Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Setting up my first StoreStacker store

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I spent part of this afternoon working on my first Storestacker store. I haven’t finished it yet because I’m watching the instruction videos as I install the software on my server and set up the site.

This is what I have so far … I made a store for my tech blogs – the blogs I haven’t been writing in very much lately, but plan to start adding posts to again soon. The store is simply called “The Tech Store” and it doesn’t have any products in it yet, but once I set up the categories I’ll be able to automatically fill it up with computer, gadget, software and tech related products. I have to figure out which store template I like best and tinker with it too. I’m not sure I like the default template all that much.

So far everything is going well. Once I’m ready the products that will fill up my store will be from Ebay, Amazon, Clickbank and probably RegNow. I’m hoping that I can use the Overstock plugin as well, but I think Overstock only allows US affiliates so i might not be able to add their products to my site.

If this store goes well and doesn’t use up too much of my servers resources I’ll set up a gardening store for my gardening blog, and maybe a more general store for this blog with home and garden, clothing and entertainment related items.

What I really like about the StoreStacker software so far is that not only will I be able to create niche stores, but I can add RSS feeds and videos that are related to the products I’m trying to sell as well as helpful on topic articles. Just those features alone should help draw some search engine traffic and will do it better than a plain store would.

I won my copy of Storestacker in a contest so I have nothing to lose by trying it. If you are interested in trying Storestacker you should visit their site soon as they just opened up for sales again this past Friday. They only sell a limited amount off store software when they open up so it’s still a fairly exclusive product that should give those using it an edge.

BTW I’m not an affiliate for Storestacker. I think they might have an affiliate program but I haven’t managed to find it yet! I’m just telling you how I’m using the software and if you have been interested in find a very easy way to set up a niche store you’ll probably like this program.

Update – my new store is doing great! I’ll be setting up other niche stores very soon. Oh and I do have an affiliate link for StoreStacker now so if you are thinking of buying this product I’d appreciate it if you’d visit the site through this StoreStacker link. Thanks!





A new way to network and promote your sites

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Yesterday I read a blog post about keeping your Twitter and Plurk accounts functional and it caused me to revisit a site that I’d been to in the past, but dismissed as not being what I needed at the time.

The site that I visited and subsequently signed up for was Ping.Fm. Perhaps you’ve heard of this site?

Ping.Fm allows you to update your social networks quickly and virtually from anywhere. Best of all, you can update all of your social networks at once!

In my last post I talked about how I think Twitter might be a waste of time for people because some of the bloggers I follow seem to always be sending out Tweets. Now add other social networks like Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Facebook, Friendfeed and a multitude of other social network sites and you could literally spend your whole day posting messages on these sites just to network and keep in touch with your friends. There are so many social networks popping out of the woodwork these days that it’s becoming overwhelming! So you can see why the idea of being able to post one message to one site and then have that message delivered to all of your social networks at once might be beneficial.

I think I originally dismissed Ping.Fm when I first came across it because I wasn’t yet a member of Twitter or Plurk or some of the other sites that Ping.Fm interacted with at the time. However now that I’m a member of at least half of the sites that work with Ping.Fm I can really see the advantage!

Ping.Fm is very easy to use. Just sign up and activate your social service. You can post your Ping.Fm messages directly to Blogger and WordPress.com blogs, Social sites such as Bebo, Brightkite, Facebook, FriendFeed, hi5, Identi.ca, Jaiku, kwippy, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter, and Xanga. You can also use Ping.Fm to post message to the following services – AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk (GTalk), Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, iGoogle Gadget, Facebook, iPhone Web App, and Mobile App (WAP).

BTW all the links in the paragraph above are to my social network profile pages if you’d like to visit them and add me as a friend.

Imagine how much time you’ll save by being able to post message to your friends and contacts on several of those sites all at once?

