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.

Our websites have done well with nothing but organic traffic from search.  In fact, we don't have any products to sell so a list just hasn't seemed important.

For some reason I recently found myself asking "If we lost our presence on the search engines where would we be?"  The answer is not attractive.  We could sell stuff on Ebay or one of the other auction venues, but life would look much better if we had a list to work with.

Fortunately, while we have procrastinated, the tools for building lists have gotten much better.  They are more powerful and easier to use.  We recently discovered AuctionSound.com which combines Ebay sales management with list building and consignment sales.  We are testing it now and it may be the tool that finally turns us into active Ebay sellers and list builders.

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.

The reality seems to be something different.  I have had my Canon T2i for about a week now.  I set it to record the largest possible images (18 megapixel) plus RAW.  On a sixteen gigabyte memory chip the camera said I had room for about 415 images.

I went around taking pictures and everything seemed fine.  Then I tried to load the pictures into Picasa via an SDHC Class 6 memory card reader.  The pictures loaded, but all the Camera RAW images were weird, distorted and had a violet/pink cast.

So I think "Maybe the free Picasa program can't  handle the RAW files properly.  I should try the expensive ($200) Lightroom2 program from Adobe.  It will no doubt do better."  Wrong! Lightroom2 churned around for a while and then told me there were 72 files that had problems and it had skipped them.  Those were all the Camera RAW files of course.  Unfortunately, it didn't even see the 72 associated jpg's!

I hopped out onto the web and did some Google searches.  I'm not the first person to ask the question of what is going on and here is what I found.  The camera manufacturers change the codec every time they manufacturer a new camera.  You can think of the codec as a map to the image data on the memory chip before the camera software processes it.  Until they publish a specification or someone reverse engineers the data structure none of the current software will be able to read the camera RAW files properly.

What really surprised me, and prompted this post, is that apparently no one really cares about this and the lag between time first sales of a new camera and availability of  software with an updated codec is likely to be three to six MONTHS!  To me that screams "NO ONE CARES!"  If a lot of people used camera RAW files there would be actual demand for it and the new codec would be available immediately.

I am left with the feeling that many semi professional and professional photographers think camera RAW is important, but few of them actually need to use it immediately after a new camera comes out.  The reality is so few people are interested in actually using camera RAW publication of a new codec is very much a back burner issue.

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.

In fact, stock photography will now embark on a More's law descent based on the rate of change in camera technology.

I think this presents an opportunity for photographers willing to grasp the new technology and move quickly.  I plan to start making this size images available on my own stock photography sites and will be publishing as many of them as I can as quickly as possible.  It should be an interesting time.

I did some checking into requirements and it will take more than just buying the camera to make a system selling these large images function.  Canon estimates you will be able to get 40 images onto each gigabit of memory chip capacity.  In other words goodby 1, 4, even 8 gig chips.  It will be the same thing with hard drives.

The new cameras will let you make both a jpg and a camera raw copy of your image from a single "exposure".  I suspect that cuts that 40 picture estimate by at least a half.  However, it also means the originals can be kept completely untouched.  Buyers will know they are getting every pixel possible in it's original condition so they will be able to tweak them to their specific needs.

The new camera will also do video with an external microphone.  There is a button on the back of the camera that lets you switch from stills to video and back without pause.  Should be a fun time.

I really do think this will open the door so a lot more small time photographers will be able to compete with the big stock photography houses and profit from selling their pictures.

As people discover what they can do with WordPress they think of more and more features it "would be nice to have."  Thousands of plugin developers have been happy to meet this need.  So, today, the typical WordPress install consists of the basic WordPress core code plus five to twenty plugins that add specific features needed by a particular application.

A programmer typically gets involved when:

• The user can't find a plugin that does what they need.
• The user notices page loads have become unacceptably slow.
• Website users begin to complain they can't connect and/or get error messages.

All of these are symptoms which will probably require a programmer to fix.  We will be publishing a series of posts with specific details about some of these problems as well as potential solutions.

It's true you don't have to know as much as you did in the past.  It's true many of these systems DO make things easier than they used to be.  It's true the learning curve for a web development product like DreamWeaver is steeper.  However, at some level you simple CAN NOT get away from the necessity of some technical knowledge.

I was reminded of this when I attempted to actually publish my first XSitePro website.  Let me point out this is not a condemnation of XSitePro.  They just happen to be my most recent experience with this universal problem.

When you go to actually publish the site the system displays a screen that asks you to enter information you got when you set up your hosting account.  Unfortunately, the information web hosting companies send out can be quite different from host to host.  It depends on what software they use and how they have chosen to set it up.  These setup commands are the worst kind of technobabble.  They also must be entered Exactly right.  That means case, special symbols, etc. must all be correct or the command fails.  The failure error messages are extremely cryptic and may or may not relate to the actual problem.  There are to many variations for anyone to have a prayer of automating the process.

