Hillary DePiano's Blog, page 17

Give your eBay selling or store a memorable logo and avatar for visual consistency

This is post 17 of 21 in the series “eBay Marketing Makeover”

Create a standard logo and avatar

Mobile has made ecommerce more visual than ever before, and your logo is often a buyer’s first impression of your company. You want it to not only give a good one but also reflect your selling personality.

Here’s what to do:

This step is very similar to the previous one but deals with graphics instead of words. If don’t already have a logo, there are a variety of logo generators online that do...

I finished my adaptation of The Myrtle… again.

In all the moving / having a baby madness of the last year, I finished a play but forgot to actually tell anyone about it for almost an entire year! (Like, seriously 11 months almost to the day as I finished it on August 29th, 2016.) This play is The Myrtle, the fairy tale adaptation that actually started this whole gigantic Tale of Tales project in the first place.

In the end, it’s a good thing that I forgot to officially announce the play. I realized, after I finished the standalone version...

Prepare a description of your eBay store in varying lengths to give your buyers the best first impression

This is post 16 of 21 in the series “eBay Marketing Makeover”

Write up an official biography for your company

It’s time to properly introduce yourself to your ideal customer.

Here’s what to do:
Chances are you already have some kind of introduction to yourself or your company somewhere on your store already, maybe on your About Me or MyWorld page or in your store header. Even if you do, start fresh with a blank document and write a new one. You can always compare the two versions later an...

“Help! I have no motivation to complete my book. What should I do?”

You can always tell when I’m catching up on my inbox when I do a lot of mailbag posts in a row. Relatedly, here’s another one:

We met last year during NaNoWriMo (October 2016) in preparation for our arduous month ahead. Thanks for all the great info. I wrote 50K words that month and almost completed my suspense novel. I have perhaps 20 pages to write for the action sequence/chapter needed to resolve the story, but I find myself w/o motivation to complete it. I have several people willing to r...

Do you need an ISBN to submit your play to schools and other opps?

This is post 14 of 14 in the series “Self-Publishing a Stage Play” Here’s another one from the old mailbag about self-publishing a stage play… I recently read your article about self-publishing and wanted to reach out and ask. I recently saw that several contests for schools require schools to perform one-act plays (under 30 minutes and some contests state only plays of 10-15 minutes will be accepted) but these plays must have an ISBN number to be considered.… Read more

This post appeared firs...

Guide buyers to your items by using your top eBay keywords on all your sites and social profiles

This is post 15 of 21 in the series “eBay Marketing Makeover”

Optimize the keywords in your external presence

Here’s what to do:
Take a look at your social media presence, your external website, your blog or wherever else your company is beyond eBay. The same general rules apply to keywords here. Your social media bio, the title of your website, and the categories of your blog are all opportunities to use the terms your buyers are most likely to search for. Search engines love social medi...

The Great Kermit Kerfuffle

There was drama in the world of Muppets this week. Steve Whitmire, the puppeteer that Jim Henson himself personally trained and picked to succeed him in the role of Kermit the Frog, one of two original Muppet performers left, is no longer with the Muppets. Kermit has been recast to (as?) puppeteer Matt Vogel. Dramatic as it is but then a blog post reportedly by Steve Whitmire himself (as of now unconfirmed) puts out a statement that he did not leave willingly. The plot, as they say, thickens...

Oops!

So, um, hey. How ya been? Uh, yeah, it *has* been a while and that’s… kind of a funny story. See, I didn’t mean to take a year + hiatus from this blog. In fact, I didn’t mean to take a hiatus at all. And since the last thing I posted was about me possibly closing my eBay store you probably thought I fell off the face of the earth, didn’t you?

Well, here’s what actually happened. I decided not to close my eBay store and then didn’t queue up any more posts here because I was about to absolutely...

June 2017: plot bunnies and other distractions

Time is absolutely rocketing by and it is unacceptable. Baby is getting all big and stuff which is very rude when I want her to stay tiny and snuggly forever. But she said, “Mama” a week ago so I forgive her. The other one said just about every word in the dictionary before Mama so at least this one knows where her bread is buttered.

Mama is feeling very wistful these days, when I’m not absolutely terrified AF for the future for me and my girls. It all has a mental toll. The world around us j...

Evolution of an idea: The (Completely Inaccurate) Legend of the Mummy Witch House

I have a brand new play, The (Completely Inaccurate) Legend of the Mummy Witch House, which has just officially been published by Playscripts. You can read the play for free*, purchase scripts or license productions here. It’s a short, very silly, not-even-remotely-scary wacky horror comedy for middle school and up that I think you’ll enjoy for Halloween or anytime.

But as the title suggests, this play is a really goofy mash-up of a bunch of random horror-related things and since the most fre...