Widgets: add the Etsy mini-widget to your sidebar

We love guest stars here on Everything TypePad, especially when they're telling us how to do more cool stuff with our blogs. Here's a guest post on how to add the Etsy mini-widget to your blog, from one of our favorite bloggers, Sara, who blogs at All Things Girls Can TellWhat I Did With My Summer Vegetables. Take it away, Sara! 

Do you have a Typepad blog, love Etsy.com and want to include an Etsy mini widget (or three) in your sidebar?

1. Once you have the java script all cut and copied from your Etsy account for your Etsy mini (you can find it under "Promote" when you're logged in, under "Your Etsy"), go to Typelists in your Typepad behind-the-scenes screen (your dashboard when you're logged in). Click "create a new Typelist".
2. Choose "link" as the type of list you'd like to create.
3. Name your fancy new list (I call mine "currently at Etsy", but by all means, be more creative than that).
4. Now choose which page you'd like to display it on - your blog page, your about page, etc.  
5. Click on this new Typelist, and paste the javascript code you grabbed from Etsy into "link title" and then save it. (Leave the other fields blank).
6. Once that's accepted, you need to click to "edit your current design" (in the "Weblogs" tab).
7. First click "select content" to add it to your sidebar content.
8. Then click "order content" to arrange your sidebar items as you wish (most likely prominently displaying your fabulous Etsy Mini). It's all pretty drag and droppy, so have fun with it.

Once that's all done, you need to republish for it to appear. You can see how it looks all pretty and finished right here on my little blog. Rock it!

How a Blog Can Help Your Job Search

Today's feature is a little different - we asked a TypePad blogger and About.com job search expert Alison Doyle to write us a guest post about how you can use a blog to help your job search. We'll be writing up extras about how to use TypePad for your job search, building a resume, and more. Thanks for posting, Alison! Want to write a guest post? Just let us know in the comments.

Are you looking for a new job or are you in career-building mode?  A blog is an ideal way to showcase your skills and accomplishments to prospective employers and a terrific opportunity to build your credibility as an expert in your field.

Why Blog?
A blog can help you find a new job in several different ways.   You can use your blog to provide insight on your expertise and use it to let the world know that you are seeking a new opportunity.

In addition, it’s very typical for hiring managers and recruiters to Google prospective applicants for employment.  Your blog will most likely rank highly (Google Alison Doyle and you’ll see my blog ranks #2) and it’s got exactly the type of information that I would want a prospective employer to see right off the bat.

Getting Started
If you already have a personal blog that you’re happy with, don’t mess with it. Start a new career-focused blog. That way, you can keep your personal life separate from your professional life, which is always an issue online.  There is, of course, such a thing as too much information and you don’t want to share that information with prospective employers.  You can use your career blog for job search purposes and your personal blog for family and friends.

Blog Options
Bloggers have had success with different types of employment-related blogs. Before you start blogging consider what you want to focus your blog on. Do you want to write about your job search? Or, do you want your blog to supplement your resume and focus on the skills and expertise you have to offer? Both options work well.
Rachel Levy, for example, is in the midst of a job search.  Her blog is directly focused on her job search.  The title and sub-title are:

Rachel Levy: Job Search & Social Networking
How I’m using social networking tools like Twitter in my search for a marketing job in Boston

Rachel uses her blog to talk about her job search, to discuss what it’s like being unemployed, and to share her expertise in public relations, marketing, and social media. Her blog also includes a portfolio of her work and information on how to contact her. 

Philip Morgan is a technology communicator. His blog philipmorgan.net is full of posts that show his expertise in the field including tips for technical trainers and effective software certification. His blog includes a link to his resume and detailed information about his background.

Blogging Job Search Tips
The goal when you’re using your blog as a job search tool is to spread the word – to get your name, your credentials, and your expertise on the Internet in as many places as possible. The more visibility you have, the better.

• Start simple. Choose a professional style template and go from there. You don’t need to know anything technical to get started.  It’s a quick and easy process.
• Use your name.  If possible get your name or a variation of it for your blog (here’s mine: alisondoyle.typepad.com). It’s a good opportunity to reinforce your online presence.
• Share your profiles.  Add links to your Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, StumbleUpon, Digg, Twitter, etc. from your blog (in TypePad, click on Control, Profile, Your Other Account).
• Feed your blog. Set up feed from your blog to your Facebook page and to Twitter so your connections can see what you’re blogging about.
• Include links. Include links to your blog on your resume, your LinkedIn profile, your VisualCV, and your other professional networking profiles.
• Update your blog.  A stale, out-of-date blog isn’t going to do anything for you. Update your blog, even if it’s a short post, at least a few times a week.
• Be nice. Do not say anything nasty about your previous or current employer.  It not only can get you in trouble, it can jeopardize your chances of getting a new job. Nobody wants to hire someone who might do the same to their company someday.
• Have fun.  Even though your blog, in this case, is work related, there’s no need to be boring.  Be creative, share your perspective, and share your personal stories.  Your blog should be readable, engaging, and personable.

