Preneurs Helping Preneurs Get Noticed

Susan Parnaby

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  • #5197

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    As with anything do some careful checks first. Remember it is not just the domain name that could cause you issues. I have an email address that some responders don’t like. They have in effect blacklisted the domain. Sorry, I cannot remember how I discovered this. It is a domain I have had for over 10 years. I think it has been blacklisted because so many of the messages sent to that address have been seen as spam by others. I would be highly surprised if it is because of messages sent from that address as so few messages have been sent from it.

    On the other hand because I know it is blacklisted I use it for things like my Facebook address where it possible to harvest email addresses. It has in effect become a throwaway address.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #5043

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    They would not survive that well under the 4 inches of snow we have had here today. Looking at the list of closures online it would surprise me if there is a school within 15 miles of me that will be open tomorrow. There again I can just about see trees under the snow. Plants are well-hidden today.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #4194

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    I heard that Facebook live now does screen-sharing for some people.

    I keep meaning to check out Zoom as this seems to be getting more popular. I don’t know how much you can do with the free plan but that sounds like one possibility if you are on a budget. I have seen people use this for screen sharing but I don’t know what the limitations of the free plan are.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #4143

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Why is it that some words trigger memories? When I think of obsession I think of the times when I needed to get to work and had not tried to catch the bus because I had the offer of a lift. I then found my nerves on edge as the person who offered to give me a lift was so obsessed with washing their hands that they struggled to stop. I was thankful if they took less than 15 minutes. I was stuck if I had tried catching the bus I would have faced a torrent of verbal abuse that erupted out of their hurt feelings. If I didn’t there was a big risk that I would be late. I did try and get to the classroom to set the room up before the learners arrived so that helped create a bit of a buffer. Many times though it was touch and go if I would get there before the class started.

    There are definitely some things that you do not want to get obsessed with!

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #4007

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    I have no idea why you are having so many problems but when had a look to see what you meant I noticed something else. There were some images that were not loading for me. They worked as links but the images were not displaying.

    Are you sure that this is a WP problem? Could it be Amazon that is driving you crazy?

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #4006

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    I have an interesting twist on this. If you read http://www.godslily.com/why-use-the-name-gods-lily/you can see what I mean. The story goes back to 1991. In some ways, I think I was given the endpoint a long time ago. It has been a blessing in the sense that when going through a deep dark valley I knew that there was going to be an end to it. In other words, there was a dream at the other side of the nightmare.

    The issue is working out how to make that dream become a reality. Like many people in middle age, it has been a challenge keeping hold of a vision as so many things have not turned out as we thought they would. When I was 20 my then boyfriend expected to have a job for life and I thought marriage would lead to happiness. The reality is he lost that job due to choices made by politicians and then struggled to keep a job for more than a few years at a time. As time has passed I have added more adjectives to my description of his issues and wondered why on earth I stuck it out so long.

    I have been through an extreme training process. My problem is how to connect the dots between that description of the future and where I am now. There are loads of ideas floating around my head some of which have been maturing for many years. I have just checked and it was 2001 when I registered my first domain. That site and the 2 from 2002 were all but abandoned for a few years while the nightmare that was my life worsened and picked up again after the nightmare ended.

    I know that the change will involve some aspect of my design as a teacher. It will also use some aspect of my interest in computers. It will also include various strands of ideas that have come round more than once on my journey. After that, I don’t have any firm ideas just a faith that something will happen.

    My dream turned into a terrible nightmare.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #4003

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    My first thought was is meant by holding back? There are two possibilities for me. One is holding back in terms of level or depth of the content i.e. quality. The other is holding back in the number of posts or replies made i.e. quantity.

    I am someone who does not find routine easy. I don’t even remember to say what do you want me to do today God every day. Those are the days when I wander off and do my own thing and forget to do something important. Of course, there is some overlap but they are not always identical.

    One of the things that has fallen off my list of jobs some days is checking PreneurPal. It is easy with Facebook as I get notifications from some groups via email. It is easy to get updates on Periscope as they come through on my phone. I do keep PreneurPal open in a browser tab as a reminder which has helped me to come back as when I review what tabs are open I find it again.

    I suppose it is an issue of jogging my memory and pulling PreneurPal back to the top of my mind.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #3840

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    It is interesting how different people see things. I like organisation so all the books in my bookcases are organised by topic. I have boxes of things that are kept like with like and often labeled so I can find them. One room contains this sort of thing so my back bedroom is the stationery storage area as also has the spare cables I have gathered. It upsets my mother looking in there as she thinks it is untidy yet I think it is organised because I can find things in there.

    It does not matter to me if what I want is in a box in a box under the bed and it takes a bit of time to actually get at it. The space is organised so that I can get at what I will need at a later date. That to me is the equivalent of having a menu item that when you click on it opens into a nested menu. I like things neatly in menus that take me to sections. I hate things piled up one thing on another that I cannot find an easy and neat pathway to.

    Years ago when I did a Multimedia Application course at the University of Teesside some of the assignments involved creating websites. Part of the assignment was to produce a plan for the site. We then did a site with a few test pages to show how it would work in practice. The first section of the plan was about the target audience and their needs. Where they old or young? Did they have any needs in terms of accessibility? After that, there were three sections that we could cover in any order.

