Hillary DePiano's Blog, page 34

When is The Whine Seller’s next e-commerce book coming out?

I mentioned a while ago that my next book will be a follow-up to eBay Marketing Makeover.If you’re really cleveryou noticed that the cover is already part of the graphic on the top of the page and that Miss Piggy (damn that pig!) accidentally revealed the title over on my writing blog. I was getting a little lazy with the secrecy because I expected to have that book out within a month or two of eMM and was going to announce it very soon. In fact, it even started to show up for pre-orders on...

Money Matters Managed

Sell Their Stuff:

If you took notes during thislast section, you should have a rough draft of all the financial details of your Selling Assistance service sketched out. As these are the most important terms of your business, it’s worth taking a moment to double-check them. Have you made a decision on all of the following?

How will you profit from your selling services? Are you open to just purchasing your clients’ items outright and reselling them? Will you charge a fee or commission? What wi...

Happy 20th Birthday, eBay! (Only like, 10% sappy love letter, I promise!)

Today is the big 20th Anniversary Party over at eBay HQ and, as discussed, I had to turn down eBay’svery kind invite to attend because of a prior commitment. There was no way to make it happen and I just sort of sat there going, “GAH!” for many long minutes before I had to decline because I knew it was absolutely one of those once in a lifetime type events and I hated to miss it.

Now, what I already had going on is pretty darn awesome so, please, don’t cry on my account. It’s just one of thos...

On that mysterious “NaNoWriMo book” entry you spied on my list a few weeks ago…

While I never officially announced anything, some of you glimpsed the phrase “NaNoWriMo book” on my project list in this pictureand I wanted to explain what that was about.

I’ve written a ludicrous amount of content about NaNoWriMo over the years. Lots of pep talks, lots of explanatory articles about the event itself, lots of tips on writing and meeting the deadline. I wrote it because I’m passionate about the event and for my area in my role as volunteer with NaNoWriMo and ML butthis passion...

One Year Ago Today: The value of grounding yourself in the real timeline

I have no concept of time. I’m just really, really bad at estimating how long ago things happened. For instance, I would have happily confirmed that eBay Marketing Makeovercame out last year and that Sell Their Stuff was released the year before that. But eBay Marketing Makeover was only released on June 1st of THIS YEAR, a mere three months ago, while Sell Their Stuff came out November 1st of 2014 which means it hasn’t even been out for a full year yet. So I was off my 9 months on eMM and ov...

Build yourself a timeline for paying Selling Assistant clients without getting burned

Sell Their Stuff: When should I pay my client?

Let’s say your client’s item sells right now, should you immediately send them the payment for it? Not so fast! A transaction isn’t finished when a buyer pays for the item. In some ways, it’s only just beginning.

Once an item sells, you’ll often get the payment at the same time, but not always. Depending on your payment terms, the buyer may have anywhere from days to a couple of weeks to pay for the item after committing to buy. If you don’t get...

School friendly TYA plays by Hillary DePiano, a guide for drama teachers and other theatre educators

The end of school is coming up and teachers other educators are looking for plays to do in the coming school year. Many of my plays are school friendly, The Love of Three Oranges is even a bestseller for high school theatre, so here’s a quick overview of everything I have available right now that can work with student actors from middle school to college. All are free of adult language and are fun and family friendly. Please consider any of these shows for your upcoming season.

Below you’ll f...

Exactly which fairy tale is Carlo Gozzi’s The Green Bird based on?

Sometimes a coincidence so weird happens, you just gotta share it.

As you know, I’m adapting an old collection of obscure Italian fairy tales called the Pentamerone into several plays. Well, as part of that process, I wanted to find out the name of some other fairy tale collections from that area that might have been around during the same time period.

I search for “Italian fairy tales,” find a list of stories, and figure I’ll just click on the ones I’m not familiar with and see when and wher...

Reporting and reconciliation of a Selling Assistant client contract

Sell Their Stuff: What kind of reporting should I include with my Selling Assistant client’s payment?

Before you send any kind of payment, you’ll want to give your clients a breakdown of everything related to their contract with you. How you draw up this reconciliation is up to you, but I think it’s better to err on the side of complete transparency when it comes to money (both what they owe and what you owe them) even if it means a lot of documentation. As long as you put the most important...

Word Count Update: Ahead for the year, behind for the month, still clueless about my writing life

Funny how the business of being a writer always seems to get in the way of the actual writing. Between some personal stuff cutting into the time I have to work and all the little administrative stuff there is to do for the launch of The Green Bird, I’m rather behind on my word count. Well, “behind” may be a matter of opinionbut let me give you a quickword countupdate. (No potato since those seem to be slowing down the site. I have a nifty new progress bar for these updates as you’ll see below...