Alison Doyle’s Bio
Alison Doyle is a job search expert with many years of experience in human resources, career development, and job searching, with a focus on online job searching and job search technology. She has covered job searching for About.com since 1998. Alison is also the author of her personal blog (alisondoyle.typepad.com) with advice and commentary on the world of work.

Alison is the author of Internet Your Way to a New Job: How to Really Find a Job Online (2008) and the About.com Guide to Job Searching (2006).

Alison’s Blogs:
Alison Doyle Blog: alisondoyle.typepad.com
About.com Job Search Blog: jobsearch.about.com

Cadbury's Chocolate Goes Fairtrade with TypePad

This morning, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk in the UK made a landmark decision to gain the Fair Trade Certificate by the end of the summer. This was a massive decision for a company serving a nation of chocoholics, who consume over 300 million bars of chocolate a year(!), and to use their addiction as a force for good. This move will triple the sales of cocoa under fair trade terms for cocoa farmers in Ghana, notes the CSRWire, a corporate social responsibility website.

They chose TypePad to announce the news, driving a multimedia campaign with their blog.  The site was built on TypePad Business Class, and was designed by the agency in a matter of days. Welcome to TypePad, Hyper and Cadbury's: we think your new blog is awesome.

Updates to the PayPal Storefront Widget

Today's guest post comes from John T. Unger.  He's sharing some news about updates to the PayPal Storefront Widget:

When I first wrote about the Paypal Storefront Widget, I called it "the fastest, easiest eCommerce solution for blogs." If you're looking for a quick and easy way to add fully functional eCommerce to your blog (whether selling goods or services) you should definitely give the Storefront Widget a look. The widget works equally well for TypePad blogs using basic or advanced templates. You can add a storefront with a single click by visiting TypePad's Widget Gallery. Or, you can embed as many stores as you like, anywhere you want, by cutting and pasting a snippet of code provided by PayPal at the end of the set-up process. For a list of features and an overview of what the Storefront Widget can do for your blog, please check out my previous articles on Everything TypePad and my own blog TypePad Hacks.

I'm writing about the Storefront Widget again today to tell you about some new features and to congratulate Judy Chang and the PayPal Distributed Payments team on the fantastic effort they've put in to supporting widget users and continuing to improve the widget for everyone.

Here's a list of what's new for the widget:

Multiple Currencies: One of the most-requested features that was missing from the initial release was the ability to sell in currencies other than US Dollars. This has been addressed and you can now configure your store to sell using any of the 17 currencies that PayPal supports.

Product Options: Just like the original PayPal buttons, you can now customize up to two options for a product. For items that might come in different sizes, colors or materials this is certainly handy. Even better, you can now also include a surcharge for certain options if you want to. For instance, if you're selling jewelry, you could set different prices for the same ring done in gold or silver. Or you could use the surcharge to offer upgrades to services.

Inventory Control: For items that have limited quantities, you can now specify the available inventory. This can be broken down further to allow you to set inventory numbers for each item by options or combinations of options (ie: I have 9 red shirts, size xxl and 15 blue shirts, size xxl).

Store Reputation: We all know that favorable feedback from buyers is one of the best ways to increase trust online. Now, customers who buy from your Storefront Widget can provide written feedback and rate your store from 1-5 stars. Only one rating per transaction is allowed and buyers must provide the invoice ID that PayPal generates in order to leave feedback.

Shipping Options: Originally, shipping had to be included in the sale price. The obvious drawback to this approach is that it makes items look more expensive. Although the widget does not yet include a way to automatically generate shipping costs, the PayPal team has called attention to a clever hack developed by sellers using the widget: You can add shipping fees to your storefront and have buyers select the proper shipping rate as an item based on the order subtotal. This is still an imperfect solution for some situations, but should prove useful for many sellers.

Here's what the updated widget looks like in action:

For a more comprehensive overview of features and benefits, visit my PayPal Storefront review at TypePad Hacks. If you'd like to compare the widget to several dozen other eCommerce options that can be integrated with TypePad please check out my article: Blogs as Stores: A Comprehensive Overview of eCommerce Solutions for Bloggers.

-- John T. Unger
TypePadHacks.org

Guest Post: The Smartphone Experiment

This virtual-book-tour guest post comes Pierre Khawand, who used his TypePad blog The 81-day-experiment as the launch point for his recently released book The Smartphone Experiment. In his post, Pierre talks about his motivation for writing the book and how his TypePad blog helped him gather feedback and build a community around the book as he wrote it.

We have two copies of The Smartphone Experiment to give away to Everything TypePad readers. Just leave a comment with your email address (it won’t be published) so we know how to get in touch.

Update: The giveaway copies have been claimed. The Smartphone Experiment is available for purchase at Lulu.com.

I have recently published The Smartphone Experiment book—how to select your smartphone in 5 easy steps, based on the 81-day-experiment blog (81dayexperiment.typepad.com) which I started on TypePad in August of 2006. In this blog, the focus was on using a variety of smartphones and reporting my daily observations about their features, plans, and usability, in order to help smartphone users make better decisions when it comes to purchasing a smartphone.