    The design section described the appearance of the site. Where were the menus going to go? What colours were you going to use? This was so long ago we had to use websafe colours. Would white with pink accents suit them better than a black background and white text? What sort of style and feel suited the audience? Sturdy cars? Fluffy rabbits? I got quite proficient in using the drawing tools in Word to create diagrams to show the colours and the layout of the site. We were using Dreamweaver as WordPress was being birthed at that time. We had to set all this up ourselves, thankfully using a visual editor rather than hand coding.

    The content section was all about what are you going to include to get your message across. So what does your audience want? What images or text will you include? What are the essential pages on the site? Where was the content going to come from? Bear in mind the aim of the course was to prepare people to build websites for other people and you would need their help to develop the content. How are you going to justify to your tutor why you included some things and not others?

    The navigation section of a simple website was not a lot more than the content section. However, once it became more than just a handful of pages it became increasingly complicated. The idea was to set up links and pathways to make it as easy as possible to move from one page to another. Bear in mind that this was pre-WordPress so we could have a number of separate menus on the site. The site would be split into areas and each one had links to the other areas we thought were relevant, as well to the content within that area. Another reason why we became quite proficient with the drawing tools in Word.

    I must admit I have got rather lazy now and carry all these things in my head rather than writing them down. I still start with the design or these days the theme and adjusting the theme to suit my aims and intentions. After that comes the content. Often it is a bit of content and then some navigation and back to content. I still find it useful to look at a website from each of those perspectives.

    The fact that we were able to set things up so everything could be accessible using 3 clicks made it easier. Trying to pare that down to 1 or 2 clicks makes developing a navigation plan so much harder. We did not have access to accordion boxes that we could set up to take people to a section or to a page within that section. The idea of a feature box with a symbol to help guide us to different sections was unknown. We had no video no audio and images were supposed to be kept to under 10k. We did not have courseware plugins that would set up lessons in a series that added go back and go forwards buttons to a series of units.

    I am not sure if all this progress has made it easier or harder to design and build a website. It does strike me though if you are working towards building a large platform that having some kind of plan to work towards is extremely useful and that looking at a website from those four directions makes a lot of sense.

    For someone like me who likes things stowed into sections with clearly distinguishable boundaries this site although it has improved still has some way to go. How do you create boundaries? You can use borders or different coloured backgrounds to make it easier to tell where one section starts and another ends. You can separate things onto different pages.

    P.S. What happened to the constraint of having as much as possible above the fold?

    P.P.S. Ever thought that pleasing all of the people all of the time or getting something right from more than one perspective at once is virtually impossible.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #3832

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    No point in going to a coffee shop as I don’t drink coffee. There again I don’t find it easy to go out anywhere to eat or drink because there are so many things that have been known to upset my digestion.

    Thank God you have never come across fear like that Bruce. I lived with a victim of obsessive compulsive disorder for 26 years. It was a mercy when they gave me the order of the boot. It is important you get somewhere on time and they have promised you a lift but then they get stuck washing their hands for 30 minutes or more. That is on a not so bad day. Once when they could not stop washing for 8 hours I called the doctor in desperation and it shamed them into stopping. I know what it is like to live through a nightmare and not have people around who can offer support that does good rather than harm. That is why the site header I have repeated in my signature makes so much sense to me. I have been weak and others have tried to help but weakened me further rather than strengthening me.

    I did eventually settle down to get something done and I did a fair bit eventually. However did not get a second wind until about 5pm and had to quite disciplined to make myself stop at around 11 pm to get some sleep.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #3825

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    It has always felt right to me to develop the go to place for the topic. It just suited my personality, nature, design, or however else you would describe me. It has been one thing know what you want to achieve it is another drilling down to a small enough area to make it work. You need to be able to describe that area in such a way that it catches the imagination of those who visit your site.

    Two or three years ago I tried adapting the idea of writing a manifesto that Rich Schefren used with his “internet Manifesto”. What started as a give away ended up as a book measuring 6 by 9 that is .8 inches thick. No one bought it and few have ever read it. I called it The Manifesto that is NOT for Wimps. The title is deliberately provocative.

    Years ago in the middle of an argument, I called Prince Charming a wimp. Two months earlier he had signed the papers to finalise our divorce and then refused to let them be sent to the court. After that argument, he made a phone call and said the papers could be sent to the court. When he had calmed down he made a second phone call to stop them but it was too late because the papers had already been sent to the court. Maybe calling him a wimp was understandable in the circumstances and it definitely provoked him to action.

    A few weeks ago I started wondering if I should use this Manifesto for a series of blog posts. I finally got round to adjusting the God’s Lily site to do this on Saturday and added the first 3 posts. I am using the editorial calendar plug in from the WordPress repository to schedule the draft posts. At the moment there is a draft post for each day until December 15th and I have only copied the text from the first 45 pages.

    I was thinking of splitting the book into two and making the part after page 130 into the Challenge that is NOT for Wimps. Whether the Challenge becomes a course or the start of a membership site or becomes a book remains to be seen. In fact, it is only as I am writing this that I am starting to think of what to do with the material in the Challenge section. There is enough material in the Manifesto section for 5 posts a week for 6 weeks i.e. to the end of January.

    It is proving an interesting exercise as I have adjusted my approach slightly so that it is more in keeping with the mission statement in the header of the website i.e. a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in such a way that they are strengthened rather than weakened further. I have juggled some pieces of text around between chapters and reorganised it a bit so that it flows better.

    I have set up a blog broadcast using Mailchimp and the last time I looked there was a grand total of 10 subscribers, yes ten. I have a few harvested lists gathered when people have been silly enough to send one email to a group of people in such a way that everyone can see the email addresses. These are from people who at least have something in common with my intended audience. I have thought of importing them into a new list (or possibly even a new account) in MailChimp and sending out an invitation to check out the God’s Lily site and sign up to join the proper mailing list. I might add a few friends and family to the list of invited guests. Hopefully, that will at least double the number of subscribers.

