MMM: Pricing Your Products Fairly OR Pricing So You Can Eat

I have come across a couple of really great articles with regards to pricing your product fairly. I think it's one of the most difficult and important parts of having a business or just selling for fun. You need to find a price that represents your worth and the quality of your work as well as being able to sustain the expenses required to create. I strongly recommend checking out these articles! I found them to be ridiculously insightful and thought provoking.

♥ How to Price Handmade Goods
This is one of the greatest resources I have found in a while. Not only does it detail the ways to calculate a fair price for your products but it gives you step by step calculations to use in estimating overhead costs and things that a lot of entrepreneurs don't think to account. DEFINITELY WORTH READING!

♥ mindful earning: 3 rules to set prices with a conscience.
There is some really great information here about pricing with a conscious  and it brings up a really thought provoking topic. How you may actually benefit by increasing your sales instead of lowering them and the authors take on how consumers view products that are under priced.

♥ more profit = more to give
This is just an interesting article for those who may feel guilty or unsure about increasing their prices. It brings up the idea that just because you can gain a comfortable income doesn't mean that you have to be greedy and that you can contribute to other worthy causes, make a profit, and price your items fairly.

The opposite of love is not hate.

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference." -Elie Wiesel 

I read the book 'Night' when I was a sophomore in high school. This quote has always stuck with me. I think there is such truth behind this statement. I be if you were to ask 10 people off the street what the opposite of love was, most, if not all would say hate.  was one of them, if you were to ask me I'd answer the same way...without thinking. Maybe that's the problem. The fact that people often say what they are used to hearing instead of taking the time to think. I'll talk more about this next week. It's what I like to call the battle between true beliefs and accepted truths.
The issue with the accepted truth in this scenario is that love and hate are placed on the same scale. Do they belong on the same line? I don't know but I don't think so. You see, love and hate are a lot more similar than one may think. Yes, they are manifestations of positive and negative but that doesn't mean that as a whole they are opposites. It seems strange, I know, but when you break it down it makes more sense.
Love and hate are both emotions. What do they both have in common? They are both extremes. They both require passion, without passion people wouldn't get to the point of love or hate. They also require investment, emotional investment. Without emotions invested there wouldn't be any reason to reach those extremes. One of the most compelling similarities between the two is energy. Especially the amount of energy invested and used. Both emotions require the same high amounts of energy to even reach these feelings. I mean, for the most superficial example love and hate are both represented with the shades of red. You see there is a fine line between love and hate. The only defining factor is circumstance. Whether the circumstances harbor positive or negative feelings. Love and hate are most like two sides of the same coin, different but together.
      When you think of indifference as the opposite of love it begins to make more sense. Indifference is a prime example of the absence of f emotional investment and invested emotion. Indifference is not extreme at all. It's nonchalant and indescript. That is what sets it on the other end of the spectrum from love and hate. They don't need to travel the same scale but the don't belong on opposite ends either.

Monday Morning Meeting #1

posted by cfi02 on www.sxc.hu

     In my search for knowledge about starting a business I have come across a substantial amount of good information. Information that I could keep to myself, however, I'm feeling generous and would love to share some of the nuggets of knowledge with whomever happens across this blog. I am continuously scouring the interwebz for more info for myself, thus benefiting you in the process.

Here we go!

♥  Short and Sweet: 4 Tips for Fast and Easy Blog posts
I found this article on meylah to be simple, yet informative. I was really interested in the information about the audio software on the computer. I actually tried it out after I read this. I have wanted to invest in a recorder for a while now. Turns out my mic is too crappy to work well, but cool too nonetheless!

♥ Want More Readers? Try Expanding Your Internet Universe.
This article on Copyblogger was surprisingly insightful and eye opening. Intergalactic theme aside, I found it interesting how I, personally, was operating in a generally small orbit online. Without thinking about it, I assumed the people I came across online knew the same people/things/places that I did. The reality is I was right. The people in my 'circle' online are all connected, and most do know about the same things. It's really kind of exciting to go on a link hunt (At least I like to call them that) Where you click on an interesting link and then another and then another. You'd be surprised the types of things you learn and the types of places you end up. Actually, this is the way I have learned so much about small business, craft business, SEO and marketing. I hadn't ever ventured in that part of the internet before. I'm sure glad I did.

♥ 3 BIG mistakes to avoid with your creative biz blog
I liked this article by Tara of www.taragentile.com but I have to admit, it made me a little uncomfortable. Not in the way you may think though. It made me uncomfortable because I didn't know. She poses three simple topics that cause issues if not addressed well. I thought about how I utilize those things and I noticed I don't do it very well. When I try to think of the answers, I get stuck. It's good in that it makes me really think about things but it definitely is uncomfortable to not completely understand how it all works, or at least where to start. I'm on a journey and it takes time.

Hope you find something to take from these three articles! Until next time...