Hillary DePiano's Blog, page 6

Are you getting enough Whine in your diet?

For a long time, The Whine Seller mailing list was just a sub-section of my fiction mailing list but we’ve been outgrowing that for a while now. As part of , I have finally created separate mailing lists for the two spheres of my writing life.

The new Whine Seller mailing list will be about selling online, working form home and e-commerce. (If you still want to hear about my fiction and plays, you’ll have to join my other list.) But The Whine Seller list is getting an...

9 Ways to Stop Shopping Cart Abandonment

Today we’re going to take about… the ones that got away. No, no, not that cutie in your 10th grade history class! Instead, Karlie Kramer of Fundera.com is here to talk about shopping cart abandonment! 

-T. W. Seller

Did you know that three-quarters of all online retail purchases are abandoned before they’re completed? Shopping cart abandonment is frustrating yet common, and virtually all online stores face it at one point or another — no matter what ecommerce platform they’re using.

Shopping cart abandon...

Special pre-order price for Building a Writing Life

Hey! Guess what? I have a new book coming out this October! It’s called Building a Writing Life, after the talk I’ve been doing for the last few years, and it’s all about getting started as a writer and building up a writing habit. It’s the first book in my How to Start Writing Series for Writing Beginners and I know you’re going to love it! While every retailer has their little quirks so many won’t list the book until it’s been released, Amazon and B&N will both let you pre-order the eBook r...

Want a free advanced copy of my latest?

Hey, you! Yeah, you, reading this right now. I need your help. You’re here because you dig what I’ve got to say and I really freaking appreciate that. And I’d like to enter into a little mutually beneficial arrangement where you help me out a bit and I give you advanced copies of my latest writing books and other exclusive goodies in return. I’m starting a street team. And while it’s going to be a work in progress for a while as I get it started up, there’s one part you can do now.… Read more...

Catching up! New book, new plays, new tricks!

I did drop off the face of the earth for a bit there, didn’t I? In the past, I would write, edit and format my blog posts all in a single evening. Because I rarely have a chunk of time long enough to do that anymore, I thought I’d break it up this year. Write, edit, and format separately. That way I could, in theory, break each post up and work on it here and there instead of needing a big chunk of time. Except what happened instead is that I have a lot of blog posts written and edited… but h...

Shopping cart widgets let you turn any website into an e-commerce webstore

Shopping cart widgets

When you look at it on its most basic level, what is a webstore anyway? It’s some product listings, a few pictures, some text… all of which are pretty simple to set up without any fancy tools. What separates a webstore from just a list of products on a static webpage is the ability to purchase those products and that checkout process is almost always referred to as a shopping cart. At the least, a shopping cart functions like a buy it now button that directs the buyer in...

Ways to Improve Your E-Commerce SEO

How is your e-commerce SEO? Are you sure you’re getting your products in front of as many customers as you can? Today’s guest post from Qeedle‘s Michael Deane is chock full of tips to help you get your store higher in the search engine rankings.

-T. W. Seller

By 2021 global e-commerce sales will reach $4.8 trillion.

It’s clearly a huge market which keeps on growing and this trend can have a positive impact on your online store. 

However, it’s not only revenues that grow – the number of e-co...

5 Helpful Ways To Increase Your Conversion Rate With Social Media

These days, everyone’s on some kind of social media. But how can you turn all those likes and retweets into sales and conversions? Today’s guest post from Synccentric‘s Gabe Nelson has some great tips from getting more sales from social.

-T. W. Seller

Using social media to help boost your business is a great idea. There’s a lot of ways to interact with current and future customers in more personal ways than relying on a contact form or email. You’ll be able to see how your products or servic...

Brave the Page Review: NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program Writing Guide

There’s a new NaNoWriMo guide coming out on August 27th specifically geared towards young writers. It’s called Brave the Page by Rebecca Stern and National Novel Writing Month Executive Director Grant Faulkner and I was lucky enough to score an advanced copy. Regular readers know that I am a great lover of National Novel Writing Month aka NaNoWriMo and parent to a young writer so this is doubly relevant to my interests!… Read more

The post Brave the Page Review: NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Prog...

Finely Aged Whine (Seller Stories): The Goof Up and The Guilt Trip

See the whole archive of Selling Stories here.

Those of you up on your Whine Seller lore know I started my eBay business when I was 17 years old. Well, one of the downsides to running an eBay business as a teenager alongside school and two jobs and a social life is that you’re a little distracted and distraction equals mistakes. I’ve made soooo many mistakes over the years like mixing up shipments or sending another random item along with the thing I’m supposed to be shipping or emailing the...