The first item they want is Domain Name.  For example, www.samplesite.com.  That's easy enough, but are you sure you want to use the www part of that?  Would samplesite.com without the www be better?  The answer to that question is VERY technical but getting it wrong may reduce the ability of your site to rank well because the benefits of links may be diluted.

The next item is Home Directory.  The first time around I missed the note in the fine print which said "Unless you have a specific requirement this should be left blank."  I filled it in with what I thought was the right information.  The software obediently published the site where I said it should.  Unfortunately, that was not  the folder you arrive at when typing the domain name into your browser.  So, even though the software said my site was published, it was in the wrong place and not visible.  Figuring that out required use of another program that let me look directly at the file structure on the server.  That's getting a little technical

Now we arrive at FTP Directory.  The welcome message from the hosting service I use does NOT include this little tidbit.  I suspect the usual non-technical user might find /domains/samplesite.com/public_html just a little difficult to locate and enter properly!!

In other words, the idea a completely non-technical user will be able to quickly and easily publish a bunch of websites is a myth.  They are going to need occasional help from someone who does understand the technology.  Once you have a working example and a pattern to follow things will be easy until something changes.  Then it is an ugly problem that has to be dealt with again.

On the bright side, non-technical people frequently know about things that make good content. Many technical people, especially the young ones, don't know anything except tech.  They can do all sorts of technical wizardry, but then look around and can't figure out what to write about.  I think there is a tremendous opportunity for one technical person to support the technical needs of 15-20 writers.  That way both can do what they do best to the benefit of all.

A couple of years ago when I first started exploring the idea of selling reports online there was a system called the $7 report system getting a lot of promotion.  The author had figured out $7 was a price point with little sales resistance and was promoting a system to write and sell these kinds of reports.  We toyed with the idea but part of the reason we never went far with it was because the process of making your reports available for easy download we difficult.

XSitePro has a membership site with several videos, one of which shows exactly how to use one of their wizards to set up a system to sell online reports like this.  I have not personally tested it, but it seems very straightforward to set up and the process requires no technical knowledge.

For someone who wants to try writing and selling digital products this would be a really easy way to set up  your distribution system.

Their membership site indicated they were working on a video to show how to set up an actual PayPal shopping cart, but this won't be as simple.  As soon as you start getting into all the choices required to make a viable shopping cart the process is bound to get complicated.

I think this makes a nice illustration of working within the design constraints of the software you buy.  This system was designed for buyers with zero technical skill.  If what the buyer wants to do was included in the system design parameters, sell digital copies of reports for example, it will work really well.

If the user knows more and wants something more elaborate, which is outside the design parameters, it can probably be done, but at the price of more complexity.  It always comes down to trade offs.  The question you need to ask is if you need the additional complexity.  When I ask myself that question I frequently find the answer is no.  I would be better off going with a simple system I could get running quickly.  Frequently features I am sure I will need turn out not to be that important.

I want to sell many (thousands) of unique items from a lot of websites.  XSitePro was designed for a user who wants to sell a few different products on multiple sites. This is such a significant design difference I am not sure it can be worked around.

When you enter a product for sale on an XSitePro website you can enter a description string, another string of your choice the currency (Dollars for example), and the price.  The form says you have to use PayPal's global shipping options to deal with shipping and handling charges.  The description string does seem to handle a complex URL without difficulty so the idea of using the URL of the page a product is described on as the product ID works.

PayPal's instructions and examples for setting up shipping options are not as clear as they could be.  I spent two hours working on them and still don't understand exactly how what I set up on PayPal will interact with the data sent from my website when the Buy Now button is pushed.

These difficulties have forced me to think about exactly when and why I need real shopping cart software.  If you want to let customers purchase more than one item at a time you need a shopping cart.  However, the cart has to be able to handle item deletions when people change their minds, tax calculations which depend on location of the buyer, variation in product weight, variation in shipping speeds and a host of other factors.  Shopping carts are NOT simple.

I am not certain all that complexity is always needed.  I think most of my buyers will only buy one or two things.  Would it be so bad if they had to buy them one at a time?  It would cost me a little more because a part of the PayPal processing fee is charged per transaction.  I think that is such a small amount I shouldn't worry about it.  If the buyer is purchasing five or ten items it would be a pain for them to have to supply their details over and over. Finally, the shipping charges should be reduced when multiple items are going to the same address.

I think in my circumstances there are non-shopping cart solutions to these issues.  If someone thinks shipping is to expensive I can post a notice I will refund any amount above actual cost.  That will cost me another PayPal fee, but only $0.30.  I can also tell buyers to send me an email with a list of items they want and I will package them up and send them an exact shipping amount.  Both of these "solutions" slow down the transaction and squash an impulse purchase.  I am not certain the buyers I expect to attract will be seriously put off by this.  Most will be Ebay shoppers who are used to paying at once and waiting a few days for their purchase to arrive.

Finally, not all the sites I plan to publish will sell products.  It may be worth purchasing XSitePro to use primarily to build content sites.  Time will tell.