    I only know of a handful of Facebook groups where potential readers congregate and most of those are pretty small. An invitation post on those would be a good idea. One thing I must remember to do is to adjust the blog broadcast template so it includes the suggestion to forward to a friend who they think would appreciate the content.

    After that, I am somewhat stumped. The problem with niche areas is that you can find places where the readers have something in common with your mission but most of them are small groups where a 1% response rate is less than one person.

    Thinking about this I have remembered what happened in February 2016 when we started Safe Haven. We wanted to find people with learning difficulties and we did not have a clue where to look for them. Well, we had one idea about an organisation to approach but our biggest supporter told us not to. Looking back they did not understand why we wanted to contact them. It took over a year for that organisation to accidentally find out about us. We literally put up posters in as many supermarkets as we could manage because that was all we could think of doing. On the third week we opened the doors and still no one had come so we had a prayer meeting. The day after that prayer meeting there was a phone call asking if it would be possible for someone in a wheelchair to come along. It was not something we had thought about but there was no problem. We had our first craftee, someone with far greater needs than we imagined ur craftees would have. Once word spread around the different homes and projects where adults with special needs live the numbers went up to 6. One died during the summer so there are now 5 regulars aged between 41 and 87 only one of them has never come in a wheelchair and has full use of their hands. We have not kept count of the number of professional carers who have come to Safe Haven but we have met dozens of them. All people whose lives we could not have touched otherwise. It started with putting out bait in the only places we could think of putting it. Now the carers struggle to believe how we got the ball rolling.

    If all it took was putting out bait to get Safe Haven up and running then why not the God’s Lily website? One reason why I have now got round to writing a signature for this forum.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #3745

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    My struggle today is getting started. I find it relatively easy to get stuck into things when I get up so tend to use that time for the harder tasks or the things I need to do that I have been putting off. One of the things I have been putting off was sorting out the back bedroom enough so that I could close the door. I had put so many things to stow away in there then not got around to spending some time sorting them out that they were overflowing into the hall. I got that done this morning. I had left it so long it took me an hour or two just to catch up on that task. By the time I had done that I had lost my momentum for getting stuff done on the computer. Rather than do nothing I pottered about doing other things around the house that were useful but not very productive in terms of earning money. The house is a lot tidier and the washing and ironing are done. OK it does reduce the brain chatter of you should do this that or the other rather than working on the business and in that sense it will make it easier to do things in the next few days but today is a lost day.

    It is the balance of doing something then feeling guilty for not doing something else which I find hard. I cannot do both of them at once so they have to take turns. Maybe that is why I don’t take many breaks. I have a television but I rarely if ever watch it. I am always pottering on around the house or on the computer. Ask me to go out and relax and the first thing that comes to mind is to go shopping which I do every 4 weeks. I have had to develop a feast and famine routine with that to protect my budget. There again if it was every week it would not be long before I needed a bigger house.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #3741

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    You opened a whole can of worms with the idea of charging your phone. It was reading an article about an experiment some school children did that led me to question the wisdom of having a phone next to my bed. It is not just the whistle that made when some starts a periscope broadcast that is the issue. The article suggested that if cress would not grow in an environment where the only difference was the presence of a mobile phone then what impact is the phone having on us. I do have a phone beside the bed but it online needs to be plugged into a landline and not an electric socket. Yes, I do seem to sleep better if my mobile is charging in another room overnight.

    That leads me to issue number 2 the stories of fires have been started by leaving chargers plugged into a socket without a fire attached or when a phone is left attached to a charger after being fully charged. Yes, realistic possibilities but how far do you go to reduce that kind of risk.

    After seeing people who got themselves tied up in knots because of fear I am frightened of being too frightened, if that makes sense. Have you ever met a deacon who could not be allowed to be the last person to leave the church building because of their fear? They could spend up to 2 hours checking if all the lights were off and all the doors closed etc before they locked the outside door and walked away. The only way to make sure they eventually got home was for someone to tactfully support them as they locked up.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #3640

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    I checked my diigo account and found 99 bookmarks with the tag image. I used to have this set up so that I could integrate a list of bookmarks into a wordpress page or post. There was a small annual charge for it but they have changed the way they operate and I have not worked out if I can still do this and how to do it.

    Useful concept though. Every time you see a link that would be useful to your readers bookmark it on diigo with a particular tag. Then add a code to your page/post so that all the links that you have used that tag for are listed on your post/page.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #3639

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant
    This reply has been set as private.
  • #1808

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    The other reason they may be needed is to comply with European tax rules. About 3 years ago now I realised the impact of the Digital Services Regulations for VAT. I had presumed that those who earned less than the normal UK threashold would not have to do anything about VAT. Wrong they applied to everyone and were horrendously difficult to comply with.

    There were two options.
    1/ Follow the official advice and use a third party selling platform. These platforms including those used to run courses were supposed to deal with the VAT on behalf of the sellers.
    2/ Do some legal tax evasion by making your product live and interactive so that you did not have to become a tax collector.

    The total madness about this law is that everyone who sells something online is supposed to abide by it. Sell a downloadable file like a knitting pattern to someone who lives in the EU without it being live and interactive makes you liable to collect tax from your buyer and give it to the tax department of the country where your buyer lives. It also took a long time before some selling platforms, even big names like Infusionsoft, complied with European law.

