app deals with the fulfillment, the payment, shipping, e-mailing, tracking, etc.Using a second sales channel on Amazon will be a great way to boost income - I hope. Since it's pretty easy to transfer information from Shopify to Amazon now that they're integrated, I think there could be a lot of space for additional income streams. Unfortunately, I could not post any of the Aliexpress items on Amazon (for obvious reasons), but custom merchandise I can. Let's see how it goes.Here's a screenshot: http://ift.tt/2lyhT8a - I'm still working on adding all the items to Amazon as well as to the website itself. This will be a continual process but one I have great hope for.5 - So what's next?Over the next month, I will be introducing a few new products from Aliexpress, lots of custom merchandise products (whenever I get designs from my designer, basically), and then spending the majority of the time on marketing & advertising now that the framework is set in place. The plan:$100/month on Google Adwords (plus a free $100 thanks to Shopify's coupon thing)$100/month on Facebook Ads/Facebook Likes$100/month on the remaining ad spend - Reddit? Instagram? Social Influencers? Etc.Now that the majority of the website framework is done, the next post will cover the marketing plan & advertising. I will include my plans, my ads, my results, what I've learned, ask for advice, all that good stuff. I'm looking forward to analyzing the ROI and sharing the results with you all.The last remaining part of the website to do is SEO - keyword analysis, content creation, backlinking, etc. That will be a continuous process that I will explain further along w/ the marketing in the next postHere's a few links I'll be reading and using over the next month.... http://ift.tt/2ltlAjB http://ift.tt/2lyexCb http://ift.tt/2c2kClY http://ift.tt/2l0vFUE - Financials & AppsBusiness Expenses so far (approx 2 months):DBA Register: $23.00DBA Newspaper Posting: $23.00Shopify Theme: $58.00Namecheap Domain & Email: $14.06 (1 year)Instagress Payment: $9.99 (1 month of "time", mostly for testing)UPS Mailbox: $150.00 (3 months)Shopify: $106.88TOTAL: $384.93..Monthly Costs Moving Forward (including Shopify Apps):Mailbox: $50.00Amazon Professional Account: $39.99Shopify Monthly: $29.00Consistent Cart App: $4.99Fomo App: $19.00Oberlo App: $29.90 (/u/kalvel please give me free stuff)Trust App: $0.00HelpCenter App: $0.00MailChimp App: $0.00SocialShopWave App: $29.00 (these guys had the best wishlist app, and their customer service was AMAZING. they helped me for hours via chat. I love them. /u/Kalysbek you are a baller, thank you.)TaxJar App: $19.00Teelaunch App: $0.00Trackr App: $0.00TOTAL: $220.88/month..So, let's try to make $250/month profit to start off with. Cool?THE END. Please let me know any questions you have, any suggestions you have, any advice you have, and let me know if you guys like the layout of the posts. More info? Less info? More screenshots? More explanation? More TL;DR? Let me know.P.S. I will respond to posts & messages as fast as I can, but please be patient. Thanks. Thanks for your kind words, thanks for your help, and thanks for your love.