Now, if you happen to have a WordPress blog on it’s own domain there’s a WP Plugin called PingPressFm that will allow you to notify your social network sites about a new blog post. The WP plugin only works with WP 2.5 and higher so if you are a Ping.Fm member and want to use the plugin on your blog make sure your installation is at least WP 2.5 or higher.

Unlike some I don’t post a lot of messages to my social networks, but I do like the idea of being able to notify all of these services of new blog posts. Up until now I’d only been using Twitterfox to post blog post updates to Twitter. If the PingPressFm plugin works well I’ll use that instead.

Ping.Fm is in Beta right now and you need an invite before you can become a member. So consider this your invitation. The invite code is currently pingscompany. Oh and speaking of invites if anyone has an invite for Jaiku I’d love to get one so I can explore that site.

If you know of any other handy services that make it easier to network I’d love to hear about them.

Have a small bathroom? Get a small tub at betterbathrooms

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Do you live in a home with a fairly small bathroom? This seems to be typical of older homes – at least here in North America. My home was built in 1927 and my upstairs bathroom is tiny. It’s only about 8 feet long by 6 feet wide – or smaller. Now imagine a full size bath, toilet and sink in there? There’s barely enough room to walk past the bathroom utilities!

If you have a small bathroom in your home and either don’t have the means to renovate or the space to make a larger bathroom you might want to look at the selection of Small Baths that are available at BetterBathrooms.com.

If I ever redo my bathroom without making it larger I’ll probably get a small bathtub so it will fit in the space better. Some might say why not just convert to a shower, and while I do mainly shower in that bathroom it’s still nice to have the ability to soak in a tub every once in a while isn’t it?

Now BetterBathrooms.com doesn’t just sell products designed for small bathrooms, although it’s nice that they do, they also have a wide variety of regular and large baths, baths with whirlpool or air spa systems and a whole range of shower systems, bathroom accessories and furnishings as well as bathroom fixtures. They actually have over 3,000 products available for purchase at their online store.

BetterBathrooms.com’s business has grown over the years, so much so that now they are able to negotiate excellent deals with their suppliers which of course allows them to offer very low prices to their customers. They actually guarantee the lowest price to their customers, “we guarantee that if customers can find a cheaper like for like deal on any other online store, we will match it, such is our confidence in our prices, and our goal to bring our customers the best deals at the best prices.” Now that’s a great guarantee!

This company is located in the UK and is able to ship products throughout the UK.

Do you ever get the urge to redecorate a room?

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I really enjoy decorating my home and picking out furniture and accessories. I’ve always been interested in decorating.

It goes back to when I was a young teenager. My mom was very handy and she decided that my room needed an update so she took me to pick out fabrics for curtains and a comforter for my bed that she would then make herself. We also picked out wallpaper for my room as well.

Once we’d made our decisions I helped my mom make the items for my room and paint and wall paper my room. Then it was my turn to decide where I wanted my furniture. Naturally with the room having a whole new look I put the bed and other furnishings in different areas than they had been prior to our re-decorating.

After that, at least once a year I’d move my furniture around to give the room a different look. That habit stuck with me when I moved out of my parents home and went on to live in my first apartment and now our house. I still move furniture around or buy new pieces to change the look and feel of the room.

I’m not planning on buying any new furniture in the near future – we still have to finish our renovations – however, the interior decorator in me is jonesing to re-decorate. So, I satisfy that urge by occasionally going out and looking at new furniture with friends or relatives that are thinking of redecorating their home, or I browse online in order to find items that I might want to use in our house once we are done renovating and I can finally start re-decorating!

One online store that I’ve visited a few times is Concept Furniture. They carry a large variety of styles of modern furniture. The majority of their furniture is made in Europe – Italy, Spain, Belgium or Germany – and I think their selection is absolutely gorgeous.

If you are thinking of redecorating a room or perhaps buying furniture for you new home why not take a look at Concept Furniture? You’ll find a large selection of furniture for bedrooms, living rooms and dining rooms including tables, closets, entertainment centers, tv stands and more.

If you are interested in tasteful quality decor visit Concept Furniture.

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