    The fuss has died down a bit now as both the EU and the local tax authorities have become somewhat more toleraant in applying the law because they realised the impact it is having on tiny online businesses. The intention, Brexit permitting, is to introduce a new set of regulations that do not have such a detrimental impact on nano-businesses in 2018.

    They wanted to catch a few big fish like Amazon but instead killed or injured shoals of tiny fish they had not realised existed.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #1806

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant
    This reply has been set as private.
  • #1805

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    A few years ago I left my computer on when I went out but when I got home again the internet and phone were not working. It turned out that while I was out of the area there had been a thunderstorm. Of course being out of the area I had not known about it. The storm had fried the modem. While the modem was connected the phone would not work either. I got the phone checked out only to be told I needed to get the modem fixed. Since then I have used surge protectors on as much electrical and phone equipment as I can. I would rather they took the stress of a surge than my more expensive equipment.

    Talking of electrics did you know that if there is a brown out i.e. a serious drop in voltage that electric motors around the house can get burned out. For me that includes fridge, freezer and the central heating boiler. They will work but it will over-stress them. If you want to preserve such motors then it is better not to use them until the voltage has been restored. That has only happened to me once but I rang my dad who is a retired power engineer for his advice. He told me to switch off the fridge, freezer and boiler until the lights were bright again.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #1498

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    I know what I feel called to do and I have wandered around for years wondered how to actually get going with that. In terms of offline activities setting up Safe Haven Crafts was a big breakthrough for me. It helped finally being part of a supportive community. For the previous 8 years I had said I would like to do this and I think it would fit in with your aims and objectives as well will you help me. I then watched fear overwhelm them as they said we cannot do this because it might not work. Their fear actually put some considerable obstacles in my path so instead of helping me they added to the battle of getting things done. In the end I tried doing things bymself but that did not work well either.

    Fast forwards to 1st Sunday in Advent 2015 i.e. nearly 2 years ago now. I had moved home to be closer to my family in January 2015 and was beginning to find my feet in Wales, after living in England until then. Myself and one of my new friends bounced ideas off each other then drew someone else in and by Christmas we had the outline idea in place and a supportive community around us. Totally different experience.

    Finally I had a prototype in place. Like Sean is finding setting up and running a protptype tells you a lot about yourself and the market you are operating in. This summer I wrote a book that I wished I had been able to read 30 years earlier. The message behind it is we have done this and overcome these obstacles so why are you sitting there doing nothing. It also includes some of the things that we have learnt on our journey and a chapter on craft ideas that can be used even with severely disabled people.

    Then I got stuck. I got as far as getting a proof copy from Amazon Create Space. Now the problem has become how do you launch it. There are all these complicated systems with many parts that people use these days to propel books into a place where they can be seen. How on earth do I do all of that, or even just a fraction of it? I have asked a couple of people for support but don’t seem to have the knack of getting influencers to get on board. I have moved out of the area where the supportive community that helped when starting Safe Haven can help me. It is not that they don’t want to be supportive but that they can’t move onto that new stage with me because it is beyond their experience.

    It is not the first time when I have tried to do something like this. You can see my first attempt at http://amzn.to/2zuJ6mr no sales, no reviews no endorsements just a lonely book sitting on a shelf. So a waste of time and effort. It is a case of once bitten twice shy.

    Then there is the online side of what I am trying to do. Loads of fear and loads of challenges here some of them quite unexpected. This time last year I tried putting together an online summit. Yes scared witless but I was having a go. Then I lost my denture. It only covered on tooth but someone close to me really hates seeing me without it in and that created a challenge for me. The obvious thing was get it replaced. That was the start of an amazing 8 month saga that involved 2 dentists and working my way through two different complaints procedures. Getting a replacement should have taken about a month with fittings etc but it took over six months as they could not make the first one fit so I went to a different dentist and started again. There were loads of letters and phone calls as everything that could go wrong did, even when people were trying hard to do the right thing. If there had been some kind of muddler who was trying to make thing go wrong I cannot see how much more they could have done to drag out this saga.

    Problem is as I have worked my way through all Sean’s trainings in an attempt to work out what to do next I cannot escape the idea of having a membership site and launching it with a summit. So I went back to The COB Club and realised that all that needed was a tweak or two and the freebie setting up better. I thought it would be a good idea doing some sample content before completing the sales page just to make sure it was set up. That is when procrastination set in aka following the path of least resistence. The least resistence has so far included

    • painting the smallest room in the house
    • starting to crochet some scarves for Christmas presents as that is as far as my budget will stretch
    • cleaning the house to try and pacify my mum who thinks that I should spend a lot less time playing computers and a lot more time playing house
    • watching videos to get ideas about what content to create and how to create it

    The excuse I have used for doing things around the house is that it will make it easier to set up the jewelery I have stacked in boxes on the table and invite people around to come and buy it. I have been procrastinating on handing out the invitations for that as well.

    In terms of isolation it has not been that bad a week this week. I was at a meeting on Monday night discussing ideas for the upcoming 150th anniversary of our church building. Tuesday I was at Safe Haven. Wednesday mum was here “encouraging” me on Wednesday morning and last night I went to the annual public meeting of the local council where they aim to engage with the local community. This time I got talking to someone about Safe Haven and after a few minutes she adjusted her badge and I realised that she was just the right council official to talk to about it. That was amazing! Thursday (tonight) it is Welsh class. Friday (tomorrow)I am supposed to be helping with the toddler group at church. Saturday it is the last of a series of half day courses I joined in an effort to promote God’s Lily but that I have not been able to gain much of a harvest from. Amazingly I will have seen a living person every day this week. It is not unknown (although admittedly rare) for me to come home from church on a Sunday night and not go out or see anyone until Sunday morning. It only happens when the schools are on holiday and things quieten down. It is what happens when you live on your own and you don’t have a job.

