In our case we plan to publish many of them on more than one website.  For example, we may have a Serigraph published by Tewa Enterprises.  We will talk about it and others in our collection like it on TewaEnterprises.com.  When and if we decide to sell it we will list it on NativeAmericanArtsAndCrafts.com.  There may be some months between these two event so we need a minimal effort system that lets us track this.

“Real” stores all seem to use SKU’s (Shop Keeping Units) so we tried doing that.  It became apparent very quickly this is labor intensive and prone to errors.  In effect you are building a large database system.  I have had enough experience with those to never want to go near one again.

We eventually realized the camera assigns a unique number to each picture we take. We understand that this number may repeat when the camera counter rolls over at 100,000 images, but don’t expect that to be a problem.

We use the Picasa program, downloaded for free from Google, to track our pictures.  We also assign keywords to pictures as we use them.  Since Picasa includes Google’s search power that works well.

For example, using the situation mentioned above, we might take pictures of a Harrison Begay Silk Screen published by Tewa Enterprises.  We would have one picture that showed the entire Serigraph, another that shows the signature, one that shows the written description, etc.

In Picasa we would add TewaEnterprises.com as a keyword to each of these pictures.  When we uploaded the pictures to the website(s) we would make sure the file name is included.  Sometimes this is automatic.  Some of the software we use for site building doesn’t change the file name.  Some other programs do change the file name so we have to make sure the original name is included somewhere associated with the picture.

For example, we will include it in the product description which is part of a PayPal button.  This way when the notification of a payment made arrives from PayPal it includes the file name.  We can do a quick search in Picasa for the file name and immediately see exactly which item we are talking about.

The other side of this issue is that the actual items need to be marked with the file name too.  How this should be done depends on the kind of item we are dealing with.  Some things, like our Erzgebirge Smokers are best marked with a hang tag.  Hang tags don’t risk pulling paint loose when they come off.

We bought a label maker which includes a variety of sized adhesive ribbon.  This works well for glass items where we don’t worry about adhesives drying and causing damage over time.  Many items can just have the label dropped inside them.

We are still working on how to organize these things around the house. We don’t have a shop and like to display as many of these collectibles as we can.  That means we need a system where others, such as our kids, would be able locate things as they sell.  We are still testing ideas for how we might accomplish this.

I went to their site, and while it is informative, it’s hard to tell much about a complex software system by reading a feature list and the vendors sales literature.  At that point I usually do a search for “software name review” in hopes of reading about the software from people who are actually using it.  Lately that has been really disappointing.

Almost all the results of a search for reviews bring up sites that are really thin affiliate sites whose only purpose is to get you to buy the software using their link.  Few, if any of them, have actually  used the software.  The “content” is carefully designed to make it look like they actually know something and that their review has substance, but that’s not the case.  It’s very frustrating.

An in depth review of a complex software system is a lot of work!  You can read all the sales materials, run a few text cases, and get some sense for what the system might do.  However, the only way to find out how it really works is to actually use it in a real work environment for a while.  Only then will you find the subtle constraints imposed by the underlying design concepts.  You will also find places where features you originally thought were  essential are not needed.

In other words it take lots of time and use to really be able to write a good review.

AuctionSounds looks like it might be a Ebay selling system that would help fit Ebay sales into our activities with our network of websites.  We plan to document our findings in a series of posts on our Selling Stuff website.  As we learn how the software works, run auctions, manage sales, build lists, etc. we will be posting about what we find.  Hopefully, that will help others determine if the software would help them.

Unfortunately, when we came back from our Arizona desert wildflower trip with 3,400 pictures to process some of the strengths of Lightroom for workflow management became apparent.

Lightroom3 beta was available now so I installed it.  I find it incorporates some of the watermarking capability it previously lacked.  This is good because I like to watermark my images before I publish them.  Even more important is that Lightroom supports virtual copies.  You can make as many virtual copies of an image as you want and treat each of them differently.  With Picasa I would have to undo the changes and re-export for each set of changes.  That means I would have to remember what I had done and/or where I used the exported picture.

I think Picasa is the tool of choice for most people.  It really is easy to use and understand and it’s ability to add captions to pictures is much better than Lightroom.  I assume that is, at least in part, because Adobe is trying to preserve the Photoshop niche.  Virtual copies and more powerful organizing tools require me to use Lightroom.  You can probably see where this is going…

I’m going to have to use both for at least a while.

We have learned to be skeptical over the years because so often the advice is trivial, and sometimes dangerous.  Google, for example, is not very forgiving if they catch you using “black hat” techniques to improve your rankings.  Still, there are people and companies who have been selling their SEO services for years and seem to do well with it.  Presumably they have happy customers who give them good referrals.

We have come to realize these systems have two universal themes.  “With our system it’s easy”.  “With our system you won’t have to write lots of original content“.  Original writing is hard.  You have to do research,  you have to educate yourself, you have to organize and summarize your reference materials.  Then you need a good command of the English language and writing skills to craft well written, entertaining, educational articles.  Sure, you can try outsourcing your writing needs to India, but it won’t work.  Content “Spinning” software may create text that will fool a search engine, but it will not impress a human reader.  The technical requirements have gotten easier but if you realistically hope to stand out from the crowd, it is going to take work.

This post was triggered when I saw a video by a guy being touted as “one of the best SEO’s in the world”.  One of his solutions for creating the content needed to grow your website was to subscribe to RSS feeds from 20-25 related websites and write a 200 word “review” of what they said.  With practice that would take about five minutes so by investing an hour a day you would add 200-250 posts a month to your site.  He seemed to think that kind of “content” would be sufficiently interesting for people to link to your site.  I am doubtful.  I know I would keep looking around until I found the site(s) that were doing their own work.

This aversion to writing creates, in my opinion, a real opportunity for writers. Writing is hard work and writers are poorly paid for what they produce.  Unfortunately, many are also computer illiterate or phobic.  If writers could conquer their fears of technology they are ideally suited to develop profitable websites.  They already know how to do research, how to interview people, how to write entertaining articles, etc.  These are all skills the tech heavy online publishing world is weak in.  The out of pocket cost of a domain name and website hosting is almost nothing.  Readers will give you immediate feedback on what they like or don’t  like; you don’t have to wait until the book is published.