http://sellingtshirtsonline.com/create-low-cost-t-shirts-with-vistaprint/

Vistaprint has many gift and household items too and all of them can be personalised using your own photos or other graphics if you don’t want to use their stock range – although that is very wide.

If you have never seen what they have to offer or have only tried the business cards, then take a look.

And they even produce t-shirts!

Well that is what some people think but I don’t agree. In fact this could be the very best time to start up.

Ok so maybe your customers have less money to spend but costs are lower too. Start small now and let it grow and learn to survive. You may not be making much money for a while but you can learn the business, make contacts, build trust, reputation and a customer base. Then  when things improve your business will be there to take off.

Of course getting finance is not going to be easy but this is one way in which an internet-based business using Provide-On-Demand (POD) services or selling information and eBooks can have a big advantage. Why? Simply because very little capital is required.

You don’t need stock or warehouses or employees – all that is in effect contracted out.

For example you might want to design and sell t-shirts or office goods or interior design products such as clocks or cushions. (Or bags or ear-rings or watches or… there are a lot of possibilities).

You create – or buy – the designs, you set up the store, you advertise and sell the items. And then some other company covers all the costs of producing and shipping them! And the profit comes to you.

If you sell information products distributed over the net then there is not even a physical product to deal with (although if you sell on ebay current regulations say that you must provide a physical copy on CD as well).

So right here right now could be the perfect time to start a new small business – and the writer of this article in The Independent newspaper agrees:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/sme/a-recession-can-be-a-good-time-to-start-your-own-business-1636071.html

———————————————————————————————-

FOR MORE INFORMATION
on starting an online business using POD  services
go to the “Selling T-Shirts Online” website:
http://www.sellingtshirtsonline.com

———————————————————————————————-

]]> http://www.sydhancock.com/start-a-business-now-you-must-be-mad/feed/ 5 http://www.sydhancock.com/is-there-an-optimism-gene/ http://www.sydhancock.com/is-there-an-optimism-gene/#comments Sun, 01 Mar 2009 09:56:54 +0000 Syd Hancock http://www.sydhancock.com/?p=90 How much are moods and attitudes influenced by upbringing and experiences, the classic ‘nurture’ half of the ‘Nature/Nurture” dichotomy and the basis of theories of inter-personal psychology and “Personal Growth”?

Could it be that they are  also  influenced by a genetic disposition to optimism or pessimism?

First we should look at how this could occur. It is easy to think of ‘moods’ as if they are just imprecise non-physical ‘feelings’ or ‘emotions’ but of course we know that they are accompanied by or caused by chemical changes in the brain.

An example is that vigorous exercise produces endorphins, the body’s own painkillers and mood-enhancers. The endorphins change the brain’s chemistry and change mood. Going to the Gym really can cheer you up, it’s a chemical fact!

Research findings recently published in the “Proceedings of the Royal Society” seem to show that there are differences in certain genes between people who dwell on the positive attitudes of seeing life as ‘half-full’ and those who are drawn towards ‘half-empty’ responses.

The mechanism by which this happens is still being investigated but one possibility is that the genes could be affecting the amount of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin affects moods including anger and aggression so higher levels of serotonin would mean better moods.

Another possibility is that a certain area of the brain called the amygdala is seen to be more active in people with the ‘negativity’ genes and this may make such people more inclined to be neurotic worriers with bouts of anxiety.

When I first lived in Brittany, the first winter I had two piles of logs. One was just left out in the open but the other one was completely covered with a plastic sheet reaching to the ground. Not knowing any better, I was trying to protect it from the rain (and there’s a lot of rain in Brittany!).

When I came to start using the second, uncovered, log pile I was amazed to find that it was dryer and burned much better than the pile that had been covered completely.  I realised that although rain reached the surface of the wood, the wind blowing through was drying the whole pile and the rain had barely penetrated.

That was the first lesson.

Then I noticed that out in the Breton countryside every house has a log pile and that the locals cover the top of them with plastic or corrugated iron sheets to keep the heavy rain out but leave the sides open to the air.  They say that in Hollywood you can never be too rich or too thin – well in Brittany you can never have too much firewood…

Our farming neighbour Marcel had a huge pile of about thirty three metre (ten foot) lengths of tree trunks stacked behind his house.  Talking with him I learned that they were from the big storm on 1987 and he’d been steadily splitting, drying and later on burning them for over twelve years with still plenty left.  In fact he only recently split the last of them and hasn’t yet burned the last of the logs so his stack has lasted over twenty years.

How long to dry logs is something that people have strong opinions about.  People like Marcel have been using wood as a crop and source of fuel for generations so I tend to think that he is worth listening to.

His advice was that hardwoods such as oak or chestnut should be split and then kept outside for at least two years and then kept inside for another year before being burned. Soft sappy wood like pine should be avoided if  at all possible because of the extra tars, and because it burns very fast, but if you have to use it then keep outside first for at least four years so that the sap can be dried out as well as the water content.

I know not everyone will agree with this but as I said before,  he knows what he is talking about.  The length of time that Marcel was advising is the minimum and of course in practice the logs are split and put under cover in a drafty shed or lean-to and just left for years.

Marcel has a long shed running the length of an old barn, open at both ends.  He takes wood from one end and the other is filled with logs which his long-suffering son spends an hour or two splitting every sunday when he comes to visit for the traditional big family lunch. Every year or two he changes ends as he reaches the middle of the log shed.

