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hilary

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Sorry :blush:, that was 'block' in the other sense of the word, as in a block of html code, ie an advertisement from Amazon instead of one from Google. They provide various options. But first, I think I might try putting an 'offer of the month' of my own at the foot of each page, with a Friends-only discount coupon. Can't hurt, can it?
 

lorrainep

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Sorry :blush:, that was 'block' in the other sense of the word, as in a block of html code, ie an advertisement from Amazon instead of one from Google.


Oh! Yes, you should have that. :)
 

hilary

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But wouldn't you rather have Google ads than not have the forum at all?
I shouldn't be surprised ;) But I did already say that even if I pack it in, I'll leave the forum intact, pay its way for a few months, and stick up a donation button for members to do the same in future. And at that point I could add Adsense to help things along. It just doesn't seem a good fit right now, while Clarity's still alive as a business.
 

lorrainep

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And at that point I could add Adsense to help things along. It just doesn't seem a good fit right now, while Clarity's still alive as a business.

You don't want to put in ads to make money, because Clarity is alive as a business - ?

;)
 

hilary

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OK, OK. Did I ever claim I was being logical? Thought not. Anyway, as long as there are things for sale under the nice 'Products and Services' tab, hopefully someone who stays here and keeps reading is worth more to me than the cent or two I'd get when they left. Hopefully ;) .
 

lorrainep

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OK, OK. Did I ever claim I was being logical? Thought not.

I'm just teasing. I'm trying to brainstorm on some ways to get cash flowing into here. It would be nice if ads could at least cover the hosting!
 

fkegan

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Value Added...

Hi Hilary and Lorraine,

An Amazon link makes most sense as part of an expert review of books on some subject where folks would come to read the reviews and then could click directly to Amazon to buy a copy of that work, which Amazon pays a commission for that referral (an Associate program not an ad program, I am told).

Of course you would have to find folks familiar with many, many I Ching books and their reviews to make it a truly value added service...either of you know anyone with a proven track record in that area? :D

Frank
 

heylise

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And how about putting advertisements for your OWN books and courses on your own forum pages? Now you (us) have to go there, and to be honest, I never do. I think only people who are searching for something actually hit a link to a place where they can find things. If they see the link..

A picture which grabs your attention. I know, pictures of audio courses and such are not easy to make, but it is possible. Even just a pretty box with an eyecatching text would make a difference.

LiSe
 

hilary

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Frank - chortle.

LiSe - yes, I like this idea, too. I'm putting changes to the forum on hold until after the new version of the software comes out (so I won't be doing lots of tedious technical things twice), but then I'll see about getting an 'offer of the month' on each page.

You're right about the graphics, too, though I heartily wish you weren't. Graphics programs and I are not friends.

Lorraine - yes, I know. :) It's OK, the hosting is perfectly well covered for now. By the way, it's really good to see the database at zhouyi.com back up and running.
 
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maremaria

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You're right about the graphics, too, though I heartily wish you weren't. Graphics programs and I are not friends.

.

Hilary, I agree with LiSe about picture's impact. Yi is full of "images" . About the graphics technicalities. Sometimes they do look complicate but it is not that difficult if you find someone to show you of do it for you.

What if you forget for a while your technical restrictions, take a piece of paper and draw how would you like to look your product services screen ? When i needed to make an ad for our company, or a brochure I choose logos, photos , fonts I liked, messages , then cut it in seperate papers and played with them in a white paper with the actual dimensions of the brochure I wanted to make. I could not use those publishing software's but I could show to the graphic designer what I wanted.
 

Sparhawk

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Hmmm, thinking about what LiSe said... You know that you have your forum right in the middle of the page using what, about 60% width, right? You could either offset the forum column to one side and use that space for offers or leave it as is and still use both sides for something else. It takes some CSS and HTML coding but should be difficult... The point is that you have some 40% unused width in your page. See my English blog for an example...
 

hilary

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I think the % unused depends on your screen resolution (it does in the rest of the site, anyway). I'm also pretty sure that putting anything in the unused space would require a complete rewrite of the whole template from scratch. :rolleyes: So for now I'm thinking more of headers and footers.
 

buzzurro

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Hilary
As for the forum, I'm not sure about what would need to change but I think I'd buy a book you'd written for two reasons. First, I gather from the forum that your view on the I Ching is worth exploring. Second, from what I can understand from reading your posts etc., you are not in it for the money. What I mean is that personally I'm very suspicious of people who find something that they think is a 'trend' and all they care about is make money from it.

