Author Archive
I doubt a day does not go by that I’m not asked, “Rick, why so many products, why so many stores? (We have 9 stores). There are a number of answers to that question, but I will start with the obvious.
At the risk of sounding like the elderly professor in the Xerox commercial regarding publishing is not done much because it costs “MONEY”, that is the first answer that comes to mind. We like making moolah. But that is our cynical side. We also like making people happy. No, really.
I wear many hats. For a long time I have been a cartoonist. In my mid-40’s I went back to college and studied business and Internet technology. Suddenly I was an IT Professional and a cartoonist. The conflict was deciding if I should just be an IT pro, or continue my cartoons. After all, I had spent a decade on the cartoons and built numerous gift stores, some megastores with inventories of 100,000 products. What to do? Now I had some new tools, a major one known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I decided to utilize that skill to work on my cartoon and cartoon gift sites. It was a good decision. I am learning new things about SEO every day. I am hardly a guru.
Nine times out of ten, the writer of that ebook has downloaded other ebooks, before writing his/or hers and simply copied the main points, thinking, “If I bought it on the Internet, and from a guru, it must be hot stuff. It is hot stuff. It is the road to Internet hell.
How many more articles are going to be written on “safe internet shopping”? Well, here’s one more. And its the basics. It’s the basics because the basics is what you need to know, just like a store in your local mall (but a little different). Things like shipping price, security, guarantees, quality, service. Common sense things. But how do you find out when the vendor may be across the country (if not the world?)
Knowledge. Of course knowledge is power and education is the key to knowledge. I don’t mean go out right now and sign up for a class on Internet shopping, though it’s never a bad idea if you have the time, and, like me, do most of your shopping on the Internet.