    Susan hiding in North Wales

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

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  • #1492

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Things definitely do change. I used to do a lot of crochet and spent a a lot of time wandering aroucn crochet sites. This Christmas money is tight so it is a case of making as many presents as possible. Mum asked for a particular type of scarf so after a failed hunt round my pattern files I went online.

    There always were free patterns as giveaways but now there are not just hundreds but thousands probably even tens of thousands. There are some people with hundreds of videos on crochet techniques and patterns. Some people have a hundred or more free patterns you can print out and a YT video explaining how to use the majority of the patterns. Yes there are still some paid patterns but I cannot see how they sell that many because there are so many free ones. The people who make money are those who sell the yarn and the hooks. There again I have heard of people making their own hooks and yarn. There again YT will make a penny or two from the advertising.

    There is no certainty in business. Many years ago my ex used to be involved in the import of coal and the export of coke (the kind you used to put on a fire in a smokeless zone). His job disappeared when his boss failed to persaude a big customer overseas to buy some coke. He came home at 5 pm one Friday saying he was almost certain to lose his job. At 10-30 pm that night the local TV news had a report that the works was closing. We were one of the few families that had any warning before that TV broadcast. BTW in case you think that government support helps places like that survive that is not necessarily the case. That works was run by a wholely owned subsidary of the National Coal Board which was set up to run all the coal mines the UK government had taken control of shortly after WW2.

    There is no absolute security in economics, only in faith but that is not this site’s primary purpose. We got married thinking he had a job for life but 15 years later not only had his job disappeared but the entire industry was gone without trace. Even the earliest economists such as Adam Smith said that the market works by people making constant adjustments. Something changes and there is a response. In his day it was the Corn Laws and subsidies for herring fisheries that stopped the markets making the necessary adjustments. He argued for less regulation so that the market could adjust by itself.

    The idea of a steady stream of traffic that you can tap into is one of those impossible dreams. The market is adjusting. Cast your mind back to 2000. Web sites used web safe colours and if you used an image the advice was to keep the file size to 10k or below. No wordspress so sites were handcoded as text files in notepad, no social media, video was just a dream. Yes I created my first website in that era.

    Today WordPress can do in a couple of hours what it used to take me a week or so to do. Then I wondered how on earth to set up a subscription based site. Today it is as simple as adding a plug in and changing to settings so that it does what you want it to do. The barriers to entering the online world have lowered so more people have jumped on the bandwagon. More competition. More opportunities.

    If you have not guessed there is one thing that has not changed about running a business since the days of Adam Smith and that that it is necessary to adapt to the changes that are happening in the marketplace. Finding traffic is one of thse contstantly changing factors. The thing is that the market changes faster today than it did in Adam Smith’s time so it has become harder to make the constant tweaks and changes to keep a business running profitably.

    P.S. Just to give some perspective timewise Adam Smith was born 52 years before America was.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

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  • #1014

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    This is a place to play, to encourage, to learn, and to find guinea pigs. I wish we used skinny pigs for testers as I can spell that easier. I am not a skinny pig more of a fatty pig really but I could be a guinea pig and help you with a second opinion. Well I did say play.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #956

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Don you can aim at one gender without it being so overt that it upsets people. There again people see what they want to see. Equal respect, equal honour, but definitely not equal abilty.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #805

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    One of the things you rarely hear about in the IM world is accessibility. My issue of text colour is a minor issue compared to the problems others have. The strange thing is one of the hardest web pages I can remember reading was created by someone who was deaf and blind. They used a variety of assistive technologies. It was hard because being blind they had no concept of white space. Everything was packed together with few if any gaps. There were no images and the text was not broken up by using text that look so different.

    I know that on one of the Facebook groups where I am likely to find an audience includes at least one blind person. Again and again they ask people who post images to include a description of it in the post so that they can hear it read out to them.

    I am not saying go all out and use the strict compliance rules that publically funded websites are forced to abide by. That would be too great a burden but there are some things that can be done that don’t put unnecessary obstacles in people’s paths. Things like be aware of colour contrasts for older folks and others who see colours differently to ourselves. Adding alt text as a way of helping those who use assistive readers rather than using it as an seo tactic. Making it easy to navigate round a site.

    In other words, usability or accessibilty reviews would be useful.

    “‘Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the LORD.” Leviticus 19:14

    Susan

    P.S. Is that the first scripture reference on this site?

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

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  • #794

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    My first problem is that I either need a better monitor or better eyes. I am finding grey text on a white background hard to read because of the lack of contrast. Black on white is fine but this grey is a strain and creates a stressful experience. Maybe my eyes are aging faster than the rest of me.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #515

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Bruce the time zones are more complicated than that. They do not always spring forwards or fall back at the sme time. This year the Uk clocks fell back last weekend as it was the last weekend in October but as I type they have not fallen back in the US. Therefore the time difference for Uk and Eastern time is 4 hours, and not the normal 5. That was why the marathon calls this Tuesday were such a brilliant idea even if it happened by accident rather than design.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #495

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Most weeks I have 3 rocks that I need to position things around ie. Tuesday afternoon, Thursday evening and Friday morning. I would really struggle to fit all that lot in before I go out on Friday morning. Some Fridays it is a struggle just to get washed and dressed in time to go out. Fitting everything else in before hand would mean a 3 am start and I am not up to that very often.

