A Desperate Need -- and a Solution that Pays

Today marks a turning point in my marketing focus. Until today, I really didn’t have a methodology for getting my profitable (more than 99 cents US) items listed and presented in a way that would motivate buyers to buy. Sure, those items are worth the price I charge (In My Not So Humble Opinion), but only a select few were eligible for top dollar. Those items have one thing in common: they fill a need, not a want.
    Ironically, my “bestseller” is a recipe book for Fruit Smoothies. That’s not exactly a burning need, and promoting it would have distracted me from focussing on selling the items that can help pay the bills for listing, store fees, etc. Fortunately, I found a resource that explained, explicitly, what gets people to spend.
    Desperation creates a desire for action. It also creates an emotional reaction that is reliable, predictable and dependable. That emotional reaction is a sense of urgency: either to move closer to something good or away from something bad. You MUST get to a dentist to have that tooth pulled. You MUST find out if you can learn to attract that one, special person you’ve been pining over. You MUST find a way to get rid of the smelly foot odor problem you have. You MUST increase your income SOON.
    I had been wondering what to create in the way of how-to information that would be profitable. Looks like that question is answered: target desperate buyers. Now I must produce genuine value, not just sucker people into buying by playing on that sense of urgency.

Web 2.SLOW?

[As his Squidoo page loads, Vince mumbles, “Bloated code crap! Why am I ‘waiting for Squidoo' to download its stuff?!!! It's a freakin' machine! Shouldn’t *IT* wait for me?!!! I'll give ya a freakin' "drumroll"!]
    Obviously, dealing with these “feature rich” environments means a certain amount of aggravation. Just because you *can* do something doesn’t mean you should.
    As I’m editing this post in Word, because typing it into the blogger interface is jumpy, kludgy and annoying, I can’t just type a *, then a word, then another * without Word deleting both *’s. So, I have to type the word, add the * then move back to the beginning of the word and insert the second *.
    Undoubtedly, some genius (who passed up a promising career path in packaging technology) decided that little function was useful, just like the genius who decided that jumpy JAVA inputs were a good idea.
    I wonder if those two met the genius who makes me insert “nbsp’s” so I can indent my paragraphs, instead of hit the freakin’ TAB key and have it WORK?!!!
    Going to either Squidoo or Wordpress to even log into my dashboard is a waste of time, as all the “feature rich” crap loads without even the courtesy of showing a splash screen. Attempting to modify or update either one is boring: I can go make coffee waiting for the new screen to load, stop back to enter [YES] to tell the thing to stop running a script that’s broken, go shave, then come back and try to do something useful.
    This is clearly a case of reach exceeding grasp. The only question is: will we live long enought to see the time when all this “feature rich” crap will actually work in something resembling real time?

Feeding at the same trough - Google

My sister is an employee of Google, working on the "plumbing", as she calls it. Her work involves the machinery and codes to run it, from the BIOS on up. Next time you "Google" something, it's the work of her, her team and many others that make that search happen in a gazillionth of a second and return umpteen million "hits". Never mind weeding through all that stuff for the answer you really want.
    She's a supporter of my efforts at publishing - even bought my DEVIL'S DICTIONARY for quotes she can foist on others! Here's her current favorite:

QUOTATION: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

While I'm still new to this whole business of monetizing myself, my blog, my RSS feeds, etc., I still had the dumb luck to put up Google AdSense advertising here. It's not a roaring success yet, but I'm learning every day.
    Furthermore, I've invested a bit in eBooks on using AdSense in an effective manner. They're actually helpful, as opposed to all the fluff pieces out there that cover general information and have TONS of links to other products the author insists one must have.
    AdSense for Beginners, The Google Adsense Empire Handbook and AdSense Revenue Exposed will be offered separately and as a "bundle" for a bit of a discount. Even though they're intended to boost the income of the publishers, they all offer real value, simple explanations and useful links that aren't going to make the publishers any real money.
    Now that I'm getting store traffic, it's time to put up products that'll get me some real income, not just pay for their fees and expenses incurred by opening a store!