I had some wood that was outside for over five years. It was oak in metre lengths, quite heavy when delivered.  It was amazing just how light it became after it was really dry – it felt like balsa wood and burned completely giving off a lot of heat and leaving almost no ash.

Amazingly enough, although it will kill e.coli and salmonella as well as many other nasty bugs, it is safe to drink and people using it who work as industrial cleaners no longer suffer from fumes and skin damage.

There is a lot more about the story in the LA Times.

What comes across most strongly in the lyrics are the elements of despair, bitterness and frustrated rage and some people never see beyond that. My partner for example cannot stand the song, she just finds it depressing – maybe because it reminds her of some of the very difficult times we have been through in the past when I was a raging drunkard too.

That’s an indicator of the power of the song – it raises emotions, sometimes painful. It’s not entertainment, not easy listening, even if it does get trolleyed into the radio playlists every Xmas.

In fact reading the lyrics alone can be a shock. But to hear the song, to hear the entirety of those words together with the music with its uplifts and sense of release, the interplay of voices which mirror the struggles in the song in their contrast of McGowan’s broken craggy age-old rasp and MacColl’s soaring rich tones, the song itself contains such joy and optimism despite everything that we are told has happened between them.

The choir is singing of Galway, of Home, welcome even if they are the cops, and the Bells are ringing out… the Xmas bells, symbols of joy and celebration. They are heard even in the NYPD drunk tank.

What a song.

How does McGowan do it? Well, he’s a story-teller. It’s part of his heritage and part of his upbringing, the times he spent in rural Ireland. A living tradition. He lets the words tell the story in the gaps. You hear what these people say as the teller thinks back in his cell and you fill in the rest. Absolutely masterful story telling and perfectly matched by the performance of the Pogues and MacColl.

Transformed into something beyond itself. Now that is Art.

I’m not sure if McGowan would use the word but it is Art – Art with a capital A and the eternal Craft of the Bard.

Some Xmas songs are about happiness, some are cynical, some are calls to think of the past and the future but I cannot think of anyone else who could write a song like ‘Fairy Tale of New York’ with its immense range of emotions – lost dreams, bitterness and disappointments of failed relationships between people who are somehow still bound together and then the wild uplift of the music celebrating that, despite all this, it is still Christmas: there is joy, there is some kind of promise.

It’s a song about relationships of many kinds.

Relationships between people, lovers, yes but also being McGowan and his awareness of his heritage, it’s a song about the Irish diaspora, the contrast between the promises and the often-bitter reality of the American Dream.

And then it becomes universal: a song about us all trying to make our way through this shattered and shattering world.

Very plain, old-school look, hopefully clear and simple information.

It must be at least five years since I did any web-authoring so it all took a long time to get back to speed even with simple mark-up and basic CSS.

Plenty of room for development in the future though!

Winston Churchill called it ‘the Black Dog’ and sought refuge in brandy and cocaine like many before him. Depression. Negativity. Mood swings. The Blues.

Nick Drake wrote about depression in ways that only a genuine sufferer could have done and like no-one else ever has. He was not working from imagination, he knew. Simple words that express the simplicity of not wanting to feel, not wanting to live, not feeling, shutting down into a simplicity of bleak pain.

‘Black-eyed dog knew my name’ – probably means nothing at all to many people but to anyone who experiences depressions or bi-polar mood swings it is that inevitability, the inescapable force that comes just for you, that chases you down, that savages you, that comes from inside, that is a part of you yet is so different from the person you are most of the time that you actually do become another person with different thoughts, a different voice, different actions. It’s weird.

It is not hard to understand why some people believe in possession by an alien spirit because the contrast, the personality change, is so great.

Sometimes it is bitter rage which is at least a sign of life, sometimes it is that black empty pit of passivity, of not caring about anything, where you look for meaning in your life, you look for answers but there are none. This is truly ‘the time of no reply’.

And yes it is enticing, ‘calling me to stay’. Such a few simple words but they convey so much to anyone who has ever felt that particular shard of reality.

Yet other songs speak of such joy, such intense joy, love of people, love of nature and the magic of life. Peak experiences, joy that is always too fragile and fleeting to last. But we cannot function for long with that intensity.

For years I could not listen to Nick Drake’s music because of the depths of truth in them. The playing is masterful and melodic, his voice so rich and warm, the words so calm so gentle…Yet so full of pain. I just had to turn them off before they dragged me back and down and held me under…

And after all it was so deep that in the end the depression killed him, whether by accident or intent. He didn’t just sing about depression, it killed him. It killed him.

Why not take a look at it if you are in any way interested in the possibilities of selling goods online using provider services. They do all the printing, producing and shipping which just leaves you and your laptop to do the designing, marketing, taking orders and hopefully counting the profits without being tied to running a physical mail-order business.

It’s a model that is not as completely automated as delivering eBooks online but there are a lot of other similarities.

Web design
This evening I am working on a web page for the Norwich Healing Centre which is due to open in a few weeks’ time.

I’ll write more about this soon in my healing blog Mystic Cloud: Feet on the Ground. It’s a while since I did any web authoring and I’m having to get back to speed on CSS and so on.

It will be very simple – nothing fancy just plain xhtml.