Me too. I only have to add that I'd prefer to buy the book in digital format. I like ebooks because there's always enough room to store them ;), and also because you don't have to wait for shipment, just pay and download...

I would also like to have more Yijing translations in digital format. I mean, there's Wilhelm/Baynes, your Working Translation, LiSe's site and Bradford Hatcher's one,
and that's already a lot of excellent material, and all for free!
Thanks a lot to all of you! :bows:
But what about other good authors one might be interested into...?
Maybe I should search more, but so far I could only find two ebooks of Karcher's, sold on his own site. I searched ebooks.com both for "I Ching" and "Yijing", and I got more than 700 results, the closest of which was the Tao Te Ching, and the rest was about nearly everything ranging from astrology to weight loss...
:confused:
Sorry if it's very far from being a good idea, but that's what I started to fancy: Clarity selling digital versions of selected translations and books about Yijing... :eek:

And then, on a completely different matter, I once happened to consult the Yi on a quite embarassing subject, and to receive an answer that seemed to be even more embarassing... so I thought: how to ask for help in interpreting a reading that one would rather not share with the world...?
Does it fall into the category of the reading service, when I started the reading myself..?
Or could it be mentoring...?
Since I'm studying the course, I understand that I might spend an extra assignment for that, but this doesn't seem to apply to everyone else... is it only me, or could this be a different category of service to add to those already offered...? :confused:

Who knows, sometimes good ideas can rise from bad ones... :blush:
 

hilary

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Do you have Ewald's translation? That's definitely one to add to the collection. Some interesting ideas and a lot of very pleasing simplicity and directness.

Lots of people using the reading (and mentoring) service cast their own readings. (Also lots of people doing the course introduce readings they particularly want help with instead of doing a 'suggested assignment', so feel free.) But you have a good point: the pages are written to focus on people who are more at the 'what to ask?' stage than the 'is this as embarrassing an answer as I think it is?' stage. Thank you for the idea.
 

buzzurro

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Do you have Ewald's translation? That's definitely one to add to the collection. Some interesting ideas and a lot of very pleasing simplicity and directness.
:eek:uch: Ops! No, I hadn't found this one, thanks for linking!
(I tried to reply before, but my post fell into a well... :D)
 

bookgirl

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Just want to add that when I did a search for I Ching courses and limited it to UK sites only, there were a number that were associated with distance learning colleges, very popular and charging sometimes over £400 for the privilege of enrolling. Whether there is any mileage in trying to do a course through an existing institution - which would give it added value in some people's eyes and raise awareness of the existence to such courses - is possibly worth exploring. Obviously the college would cream off a percentage, but the amount going to you might be more than you are getting at the moment when people buy the course from this site.

I will also add my support for a direct link into Amazon, which is what several websites that I am a member do. Then people can contribute to your site without necessarily buying I Ching related materials.

Sandra
 
M

meng

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I think the % unused depends on your screen resolution (it does in the rest of the site, anyway). I'm also pretty sure that putting anything in the unused space would require a complete rewrite of the whole template from scratch. :rolleyes: So for now I'm thinking more of headers and footers.

This is exactly the mess I'm going through at the moment with my blog template. Screen size and resolution vary so widely these days.

I'm not familiar with such things, but bookgirl's suggestion sounds brilliant!
 
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meng

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Hilary, so you know, with a 1680x1050 setting, everything beneath your header takes up only the center 1/3 of the page real estate.
 

hilary

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It's a matter of numbers... how many visitors you can expect at each resolution. The downside to that is that of course they change all the time. The upside is that people who use unusually wide resolutions probably see a lot of pages that are two-thirds empty and are quite used to it.

Google says that last month my visitors' screen resolutions were roughly...
40% 1024x768
17% 1280x800
11% 1280x1024
8% 1680x1050
7% 1440x900
7% 800x600

Yes, still 6.56% at the good old 8x6. A year ago it was 8.25%, so the trend is declining; pretty soon it'll be absolutely fine to create websites that require people to scroll horizontally at 8x6. But when I had this current incarnation of the site designed, it definitely wouldn't have been.

(If I remember rightly, I went for fixed width to control column width on wide screens, to avoid having really long lines of text which are harder to read. There may have been some other crucial techie reason that now eludes me.)

I'll plan to design for a wider screen next time around... (oh, I can't wait...)
 
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maremaria

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The upside is that people who use unusually wide resolutions probably see a lot of pages that are two-thirds empty and are quite used to it.

...)


This is true. Even in the facebook (the way I see it from my screen ) the page is almost 50% empty .
 
