Month: March 2016

Our Amazon.com eCommerce Experiment

by snall

In an effort to feed our family, fund our 3 children’s education, attempt to retire with dignity, and buy some time for quality life activities, we have been pursuing some eCommerce projects. This article is specifically about our Amazon.com selling project.

Click here to view our Amazon.com product listings. If you buy anything, please ensure that the seller shows as “FadsAndMore” (it should) and leave a product review and seller feedback with five stars to help us rank higher and get more sales. Click here for specific instructions on how to provide feedback. Also notice the button below “Provide Seller Feedback” in the article screen shot that says “Write a Product Review.” By completing both of these tasks you will greatly help us in our efforts since our seller rank will rise and we will get more views by other customers. In fact, without it, our chances of success are very low.

Our profits continue to increase month after month as we source new products and learn more tricks of the trade. Data is a big focus for us, now more than ever. The goal is to grow the business and eventually have our own products on our own eCommerce web sites. Shipping will be free if you have a Prime account or if you have a specified minimum order total as indicated on the listing. We don’t engage in “races to the bottom” on prices. We focus on quality, in-demand products for our customers. We will also provide discounts to friends and family, so be sure to ask us on Facebook about it. Competition is increasing but there are ways to stand out. We have learned a lot in the last year and a lot has changed. Amazon has changed many of their policies and we continue to remain informed and compliant.

Amazon initially contacted us after seeing our eCommerce web site and asked us to participate in a program to list our products. The products listed there currently have changed considerably since early 2016 and continue to be replaced and augmented with new choices. It has taken a lot of study and effort to get where we are now, but we have a long way to go. Please share this with your friends and family, and thank you for visiting this site!

 

Creating Rounded Corners in Images Using GIMP

by snall

gimpFor the uninitiated, GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a free PhotoShop-like program for creating and manipulating images. This article assumes that you are already familiar with the basics of installing and using GIMP. If you need help getting to that level, please visit https://www.gimp.org/ as a starting point.

Here’s one way to produce images with rounded corners. For this article, I’m going to make an image to be used as my favicon for my site. It appears in the tab when you visit a web site and also in the bookmark or favorite when you bookmark a site.

  1. Open a new image of the desired size. WordPress recommends 512 x 512 as a minimum, so let’s use that size.gimp-rounded_corners-01
  2. In the layers dialog, right-click on the layer for the new image and ensure that “Add alpha channel” is selected. Alternatively, click Layer from the menu bar, then Transparency, then Add Alpha Channel.gimp-rounded_corners-02
  3. Click on the “Select” menu option, and click on “Rounded Rectangle.”
  4. Set the radius to 50% in the dialog that pops up. You can adjust that value up or down to see what works best for you.
  5. Go to the edit menu and select “Copy”, or use Ctrl-C.
  6. Go to the edit menu again and select “Paste as”, then “New Image”, or use Shift-Ctrl-V. You now see transparent corners giving the rounded corners effect.

You can continue to finish your project with your rounded corners base image.