    It does not help in that I do better if I batch things together. So a week or two doing videos or a week or two writing course notes. I find it so much easier to concentrate on one task through out the entire day and just go for it non-stop.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #472

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Who cares if your business is a failure? You will have learnt a lot about yourself. Providing you do not die of starvation or exposure whether you make or lose money does not matter.

    Take the pressure to succeed off yourself. Anyway only you can know if you have failed or not because you are the one who set the expectation of what success looked like.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

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  • #459

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    The only things that are crucial are the things that you cannot do without and that depends upon your business model. There are people who have tried to do business online without having a website or an email list. How successful they have been in the long term I don’t know but it has been attempted.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #448

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Not only are there not many profile pages but not everyone has included a picture. The one I have used is a bit old and not me at my best but at least it is better than nothing. The email address I have used for this site does not have a gravatar associated with it so I had to add this one manually.

    There again the fact that I am not the only one who does not have a gravatar associated with their email is also a point for concern.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #440

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    The advantage of living on your own is that you don’t have to stop for someone who needs you to stop and help them deal with their issues. When I was married one of the most annoying things was when I was trying to make a meal and I would be asked to help him cope. Part of his problem was he had obsessive compulsive disorder and struggled to accept some things were clean or that something was done well enough for him to stop doing it. Often when he was trying to get ready for a meal he would get tied in a knot. He might be stuck washing his hands or he might be so worried about something not being clean enough that he would want me to stop what I was doing and help him. I struggled with the anger that was generated by my refusal to help so I often ended up switching off the cooker to reduce the likelihood of the meal spoiling and go and help.

    I cannot see how anyone can be successfull when they have that kind of wieght hanging around their neck.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #426

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Many years ago I tried starting a jewellery business. Those were the days when if you lived in certain areas of the UK the government would all but throw money at you to start a business. That web site cost £5000. It scaresely got any visitors. i could not update it myself despite already having played with Dreamweaver a bit while doing websites for a post grad course. The developer had all the control. It was a disaster zone. That was in the days before WordPress. The fact that I got a grant for it softened the financial blow considerably but I have alwasy stuck to DIY with WordPress since then.

    The answer to what financial investment is rquried to make a profit should be vertually nothing. The problem is it takes time to work out how your indidiual design can be leveraged to make a successful business. For example I have struggled as I have moved from one thing to another to another rather than maintaining focus. Ask me to work on a project for 2 months or more and I am sunk. Yet 2 months is not enough time to make much headway so projects sink without trace. Ask me to do a bit of this and a bit of that each day and I struggle. I cope best with one type of activity to focus on a day. So one day a month is money and accounts. Other days are family days.

    Wou cannot succeed until you know enough about yourself to succeed. What are you good at? What is your preferred way of working? What actually works for you? Working that out can take time. Sometimes the only way to find out is trial and error. Try someone else’s system see if it works for you if not why not and learn from the experience.

    The problem too many of us come out of the sausage factories we call school, college and university hardly knwing ourselves. Then we go into the little boxes called offices where we learn to fit into the shapes created by other people. If we are really unfortunate we are shaped by the bad behaviour of others and end up scarecely able to think rationally. 10 years after a destructive marriage ended I am still trying to work out who I am and what happened to me and around me. It is actually quite scarey thinking about how messed up my ex was, and I presume still is and the ripples that this has had on the people aound him. I was not mad but he drove me part way there with his crazy-making behaviour.

    No wonder we cannot be who we were designed to be and do what we were designed to do. It takes time and effort to overcome that programming and find the real person underneath it all. Once we can be who we are designed to be then if we are designed to start and run a business we will be able to do so.

    It can work by sheer force of will but not everyone has that kind of strength. I am strong becasue I have survived but that is a different kind of strength to what is needed to be a quick success in business.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #348

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    The problem is that if you do find the best day then everyone else will gravitate towards that best day. Once that happens the best day will become the worst day. I was once told that Thursday was the best day to do webinars. Before I knew it the world and his wife were doing webinars on Thursday nights. Thursday nights were overloaded with webinars. Then some people realised what was happening and they were more spread out.

    The answer therefore has to be it depends on your audience. Are they like to be going to a mid-week meeting on a Wednesday night? Would it be a good iea to start the week with a bang on a Monday? Are they too tired and distracted to do much on a Friday?

    There again you can guess all you like but until you test what you are doing or just ask your audience you will not know the answer for certain. Maybe I should not say for certain because nothing is set in stone.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #347

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    I don’t speak enough Welsh yet to use native advertising sources round here. I am learning though!
    Dwi dysku Cymreag

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #346

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    What do you mean by one website? It is possible to have more than one wordpress installation on one domain.

    It is possible to set up a domain so that you have mysite.com as one wordpress installation and mysite.com/nicheOne as a second wordpress installation and mysite.com/nicheTwo as a third and so on. If you are clever you set them up as multisite installation so some things are done from one dashboard.

    There are others who go the route of sub domains so the address for the first niche becomes nicheOne.mysite.com

    You still have most of the disavantages of having multiple websites which leads to you doing some tasks once for each website so multiplying the time and effort needed to maintain your online presence. Yet you are only using one domain.

