Drive-By Shooting Special: Black Bus

“What are we waiting for?” Harry stood on the curb, hands in pockets, watching his friend curiously. “A bus.” James looked casually nonplussed as he hitched the backpack higher on his shoulder. “A school bus? A Greyhound?” So far, he and James had been standing on the curb for close to a half hour. “What [...]

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Do You Have a Magic Ring?

I do. It’s awesome. Thanks for tuning in, I’ll see you all next – Oh. James says I have to tell you how to get a magic ring of your own. He does not seem to grasp that this has two benefits: a) I get a magic ring and you don’t, which is great for [...]

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Does Your eBook Design Stand Up or Fall Flat?

Ebook design has evolved so much beyond just the content that ebooks are now like little portable websites. Unfortunately, there’s very little written about ebook design trends out there – beyond a ton of sites touting ebook design skills or ebooks with great content. When it comes to defining what makes an ebook design look [...]

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Increasing Sales Through Scarcity – Is It a Scam?

This is the third post in a series on sales and marketing tactics. Read our first post, Afraid of Marketing or Just Turned Off, and then our second, How Urgency Gets You To Buy. And now for today’s post… The law of supply and demand says that when something is hard to get, it’s worth [...]

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Are You Forgetting to Network With Your Friends?

“I get by with a little help from my friends.” – The Beatles True story: for a long time, and when I was a child, no less, I thought that line was, “I get high with a little help from my friends.” This was before I actually knew that you could get high, and that [...]

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Did You Hate Our Black Background?

Dark alley. Dangerous. Empty. I couldn’t say they weren’t accurate descriptions. The black brickwork and the cement textured background of our site look did look like a dark alley theme – now that it had been mentioned. We’d worked very hard on our site redesign. The look we’d loved so much – casual coolness, leather [...]

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How Urgency Gets You to Buy

This is the second post in a series on sales and marketing tactics. You can find the first post that explores whether you’re Afraid of Marketing or Just Turned Off right here. Limited time offer! One-day sale! Less than 24 hours! Price goes up in 3 hours! Last chance! Only 12 copies left ! Hurry! [...]

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Getting Zen About Writing

As a freelance writer, you get to learn about many interesting things in the course of your work. Sometimes you learn about boring things, like why this widget is the coolest widget in the history of widgets. Sometimes you learn totally random things, like the fact that the Northwest Territories evidently almost named themselves ‘Bob’ [...]

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13.2 Rockstar WordPress Plugins You May Not Know About

WordPress is a very versatile platform for all sorts of online needs, and the variety of plugins that extend its capabilities is one feature that makes WordPress a content management system so popular. With 4,245 plugins to choose from, you can definitely customize your CMS, site or blog functionality way beyond the basics. We’re always [...]

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Are You Afraid of Marketing or Do Sales Just Turn You Off?

(Note: This is the first post in a series on sales and marketing tactics – and yes, we shun the Dark Side, young Skywalker, wielding sabers for the Powers of Good, not Evil.) Marketing tactics and strategies always hit a sore spot with many of our readers. Just the word itself provokes many different reactions [...]

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