In this virtual book tour, and in the next few posts, my attempt is to answer many of the questions that I have been answering in my radio book tour, about smartphones and smartphone safety.

Question: “Why did you write this book?”

Because my focus is on productivity in the workplace (that is what my company, People-OnTheGo, trains in) and smartphones are becoming an important part of productivity. In addition, as more smartphone models are introduced and as technologies and wireless service plans become more complex, buyers are finding it more difficult to select the smartphone that meets their unique requirements. And with an average purchase price of $200-500, and several hours invested in setting up the device and learning it, a bad decision can be an expensive one.

I wanted to provide business professionals with a one-stop resource that provided them everything they needed to make the right decision.

Question: “How was the TypePad platform useful in this process?”

The 81-day-experiment blog, using TypePad, was the vehicle for creating The Smartphone Experiment book. It enabled me to easily have ongoing discussions with smartphone users and to form a community around this topic. I was able to start sharing my findings with the users starting from day 1, instead of waiting until I publish the findings at the end of the experiment. Most importantly, the ability to post the entries on a daily basis, and to get feedback frequently, gave me the motivation to keep going. It would have been a daunting project to write the book without the blog. The blog helped me break down this project into manageable and enjoyable smaller components.

Guest Post: Why Did I Write the ABCs for Expectant Dads?

The following guest post is from author and longtime TypePad blogger, Todd Lieman, who wrote the reference book, ABCs for Expectant Dads.

“What the heck have I done?”

That’s one of the first reactions I had after sharing the “line on the stick moment” with my wife. (Which is shortly followed by, “I really hope it’s mine.”) When you see that line and know your partner is pregnant, there is (usually) immediate joy. Then fear. Then insanity. Then the questions. What do I do next? Who do I turn to? Will I ever play golf again? What the hell is an episiotomy? (Don’t even get me started on the “mucous plug.”

Becoming a father for the first time is an exciting time for any man (provided, you know, it’s on purpose, and that you and the woman carrying your baby aren’t in high school…or cousins). As the time passed (and my wife grew), I quickly realized that I didn’t know the first thing about pregnancy or what to expect. My wife, on the other hand, started studying for the pregnancy with all the vim and vigor of a Harvard educated med student. She had magazines, books, Web sites and friends to turn to, all of which were loaded with what seemed like great information. She was going to be prepared.

As for me? I had no idea what to think or expect.

Six Apart Meetup in Austin, TX

We've scheduled an informal meetup in Austin, TX, and all local TypePad users are invited!

Austin Six Apart Meetup
Wednesday, January 16th
7pm
at Spiderhouse Cafe
2908 Fruth Street, Austin TX, 512.480.9562 (map)

All current and future users of Six Apart's blogging tools are welcome to join us.  As your representative from Six Apart, I will have some goodies to hand out.  Look for us outside, unless it's too rainy or cold (ha!) in which case we'll try to huddle together inside.

Please visit my blog to leave a comment and let me know if you're coming!

- Krissy

Guest Post: A review of the PayPal Storefront Widget

In our post announcing the launch of the PayPal Storefront Widget, we linked to an in-depth review of the tool by John Unger on his TypePad Hacks blog. John's a long-time TypePad blogger who's written extensively about eCommerce in TypePad, and uses his TypePad blog as a storefront for his TypePad consulting work, handmade firebowls and other artwork. We asked John to share his thoughts about how the widget can be used as part of a blog-based eCommerce solution.

The Paypal Storefront Widget is an amazing tool for bloggers who want to sell goods or services without diving deep into coding a custom solution. You can add a storefront with a single click by visiting TypePad's Widget Gallery. Or, you can embed as many stores as you like, anywhere you want by cutting and pasting a snip of code provided by PayPal at the end of the set-up process. If you're looking for an easy way to monetize your blog or to sell goods and services online, this is one of the best options I've seen yet. The widget works equally well for blogs using basic or advanced templates.

Don't let the ease of use and simple set-up process fool you… although the Paypal Storefront Widget was designed as a tool for "casual sellers," the widget contains almost all the features you would expect from a full eCommerce tool. Because you can have as many different storefronts as you want, there's no limit to how you can use this widget to grow your business. You could use it to offer special deals from within any post. Or to create a "catablog" with your full range of products. You could use it to feature product spotlights. The possibilities are limited only by imagination.

The PayPal Storefront Widget is free, and fees for transactions are the same as those for the standard PayPal shopping cart buttons. This makes it an ideal solution for testing new products and ideas. You only pay if you've made sales and the costs are much lower than most eCommerce products currently available.

Who is the Paypal Storefront Widget for?

• People who want to focus on blogging about their area of expertise and drive business, rather than spending all their time configuring and coding their blog.
• People who want to test new ideas in the market or grow their existing businesses.
• People who need an inexpensive eCommerce solution that delivers real features.
• People who need a simple eCommerce solution with a low learning curve.
• People who want a fast eCommerce solution they can set up in minutes.

Even for people who are comfortable with writing code, this widget offers a great solution for quickly adding one-of-a-kind items or special offers that might not justify the amount of work needed to hand-code product pages.