    It depends on your technical abilty and the time and effort you are willing to put in to maintian and grow each site.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #345

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Remember it is easier to steer a vehicle that is already moving. Your car breaks down and you try and push it out of the way of the traffic but you cannot steer it very easily until it is actually moving. There are other little tricks like making sure all the levers such as the brakes are positioned in a way that helps rather than hinders. On the other hand if you have ever tried pushing a car with the brakes on you won’t do it again. You have learnt more about what to do from doing the wrong thing so in the long run you have benefitted form your mistake.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #344

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Why do people sell stuff in the IM market?
    They know there are hungry customers willing to spend money.

    Seriously it is no different to chocolate or sweet sugary foods. People have a desire so other people are willing to sell to them. There was a time when I struggled to work out what to eat as so many things made me feel ill. The list included fish, red meat, dairy, lentils, cauliflower, mushrooms and chocolate.

    It was a nightmare going shopping. With that list I would find there was very little that I could eat. I would walk into some shops that were designed to serve the low income market and the first 20 feet of aisle space was chocolate and sweets. There was one shop that felt like a war zone. They were trying to sell all sorts of things that would not do me good and it actually felt oppressive walking into the store. Other shops were not so bad but the war and battle analogy is one that works very well in the retail business. We will put this here and that there so that people will be more likely to buy what we want them to buy. We will tell those who don’t care what they spend but want a product that seems higher quality that this higher priced one is better than that one when in reality there is very little difference between.

    Two things have happened since the darkest days of that struggle. One is I have got used to the limitations. I know to look at the ingredients of a vegetarian burger to see if there is any soy, cauliflower or tomato in it. This is more common than you would think. I know that there are parts of the supermarket that it is simply not worth my while looking for something I can eat. I go to the free from section rather than the dairy section for example.

    The other is that once I got used to the severe restrictions my digestion healed enough so that I could eat the occasional item that I previously eliminated from my diet. I do have chicken and pickle sandwiches these days as long as I don’t overdo the pickle I am fine. But I don’t put vinegar on my oven chips.

    If you are on a see food and eat it diet then you will end up eating what is not good for you. That is exactly what the food retailers want. They want to sell food. Given the various food scandals that pop up here there and everywhere there are times when it is obvious that their definition of what is fit to eat is somewhat dubious at times.

    The IM world is no different. We gorge ourselves on everything to start with then when we get sick we either abandon the whole idea of find a diet that suits us. The tricky bit is finding the right diet for us. There also the occasional scandal as one of the people who I followed online in the early days has since spent time in jail after lying on a loan application. The charges were unrelated to their online activities but it showed a definite character flaw. You think you can trust people but then something happens and you question their integrity.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #251

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    I had a strange experience when planning to use Zoom. I was already well into my stretch zone at that point so this was the last straw.

    The denture situation became crazy. I was given appointment cards with the time of the end of the appointment not the start on them then my records were marked DNA i.e. did not attend. Too many of those and they refuse to accpet you as a patient. The first attempt was so incredibly painful to wear that it took 3 or 4 days to recover from wearing it for less than an hour. Eventually I got a second opinion and a new denture but then there was the question of what to do about the first attempt. That was when I started to learn about consumer law and how to make formal complaints. It got to the point where I realised that if anything could to go wrong then it would. It was one thing after another for months. People were trying to do things right but things still went wrong and I started to think that there was an invisible hand at work making things go wrong. If nothing else that helped me maintain my sanity and temper. The entire saga took 8 months to resolve at which point I found the denture I had lost hiding in place where I had looked mroe than once.

    At first I thought I would wait until things sort themselves out but they took so long that I gave up trying to meet the deadline I had set myself. I was fighting so hard to sort things out on that front that it was easier to retreat out of that stretch zone. So rather than continuing with just audio I abandoned the whole project. Now I am looking at venturing into back into that stretch zone and wondering how to protect myself from things going wrong again.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #219

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    I think of a membership site as being a product.

    Different peoeple use the platform in different ways.

    Some use it to refer to the people who follow you via email and social media. They are primarily interested in gaining an audience who want to buy their book or whatever it is.

    In UK politics a platform is the candidates’s message or the group of policies that they intend to promote if elected.

    From what I understand Sean is using it to mean the site (i.e. online space) that you use to express yourself so that those who are interested in what you have to offer gather around you.

    I am reminded of a story told by Winston Churchill when the relationship between the US and UK delegations at a conference broke down. They had similar aims and no one could quite understand what had happened. Then a junior member of one team discovered that the same set of words meant totally opposite things to each delegation. Change the idiom “to table a motion” to something else that explained the proposed action more clearly and they were friends again.

    There are times when it is as important to understand the definition of a word as it is the word itself.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #193

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Another vote for Membersonic here. It is easy to use. There was a short period when support was slow but AH had the integrity to explain why. He also did what he could to overcome the issue. In fact he was obviously upset about the situation which mercifully resolved itself. Not perfect but very human and worth doing business with.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #184

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Pricing was the hardest thing to get right when we started our craft group. We set the price at £2 but the people who came thought it was too cheap and some of them were giving us donations as they felt guilty at paying so little. After a few weeks we doubled the price. Not because we wanted the money but because people wanted to pay us more. We looked around and we realised that similar ventures run as businesses rather than charities charged £12 a session for children doing similar things to what we were doing. Bearing that in mind £4 still seemed very cheap!

    The problem we had was finding something to make comparisons with as we have never found another group offering craft activities to adults with special needs. It was the carers who brought folk to the group who told us what they paid for their children going to such activities in towns a few miles away from us. We had not heard of those activities.

