It’s no secret that I love geeky gadgety things and I love spending as little time possible doing things I don’t have to do.  So, when I stumbled across Tunglealmost a year ago (or maybe it’s been over a year!) I fell in love instantly.

If you haven’t yet seen Tungle, it’s a socially slanted automated appointment scheduling system that integrates with your existing calendar.  For me, I useGoogle Calendar to schedule all of my appointments and I needed something that integrated flawlessly with Google Calendar.  I didn’t want to have to update the third party calendaring system with my availability but rather update it right within my own calendar.  I also did not want to spend time going back and forth with prospects.

Tungle changed everything for me.  First of all, it’s free which makes the program that much sweeter but second of all, the people behind Tungle just “get it”…  They understand what we want and they understand where we’re at.  The social connection inside of Tungle is fantastic.  Let me take you on a tour of it!

Here is the Tungle.me page – the most powerful part of Tungle.  This page allows you to setup a custom place for people to come and view your availability and schedule appointments with you.  If you want to view this in real-time, you can check out my live Tungle page at http://www.tungle.me/ErinBlaskie.

As you can see, people can view my real-time availability, connect with me via my social networks, view a photo of me so they know who they are booking the appointment with as well as have access to my contact information very easily.

Once people land here, they can drag and drop their own availability in the spaces available.  They can then request a meeting with me in those time blocks that they are also free in!  If the user is also a Tungle user, the service is even neater because it automatically pairs up the two calendars to show the user’s availability as well as mine in an overlay.

Now, when I want people to schedule a meeting, they can come here and do that and the times get sent to me in an e-mail request.  The e-mail request looks like this:

Once I confirm the time I want out of the times the user has chosen, an e-mail is auto-generated to them letting them know that the meeting is confirmed.

The entire process being this streamlined has saved me a TON of time in scheduling.  I would encourage everyone I know to sign up and get your Tunglepages setup!  If you want help, my team would be happy to assist you!  Just send us an e-mail and we’ll send you a quote!

A few months ago, I was asked the following question on Facebook:

Here is my response:

Publishing an e-book is actually a really simple process if one doesn’t over-complicate matters.  I’ve seen some clients whip through an e-book in a few hours while others take weeks and even months to produce an e-book.  Let’s first look at what an e-book really is.  An e-book is an electronic book that is generally delivered via e-mail and is usually a PDF file.  An example of a free, simplistic e-book can be found here:http://www.slideshare.net/erinblaskie/delegation-workbook.

Now, the process that we use to publish e-books goes like this:

1. Choose a topic. Choose something that is broad enough in scope but narrow enough in focus that it will attract a niche audience.
2. Lay out the content in a Word document. Most e-books start as Word documents while others start in Publisher or another fancy desktop publishing program.  However, Word works just fine!  Begin writing your content or copying / pasting your content into the order you would like it to appear.
3. Format and proof the content. Once you have your document laid out, it’s now time to proof it and apply first round formatting.  First round formatting includes things like header titles, bold and italics as well as bullets and other content items.  If you do not want to proof it or format it yourself, you can hire a virtual assistant to do this for you.
4. Add images where applicable. This is a good stage to go through your content and choose applicable images.  You can also have a graphic designer create and add custom photos or custom graphics if you need to illustrate something like a process or stats.  Stock photo sites have fantastic images to support the content you are discussing though and can usually be found for free or purchased fairly inexpensively.
5. Add a table of contents. At the beginning of your e-book, add a table of contents that links to the various heading sections located throughout your e-book.  If linked properly, when your document is PDFed, people can click the links inside of the PDF and be taken to those specific areas of content.
6. Add a cover page. Your first page of the e-book should be a cover or title page.  This should be designed by a graphic designer in a good print resolution.  Keep in mind that people will be printing it out so using all black or heavy colors could be intensive to print.
7. Add an about the author page and a call to action to the end. Publish your bio and photo at the end of the e-book and if it makes sense to do so, add a call to action.  This could be, “Contact us to get one-on-one coaching support with the material in this e-book” or, “Purchase additional books on our website at www.yourdomainhere.com.”
8. Proof and review the content one last time. Make sure to have a fresh set of eyes review the document if previously, you did the proofing.  This will ensure that all errors are caught and that the formatting looks pleasing to someone else.
9. PDF the document and save. You can choose whether or not you want to add security to your PDF (which would require people to have a password to open it) but otherwise, simply PDF the document and save it to your local computer.
10. Upload the document to your server in an unlisted directory or use a digital delivery program like 1ShoppingCart to host the e-book. This will allow you to provide download links to your purchasers.
11. Add the product to your e-commerce system. You can use something as simplistic as PayPal or you can go the route of a full e-commerce system like 1ShoppingCart.  You can then generate buy now buttons for your website.
12. Start selling and promoting the e-book! Utilize social media channels, your website and any e-mail marketing lists you have to spread the word about your book.

If you have clarifying questions, please post as a comment and we’d be happy to expand on this post!

In the past six months, I have been approached by a few different companies who were interested in a barter agreement.  You know, trading something for something as opposed to money for services, money for time, etc.  Here is one of the requests I received:

The request went on to suggest a barter agreement.  Since I have been receiving more and more of these requests, I wanted to open up the discussion around bartering.

For me, I decline all barter agreements and barter requests.  Why?  I personally think that in a barter agreement, one person is never quite getting the same value as the other person is. Generally speaking, one person is approaching someone else.  That someone else has a service or a product that the first person is after which makes that product or service really valuable for the barter requester.  However, the person being asked now has to gauge the value of the other person and their goods and services.  The barter requester may not have anything that is of the same value or they may place a price on their items that is well above the true value which makes the barter arrangement unfair.

For example: Joe the Landscaper has a broken toilet.  He calls up Sam the Plumber and asks Sam, “Hey, will you fix my toilet for me?  I don’t have any cash at the moment but what if I do some landscaping for you?”  Now, Joe is obviously the one with the higher need.  Sam wasn’t seeking a landscape artist and therefore, doesn’t have a need for that particular service.  If Joe’s landscaping fees are higher than Sam’s plumbing fees, he may not get much landscaping done and at the end of the day, he’ll feel cheated because he got very little of something he didn’t want in the first place.

If you are the person who needs the barter because you are lacking funds, think about how you can TRULY add value to the person you ask.  Approaching them blindly and offering them something that they may not want or need won’t work because they weren’t looking for it.  Instead, see if you can figure out what they do want and if you can, offer that to them.  Or, offer even more value than what they feel they are giving to you.

One of the most interesting barters I have ever been offered went like this: ”We need you to help us get more traffic and visibility to our website.  It’s not getting much traffic right now and is therefore not producing revenue like we’d like.  In exchange, we’d like to offer you a free ad spot on our website.  You can benefit from the visibility and hopefully get business referrals from it.”

Yes, I am serious and yes, you read that correctly.  The company wanted me to work for free to help them increase traffic to their site so that I could get more visibility on said site.  Why would I expend my time and energy working for free on a site only then to get visibility?  I might as well pour that time and energy into my own sites!

So, my own opinion on bartering is that it’s not a way to conduct business.  If you want to barter in your personal life, it might make more sense but watch for perceived value vs. true value.

I’d love to hear from you too – what is your take on bartering and do you do it?