M

meng

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Most new mice have left/right scroll controls. Nice is that they also allow for enlarging web text. So even my aging eyes can use high resolution without using a magnifying glass to read.

I had to drop the handsome dragon from the right side of my blog. As much as I liked him, he's just too much trouble to keep. Right margins - cleared! Web Design 101 lesson learned. :rolleyes:

Thanks for sharing your traffic profile specs. Kinda surprising to me. With flat LCD's becoming so much more affordable, I thought more folks were upgrading than that. I think they just about all come with native 1680x1050 capability. But then, that is quite an adjustment, dealing with tiny web column pages and such, so it's not surprising that some would reset to a lower res.
 

heylise

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I like it that the center is not too wide. I have lots of room at right and left, but don't mind that at all. Too long lines are confusing to read.

What I do quite often though, is open Clarity next to another window, and then I have to scroll left-right and back in order to read, and I don't like that at all. So a maximum width is great (for me) but not a fixed width. Would be nice if the width of the text would adapt to the available space. Like it does in Word and such.

Clarity looks nice, but a lot like a well-made book of an institution like a university or so. Looks as if you can find good and reliable information :rolleyes: - but nothing which makes you want to do fun things with money. No wanna-haves, no colors, nothing playful. I would like some things here and there. An interesting book, an intriguing line from a text, and of course where to get it. It's not that I 'want' to spend money, but a place where unexpected things might be found is fun. Even if it is only window shopping. Once in a while you find that book or whatever you would not have found otherwise. And buy it through Clarity...

LiSe
 

hilary

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The width does reduce to a certain point - it's about half my screen-width - and then you have to scroll. I think there was some reason why there had to be a minimum width as well as a maximum, but can't remember what it was... ;)

I like the sound of 'doing fun things with money'! Not quite sure what you have in mind, though... can you point me to a site or two that does this well?
 

solun

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Hi Hilary,
by now you have a lot of really good help from the posts I am seeing.

Problem is, selling spiritual wisdom is a bit of a contradiction, and may not lend itself so well to making money. "Buy wisdom and do not sell it" from another old book of wisdom ...

Anyhow, you could link up with some of the online sites like facade.com to do readings or direct to your site ...
Plus, let's be honest , if it's about money, it's about buying low and selling high. Maybe branch out a bit, be willing to sell 'related' things' - like a bit of clothing, jewelery, art, casting stix (could be beautifully decorated popsicle stix), etc.

Look around for things related to what the I ching represents - nature, the east, spirituality ... go a hunting online, there's lots of stuff out of China that isn't all discount store oriented - no pun intended - and out of India, too.
There's no shame in making the money you need. But I am of the school and experience that spirituality and money often mix in ways we can't predict or control.

Peace and best of luck. This is the year of the Golden Rat.
 
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hilary

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Hi Hilary,
by now you have a lot of really good help from the posts I am seeing.
Absolutely!
Problem is, selling spiritual wisdom is a bit of a contradiction, and may not lend itself so well to making money. "Buy wisdom and do not sell it" from another old book of wisdom ...
Oh yes, lots of dangerous areas here, many chasms to learn. I think one of them is actually the whole idea that anyone is 'selling spiritual wisdom.' Obviously that can't be done, so I must be selling something else. Like attention, care, experience, maybe providing one way that removes some of the obstacles that get in the way of receiving spiritual wisdom, for some people. I suppose it's something like the way doctors don't sell health.

... Plus, let's be honest , if it's about money, it's about buying low and selling high...
That's one thing it could be about, but I think it misses the core of the thing - which is about the agreement between two people to enrich one another.
 

musicpeace

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Hilary, the first time I read about you on The Business Oasis, I immediately thought of Tarot.com where they have an extensive iching system. I suspect that you are well aware of it, but bring it up just in case.

There was a period where I would use it extensively. I loved it. Used it to self reflect.

Are you aware of www.tarot.com?
 

hilary

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Hi Eliana,

Yes, I know tarot.com - love their technology, greatly admire their commitment to divination and the creative flair of the whole thing. In fact, the only thing I haven't liked about what they do (apart from owning iching.com, of course...) is the readings! I have an account there, I've had several tarot readings, and somehow they never seem to make a real connection. Also, they always used to have this truly dire habit of giving away half an I Ching reading, and withholding the rest until you signed up. I don't know whether they still do this... really, really hope not.

Thank you for the reminder, though. I need to take a deeper look at what they're doing now, and see what I can learn from it.
 

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