    People ask us if we want funding but we are the richest group in the church. We have more money coming in than we can spend so buy things for the church. For example today I was talking to the treasurer to discuss what size of table we were going to buy for the church. After all we get free rent and heating.

    Susan

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #4219

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    I had look at Google Classroom and as a result, I realised that I could download the contacts on my android phone in csv format. These were addresses that had been imported from Facebook and Google+ I added them to a MailChimp account that has one working list that I have uploaded CSV files to.

    I had already found 3 or 4 lists of old email addresses I had harvested. Most of them came from when people had been silly enough to send me a message and let me see the names of everyone else they had sent it to. I had all the email addresses of all the people on 2 courses I had taken plus a couple of people had sent the same message to 50+ people at once for a newsletter that were of interest to people who wear at least one of the same labels as my target audience. One of these was mixed in with the contents of my email address book from some time ago. I was amazed to find this resulted in 629 people being added to that list.

    Once I added the addresses from my phone that list went up to 1159. I know that at least 2 people will not be able to read anything I send them as they have been promoted to glory. It is an old stone cold list although I know some people are still alive as they are related to me. I would be pleased with a response rate of 1%. It is on a separate account so that the high bounce and low open rates will not impact anything else.

    My intention is to send a one-off invitation to visit my platform and sign up for the main list. No one has opted into the invitations only list so it has to be handled carefully. With a one of shot like this, they need to be sent to a welcoming place to encourage them to sign up. That is my next step.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #4153

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    I went back to basics today. What really is my vision of what I want to achieve? Who am I supposed to be serving and how?

    I looked back at what I put on paper in the spring as well as what I did more recently and was surprised that there was so much overlap. I thought I had really wandered far from the intended path. I had not gone as far off as I thought.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #4144

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    If I am trying to think things through I find it so much easier if I am lying down. You have heard that some people take work home with them. I am already at home and I take it to bed with me. Many times I have written 2k+ words before getting out of bed in the morning. Yes, it helps that there is only one morning a week when I have to be somewhere at 9 am. You can’t lie down in a coffee shop.

    It was a struggle to sit up straight at my desk at school as I was either leaning forwards or backwards as that was the nearest I could get to lying down at school. A coffee shop just would not work for me.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #4010

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant
    This reply has been set as private.
    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #4002

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Proofreading in posts on the forum is easier if you use the grammerly add-on or extension for your browser. It catches enough of my mistakes to make what I write readable. Actually, it works on anything you type into your browser, WordPress posts, email in your autoresponder.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    2 users thanked author for this post.
  • #3835

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Perfectionism ouch! that was part of the nightmare I escaped a few years ago. It was amazing how many times I heard “I cannot do this because I am too unsure of myself.” or “I won’t start in case I cannot do it well enough.” End result nothing gets done and whatever the current coping mechanism is gets triggered.

    I like things done well but fine details drive me nuts. Knowing who you are and what you are capable of is incredibly important. Self-acceptance and self-respect are amazingly empowering.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #3641

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    My ex told me he was going to do things many times and never did them. Think the record was held by the wardrobes he said he would fix shortly before we were married and were still not fixed a year after I left them with him. When he said he was going to divorce me neither I nor my family believed him. Mum says he first mentioned the idea to her 20 years earlier hence her shock when he actually did. Looking back it was the kindest thing he ever did for me.

    So this is not too far off topic he had at least 3 separate attempts to set up and run his own offline business and every one of them failed. The last two combined drained our finances as he had no income for well over a year and unknown to me he was borrowing money hand over fist to pay the bills. As long as none of us here are quite that stupid we will be fine.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #1803

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant
    This reply has been set as private.
  • #1012

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Gregory You have proved my point from last night. Too many of us take the ability of others for granted and just don’t think about the obstacles we accidentally put in their way. We need people like you to speak up and help us meet the needs of those around us.

    Mary patiently took out all the dried fruit out of the scone she was breaking up into tiny pieces to give the elderly disabled lady she brought to church with her. She never said anything to us about how we could do better. Thankfully we noticed what Mary was doing and we have been a bit more careful what we offer people.

    We need you Gregory to help us help others.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

  • #964

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    After handcoding 2 or 3 sites I was really thankful to find WordPress. So much easier. I can do in a few hours what it used to take me a week to do. I still use some of the html and css I learnt at that time. Trying to do things like add a contact form was very hard now it can take a few minutes even with adding a plug in to do the work.

    Finding the right theme for you is trial and error. There again fashions change and you can keep up with them more easily using a separate theme.

    About a year ago I stumbled across someone doing a webinar on building sites using a plug in page builder by site origin. This is a plug in that uses a freeium model. I can do all I want to do with the free version. Their are a variety of page builder plug ins within the wordpress repository. It took me a litle while to be as comfortable using them as the demonstrator on the webinar but it has expanded the range of things I can do substantially. You never know it might not be long before WordPress includes some form of pagebuilder as part of its standard functionality.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

    1 user thanked author for this post.
  • #957

    Susan Parnaby
    Participant

    Bruce why not save them on your own system? You can then open them in a browser when you want to use them for reference.

    God's Lily is "a voice for those frustrated by the slow progress towards a fair society where the needs of the weakest are met in a way that it strengthens them rather than weakens them further" . If that includes you then hop on over and have a look around. If you like what you see it would be a good idea to sign up to receive our blog broadcasts. Oh and you will get a couple of pdf files that explain the what and why behind the site when

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